Unless, of course, the border he intended to cross lay in shambles. With one eye on the map, the other on the road, he knew he had only one choice: Kosovo. Over a year ago, the refugees had been pouring out, thousands of them crammed into camps littered along the Albanian and Macedonian borders. But there had been too many of them, thousands more shipped off to Turkey, Armenia, Greece-wherever friends or relatives had been willing to house them. Now, those same refugees wanted back in. Trouble was, there was no place to put them, entire villages buried under rubble. More than that, the Serbs weren’t exactly encouraging them to reclaim their homes; mines were once again springing up all over the place. Still, the refugees came. And with them, a rebirth of the camps. Not that the rest of the world was taking much notice. That was last year’s news. The horror of the camps, however, remained the same.

Callous as it might sound, Pearse knew that a priest on a relief mission could easily get lost in one of them. Or at least be deemed lunatic enough to be let through without too many questions. He was banking on the latter. More to the point, Kosovo would be the easiest place to disappear once Nikotheos’s call went through to Rome. Mention of the “Hodoporia” would no doubt kick the Austrian and his cronies into high gear. Even if they should find the car-which he planned to abandon a few miles from the border-the chances of locating him within the mayhem were slim at best. Somehow, he would find his way to the Drina.

Where along the river, however, was another question entirely. The latest Manichaean word game had nothing to do with acrostics as far as he could tell; this time, the gnosis lay hidden in what Ribadeneyra had described as “language alchemically transformed.” His explanation had done little to clarify:

Everything has not only one virtue but many, just as a flower has more than one color, and each color has in itself the most diverse hues; and yet they constitute a unity, one thing.

Still mulling over the sixteenth-century instructions, Pearse pulled into the “last petrol in Macedonia.” He’d expected to see some signs of life this close to Kosovo; instead, the road had become empty, the last half hour driven in complete isolation.

And yet, the solitude shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. During his first pit stop some eighty miles back-what had passed for a gas station, shack and seedy little pump-he’d been told that, this time, the UN was trying to keep the refugee camps to a minimum-Senokos and Cegrane to the south of the capital, Blace to the north. Those not involved had no desire to get too close.

The mayhem was at Blace-twelve kilometers on, according to the sign at the rest stop. On foot, Pearse knew, he could be there in a few hours.

The rest stop had clearly been designed for the onetime bus tours destined for the St. Nikita monastery, its minimalist cafeteria-glass as its walls-nestled into an opening in the trees. The pump here was pristine compared to the first he had seen, the name of the gas something unpronounceable, accents and consonants in the vast majority. Pearse pulled around to the back, grabbed the pack, and headed for the building. He left the keys in the ignition. If someone wanted the car, they were more than welcome to it. Let the men from the Vatican chase after an opportunistic refugee.

Inside, the place was equally bare, save for a man and woman at one of the far tables, both under a cloud of cigarette smoke. At the first sign of Pearse, the man jumped to his feet.

“Dobro utro.” He beamed as he made his way across. A few more incomprehensible words, then a hand indicating the tables.

Pearse shook his head, and smiled, the international sign for “I have no idea what you’re saying.”

No less genially, the man continued. “How am I helping with you?” A nod. “You make to understand?”

Pearse returned the nod and said, “Telephone?” Immediately, he saw the disappointment in the man’s face. “And food,” he added, the man’s expression at once brighter. Pearse then pulled out a few of the American bills. The man’s face again beamed.

“Telephone. Food. Excellent.”

Two minutes later, Pearse was doing his best with the operator. Eight minutes after that, he was being pulled away from a plate of something utterly unrecognizable, though surprisingly tasty, his call having gone through.

Professor Angeli’s voice was a welcome relief. It took him no time to bring her up to speed on Photinus and the little bound book.

“Yes, but where are you?” she asked.

Pearse hesitated. “Probably best if you don’t know that.”

A pause on the other end of the line. “I see.” When he didn’t answer, she admitted, “I suppose you’re right.” He could sense her unease, the reality of his situation-and her own reacquaintance with it-a bit too much. “All right…. You say it’s from a Spanish monk. Coded language. What did he call it?”

“‘Language alchemically transformed,’” answered Pearse.

“No, no. The other phrase. The one from Pliny.”

“Oh.” Pearse turned to the page, quickly skimming through several passages. “‘Quaestio lusoria,’” he read.

“Yes. ‘Quaestio lusoria,’” she repeated. Clearly, his warning had unnerved her more than he realized; her tone remained distant. More than that, it wasn’t like her to need any kind of reminder when it came to the world of esoterica. “I might have a book on that. Hold on for a second” Pearse listened to the sound of her receding footsteps, followed by almost a minute of silence. When she picked up again, she seemed no less edgy. “Carlo Pescatore,” she said. “The Art of Renaissance Wordplay. I knew I had it somewhere.” He could hear her scanning the pages, the usual hum conspicuously absent. “Yes. Here it is,” she began. “According to Signore Pescatore, a quaestio lusoria was a kind of puzzle….” Another flip of a page. “Primarily the domain of poets. Steeped in classical references.” She stopped, the first hint of the old Angeli creeping though when she continued. “Now that’s interesting. He says it could be considered the great-grandfather of the modern cryptic.” A few more flipped pages before she said, “You’ve always been very good at these. Like that Greek poem with Ambrose, remember?”

“Sure.”

“Well, it’s similar to that,” she explained. “Except with this, it’s more about anagrams and word reconfigurations, not just transpositions. That sort of thing.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Good. Because, in some form or another, I believe that’s what Senor Ribadeneyra has given you. It ties in perfectly with the Manichaeans. Meaning hidden within language.” Again a pause. “How many entries are there?”

Pearse counted out the lines of text. “About twenty-five.”

“I see.” Again, a pause. “Might be a bit tricky in Latin. If you want, you could … read them to me over the phone. I’m not so bad with these things myself.”

Pearse hadn’t heard the request; he was already trying his hand at the first entry. It took him a moment to adjust his thinking. As he read, he began to see what she was talking about. On its own, the phrase made no sense whatsoever. Reading it as a cryptic-a bit of repunctuation here and there-he saw at once what Ribadeneyra was after. He wants an anagram of a word that means “He that walks in battle,” Pearse thought. He continued to stare. “He that walks in battle.” Something so familiar to it, hours and hours of Catholic school and seminary Greek and Latin swimming in his head. His “gift” as he’d so often been told. He closed his eyes. “He that walks in battle.” A moment later, he had the answer. Gradivus. From the Aeneid-the epithet of Mars. He quickly jotted down the letters on his palm. He read the rest of the clue. “Who turns the seventh to a fifth.” The seventh. He let his eyes drift. A musical seventh? The seventh Commandment? He stared back at the word. Or is it easier than that? His eye stopped on the u. The seventh letter? “Turns … to a fifth.” The fifth letter of the alphabet? With nothing else to go on, he replaced the u with an e. An anagram of Gradives. He then wrote the letters in a circle, the surest way to work out an anagram. Ten seconds later, he had the answer.