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There was no furniture nearby. She let the items drop to the floor.
    Krek told her to stop to allow him to feast his eyes on the way she looked in her lingerie. He didn’t want her to turn around, not for the moment. ‘Keep going,’ he finally said.
    Aleida unclipped her black stockings from their garters and peeled them off, then deftly shed her bra and slowly pulled down her black thong. She was shaved and smooth.
    ‘Very nice,’ Krek said, leaning back on one arm. ‘Now turn around.’
    She did. There it was: a pale thin midline scar over her sacral spine running about six centimeters.
    ‘Come closer.’
    He inspected the scar and traced it with his finger. ‘Who did it?’
    ‘Dr Zweens,’ she said. ‘In Utrecht.’
    ‘I know him. He does good work. So, Aleida, you’re quite beautiful. I see no problems here.’
    He turned her by the hips to face him. She looked down at him gratefully.
    Krek stood, undid his belt and let his trousers fall to the floor. She finished the job and pulled down his shorts.
    He guided her hands around his waist. Aleida did the rest, moving them slowly and sensually to his lower back where she grabbed hold of the thick shaft at the base of his spine. She ran her fingers down its length. It was as meaty as his cock and every bit as hard.
    ‘Pull it,’ Krek moaned. ‘Pull it hard.’

SIX
    ELISABETTA’S SMALL OFFICE was on the third floor of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Archeology on the Via Napoleone, a bustling Roman street on a gentle hill. Outside, everything was moving at speed – cars, motorbikes and pedestrians – and the cacophony of engines and people made the city seem vibrant. Inside, the pace was languid. The staff shuffled through the halls at a crawl. The catacombs and monuments had been there for centuries, they reckoned, so what was the rush?
    Elisabetta didn’t share this sense of torpor. Over at Piazza Mastai her classes were being taught without her! Sister Marilena had taken them over so the children were being well-served – that wasn’t the biggest problem. This assignment was a schism, a rip through the fabric of her soul, for all the sinister fascination it held for her now. The patterns of her day had a purpose, all to serve God. For the first time in a dozen years she’d been tipped from her gently rocking lifeboat and cast into an unfamiliar sea.
    The books and papers on her desk were from a different time, a different Elisabetta. She recognized her own handwriting, remembered the marginalia she’d made but they seemed alien to her. She resented them, resented Professor De Stefano and resented the staff at the Institute. To her mind, they were players in a conspiracy to pluck her away from the things she loved. Even the clergy at the Institute seemed like inhabitants of a parallel universe with missions different from her own. The nuns were more like clock-watching secretaries, the priests smelled of cigarettes and talked about TV shows in the lunch room. She had to finish this job of hers, whatever it was, and return to precious normalcy.
    Elisabetta was thumbing through her old copy of Manilius’s Astronomica when she felt a sudden need to shut everything out and pray silently.
    She closed her eyes and clutched the cross hanging from her neck, hard enough to hurt her hand which already ached frequently from her old palm laceration. ‘Dear Lord, I lost all thoughts of myself and that of my old life when I abandoned myself to your divine spirit. I yielded my heart to the power of your love. That heart which was almost pierced by an assassin’s knife, that heart now belongs to you. I offer up my actions, my trials, my sufferings that my entire being may be employed in loving, honoring and glorifying you. It is my irrevocable will to belong entirely to you, to live and die as one of your devoted servants. Please let nothing disturb my deep peace. Heal my heart from impurity. Amen.’
    Before Elisabetta could reopen her eyes, disturbing images