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CHAPTER 31

F LORENCE , I TALY

1:15 P.M.

E RIC WALKED ACROSS THE P IAZZA DI S ANTA C ROCE AND HEADED for the basilica. Workers were busy disassembling the grandstands and ball court that each year dominated the plaza. The yearly games were over. The Greens had won. Truth be known he’d always been partial to the Blues. He envied those who played Calcio Storico. He’d never had the physique to compete, though he’d come to learn that it favored not only the strong but also the clever.

The Basilica di Santa Croce anchored the west side of the piazza. A minor basilica, but it had long ranked as the largest Franciscan church in the world. Its current claim to fame was as the burial spot for Michelangelo, Galileo, and Machiavelli. Quite a funerary roster. But where San Lorenzo served as the Medicis’ chapel, the Pazzi family had always favored this church, erecting a chapel of their own that sat on the southern flank of the cloister. A masterpiece of Renaissance architecture. Built by Andrea Pazzi, head of the family in the fifteenth century, whose wealth at the time was second only to the Medici.

He’d never been especially close to his own parents. Neither considered him much of anything, both of them more interested in his brother, whom they’d harbored high hopes for. Why? He’d never understood. The man amounted to nothing more than a manual laborer working the marble quarries, dying over a decade ago from alcohol abuse with no wife or children. He, on the other hand, had gone to university, which he paid for himself, and graduated. He recalled the pressure he’d felt there to conform, the feelings of being left out. But he survived and eventually entered politics. Now his party might be on the verge of dominating the Italian government. Most likely he would play a key role in that move and hold a high position in an incoming administration. Of course his mother and father would never know any of that, as both had been dead a long time.

Only his grandmother had ever shown him interest. Though that attention had been tempered with her anger. She was a bitter, resentful woman whose husband had been jailed in the aftermath of the last great war, dying in prison as a devout postwar follower of Mussolini. He’d long listened to her stories, thinking them fantasy. But not anymore. They were far from that. In fact they might be the key to winning the upcoming elections.

He entered the cloister and walked to the end of the graveled path.

Not many people around today.

He stopped, then stepped inside the Pazzi Chapel. Where the adjacent Gothic basilica was adorned with stained glass, frescoed walls, pointed arches, and a trussed wooden ceiling, the chapel was the opposite, steeped in the humanism of Greek and Roman culture. He’d always admired its utter simplicity. The perfect combination of rectangles, squares, circles, and semicircles. All of the supporting elements—the arches, entablature, and pilasters—were highlighted by gray serena limestone, which stood out against the lighter white walls. Shallow arches became barrel vaults, and the overhead dome cast a sense of weightlessness. It took its name from the Pazzi who commissioned it as a funerary place, but it once also served an everyday function as the monks’ chapter house. The stone bench around the outer walls a leftover from those days.

“ It is a special place ,” his grandmother said. “ There is a message there. A powerful one. Of unity. ”

When he was a boy the two of them had visited Santa Croce and the Pazzi Chapel several times, but she’d never fully explained anything, offering only riddles. As an adult he’d come to understand what she’d alluded to. And what might have been only a footnote to history was now of immense importance.

He stopped before the altar and stared upward into the dome at the fresco, painted like the night sky, all the stars in place, the constellations ordered as they appeared over Florence on July 4, 1442. Only half of it had survived the over five hundred years since its creation.

Yes. There was a message here.

He studied the rest of the chapel.

Parliament was in its summer recess. He’d told everyone that he was taking a few days off. Many others were doing the same thing. Legislative sessions would resume September 1. Elections would come two months after that, the campaign season also opening September 1. Unlike in America, campaigning here was forbidden except in the sixty days prior to the election. It was imperative he be ready. His party had to achieve a meaningful majority in order to persuade the president of Italy to name their leader prime minister.

For that they needed the Catholic Church. And to get that he had to finish what he’d started. He’d come here for strength. Time to take a drive into the Tuscan countryside.

Back home.

And face reality.