The real reason Claudio wanted to buy me lunch soon began to emerge: so he could mess with my head.

“So,” Claudio said around his soup, “you seek your sister. But it isn’t a quest.”

“It’s a loose end,” I said.

“But if you pull on loose ends your sweater can unravel.” He smirked at this sally. “I’m just interested in why you need to find her.”

“My father’s death. I feel as if the whole thing won’t be over until I find Rosa.”

“But what will you say to her?”

“Hell, I don’t know—”

“Will you talk about your father?”

“Probably. What else?”

He put down his spoon. He said gently, “You see, I think you’re curious. Perhaps even envious. You want to understand why she was sent away, to this opportunity — or to this prison, depending on how it’s turned out for her — and why not you. Isn’t that true? But it’s really your father you should have spoken to.”

“It’s a little late for that,” I snapped. I had spent too many years breathing Catholic air. I felt deep responses kick in to the gentle prying, the effortless assumption of moral superiority. “Look — Claudio — why are we having this conversation?”

He steepled his fingers over his soup bowl. “The encounter you are planning could be very painful. I’ve seen such meetings before — for instance, among long-separated refugees — and, believe me, I know. And the information I am providing for you is setting up that encounter. I feel I would be avoiding my responsibilities as a human being if I didn’t raise that.”

“Are you saying you won’t give me the contact for the Order?”

“Oh, I’ve said no such thing.” But on the other hand, he wouldn’t give me the details, not yet; it seemed I had more intangible barriers to hurdle yet. “What do you know about the Order?”

“Hardly anything. It runs schools, and sells information for family trees.”

“What do you think it is?”

I hesitated. “I think it’s some kind of cult. That’s why it’s so secretive, why Rosa just — disappeared.”

“A cult.” He thought about the word. “You mean that pejoratively, don’t you? What kind of cult, do you suppose?”

I shrugged. “A cult of Mary. That’s what the name says.”

“You are right, and you are wrong,” he said. “The group does have the form of a religious order, but it is an unusual one. The Vatican has had contacts with the Order since its inception. At times of crisis in Rome’s long history the Order and the Vatican have even worked together …

“It’s certainly not a convent: children are born within its confines. Its focus isn’t on Mary, in a sense — not just on the mother, you see — but on the family. And in that sense it’s very Italian, of course. Italians aren’t like north Europeans, George. We’re a very — umm, local people. In England, young people leave home as soon as they can, for college, or work. Here, people stay at home. The family remains intact. It’s common to have several generations of adults under one roof, or at least living close by. There is a word — campanilismo — the sense of one’s loyalty to one’s campanile, the bell tower.”

“You can’t generalize like that about a whole nation.”

“Of course not,” he said easily. “But I believe you will need to think this way if you wish to understand your sister’s situation.”

“This is what I’ll find in the Order?”

“I’m telling you that the Order is like a family, but a family sixteen centuries deep. These are very close bonds, George. You will find your sister has exchanged one family for another — and she may not want to reverse that exchange.”

“I’ll take the risk.”

He spread those long pianist’s fingers on the table. “It’s your choice. But first let me show you my archaeological project. No, I insist.” He snapped his fingers; the waiter responded immediately.

It turned out his project concerned a small church called San Clemente, some minutes’ walk away, on the other side of the Colosseum. As a guest of Claudio’s I didn’t have to pay any entrance fee. Inside and out the church looked unprepossessing.

“But,” said Claudio enthusiastically, “it is one of Rome’s best examples of a ‘layered’ church.” By which he meant one building laid down on top of another. He took me down through the layers. It was a fascinating, eerie experience.

“You have an eighteenth-century facade, behind which is this twelfth-century basilica. Here is a rather remarkable mosaic of that period, showing the triumph of the Cross … But below all that we have a still earlier church, from the fourth century. I am working with some Dominican monks on the excavation of this layer.” Not that anybody was working here today. “And below that is a mithraeum.” This had probably originally been a town house of the imperial days, dedicated in the first century for use as a temple to the god Mithras, a secretive cult for men only. There was a faded fresco on one wall. It had been of the wife of an emperor, said Claudio, but retouched later to make it a portrait of the Madonna and Child. “And we believe there are layers yet to be unturned under that as well …”

He smiled in the gloom. “Look around you, George. Consider the deep layers of history, the extended and changing usage, of this one small church alone; and consider how little we understand even of this patch of ground. Then remember you are in Rome, where everything is drenched in history, in continuity through change. And then think of the Order. Rather like the Vatican, the Order is woven into this fabric of history and humanity …”

I was beginning to form an impression that this smooth clergyman was a lot less forthcoming than his appearance suggested. He was good at eating up time, at deflecting my questions, at probing into my personality, uttering vague forebodings and generating doubt: better at all that bullshit than putting himself on the line and taking responsibility to do anything. Maybe that’s a quality you need to get along in the Vatican, I thought; the Church hasn’t survived two thousand years by being proactive. But it wasn’t helping me.

And it was more than that. It was a feeling I’d had when meeting the headmistress, even Gina, even Lou. Every time I tried to take a step closer to Rosa I felt as if I were pressing against an invisible, intangible barrier, a force field of words and looks and subtle body language. It was as if all these people had been trying to put me off the search — perhaps without even realizing they were doing it.

But I’m a stubborn bugger if nothing else, and having come so far I wasn’t about to give up. And maybe the wine was making me snappy. I decided to challenge him. “You work for the Order, don’t you?”

“I’ve had some dealings with it.”

“You find it recruits,” I said rudely. I was guessing, but I hit a mark.

He lost his smile. “If I perceive a person in need, and if through the Order I can meet that need—”

“Will you get me that contact or not?”

He nodded curtly. “Tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll send it to your hotel.”

When I got back to my room I booted up the Internet connection again. I found two more emails from Peter. In the first mail, to my surprise, he said he had booked a flight to Rome. He said he thought I needed help.

“I think we’re up against a cult here, George. Some kind of weirdo mother-fixated Marian cult. And it’s nearly as old as the church itself. If the Vatican is siphoning funds they’re going to stonewall … Go back to your tame Jesuit,” he wrote. “Maybe he can get me into the Vatican Secret Archives. All Slan(t)ers know that the answers to most of the universe’s mysteries are to be found in there …” Well, maybe. I knew that Peter was of course following his own agenda — mine was just incidental to him — and I wondered if there was more to this sudden change of plan.