I, Saul (44 page)

“Mom, what time is it there?”

“Three in the morning,” she said, “but your father insists on talking to you. He made me turn on the light and find my notes. He ignored the poem and kept asking about my other scribbles.”

“Let me talk to Augustine!”

“All right, Edsel. Calm yourself. Here.”

“Philippi,” Augie's father said. “That's where you're going to find what you're looking for.”

“How in the world did you figure that out?”

“The guy who wrote this, where's he from?”

“Here. He's Italian.”

“Yet he wrote this in English. That's important. You said he wrote it in colored ink. Think that through and concentrate on the first two words, and you'll see it works only in English. Then it'll dawn on you.”

“Just tell me, Dad. I've been working on this for days.”

“Don't worry, you'll get it”
Click.

Augie rushed back into Emmanuel's office. “Excuse me, Colonel, but forget the author. Focus on the fact that Klaudios wrote this in English and in colored ink. We're supposed to get Philippi out of that.”

“Where in Philippi?”

“It's supposed to be obvious, but I have no idea.”

A young woman at a laptop spoke as if thinking aloud. “Color. Lavender. Purple.”

“That's it!” Augie shouted, smacking his head with both hands. “Give me an anagram for
Daily …
.”

Georgio was the first to respond. “Lydia!”

Augie dropped into a chair. “The Apostle Paul met Lydia of Thyatira, the seller of purple-dyed cloth, at a riverside in Philippi. She became the first European and the first female convert to Christianity.”

Georgio dismissed the others and told Augie, “If we can connect Klaudios to Philippi, we'll find the manuscript.”

“Roger knew him better,” Augie said, punching in his number.

As soon as Augie told him of his father's solution to the mystery, Roger said, “I know right where we're going to find the memoir. Remember
that beautiful outdoor chapel in Philippi, with the little brook and the Baptistery of St. Lydia?”

“Sure.”

“And the gorgeous little Greek Orthodox Church of St. Lydia on the grounds there—all kinds of original art on the walls?”

“Been there many times.”

“Ever seen that wiry little guy, looks like he's two hundred years old, who hands out pamphlets in there?”

“Yeah, but he hardly says anything.”

“That's him. You ready for this? He's some distant relative of Klaudios.”

“Get out! I thought Klaudios's whole family was Catholic.”

“I'm telling you, they squabble like brothers, but they're related. We find that guy—I'm trying to remember his name, it's got a z in it—and I guarantee we find the memoir.”

“Tell Roger we'll pick him up,” Georgio said. “We're going to pay a visit to Klaudios's widow, then the three of us will fly to Philippi.”

Somehow Emmanuel talked his superiors into the use of a private jet and also put someone to work determining an appropriate reward for the two men responsible if Italy were to recover the most prized antiquity in history.

Just before noon, Mrs. Giordano confirmed that Yuri Zodiates, a caretaker at the Church of St. Lydia in Philippi, was Klaudios's uncle. “Most of the family shunned him, but Klaudios enjoyed him and saw him whenever he traveled to Philippi.You will find that he also does not believe Klaudios would ever steal.”

On the way to the airport, Emmanuel said, “I didn't want to spoil her image of her husband. Down deep she must know. Still, Klaudios should have been charged, not murdered.”

“Philippi is less than 150 kilometers from Thessaloniki,” Augie said. “I'd hate to leave Sofia out of this when she's so close. No idea whether she'd leave her mother for a while ….”

“It's all right with me,” Georgio said. “She can pick us up at the airstrip in Alexandros and save us a few euros. She deserves to come.”

A couple of hours later the three men greeted Sofia and followed her to a late-model Mercedes four-door.

As soon as they were on the road, headed toward the foot of Mount Orbelos, Georgio said,
“L'ironia non è perso su di me”

“No fair,” Augie said. “Speak English.”

Roger said, “He told her the irony was not lost on him. I'll bet we're closing the loop on all of this in Trikoupis's own car.” “It's true,” Sofia said.

When they arrived and walked past the Baptistery of St. Lydia on their way to the church, they passed a busload of tourists leaving the outdoor chapel. Augie said, “I'll be right there,” and stopped to examine trinkets offered by an elderly matron. He gave her three euros for an ichthus ring no thicker than a wire, then hurried to catch up.

The others were waiting at the stairs leading to a triple-arched entryway. They filed into the narthex, which featured a painting of
Hagios Paulos
(Saint Paul) holding that very church in one hand and a white Bible in the other. Next to a marble cabinet, which held candles for sale, sat a tiny priest in all black. He had tied back the long, straggly hair that protruded from a chimney pot-style hat, and he sported an untrimmed patchy white beard. He sat so still that he could have been a carving.

Roger knelt before him. “Remember me, Yuri?”

The old man blinked. “The voice,” he breathed.

“Yes! You remember my voice! Imagine me with my bushy gray beard.”

Finally Yuri focused and smiled. “Klaudios said you would come,” he managed, crossing himself right to left. “Rest his soul. I will need help getting downstairs.”

Yuri accepted Roger's outstretched hand and slowly pulled himself upright. The four followed him down a narrow staircase to a small office where he unlocked a cabinet to reveal a rough-hewn wooden box measuring about twenty-four by twenty inches. The initials
RM
had been penned atop it in lavender ink.

“Got to be sure this is it before we haul it out of here,” Emmanuel said. “Mr. Zodiates, do you have a screwdriver or a hammer?”

Yuri rummaged through an old metal desk and found an oversize pair of scissors.

Roger hefted the box from the cabinet, and Emmanuel carefully used the scissors to work at the top pieces of wood. When he finally broke through, he gingerly lifted out the bubble-wrapped stack of about five hundred sheets of ancient parchment.

“Please,” Augie said, “don't anyone touch them.”

As if on cue, everyone pulled out their cell phones and began shooting pictures, even the old priest.

Finally Georgio said, “This isn't standard operating procedure, but shouldn't someone pray?”

The five of them held hands and Augie said, “Father, we are overcome. We feel unworthy, yet blessed beyond measure. When we think of the man who penned these pages and what he endured for Your sake, we are reminded of what Your Son endured for us. We say with the Apostle Paul himself, who wrote to the believers in this very city: ‘Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though He
was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

“‘And being found in human form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.'

“Thank You in the name of Jesus the Christ, our Lord and our Redeemer. Amen.”

As they made their way back to the car, Roger—tears streaming— carried the box. On the flight back Georgio used a satellite phone to announce to his superiors the procurement of the memoir. They arranged a press conference for the following morning. There Roger officially presented to Italy the most valuable antiquity ever discovered.

Roger and Augie received checks for two hundred fifty thousand euros each. “Depending on how soon you cash this,” Roger told Augie, “it should net you somewhere between three hundred thirty and three hundred fifty thousand dollars.”

By late spring Luke had succeeded at both his most glorious assignment—helping Paul complete his personal memoir—and his most odious: keeping his dearest friend alive only so he could be put to death.

As Luke had pored over the hundreds of pages covering many events he had personally witnessed, he discovered insights that continued to amaze him. His friend was the most cogent thinker he had ever met. Paul had a way of ferreting truth from every anecdote. And whatever God had taught him, especially during the three years of solitude following his conversion, manifested itself in ideas easily understood by any reader.

That was why Luke insisted—much to Paul's dismay—that every word of the memoir, even the very last pages that brought the story fully up to date, be written in Paul's own hand. The old man insisted that no
one would care. “They will know these are my thoughts and that you, my friend, served as my amanuensis at the end.”

“I'm not going to do it,” Luke said. “This is an important document the brethren will cherish all the more because it is your own.”

“But my hand is unsteady, my writing sloppy!”

“All the more meaningful and unquestionably authentic.”

And so Luke lugged sections of the manuscript back and forth with him every night. He had additions and deletions to suggest, but the actual writing was done by the old evangelist himself. Luke interviewed Paul, urging him to write every detail he could remember from his earliest days with Jesus' disciples.

When it was finished, Luke was filled with pride. Paul, naturally, thought it “a mess. Whatever import or gravity it carries in the beginning will be lost on the reader in the end due to the distraction of ink blotches and the illegibility of an ancient man's hand.”

Paul's execution was scheduled for three days hence, so that evening Luke brought the complete memoir with him—an unwieldy stack of parchments wrapped in a bag. Equipped with plenty of oil for his lamp, he and Paul went over the last few portions page by page. “I remain opposed to the handwriting,” Paul said.

“And you must know by now that I have stopped listening.”

“Or caring.”

“Don't you dare say that,” Luke said, suddenly overcome. “Not in jest, not in anger, not even to make a point. It is too close to the end for you to even imply such a thing.”

Paul rose, opening his arms to Luke. “Forgive me, my friend. You know how I exaggerate.”

As the doctor embraced Paul and drew him near, he longed for him to enjoy the glorified body promised him in paradise. Paul had nearly
wasted completely away. Luke didn't know how the man could stand or walk, let alone be led miles out of Rome on the Ostian Road for his execution.

“I will never be able to thank you, Luke, not this side of eternity. I will watch and wait for you there, and perhaps in that beautiful dominion I will have the capacity to tell you all you have meant to me.”

“Stop!” Luke said. “I will miss you as if a part of me has died.”

“I
am
a part of you, my friend, for we are closer than brothers. We are united in Christ.”

Luke heard the scrape of the wood as the covering over the hole was pulled away. He was relieved when it was Primus who descended.

“Hide the manuscript,” he whispered urgently. “The execution has been moved up to tomorrow. They are coming now to move you to a cell above ground tonight.”

“You must take the parchments,” Paul said. “We cannot risk their being found with either of us.”

“I have nowhere to hide them, Paul,” Primus said. “I remain under suspicion. I had long before arranged for my day off to coincide with your execution—.”