Promethea (5 page)

             
My handpicked choice of words rattled his eardrums, as tension thickened the air between us. My eccentric approach to debates never appealed to anyone. Yet, bishop Bauer knew that this was not the time for yet another Sunday sermon; he sidestepped my verbal jab to focus on the case in hand.

             
“Considering the guards’ account of yesterday’s events, do you believe the thief knew about any if not all of this?” He exclaimed in an attempt to get back on topic, as I nodded in agreement.

             
“It would seem that he was exclusively determined on obtaining the spear, as I have mentioned… But then again if they really were after the one and true Holy Spear, shouldn’t they really be looking somewhere else?” I asked Bauer who looked hesitant. He may have been either hiding something or simply entertaining the idea. “If that is to be the case, it would leave us with four more spears they may still be after.” I resumed.

             
I did not think much of the lances of Echmiadzin in Armenia or the one in Poland. The former was never really a weapon; it simply does not resemble those spears used by Christ’s Roman executioners, while the latter, likewise, is a mere replica of the Vienna lance. Bauer marvelled at my objective analysis as he listened more carefully now.

             
The circumstances leading to the discovery of the third lance, the one in Antioch, were strictly bizarre. It was unearthed in a time of frantic need and despair during the first Crusade by a mystic French soldier that went by the name Peter Bartholomew. He claimed that the spear’s exact location was whispered to him in a long-forgotten vision, and as so, he credited the overwhelming subsequent victory over the advancing Muslim armies to his significant find. Yet, it was only a matter of time before crusaders started doubting his claims and the once vehement, gathered masses abandoned his propagandist side, which drove the Frenchman to the very edge of madness. He foolishly saw no harm in challenging whomever that opposed him to an
Ordeal of Fire
, where his flesh thawed to death, as he marched through the flames, believing that
the mystical powers of the spear
would protect him.

             
This left us with one last lance, if one would believe in such tales, one that has been suspiciously
too
concealed from public. Bauer knew exactly what I was talking about and his words rolled only to confirm my suspicions.

             
“The lance of Rome.” He countered.

             
The lance of Rome was never on display and is currently located beneath the dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica. Only the base of the original spear remains. The tip was broken off after the Persians’ capture of Jerusalem, and was sent off to Constantinople then to France, where it suspiciously disappeared,
or should I say stolen
, alongside Christ’s crown of thorns during the French Revolution.

             
“If the thief was actually willing to wrap his hands around the true Holy Lance, I believe that there would have been his best shot. There, was where he should have struck. Do you think someone this dedicated would make such a rookie mistake?” I asked bishop Bauer, who finally looked set to disclose whatever information he was withholding, but was interrupted by a discreet phone ding. He had just received a personal message that appeared to have relieved some of the anxiety that was building up on his face.

             
“Hélène, care to join me at St. Stephen’s Cathedral? I would like you to meet a man who might be able to answer some of our queries.”

              Adam had just got off the phone with Hélène. She seemed to be in pursuit of a minor lead with Father Bauer.
She should have waited for me
, he thought. Always a stubborn, unpredictable woman she was.

             
Even if he dared not expressing it in public, Adam had terribly missed her irresistible charm. He was always fascinated by her intoxicating personality;
She never compromised
. In a way, she always possessed what he thought was her own field of gravity. It either pushed people so remotely away or pulled them in like a black hole so inescapably and rather intensely.

             
She did not favour emotional attachments, as she once told him, and that is how everything simply just fell apart. Since then, he did not find peace unless in her presence, he would only be soothed within feet of her vicinity, and that is why he was always prepared to pull some strings, without her knowledge, in order to let her join him in assignments such as these. He felt like he could never get enough of her and that made him wonder if she had ever manipulated him and used his avid insatiable craving against him. Adam had lost himself in that idea for long enough that for a moment there he felt startled by the emotional mess Brunner had just put on display.

             
Brunner looked crushed. This moment was a culmination of failures of an unusually low point of his life. “I need this.” He pleaded. It was not clear if he meant his job or the investigation with his appeals. Yet Schuster was unyielding. He had already called three other officers through his radio to escort them both for the rest of their investigation. Once they arrived, they all descended back to the Swiss Court where they have first started their journey.

             
“Any more brilliant interpretations Monsieur Dubois? Ideas worth pursuing perhaps?” Schuster gave Adam his full attention now, who was still shaken by the Brunner scene. He somewhat felt concerned, as if he was the real reason for the Austrian officer’s dismissal. “Well… I’m sure you already covered going through the security cameras.” He stated cautiously.

             
“We have also run through the fingerprints, obviously.” Schuster added before elaborating, “Needless to say: it is a museum and no matter how many times you ask visitors not to touch anything;
they do
. We’ve got hundreds if not thousands of full and partial fingerprints scattered all around the place.”

             
Adam sighed and crossed his elbows. He closed his eyes for a moment, shutting away all the distractions as he tried to recall any analogies he may find with previous cases. “Well we were able to know how they got out, yet breaking in remains somewhat of a mystery.”

             
Schuster sensed that the young agent was on a blazing hot streak of monumental revelations and he certainly enjoyed the ride. “There were no signs of breaking and entering.” He added. “The alarm was only set off after they acquired the lance.”

             
“If that is so, what would your instincts tell you? What would your first guess be?” Adam’s tone turned more determined now. He was slowly gaining confidence, as he led the cognitive abilities of his Austrian liaison in a well-designed closed circuit.

             
“Someone had let them in!” Schuster expectedly deduced. There was an evident thrilled tone in his voice. He felt a spark that had been extinguished by the accumulative years of bureaucratic banalities and the blunt failures of his assistants. In a way, this adamant Frenchman has just reminded him of his young former self.

             
“We should start talking to those in charge of the CCTV. They must be aware of all the security blind spots. If I had any assistance from the inside, they would be the first people I would turn to for help.” Adam explained, and his point made perfect sense to the Senior Councillor who guided him hastily to the security room of the Hofburg’s Swiss Wing.

             
The glow of eighteen security monitors bounced off the hipster prescription glasses of an anxious young CCTV professional, as she sat there, alone, in the windowless dim Swiss wing security room hammering her wireless grey metal keyboard frantically. One could tell from the way she had collected her hair into a golden bun, fixed only with a used unsharpened pencil, and her loose grey hoodie covering a dark blue torn-out pair of jeans, that she had spent countless hours in this room with minimal human contact. It was also obvious from her bloodshot red eyes and her three empty coffee mugs that she had barely rested in days. The security console opposing her formed a wide U letter, and with all those bright flickering rectangular screens, it looked as if the eyes of a mechanical giant housefly were menacingly staring back at her worn-out face.

             
Schuster broke into the room without even a courtesy knock. He was still high on the earlier small advances they had jointly made in the case. Not to mention lacking the caution of the common man: his official high rank permitted him an all-access clearance to everywhere he needed to be, and he did push his authority to the limit. The young woman hopped off her chair when she saw them coming in. She was completely fixated on her tasks that the sudden noise seemed to have stunned her.

             
“Isn’t this just one disappointment after another?” Asked Schuster rhetorically. “Do we expect to finish all the video surveillance review in time with only you around? I thought we had more
men
on this.” When Schuster was in charge, he spared no punches. The inferred tone of sexism in his voice made Adam realize why the Austrian had not objected much when leaving Hélène behind. He probably only considered her as a liability. The mere thought of this bothered Adam to quite an extent.

             
“Well, Sir, I am the one in charge of the surveillance actually. I am the best you’ve got.” Replied the young attractive woman in an obvious challenging tone. Unlike Brunner, she seemed to be fully capable of marking her own territory, yet Adam saw little benefit to the escalating tension between the two. He felt an irrevocable urge to intervene.

             
“This could very well be true, Miss, but wouldn’t it be more productive to ask for help? You look overwhelmed.” Adam then pointed at the other empty chair in the room. “Where are your assistants?” He chose his words carefully, doing his best to mediate and dampen the situation. He actually felt relieved when he saw the young woman complying, letting her guard down slowly and cautiously.

             
“Assistant, actually, just one.” She retorted. “He did not report for work today. We have tried to contact him but with no luck.”

             
The Interpol agent did not expect, under such circumstances, to keep track of everyone’s whereabouts. All those in charge were simply under a lot of pressure, they were just too busy doing their own thing. Yet, the prospect of a missing security officer? Now
that
put Schuster and Adam on alert. They realized that they might have just found their next lead. One that lured them into posing the inevitable question: “And what if we need to find him?”

***

              St. Stephen Cathedral was relatively a stone-throw away so we decided to put our legs to good use and walk down Dorotheer alley. Our march bent sharply eastwards by the time we reached the Graben, Vienna’s most famous and lively street. Families seemed busy concluding their festive shopping sprees. They leapt merrily from one store to the next as thousands of lamps and chandeliers shone angelically above them, hanging charmingly over and across the surrounding buildings.
The place must have looked majestic at night
. I found it relatively easy to distinguish the locals from the tourists who were snapping group photographs in front of the Pestsäule; a famous marble column that was erected after one of the last big plague epidemics here in Vienna.

             
We walked relatively quickly, so much that I felt our hasty pace restricting me from experiencing the warm intimate scenery as much as I would have wanted to. We bypassed the area, almost immediately, and gave our backs to the crowds as we strolled down and headed to St. Stephen Cathedral. As time slipped by, I began to realize how much Bauer and I have failed to have any proper conversations ever since we left the Museum. Yet, his preference to resort to silence did not bother me that much. It actually gave me an ample the opportunity to savour the sights and smells of my first ever visit to the city.

             
As we drew nearer, I felt as if I could almost taste the cathedral’s distinctive atmospheric ambiance that just got transferred to all of our surroundings. The massive structure had an undeniable presence. So much that I found myself intuitionally drawn to the left and instantly feeling dwarfed by its captivating magnificence, obliged to even stop and stare in admiration for one long breath-taking moment. The structure was, without a doubt, the ultimate offspring of a brilliant fusion of Gothic and Romanesque architecture.

             
The bell tolls reminded me of how Beethoven had discovered his complete deafness right here in this very same spot. The story goes that he had seen birds flying out of one of these towers, alarmed by the loud dings, which he himself had failed to hear. The cathedral’s most glorious feature, however, was its glazed ornately patterned colourful roof carrying the Habsburg dynasty insignia. The same family, which its name now adorns the palace we had just left about thirty minutes earlier.

             
“This way, child.” Bauer whispered and I closely followed him. We arrived at the cathedral’s main door, for some reason they called it
the Giant’s Door
; Bauer did not really have the time to explain. I noticed three altars at the far end of the cathedral where the Archbishop’s Throne was situated. The cathedral’s layout was designed in a Cross shape, just like all medieval churches, while the crypts and catacombs sprawled in the basement beneath us. As holy as this place can be, I could not still prevent the eerie chill that ran through my bones.

             
Bauer turned to me as he led our passage across some seated worshippers then our hike up a stone spiral staircase that bathed in sunlight and prancing dust speckles. He was setting the stage for something; yet another one of his argumentative antics.

             
“What do you know about the relationship between the Vatican and the Austrian church?” He asked.

             
“Enough to know that there had been quite some turbulences starting with Vienna’s diocese inauguration and ending with the recent and on-going Austrian Bishops’ Call to Disobedience.” I replied while unbuttoning my coat.
They certainly had one efficient heating system
.

             
“Emperor Fredrick did prevail upon Pope Paul II to grant Vienna its own bishop, that is true, but that was a long six centuries ago. Today however, the real turmoil lays in managing the crisis created by the ‘Call to Disobedience’. I have to admit that if our religion had taught us anything it’s that ideas have, over and over again, proved extremely hard to thwart.” He then added before opening his office’s seemingly heavy ornate wooden door: “I must admit that they are, in their very own way, trying to keep up with the times that are constantly changing. So to an extent, I reservedly understand their cause
.
”

             
I seriously doubted that he shared those views with the Archbishop of Vienna.

             
The heavy door swung open, smoothly, without the slightest creak.
They were well funded.
Well at least enough to carry out even the smallest of maintenance nuisances. Inside his office sat another priest, with an exotic complexion, on one of two Louis XVI dark brown wooden chairs. Bauer must have trusted that man so much that he would leave him alone in there.

             
“Father Russo, welcome!”

             
“Oh enough with the theatrics Max, it’s been a long time!” Said the seemingly ever-cheerful Russo as he warmly shook Bauer’s hands.

             
“Fifteen years since our doctorate in Jerusalem to be exact, yet you haven’t aged a day.” Bauer was probably right. The Italian priest looked unusually fit for someone in his late forties.

             
“My body is my vessel, Max, and I intend to sail that ship for as long as I can.” Joked Russo.

             
“Well to be honest, I am really impressed by how Italian priests, out of all others, manage to stay celibate.” Bauer jabbed back.
Priests with a sense of humour; this is a novelty.

             
My ears involuntarily toned down their friendly chatter as they recounted stories of ghosts of lifetimes past. Me, on the other hand, I inspected my surroundings casually, but I found myself pulled to an intriguingly neat corner of Bauer’s office library. There, he had stacked numerous books and works of renowned modern physicists, thinkers and scientists such as Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, Richard Dawkins’ the God Delusion and Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Facing the Ultimate Frontier. All are renowned remarkable thinkers. Yet again, they were all famously atheist or agnostic individuals.