The Columbus Code (26 page)

Maria glanced at the car's reflection in the window of a shop. Someone was sitting in the driver's seat and although she could see only the top of the head, the square shape was all too familiar.

Maria feigned delight at the macabre masks in the shop window as she stepped inside. She silently cursed the bell on the door, but when
she peered through the glass, the square head was still facing forward. Even when a man in tattered khakis and a long T-shirt climbed in on the passenger side.

“I can help?” a woman asked behind her.

“I was just admiring your window display,” Maria said, eyes still on the pair in the car.

The shopkeeper scowled. Maria took her law firm phone from the briefcase and smiled. “Would you mind if I took a picture of it?” she asked, gesturing toward the display. “It's beautiful. I'd like to send it to my friend.”

The woman responded with a
These American tourists!
expression and turned away shaking her head.

Maria opened the camera app on her phone, aimed it out the window, and waited. She could feel perspiration beading on her back. Just as the shopkeeper bustled toward her again, the man in khaki pants emerged from the car. Maria snapped pictures until he disappeared around the corner. By then Molina and the sedan had sped down the alley raising a cloud of dust.

Maria turned to the shopkeeper and smiled. “I'll take one of those cat faces,” she said, pointing.

She was just stuffing the purchase into her briefcase—and wondering what on earth she was going to do with it—when the phone rang. The call was from a San Francisco number.

“Dad?” she said.

“No, Maria,” a male voice replied. “It's Taylor Donleavy.”

Winters and Sophia arrived at the monastery a little before noon. The crumbling, white stone seemed to glow in the sunlight. Either that or
sleep deprivation was getting to Winters. He'd had another night of bad dreams, this time twisted around Anne and planes flying into buildings, but not the Twin Towers—the churches and monasteries of the Spanish countryside.

The real questions before them now, of course, were whether the elusive journal was here and whether anyone would even let them see it.

Once again Sophia had called ahead, but the abbot who marched across the ancient pavers to greet them was not yet part of her fan club. He nodded vaguely at her, before he directed his remarks straight to John. “You are
Señor
Winters?”

Just enough English to get by.

“I am. And this is—”

“We do not allow women on the premises.”

Winters bristled. “You could have mentioned that on the phone.”

“He did,” Sophia said. “I am happy to wait out here.”

“No,” John said. “Look, Father—”

“Brother.”

Winters didn't care if he was somebody's sister, but he put on his game face. “I apologize, Brother. I understand you have rules, but Ms. Conte is a scholar and my translator.”

Sophia, meanwhile, was gazing in fascination at the rock formation the monastery was built into. Her dark eyes seemed to be soaking in every crack, as if it might tell her a tale of its past.

The abbot said something to her in Spanish, to which she answered simply, “
Sí
.” He looked as if he were pondering the meaning of life before he said, “Good then. I will make the exception.” He offered his hand to Winters. “I am José Gris.”

“Pleasure,” Winters said, glad to have the issue resolved.

Sophia, on the other hand, seemed unfazed as Brother José led
them inside the monastery. Light from the many candle sconces lining the walls gleamed on the ancient floors. Winters thought it had probably looked exactly the same for five centuries.

John was beginning to suspect Brother José was the only one living there when a hooded monk passed silently behind them. Winters saw him only because he was keeping his eyes, ears, and nose attuned to everything. The dreams weren't the only thing that had kept him awake. The more he mentally reviewed the figure in the window across from the church in Toledo the more sure he was that they had been watched.

Then there was the death trap of a compact car with one bumper askew that had followed them for fifty kilometers before they stopped for the night. He'd memorized the license number when it passed them but he didn't know what he could do with it. There was no Donleavy there to track it down for him.

Winters watched the other monk hurry down the steps, to what appeared to be a struggling vegetable garden.

“You grow all your own food?” Winters asked.

José merely nodded his head.

As they were ushered into a cool room with a row of narrow, arched windows, Winters saw that the monk's disposition toward Sophia had improved. What was it with her? She wasn't even charming him with a smile, just listening intently as he chattered away in Spanish. Still, he seemed taken by her.

Then she asked, “How will you know if
Señor
Winters is worthy of seeing the journal?”

Winters stopped with his hand on the heavy, wooden chair he was about to pull out from the equally heavy table where José was motioning for them to sit. “The journal is here?” he asked.

“It is.” Sophia's eyes were bright, but they held a warning. “Brother José tells me others have traced it here but no one has been allowed access to it.”

“Because they can't prove they are a direct descendant?” Winters said.

“No.” The monk shook his head. “Because they cannot prove their hearts.”

So old Jacobo had been right, Winters thought.

Brother José gestured for John to sit next to Sophia, which he did, but he was uneasy about what would follow. He didn't know how he was supposed to prove his heart to this man who would obviously take a bullet rather than let the journal fall into the wrong hands.

“I must ask you some questions,” Brother José said. “The answers will tell me everything.”

Sophia squeezed his knee, but Winters didn't need the warning. He'd faced tougher opponents than Brother José.

“
Señor
Columbus,” Brother José said. “Does he seem
un hombre loco
to you?”

“Do I think he was a crazy person?” Winters said. “No more so than I am to come here looking for my connection to him. I think he had a vision and he thought it came from God and he followed it.”

“If I show you the journal, what will you do with it?”

“I don't intend to do anything with it,” Winters replied. “It doesn't belong to me. It belongs here.” He moved to the edge of the chair and spread his hands on the table. “Look, my mother started looking for our link to Columbus because she said God told her to. I promised my mother I would continue the search. I owe her that and maybe God is telling me to as well—I don't know. I'm here and I want to follow through.” He shrugged. “Once I've looked at it, I don't know
what will happen. I'll probably go home. But I'm sure not planning to take it out of here with me. I only want to look at it.”

Winters paused for breath and realized Sophia had been simultaneously translating while he waxed eloquent. He had no idea where any of it had come from.

“I think you must see it,” Brother José said with a nod. He scraped the heavy chair back from the table, crossed the room, and made his way to a door on the far side. He pulled it open and disappeared on the opposite side.

“John,” Sophia whispered, “do you realize what this means?”

“Do you?”

The hand she put on his was clammy. “We are about to see something no one else but these monks has seen since Gaspar Gorricio brought it here over five hundred years ago.”

“And I'm not even Catholic.”

“You're not a practicing Jew either.”

Winters looked warily at the door. “You think these guys believe that theory? Would they be this protective of Columbus' stuff if he was Jewish instead of Christian?”

“I think they're just following the orders of Brother Gaspar.”

“You think Gaspar knew Columbus was Jewish?”

Sophia straightened in her chair. “I think you're about to find out.”

The door creaked open and Brother José entered wearing cotton gloves and carrying a glass case about the size of a box of chocolates. Inside it was a wooden box, burnished with age.

Brother José set it on the table between John and Sophia, just within their reach. He handed each of them a pair of gloves. “Use these to touch it,” José said. “Otherwise, the oil from your skin will damage the pages.”

He took a key from the folds of his coarsely spun robe and unlocked the glass case. Winters saw his fingers tremble inside the clumsy gloves and found himself holding his breath as the monk lifted out the wooden box.

Sophia gasped audibly as he set it on the table before them.

“
Sí
,” José said.

“You see the inscription,” Sophia said, pointing. “Across the top.”

Winters studied the letters scrawled into the wood. “Is that Latin?”

“Yes. It says ‘Gaspar Gorricio.'” She slid on the gloves. “May I?” she asked the monk.

His nod was almost indiscernible.

Carefully and reverently, Sophia traced the letters with her index finger. “This is very old,” she observed.

“Very old indeed,” the abbot said. “It has been here since Gorricio brought it in 1506.”

Winters was willing to stop right there. It was worth the whole trip to see the joy on Sophia's face.

“I will warn you,” the monk said. “The papers are frail.”

Winters was sure he meant
fragile
and that turned out to be an understatement.

Brother José removed the rough-hewn lid from the box and lifted out a small book. The leather cords that had once held it together were rotted through and the heavy brown cover with its raised letters began to fall away in the monk's hands. Brother José laid it between them, and it splayed open. A small, browned corner chipped off and floated to the tabletop.

Sophia pored over the pages, gloved hands in her lap except to turn the leaves. Soft murmurs came from her throat.

“It's in Spanish, of course,” Winters said.

“Castilian Spanish,” she said. “Once I get used to it, the reading will go faster. This I know so far.” She hovered a finger over the paper and read, “‘God made me the messenger of the new heaven and the new earth of which He spoke in the Apocalypse of Saint John. Having spoken of it also through the mouth of Isaiah, He showed me the spot to find it. We are rapidly nearing the end of the age.'”

“He thought the new heaven and earth were the New World. Right?”

“Listen to this. ‘This is the Divine providence that has guided me and will furnish Isabel and Ferdinand with the gold and silver for the re-conquest of Jerusalem . . . Jerusalem and Mount Zion are to be rebuilt by the hands of Christians as God has declared by the mouths of His prophets.'”

Winters didn't know whether to say it in front of the abbot, but he would bring it up with Sophia later—if Columbus was Jewish, he certainly wasn't anti-Christian. It was like the two religions were supposed to coexist. Interesting thinking for a guy in the midst of the Inquisition.

“‘The year has come in the succession of ages when the oceans will lose the bonds by which we have been confined. And immense lands hitherto unknown and unseen shall lie revealed.'”

Winters found himself nodding. They could say Columbus was certifiable, but Winters had never known a mentally ill person who could write like that. He wanted to sit right there and listen to Sophia read the whole thing.

Despite his apparent trust in the two of them, the monk was getting jittery. He rubbed his hands together in the unwieldy gloves and glanced uneasily toward the door more than once.

“Do you have a photocopier?” Winters asked.

The monk looked scandalized.

“Perhaps you would let me photograph the pages?” Sophia asked.

“No flash,” Brother José cautioned.

“Of course not.”

“And the photos will be only for your own use?”

Winters nodded. “I have to consider that promise,” Sophia said, to his surprise. “I cannot make it lightly.”

Winters could only stare at her . . . until it dawned on him. She was a Columbus scholar and this was the discovery of a lifetime. She would want to share what she knew. For Sophia, not being able to share it was worse than not knowing it at all.

“Take the photos for
me
,” Winters said. “You can decide later whether you want to study them.”

Sophia searched his face and slowly smiled. What he loved about the moment was that she didn't seem surprised.

Winters put on the second pair of gloves—as too-small for him as they were too-big for Sophia—and stood on her left side. “I'll turn and you snap,” he said. “And Brother José, you pray.”

“What am I praying?” José asked, eyes smiling.