The Fifth Gospel (41 page)

At three o'clock, Tauran exits. The stage is now set for Simon. Since most Vatican offices close at one o'clock, and workers are given at least an afternoon break during longer shifts, I expect the judges to declare a recess first. So I wait by the door for Mignatto, preparing to celebrate with him about a triumphant opening.

But no one comes. The longer the silence stretches, the more I feel unease spreading behind my ribs. They're waiting for Simon. And Simon isn't coming.

Twenty minutes later, a sedan pulls up. The driver exits, opens the rear door, and waits. The courtroom doors swing open. My uncle descends in a huff.

“What's happening?” I say.

But Lucio walks straight past me and into the waiting car. A moment later, it pulls away. I turn back to find Mignatto standing behind me.

“Did something go wrong?” I say.

“No word from Cardinal Boia,” Mignatto growls.

“How can they treat Simon this way?”

The monsignor doesn't answer.

“Is my uncle coming back?”

“No.”

I clear my throat. “So I can come inside the courtroom?”

He wheels on me. “You need to understand something. I can't properly defend your brother if your family continues to take matters into its own hands.”

“Monsignor, I'm sorry. But Ugo's phone will—”

“I know what the phone will do. If you can't agree to what I'm asking, then I can't agree to represent your brother.”

“I understand.”

“Everything else you consider doing, you come to me first.”

“Okay. Agreed.”

My acquiescence seems to calm him. “Very well,” he says. “The final deposition is in an hour. Get some lunch and meet me back here in fifty minutes.”

I'm supposed to pick up Peter in an hour, but that will have to wait. “Who's testifying?”

“Doctor Bachmeier.”

Ugo's assistant curator. This must be how the judges will learn about the exhibit.

“I'll be here,” I tell him.

AT FOUR THIRTY, THE
doors open. Mignatto leads me to a table on the right side of the courtroom. I see an identical table on the left for the prosecution, led by a priest with the ancient title of promoter of justice. Flanking him is the all-important notary, without whom the proceedings are void. Then comes the gallery behind us, rows upon rows of vacant chairs. Finally, a third small table with a microphone stands between the defense and prosecution. On the table are a pitcher of water and a glass. I don't have to guess who'll sit there.

Mignatto whispers, “It is not our place to ask questions. If you hear things you disagree with, write them down. If I consider the questions useful, I can submit them to the judges.”

“Please be seated,” says the presiding judge.

Then the gendarmes admit Dr. Bachmeier, a tweedy layman with a thatchy beard and poorly combed hair. I met him twice when Ugo and I were working together, and I know Ugo kept him in the dark. I doubt he really knows much about the exhibit.

The notary rises to swear him in. There are two oaths: an oath of secrecy and an oath of truthfulness. Bachmeier looks slightly cowed as he agrees to both.

“Please identify yourself,” says the presiding judge. He's a gentle-­faced monsignor with an old-fashioned appearance, his eyeglasses large and black-framed, his full head of graying hair combed back with tonic into a shiny little pompadour. I don't recognize him, or either of the other two monsignors on the bench, so Mignatto must've been right: any judge who knew Simon has had to recuse himself. Instead this monsignor's accent is Polish, which would make him one of the judges appointed to the Rota during the beginning of John Paul's pontificate. But for having that much experience, he still seems uncomfortable on the bench. His voice is unimposing, his body language tentative. When the time comes for the judges to meet in private and vote on sentencing, it's hard to imagine this man bending others to his will.

To his left is a much younger judge, still in his late forties, a ­friendly-looking man with tightly cropped hair. He has the air of a new student, eager to please. The last of the three is a grizzled bulldog with a clifflike brow and accusing eyes. He's older than the others and wears his irritation plainly. Instinct tells me he's the one this case will rest on.

“My name is Andreas Bachmeier. I am curator of medieval and Byzantine art at the Vatican Museums.”

“You may sit,” says the presiding judge. “Doctor Bachmeier, we're here to establish why Doctor Ugolino Nogara might have been killed. You worked with Doctor Nogara?”

“To an extent.”

“Tell us what you know about his exhibit.”

Bachmeier plucks at his bushy eyebrows in a sour, querulous way. He
seems to find the question open-ended. “Ugolino wasn't very forthcoming about his work,” he says.

“Nevertheless,” says the lead judge.

Bachmeier looks down at the tip of his nose, gathering his thoughts. Finally he says, “The exhibit shows that the radiocarbon tests on the Shroud of Turin were wrong. The Shroud existed in the Christian East for most of the first millennium as a mystical relic called the Image of Edessa.”

The judges glance at each other. One of them murmurs something inaudible. My muscles are tense as I wait to see if Bachmeier can establish the groundwork the prosecution needs. Only one motive can possibly be pinned on Simon for killing Ugo: that Ugo was about to reveal our theft of the Shroud from Constantinople in 1204. If Bachmeier doesn't know about 1204, then today has been a triumph for the defense.

The young judge says, “All of that comes as surprising and wonderful news. But how much of it was Father Andreou aware of ?”

“I don't know. I met him only a few times and never asked him. But he was very close to Ugolino, so I'm sure he knew much more about the exhibit than I do.”

“And can you think of a reason,” the lead judge says, “why the defendant would've been motivated to kill Doctor Nogara because of what he knew?”

Even before Bachmeier answers, I'm thrilled. This is asking him for more information than he can possibly provide. Even if he knows about 1204, almost nobody is aware that Simon invited Orthodox clergy to attend. I glance at Mignatto and notice a certain gleam in his eye. Maybe this question came from a list of suggestions he gave the judges.

Bachmeier, though, takes us both by surprise.

“Yes,” he says. “I can imagine a reason. We recently discovered that one of the most important parts of the exhibit has disappeared. Someone took the Diatessaron manuscript from a locked display case.”

I launch from my seat in disbelief. Before I can speak, Mignatto's hand is on my arm, pulling me back. The promoter of justice stares at us from the prosecution table.

“You're suggesting Father Andreou stole the book?” asks the presiding judge.

“All I know,” Bachmeier says, “is that the day after Ugolino was killed, Father Andreou came into the museum and made a change to the exhibit. He removed a photographic enlargement showing a page from the Diatessaron, and when I asked him about it, he offered no explanation.”

I hastily scribble a note to Mignatto.

He doesn't know what he's talking about. There are still Diatessaron photos on the walls.

Mignatto mouths,
You're sure?

When I nod, he rises and says to the judges, “Permission to approach?”

They wave him forward. A hushed parley follows. Then Mignatto returns to our table, looking stiff.

The young judge says, “Doctor Bachmeier, did Father Andreou remove
all
the photographic enlargements?”

“After I questioned him about the first one, he didn't touch the ­others.”

Mignatto frowns. This isn't the impression he wanted to leave the judges with. But it's a dead end. I'm more concerned about the Diatessaron. I wonder what the stains on Ugo's hands mean. Whether it's possible he brought the manuscript to Castel Gandolfo, and now it has vanished.

“Doctor Bachmeier,” the lead judge says, “can you think of a reason why—”

But the question is interrupted by the opening of the door at the rear of the courtroom. Its sound perforates the quiet hum of the proceedings. I turn.

A tall, doughy-faced man enters. He has downcast eyes and wears a plain black cassock. Soundlessly he sits on the last bench in the courtroom, trying not to attract attention. No gendarme stops him. And almost immediately his presence makes a stir. Even the judges are staring.

“Please,” the soft-faced man says in Polish-inflected Italian. “Continue.”

He has lived inside these walls for twenty-six years but has never shed his accent.

“Your Grace,” the presiding bishop says, “may we help you?”

“No, no,” says Archbishop Nowak, sounding contrite about the com
motion. “I am here only to observe.”

The judges are unsettled. It's one thing to be observed. It's another thing to be observed by the eyes and ears of the pope.

“Doctor Bachmeier,” the presiding judge repeats, “can you think of any reason why the accused would want to steal the manuscript?”

I find these questions absurd. There's no evidence to suggest Simon ever laid a finger on the book.

“Pardon,” comes a voice from behind us. Nowak again. “What is this question?”

The judge explains what Bachmeier has revealed about the theft of the Diatessaron.

“My apologies,” Nowak says. “You may ask another question, please.”

The judge tries to parse what the archbishop means. Looking uncertain, he decides to repeat his question to Bachmeier.

But Nowak interrupts, “My apologies. No more about this, please. The topic is now outside the dubium.”

Two of the judges glance at each other. I whisper to Mignatto, “What's the dubium?”

Mignatto doesn't answer. He stares at Archbishop Nowak in what seems to be shock.

The presiding judge riffles through the papers before him, then holds one in the air to read from it. “Your Grace,” he says, “I have the joinder in front of me, and it says the dubium is whether Father—”

Nowak raises a hand in the air and says in a mild voice, “His Holiness commands a change in the dubium. No more on this topic, please.”

Mignatto scribbles something blindly on the pad between us.

Dubium: what is to be proved.
The scope of the trial.

The presiding judge is so surprised that he says something to Archbishop Nowak in Polish. The older judge asks, “Which topic is His Holiness referring to, Grace?”

“The exhibit of Doctor Nogara,” Nowak says.

Mignatto seems frozen. His eyes never leave Nowak. But under the table he clamps his hand on my forearm and squeezes. If the tribunal can't hear about the exhibit, then Simon has no possible motive. The trial is all but over.

“Are you sure, Your Grace?” the presiding judge asks.

Across the courtroom, the promoter of justice is agog.

Archbishop Nowak nods. “You may continue, if you wish, with another topic.”

At the witness table, Bachmeier clears his throat. He isn't competent to speak on any other topic.

The judges confer. Finally the presiding judge says, “Doctor Bachmeier, you are excused. The tribunal will adjourn until tomorrow.”

Nowak rises. The gendarmes open the doors for him, and he quietly shuffles out.

Mignatto calmly opens his briefcase. He places the legal pad inside, then seems to remember something and jots a note on it. The promoter of justice is already buzzing nearby, hovering between the defense table and the bench, waiting to confer.

“I'll call you later,” Mignatto says to me. Before closing the briefcase, he tears off the top sheet, folds it over, and hands it to me. Then he joins the promoter on his way to meet with the judges.

Archbishop Nowak is already gone when I reach the courtyard outside. I sit on a bench by the gas station and close my eyes to collect myself. Few times in my life have I felt more acutely that my prayers have been answered. Then I open the sheet of legal paper. On it, Mignatto has written a single line:

I think we just found out who your brother's guardian angel is.

C
HAPTER
26

A
S I WALK
back to the village to pick up Peter, I look at the papal palace in the distance and wonder about what I've just seen. Boia is trying to force Simon to talk. Nowak is trying to keep the exhibit a secret. Battle lines seem to crisscross the palace. If John Paul supports the exhibit—if he supports Simon—then none of this should be happening. He has the power to stop the trial; he has the power to bring Cardinal Boia to heel. But when a pope nears death, he sometimes finds that old friends are wolves in priests' clothing. Archbishop Nowak has been forced to play the role of illusionist, creating the mirage of a strong pope to stave off a power vacuum. That mirage can last only so long.

What puzzles me most is the disappearance of the Diatessaron and where it might be now. Why would Ugo have taken it from the museum? To distract the Orthodox at Castel Gandolfo from the news about 1204? Or to prove something to them? The last time Ugo and I worked on the Diatessaron, he proposed a theory that could've sealed the final gap in his research. If true, it would've proven that the Shroud came to Edessa in the hands of one of Jesus' disciples. And it would've located that proof in the Bible itself.

LEARNING THE GOSPELS BECAME
Ugo's mania in the final weeks we worked together. He studied them the same way he drank. I would be reading in bed after Peter had gone to sleep, and my mobile phone
would ring: Ugo, asking whether Jesus really turned water into wine, since John is the only gospel to claim he did. Knocks on the door during breakfast: Ugo, wondering if Jesus really raised Lazarus from the dead, since John is the only gospel to claim he did. A message left at the pre-seminary: Ugo, trying to understand why John left out twenty of Jesus' healing miracles and all seven of Jesus' exorcisms.

To buy myself respite, I gave Ugo a sheaf of Simon's old homily paper—the same stationery on which he would later write the letter I found in Simon's bag—and we invented an exercise for him to do: chapter by chapter, he began writing out parallel verses from the gospels, comparing them word by word, and crossing out the sections that must've been added or changed by the gospel writers. This thrilled Ugo, who believed that by weeding out theology he was coming closer to the historical facts of Jesus' life. And though it saddened me to see him return each day with a new handful of pages in which whole phrases and lines from the gospels, especially John, had been crossed out, his command of scripture was becoming so strong, and his errors were becoming so rare, that I decided to let him continue until he reached the end.

Meantime, the manuscript restorers told me they thought Ugo sometimes spent the night in the lab. They resented the way he refused to let the Diatessaron out of his sight, as if he didn't trust them. Their concerns reassured me about Ugo's true intentions. He didn't really believe that by whittling the gospels down to their factual core he would reveal something new about how the Shroud had left Jerusalem. Instead, all our work together was preparation for reading the Diatessaron—and his hopes for
that
gospel were well-founded.

The man who wrote the Diatessaron, Tatian, belonged to a Christian sect called the Encratites.
Encratite
is Greek for “self-disciplined,” and they earned the title: they were teetotalers and vegetarians who also outlawed marriage. Since one of Jesus' first miracles was to turn water into wine at a wedding, it's tempting to ask how well the Encratites knew their gospels. But Tatian knew them cold.

It's a daring feat to weave Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John into a single gospel. But Tatian made it even harder on himself. His goal was to create a definitive version of Jesus' life, to disprove the pagans who said the Christian holy books contradicted themselves. A century earlier, the gospel of Mark had been edited to create the gospels of Matthew and
Luke. Now Tatian set out to edit
all
the gospels. One God, one truth, one gospel. And for anyone trying to prove the Shroud was in Edessa, his editorial changes were gold.

In merging the gospels, he left behind a trail of clues about himself and the world he lived in. For instance, the gospel of Matthew says Jesus was baptized by a man known as John the Baptist, who lived on a diet of locusts and honey. But Tatian, being an Encratite, was a vegetarian, and he happened to classify locusts as a kind of meat. So he changed the gospel text: in the Diatessaron, John the Baptist survives on
milk
and honey.

In the same way, it would take only a single word to prove that Tatian had seen the Shroud, or that the Shroud was in Edessa. The clue might be obvious, or it might be almost invisible. If
anywhere
in the Diatessaron Tatian described Jesus' physical appearance, it could be the lead we were hoping for. The four gospels never say what Jesus looked like, so a description in the Diatessaron would suggest Tatian had seen an image he considered authentic. Thus every page of the Diatessaron became pregnant. Ugo and I hung on what the restorers were recovering from under the smudges each day.

It was slow going. I convinced Ugo not to let the technicians remove the Diatessaron's binding, even though it would let them work faster. The pope's oldest Bible, Codex Vaticanus, was now just a collection of loose sheets under glass because someone had let the restorers disassemble it that way. But with the Diatessaron still bound, the conservators could restore only two pages at a time. So Ugo forced them to start on the pages that interested him most—the ones that described Jesus' death—and one morning a technician sidled up to us and said, “Doctor, the section you asked about is ready.”

THE WORKROOM OF THE
manuscript restoration lab was filled with wonderful contraptions. There were anvil-like things with hand-wheels as big as bicycle tires. Clotheslines sagged from the ceiling, draped with what looked like giant napkins. The conservators worked with vials of chemicals and huddled around the tiny manuscript with what appeared to be doll-size tweezers and brushes. Removing the smudges was painstaking work, and the manuscript had to be set open in an apparatus to recover overnight. Now, as the technician presented his work, Ugo
stared. He had begun taking Greek lessons at a pontifical university, but he was too impatient to use that knowledge now.

“Father,” he whispered, “tell me what I'm looking at.”

Hazy clouds dotted the page where the restorers had removed the smudges of censorship. Before our eyes was the verse that had vexed Ugo most. The one he had been dying to uncover.

“It says
cloth
,” I said. “Singular.”

“Ha! That supports the Shroud!”

He was excited but not jubilant. He'd had enough lessons by then to understand that Tatian could've chosen that word for other reasons. In fact, the word Tatian used—
οθονίο
, or “strip of cloth”—was John's word, which Tatian had changed from plural to singular rather than using the completely different word found in the other gospels. Confronted by this discrepancy in the gospel testimony, Tatian had split the difference, and the Alogi had dutifully smudged it out. This proved nothing.

But there was more here.

“Look,” I said, pointing to a word on the page.

According to Mark and Matthew, Jesus was offered a mixture of wine and gall to numb the pain of crucifixion. But Tatian was a teetotaler. He didn't want the Messiah drinking wine. So the page before us had changed the word from
wine
to
vinegar
.

“It's happening again,” I said. “He's changing the text.”

Ugo signaled to a conservator and called, “Bring me the photos of the other pages in this section.”

I scoured the pictures for other examples.

ΚΑΙΠΛΕΞΑΝΤΕΣΣΤΕΦΑΝΟΝΕΞΑΚΑΝΘΩΝΕΠΕΘΗΚΑΝΕΠΙΤΗΝΚΕΦΑΛΗΝ
.

“
And plaiting a crown of thorns
,” I said, “
they put it on his head
.”

Ugo watched but said nothing.

ΚΑΙΕΤΥΠΤΟΝΑΥΤΟΥΤΗΝΚΕΦΑΛΗΝΚΑΛΑΜΩΙ
.

“
They struck his head with a reed.
”

ΚΑΙΠΑΡΕΔΩΚΕΝΤΟΝΙΗΣΟΥΝΦΡΑΓΕΛΛΩΣΑΣΙΝΑΣΤΑΥΡΩΘΗ
.

“
And having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.
”

“What are you looking for?” Ugo asked.

These were the injuries that produced visible marks on the Shroud. So if Tatian had seen the Shroud, then he might've been tempted to en
rich these verses with his own knowledge, just as he'd done elsewhere. The gospels don't say how often Jesus was scourged or how badly his wounds bled. They don't mention which side of him was stabbed by a spear or where each nail of the crucifixion pierced him. Only the Shroud maps this gore. And to Tatian, who wrote the Diatessaron at a time when Christians were suffering bloody persecution across the Roman Empire, it might have seemed important to make the gospels fully express the horror of Jesus' torture.

“I'm looking for anything different,” I said. “Added or taken away.”

“Get a Bible for Father Alex,” Ugo called out.

But I waved him off. “I don't need it. I know these verses.”

Yet there seemed to be nothing changed. Not a word.

“What do you see?” Ugo asked.

“Nothing.”

“Are you sure? Look again.”

But there was no need to look again. From the first torture until the last mention of the burial cloth, the account given in the gospels is scarcely a thousand words. I knew those words by heart.

“Maybe we're not looking in the right places,” I suggested.

Ugo ran an anxious hand through his hair.

“There are dozens of pages left to be restored,” I said. “It could be anywhere. We'll just have to be patient.”

But Ugo ran a finger under his nose, considering something, then whispered, “Maybe not. Come with me. There's something I want you to see.”

I FOLLOWED HIM BACK
to his apartment.

“This is confidential,” he said, wringing his hands with eagerness. “Do you understand?”

I nodded. Not since our initial meeting here, when he first described his exhibit, had I seen him so carried away.

“I've always proposed that the Shroud,” he said, “was brought to Edessa after the Crucifixion. Around 33 AD, do we agree?”

I nodded.

“We don't have to be exact,” he continued, “since the Diatessaron wasn't written until 180 AD. The point is: Shroud first, Diatessaron second. When the book was written in Edessa, the cloth was already there.”

“Okay.”

“But,” he said with a glint in his eye, “what happens if we apply the same logic to
John
?”

“What do you mean?”

“The gospel of John was written around 90 AD. So the same idea applies. Shroud first, book second. The cloth was in Edessa before John was written.”

“But Ugo—”

“Hear me out. Since you've shown me that John adds and subtracts material as he sees fit, what if John tells us something new about the Shroud in his gospel?”

I lifted a hand to stop him. “Ugo, you can't make that leap. There's a geography problem. Tatian was writing in Edessa. If the Shroud was there, he would've seen it. But John wasn't writing in Edessa. So how would he have seen it?”

Before answering, Ugo stepped back toward a bookcase and unraveled a map that was waiting there in a scroll. It showed ancient Syria, from the coast of the Mediterranean to the Euphrates and Tigris in the east. His index finger stabbed at a familiar point.

“The city of Antioch,” he said. “One of the likeliest places John was written.” His thumb moved an inch inland. “The city of Edessa. Where the Shroud was.” He glanced up at me. “Sister cities. If the Shroud arrived in Edessa around 30 AD, news would've reached Antioch long before 90.”

I shook my head. “Ugo, I think this assumes too much.”

“Why? We have plenty of historical records showing that news traveled between the cities.”

I fidgeted in my seat, feeling flustered. It was true that John had incorporated new material into the gospel corpus—hints of gnostic ideas and pagan philosophies and new Christian attitudes toward Jews—but Ugo was proposing something different. Something worse: that John's gospel was as tainted by personal prejudice and local color as the Diatessaron. The real problem wasn't geography. It was personality. Tatian was a brilliant but eccentric loner, a man who drifted further and further from mainline Christianity. He changed the gospels to agree with his sectarian beliefs. The author of John, whoever he might have been, was a philosophical genius who set his sights on something different and
much higher. Something essential to all Christians. The invisible truth about God.

Yet Ugo said, “Please understand, I don't suggest this lightly. Try to stand apart from your emotions. It's a testable hypothesis: the authors of both John and the Diatessaron
knew
a disciple had brought the Shroud to Edessa and indicated this in their writings.”

“Then let's test the hypothesis,” I said. “Does John say the burial cloth had an image on it? No. Does the Diatessaron say that? No. Does John or the Diatessaron say the Shroud was brought from Jerusalem to Edessa? No. The hypothesis fails.”

“Father,” Ugo chided, “you know that isn't reasonable. These writers weren't trying to persuade
us
, two thousand years later, of something they considered obvious. It would be ludicrous for them to make a big fuss about the Shroud if everyone knew it was in Edessa. As ludicrous as if you or I made a big fuss about the existence of Saint Peter's Basilica.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I'm saying we have to look for an allusion. A few details feathered in to make the gospels acknowledge what everyone in Edessa and Antioch already knew.”