The God Machine (11 page)

In a few weeks, perhaps days, the Polish Pope would be dead, and a new Pontiff named to succeed him. And while the Christian West faced unprecedented attacks from the Islamic East, they were busy squabbling between the North and the South—between the established, conservative churches of Europe and North America, and the mushrooming faiths of the southern hemisphere, with their home-grown expressions of liturgy and their extremist political views.

Lacey looked at the three standing columns of the Casa delle Vestali, once home of the virgins who had maintained the sacred flame in the Tempio di Vesta next door. And right over the edge, at the top of the columns, stood the Arco di Tito, built in
A.D
. 81 to commemorate Titus's and Vespasian's military victories against Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple.

For sixty years the sacked city had languished in ruins, until the Second Bar Kokhba uprising, when the Jews had been dispersed to the four corners of the earth. Palestine had fallen to the Persians, only to be reconquered by the Christians in 629, and lost again in 638. Back and forth, a pawn in the eternal struggle between the East and the West, Christians and Muslims. Until 1099, when Jerusalem had been liberated by the Christian Crusaders. And so it had flourished for one hundred years, under the protection of the warrior Knights, until Salah ad-Din, Sultan of Egypt and Syria, recaptured the city and made it an Islamic holy center again. Back and forth. Back and forth. Nothing changed.

The black Mercedes cut up the Via di Santa Sabina, up the slopes of the Aventine Hill to the Piazza dei Cavalieri di Malta. Two boys were playing soccer in the
street. The sedan drew to a stop and Archbishop Lacey stepped out by the massive closed doors of the Priorato. A black cat with white feet padded by.

Most guidebooks, Lacey knew, suggested a peek through the keyhole, where one could see the dome of the Basilica San Pietro neatly framed, strangely close, despite its great distance, as if the smog of the city served as a lens. But Lacey did not bother to look. He had seen it before. He knew what lingered within. It was the home of the Militare Ordine Ospedaliero di San Giovanni di Gerusalemme di Rodie di Malta, commonly known as the Knights Hospitaller. The Knights of Malta.

Founded in Jerusalem in 1080 by the Blessed Gerard, the Order was originally launched to provide care and relief for poor pilgrims who had made their way to the Holy Lands. Then, following the conquest of Jerusalem, the group became a Catholic military order, and expanded its role into providing armed escort to pilgrims en route. Eventually, these escorts grew into a significant force, and together with the Knights Templar, formed in 1119, the Order matured into one of the most powerful Christian groups in the region. The black tunic with white cross soon became a symbol of power and fear in the minds of the Muslims.

By the mid-twelfth century, the Order was clearly divided into military brothers and those who worked with the sick. It also enjoyed astonishing privileges. The Knights were exempt from all authority, except that of the Pope, and obliged by no tithes. Over time, the rising power of Islam eventually pushed the Knights from their traditional holdings. After the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, they settled on the island of Rhodes.

In 1312, the Knights Templar were dissolved, and much of their property handed over to the Hospitallers. Now known as the Knights of Rhodes, the Order was forced to become a more militarized force, fighting most
frequently with the dreaded Barbary pirates. They withstood two invasions in the fifteenth century one by the Sultan of Egypt and another by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, after the fall of Constantinople. Then, in 1522, four hundred ships under the command of Sultan Suleiman delivered two hundred thousand men to the island, against a force of only seven thousand Knights under Grand Master Philippe Villiers de L'Isle-Adam. The siege lasted six brutal months. At its end, the survivors were finally allowed to leave Rhodes, and the Order, what little was left of it, retreated to Sicily.

After seven long years of moving about from one place to another, the Knights were eventually established on the Island of Malta when the Holy Roman Emperor, King Charles V of Spain, gave them Malta, Gozo and Tripoli in perpetual fiefdom in exchange for the annual fee of a single Maltese falcon.

Once again, in 1565, Suleiman assembled a massive invasion force to dislodge them. But, once again, the Ottomans were defeated. At its height, the Turkish army had some forty thousand men, but only fifteen thousand returned to Constantinople—while only six hundred Knights remained guarding the walls.

Following the Christian victory over the Ottoman fleet in the decisive Battle of Lepanto, the Knights continued to attack pirates and Muslim shipping, and their base became a center for slave trading. It required a thousand slaves to equip the galleys of the Order. The slaves perished in droves for the greater glory of God.

For two hundred years the Knights prospered, but with the rise of Protestantism, the Order lost holdings in Europe, and slowly but surely their power declined. France erupted into revolution in 1789, and a huge source of revenue dried up overnight. Napoleon captured the Mediterranean stronghold of Malta during his expedition to Egypt. The Order continued to exist,
though greatly diminished. A few nations offered them refuge; the Tsar of Russia gave shelter to vast numbers of Knights in St. Petersburg. But, by the early 1800s, the Order had been gravely weakened by the loss of its priories. It wasn't until Pope Leo XIII restored a Grand Master that the Order's fortunes began to ascend once again, and the Knights eventually established a new headquarters in Rome, at the top of the Aventine Hill.

Archbishop Lacey stepped up to the doors and yanked on the chain. Somewhere deep within, a bell chimed. The Sovereign Military Order of Malta—or SMOM—was legally, politically and historically unique. Just beyond those doors, Lacey knew, lay another sovereign state within the borders of Italy, like San Marino and the Vatican City. It was presided over by the current Prince and Grand Master, Fra Andrew Bertini, who served as Head of State, and by the ten high officers of the Sovereign Council and the General Chapter. The SMOM had the right to legislate itself, and to trade ambassadors with other nations. Indeed, the Knights had diplomatic relations with almost eighty countries. The Order issued its own passports; Lacey carried one. It had its own emblem, the Maltese cross. And it was a Permanent Observer at the General Assembly of the U.N.

The doors swung open. A middle-aged woman dressed in black blocked the entrance. The archbishop said a few words, shook her hand in a particular way, and she motioned him forward. In one step, Lacey passed out of Italy, and entered the elegant gardens of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. He passed down a corridor of manicured trees which led his eye to a perfectly framed view of the cupola of the San Pietro Basilica. To his left spread clipped shrubs, laid out with punctilious care, creating symmetrically designed patterns of walkways between them. As he strolled onto a patio, he took in the view of the city. The territory of the Great Magistry had
once been far greater, he knew. But as the role of the Order had changed, and Rome had expanded, the Knights had scaled back their presence, and now they shared the hilltop with other religious communities.

Today, as far as the world was concerned, the activities of the Order were mostly charitable—with medical and social service missions in Western and Eastern Europe, North and South America, throughout Africa and the Middle East and in Asia. They ran hospitals, clinics, homes for the elderly and the terminally ill; workshops for the disabled; rehabilitation and reeducation and refugee centers. The group had ten thousand-plus members, more than seventy thousand permanent volunteers, one million regular donors and nine thousand employees. In total, the Order assisted more than fifteen million people worldwide, with contributions valued at over $700 million. This was the archbishop's night job. In addition to his work at the Vatican Bank, Lacey was responsible for managing the finances of the Order. And, of course, he had a few other duties as well. Duties such as the one he was about to perform.

T
HEY SAID THAT IF YOU REMOVED ALL THE CLOTH DECORATIONS
in the Magistral Church of the Sovereign Order of Malta, it would be the only truly white church in the world, decorated inside and out entirely with white plaster stucco, without any marble whatever.

As Lacey approached the main entrance, he noticed a series of plaster sepulchral embellishments, upside-down torches and skulls, floral and animal reliefs. The façade borrowed design elements from many earlier styles, and featured the recurring motif of the serpent. Lacey studied the intricate carvings. The serpent represented three things: the Roman origins of the area, since the hill had once been known as the Hill of Snakes; the Hospitaller role of the Order, as the snake was the symbol of medicine, as seen on the seal of Hippocrates; and the Christian symbol of death… and resurrection. How apt, Lacey thought, as he stepped through the door.

The light seemed to swell all around him. It bounced off the snowy white walls. The church was empty. Lacey made his way down the aisle, inspecting the pews as he
moved. When he got to the altar, he reached down and pressed a carved figure embossed in the stone. With a groan, the altar slid to the side, revealing a narrow stone staircase beneath. Lacey dashed down the steps just as the altar moved back into place.

He made his way down. A solitary light illuminated the narrow passageway. Moments later, he stepped through a door at the foot of the stairs, revealing a long narrow chamber, once again plastered in snowy white stucco. At the center of the room rose a giant sarcophagus made of
Bianco Carrara
.

Lacey moved toward the marble sarcophagus. It, too, was intricately carved, featuring scenes from the Old Testament—especially Genesis. He could see Eve reaching out for an apple, as the serpent reclined in the tree. The archbishop pressed his right thumb on the apple; the top of the stone chest unlocked with a click and a hiss. He pushed and it rolled to the side. Lights popped on underneath, revealing a series of boxes, twelve by twenty-four inches, each topped with a tight-fitting glass lid.

Lacey gasped. He had been here on countless occasions, but the sight of the codices still filled him with awe. Some were almost two thousand years old.

He leaned over and stared down at the pages of an illuminated text. It was a Renaissance version of the Apocrypha—from the First Book of Adam and Eve.
“And God commanded him to dwell there in a cave in a rock—the Cave of Treasures below the garden,”
read a passage in Latin.

The archbishop's eyes veered to the foot of the passage, as if drawn by some movement on the vellum itself—to that jumble of lines, that strange intricate series of rectangles, circles and squares. But the vellum was torn, the drawing ripped down the middle.

Lacey sighed. He reached to one side of the marble
sarcophagus and pulled out a file from a narrow compartment. He flipped it open and plucked out a photograph. It featured a close-up of Savita Sajan. She was standing beside a black stallion, wearing jodhpurs, staring up at an indigo sky.

Is she the one?
Lacey wondered.
And is she the last in the line?

They had to find the Gospel of Judas. It was the key to the God machine. But it had to be done very carefully, without incident. With the Papal election just a few days away, they could ill afford some new scandal. Which meant that they needed the cover, the support of the American government, and all of its security apparatus—the police and Homeland Security. And that was not going to be easy.

Lacey sighed once again. He stuffed the photograph back in the file. There was no love lost between the current Administration and the Catholic Church. Not after that business during the last presidential election. Which meant that he, Lacey, had to forge an alliance with Thaddeus Rose, that Evangelical peacock, as distasteful as that was. There was no way around it. It had to be done.

The archbishop glanced at his watch.
Time to go
, he thought. Sister Maria Morena Diaz would be waiting in the gardens above.

Archbishop Lacey had known Sister Maria for three and a half years. She had been brought to his attention after having been caught up in an unfortunate robbery and murder in Tuquerres, Colombia. Orphaned by gangsters as a child, Maria had turned to prostitution during her teenage years to survive, and then—following a startling conversion—had become a Franciscan Sister of Mary Immaculate. But her misfortunes had trailed her,
for one evening, following vespers, she had come upon two robbers intent on stealing some artifacts on exhibit in the church next door to her convent.

Like many nuns who came from and still frequented the worse parts of the city in their daily ministrations, Sister Maria carried a gun. A Taurus. A low-cost Brazilian knockoff of the Smith & Wesson revolver. When the robbers ignored her pleas to depart, she had pulled out her pistol and brandished it. One of the thieves, a large man with a great bushy beard, had lunged at her, thinking that this pretty young nun didn't have the
cajones
to shoot him—only to feel his left ear blown cleanly away. The other robber surrendered soon after, but vowed to return. And he had. Four months later, he had broken into the convent and raped the young nun in her cell, over and over, until—in a way that she never fully explained to the prioress or the bishop—she had somehow disarmed him and put a slug through his head.