The Thirteenth Apostle (19 page)

Those who had been condemned to death had been penned up in these long vaulted tunnels that came out directly onto the arena of the circus. Through the entrance grille you could see the two stone markers – the
metas
– set at either end of the race track. It was here, around the great central obelisk of the circus, that every evening “Jewish” men, women and children were indiscriminately crucified, being allegedly responsible for the huge fire that had destroyed the city a few years earlier.

“What's the point of eating or drinking, Linus? You know it's going to be this evening: they always start with the eldest. You'll live a few more days, and Anacletus will see you leaving; he'll be among the last to join us.”

He stroked the head of a child sitting at his sides on the straw. The child gazed at him with veneration, his big eyes underscored by dark shadows.

As soon as he had arrived in Rome, Peter had taken the Christian community in hand. Most of the converts were slaves, like Linus and the boy Anacletus. They had all passed through the mystery religions from the East, which exercised
an irresistible spell on the people. They offered them the prospect of a better life in the beyond and spectacular, bloody cults. The austere and unadorned religion of the Jews who had converted to Christ – who was both God and man – experienced a meteoric success.

Peter had finally admitted that Jesus's absolute divinity was indispensable for the spread of the new religion. He forgot the scruples that had held him back right at the start, when he had still been living among the Jerusalem converts. “Jesus is dead,” he had thought. “The Christ-God is alive. Only someone alive can bring these throngs of people to the new life.”

The Galilean became the uncontested head of the community in Rome. No more was heard about the thirteenth apostle.

He closed his eyes. On his arrival here, he had told the prisoners how soldiers had captured him on the Via Appia as he fled with those trying to escape Nero's persecution. Revolted by what they considered to be an act of cowardice, many of the Christians arrested for their courage gave him the cold shoulder in this prison.

His life was abandoning him – would he hold out until evening? He must. He wanted to suffer this hideous death, rejected by his own, to redeem himself and become worthy of God's forgiveness.

He motioned to Linus, who sat beside Anacletus, on the mildewed paving. After midday, the roars of the wild animals had fallen silent: they had all been massacred by the gladiators during a huge fight that morning. The odour of a menagerie mingled with the nauseating stench of blood and excrement. He had to force himself to speak.

“You may live, you and this boy. Three years ago, after the fire, the youngest prisoners were released, when the crowd
grew weary of so many horrors displayed on the sand of the

circus. You will live, Linus, you have to.”

The slave gazed at him intently, tears in his eyes.

“But if you're not here any more, Peter, who will lead our community? Who will teach us?”

“You will. I knew you when you'd just been sold at the market near the Forum, just as I watched this child grow. You and he will live. You are the future of the Church. I'm no more than an old tree now, already dead inside…”

“How can you say that? You knew Our Lord, you followed him and you served him without fail!”

Peter bowed his head. The betrayal of Jesus, the successive murders, the vicious struggle against his enemies in Jerusalem, so many sufferings of which he had been the cause…

“Listen to me carefully, Linus: the sun is already setting, there isn't much time left. You have to know: I've failed. Not only by accident, as happens to each of us, but over a long period, and repeatedly. Tell it to the Church, when it's all over. But tell them too that I die at peace – because I have acknowledged my faults, my countless faults. Because I have asked forgiveness from Jesus himself, and from his God. And because a Christian should never –
never
doubt God's forgiveness. That's the very heart of Jesus's teaching.”

Linus placed his hands on Peter's: they were frozen. Was it his life withdrawing from him? Several had died in this tunnel, even before being led out to execution.

The old man looked up.

“Remember, Linus – and you, child, listen – on the evening of the last supper we took with the Master, just before his capture, there were twelve of us with him.
There were only twelve apostles with Jesus.
I was there, I call God to witness before I die. Perhaps you will one day hear of a thirteenth
apostle; neither you, nor Anacletus, nor those who will come after you must tolerate so much as the mere mention of any apostle other than the Twelve – not so much as an allusion to one. It's a matter of the Church's life and death. Will you swear solemnly to obey, before me and before God?”

The young man and the child nodded gravely.

“If he ever emerged from the shadows, that thirteenth apostle could completely destroy everything we believe in. Everything that will enable those men, those women” – and he motioned to the indistinct shadowy figures lying prostrate on the ground – “to die in peace this evening, perhaps even with a smile. Now leave me. I have a lot to say to my Lord.”

Peter was crucified at sunset, between the two
metas
of the Vatican circus. When they set fire to his body, it lit up, for an instant, the obelisk, which was just a few yards away from the cross.

Two days later, Nero proclaimed the end of the games: all those who had been sentenced to death were freed, after being subjected to the thirty-nine lashes of the whip.

Linus succeeded the Apostle, whose body he buried at the summit of the Vatican Hill, some distance from the entrance to the circus.

Anacletus succeeded Linus, the third on the list of popes proclaimed at every Catholic mass throughout the whole world. It was he who built the first chapel on Peter's tomb. This was later replaced by a basilica erected by the Emperor Constantine, who already wanted the building to be one of great majesty.

The solemn oath sworn by the two popes who succeeded Peter was transmitted from century to century.

* * *

And the obelisk in front of which Father Nil paused for a moment, that morning – the sirocco had dropped, and Rome was sparkling in all its glory – was the very same one at the foot of which, nineteen centuries earlier, one of Jesus's disciples, reconciled with his God by penitence and pardon, had willingly faced up to a terrible execution.

For Peter had hidden the truth from the Christians: he alone knew that he did not deserve their veneration, and wished to die a shameful death, scorned by all. But he had not fled the persecution. Quite the opposite: he had gone to hand himself over to Nero's police to expiate his faults. And to be able to get Linus to swear that he would transmit the secret.

Ever since, that secret had gone no further than the Vatican Hill.

The thirteenth apostle had not spoken
.

45

Nil loved to stroll and daydream in St Peter's Square early in the morning, before the tourists got there. He moved out of the shadow of the obelisk to enjoy the already warm sunshine. “They say that it's the obelisk that stood in the centre of Nero's circus. In Rome, time doesn't exist.”

His left hand kept a tight hold on his bag, in which he had placed, on leaving San Girolamo, the most precious of his notes, extracted from the papers he had placed on the bookshelves. His room could be searched here just as easily as in the Abbey, and he knew that now he had to mistrust everyone. “But not Remby – never!” As he left, he slipped into his bag the roll with the negative of the snapshot he had
taken in Germigny. One of the four leads that Andrei had left behind, though he still didn't know what to make of it.

When Leeland reached his office, while Nil was still day-dreaming at the foot of the obelisk and musing on the empires that are consolidated by time, he found a note summoning him immediately to see a
minutante
of the Congregation. A certain Mgr Calfo, whose path he had sometimes crossed in a corridor, without altogether knowing what place he occupied in the organization chart of the Vatican.

Two storeys and a labyrinth of corridors further down, he was surprised to see the prelate installed in an almost luxurious office, whose single window looked out directly over St Peter's Square. The man was short, podgy, and looked both self-confident and smooth-tongued. “An inhabitant of the Vatican galaxy,” reflected the American.

Calfo did not ask him to sit down.

“Monsignor, the Cardinal has requested me to keep him informed of your conversations with Father Nil, who has come to give you a hand. His Eminence – and it would be surprising if this were not the case – takes a close interest in the studies of our specialists.”

On his desk, in full view, lay the note handed over by Leeland to Catzinger the day before: in it, he summarized his first conversation with Nil, but said nothing whatever about his friend's confidential remarks on his research into St John's Gospel.

“His Eminence has passed your first report on to me: it shows that there is a friendly, trusting relation between yourself and the Frenchman. But that's inadequate, Monsignor, quite inadequate! I can't believe that he told you nothing about the nature of the talented work he has been doing, and for so long!”

“I didn't think that the details of a general conversation could interest the Cardinal to such an extent.”

“All the details, Monsignor. You need to be more precise, and less reserved, in your reports. They will save a lot of the Cardinal's valuable time, since he wants to follow every new scientific advance – it's his duty as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. We expect you to collaborate, Monsignor, and you know why – don't you?”

A feeling that Leeland could not suppress, an upsurge of muted anger, overcame him. He pursed his lips and said nothing.

“Do you see this episcopal ring?” Calfo stretched out his hand. “It's an admirable masterpiece, fashioned at a period when people still understood the language of precious stones. Amethyst, which most Catholic prelates choose, is a mirror of humility and reminds us of the ingenuousness of St Matthew. But this is a jasper, which is the reflection of faith, associated with St Peter. At every instant it forces me to face anew the thing for which my life is one long struggle: the Catholic faith. It is that faith, Monsignor, which is concerned at the work being done by Father Nil. You must hold back nothing of what he tells you – as you have done.”

Calfo dismissed him in silence, then sat at his desk. He opened the drawer and drew from it a bundle of pages torn from a notepad: the shorthand account of the previous day's conversation. “I'm still the only person who knows that Leeland isn't playing the game. Antonio has worked well.”

As he made his way back along the corridors to his office, Leeland tried to stifle his anger. That
minutante
knew that he had concealed a whole swathe of his conversation with Nil. How did he know?

“Someone's been overhearing us! I'm being bugged, here in the Vatican!”

Once again the hatred welled up in him. They had made him suffer too much, they had destroyed his life.

As he came into Leeland's tiny office, Nil apologized for being late.

“Sorry, I was having a stroll out on the Square…”

He sat down, propped his bag against one of the chair legs, and smiled.

“I've put all my most precious notes together in there. I need to show you my conclusions – they're provisional, but you'll start to understand…”

Leeland interrupted him with a wave of his hand, and scribbled a few words on a piece of paper, which he held out to Nil, placing his forefinger on his lips. In surprise, the Frenchman took the paper and glanced at it. “They're listening in on us. Don't say anything, I'll explain. Not here.”

He raised his eyes to Leeland in astonishment. In a tone of volubility, the latter carried on:

“So, settled into San Girolamo okay? Yesterday there was quite a sirocco – hope it wasn't too uncomfortable for you?”

“Er… oh, yes, actually, I had a headache all evening. What…”

“There's no point in us going back to the Vatican book stacks today: I'd like to show you what I've got on my computer, you'll see what I've already done. It's all over at my place. Would you like to come with me? Now? It's ten minutes' walk, Via Aurelia.”

He nodded imperiously at the flabbergasted Nil and rose to his feet without waiting for him to answer.

Just as they were leaving the corridor for the stairwell,
Leeland let Nil go on ahead of him and turned round. From the office next to his own he saw a
minutante
emerge, someone he didn't know. The man quietly locked the door and started to come towards them. He was wearing elegant clerical costume, and in the darkness of the corridor Leeland could make out only his dark gaze, both melancholy and disquieting.

He quickly caught up with Nil, who was waiting for him on the first steps of the stairwell, looking just as bewildered.

“Let's go down. Quick.”

46

They crossed Bernini's colonnade. Leeland looked all round and took Nil's arm in a familiar gesture.

“My friend, this morning I obtained the proof that our conversation yesterday was overheard.”

“Like in an embassy in Soviet times!”

“The Soviet Empire no longer exists, but here you're at the nerve centre of another empire. I'm dead certain about what I'm saying, don't ask me any more.
Mon pauvre ami
, what hornet's nest have you got yourself embroiled in?”

They walked in silence. The traffic was extremely heavy on the Via Aurelia, and made any conversation impossible. Leeland stopped outside a modern apartment block at the corner of the next street.