The Thirteenth Apostle (2 page)

The noise of the train, echoed back by the trees bordering the road, made him feel drowsy. He sensed himself dozing off…

Everything happened extremely quickly. The passenger opposite him calmly put down his newspaper and stood up. At the same moment, in the corner seat, the expression of the fair-haired man became resolute. He got up and came over, as if to take something down from the luggage rack above him. Andrei looked up mechanically: the luggage rack was empty.

He had no time to think: the golden head of hair was leaning over him, and he saw the man's hand stretching out towards his jacket lying on the seat.

Suddenly everything went black: the jacket had been flung over his head. He felt two strong arms encircling him, pinning the garment against his torso and lifting him up. His cry of stupefaction was muffled by the fabric. He promptly found himself face downwards, heard the squeal of the window being lowered, and felt the metal of the safety rail against his hips. He struggled, but his whole upper body was already suspended in the void outside the train, and the wind slammed into him without blowing away the tails of the jacket still being held firmly against his face.

He was suffocating. “Who are they? I should have expected it, after so many others over the last two thousand years. But why now, and why here?”

His left hand, trapped between the safety rail and his stomach, continued to clutch the piece of paper.

He felt himself being tipped out of the window.

2

Mgr Alessandro Calfo was satisfied. Before leaving the great rectangular room near the Vatican, the eleven other members of the Society of St Pius V had given him carte blanche to act as he saw fit. The society couldn't afford to take any risks. For four centuries, it alone had watched over the most momentous secret of the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church. Those who got too close to that secret needed to be neutralized.

He had of course abstained from telling the Cardinal everything. Would they be able to keep the secret for long? But if it were to be divulged, it would mean the end of the Church, the end of Christianity as a whole. And it would be a mortal blow to a West already faltering in the face of Islam. It was a huge responsibility that rested on the shoulders of the twelve: the Society of St Pius V had been created with the sole aim of protecting this secret, and Calfo was its rector.

He had revealed to the Cardinal that there were, as yet, no more than scattered clues that only a few scholars, spread across the world, were able to understand and interpret. But he had concealed the most important thing: if these clues were all put together and presented to the public, they might lead to absolute and indisputable
proof
. This was why it was important for the existing trails to remain scattered. Anyone malevolent enough – or merely perspicacious enough – to put them together would be able to discover the truth.

He got up, walked round the table, and stood right in front of the bleeding figure on the crucifix.

“Master! Your twelve apostles are keeping watch over you.”

He mechanically twisted the ring that encircled the annular finger on his right hand. The precious stone, a dark green jasper with glinting red highlights, was abnormally thick – even for
Rome, where prelates are fond of the ostentatious signs of their dignity. At every moment, this venerable jewel reminded him of the exact nature of his mission.

Anyone who penetrates the secret must be consumed by it, and disappear!

3

At its maximum speed, the train plunged across the plain of Sologne like a glowing snake. His body still bent double, his torso lashed by the wind, Father Andrei arched his back against the pressure of the two firm hands pushing him towards the abyss. Suddenly, he relaxed all his muscles.

“God, I have sought you ever since the daybreak of my life: now it has come to its end.”

With a
hrumpf!
the thickset passenger pushed Andrei into the void, while his companion, standing motionless behind him, stood gazing on.

Like a dead leaf, the body whirled down and crashed onto the railway track.

The Rome express was obviously trying to make up for lost time: in less than a minute, the only thing left by the side of the railway was a broken puppet lying in the icy breeze. The jacket had flown far away. Curiously, Andrei's left elbow had got caught between two sleepers: his fist, still clutching the piece of paper he had been writing on only minutes before, was now pointing up at the black, silent sky in which the clouds slowly sailed eastwards.

A little later, a doe emerged from the forest and came to sniff at this shapeless mass with its smell of man. It knew the sour odour that humans give off when they are very afraid. The doe
sniffed for a while at Andrei's closed fist raised grotesquely raised heavenwards.

The animal suddenly looked up, then bounded to one side and darted into the shelter of the trees. A car had caught it in its headlights, braking abruptly on the road down below. Two men came out, climbed up the slope and leant over the shapeless body. The doe froze: soon the men went back down the slope and stood next to the car, talking animatedly.

When the doe saw the reflection of the flashing lights of the police car speeding along the road, it took another bound and fled away into the dark, silent forest.

4

Gospels according to Mark and John

On this Thursday evening, 6th April in the year 30, the son of Joseph, whom everyone in Palestine called Jesus the Nazorean, was preparing to have his last meal, surrounded by the group of his twelve apostles.

With a grimace, Peter pulled up the cushion that kept slipping away from under his hip. Only the rich were in the habit of eating like this, Roman-style, reclining on a divan: poor Jews like themselves took their meals squatting on the groud. It seemed that their prestigious host, the Judaean, had wanted to confer a certain solemnity on this dinner, and had made a real effort for them – but the Twelve, lying around the table in a U shape, felt a bit lost in this large room.

They had cast aside all the other disciples to form a tight bodyguard limited just to the Twelve of them: a highly symbolic figure that recalled the twelve tribes of Israel. When the time
came to launch their assault on the Temple – and that time was now near – the people would understand. There would then be twelve of them to govern Israel, in the name of the God who had given twelve sons to Jacob. On this they were all agreed. But at the right hand of Jesus – when he came into his reign – there would be only one place: and they were already locked in a violent struggle as to who among them would be the first of the Twelve.

But first there was the riot that they were to instigate in two days' time, taking advantage of the hubbub of Passover.

When they had left their homeland, Galilee, and moved to the capital, they had first met with their host for this evening, the Judaean who owned the fine house in the western district of Jerusalem. He was a rich man, educated and even cultivated – while the horizon of the Twelve did not extend beyond their fishing nets.

While his servants were bringing the dishes, the Judaean remained silent. He felt that Jesus was running a considerable risk, surrounded by these twelve fanatics: their assault on the Temple would of course end in failure. He had to shelter Jesus from their ambitions – even if, for this purpose, he had been obliged to forge a temporary alliance with Peter.

He had met Jesus two years earlier, on the banks of the Jordan. He had been an Essene and had turned Nazorean – one of the Jewish sects attached to the Baptist movement. Jesus was one too, though he never spoke of it. Between the two of them a bond of understanding and mutual esteem had soon been established. He would sometimes assert that he was the only one who had really understood
who
Jesus was. Neither a kind of God, as some members of the populace had hymned him after a spectacular cure, nor the Messiah, as Peter would have liked, nor the new King David, as the Zealots dreamt.

No, he was
something else
, which the Twelve, obsessed by their dreams of power, had not even glimpsed.

So he considered himself to be superior to them, and said to anyone who would listen that he was the
beloved disciple
of the Master – while Jesus, for the past few months, had found it more and more difficult to put up with his gang of ignorant Galileans, greedy to get their hands on power.

The Twelve were furious at the sight of another pretender moving in, just like that, to a position they had never managed to reach, furious that he had gained the confidence of the Nazorean.

So the enemy within this group was this beloved disciple. He, who never left his native Judaea, said that he had understood Jesus better than all of them, even though it was they who had constantly followed Jesus in Galilee.

An impostor…

He was reclining at the right hand of Jesus – the host's place. Peter never took his eyes off him. Was he about to betray the terrible secret that had only recently bound them together – would he make Jesus realize that he had been betrayed? Was he now regretting having introduced Judas to Caiaphas, to set up the trap that was to close on the Master this very evening?

Suddenly Jesus stretched out his hand and took hold of a morsel that he held for a moment over the dish, so that the sauce would drip off it: he was going to offer it to one of the guests, as a token of ritual friendship. Silence abruptly fell. Peter turned pale, and his jaw was set. “If it is to that impostor that the morsel is offered,” he thought, “everything is ruined: it will mean he has just betrayed our alliance. If so, I'll kill him, and then make my escape…”

With a broad sweep of his hand, Jesus held the morsel out to Judas, who remained motionless at the end of the table, as if transfixed.

“Well, my friend… Go on, take it!”

Without a word, Judas leant forwards, took the morsel and placed it between his lips. A few drops of sauce trickled onto his short beard.

The conversations resumed, while Judas chewed slowly, his eyes riveted on those of his Master. Then he got up and moved to the exit. As he passed behind them, their host saw Jesus turn his head slightly. And he was the only one who heard Jesus say:

“My friend… What you have to do, do it quickly!”

Slowly, Judas opened the door. Outside, the Passover moon had not yet risen: the night was dark.

There were now only eleven of them around Jesus.

Eleven, and the beloved disciple.

5

The bell rang out for a second time. In the uncertain light of dawn, St Martin's Abbey was the only place in the village with its lights on. On winter nights such as this, the wind whistles between the desolate banks of the river and makes the Val-de-Loire seem more like Siberia than France.

The bell was still echoing in the cloister when Father Nil entered, having taken off his ample choir robe: the office of lauds had just finished. People knew that the monks maintained a complete silence until terce, and so nobody ever called before eight o'clock.

The doorbell rang for the third time, imperiously.

“The brother porter won't answer it, he has his orders. Too bad, I'll go myself.”

Ever since he had brought to light the hidden circumstances of Jesus's death, Nil had been suffering from a hazy sense of
unease. He did not like it when Father Andrei went off on one of his infrequent trips: the librarian had become his sole confidant after God. Monks live in common, but they do not communicate, and Nil needed to talk to someone about his research. Instead of returning to his cell, where his ongoing study of the events surrounding the capture of Jesus awaited him, he went into the gatehouse and opened the heavy door that separates every monastery from the external world.

In the gleam of the car's headlights, an officer from the gendarmerie snapped to attention and saluted.

“Excuse me, Father, but does this person reside here?”

He held out an identity card. Without a word, Nil took the laminated piece of paper and read the name: Andrei Sokolwski. Age: 67. Address: St Martin's Abbey…

Father Andrei!

The blood drained from his cheeks.

“Yes… of course, he's the Abbey librarian. What?…”

The gendarme was used to these disagreeable duties.

“Yesterday evening, two farm labourers informed us that, going home late, they had discovered his body on the side of the railway track, between Lamotte-Beuvron and La Ferté-Saint-Aubin. Dead. I'm sorry, but one of you will have to come and identify the body… For the inquiry, you understand.”

“Dead? Father Andrei?”

Nil wavered in dismay.

“But… it must be the Reverend Father Abbot who…”

Behind them, they heard footsteps, muffled by the swish of a monk's habit. It was the Father Abbot himself. Alerted by the doorbell? Or impelled by some mysterious presentiment?

The gendarme bowed. In the Orleans brigade, everyone knows that, at the Abbey, the man who wears a ring and a
pectoral cross has the same rank as a bishop. The Republic respects these things.

“Reverend Father, one of your monks, Father Andrei, was discovered yesterday next to the Rome express railway line, not far from here. It was a heavy fall, and he didn't have a chance: his neck bones were broken, he must have been killed instantly. We won't take the body to Paris for autopsy until we've identified it: could you come along in my car and carry out this formality, please? It's painful but necessary.”

Ever since he had been elected to this prestigious post, the Father Abbot of St Martin's had never allowed a single feeling to show. True enough, he had been elected by the monks, in accordance with the Monastic Rule. But, contrary to that Rule, there had been several telephone calls between Val-de-Loire and Rome. And then, a high-ranking prelate had come to make his annual retreat in the cloister just before the election, in order to put discreet pressure on any waverers and convince them that Dom Gérard was the right man for the situation.