The Thirteenth Apostle (20 page)

“Here we are, I've got a studio on the third floor. The Vatican pays the rent, my salary as a
minutante
wouldn't be enough.”

As they crossed the threshold of Leeland's studio, Nil whistled in quiet admiration.

“Monsignor, what a wonderful place!”

A spacious living room was divided into two. The first part contained a baby grand piano, around which a whole battery of electro-acoustic equipment was scattered. An openwork bookshelf filled with books separated off the second part: two computers linked to the most sophisticated peripherals – printers, a scanner and keypads that Nil was unable to identify. Leeland invited him to make himself comfortable and uttered an embarrassed little laugh. “It's my American abbey that gave me all this stuff. It's worth a fortune! They were furious at the way I was dismissed from my post as abbot – which I'd been elected to in the proper way – for reasons of church politics. The Vatican requires me to sign in at my office mornings and evenings. Then I go off to work in the book stacks or come back here. Breczinsky has authorized me to photograph certain manuscripts, which I've scanned into the computer.”

“Why did you tell me not to trust him?”

Leeland seemed to hesitate before replying.

“During the years when we were students in Rome, you could see the Vatican from the Aventine Hill, a mile or so away: it was a long way, Nil, a really long way. You were fascinated by the prelates dancing their ballet round the Pope, you enjoyed it as a spectator, proud to belong to a machine that possesses such a prestigious bodywork. Now you're not a spectator any longer: you're an insect, pinned to the canvas, caught in the spider's web, stuck there like a defenceless fly.”

Nil listened to him in silence. Ever since Andrei's death, he had sensed that his life had been turned upside down, that he had entered a new world of which he knew nothing. Leeland continued:

“Josef Breczinsky is a Pole, one of those they call ‘the Pope's men'. Totally dedicated to the person of the Holy Father, and
thus torn between the different tendencies in the Vatican, all the more violent because they bubble away underground. For years I've been working ten yards away from his office, and I still know nothing about him – except that he bears the weight of an infinite suffering – you can read it in his face. He seems to have taken a liking to you: take great care about what you tell him.”

Nil restrained his desire to seize Leeland by the arm.

“And what about you, Remby? Are you also an… an insect stuck in the spider's web?”

The American's eyes misted over with tears.

“Me?… My life's over, Nil. They destroyed me, because I believed in love. The same way they can destroy you, because you believe in truth.”

Nil realized he should not persist. “Not today,” he thought. “Such distress in his eyes!”

The American got a grip on himself.

“I'm completely unable to collaborate with you on your scholarly work, but I'll do my very best to help you: Catholics have always tried to ignore the fact that Jesus was Jewish! Make the best use of your stay in Rome, the Gregorian manuscripts can wait if necessary.”

“We'll work in the book stacks every day, so as not to arouse suspicions. But I'm resolved to pursue Andrei's research. His note mentioned four leads that can be followed. One of them concerns a recently discovered stone slab in the Germigny church, with an inscription dating back to the period of Charlemagne. We took a quick snapshot opposite it, the inscription had greatly surprised Andrei. I have the negative here – do you think that with your computer equipment you can maybe develop it?”

Leeland seemed relieved: talking technology enabled him to escape the ghosts he had just referred to.

“You've no idea what a computer can do! If they're the characters of a language that it possesses in its memory, it can reconstitute letters or words from a text that has been eroded by time. Show me your negative.”

Nil picked up his bag and held the roll over to his friend. They moved to the other part of the room, and Leeland switched on the boxes that started to blink. He opened one of them.

“Laser scanner, latest generation.”

Fifteen seconds later, the slab appeared on the screen. Leeland manipulated the mouse, tapped away at the keyboard, and the surface of the image started to be swept, very smoothly, by a sheaf of light.

“It'll take twenty minutes. While it's getting on with it, come over to the piano, I'll play you
Children's Corner
.”

While Leeland, eyes closed, brought Debussy's delicate melodic lines to life under his fingers, the sheaf of light from the computer passed untiringly over the reproduction of a mysterious Carolingian inscription.

Photographed, in the twilight of the twentieth century, by a monk led to his death by this snapshot.

At the same moment, Mgr Calfo was picking up his mobile phone.

“So they've left the office of the Congregation and headed straight off to the
Americano
's apartment? Okay, stay in the neighbourhood, keep a discreet eye on their movements, and this evening you can write your report for me.”

He mechanically stroked the elongated lozenge shape of his green jasper.

47

On the computer screen, the inscription on the Germigny slab now showed up more clearly.

“Look, Nil: it's perfectly legible. They're Latin letters, the computer has restored them. And then look, at the beginning and end of the text there are two Greek letters – alpha and omega- which it had identified beyond any possibility of error.”

“Can you do a copy for me?”

Nil was contemplating the inscription on the printout. Leeland waited for him to speak.

“Yes, it's the text of the
Symbolon
of Nicaea, the Creed. But it's set out in a completely incomprehensible way…”

They brought their chairs closer to each other. “It's like before,” thought Nil, “when I went to his room to study with him, side by side under the same lamp.”

“Why has the letter alpha been added before the first word in the text,” he continued, “and the letter omega after the last one? Why are those two letters, the first and the last in the Greek alphabet, artificially put down on a text written in Latin and considered to be unalterable? Why have the words been chopped up like that, without their meaning being taken into account? I can see only one possible explanation: we mustn't bother about the meaning, since there isn't one, but about the way the text has been set out. Andrei told me he had never seen this; he certainly suspected that this way of cutting up the text had a particular meaning, and he had to come to Rome before realizing that the Creed, modified in this way, had something to do with the three other clues jotted down in his note. Right now, I've only deciphered one, the Coptic manuscript.”

“You haven't told me about that…”

“That's because I've discovered the meaning of the words, but not the sense of the whole message. And the sense may lie in the incomprehensible way this text was inscribed in the eighth century.”

Nil reflected, then continued:

“As you know, for the Greeks alpha and omega signified the beginning and end of time…”

“As in the Apocalypse of St John?”

“Exactly. When the author of the Apocalypse writes, ‘I saw a new heaven and a new earth', he has Christ in glory say:

“The letter alpha means that a new world is beginning, and the letter omega indicates that that world will last for eternity. Framed between those two letters, the odd way the text has been cut up seems to allude to a new world order, one which cannot ever be modified: ‘a new heaven and a new earth', something that must last until the end of time.”

“Are alpha and omega frequently used as symbols in the Bible?”

“Not at all. They are found only in the Apocalypse, traditionally ascribed to John. So the conclusion seems to be that if this text is ‘set' between the alpha and the omega in this way, the arrangement must have something to do with St John's Gospel.”

Nil got up and stood right in front of the closed window.

“The text is arranged independently of the meaning of the words, and has some link to St John's Gospel. That's all I can
say, until I can sit down at my desk and look at this inscription every which way, as Andrei must have done. In any case, everything gravitates around the Fourth Gospel, and that's why my research was of such interest to my old friend.”

Nil motioned Leeland to join him at the window.

“You won't see me tomorrow: I'll be locked away in my room in San Girolamo, and I'm only coming out when I've found the meaning of this inscription. Let's meet up the day after tomorrow; I hope I'll have a better idea by then. Then you'll have to let me use the Internet, I need to do research in all the great libraries of the world.”

He jutted his chin towards the cupola of St Peter's dome, emerging from above the rooftops.

“Perhaps Andrei died because he'd come across something that threatened all
that
…”

If, instead of gazing at the Vatican dome, they had glanced down into the street, they would have spotted a young man having a quiet smoke, sheltering from the December chill in a carriage entrance. Like any casual passer-by, he was wearing light-coloured trousers and a thick jacket.

His dark eyes never left the third floor of the apartment block on the Via Aurelia.

48

Late that evening, Catzinger's office was the only one with its lights on in the Congregation building. He told Calfo to come in, and addressed him in tones of command:

“Monsignor” – the Cardinal was holding a simple sheet of paper – “late this afternoon I received Leeland's second report. He's kidding around with us. According to him, the
only thing they discussed today was Gregorian chant. But you tell me they stayed locked up together in the apartment on the Via Aurelia all morning long?”

“Until 2 p.m., Your Eminence, when the Frenchman left and went back to San Girolamo, where he closeted himself away in his room. My information is completely reliable.”

“I don't want to know who your source is. Sort out a way of finding out what they're saying to each other in Leeland's apartment: we
must
discover what that Frenchman's up to. Understood?”

Early next morning, a tourist seemed to be taking a close interest in the sculpted capitals of the Teatro di Marcello, which marks the site of the cattle market in ancient Rome, the Foro Boario. Not far away rise the rigid columns of the Temple of Virile Fortune, topped by a Corinthian acorn; they remind the informed visitor who the Temple was dedicated to. Just next to them, a small round temple is dedicated to the Vestal Virgins, who offered their perpetual chastity to the divinities of the city and maintained the sacred fire. As he walked past these two contiguous buildings, the tourist smiled with pleasure, reflecting: “Virile fortune, and perpetual chastity. A deified Eros next door to divine purity: the Romans had already understood. Our mystics merely developed their insights.”

His elegant trousers did not quite conceal an eloquent posterior, and the reason he kept his right hand thrust into the pocket of his suede jacket was that he wanted to hide the very fine jasper adorning his ring finger – never, in any circumstances, did he take off that precious jewel.

He was joined by a man who was ostentatiously holding a thick tourist guide to Rome.

“
Salam aleikom
, Monsignor!”

“
We aleikom salam
, Mukhtar. These were the arrangements for transporting the Germigny slab. Nice work.”

From his pocket there emerged an envelope that changed hands. Mukhtar Al-Quraysh quickly fingered the envelope without opening it, and offered his colleague a smile in exchange.

“I went over to inspect the apartment block on the Via Aurelia: there's no flat to let. But there's a studio for sale on the second floor, just beneath the
Americano
's.”

“How much?”

When he heard the figure, Calfo pulled a face: but, before long, perhaps the Society of St Pius V would no longer need to count its pennies. He opened his jacket and took out of his inner pocket another envelope, bigger and thicker than the first one.

“Go and have a look at it straight away, settle the purchase immediately and get hold of the key. Leeland will be kept busy at the Congregation this afternoon, you'll have three hours to do whatever's necessary.”

“Monsignor! In just one hour, the microphones will be installed.”

“Has your favourite enemy gone back to Israel?”

“Straight after our little trip. He's preparing for an international tour starting with a series of concerts here in Rome, for Christmas.”

“Perfect, a wonderful cover – you may yet need to call on his services.”

Mukhtar looked at him with a ribald glint in his eye.

“And Sonia – happy with her?”

Calfo suppressed his irritation. He replied drily:

“I'm very satisfied, thank you. Let's not waste any time,
mah salam
.”

The two men nodded to each other and left. Mukhtar crossed the Tiber via the Isola Tiberina bridges, while Calfo took a short cut across the Piazza Navona.

“Christianity couldn't have come into being anywhere but Rome,” he thought as he gazed in passing at the sculptures of Bernini and Brunelleschi, set opposing each other in a dramatic stand-off. “The desert leads to the inexpressible – but in order to express himself in incarnate form, God needs the quiverings of the flesh.”

49

Qumran, 68 AD

Dark clouds were piling up over the Dead Sea. In this natural basin, clouds never bring rain: they announce a catastrophe.

Yokhanan motioned his companion to keep going. In silence they approached the enclosure wall. A guttural voice rooted them to the spot: