The Thirteenth Apostle (37 page)

Lev signalled to the barman.

“What do you intend to do?”

“I know all about their movements, the routes they take. In the evening, Nil returns to San Girolamo on foot, it takes him an hour – he goes down the Via Salaria Antica, which is always deserted at dusk. The American goes part of the way with him, but then retraces his steps and goes for a walk round Castel Sant'Angelo, where he dreams in the moonlight – there's never anyone there. Will you join me? Tomorrow evening.”

Lev sighed. A slapdash operation, carried out under the impulse of anger, with no lucidity. When Mukhtar's fanaticism
went to his head, he lost all sense of proportion. The Bedouin hopped onto his camel and galloped off to wash away the insult with blood. Waiting was a sign of weakness, something that went against the law of the desert. The Arabs' pride, their inability to control themselves when honour was at stake, had always allowed Mossad to win out over them. And he remembered the instructions from Jerusalem, firmly transmitted by Ari: “No more action for you”.

“Tomorrow evening I've got a rehearsal with the orchestra for my last concert. They know I'm in Rome: nobody would understand it if I didn't turn up. I have to keep my cover, Mukhtar. Sorry.”

“So I'll act without you: first the one and then the other. Father Nil is as fragile as china, he'll break at the least little shove. As for the American, I'll just have to frighten him, he'll die of fear without me even having to touch him. I won't need to dirty my hands on someone like
him
.”

When they went their separate ways, Lev headed towards the gardens of the Pincio. He needed to think.

As night fell, the Rector called an urgent meeting of the Twelve. When they were seated behind the long table, he rose.

“My brothers, once again we are here with the Master, just as the Twelve were in the upper room. This time it is not to accompany him to Gethsemane, but to offer him a second triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Father Nil has found the last and only remaining copy of the letter of the impostor, the so-called thirteenth apostle. It was simply in the secret collection of the Vatican, among the manuscripts from the Dead Sea that were stored away there permanently in 1948.”

A murmur of intense satisfaction ran through the gathering.

“What has he done with it, Brother Rector?”

“He left it in place, and intends to inform the Holy Father of its existence and whereabouts.”

Their faces darkened.

“Whether he does so or not is of no importance: Nil will go through Breczinsky to get to the Pope. The twelfth apostle has the Pole under his thumb – isn't that so, Brother?”

Antonio nodded gravely, in silence.

“As soon as Breczinsky has been informed by Nil – probably tomorrow – we will swing into action. The Pole is at our mercy, and will lead us to the letter. In two days, Brothers, the letter will take up its rightful place in front of us, safeguarded by our fidelity as by this crucifix. And in the months and years to come, we will use it to obtain the means we need to accomplish our mission: to crush the serpents who are bruising Christ's heel, to stifle the voice of those opposed to his reign, to restore Christianity in all its grandeur, so that the West may regain its lost dignity.”

As he left the room, he silently handed Antonio an envelope: it contained a summons to see him in Castel Sant'Angelo two days later, in the morning. This would give Nil time to talk to Breczinsky.

And enable him to keep his mind completely free for tomorrow's evening session with Sonia, a session from which he was expecting a great deal. Things could not have turned out any better. Thanks to her, he would be imbued with the strength he would be needing. The inner strength that a Christian receives when he identifies with every fibre of his being with Christ crucified on his cross.

Antonio slipped the letter into his pocket. But instead of heading back to the city centre, he turned off to the Vatican.

The Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation always stayed up very late in his office.

82

Rome lay stretched out in the morning sunshine. It was still distinctly nippy, but the approach of Christmas lured the Romans out of doors. Standing at his window, Leeland gazed absent-mindedly at the spectacle in the Via Aurelia. The day before, Nil had informed him of his decision to return to France without delay: what he considered a mission he had been given by Andrei had come to its conclusion with the finding of the epistle.

“Have you ever thought, Remby, that the area of desert situated between Galilee and the Red Sea has given birth to the three monotheistic religions of the planet? It was there that Moses had his vision of the burning bush, there too that Jesus was radically transformed, and there that Muhammad was born and lived. My own desert is going to be on the banks of the Loire.”

Nil's departure cast a harsh light on the emptiness of Leeland's life. He knew that he would never reach his friend's level of spiritual experience: Jesus would never fill his inner void. Nor would music: one plays in order to be heard, to share the music's emotion with other people. He had often played for Anselm, who would sit at his side and turn the pages for him. A wonderful communion would grow between them at those times, the violinist's handsome features bent over the keyboard as his hands moved up and down it. Anselm was lost to him for good, and Catzinger had the means to plunge both of them into an ocean of suffering. “Life is over.”

He gave a start on hearing a knock at the door. Nil?

It wasn't Nil, but Lev Barjona. Surprised to see him here, Leeland was just about to start asking him questions, but the Israeli placed a finger on his lips and murmured:

“Is there a terrace on top of your apartment block?”

There was indeed, as on most apartment blocks in Rome, and it was deserted. Leeland allowed Lev to lead him to the side furthest from the street.

“Ever since Nil arrived in Rome, your apartment has been bugged. I've just found out. Every least little conversation you have is recorded and immediately transmitted to Mgr Calfo – and to other, far more dangerous people.”

“But…”

“Let me have my say, time is pressing. Without knowing it, you and Nil have started to play the ‘great game', a game on planetary scale, one you have no idea about, know nothing about – so much the better for you. It's a dirty game played between professionals. You two are like school kids in short pants, leaving your playground to wander slap bang into the yard where the big boys play. And they're not playing marbles. It's a violent struggle, always with the same objective in view: power – or its visible form, money.”

“Forgive me for interrupting – do you still play that particular game?”

“I played it for a long while, with Mossad, as you know. You never get out of that game, Remby, even if you'd like to. I won't say any more about it, but Nil and you are in great danger. By warning you like this, I'm playing against my own side, but you're a friend, and Nil is a nice guy. He's found what he was looking for: the game can now carry on without the two of you. If you want to keep on living, you need to disappear, and quickly. Very quickly.”

Leeland was staggered.

“Disappear… but how?”

“You're both monks: hide out in a monastery. There's a killer hot on your heels, and he's a professional. Leave – leave today.”

“Do you think he'd kill us?”

“I don't think: I know. And he'll do it without delay, while he's got you at his mercy. Listen, I implore you: if you want to stay alive, leave today – by train, plane or car, it doesn't matter – and make yourselves invisible. Warn Nil.”

He clasped Leeland in his arms.

“I've taken a risk in coming here: in the great game, they don't like those who don't respect the rules, and I'd like to stay alive to give lots more concerts. Shalom, my friend: in five years, in ten years, we'll meet again. No match in the game lasts for ever.”

And the next minute he was gone, leaving Leeland on the terrace, stunned.

83

Mukhtar had granted himself a lie-in: for the first time he didn't need to be at his post at daybreak, headphones on, listening in on the least conversation in the studio above.

So he didn't see Leeland hurrying out of the apartment block on the Via Aurelia, hesitating for a moment and then heading for the stop where he could catch a bus to the Via Salaria. The American stood anxiously waiting for the first vehicle to come along and jumped on board.

Nil pushed back the sheet of paper on the table: trusting to his memory, he had just set down the letter of the thirteenth apostle, which he had memorized without difficulty. Together with the Pope, he would be the only one to know that a tomb containing the remains of Jesus lay somewhere in the desert, between Jerusalem and the Red Sea. He opened his bag and slipped the letter inside.

He would soon have packed, and would keep his bag in his hand. And take the night train for Paris – it was never full at this time of year. Leaving the ghostly monastery of San Girolamo was a real relief for him: once he was back in St Martin's, he would hide the most compromising of his papers and settle into the desert. Like the thirteenth apostle in bygone days.

He still had the most important thing: the person of Jesus, his gestures and his words. In a desert, he would need no other food to survive.

He was amazed to hear a knock at the door of his cell. It was Father John – another person he wouldn't miss. The unstoppable chatterer's eyes were gleaming.

“Father, Mgr Leeland has just arrived and wishes to see you.”

Nil rose to greet his friend. The erstwhile playful student was now a hunted man, who hurried into the cell and flopped onto the chair that Nil pushed forwards for him.

“What's up, Remby?”

“My studio on the Via Aurelia has been bugged ever since you arrived, Catzinger and his men know everything we've been saying. And so do others, people who are even more dangerous. For different reasons, they want us put away.”

Now it was the turn of Nil, shocked at this news, to drop into an armchair.

“I'm dreaming – or have you succumbed to an attack of paranoia?”

“I've just been paid a visit by Lev Barjona, who brought me up to date very briefly, but without room for doubt. He told me he was acting out of friendship, and I don't doubt him for a moment. We've got ourselves involved in something much bigger than us, Nil. Your life is in danger, and so is mine.”

Nil buried his face in his hands. When he looked up again, he stared at Leeland with eyes filled with tremulous tears.

“I knew, Remby. I knew right from the start, as soon as Andrei had warned me. It was in the monastery, in the apparently changeless peace of a cloister protected by its silence. I knew it when I learnt of his death, when I went to identify his dislocated body next to the track of the Rome express. I knew it when history caught up with me, in all its horrible reality, thanks to Breczinsky and certain things he told me in confidence. I never felt afraid because of what I discovered. Is my life in danger? I'm the last in a very long list, one that starts at the moment the thirteenth apostle refused to see the truth being manipulated.”

“
The truth!
There's only one truth, the truth that men need to establish and maintain their power. The truth of the very pure love between myself and Anselm is not their truth. The truth that you have discovered in the texts isn't the real truth, since it contradicts their truth.”

“Jesus said: ‘The truth will make you free'. I am free, Remby.”

“You're free only if you disappear, and if your truth disappears with you. The philosophers you like so much teach that truth is a category of being, that it subsists in itself, like the goodness and the beauty of being. Well, it's false, and I've come to tell you so. The love that brought Anselm and myself together was good and beautiful: it was not in conformity with the Church's truth, so it was not true. Your discovery of Jesus's face contradicts the truth of Christianity: so you've got it all wrong, the Church will not tolerate any truth other than its own. Nor will the Jews or the Muslims.”

“What can they do against me? What can they do against a free man?”

“Kill you. You need to hide – to leave Rome straight away.”

* * *

There was a silence, broken only by the chirruping of the birds in the reeds of the cloister. Nil got to his feet and went over to the window.

“If what you say is true, I can't go back to my monastery, where the desert would be peopled by hyenas. Hide? Where?”

“I've been thinking about that on my way here. Do you remember Father Calati?”

“The superior of the Camaldolese? Of course, we both had him as professor in Rome. A wonderful man.”

“Go to Calmaldoli, ask him to take you in. They have hermitages scattered through the Abruzzi, you'll find just the desert you're looking for. Do it quickly. Do it now.”

“You're right, the Camaldolese have always been very hospitable. But what about you?”

Leeland closed his eyes for a moment.

“Don't worry about me. My life is over – it's been over ever since I learnt that the love preached by the Church might be just one ideology like any other. Your discoveries, with which I have become associated even though I didn't ask to be, have merely confirmed my feelings: the Church is no longer my mother, she is rejecting the child I have been because I loved in a different way from her. I'm going to stay in Rome; the Abruzzi desert isn't the right place for me. My desert is inside me, as it has been ever since I was forced to leave the United States.”

He headed for the door.

“Your suitcase can be packed quickly. I'm going to go downstairs and ask Father John to show me the library, to keep him away from the porter's lodge. In the meantime, you can slip out of the monastery, take a bus for the Stazione Termini and jump into the first train to Arezzo. I trust Calati, he'll keep you safe. Hide away in a hermitage of the Camaldolese and write
to me in two or three weeks: I'll tell you if you can come back to Rome.”