“Take him, Perini,” Mandino murmured, as the man walked toward them, “but do it quietly, then lock the doors. We don’t want any interruptions.”
Perini drew his pistol and jammed it into the man’s stomach.
“Verrochio,” Mandino said, turning away, “take the receptionist. Rogan, secure the shop.”
Under the silent pressure of Perini’s Glock, the guard walked over to the main doors, which he closed and locked. Verrochio escorted the receptionist over to the museum shop, the sight of his pistol ensuring her silent cooperation. Two late visitors and the shop assistant stood quaking at the far end of the shop, their arms in the air, while Rogan covered the three of them. Perini produced a handful of plastic cable ties and handed them to Verrochio, who expertly tied up all five people, making them sit on the floor and lashing their hands behind their backs and tying their ankles together.
“There’s hardly any money in the till,” the assistant said, her voice quavering.
“We’re not interested in the takings,” Perini told her. “Keep quiet—that means no shouting for help—and you won’t be harmed. If any of you yell out, I’ll shoot. And I don’t care who gets hurt. Do you understand?”
All five nodded vigorously.
Josep Puente had always taken pride in his faith. He was a Roman Catholic, born and raised. He attended mass every Sunday. But what he’d read that afternoon in the two diptychs and the scroll had turned his world upside down. And he really didn’t know what he should do about it. He did know that the three objects—whether elaborate and convincing forgeries or genuine relics—were probably the most important ancient documents that he, or anyone else, would ever see.
When they heard the sound of approaching footsteps, none of them paid much attention. Then a man stepped through the doorway, flanked by three others, each holding a pistol.
“So, Lewis, we meet again,” Mandino said, his voice cutting through the silence. “And where’s Bronson?”
For several seconds nobody said a word. Angela and Puente were sitting on opposite sides of the library table, the scroll and the diptychs in front of them.
Bronson was out of sight, walking between the library shelves. The moment he heard Mandino speak, he drew the Browning pistol and crept back toward the center of the room.
He risked a quick glance around a freestanding bookcase to check exactly where the intruders were, then took four rapid strides across the room. Two of the gunmen saw him, but before they could react he’d cocked the Browning—the metallic sound unnaturally loud in the tomb-like silence—seized the back of Mandino’s collar with his left hand and placed the barrel of the pistol firmly against his head. Bronson pulled the man backward, away from his armed companions, the pistol never wavering.
“It’s time,” Bronson said, “to find out what the hell’s going on, starting with why you’re here, Mandino.”
He felt the man give a start of surprise.
“Yes, I know exactly who you are,” Bronson said. “Tell your men to lower their weapons, otherwise the Rome family of the
Cosa Nostra
is going to be looking for a new
capofamiglia.
”
“The bodyguard, I suppose?” Mandino’s voice was surprisingly calm. “Put your weapons away,” he told his men, then turned his head slightly toward Bronson. “I’ll tell you what I know, but it will take some time.”
“I’m not in any particular hurry,” Bronson said. “Angela, can you bring a couple of chairs over here? Put one behind the other, back to back.”
Bronson pushed Mandino onto the front chair, and he sat down on the one behind, resting the muzzle of the Hi-Power on the chair back, so that it was just touching his captive’s neck. Rogan and the other two men took seats between Mandino and the table where Angela and Puente were sitting.
“This story started,” Mandino said, “in first-century Rome, but the Vatican’s involvement only began in the seventh century. I’m nothing to do with the Church, but my organization—the
Cosa Nostra
—was contracted to resolve this problem on its behalf. The Mafia and the Vatican are two of the longest-lived organizations in Italy, and we’ve had a mutually beneficial relationship for years.”
“Why don’t I find that surprising?” Bronson murmured.
“In the first century A.D., the Romans had been fighting the Jews for decades, and the constant military campaigns were weakening the empire. Rather than initiate a massive military response, Emperor Nero decided to create a new religion, based on one of the dozens of messiahs who were then wandering about the Middle East. He chose a Roman citizen called Saul of Tarsus as his paid agent. Together they decided that a minor prophet and self-proclaimed messiah named Jesus, who had died in obscurity somewhere in Europe a few years earlier after attracting a small following in Judea, was ideal. Nero and Saul concocted a plan that would allow Saul to hijack the fledgling religion for his own purposes.
“Saul would first achieve a reputation as a persecutor of Christians, as the followers of Jesus were becoming known, and then undergo a spiritual ‘revelation’ that would turn him from persecutor into apostle. This would allow Saul to insinuate himself into a position of power and leadership, and he would then direct the followers—mainly Jews, of course—into a path of peaceful cooperation with the Roman occupying forces. He would tell them to ‘turn the other cheek,’ ‘render unto Caesar’ and so on.
“In order to achieve this fairly quickly, Saul needed to ‘talk up’ Jesus into far more than he ever was in real life. He decided that the obvious option was to portray him as the son of God. He concocted a variety of stories about him, starting with the virgin birth and finishing with him rising from the dead, and proclaimed these to be the absolute truth.
“To help him spread the word, he recruited a man named Simon ben Jonah—a weak and gullible man—who had known Jesus personally, but had regarded him as nothing more than just another prophet. Simon—who later became much better known as St. Peter—also entered Nero’s employment, but toward the end of his life he began to believe his own stories. A third man—Joseph, son of Matthias, better known as Flavius Josephus—later joined them, but as far as we know he
was
a true believer. All three men preached Saul’s version of events, attempting to recruit Jews who, because of their teachings as Jesus’s ‘disciples,’ had become peace-loving people who no longer wished to fight the Romans.”
“Are you seriously trying to tell us that Nero founded Christianity as nothing more than a device to keep the Jews quiet?” Angela whispered.
“That’s precisely what I’m telling you. In the seventh century A.D., Pope Vitalian found a draft of a speech Nero never gave to the Roman Senate. It explained in detail exactly how Christianity began, and that it was an idea suggested by Nero himself. Pope Vitalian was appalled at what he read and began what would be a lifelong search for any other documents that might support or—hopefully—repudiate this horrific claim.”
“And he found something,” Bronson suggested.
“Exactly. In a bundle of uncataloged ancient texts he found a scroll that turned out to be a copy of what Vatican insiders began calling the
Exomologesis.
The name Vitalian gave to this document was the
Exomologesis de assectator mendax,
which translates as ‘The confession of sin by the false disciple.’ It was an admission that Nero’s statements were true, and was handwritten by Saul.”
“Dear God. So what did Vitalian do?” Angela asked.
“Precisely what the Church has been doing ever since: he hid the evidence. He prepared a document—now known as the Vitalian Codex—that explained what he’d discovered, and included the copy of the
Exomologesis.
The Codex also included one other piece of information derived from Nero’s draft speech: it stated that the bodies of Saul and Simon ben Jonah had been buried in a secret location after their respective executions, a location that Vitalian referred to as the ‘Tomb of Christianity.’ He left instructions that each new pope, as well as a handful of carefully selected senior Vatican officials, was to be shown the Codex.
“But the
Exomologesis
that Vitalian had found was obviously a copy, specifically prepared for Nero, and there was a short note on it to that effect. The Pope ransacked the Vatican archives and every other document source that he had access to, but could find no trace whatsoever of the original scroll. A search was started for the relic, and the quest has been running ever since. Vitalian also instructed that the
Exomologesis
was to be destroyed as soon as it had been found, for the eternal good of the Church.
“Ever since the seventh century, each new pope has been initiated into the secret of the
Exomologesis
within the first four weeks of his papacy, but only once has any pope made a pronouncement about it, such was its power. In the early sixteenth century, Leo X, a Medici whose papacy ran from 1513 to 1521, made the somewhat enigmatic statement
‘It has served us well, this myth of Christ.’
That one sentence has been the subject of speculation for the last five hundred years.
“The Vitalian Codex is held in the Apostolic Penitentiary—the most secure document repository in the whole of the Vatican—in a safe in a locked room inside another locked room. The official responsible for the document is the Prefect of the dicastery of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He has custody of the relic, and normally only a handful of carefully selected senior cardinals from that Congregation are even aware of its existence.”
“What did they think happened to the original scroll?” Bronson asked.
“Senior Vatican officials believe that the
Exomologesis,
and the stone that Marcellus had carved, disappeared during the chaos following Nero’s expulsion from Rome, and passed through unknown hands before eventually being acquired by the Cathars. The scroll and the stone subsequently became the principal and most important items in the so-called Cathar ‘treasure’ spirited out of Montse’gur in 1244 during the Albigensian Crusade. And from that date until an English couple named Hampton began to restore a house they’d bought in Italy, both the scroll and the stone simply vanished.”
Bronson took a deep breath. So this was why the woman he loved and his best friend had both died. The story had the unmistakable ring of truth, and provided cogent answers to almost all their questions. But there was one obvious matter that Mandino had glossed over.
“How did you know about the tomb up in the hills?”
“There was a postscript on the original
Exomologesis,
the scroll that had been hidden in the
skyphos.
It stated that two diptychs—relics that would prove what the
Exomologesis
stated—and another scroll had been buried with the two bodies. It also stated that the location of the tomb could be deduced from the ‘stone Marcellus created.’ That was why the Cathars guarded the stone so zealously, even though they had no idea how to decipher the diagram on it. All I had to do then was follow your trail, Bronson.”
“But how do you know all this,” Angela asked, “if you’re not a member of the Vatican?”
“I was extensively briefed on the history of the quest by the last Prefect of the dicastery of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” Mandino replied.
“But why would a senior cardinal and member of the Roman Curia reveal all this information to someone outside the inner circle of the Vatican? And especially to a member of the Mafia?”
“Simply because they needed my help to find the
Exomologesis,
and I refused to give it until I knew exactly what the situation was.”
Silence fell in the library for a minute or so as Angela, Bronson and Puente digested what they’d heard.
“Let’s be clear about this,” Bronson said at last. “What we’re involved in here goes a long way beyond a mere matter of lost relics. Those three items on the table over there have the ability to topple the very foundations from under the Roman Catholic Church. If they’re genuine, Christians all around the world could wake up one morning to find that their faith has been callously betrayed by the Vatican for nearly fifteen hundred years. Even if it could be proved that they’re fakes, there would always be doubts and conspiracy theories about them, just like those surrounding the Turin Shroud. So the question is: what should we do with them?”
“
My
instructions are quite clear,” Mandino replied. “I’m an atheist, but even I can see the incalculable damage that would be done to the Catholic Church and every other Christian religion if knowledge of their contents leaked out. For the sake of countless millions of believers around the world, these relics are simply too dangerous to be allowed to survive. They
must
be destroyed.”
Bronson glanced around the room. Surprisingly, Puente nodded agreement, and even Angela looked undecided.
Suddenly Perini lunged across the room and grabbed Angela by the arm, spinning her around so that her body was between him and Bronson. In a fluid movement he drew his Glock and pressed it into the side of her neck, almost exactly mirroring Bronson’s position behind Mandino.
Puente stepped forward and raised his arms in a calming gesture.
“Please, everyone, please,” he said. “There’s no need for bloodshed. No scroll or diptych, no matter how old or what text it contains, is worth a single human life.” He stepped back to the table, picked up the scroll and the diptychs and held them above his head.
“We all now know exactly what these documents purport to be, and the destructive power of the information they contain,” he continued. “I know the circumstances are far from normal, but can we please take a vote? What should we do with them? Angela?”
Perini jabbed her sharply with the pistol, and she answered hesitantly. “We should preserve them. Whether they’re genuine documents or forgeries commissioned by Nero, they’re relics of immense importance.”
Puente nodded. “Chris?”