The Inquisitor's Key (22 page)

DESCARTES SETTLED INTO A CHAIR. I’D EXPECTED HIS
eyes to light up at the array of pastries and berries—Jean and Elisabeth had started doubling the portions for his sake—but he looked bleak and bleary. “I’ve been up all night,” he said, in answer to the question in my eyes. “Fishing. We have some information on all three of the fishes.”

Coffee sloshed from my cup as my hand began to shake, filling the saucer. When I set the saucer down, milky coffee sloshed onto the table and dripped through the wooden slats, splatting onto the stones of the courtyard. “Tell me.”

“The one in London is a British art dealer.”

“An art dealer?” I was surprised, though I swiftly realized I shouldn’t have been. After all, if collectors and museums prized fractured Roman pottery and gem-encrusted Aztec skulls, why wouldn’t someone covet the bones of Christ, arguably the most revered figure of all time? “What else do you know about him?”

“Not him. Her. A woman named Felicia Kensington. She’s very shady. She’s been on the watch list of New Scotland Yard and Interpol for years now.”

“What for?”

“Buying and selling black-market art. Forgeries and fakes. Stolen antiquities. Her name has come up more than once in cases like this—”

“Murder cases?”

“No, nothing violent. Cases where a valuable piece of art—a painting, a sculpture, a precious document—disappeared, or mysteriously reappeared. Sometimes with fake papers, sometimes with no papers at all. But she’s slippery. Someone else always takes the fall.”

“She’s never been convicted of anything?”

“She’s never even been arrested.”

“Sounds like she’s lucky, or smart, or both,” I said. “What’s your take?”

“My take?” He looked startled, then he frowned. “Isn’t that what you call a corrupt policeman’s bribe—his take?”

“Ah. Not quite.” No wonder he’d looked confused and unhappy. “We do say that a crooked cop is ‘on the take,’ yes. But the money that a cop gets when he’s on the take is called his ‘cut,’ I think. ‘What’s your take?’ means ‘What’s your impression, what’s your intuition?’ So, what’s your take on this shady art dealer, Felicia Kensington—could she have killed Stefan?”

He studied the biggest of the strawberries, then plucked it from the platter and bit off the lower half. “My take is, she’s a
morceau de merde
—a morsel of shit, you would say?”

I smiled at the translation. “Americans don’t say ‘morsel’ a lot. We tend to say ‘piece’ instead.”

“Okay, she’s a piece of shit,” he said, popping the rest of the strawberry in his mouth. “But I don’t think she’s the killer.”

“Because?”

“Because she’s a woman, for one thing. Women almost never
kill. They only kill their husbands or lovers. Well, sometimes their kids, but that’s rare. Besides, this woman has an alibi. She’s been in Cairo for the past two weeks. Probably buying mummies or robbing tombs.”

“Okay, so we can probably rule her out. Who’s suspect number two?”

He crossed himself, then raised his eyebrows expectantly, waiting for some sort of response. I shook my head and shrugged. Looking disappointed that I’d not understood the clue, he said, “The pope.”

“The
pope
?
The
pope? As in the Holy Father in Rome? Holy smokes.” The inspector nodded, cheered up by my dramatic reaction. “Well, well. I’ll say this for Stefan—he might have been stupid, but he wasn’t guilty of thinking small, was he? That’s a damn big fish.”

Descartes wagged a finger of clarification. “Not the pope himself, I think. The fax number belongs to the Vatican, though. The Vatican Museum, to be precise.”

“I’ve been to the Vatican Museum,” I said. “Took me six hours to go through it, and I skipped a lot. I’m guessing it’s not a one-man operation. Any idea who Stefan was negotiating with?”

“Not yet. The wheels of the Vatican roll slowly.”

“Gosh, there’s a revelation.” He didn’t seem to get the pun.

“They have two different police forces. The Swiss Guard is there to protect the pope.”

“Like the Secret Service in the U.S.,” I said. “They protect the president.”

“
Exactement
. The other force is the Vatican police—they do everything else. But neither group will cooperate with me unless someone
très important
commands it. The Catholic Church has had too many scandals lately. They don’t want bloody hands from a murder.” His lips twitched in an ironic little smile. “
En particulier
a crucifixion.”

“That wouldn’t look so good,” I agreed. “But do you think
it’s possible that someone at the Vatican Museum would want the bones enough to kill for them?”

He shrugged. “I’m no expert. There’s plenty of blood on the hands of the Church. The Crusades. The Inquisition. Sexual abuse and cover-ups. But would the Vatican kill to possess the bones of Christ—or to destroy them? Only God knows.”

I slathered cherry preserves on a croissant and took a bite; for some reason, I’d started imitating Descartes, who seemed unable to string together more than three sentences without refueling. “So what do you know about the third fish, the one in Charlotte? Is it the Institute for Biblical Science, the place that contacted me?”

“No, that is not the place, but maybe there is some connection. This is a church.”

“Catholic?” He shook his head. “Protestant? Why would a Protestant church in North Carolina want to buy the bones of Jesus?”

“It’s not typical Protestant, I think. It’s called the Church of Dominion and Prophecy. A church
gigantesque
—a megachurch,
oui
?—with twenty thousand people. Also radio and television stations. The preacher is named Jonah Ezekiel. Not his original name; he changed it. He calls himself ‘Reverend Jonah, Apostle and Prophet of the Apocalypse.’ He’s—how do you say it?—on the fluffy edge of crazy.”

“Lunatic fringe?”

“
Exactement,
lunatic fringe.”

“Why do you say that, Inspector?”

“He thinks the world will end soon.”

“I hate to say it, Inspector, but millions of Americans—like, forty percent—think the world is about to end. Almost half of Americans believe that the Second Coming of Christ and the end of the world will happen by the year 2050.”

He held up a finger. “Ah, but this preacher—he says he knows
exactement
when these things will happen. God brought him to
Heaven, he says, and gave him a special preview.” I had to admit, this was starting to sound fringy. “Two years ago, he tells everyone, ‘The Rapture happens in six months.’ So his followers quit their jobs to help him warn everyone. When the Rapture does
not
happen, does he say, ‘Sorry, I was wrong, I am an idiot’?
Non!
He says, ‘God gave me more time to save souls, so give me more money.’” He spat out a strawberry cap.
“Morceau de merde.”

It was the same phrase—“piece of shit”—that he’d used about Felicia Kensington, the black-market art dealer.

“That isn’t all. He
wants
the world to end. Look, I’ll show you.” He pulled several folded pages from the inside pocket of his jacket and handed me the top one. It was a printout from the church’s Web site, advertising a series of upcoming sermons by Reverend Jonah titled “Signs of the End Times.” Most of the page was filled by an illustration in vivid color. The illustration was captioned by a quotation from the Gospel of Mark: “Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down…and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows…For in those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the beginning of the creation which God created unto this time…” At the center of the picture was an immense, shining cross rising from the smoldering ruins of shattered skyscrapers. In the smoky sky, winged angels hovered beneath the gates of Heaven, welcoming a handful of white-robed, haloed people streaming upward from the ruins. Underground, naked bodies writhed amid the flames of Hell; some were being tortured, and others were engaged in sexual acts that were graphic, degrading, and grotesque.

I handed the page back. “I don’t know which is more disturbing,” I said, “his eagerness for the world to end, or his fascination with pain and perversion.”

“He isn’t just waiting for the Apocalypse. He’s trying to speed it up.”

“Speed it up? How?”

Descartes took a sip of coffee. “For one thing, by creating red cows for Israel.”

I paused, my own cup halfway to my lips. “Red cows for Israel?”

“
Oui, exactement
. Red cows. For Israel.”

“I don’t understand, Inspector. What on earth do red cows have to do with the end of time?”

“I don’t understand it, either,” he said. “It’s very complicated. But some of these end-of-the-world people—not just this preacher, but also some fringe Jews, Messianic Jews—believe that Jesus, or the Messiah, will come again after the temple in Jerusalem is rebuilt.”

“Rebuilt by red cows?”

“
Oui,
special cows, trained in architecture and construction.” He laughed. “
Non,
of course not. Here is how the red cow fits in. Somebody important a long time ago—Moses or Solomon or God, whoever—said that the best way to clean up sins is to sacrifice a red cow.
Pure
red, with not one hair of any other color—no brown, no black, no white—anywhere on its body. Also, not just a cow, but a
génisse
. I don’t know the word in English, but it means a female cow, one that is young. A virgin cow, you know?”

“Ah. The English word is ‘heifer.’ Yes, a sacrificial virgin. Female virgins always seem to take the sacrificial bullet for the team. But I still don’t get it, Inspector. What does sacrificing a red heifer have to do with the end of the world?”

“Pfffttt.”
Descartes blew out a puff of air, a versatile French expression of irritation or impatience or uncertainty. “I’m telling you, it sounds crazy to me.
But
. These people who want the Apocalypse, they think that when the perfect red cow is sacrificed, the Jews will be purified and inspired. They will unite to drive the infidels from Jerusalem and rebuild their holy temple. And when that happens,
voilà
—the Messiah comes again.”

“So the eager preacher in Charlotte,” I mused, “joins forces with the militant rabbi in Jerusalem in the quest for the perfect cow.”

“
Oui
. But not just looking for the cow. Creating the cow. The preacher is paying farmers and scientists to breed red cows. They thought they had her, the perfect
génisse,
a few years ago. There was much excitement in Jerusalem and Charlotte, but then
poof!
—she sprouted some white hairs in her tail. There was much disappointment. But they keep trying.”

I looked around me, taking in the loveliness: the blooming lavender, the splashing fountain, the mobile rotating beneath the plane tree as miraculously and gracefully as the planets circling the sun. It was surreal, this conversation about the destruction of the earth, the desirability of mass suffering, and the notion that a cow’s pigmentation could flip the switch of the doomsday machine. “You’re making this up, Descartes. You’re just messing with my head.”

“
Non, non, mon ami,
I cannot make up such crazy shit—I do not have such a big imagination. It’s all true.
Incroyable,
but true. And there is more. More and more and more. This preacher, Reverend Jonah Ezekiel, he thinks your government—well, not the government
tout entier,
but the Democratic Party, for sure—is controlled by demons. He’s making friends with Republicans who have the potential to become president. Can you imagine? If your president—the man with the nuclear launch codes—decides to launch the battle of Armageddon? Very scary, Docteur.”

“Demons, you said? He thinks demons—actual demons from Hell—are running the government?”

“
Oui
. Also Hollywood. Also Wall Street. So to fight back, this preacher and his followers want to get power—‘dominion,’ they call it, that’s why it’s in the name of the church—over everything and everybody.”

I rubbed my throbbing eyes; squeezed my aching temples. “Unbelievable.”

“Here’s what worries me most,” Descartes said. “In one of his sermons, the preacher says that God is calling for martyrs—people ready to fight and die in the battle against evil.”

“Martyrs? Did he really use that word?”

“Yes. ‘Holy martyrs,’ those were his exact words.”

“Yikes. He sounds like Osama bin Laden.”

“
Exactement
. Put him in robes and a turban, glue a long beard to the chin, change the name of the religion,
et voilà
—an American bin Laden.
La même chose
—the same thing.
Fou, fanatique, et dangereux
. Crazy, fanatical, and dangerous.” He handed me the other folded pages he’d brought.

One was a close-up of Reverend Jonah preaching, his arms outstretched and lifted toward Heaven. One hand clutched a Bible; the other brandished a sword. The expression on his face was like nothing I’d ever seen before, an electric mixture of elation and rage.
This is what zealotry looks like,
I thought.
He’d like nothing better than to hack some unbeliever to pieces with that sword
.

The final two pages were grainy photos from a security camera. Despite the poor quality, I recognized the first photo as Reverend Jonah. The other picture showed a large, muscular man—he could have been a professional wrestler or football player—sporting a shaved head, wraparound sunglasses, and a black suit and shirt that strained to contain his chest and shoulders. “Who’s the gorilla?” I asked Descartes.

“That is the preacher’s chief of security. His name is Luther Talbot, but his
pseudo
—his nicked name, I think you say?—is Junior.” The inspector’s translation gave me a smile, but the time stamp on the photo quickly took it away. In the upper right-hand corner of each photo was a string of numerals indicating the date and time of the photo. The men had been photographed two minutes apart—Reverend Jonah Ezekiel at 9:11
A.M
. and Junior at 9:13.