The Inquisitor's Key (30 page)

A40 Motorway, Switzerland
The Present

IN A THREE-MILE STRETCH OF TUNNEL CARVED
through the mountains on the route from Geneva, Switzerland, back to Lyon, France, a black BMW whips to the left and surges forward, rapidly overtaking the old Peugeot that’s chugging up the gradual grade. The German car rockets past the French one as swiftly as Hitler’s tanks darted around France’s Maginot Line back in 1940; it cuts in front and then brakes hard. The hulking bald driver, Junior—a name he hates, even though he, too, uses it for himself—checks his mirror, expecting to see the Peugeot’s hood dip sharply, expecting to hear tires screeching in a panicky, reflexive stop—after all, the gray-haired guy in the piece-of-crap Peugeot is some kind of egghead professor, right?—but instead, the Peugeot darts to the right, wedging itself between the decelerating BMW and the wall of the tunnel.

Metal rasps and shrieks as the Peugeot rakes the entire passenger side of the BMW, clipping the outside mirror at the same
moment it rips a warning sign off the right wall of the tunnel. The Peugeot driver’s window is down and suddenly Junior sees what appears to be a pistol in the professor’s hand: a pistol pointed out the open window; a pistol pointed—shit!—at him. Next thing Junior knows, the Beemer’s passenger window is shattering and he’s ducking for his life, and the Beemer is veering wildly to the left, where it slams into a concrete abutment, pushing the radiator back into the engine block and knocking the left front wheel off the frame. The steering-column airbag explodes, punching Junior in the face, breaking his nose, adding injury to insult. He’s not sure which hurts worse, the broken nose or the knowledge that he’s been outmaneuvered and outsmarted by an aging egghead in a piece-of-crap car.

Avignon
The Present

EIGHT ENDLESS, NAIL-CHEWING, GARDEN-PACING
hours after I’d climbed out of the van—as the afternoon sun was casting long shadows across Lumani’s courtyard—my phone rang. “The preacher’s muscleman just tried to ambush our decoy,” said Descartes. I felt a jolt of fear, and sweat began beading on my forehead and trickling from my armpits. “Shit. What happened? Is our guy okay?”

“It’s okay,” he hurried on. “You got away. The muscleman’s car is wrecked, so that’s good; maybe he’s hurt, maybe not. Our guy didn’t stop—without backup, he couldn’t take the risk, and besides, we didn’t want to blow his cover. But you need to call the preacher right away, so he still thinks it’s you on the highway.”

I forced myself to breathe slowly—once, twice, three times—and then said, “Okay, tell me what happened. And tell me what I need to say.”

“It was in the Chamois Tunnel, about fifty kilometers west
of Geneva. An hour after you left the bank. The muscleman passed you in the tunnel and tried to force you to stop. You made a shot—”

“Good God, I
shot
someone?” I was shocked by the idea that I—even a counterfeit I—might shoot someone.

“We don’t know if you hit him. All we know is that the muscleman’s car ran into the wall in the tunnel. He’s not following you anymore. You should call the preacher now, before he hears from his guy.”

“THIS IS BROCKTON,” I SAID WHEN HE ANSWERED.
“That was really stupid, Reverend.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve got a good mind to turn this car around and go dump the bones in Lake Geneva. A spot so deep you’ll never find them, no matter how long you look or how hard you pray.”

“I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about, Brockton.” His words said that, but his panicked undertone told me otherwise.

“You’re lying, Reverend. Either that, or your goon’s spinning out of control as badly as his car did just now.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “What car?”

“Don’t insult my intelligence. The black BMW your bald-headed ape was driving. The one that just crashed into the wall in the Chamois Tunnel.”

Another pause. “There was a wreck in a tunnel? Was anyone hurt? Are you okay?”

“Gee, thanks for your Christian concern, Reverend. I’m just fine, but I don’t know about your muscle-bound friend—call me hard-hearted, but I didn’t stop to play Good Samaritan. Maybe he’s just shaken up, maybe he’s dead—and if he is, frankly, I don’t give a damn. I’m on my way back to Avignon with the bones, and
if you actually want them, don’t you dare mess with me again. God forgives, but I don’t.” I hung up the phone and, as Descartes had instructed, I switched it off so Reverend Jonah couldn’t call me back—at least not until we’d made him sweat for a while.

Meanwhile, I was sweating, too. We’d gotten a break and gained an advantage over the end-timers, but I didn’t want to put too much stock in it. If Junior had escaped unhurt and managed to get out of the tunnel and get another car quickly, our advantage might last only a few hours. And then what?

THE KNOCK WAS SOFT, BUT IT NEARLY MADE ME
jump out of my skin anyway, and I gave a startled yelp of surprise. “
Excusez-moi, Docteur,
” said Elisabeth’s voice. “Sorry you have fear when I knock.” I yanked open the door, grateful for the distraction, cheered by the warmth in her face, and relieved by the sight of the immense package she cradled in her arms. “This just came for you.”

The FedEx airbill confirmed what I’d expected and hoped: The package was from Knoxville, which meant that it contained the decoy skeleton overnighted by Hugh Berryman. I’d expected the airbill to be attached to one of our standard bone boxes, a foot square by three feet long, but what Elisabeth had lugged up the three flights of stairs was the size of a small footlocker. I thanked her, set the box on the bed, and ripped it open even before she’d started down the stairs. Inside the outer box, I found the long, narrow bone box I’d been expecting, along with a second box, a cube measuring about eighteen inches on each side.

Lifting out the bone box, I set it on the desk and raised the long, hinged lid. Hugh had chosen well. A forensic anthropologist would never mistake this Native American skeleton for the one we’d found in the Palace of the Popes—this skull was broader and flatter, and the front teeth were the shovel-shaped incisors characteristic of Native Americans and Asians—but apart from
those differences, it closely resembled our missing man: Meister Eckhart or Jesus Christ or whoever the hell Stefan had been trying to sell for two million dollars. Hugh had also done a good job of simulating the wounds to the wrists and feet and ribs: Besides gouging the bones, he’d dabbed the splintered edges with a mixture of tea and coffee, a stain that mimicked the patina of time, making the fresh trauma look as ancient as the bones themselves.

Satisfied with the decoy skeleton, I turned my attention to the other box, the unexpected one. Taped to the top of it was a card, a pen-and-ink illustration of Don Quixote on horseback, his lance raised, windmills in the background. Underneath were these words in Hugh’s handwriting: “Ephesians 6:11.” Puzzled, I ripped open the box. What I found inside gave me a chill. I opened my computer and Googled the citation. It was a Bible verse from Saint Paul’s letter to the fledgling Christian church at Ephesus. “Put on the whole armour of God,” it read, “that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” Saint Paul, I decided—or maybe it was my own Saint Hugh—was a pretty smart guy.

THE PIECES OF OUR PLAN WERE COMING TOGETHER,
though with maddening slowness. The decoy skeleton was the piece I’d been most worried about, and it had arrived on time and in excellent condition. The decoy ossuary should be coming soon—the stonemason had promised to deliver it no later than 10
P.M
. And barring unforeseen problems, the decoy Brockton should make it back to Avignon before midnight.

Midnight was just four hours away—hours that I suspected would seem like centuries.

I SWITCHED MY PHONE BACK ON—I’D LEFT IT OFF
for two hours to keep Reverend Jonah twisting in the wind if
he tried to call me again—and sure enough, the phone showed a missed call from his North Carolina cell number. I had a voice mail, too, and the instant the message began playing, I felt the instinctive revulsion that the televangelist’s voice never failed to trigger in me. My revulsion swiftly gave way to panic, though, as his words floated up and their implications sank in. “If you’re not with us, you’re against us,” he said. “You are not to be trusted. If you try any treachery when we meet, the girl dies. If I even think the police are watching, she dies. If you stall or bargain, she dies. And if the bones are not genuine, she dies.” My heart skipped a beat when he said it. “I have photographs of the teeth,” he went on, and I thought my heart would stop altogether. “Before I came to terms with your friend Stefan, I had him send pictures of them. I’m no big-shot forensic detective, but I swear by the blood of Christ, if the teeth don’t match exactly, the girl will die, and so will you.”

I stared at the phone in my hand, hoping it wasn’t real, hoping this was a nightmare message, hoping that if I stared at the phone hard enough, clenched it tightly enough, I would awaken.

I did not awaken; the message was indeed a nightmare, but it was a waking nightmare. Flinging open the lid of the bone box, I lifted out the cranium and mandible, and grew dizzy with despair. I’d hoped and assumed the preacher wouldn’t be tipped off by the decoy’s shovel-shaped incisors, but I saw now that those were the least of the problem. The real problem was the number of teeth: the decoy had four more teeth than the missing skeleton had. Even a preacher inclined to have faith in miracles was not credulous enough to believe that the skull of Christ had sprouted four new teeth twenty centuries after his crucifixion.

Frantic now, I called Descartes, who was still searching the labyrinthine corridors and crannies of the Palace of the Popes. “You’ve got to find those bones, and find them fast,” I said. I recounted Reverend Jonah’s call, and his threat. “He’s not going
to fall for it,” I said. “There’s no way. Even a child could tell that these teeth aren’t the same.”

Descartes was silent. Finally he said, “We’ll keep trying, but we’re running out of places to look. See if you can get more time.”

“How do I do that, Inspector? We were pushing our luck with Geneva. He’s getting suspicious. I’m afraid he’s about to snap.”

“I don’t know. Try to think of something. We have two more towers to search. You probably won’t be able to reach me—the only reason I got this call is because I stepped outside to call my office. I’ll phone you back in an hour.” He hung up, leaving me staring at the phone once more, my blood pressure soaring, my ears ringing, my heart racing. In a fury of frustration, I screamed—a wordless bellow of rage—and kicked savagely at the closest thing to me, the heavy wooden frame of my bed. It hurt—I wondered if I’d broken my big toe—but I didn’t care; I hauled back the other foot and kicked the bed again. The bed scraped across the floorboards…and something clattered to the floor. Crap—had I broken the bed in my anger? Kneeling on the floor, I peered into the darkness, using my cell phone as a flashlight, the way Miranda had shown me.

The light glimmered off something made of metal: a bracket? a bolt from the bed? Lying prone, my head pressed against the nightstand, I fished it out. It was a key—an antique-looking silver key with a large oval head and several stubby ribs jutting from the spine. For a moment I thought it was Stefan’s skeleton key to the palace, but it wasn’t, not quite. The palace key had been ornate, practically a work of art, its head cut with intricate scrollwork and filigree; this one, on the other hand, was utterly unadorned—a blue-collar sort of key, more likely to be carried by some medieval janitor than a cardinal or chamberlain. It wasn’t just the head that was simpler; so was the shaft—it had only three pairs of ribs jutting from the spine, not half a dozen. Suddenly it hit me, and I ripped open the desk drawer and rifled through
the jumble of papers and receipts until I found the note Miranda had left on my nightstand after spooning up behind me in my bed the night after we’d found Stefan’s body. “A souvenir,” the note said. “Maybe it doesn’t mean anything, but maybe it’s important.” When I’d awakened that morning and found the message, I’d thought that the note itself was the souvenir—an odd one, I’d thought, but then, Miranda’s mind often worked more obliquely than mine. But the words, I now realized, made more sense if they referred to something else—something that had fallen off the edge of the nightstand, perhaps, and lodged behind the bed…until this moment. Was this a key Stefan had given her? Or had he lost it in her hotel room the night he tried to persuade her to come with him?

Suddenly I felt a chill as I remembered Miranda’s barely intelligible words when Reverend Jonah had let me talk to her. “The key is to get the bones,” she’d said. Twice. My God, she must have meant
this
key. But what door, what hiding place, did this key unlock? It must not be a door at the palace, because Stefan’s master key—which Descartes and his men had a copy of—was different from this. What else had Miranda said during that important, frustrating, garbled call? She’d clearly been trying to tell me something else important, but much of the message had been mangled by the poor reception. She’d told me not to get greedy like Stefan, and then she’d said something about Stefan being interrupted. But then she’d added something odd, something I hadn’t understood: She’d told
me
to “be interruptible.” I’d been trying to ask her what that meant when Reverend Jonah had snatched the phone away from her and slapped her. “Be interruptible.” Turning the key over and over in my hands, I stared absently at it and repeated the words slowly, as if they held some magic, some mantra. “Be interruptible. Be interruptible. Interruptible.”

And then, tearing open my door, I raced down the stairs, flung open the wooden gate of the inn, and sprinted through the twist
ing streets, past the floodlit façade of the Palace of the Popes, beneath the outstretched arms of the cathedral’s gilded virgin and oversized crucifix, and down a zigzag ramp to the northern edge of the city wall, toward the dark waters of the Rhône.

I’d just reached the base of the Bénézet bridge—the bridge of Incorruptible, Interruptible Saint Bénézet—when my phone rang. It was Reverend Jonah. “Now or never, Professor,” he hissed.

“Now,” I said. “Right now, by God. But you have to bring her to me. The bones and I are at Saint Bénézet’s Bridge. Walk up the sidewalk from the south side of the bridge. If I see anyone with you but Miranda, I’ll throw the bones off the bridge and into the river.”

What
bones? The rhetorical question posed by Descartes still applied. I didn’t have the bones yet, didn’t know for sure they were here. But they
had
to be here. There was no other explanation that fit…and no time to look anywhere else.

“And if I see anyone with you, I’ll shoot the girl,” he countered. “If you have any doubt about that, remember what happened to your colleague.”

“What about the Sixth Commandment, Reverend? ‘Thou shalt not kill’? Or did God say you could ignore that one, when he took you up to Heaven for your private sneak preview of the Apocalypse?”

“We’re all sinners, Doctor. Some of us, by the grace of God, are forgiven sinners. That’s the only difference. I’ve sinned many times in my life. I’ll probably sin many more. But I am cleansed and made spotless by the blood of Jesus Christ. By the miracle of grace. And when the trumpet sounds—soon, very soon—I will stand with the righteous. Because I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord! Make straight his path!’ Unworthy as I am, Doctor, I am God’s chosen instrument.”

His words—and his fervent, escalating intensity—filled me with dread, but I knew better than to show fear. “And so am I,
Reverend,” I said with as much conviction as I could muster, or could pretend to. Growing up, I’d been surrounded by fundamentalist Protestants—Southern Baptists, Primitive Baptists, even a few snake-handling Holy Rollers. I cast my mind back to that subculture and its language, hoping to speak to the preacher in words that would carry weight with him. “I’m the Lord’s instrument, too. Listen to the Spirit, Reverend, and you’ll know it’s true. I found the bones. I escaped the snares you’ve set for me. And now I charge you—as Jesus charged the woman caught in the act of adultery—‘Go and sin no more.’ Forgiveness requires repentance, Reverend, and repentance isn’t true—it’s a lie—if you’re already plotting the next sin. So bring her to me in ten minutes, and do it with a pure heart. I charge you in the name of Him you serve.”