The Book of Q

“Turn that off, will you,” she said, motioning back to Pearse, not once taking her eyes from the set. He switched off the radio and joined her. The Manichaeans would have to wait a bit longer.

“… a scholar, many have argued, the likes of whom hasn’t been seen in the Vatican since the fifteenth-century Pope, Pius the Second. The question now,” intoned the voice, “is naturally one of succession. Rumors have already begun to circulate within the Vatican of two prominent candidates. The first, a longtime confidant of the late Boniface, and an equally accomplished scholar, is Giacomo Cardinal Peretti, Archbishop of Ravenna.” A photo of the Italian, taken during an audience with the Pope, filled the screen. “At fifty-two, Peretti is one of the younger members of the Sacred College, and is considered by many its most outspoken liberal voice. The other”-a second picture now split the screen with Peretti’s, revealing a crisp Alpine background somewhere in the Tyrol-“is Erich Cardinal von Neurath, Archbishop Emeritus of Linz, and, at sixty-eight, a champion of the Vatican’s most recent attempts at reconciliation with European Protestants through his work with the encyclicals on faith. Both have strong support in the conclave, although Peretti …”

The words seemed to trail off as Pearse stared at the images. Something familiar about them, something that had little to do with either of the candidates. He stepped closer to the screen, his eyes settling on a third figure, a man directly to the left of von Neurath. He stood behind the cardinal’s shoulder, his face, though, obscured in shadow. Pearse bent over, trying to make it out, Angeli aware of his sudden interest.

As the picture came clearer, Pearse felt a tightening in his chest.

There, staring back at him, was the man from the Vatican. The Austrian who had chased him from his home. Remember the monk.

Unable to take his eyes from the screen, Pearse felt the blood slowly drain from his face.

three

Giacomo Cardinal Peretti sat silently across from the canopied bed, the slight figure of Boniface X lying peacefully under white linen, head propped gently atop a single silk pillow. The room-three hours ago empty save for the two of them-now swarmed with doctors, security, clerics, lawyers, each caught up in whispered conversations, a collection of nuns kneeling in prayer, oblivious to the hushed activity. Peretti had been the last to speak with him, the last to hold his hand, his friend of forty years offering a final word of warning before drifting off: “Watch yourself, Gigi. Von Neurath wants to sleep in this bed more than you know.” A quiet smile, and then gone.

Peretti hadn’t needed the reminder, the halls even now alive with talk, his private secretary having brought him updates on two separate occasions as to the already-vigorous “campaigning”-none of it permitted by canon law, all of it greedily devoured by the Vatican’s inner circles. No more than three hours since Ezio’s death, and the politicking was well under way. The thought sickened him.

He stared at the ashen face, the high forehead dusted with tufts of gray-white hair, lips with a tinge of blue that matched the veins in his ears. The once-lined face seemed somehow smoother, even the neck taut under a stifling collar. The perfect facade for a spiritless body. Insignificant amid the self-serving swirl of motion all around him.

Peretti knew he had limited time with his old friend. The Cardinal Camerlengo-representing one of the more macabre offices within the church-would be arriving within the hour to lock up the private apartments, break the papal seal, and start the preparations for the novemdieles, the nine days of mourning. He had already announced that the conclave would meet on the ninth day, much sooner than was usual, but certainly within his authority to decide. Most thought it was because the current Camerlengo, Antonio Cardinal Fabrizzi, was in his late seventies, eager to make his interregnum stewardship as short as possible. Peretti had other ideas. Fabrizzi was one of von Neurath’s longtime allies.

“I need all of you to leave,” Peretti said quietly, loudly enough, though, to bring a sudden silence to the room. One of the security men started to answer, but Peretti raised his hand. “Just a few minutes. I’m sure he’ll still be here when you get back.” He remained seated, eyes fixed on the body, face devoid of expression.

The nuns were the first to go, crossing themselves as they stood, each turning to Peretti with a gentle nod before heading for the door-Carmelite sisters, ever mindful of a cardinal’s wishes. A slow trickle of lawyers and doctors soon followed, the two or three security men the last to leave. Finally alone, Peretti stood and walked to the bed. Again, he stared into the lifeless face, hoping for some reassurance. He half-expected the eyes to open, a naughty smile to creep across the lips. “Gone at last,” Ezio would say, a wink, spindly legs springing to the floor.

Peretti knelt at his side, his head drooped in prayer.

“What were you so concerned with on Athos, Itzi?” He looked up and gazed at the serene face. “And why did you go without telling me?”

Angeli moved to the kitchen table, two cups of coffee in hand. She passed one to Pearse, then sat, the tale of the Austrian having required another pot.

“On the other hand,” she said, doing her best to convince both him and herself, “the men from security might simply have been that-men from security. They might actually have been trying to recover something they thought could be a threat to the church. A bit more aggressively than one would have expected, but still-”

“No.” Pearse shook his head, staring into the coal black of his cup. “Even if you dismiss Cesare and Ruini-and I’m not saying you can-think about who would want the scroll.” He placed the cup on the table and looked at her. “There are two possibilities. One, someone who hears about its discovery, tracks it down, and then does what you did-decodes the map and uncovers the link to Athos. At that point, he’d realize the prayer is only a first step, not the ultimate prize. He’d also realize that he doesn’t need it anymore-he’d already have the information necessary to get him to Athos, before anyone else, and retrieve whatever is there. So even if he were to lose the scroll, there’d be no reason for him to hunt it down.”

“True,” she conceded.

“Or two,” he continued, “someone who hears about it, but who never gets his hands on it, and therefore never has a chance to decode it. No decoding, no map. No map, and the prayer-in his eyes-would fall into the category of intriguing pieces of parchment rumored to exist, but lost to the ages. At best, he might do a little academic poking around to see if it wasn’t all a hoax.

“Neither possibility, however, would prompt the kind of zeal our Vatican friends have displayed. Unless”-he leaned in over the table-“they knew it was a map before they’d heard about the discovery, a map to something worth a great deal to them. The question is, given what you’ve told me, how would anyone, except a Manichaean, know that?”

“I see.” She let the words sink in before responding further. “No, you’re right. No one has ever thought of the ‘Perfect Light’ as a map. No one could have, given that there’s never been a written copy of it before.”

“So the only person who would go to such lengths for the scroll,” he concluded, “is someone who would have known it’s a map before the written version had ever been found.”

“And that,” she admitted, “limits the field considerably.”

The silence that followed only brought home the enormity of what they were saying. After a few moments, she spoke. “It would mean that those men from the Vatican are a part of something that dates back over seventeen hundred years.”

“It would also mean,” he added, “that, considering they’re still after the scroll, they have no idea where it leads. That’s why they’re so eager to get their hands on it.” Again, silence. Pearse took a long sip of coffee. “I suppose that gives me something of a head start.”

“What?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “You can’t be serious. If what you say is true about Ruini and this monk friend of yours, we have to take this-”

“To whom?” His conversation with Dante-had it really only been yesterday? — flooded back. “No one outside this room is likely to see a link between the confirmed heart attack of a priest and a fifteen-hundred-year-old acrostic, much less the unconfirmed disappearance of a monk and the promise of something older than the Gospels somewhere in Greece. Even the church would be hard-pressed-” He stopped, the