has been perverted by egotists and bigots, it's been undermined by petty internal rivalries and intransigent fundamentalists. And we're still making mistakes that aren't helping our cause. Avoiding the real issues facing the people out there. Tolerating shameful abuses, horrible acts against the most innocent, even conspiring to cover them up. We've been very slow at coming to terms with our rapidly changing world, and now, at a time when we're particularly vulnerable, it's all threatened again, just as it was nine hundred years ago. Only now, this edifice that we've built is greater than anyone dreamed it would become, and its fall would be simply catastrophic.
'Maybe if we were starting the Church today, with the true story of Jeshua of Nazareth,' Brugnone added, 'maybe we could do it differently. Maybe we could avoid all the confusing dogma and just do it simply. Look at Islam. They got away with it, barely seven hundred years after the crucifixion.
A man came along and said, 'There is no god but God, and I am his prophet.' Not the Messiah, not the Son of God; no Father or Holy Spirit, no confusing Trinity—just a messenger of God. That was it. And it was enough. The simplicity of his message caught on like wildfire. His followers almost took over the world in less than a hundred years, and it pains me to think that right now, in this day and age, it's the world's fastest-growing religion . . . although they've been even slower than us at coming to terms with the realities and the needs of our modern times, and that will inevitably cause them problems down the road as well. But we have been very slow, slow and arrogant. . . and now we're paying for it, just when our people need us the most.
'Because they do,' he continued. 'They need us, they need something. Look at the anxiety around you, the anger, the greed, the corruption infecting the world from the very top down. Look at the moral vacuum, the spiritual hunger, the lack of values. The world grows more fatalistic, cynical, more disillusioned every day. Man has become more apathetic, uncaring, and selfish than ever. We steal and kill on an unprecedented scale. Corporate scandals run into billions of dollars. Wars are waged for no reason, millions are killed in genocides. Science may have allowed us to get rid of diseases like smallpox, but it has more than made up for it by devastating our planet and turning us into impatient, isolated, violent creatures. The lucky ones among us may live longer, but are our lives any more fulfilled or peaceful? Is the world really any more civilized than it was two thousand years ago?
'Hundreds of years ago, we didn't know better. People could barely read and write. Today, in our so-called enlightened age, what excuse do we have for such abysmal behavior? Man's mind, his intellect, may have progressed, but I fear his soul has been left behind—and, I would even argue, regressed. Man has demonstrated time and again that he is a savage beast at heart, and, even with the Church telling us we're accountable to a greater power, we still manage to behave atrociously.
Imagine what it would be like without the Church. But it's obvious that we're losing our ability to inspire. We're not there for the people, the Church is just not there for them anymore. Even worse, we're being used as an excuse for wars and bloodshed. We're spiraling toward a terrifying spiritual crisis, Agent Reilly. This discovery could not be happening at a worse time.'
Brugnone fell silent and looked across the room at Reilly.
'Maybe it's inevitable, then,' Reilly offered in a resigned, subdued voice. 'Maybe it's a story that's run its course.'
'Perhaps the Church is dying a slow death,' Brugnone agreed. 'After all, all religions wither away and die at some point, and ours has lasted longer than most. But a sudden revelation like this . . .
Despite its failings, the Church is still a huge part of people's lives. Millions out there rely on their faith to get them through their daily existence. It still manages to provide solace, even to its lapsed members in their times of need. And ultimately, faith provides us all with something that's crucial to our very existence: it helps us overcome our primal fear of death and the dread of what may lie beyond the grave. Without their faith in a risen Christ, millions of souls would simply be cast adrift.
Make no mistake, Agent Reilly, allowing this to come out would plunge the world into a state of despair and disillusion unlike anything we've ever seen.'
An oppressive silence descended on the room, pressing down heavily on Reilly. There was no escape from the unsettling thoughts that were blockading his mind. He thought back to where this journey had all begun for him, standing on the steps of the Met with Aparo on the night of the horsemen's rampage, and wondered how he had managed to end Brugnone met Reilly's consternation with a beaming, comforting expression. 'There are those who believe the story was only ever meant to be taken metaphorically; that to truly understand Christianity is to understand the essence of the message at its heart. However, most believers take every word in the Bible as being, for want of a better term, the gospel truth. I suppose I fall somewhere in the middle. Perhaps we all walk a fine line between freeing our imaginations to the wonders of the story and allowing our rational minds to doubt its veracity. If what the Templars found was in fact a forgery, it would certainly help make us more comfortable with spending more time on the more inspirational side of that line, but until we find what they were carrying on that ship ...' He framed Reilly with an ardent stare. 'Will you help us?'
For a moment Reilly did not answer. He studied the deeply lined face of the man before him.
Although he felt that the cardinal harbored a deep-seated core of honesty, he had no illusions about the motives of De Angelis, and he knew that helping them would inevitably mean working with the monsignor, a prospect that held little appeal to him. He glanced over at De Angelis. Nothing he had heard did anything to alleviate his mistrust of the duplicitous priest, nor dampen his contempt for the man's methods. He knew he would have to figure out how to deal with him at some point in the future. But there were more pressing matters at hand. Tess was somewhere out there, alone with Vance, and there was a potentially devastating discovery looming over millions of unsuspecting souls.
He turned his gaze to Brugnone. 'Yes,' was his simple reply.
up here, at the very epicenter of his faith, engaged in a deeply disturbing conversation he would have much rather never had.
'How long have you known?' he finally asked the cardinal.
'Me, personally?'
'Yes.'
'Since I took my present post. Thirty years.'
Reilly nodded to himself. It seemed an awfully long time to have to labor under doubts like those that were now battering him. 'But you've come to terms with it.'
'Come to terms?'
'You accept it,' Reilly clarified.
Brugnone mulled it over for a moment, his eyes darkly troubled. 'I will never come to terms with it, in the sense that I believe you mean. But I have learned to accommodate it. That's the best that I've been able to do.'
'Who else knows?' Reilly could hear the condemnation in his own voice, and he knew that Brugnone heard it too.
'A handful of us.'
Reilly wondered about what that meant. What about the pope? Does he know? He felt he really wanted to know—he couldn't imagine the pope not knowing—but he held back from asking the question. Only so many blows at a time. Instead, another idea was vying for his attention. His investigative instincts were stirring, clawing their way out of the mire of his besieged mind.
'How do you know it's real?'
Brugnone's eyes brightened, and the edge of his mouth broke into a faint smile. He seemed heartened by Reilly's hopeful defense, but his dire tone quickly smothered any such hope. 'The pope sent his most eminent experts to Jerusalem when the Templars first discovered it. They confirmed it to be genuine.'
'But that was almost a thousand years ago,' Reilly argued. 'They could have easily been fooled.
What if it were a forgery? From what I've heard, it wasn't beyond the Templars' capabilities to pull off something like this. And yet you're ready to accept it as fact without even seeing it . . . ?' The implication hit Reilly just as the words tumbled out of his mouth. 'Which can only mean you've always doubted the story in the gospels . . . ?'
Chapter 72
A light southeasterly wind stroked the waters around the Savarona, conjuring up a fine salty mist that Tess could almost taste as she stood on the aft deck of the converted trawler. She relished the freshness of the mornings
