The woman didn’t answer at first. Then she got up from the couch and stepped across to the desk, where she retrieved some keys. She turned to face them and said, “Come.”
She led them across the living room and through a dark, narrow hallway that had the kitchen off one side and looked like it gave onto a bedroom at its far end. It had a lower ceiling than the living room and was lined with cupboard doors on one side. A kilim carpet hung from a brass rail on the opposite wall. The old woman opened a cupboard door and brought out a flashlight, then went up to the kilim and pulled it to one side. Cut into the wall behind it and barely visible in the darkness was a narrow, winding staircase, not much wider than a man’s shoulders.
The old woman entered the niche and climbed down, taking each of the tall risers with care, steadying herself against the curving wall, the light of her flashlight playing against its rough, pockmarked surface. Tess and Reilly followed. The stairs wound down twice before ending in a tunnel, also narrow and rough. It all had a similar feel to the underground city they’d been trapped in, and Tess wondered if it was of the same vintage.
The old woman led them past a series of old wooden doors lining one side of the tunnel, over a length of about thirty yards, until she reached the last door, one that faced down the tunnel. She then unlocked it, stepped inside, and ushered them in behind her.
They were standing in a small room. More of a walk-in cupboard, really. It was windowless and low-ceilinged and, like the chambers in the underground city, had a pleasant temperature despite the heat aboveground, and none of the humidity.
Tess looked around, and every last molecule of air in her lungs gushed out.
All of the small room’s walls, apart from the one with the door in it, were lined with shelves. The shelves, in turn, were lined with books. Old books. Small, leather-bound, positively ancient codices. The oldest books on the planet: two-thousand-year-old gospels, from the earliest days of the Church.
Dozens of them.
Tess couldn’t believe it.
Her mouth managed to ask, “May I?” as she pointed at one of them.
The old woman gave her a resigned “help yourself” gesture.
Tess reached out and picked up one of the books. It was very similar to the two codices she’d found in Conrad’s grave. Same kind of leather binding, same folded back, same strap wrapped around it. It seemed in equally good condition. She hesitated, then peeled back the fold and opened the book and looked inside. It had similar lettering, Koine Greek.
She translated its title page aloud: “The Gospel of Eve.”
Tess wasn’t familiar with it. The old woman watched her with slight bemusement, then said, “I was curious about that one too. But it’s not the Eve you think.”
Tess gave her a curious look. “You know what’s in these books? You’ve read them?”
“Not entirely. I’ve just taught myself a little bit of Coptic and some old Greek here and there and managed to understand some of what’s inside them.”
A particular question was clawing away inside Tess, desperate to get out. “If I ask you about a particular text, would you know if it’s here or not?”
The old woman shrugged. “Probably.”
Tess inhaled nervously. “A few years ago, I held in my hands something I believed was the journal of Jesus. His own writings. His diary.”
The woman’s eyes widened. “You saw it?”
“Yes, but I couldn’t tell if it was real or if it was a forgery. And I never got a chance to put it through any lab tests to find out. Do you know anything about it? Do you know if it was the real thing?”
The woman smiled, then shook her head. “It wasn’t. It was a forgery.”
The finality of her answer stunned Tess. “How do you know that?”
“Maysoon’s letter. Conrad told her all about it.” She ordered her thoughts, then added, “They were only able to make it because they had all this to work with,” gesturing at the shelves of ancient texts.
“Wait a sec, you’re saying the Templars knew about this trove all along?”
“Knew about it? They wouldn’t have existed without it. That’s how it all started. With the original keepers of this trove, the men who looked after it and kept it safely hidden at the Imperial Library in Constantinople. It was all their plan.”
“You’re saying the Templars were dreamt up in Constantinople?”
The old woman nodded. “The Keepers had been guarding the trove of Nicaea for centuries, ever since Hosius had saved it from burning and smuggled it off to safety in Constantinople. The Keepers guarded it, waiting for the right time to make it public and share it with the rest of the world. But that moment never seemed to come … and by the end of the first millennium, the world took a darker turn. The pope was out of control. And when he came up with the notion of a holy crusade and ordered Christians to go to war and kill in the name of Christ, they knew he had lost it completely. Jesus’s message had been completely obliterated. But the crusaders were winning their battles and giving the pope more and more power. With control over the Holy Land and all the monarchs of Europe kissing his feet, the pope would have supreme power over most of the known world. The Keepers were horrified by what was happening and felt they had to do something. They needed to find a way to rein him in. And they came up with a radical idea. They decided to create a counterforce. A military organization that could challenge Rome’s supremacy and keep its influence in check. They had all this to work with,” she said, waving at the astounding collection of writings around her. “The threat of making it public would have probably been enough to scare the pope into giving them what they wanted, but they felt they needed more. They needed to be sure. They needed one more book. One hugely powerful text that would terrify Rome into submission. So they decided to create the ultimate gospel.”
“The personal journal of Jesus,” Tess said.
“Exactly,” the old woman nodded.
Tess looked at Reilly, and that fateful moment of years earlier came rushing back. The two of them, standing on that cliff. Watching the vellum pages glide down and get swallowed up by the churning sea. The answer they never got—until now.
The old woman pressed on. “They had all this to base their work on, to create their forged masterpiece, to get it right. It would also make the find seem unquestionably believable. After all, all these books are the real thing. It was only natural for Jesus’s own journal to be part of this collection. So once it was ready, they acted. They sought out others who shared their concerns. Knights, learned and enlightened men from across Europe who they had met over the years, at the library. Nine of them.”
“The first nine Templars. Hughes de Payens and his men,” Tess said.
The old woman nodded again. “The knights went to Jerusalem, where they approached the king. They told him they were there to protect the pilgrims coming to the holy city, and got him to give them the ruins of the old temple to use as their base. And after years of supposedly digging around, they sent a message to Rome, saying they’d found something. Something … disturbing. The pope sent his envoys. The knights showed them some of the gospels that you see here. Then they showed them the real prize. The pope’s men were horrified. They went back to Rome and confirmed the find. The pope gave the Templars everything they wanted in exchange for keeping it quiet.”
Tess’s head was spinning. It was a lot to take in. “And after that, the Templars sent the gospels back here —or rather, back to Constantinople?”
“They’d been safe there for many centuries. The Holy Land was a war zone. The Keepers wanted to make sure the gospels were safe.”
“But not Jesus’s diary?”
“No,” the old woman said. “That stayed with the Templars, at Acre. It was the source of their strength. They wanted to keep it close, under their guard. Which was a mistake. But remember, it was also a forgery. As far as the Keepers were concerned, its value was strategic, not historic.”
Tess was completing the puzzle in her mind. “So then in 1203, the pope’s army is at the gates of Constantinople. The Keepers are worried about losing their trove. They send out a distress signal.”
“Yes. The Templars send out a few men to smuggle it out to safety. But they lose it until Conrad and Maysoon manage to get it back … a hundred years later.”
“But by then, it’s too late to do anything with it. The Holy Land is back in Muslim hands, the forged diary of
