two millennia, based upon the life and deeds and very words of Jesus Christ our Lord. The Vatican is the focus of the religion of countless millions of believers in almost every country in the world. How dare you say that you’re right and everyone else is wrong?”
“I dare say it because I’ve done my research, instead of just accepting the smoke and mirrors the Catholic Church hides behind. Whether or not huge numbers of people believe something has no bearing whatsoever on its truth or validity. In the past, millions believed that the earth was flat, and that the sun and the stars revolved around it. They were just as wrong then as Christians are today.”
“Your arrogance astounds me. Christianity is based upon the unimpeachable authority of the words of Jesus Christ himself, the son of God. Are you really denying the truth of the Word of God and the Holy Bible?”
Mandino smiled slightly and nodded. “You’ve gone right to the crux of the matter, Cardinal. There’s no such thing as the Word of God—only the word of man. Every religious tract ever written has been the work of men, usually writing something for their own personal gain or to suit their individual circumstances. Name me one single thing—anything at all—that proves God exists.”
Vertutti opened his mouth to reply, but Mandino beat him to it. “I know. You have to have faith. Well, I don’t, because I’ve studied the Christian religion, and I know that it’s an opiate designed to keep the people in line and allow the men who run the Church and the Vatican to live in luxury without actually doing a useful job of work.
“You can’t prove God exists, but I can almost prove that Jesus
“If Jesus was such a charismatic and inspiring leader, and performed the miracles and all the other things the Church claims he did, how come there’s not
Like every churchman, Vertutti was used to people doubting the Word of God—in an increasingly Godless world, that was inevitable—but Mandino seemed to harbor an almost pathological hatred of the Church and everything it stood for. And that begged the obvious question.
“If you hate and despise the Church so much, Mandino, why are you involved in this matter at all? Why should you care about the future of the Catholic religion?”
“I’ve already told you, Cardinal. We agreed to undertake this task many years ago, and my organization takes its responsibilities seriously. No matter what my personal feelings, I’ll do my best to finish the job.”
“You’re lucky to be living in this century if you harbor such heretical views.”
“I know. In the Middle Ages, no doubt, you’d have chained me to a post and burned me alive to make me see things your way.”
Vertutti took a sip of his drink. Despite his instant and total loathing for this man, he knew he was going to have to work with him to resolve the present crisis. He put the mug back on the table and looked across at Mandino.
“We must agree to differ in our views of the Church and the Vatican,” he said. “I’m much more concerned about the matter in hand. You obviously know something about the Codex. Who told you about it?”
Mandino nodded and leaned forward. “My organization has been involved in the quest to find the source document since the beginning of the last century,” he began.
“The task has always been the sole responsibility of the head—the
“He should never have done so.” Vertutti’s voice was low and angry. “Knowledge of this matter is restricted to only a few of the most trusted and reliable senior Vatican officials. What did he tell you?”
“Not a great deal,” Mandino replied, his tone now conciliatory. “He simply explained that the Church was seeking a document lost for centuries, an ancient text that must never be allowed to fall into the hands of anyone outside the Vatican.”
“That was all?” Vertutti asked.
“More or less, yes.”
Vertutti felt a surge of relief. If that genuinely was all the information his predecessor had divulged, then little real damage had been done. The Vitalian Codex was certainly the darkest of all the multitude of secrets hidden in the Apostolic Penitentiary and it seemed that for now this particular secret was safe. But the crux of the matter was whether he trusted Gregori Mandino enough to believe him.
“We’ve established you know about the Codex. But what I still don’t know is why you called me. Do you have some information? Has something happened?”
Mandino appeared to ignore the question. “All in good time, Eminence. You’re obviously not aware that a small group of my people has been constantly watching for the publication of any of the significant words and phrases contained within the Codex. This is in accordance with the written instructions given to us by your dicastery more than a hundred years ago.
“We have monitoring systems in all the obvious places, but since the arrival of the Internet, we’ve also focused on dead language translation sites, both the online programs and those supplying more professional services. With the agreement of your predecessor, we set up a small office here in Rome, ostensibly charged with the identification, recovery and study of ancient texts. Under the guise of scholarly research, we requested all Latin, Hebrew, Greek, Coptic and Aramaic translators we were able to identify to advise us whenever they received passages that contained the target words, and almost all of them agreed.
“We’ve also approached the online programs, and most of these have been easier—it’s amazing what cooperation you get if people think you work for the Pope. We’ve simply supplied the same word list for each language service, and in every case the Web site owners have agreed to notify us whenever anyone requests a translation that fits the parameters. Most of the sites have automatic systems that send us e-mails containing the word or words, and any other information they have about the person making the request. This sometimes includes their name and e-mail, but we always get their IP address.”
“Which is what?” Vertutti asked.
“It’s a set of numbers that identify a location on the Internet. We can use it to find the person’s address, or at least the address of the computer they used. Obviously if an inquiry comes from an Internet cafe there’s no easy way of identifying the person who made it.”
“Is all this relevant?”
“Yes, just bear with me. We’ve cast our net wide and we’ve specified a huge number of words to ensure that nothing gets past us. We also have programs in place that scan the e-mails we receive and identify the most likely matches. They’re known as syntax checkers. Until last week, no expression scored more than forty-two percent.
“And then two days ago we received this.” He reached into his jacket pocket and extracted a single sheet of paper. He unfolded it and handed it to Vertutti. “The syntax checkers rated it at seventy-three to seventy-six percent, almost double the highest score we’d seen previously.”
Vertutti looked down at the page in front of him. On it, typed in capital letters, were three words in Latin:
5
I
“And this came from where, exactly?” Joseph Cardinal Vertutti asked, still staring down at the paper in his hand. Below the Latin was a translation of the words into Italian.
“An online translation program on a server located in America—Arlington, Virginia, to be exact. But the
