She wiped her eyes. “Come on Evan, it can’t be that easy.”
“That’s what I thought, too. But I think you’ll agree that when it comes to genetics, I know what I’m talking about. I’m absolutely certain about this.”
She studied the vial again, this time more seriously. “But why me? There are so many other people more deserving...more sick.”
“I’m sure there are. And if we’re right, maybe we can think about how to help them. But in order to do that, I need to make sure you’ll be around to help make that happen.”
“So...if I agree to this, you mean I just shoot this stuff into my body?”
“Yes.”
“That DNA was from a male. Will it turn me into a man?”
They both laughed and it lifted some of the heaviness from the room.
“I’ve already stripped out the gender-specific stuff,” he assured her. “What you have here is a customized serum that will primarily target your bones, blood cells, and so on. With a perfect genome, we can mix this stuff all sorts of ways.”
“It’s incredible,” she muttered.
He looked at the vial, then back at her.
Time seemed suspended as she contemplated the dismal alternative of staying the course with chemotherapy. No doubt, even if she were to control this incurable thing raging in her bones, those treatments would eliminate any hope of having children. Best-case scenario, she might live another ten or fifteen years. She’d never even make it to fifty. “Well?”
She smiled, knowing that she could trust him. She recalled the angel of death in St. Peter’s, flipping the hourglass. “Okay.”
“Great.” He was grinning ear to ear. “But just answer me one question. Who on earth was this guy?”
Father Donovan had fed her the story that the skeleton was a hoax concocted by Joseph of Arimathea, intended to debunk Jesus as the promised Messiah. Now that theory seemed utterly ridiculous. Only a divine being could exhibit such a remarkable genetic profile.
She walked over to the window and silently looked out over the lights of the airport. Then she turned to Aldrich, her eyes sad, and she smiled.
69
******
Vatican City
St. Peter’s Basilica had closed promptly at seven p.m. and the vast, dimmed interior was empty, except for one figure toting a black bag, striding hastily along the northern transept.
Father Donovan moved to the front of the towering Baldacchino where a marble balustrade circled around a sunken grotto directly below the papal altar. Pausing to bless himself, he checked to make sure no one was watching, then opened the side gate and slipped through. He pulled the gate closed and crept down a semicircular staircase.
One level beneath the basilica’s main floor, an elaborate inlaid marble shrine glowed in the warm light of ninety-nine ornate oil lamps, burning perpetually in tribute to the most holy ground in all of Vatican City—the Sepulcrum Sancti Petri Apostoli.
St. Peter’s tomb.
Peter was the man who, according to Joseph of Arimathea, he had designated to handle two critical, final tasks to serve the Messiah: transferring the ten ossuaries from Rome to a new crypt beneath Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and delivering his precious manuscript—the foundation for the Christian gospels—to the Jewish zealots who had helped execute Jesus’s ambitious plan to restore the temple.
Donovan recalled Joseph’s final passage in the Ephemeris Conlusio:
On this night, the emperor Nero has made a banquet in his palace. I am to be his guest, and so too, my wife and children have been asked to sit with him. With much sadness, I have agreed, though I know his intent, for his heart is filled with evil. Those who celebrate the teachings of Jesus have refused to pay tribute to him. For this, many he has burned alive.
For my loyal service to Rome, Nero has made known to me that my death and the deaths of my beloved family will be humane. The food we eat tonight will be poisoned.
Rome is vast and there is no place he will not find us. The only protection we have comes from God. Our fate is his will.
It has been agreed that our bodies will be given to my brother, Simon Peter, to be buried in my crypt beside Jesus. Once all have been freed from flesh, Peter will journey back to Jerusalem. Beneath the great temple will Jesus be interred, for this I promised to him before his execution. There too will we share in his glory on the Day of Atonement. Then will the temple be cleansed. Then shall God return to its holy Tabernacle.
These writings I have asked Peter to deliver to our brothers, the Essenes. They will protect this testament to God and his son. They will tell all men that the Day of Judgment will soon be at hand.
Once Peter had fulfilled his duties to the brotherhood, he had returned to Rome to continue preaching Jesus’s teachings. Shortly thereafter, he was imprisoned by Nero and sentenced to death by being crucified upside down.
Keep moving , Donovan silently urged himself.
Directly beneath the Baldacchino’s base, between red marble columns, was a small glass-enclosed niche containing a golden mosaic depicting a haloed Christ. In front of the mosaic was a tiny golden casket—an ossuary.
Inside this ossuary were the bones of St. Peter himself, extracted from a tomb deeper beneath the Baldacchino that was accidentally discovered during excavations in 1950. The skeleton had been found in a communal grave, but caught the eye of archaeologists overseeing the digs because it belonged to an older man whose feet were missing—as would be expected of someone who had been cut down from an inverted crucifix. Carbon dating had been subsequently performed. The male specimen had lived during the first century.
From his pocket, Donovan produced the gold key he had removed from a safe in the Vatican’s Secret Archive. He set down the bag, then smoothly inserted the key into a lock on the niche’s frame. The hinges let out a low
