The Second Messiah

“What were you doing before you headed up the slope to watch the sunrise?”

Jack said, “Wandering round the camp, finishing a beer, smiling to myself, disbelieving my luck.”

Lela, deep in thought, looked down at the gaping hole in the soil. “I’ve talked with your friends, Buddy and Yasmin. They both back up your story. But Mosberg tells me he’s walked from the professor’s tent to the top of the slope. He didn’t rush and it took him just under ten minutes.”

“So?”

“What time did you start to climb the hill?”

“Five-forty-five, I guess.”

“That means you got to the top about five before six. Yasmin says she joined you at six. I estimate there could be at least a fifteen-minute time gap when your whereabouts can’t be accounted for. Mosberg has suggested that those fifteen minutes could have been used to kill Professor Green, and he has a point. You were the last person we know of who saw the professor alive.”

Jack’s jaw tightened. “I hear what you’re saying, Lela. But I’m innocent. I’m telling you the truth.”

Lela took one last look around the cave. “I’ve seen enough for now, Jack.”

He led the way out into sunlight.

Lela glanced toward the tents and cabins, then turned to face Jack. “I wanted us to get away from Sergeant Mosberg and the others so that we could talk alone.”

“Why?”

Lela regarded him intently. “Because we’re old friends, Jack, and I wanted you to be aware that we haven’t interviewed everyone yet, so we may still turn up a decent lead as to who killed the professor and for what motive. We’ll also put out a bulletin to Interpol for police agencies everywhere to be alert to anyone trying to sell ancient documents or scrolls. We’ll try to cover all the bases. That’s the good news.”

“And the bad?”

“Right now Sergeant Mosberg thinks you’re his strongest suspect.”

16

ROME

Behind the Vatican Library, near an open courtyard known as Cortile del Belvedere, is a sturdy granite building surrounded by high walls. It has no nameplate at its entrance. Those select few who have business there know it as L’Archivio Segreto Vaticano, the Secret Archives of the Vatican, whose vaults contain a vast collection of historical treasures and countless secrets of the Catholic Church.

It was just after two that afternoon when the cardinal stepped through the solid oak doors. Moving past the discreetly armed security guards, he entered a marble hallway. He ignored the custodian seated at a large oak table, bare except for the book that every visitor was supposed to sign before proceeding beyond this point. This visitor hadn’t signed the book in all the years since he had become a cardinal. Nobody had ever dared challenge him.

He had first come here as a young American priest, when he worked at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and had to study the records of ancient judgments stored in the archives. In those days the furniture was medieval but now it was modern, complete with photocopiers and computer terminals, Coca-Cola dispensing machines and coffeemakers that gurgled all day.

He kept his head down, but he was conscious that the sudden entrance of a cardinal of the Curia made those who worked in the building nervous. Many were quite young and casually dressed, clerical scholars and custodians who presided over the most clandestine archives in the world. Here, in this same room, with its great clock and carved throne, was where the prefect of archives sat watching his assistants silently fetch and carry records for the few privileged scholars who were granted permission to inspect them, and only within the confines of this room.

Even then, there were limits to what they could see. Certain ultra-sensitive files required the special consent of the pope before they could be opened. The cardinal ignored the passing stares and moved toward the rear of the building.

The Vatican Archives was a storehouse of astonishing secrets.

Thirty miles of shelves were filled with books, parchment, and paper manuscripts of the greatest historical importance. Here were slips of paper detailing long-forgotten sins, broken promises, indulgences, and special exemptions from ecclesiastical law. Here were records from conclaves since the fifteenth century. And more, much more: documents from the Inquisition, thirteenth-century intelligence about the Mongols, church reports about Joan of Arc—correspondence that helped have her burned as a witch—and a vast repository of papers that ran from Napoleon to Hitler, from Luther to Calvin.

There were registers that contained nightmarish drawings of the world’s end, of devils and vampires and women with the bodies of nymphs and the faces of beasts, dating from the days of Innocent III. Files to do with UFOs, religious sightings and revelations, demonic possessions and exorcisms. Steel boxes containing extraordinary church secrets and prophecies.