The Book of Q (55 page)

It was all too clear that Jesus had sensed His own power, and that He had done everything He could to warn against its misappropriations and
abuses. His was a brotherhood of believers, not a church of followers. The true authority came from God alone. The individual’s personal and creative experiences of that faith—not the dictates of an institution—were the catalysts of that power:

Here it was, thought Pearse. Faith at its most personal, and thus most powerful. There was no denying the clear condemnation of his own calling.
“Waterless canals.”
And yet, Q also offered the most perfect affirmation of his own brand of faith, one freed of a structure built around detached hierarchy.

The simplicity of Jesus’ sayings had been lost, funneled through Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, Peter, and Paul to assure the connection with a Messianic past—the prophecies of Isaiah—and to establish the foundations for an infallible church. But had that been the message?

Not according to Q. Jesus as wisdom teacher, yes. Jesus as apocalyptic Savior, no.

Nothing was more clear on that point than the Beloved Disciple’s retelling of his visit to Jesus’ tomb three days after His death:

In a single phrase, Menippus had brought down two thousand years of church authority:
“But this will not be so,” He had told me, “though some will come to say otherwise.”
Not from the distance of the canonical or Gnostic gospels, but from one who had spent his life with Jesus, and had been there at the bitter end, and beyond. No need to interpret. No need to explain. No need for a Luther to divine his priesthood of all believers from an ambiguous text. The message here was clear as day. And while Luther’s ninety-five theses had been more than enough to shake the very core of Christendom, here was the Word of Christ, unambiguous and unassailable. Imagine how much more shattering it could be.

Angeli’s words raced back to him: w
ithout Peter standing there saying,
“I was the first, I can vouch for His return …” without the doctrine of bodily resurrection, there’s no way to validate the apostolic succession of bishops. No way to lay claim to the papacy.

Pull out the pin, and the entire structure falls.

At first, it seemed strange to Pearse that so monumental a shift could require so little ink. More so that Matthew and Luke had so easily glossed over it. But the more he read, the more it made perfect sense. Q wasn’t the story of Jesus the Destined. That was for the Gospels. It was the story of a life built on faith and wandering, of a dream of revolution, inspired by ideas such as love and tolerance and spiritual equality. More than that, it wasn’t advancing an image of Christ that no one had ever seen before—violent or self-serving, or whatever other character flaws iconoclasts had come up with over the centuries to debunk the mythology. It was Jesus at His most essential. The Messiah was still there, but it was a messianic message drawn from the pages of Cynicism, Indian mysticism, and Essene wisdom. Resurrections and the like only distracted from that message. The meaning was in the life, not in the death.

And for Pearse, it made Jesus all the more powerful, all the more holy. Pure divinity.

What Q made abundantly clear was that the revolution
was
the faith—the spirit, not the body—the rest of the structure merely trappings, more for the exploitation of men than for their salvation, something that Pearse himself had always believed. The shift from Q to the Gospels was a shift away from the individual to an overarching and alienating edifice. No wonder the Manichaeans had seen it as the answer to their problem. Here was something to undermine that structure.

And by the fifth century, the church
was
the faith. Topple one, topple the other. It had been no different for Ribadeneyra in the sixteenth. For over a thousand years, Q had truly held that power.

The question was, Could it pose that kind of threat today? Except for the passages on Resurrection, Q put forward an image of Jesus and faith that the modern church would have been only too happy to embrace. Q’s commitment to individual rights and responsibility, and its view of women and their role in the church—anathema to a fifth- or sixteenth-century mind—were perfectly designed to resolve any number of contentious debates now ripping Catholicism apart. And all through the Word of Christ. Where was the hyperasceticism the Manichaeans had promised? Where was the gnosis they said they would be called upon to reveal? Everything in Q was plain as day. The irony, Pearse realized,
was that their beloved tract, the scroll destined to bring about the ruin of the church, looked like it might actually be the device to save the church from itself.

That is, of course, if one could discount the passages on the Resurrection. Those were equally unambiguous. And given recent events, Pearse wasn’t sure if the church could survive that kind of assault, real or not.

More than that, he understood why the Manichaeans had gone to such lengths to get their hands on it, especially now. Whatever madness they were planning to unleash would mean nothing without a way to justify the emergence of their unified church, something to show that the old one had been corrupted from the very start. The only response to a world gone mad? Remake the church. Embrace unity through a new notion of faith. No doubt most of the scroll would remain “hidden” or “lost.” Keep only what was necessary. Use Jesus to secure Mani. The Resurrection sections would suffice.

How like the Manichaeans to distort the message in the name of gnosis.

The door to the car suddenly opened, the sound prompting Pearse up from the parchment for the first time in hours. He glanced back, to see another passport controller making his way down the aisle. The Italian border. He looked out the window, the sun already creeping out from behind a group of hills in the distance. He checked his watch: 6:15. He’d been so wrapped up in Q, he’d missed the sunrise entirely. He suddenly felt very thirsty.

“How soon to Trieste?” he asked as the man took his papers.

“About forty minutes.” The man pulled what looked to be a tiny hole punch from a holster on his belt, ready to stamp Pearse’s passport, then stopped. “The Vatican?”

Pearse wasn’t sure how to respond.

“They just announced the body count, Father. Eight cardinals survived.” He crossed himself. “Those people are animals.” A quick squeeze of the imprint.

Pearse crossed himself, as well. “You have to learn to forgive,” he said.

“I suppose, Father.” He handed Pearse the papers and began to move on. “I suppose.”

Trieste came as the man had promised, the station alive with early-morning travelers. Now, back in Italy, Pearse knew he could take the
chance on a plane—no computer network checking his passport, no security on alert. Even if the Manichaeans did manage to get hold of a passenger manifest, he’d be in Rome an hour after takeoff, too short a period of time for them to do much about it.

Just in case, though, he’d decided to call in the cavalry. The puzzle was solved. It was time for someone else to put it to use and end this.

Stopping at the nearest news kiosk, he picked up a paper and looked for the private message, the phone number from his “friends in Rome … day or night.” The fact that Salko had cut them off was reason enough to make the call.

He scanned the page. It was filled with stories on the travesties spreading like wildfire throughout Europe, an article on the Vatican Bank and the Syrian infiltration. What an appropriate word, he thought.

But no box.

He flipped through several other papers, the news seller becoming more and more irritated.

“Either buy one or move off,” he said finally.

“Are there any from yesterday?” asked Pearse.

“Yesterday? Why would anyone want—”

“Do you have any papers from yesterday?” he insisted.

The man’s irritation mounted. “I have today’s papers. You want something else, try outside the station. Maybe Buchi’s, two blocks down.”

Five minutes later, Pearse stood inside the small tobacconist’s, walls lined with papers from around the world. The most recent copy of
Helsingin Sanomat
out of Finland was two days old. He pulled it from the rack and immediately located the box in the lower right-hand corner of the page.

Pearse scribbled the number on his palm, bought a phone card, and headed out into the street. Within half a minute, he was inside a booth dialing.

A recorded voice came on the line: “We’re sorry. The number you have reached is no longer in service. Please check the listing and try again …. We’re sorry….” 

He slowly replaced the receiver.

Why would they have disconnected the line? The answer came to him as he stood there staring at the phone. His window of opportunity had been slim at best, too great a chance that the Manichaeans could trace the number, find whoever had been on the other end, and eliminate them. Once Salko had cut the line, the window had closed.

Flying back wasn’t sounding all that clever now. Without his “friends in Rome,” what exactly was he planning to do once there? Walk up to the Vatican and tell them that the Pope was a Manichaean, but not to worry—the scroll would solve everything? Or better yet, just hand the “Hodoporia” to von Neurath and explain to him that it might not be all that he’d hoped it would be? Nice try, but better luck next time. Now please tell everyone that Islam isn’t our enemy so we can all go home.

For some reason, Pearse started to laugh. It was perfect. A Manichaean dream come true. Everything flipped on its head. Now that he had the “Hodoporia,” he was powerless to use it. It only made him more vulnerable. Flight manifests notwithstanding, the Brotherhood would find him soon enough—here, or in Rome. And if he had the scroll with him, everything and everyone would become expendable. Which left him only one choice: confront them head-on. He picked up the phone and dialed Angeli’s number.

It was the same message as before.

“It’s Ian Pearse. I have the ‘Hodoporia.’” He waited. “Hello…. Hello….”

After fifteen seconds of silence, he placed the receiver back in its cradle. Again he stared at the phone. Then, slowly, he let his head fall back against the glass.

They wouldn’t have….

He suddenly stood upright.
Of course
. As much as he didn’t want to involve anyone else in this, he really didn’t have any other options. He picked up the phone and began to dial.

He just had to hope Blaney was back in Rome.

“Eight minutes, Mr. Harris.”

A quick nod as he sipped at a glass of ice water, Wembley Stadium packed to the gills beyond the window of the luxury box. Harris waited for the man to leave, then turned and stared out at the crowd. The contessa, seated, kept her gaze on him.

“Your new army,” she finally said.

The hint of a grin. “I don’t think it’s completely mine.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Still, that doesn’t seem to be a concern of yours, does it?”