The God Machine (34 page)

“How the ladies of Paris rouge their cheeks so precisely,” he answered.

The marchioness smiled. It was clear she was greatly relieved. “Cut a hole of three inches in a small piece of paper,” she said. “Place it on the side of the face so that the top of the hole falls just under the eye. Then brush. When you take the paper away, all you have is…”

“Perfection,” said Franklin, and he started to laugh.

K
OSTER STOOD ON THE BALCONY, WATCHING SWALLOWS
gather insects off the Seine. It was a warm, sunny morning, almost too warm. Already, the embankments were swarming with those trying to take advantage of the breeze off the river. On the Île de la Cité, across the Pont Saint-Louis, Notre Dame glowed. From where Koster stood, he had a perfect view of the rear of the cathedral's choir, and the gardens, and the flying buttresses which jutted out of the flanks of the Gothic church like the legs of some gargantuan spider. Koster sighed. He rubbed the back of his head, where he had been struck in the caves of West Wycombe. The swelling had gone down, but the spot was still tender. So was his neck. Then he looked down at the quai d'Orléans and noticed a pair of young teenaged girls sunbathing topless on the embankment. Just a few yards away, a father and son were fishing with what looked like cane poles. And beyond them, a woman in black was performing tai chi. Everything looked so damned normal, he thought. It was just another morning in Paris.

*  *  *

It had been a short but grueling journey from London. Although he had been assigned to keep an eye on the pair, Lyman had urged Koster and Sajan to get out of Great Britain immediately. Apparently they were being watched, but there was no directive to hold them. He would give them three hours, he told them, for old times' sake, before reporting their absence. In the meantime, he would try to clean up the mess in West Wycombe.

Koster had urged Sajan to take a flight back to the States. He was fed up with being shot at, he said. He was tired of being strangled and struck on the head. For some reason, it didn't agree with him. But Sajan insisted on traveling to Paris. They were too close, too near the conclusion of their journey to abandon the quest.

“Who cares?” he'd retorted. “What good is the gospel to us if we're dead?”

But Sajan had been adamant. The only way they would ever be safe would be to complete Franklin's map and determine the location of the Gospel of Judas. That was their only insurance. Without the gospel, they were vulnerable. But with it, she said, they could, like Franklin, keep all their enemies at bay.

Koster had reluctantly agreed. He could see the price Sajan was already paying for the encounter in the caves. Ever since boarding the Eurostar at Waterloo Station in London, she'd been distant and anxious. Once he'd caught her standing alone between train cars when he had returned from buying some sandwiches. She stood there praying, her head bowed and her lips moving silently. When he had asked for whom she was praying, she had looked up in surprise and replied, “For that waitress, and the man in the caves.”

“The man in the caves! But he tried to kill us,” he'd protested.

“That's why.”

The train had arrived at the Gare du Nord in the 10th Arrondissement in the wee hours of the morning. The whole trip had taken less than three hours; it was faster than flying commercially. Sajan wanted to avoid taxis, so they had hopped on the Métro to the Île Saint-Louis. A friend had offered them the use of her two-bedroom apartment, just off the quai d'Orléans.

During the subway ride, Koster had asked Sajan if she thought it was safe. Could she trust her friend Emily? Sajan had smiled and replied, “With my life. My question to you is, can we trust Nigel Lyman?”

When they had arrived at the apartment on the Île Saint-Louis, Emily was waiting for them. She was a petite blonde in a flowery pink print and white sandals. Sajan said she had known her for years. They had belonged to the same club at one time, when Sajan had been living in Europe. Emily showed them the apartment and then handed Sajan the keys. “Be careful,” she said, kissing her twice on the cheeks. Then she had looked over at Koster and added, “You take care of my friend.” Koster had nodded, but she was gone before he could even say thank you.

They unpacked and Sajan disappeared into the bathroom to freshen up. Koster made a fresh pot of coffee as she bathed. Then he noticed the PC on the desk in the living room. Emily worked for some kind of art magazine, and she had several printers and scanners under her desk, plus a wireless network. Koster poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down. A minute later, he was online.

“You were right,” he called as he scanned a few sites.

“About what?” Sajan answered. She appeared at the
door to her bedroom. She was wearing a bathrobe and drying her hair with a towel.

“About George Boole. Apparently he influenced some scientist named Shannon.”

“Claude Shannon? He's the guy who worked out the problem of binary circuit design.”

“What problem?” asked Koster.

“How to design arrays of magnetic switches called relays so that they could switch on and off to add binary numbers. Today the repetitive task of designing computer architecture is a chore best left to computers, but back then there weren't any. Boole's equations for AND, OR and NOT operations, reduced decision-making to a set of dualities—yes and no, true or false.”

“Zero and one,” Koster said.

“Exactly.” She stopped drying her hair for a moment. “They say that after reading a treatise on Boolean logic, Shannon recognized these pairs could be represented just as well by the switching duality: on or off. In other words, the formidable task of designing binary logic circuits had already been done. A hundred years earlier. By Boole!”

“But what do Shannon and Boole have to do with Ben Franklin and the Gospel of Judas? And why was this letter being sent to Macalister? I never did trust that guy.”

“I don't know. It's a mystery.”

Koster peered over the monitor. “You'd better get dressed if we're going to make it out to Passy this morning,” he said.

As Sajan got ready, Koster had stepped out on the balcony overlooking the river and the great cathedral. A few minutes later, Sajan reappeared at his side.

“Taking in the sights of the city?” she asked him. She was drinking a large café au lait in a bowl, staring down thoughtfully at the topless sunbathers below.

“Did you know,” Koster answered, “that the Île de la
Cité is where the Parisii were first conquered by Caesar in
A.D
. 52? Or, more accurately, by his lieutenant? It was here that Count Eudes, later king of the West Franks, first defeated the Vikings. During the barbarian invasions, Lutecia's inhabitants, galvanized by the young Sainte-Geneviève, took refuge on its shores. Then, Clovis, king of the Franks, made the island his capital, and it remained a religious and judicial center throughout the Middle Ages. On this spot, sacred since Roman times, Bishop Maurice de Sully first started the cathedral's construction in 1163, and—”

“You're doing it again,” Sajan said.

“Doing what?” Koster asked her, stuffing his hands in his pockets. She was wearing a long, free-flowing blue skirt and a white cotton blouse embroidered with flowers. There were little holes stitched into the material. He could see her brown skin underneath, her gold locket and chain.

“Never mind,” she continued, staring out at the river. Then she added, “Is Notre Dame your favorite cathedral?”

“I guess if you combined the stonework of Amiens with the glasswork of Chartres, you'd be just about perfect,” he replied. “I remember seeing the Amiens cathedral for the very first time. My parents had taken me on a train trip from London to Rome, and we stopped off for the day on the way. I was only eleven or twelve at the time. Anyway, I remember being in this taxi, riding through the streets of the city and seeing the spires of the cathedral as they appeared up ahead. In those days, mathematics was a kind of religion to me. Numbers seemed to belong to a world set apart from the everyday, a secret place that I could see and play in, one that was invisible and alien to everyone else. When I got out of the cab, when I saw the cathedral looming over me—the portico and tympanum, the rose window and towers—
it was as if my secret world had come to life. It's hard to describe. I remember running over, just to touch the walls. I remember passing through the main entrance, seeing the arches unfold far above, the triforium and clerestory. It was… perfect.” He turned and looked down at her. “How about you? Which is your favorite cathedral?”

“I like the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, in New York.”

“In Harlem? Are you serious?” Koster grimaced. “But it's only half built. No transept. And it's part Romanesque and part Gothic—a weird hybrid design. The doors are okay, I guess, but the glass is pedestrian. By and large.”

“It has many faults, just like us, Joseph. It may be officially an Episcopal church,” Sajan said, “but it welcomes all faiths. There are Shinto vases and a pair of menorahs set right by the altar. And each of the apsidal chapels is dedicated to a major immigrant group, the whole strange mélange that gave birth to the city. On the outside, it may look half built. The skin may be torn. It may not be pretty, or perfect. But the heart is what matters. Not the stonework and glass.”

Koster stared down at the river, slithering and roiling to the sea. With a sigh, he replied, “We should get going to Passy, I think.”

I
T WAS AROUND THREE IN THE MORNING WHEN
F
RANKLIN FINALLY
made it back to the rue Pérignon. He had hired a carriage to take him, and told the coachman to leave him two streets away, so as not to have any witnesses. Then he walked the rest of the way to the home of the Marquis d'Artois.

He had taken great pains not to disturb his traveling companion, the good Dr. Pringle, who was sharing his apartments in Paris. Franklin chuckled. Pringle was always telling him not to imbibe to excess, with dire threats about gout and the like. If the physician awoke and found Franklin missing, he would simply assume that his friend had gone out for a walk to promote his digestion, exactly as instructed.

Franklin paused before the marquis's great house. Although there was no moon, the street was well lit, though practically deserted. He waited for a pair of revelers to pass by, and then climbed—with some effort—over the fence to the gardens. Franklin crept through the shadows of the shrubbery, and made his way to a window.
He pressed his hands to the glass, held his breath, then pushed. The window swung open.
Thank goodness
, he thought. He had unlocked it earlier, during the evening's festivities, and fortunately no one had noticed.

It took Franklin a few minutes to climb in through the window, and he was out of breath when he finally made it inside. The room was quite dark. Franklin pulled out his tinder box and a candle. He lit the wick from a spill and the salon wavered before him, barely illuminated by the solitary flame. He crept toward the wall where the painting hung. Cecilia Gallerani stared down at him with those wounded brown eyes, as if he were late for this rendezvous and she was weary of waiting. And then, out of nowhere, it occurred to him: Da Vinci had painted this portrait in 1492, the same year Columbus had discovered America. Franklin smiled. How ironic. He lifted the canvas from the wall. It was actually far lighter than it appeared. The dark background and taut pose of the subject somehow made the painting seem far more substantial.

Franklin carried the portrait over to a side table. He propped it up against a bust of some marble aristocrat, and then placed the candle behind it. A rosy hue rose up from the painting, as if Cecilia were blushing. He brought his face close, straightened his spectacles and examined the canvas intently. There. Just as he'd hoped. Behind the door in the background. He moved the flame at the rear of the canvas just a little bit closer. It was there, after all. Just like the sketch in the Gospel of Judas. The same pattern of circles and rectangles. The same imbroglio of fine lines. And yet different…