The Lucifer Gospel (13 page)

“The original white supremacist,” said Finn.

“Yes,” the old man said and nodded.

“What do you know about the man who was with him when he disappeared? DeVaux,” asked Hilts.

“Another Frenchman. Trained at the École Biblique in Jerusalem. Personal private secretary to Cardinal Maglione when he was papal nuncio in France, continued with him for the rest of his career both as Vatican secretary of state under Pacelli, Pius XII, and also interestingly enough as Grand Chancellor of the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology.”

“What exactly does that mean?” Finn asked.

“DeVaux had a great deal to do with all things archaeological within the Church. It’s well enough known that at the time certain elements within the Vatican were looking for archaeological justifications for some of the things Hitler and Mussolini were extolling. The Spear of Destiny, the Ark of the Covenant, Ultima Thule, or Atlantis. Also at the time one of the great fears was the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine. DeVaux and a lot of other Franciscans were afraid that their hegemony over the Holy Land would come to an end if that happened.” The old man smiled around the stem of his pipe. “And just to make things interesting, Maglione, DeVaux’s boss, DeVaux himself, and Pedrazzi were all members in good standing of the Knights of Malta.”

“Who were they?” asked Hilts.

“You’ve seen the
Godfather
movies presumably?”

“Sure.”

“Our friend Tony Montana at the
Municipio
in Venosa can quote from all three extensively. You remember in the last of them that Al Pacino is given a medal?”

“Vaguely.”

“It is the cross of Saint Sebastian. He is being made a Knight of Malta. It is indicative, I think.”

“Is that anything like the Templars?” Finn asked.

“They
are
the Templars. There were two parts to the order when it was formed—the Hospitallers, the ones who cared for the sick, who wore black, and the Military order, who wore white in the manner of the Cistercians.”

Hilts looked amused. “We’re talking Dan Brown,
The Da Vinci Code,
all that?”

“I’m afraid so,” Vergadora said with a nod. “But these men are no joke. In recent years the Fraterninty of Saint Sebastian has returned to its paramilitary roots. They are zealots, trained like marines and utterly obedient. They even have a Web site: www.Christiansoldiers.org. These are not people to be taken lightly.”

“They sound like they could be friends of Rolf Adamson,” said Hilts.

“They certainly share the same basic philosophy,” the old man said. “Which I’m afraid brings me to the last piece of mythology associated with your legionary, Luciferus Africanus.” Vergadora reached out and touched the medallion. “Do either of you know the story of the Seven Sleepers?”

“Never heard of it,” said Hilts. Finn just shook her head.

“It is undoubtedly the source of your own fairy tale of Rip Van Winkle. Gregory of Tours discusses it during the sixth century, but it was well known before that. There are several versions, but the basic story is this: seven youths in the time of the Roman emperor Decius refused to honor his decree and repent of their belief in the Resurrection. They were walled into a cave but did not die. Instead they slept for two centuries, woke up to show that the Resurrection of the flesh was possible, then slept again until the coming of the Messiah. They sleep there still, these seven warriors, in a cave of immense riches, somewhere beyond the Western Sea.”

“Beyond the Western Sea?” said Hilts.

“The U.S.,” said Finn.

“Exactly,” the old man said, nodding.

“A treasure cave in the United States—that really is Adamson territory.”

“And the territory of his grandfather, the Reverend Schuyler Grand.”

“You’ve heard of him?” said Hilts, obviously surprised.

“My boy,” the old man said pleasantly, “if you live long enough your hearing begins to fade but you wind up hearing everything.”

Finn laughed at the small joke but she found herself thinking of Arthur Simpson in her hotel room and his warning about Senator Jimmy “Sword of the Lord” Judd and his Tenth Crusade militia.

Hilts stood. “Coffee went right through me, I’m afraid. Can I use your facilities?”

“Certainly. There’s a powder room just down the hallway by the kitchen.” He stood. “I’ll show you.”

“I can find it,” Hilts said. “No problem.” He left the room.

Finn looked at the gleaming medallion on the table in front of her. The connections were becoming frighteningly obvious, but the final intent remained obscure. What was Rolf Adamson’s real objective in all of this and just how far was he willing to go to accomplish it?

“What would this DeVaux person gain by killing Pedrazzi?” Finn asked.

“Silence, I suspect,” murmured Vergadora. “He clearly had a different agenda.”

“I wonder if he got out of the desert alive? The plane was a wreck,” she said.

“Perhaps it was always his intention that Pedrazzi would die that day,” suggested the old man. He used another match to light his pipe again, then looked at her above the smoking bowl. “Perhaps he had some other means of transportation at hand.”

Hilts reappeared.

“Possible,” he said, sitting down again. “With the right vehicle and enough water it wouldn’t have been too difficult for a man who knew the desert.”

“DeVaux accompanied Almasy on one expedition between the wars and he was with Bagnold on several of his expeditions.”

“Bagnold?”

“The man who organized the Long Range Desert Group; those men in the scorpion cave.”

“Quite right,” said Vergadora. “DeVaux and Bagnold were at Cambridge together. That’s where they met.”

Cambridge,
thought Finn. Arthur Simpson, her father, DeVaux, and this man Bagnold, all sharing a single thread. Were there others? She had another thought, this one far removed from Cambridge University.

“Was Lucio Pedrazzi from Venosa?”

“That’s rather an interesting question,” said Vergadora. “And the answer to it is no. Pedrazzi’s family were orphans of the Papal States; his family were
burocrates
in the commune of Pontecorvo, just south of Rome, until Napoleon threw them out.”

“Then why did he come here? Was there something between your families?”

“Not that I’m aware of. He had an interest in the Jewish catacombs here, that I do know.”

“And DeVaux?”

“The inscriptions in the Benedictine abbey were his specialty. The abbey and the Church of the Trinity are built on the ruins of the catacombs.” The old man made a sour face. “Unfortunately access is controlled by the Vatican. They say one need only apply to the custodian in Rome, but it seems the custodian is never available for such applications. It has been that way ever since I can remember.”

“Could Luciferus Africanus have been buried there?”

“If he was a Jew, which is doubtful. The legate or the tribune of a Roman legion was usually of the senator class; not a group known for keeping kosher.”

“I’m getting a headache,” said Finn. “Too much information all at once.” That and her growing suspicions about Vergadora, not to mention the clouds of smoke from the old man’s pipe.

“So there would be no point in trying to get into the catacombs, is that what you’re saying?” Hilts asked, ignoring Finn’s comment.

“None whatsoever,” the old man replied. “Unless you have some facility with ancient Greek, Latin, and the occasional inscription in Aramaic. The only person who ever knew much about them was an old man named Mueller, one of my teachers. Even DeVaux only scratched the surface, at least as I understand it.”

“Then I guess we’ve reached a dead end,” said Finn. All she wanted to do now was leave, to have some time to think about everything that had happened during the last few days.

“Perhaps so,” said the old man. “It depends of course on what you were trying to accomplish in the first place.”

“We want to find out why everyone’s so interested in this Lucifer Africanus guy for one thing,” said Hilts. He stood up, walked to the table and picked up the cigarette case, snapping it shut over the medallion. “Interested enough to kill for sixtyfive years ago, and interested enough to kill for now.” He handed the old tin box to Finn, who dropped it back into the pocket of her jacket.

Vergadora peered up at them over his glasses from the other side of the table and slipped the pipe out of his mouth. He pushed a nicotine-yellow thumb into the bowl, tamping down the plug of ash and tobacco.

“My suggestion would be to abandon your quest before your curiosity kills you like it did Pedrazzi,” the white-haired gentleman cautioned. There was something in his voice now other than the soft tones of a retired professor. The warning sounded more like a threat, and a threat with something dark and menacing behind it. “Old secrets are like old wounds; they fester.”

“How long have you worked for Mossad?” asked Hilts flatly.

“You mean
Hamossad Le’mode’in U’le’tafkidim Meyuchadim,
the Institute for Coordination? Israeli Intelligence?” The old man smiled. “Believe me, young man, I really am nothing more than a retired university professor.”

“Sure you are,” said Hilts. He turned to Finn. “I think we should be going.”

Finn stood.

“Thank you for your help, signore,” she said, and held out her hand.

Vergadora climbed to his feet. He shook her hand, his grip strong and firm. “You are traveling in dangerous seas,” he said. “It would be a shame if you were hurt in a battle that was not yours to fight.”

“Maybe you’re right,” she replied. He seemed sincere enough, but again there was an undertone of threat in the old man’s voice.

He walked them to the door and stood at the entrance as they climbed back into their rental car, and watched them as they drove away down the long drive that ran between the poplars and through the ancient grove of olive trees. Then he turned and went back into the villa.

“So what do you make of all of that?” Hilts asked as they drove away.

“I’m not sure,” said Finn, gearing down as she made the turn off Vergadora’s drive, then up again as the car reached the main road. “I wasn’t kidding, all that talk gave me a headache.”

“A lot of it was just that, talk,” grunted Hilts. He tapped his fingers on the dashboard angrily. “The old man’s very good at his job, I’ll give him that.”

“What job?”

“Leading us down the garden path. All that crap about Pedrazzi. He knows something about what Adamson’s up to in the here and now. Forget about the past.”

“What was that about him working for Israeli Intelligence? That’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it—just because he’s Jewish?”

“It’s not because he’s Jewish, it’s about what he knows—how well and how much. Not to mention the fact that there aren’t too many people around who know the original name of the Mossad. Nobody’s called it the Institute for Coordination since the fifties. A retired history professor who knows that much about the current state of the intelligence community is more than just a retired history professor. I’m pretty sure he’s at least a
sayan,
if not something else.”

“What’s that?”

“The
sayanim
are Israeli ‘sleepers,’ all over the world, in all walks of life, ready to help an operation at a moment’s notice. He fits the profile perfectly.” Hilts shook his head. “He even has his pal Al Pacino at City Hall as an early-warning system.”

“Why would he warn us off that way?” Finn asked. “He hasn’t been hanging around in his villa for all these years waiting for us.”

“Not us,” said Hilts. “Anybody who came along showing interest in Pedrazzi or the rest of the story.”

“But why?” Finn insisted. “It’s ancient history. When you get right down to it, does anybody really care about some man who commanded a legion two thousand years ago?”

“The operative date is two thousand years ago. Most of the Western world, the U.S. in particular, sets its watch by that particular clock. The Catholic Church is based on it.”

“Sure,” Finn said and laughed, easing her foot off the gas as they came up behind an ancient tractor pulling a wagonload of manure. “An old Jewish rabbi working for the Vatican.”

“Add it up,” said Hilts. “They tried to kill us in Cairo. A monk from Jerusalem starts sniffing around. Adamson and his pals are up to something in the desert that’s not quite kosher, as Vergadora would put it. We wind up crossing paths with somebody who’s playing possum in a place that’s historically and recently connected to whatever’s going on. A man who’s just waiting for someone to come along and say the magic words, Luciferus Africanus. A man with his own secrets.”

“Such as?”

“Remember when I got up to use the bathroom back at the villa?”

“Yes.”

“I wasn’t using the bathroom, I was snooping.”

“And?”

“Why does an old rabbi who clearly doesn’t like our murderous friend from the past, Brother DeVaux, have the number of another Franciscan monk in his personal telephone book?”

“Was there an address?” Finn asked. They had reached the traffic circle for the Autostrada. They could go either west toward Rome or north to Milan.

“Yeah, there was an address.”

“Where?”

“Lausanne, Switzerland. The Monastery of St. François. Where Vergadora spent the war with Signore Olivetti, remember?”

Finn turned north.

Finn Ryan, still fully dressed, lay on the bed in her hotel room and listened to the sounds of the sleeping city. She and Hilts had driven straight through from Venosa, stopping only once for a quick bite to eat at a roadside restaurant. The made the journey in a little less than eight hours. They spent another hour and a half getting thoroughly lost in the two-thousand-year-old metropolis, finally dumping the rental car in what seemed to be Milan’s last available parking spot, then walked until they found a relatively inexpensive hotel willing to rent them rooms without reservations and almost no luggage.

The rooms turned out to be tiny, perched under the eaves on the top floor with a view out over the dusty street instead of the hotel courtyard, with its newly renovated open-air garden and restaurant. Both of them were too tired for food, so they’d simply said good night and gone to their separate rooms. But sleep had not come. She was worried, and even the warm night air seemed charged with apprehension. She longed for a bath, but to strip and slip into the welcoming heat would somehow make her too vulnerable. Visions from old Alfred Hitchcock movies swarmed through her mind like buzzing bees.