The Templar Salvation (2010) (39 page)

He led them into the crypt. It was a long, low-ceilinged room. In its flat floor, Tess noticed two parallel rows of rectangles of hard-packed earth, one row lining each side of the room. They were hard to discern, but they were there, cut into the tufa from which the entire church had been carved. Each patch seemed just big enough to accommodate a human body, and the walls behind them bore inscriptions that were more or less regularly spaced. On closer look, Tess realized they were names.

“They’re church elders, and donors,” Abdulkerim explained. “These church were expensive to carve and decorate. The paint alone cost a small fortune back then. By paying for this church, these people bought themselves a ticket to Heaven. And a burial spot in here.”

Tess surveyed the names and stopped at one of the graves. She recognized the Greek letters. “This is it,” she said.

Zahed and Abdulkerim joined her.

“‘The one true hand,’” she read.

She looked over at the Iranian, guessing what was in store. Sure enough, he was already unloading the pick-shovel combo, which he handed to her.

“Let’s get to work.”

Chapter 40

T
his one was harder to dig out, but at least it was just one grave. The narrow space felt suffocating, what with the weakening light of the flashlight and the dust that the digging was kicking up. It made Tess work even harder. She just wanted to be out of there as quickly as possible.

The body they found was wrapped in two-foot-wide strips of white linen, like a mummy, and covered with seeds that had long since petrified. Tess and Abdulkerim got down close and carefully peeled back the stiff fabric. The bones within were loose and jumbled up, but one thing soon became clear. There were only enough of them for one hand.

There was something else in there, too.

A prosthetic hand, made out of copper. It was corroded and oxidized, tarnished to a dark brown patina with greenish-blue patches all over it. It was startlingly elaborate and well crafted for something that was seven hundred years old.

She held it up to the Iranian. “It’s Conrad,” she said, then gave him a “what now?” look.

He mulled it over for a beat, then said, “If he had it with him, it’s got to be around here somewhere. Maybe even buried with him.” He thought about it for a further moment, then said, “Take him out. Let’s see if there’s anything else down there.”

Tess and the Byzantinist lifted the linen cocoon out and set it down in the middle aisle. Tess then stepped back into the shallow pit, got down on her knees, and started digging some more. After only a few strokes, the pick struck something hard, sending a recoil of adrenaline through her. With renewed focus, she started clearing the earth around the hard object with her hands.

“Give me some more light,” she told Abdulkerim.

He shone the flashlight at her hands as she scraped the earth back to expose what appeared to be a dark round shape. She cleared more soil from around it to reveal a plain earthenware cooking pot, low and wide, about a foot and a half in diameter and under a foot tall. Her breath caught. She studied it for a beat, then lifted it out carefully and settled it on the flat part of the grave.

She examined it closely. It was plain and unremarkable, lacking any external decoration, and it had some kind of a bowl for a lid that was sealed into place with bitumen.

Abdulkerim’s eyes bounced around from the pot to Tess and to the Iranian and back. “What do you think is in it?”

“Only one way to find out,” Zahed said.

He snatched the pick from Tess and, before she could stop him, slammed it into the top of the pot. The plate that was sealing it shattered. Zahed then pried off the pieces that were still hanging in place.

He took the flashlight from the Byzantinist and aimed it inside the pot, then turned to Tess, making an inviting gesture with his hand.

“Be my guest,” he told her. “After all your hard work, you deserve it.”

She looked at him askance, then leaned in for a look. The sight made her heart bolt. She reached in and pulled out the pot’s contents: two codices—small, ancient leather-bound books, each roughly the size of a hardcover novel.

She held them with quivering fingers, carefully, as if they were made of the most fragile porcelain, marveling at them. For a blissful instant, all the horrors she’d been through, the Iranian monster standing inches from her—it all faded away. Then she set one down in her lap and examined the other.

“What are they?” Abdulkerim said, his tone a whisper.

Tess gently unfurled the thin, leather strap that was rolled around the first codex. The back cover extended into a triangular flap that folded over the front one. She peeled that back, then, slowly, opened the codex.

The golden-brown papyrus leaves inside were clearly brittle, their edges crumbled in places. She didn’t dare turn a single page, so as not to damage the manuscript, but the lettering on the first page was enough to announce what she was looking at.

“Alexandrian text-type letters,” she said. “It’s written in Greek.”

“What does it say?” the Iranian asked.

Tess read it, then looked up at Abdulkerim and showed it to him. Even in the faint light in the cavern, the astonishment on her face was evident.

The Byzantinist was clearly familiar with Greek writing, his area of expertise. “The Gospel of Perfection.” He looked at Tess. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“Me neither. But it’s in Greek.
Koine Greek
,” Tess said to the Byzantinist, emphasizing the point.

The Byzantinist’s expression morphed to mimic Tess’s surprise as her point sank in—something the Iranian caught too.

“What about it being in Greek? Why’s that such a surprise?” he asked.

“Koine Greek was the lingua franca—the working language—of the Near East during Roman times. It’s what any gospels that would have been written around the time of Jesus’s life would have been written in. But we don’t have any original copies of gospels from back then. The oldest Bibles we have are in Greek, but they’re from the fourth or fifth centuries. The older texts we have aren’t from the Bible. They’re non-canonical, gnostic gospels, like the Gospel of Thomas that was found in Egypt in 1945—and they’re Coptic translations of earlier Greek texts.” She held up the codex. “This isn’t Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. But it’s in Koine Greek, which means it’s an original. Not a translation. It might be the oldest full gospel ever found.”

The Byzantinist looked baffled. “Why is it here? How did you know about this?”

“What about the other one?” the Iranian interjected, ignoring Abdulkerim.

Tess set the first codex down and picked up the second book. Again, taking great care, she opened it. Although the two codices were very similar outwardly, this one was different in that it consisted of bound parchment leaves, not papyrus, indicating that it was likely to be more recent than the first. The lettering was the same, though. It was also written in Koine Greek.

“The Gospel of the Hebrews,” she read. This was a title she recognized. She looked up from it. “This is one of the ‘lost’ gospels. Some of the founders of the Church talked about it in their writings, but it’s never been found.” Her fingers brushed the open leaf with profound reverence. “Until now.”

Her heart pounding, she was leafing through its first few pages slowly, her eyes roaming the tiny letters, trying to grasp what they said, when she saw something else. A folded sheet of parchment, inserted between the pages of the book.

She pulled it out and realized it wasn’t just one sheet, but four, all folded onto one another. It had to be an official document of some kind, as it was sealed with a dark reddish-brown wax seal that had left its impression on the pages of the codex it had been sitting against. She pulled Abdulkerim’s light closer for a better look and bent a corner of the top sheet back slightly, but she couldn’t see much beyond some of the letters on it. They were different from those in the codices.

“I think it’s Latin, but I can’t see what’s inside without breaking the seal,” Tess told Zahed.

“So break it,” he replied.

Tess exhaled with frustration. It was pointless to argue with the man. She just fumed in silence and slid her fingers under the upper fold of the sheet. As gently as she could, she popped the seal off the parchment, but still couldn’t help cracking it in two. The seal had fulfilled its purpose, even hundreds of years after it had been put in place.

Tess folded the sheets open slightly, making sure she didn’t crack them.

The writing on them was indeed different. The words they held were written in Roman literary cursive script—that is, in Latin, not Greek.

“What is it?” Abdulkerim asked.

“It looks like a letter.” She squinted as she studied it. “My Latin’s not great.” She held it up to him. “Can you read it?”

The Byzantinist shook his head. “Greek, no problem. Latin, not my speciality.”

She perused the text, then her gaze rushed to the bottom of the last sheet.

“’
Osius ex Hispanis, Egatus Imperatoris et Confessarius Beato Constantino Augusto Caesari
,’” she read out. She paused, her neurons ablaze with the significance of what she could be holding in her hand, which was trembling. Lost in her own world for a brief moment, she mouthed, in a low voice, “Hosius of Spain, imperial commissioner and confessor to the Emperor Constantine.”

Zahed’s eyebrows rose in a rare display of piqued curiosity.

“Hosius,” Abdulkerim observed. “The bishop of Cordoba. One of the Church’s founding fathers.”

“The man who presided over the Council of Nicaea,” Tess added. Something occurred to her as she said it. “Nicaea’s near here, isn’t it?” she asked.

The Byzantinist nodded, frowning with confusion as he processed the information. “It’s close to Istanbul, but yes, I suppose it’s not that far from here. It’s called Iznik nowadays.”

Tess could see that he was bursting to ask her a hundred questions and was just barely managing to hold himself back. Nicaea was an iconic word as far as the early days of Christianity were concerned. There were a lot of unanswered questions as to what had really happened at that historic gathering back in A.D. 325, when Constantine the Great had summoned the senior bishops from all of Christendom and forced them to settle their disputes and agree on what Christians were supposed to believe in.

Tess looked over at Zahed. “We need to get this translated,” she told him.

The Iranian was also lost in his thoughts. “Later,” he replied. “Pass them over to me.”

Tess took one last look at the document, hesitated, then folded it and placed it back inside the codex as she had found it. She handed both books back to him, and he slipped them into his rucksack.

“Let’s see if there’s anything else buried with him,” he said as he handed the pick back to her.

Tess’s mind stumbled. The man didn’t seem at all fired up by what they had just unearthed. She thought of questioning it, but decided against it. Instead, she just got back on her knees and dug and prodded around the rest of the grave.

There wasn’t anything else buried there.

She looked across at the Iranian.

He seemed dissatisfied. “We’re missing something.”

Tess couldn’t hold back anymore, and her exasperation spilled over. “What are we missing?” She flared up angrily. “This is it. We’ve done everything we can. I mean, hell, we found his grave. We found these texts, and whatever’s in them, that’s already one hell of a find. These gospels … they’re unique. And this man, Hosius … he was Constantine’s head priest. He was there when Constantine decided to become a Christian. He was at Nicaea, for God’s sake, he was there when all the arguments about what Jesus really did and what he really was were thrashed out and when Christianity became what we know it as today. It’s where they came up with the Nicene Creed that churchgoers still recite every Sunday. His letter can tell us a hell of a lot about how that really happened. What more do you want? What the hell are we doing here anyway? What more do you think you’re going to find?”

The Iranian smiled. “The devil’s handiwork, of course. All of it.”

“There is no devil’s handiwork. They’re old gospels.” Just as she said it, she grimaced. An understanding came bursting out of the dust and the darkness.

“You don’t get it, do you?” he said, mocking her. “These writings and whatever else the Templars were transporting terrified those monks so much that they were willing to murder to keep them hidden. Then they killed themselves when they lost control of them. They’re not just gospels. To them, they
are
the devil’s handiwork. They refer to them as something that could devastate their world, their
Christian
world.” He paused, then added, pointedly, “Your world.”

“And that’s why you want them?”

His smile broadened. “Of course. Your world is already crumbling. And my guess is, this could really help you along your downward spiral. Coming on the back of all these pedophile scandals the Vatican has been so helpful in suppressing? The timing couldn’t be better.”