J.E. shone his light on the door and then on the keyhole. He withdrew the key from his pocket and inserted it in the door.
Cloe saw him try to turn it clockwise as he had on the outside of the door. Nothing happened. It was as if the lock had frozen.
J.E. tried the same motion a few more times, and then he grunted and flicked his wrist to the left. Cloe saw the key twist and turn. Once again the lock clicked open, and the sound of ancient gears filled the space, grinding their mechanical song.
The earthen ceiling over them began to shake and crumble. Small fragments fell, and then larger chunks joined in what looked like the early stages of a cave-in. Dust and debris began to rain down, and Cloe found she could hardly breathe. Rocks pummeled them, and she saw the monsignor stumble.
“Against the walls!” Cloe screamed. Earth, rocks, and dust flooded into the small area. “Cover your face and head. For God’s sake, don’t look up!” In a minute or so it was over. Dust filled the air, but four small lights still shone. As the silt settled, Cloe looked around and could hardly believe her eyes. Where there had been nothing but open space in the small corridor, a stairway was now descending from the ceiling.
CHAPTER 20
“Boss, there’s something going on at the church,” said the man who had been posted by Tomás to watch the Church of St. Irenaeus.
Miguel listened to the small voice on the satellite phone. His man had been there waiting for some time. “What is it?” asked Miguel.
“Well, nothing has happened at all for a good while because the church is no longer active. I have seen a few tourists here and there, but that’s been it for days,” replied his retainer.
“Yes?” nudged Miguel.
“This morning that all changed,” said the voice. “A van pulled up, and a number of people unloaded. There were two priests—one old, one younger—a woman, and a young man.”
“Describe them,” said Miguel.
After listening carefully to the descriptions, Miguel thought the woman had to be Dr. Lejeune, expert in old languages from the United States. He had been able to learn a good deal about her online. He knew she was the key. The older priest must be the monsignor with whom she was friendly, and the young man surely was the woman’s soldier son. He had no idea who the young priest was.
“Well, that’s very interesting,” mused Miguel.
“There’s more, boss,” said the man on the phone. “Late last night, there was some activity at the church compound, but we could not see well enough in the dark to know what it was. This new group this morning was met by two men who must have already been at the church. They had a decidedly military look to them. I think there may be others, but I do not know for sure how many.”
“I see,” considered Miguel, thinking they might be the leaders of a detachment of the Swiss Guard. He had not expected the Vatican to mobilize such resources around the woman. He wondered how many soldiers they had with them.
“It would appear that these people are not tourists but have some serious business at the church,” concluded the lookout in Lyon.
“What happened after they arrived and unloaded?” asked Miguel.
“The military-looking group spoke to the newcomers, occasionally pointing to different areas of the church complex. After a bit, the conversation apparently over, the woman and her companions walked up the steps of the church and entered.”
“Obviously, the soldiers arrived last night, reconnoitered the compound, and then set up some sort of perimeter protection,” said Miguel. “What’s happened to the woman and her group?”
“They have been in the church for hours—virtually the whole day. The young man originally carried a box about the size of a large toolbox into the church and later returned to the van once for what looked like a smaller toolbox, a shovel, and a couple of pickaxes.”
“A very thorough report,” said Miguel as he prepared to ring off. “You and your employers have my thanks.”
“Boss, that’s not all,” replied the man.
“Oh, what else?” inquired Miguel.
There was silence on the phone for a few seconds before the voice came back. “This morning’s arrivals are not alone. There’s a second group here watching them.”
CHAPTER 21
The stairs had descended as if on pistons, slowly and without much noise. Cloe guessed that if she could find the mechanism that controlled the stairs, its works would look like the interior of a fine watch with a jeweled movement.
Quiet had now once again fallen over them as the stairway locked down with a clunk. The last of the dust settled, and everyone approached the stairs and looked up.
“Is it safe?” the camerlengo asked.
“This would be the perfect place for a secondary booby trap. In the IED world, the first explosion is often just the attention-getter that lures the real targets in to investigate or to help anyone injured,” J.E. responded.
The monsignor walked around the staircase, examining it closely. “I don’t see anything,” he said. “If it were a trap, it would be triggered by weight on the steps. They are all solid. I think we are good.”
With that he jumped onto the second step and began to move upward. Cloe gasped, but the monsignor was already halfway up. The steps creaked a bit but held firm, as the monsignor had predicted.
“J.E., I’ll go up next,” said Cloe. “Father Sergio should follow, and you come last, but the two of you bring our tools. Who knows what we will find.”
Cloe headed up the stairway, and the others followed. When she reached the top, she could not see the monsignor, who had apparently moved out into the now dust-filled space above. “Albert,” she called, reluctantly breaking the long silence of the hidden room.
“Here,” he replied softly, almost reverently.
Cloe shone her light toward the sound of his voice and saw that the sizable space was partitioned by a sort of walkway down the middle. He was standing a good way down the aisle in the open hall, looking forward with his back to her. That and the dust were why she hadn’t seen his light in the first place. The room was larger than she had expected, and the ceiling was higher. The floor was constructed of stone of some type, perhaps slate. It had been so finely crafted that no mortar was visible between the plates.
The monsignor was now only a few paces ahead. As she caught up to him, she could see he was studying the surroundings. There was a look of amazement on his face.
“Albert, are you all right?” Cloe asked, taking in more of the chamber. In the murky darkness, she could see what looked like the shapes of a number of bunks or beds. Perhaps this had been the sleeping quarters of some of the early religious of the church.
Just then, J.E. and the camerlengo reached them. As they set the tools down, they too began to gawk about at the mysterious space.
“I’m fine,” the monsignor said.
“What is this place?” asked Cloe, suppressing a chill.
“Cloe, I believe we are looking at the long-lost library of St. John the Apostle, author of the last of the orthodox Gospels.”
***
“Library?” questioned J.E. “Where are the books?”
“We need to carefully search this chamber,” Cloe said. “But we need to do it together so we can see.”
“That might not be necessary,” said the monsignor. “I saw wall sconces with torches or candles in them when I first walked down the main aisle. Let’s see if any of them still work.”
A few minutes later, they had circumnavigated the room and lit the candles in the sconces with matches J.E. had in his toolbox. These were not dainty little modern candles but large candles meant to facilitate reading, Cloe realized. Some of the wicks were a quarter inch or more in diameter. Although they still did not produce bright light by electric values, they were sufficient to illuminate the larger area. Cloe and the monsignor stood almost back-to-back as they rotated 360 degrees, taking in everything. The most significant features of the room were two rows of rectangular obje
cts, flanking the center corridor. While Cloe had initially thought these might be beds, she could now see that whatever they were, they were clearly not for sleeping. They appeared to be stone boxes about the size of a child’s bunk bed. She would have to look more closely at those.
“If this is the library, where are the books?” asked Cloe, echoing J.E.’s query.
“Gone. But this was indeed at one time a library,” the monsignor replied, pointing to the walls with their shelves and niches.
“Mom,” yelled J.E., “come see!”
Cloe and the monsignor moved toward J.E., who was examining the wall of the chamber that was closest to the church, if Cloe had her bearings correct.
As they approached, J.E. turned to face them. “This end of the room has been sealed,” he said. “Look—see the mud bricks, like downstairs? There was once an opening here. The way we came in was not the only access to this area. The entrance we used must have been added later.”
“The young sir is correct,” said the monsignor after studying the area. “I think if we excavated the area, we would find that this room once connected with the basement or a subbasement of the church—not the existing church, of course, but a much, much older one. Maybe as old as the second-century church that was the worship place of the original Christian community in Lyon.”
“My goodness,” said Father Sergio. “If true, this is a remarkable discovery. No, it’s an astounding discovery! Think of it … the early Christian leaders may have studied in this very room. Pothinus, the first bishop of Lyon, then Lugdunum; Blandina; and perhaps Irenaeus himself. These people are all saints now. We may be walking in their ancient footsteps.”
“The first church building was largely destroyed centuries ago. The current church is only about two hundred years old,” added the monsignor. “This room, the tunnel, and a few remnants upstairs may be the only things left from those earliest days.”
“But why is it still here?” queried J.E. “If most everything was destroyed, why was this spared?”
“Well, the books, codices, and scrolls were obviously moved or destroyed,” said Cloe. “Still, this room was somehow sealed off and secreted away for these many years. The people who sacked the church apparently never found this chamber.”
“There must have been something else here that was valuable to the early protectors of the church that could not be easily or, perhaps, quickly moved,” posited the monsignor. “Therefore, they sealed off this chamber in such a clever manner that no one has ever found it … until now.”
“What could it be?” asked the young camerlengo. “Everything was destroyed. Even the tombs of the martyrs of Lyon were ransacked and ruined.”
“All I can say is this is not supposed to exist,” mused J.E. “What else do we think we know about the destruction of the Church of St. John that may not be true?”
“J.E.’s right,” said Cloe. “Throw out whatever we have read or believed about this church and its history. It’s our job to write a new story.” She turned and headed back into the center of the chamber. “Let’s start with figuring out what was left hidden here and why.”
CHAPTER 22
Cloe walked among what she had originally thought might be beds or cots in a sleeping chamber. As she played her tiny light over the objects, she realized they were solid stone. As she looked more closely, they reminded her of something. “Oh my God!” she exclaimed, amazed. “It’s a graveyard.”
The monsignor approached her and said, “Not a graveyard per se, but we may be looking at ancient tombs, a sort of catacomb, almost two thousand years old.”
“But if so, how did the library of St. John become a mausoleum?” questioned J.E. “What the hell happened here?”
“A good question, J.E.,” said the monsignor. “Given the signature of the Sicarii—SI—on the key that got us into this place, I’m guessing they had something to do with the removal of the contents of the library. If we find Thib’s cave, there may be something there that could shed light on this place.”
“Tombs in the attic,” said Father Sergio shaking his head. “This is amazing.”
“In all likelihood, the books were removed when the library was sealed off, and this secret room was used as refuge for the remains of whoever is here,” added Cloe.
“But why,” asked the camerlengo, “would the remains be secreted like this?”
“Had to be some special people,” said J.E.
Cloe moved toward the first sarcophagus. It was smaller than she would have expected, probably because of the smaller stature of the ancients. There looked to be eight to ten of these stone coffins. She passed from one to another until she had carefully viewed all of them. The others followed her through the room.
“Well, there is little to distinguish the individual tombs. They are all completely plain and obviously very old,” Cloe said. “The only thing is the inscription on each.”
“Yes, what do you notice about them?” whispered the monsignor.
The young camerlengo straightened from looking at one of the stone dedications on a tomb near him and said, “They are written in Latin, which was the official language of the day. Each appears to bear a name and a few words, probably some brief description.”
Cloe said, “Father Sergio and Albert, walk with me and help with the names. I’m fluent in Greek, Phoenician, and ancient Aramaic, but my Latin is a little rusty.”
Studying the first inscription, Father Sergio said, “This one says ‘Ponticus.’”
On they went down the line of stone sarcophagi, Father Sergio or the monsignor struggling with the worn scratches that made up the Latin inscriptions, in turn calling out the names: Maturus, Sanctus, Attalus, Alexander. Finally, they were nearing the far end of the chamber. Only three stone tombs were left. But the clerics had gone strangely quiet, whispering between themselves, as they leaned down examining one of them.
Finally, the monsignor stood and asked Father Sergio, “Are you sure?”
“It’s what I think,” he said simply.
“What is it? What does it say?” asked J.E. Cloe leaned in, looking at the inscription.
“It says ‘Blandina,’” said the young priest, softly.
“My God,” said Cloe, her excitement rising. “These must be the martyrs of Lyon. Lyon was one of the centers of Christianity in the second century, and the martyrs were among its most famous advocates.”
“The next one reads ‘Pothinus,’ who we know was the first bishop of Lyon,” stated the monsignor. “These are the best known of the identified martyrs of Lyon. All were martyred for their refusal to renounce their faith toward the end of the second century.”
They stepped to the next tomb. Cloe bent to examine the inscription, wondering aloud, “Could Irenaeus himself actually be here instead of upstairs in the church where his tomb is supposed to be?”
“Not in this one … it says Polycarp,” the young priest replied.
J.E. piped up and said, “Monsignor, wasn’t that the guy you say bridged the gap between St. John and St. Irenaeus?”
“Yes, the young sir correctly remembers that John mentored Polycarp in Christianity, and Polycarp taught Irenaeus,” responded the cleric. “This is astounding.”
“Perhaps the last stone coffin contains Irenaeus,” speculated J.E.
Moving to the last sarcophagus, the monsignor visibly strained to read the dedication. He was silent for a moment, and then he straightened, turned to Cloe, and said, “It’s not Latin; it’s written in ancient Greek.”
CHAPTER 23
“Karik, we have been to the hospital in Jerusalem where the son of the Lejeune woman was treated for the wound to his arm,” said the functionary, facing his master. He had flown back to the retreat from Jerusalem to report in person.
“Yes, an oversize nail from a large-bore nail gun will leave a mark,” said the Karik as he observed his servant. “Too bad my predecessor was not more accurate with his shot.”
“The young man had surgery to c
orrect nerve damage and was released after a few days,” continued the man. “We could find no records that could lead us to anyone connected to the Sicarii.”
“Is that what you have come all this way to tell me—that you have failed?” questioned the Karik, his voice rising with anger.
“No, Karik,” said the man quickly, beginning to sweat under his clothes. “We then went to the private sanatorium where the woman, the lady doctor, was brought after Hakeldama. It is most likely that they saved her life since she was close to death due to loss of blood.”
“Yes, yes … I know all that,” replied the Karik harshly. “Do you have anything new for me?”
“The private hospital keeps scrupulously exacting records. We could not identify who brought her in, but after studying the financial records, we learned who paid for the treatment. Payment was made by a number of computer transfers among various accounts through several banks in different countries. The transferor thought this was untraceable, and it would have been for most people.”
“Yes, but my people are experts in this regard. I always have to know with whom I’m dealing,” said the Karik with a smirk.
“That is so, Karik. We employed your experts, and we have a name and location. As we speak, I have people searching out this individual who may have paid for the doctor’s treatment and who may be our link to the Sicarii,” the servant said. “We will find her and earnestly seek her cooperation.”
“Very good, my faithful friend,” replied the Karik, softening. “Do use the full measure of our capabilities to convince her of our requirements of her. Time is of the essence.”
“I understand fully, Karik,” said the man, beginning to calm down somewhat. “We will get from her the location of the cave, if she knows, and if not, the names of others who do know. We will find the location.”
“Excellent. Keep me closely advised. When you do find the location of the cave, I will no longer have any need for the Lejeune group now at Lyon.”
“Understood, sir,” replied the underling.
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