Silver

by Steven Savile

  he could hear in the entire stairwell. He moved up to the landing, keeping his

  center of gravity low, his stride powerful as he climbed the stairs three at a time.

  The stairwell came out in the middle of the landing. There were two doors to the

  right, two to the left. The two farthest doors opened into apartments that looked

  out over the back of the street, the two middle doors onto the front. The doors

  themselves were old-fashioned heavy wood, but the locks were nothing special.

  He could have bumped it in thirty seconds flat. Instead he put a shot right into

  the middle of metal ring and kicked it down. The wood around the latch

  splintered under the force of the blow and the door flung inwards, slamming off

  the wall.

  He felt the timing ticking away from him.

  Konstantin stepped into the apartment, gun aimed straight ahead. The place had that musty unlived-in smell that only comes with months if

  not years of emptiness. The carpets had been ripped up, leaving bare wooden

  floorboards and, in places, patches of old newspaper that had obviously been

  used to line the floor before the carpets had been laid. They were yellow with

  age and brittle beneath his feet as he walked over them.

  He checked left and right, clearing each room as he went.

  The kitchen and bathroom were empty. He tore back the shower curtain.

  There was no one there. The shooter hadn't passed him on the stairs and he

  hadn't been able to call the elevator, so he had to be in the room. He stepped

  into the lounge, the room overlooking the corner of the Florinsmarkt. It took him a split second to process what he saw.

  There was a sniper rifle on a tripod by the window, a cell phone on the

  windowsill, a little, plastic toy robot dog that yapped while he stared at it, the

  sudden burst of noise startling him. He stepped back instinctively toward the nearest wall, cutting off the number of angles he could be attacked from. On the windowsill the sudden motion of the dog caused the curtain to twitch. It barked

  twice while he was watching, then fell quiet. There was nothing else in the room. Heart hammering, he checked the two bedrooms.

  Both of them were empty. There was no furure and no cupboards for the

  shooter to hide in.

  The apartment was empty, but it didn't look like it had been abandoned in

  a hurry, unless the shooter had incredible discipline. There was no trash, no

  drink cans, no sleeping bag, nothing to suggest anyone had been in the place

  since the sniper rifle was set up on the tripod.

  He leaned down, checking out the shot through the scope. It wasn't lined

  up on the stage or any of the area around it. In fact it seemed to be aimed at

  one of the five trees in the main square, a fair distance from the stage itself. It

  seemed odd to go to the effort of setting the shot up early and not have it lined

  up precisely, but it was possible the shooter had knocked it as he'd cleared the

  room. Or perhaps it was a superstition thing and he didn't want to aim at the

  target until there was something there to kill. He squinted at the tree itself and

  realized a dozen or more bird feeders had been strung up from the branches.

  The tree was hiding an entire flock of hungry birds.

  That was interesting.

  There was quite a crowd gathered in the square already. He checked his

  watch yet again, feeling like an obsessive compulsive. There was less time on it

  than before and no shooter. Individually, both facts were bad enough; together

  they were the worst of all possible worlds.

  He checked out the gun itself.

  That was when he knew for sure the entire thing was a set-up. There was

  a small timer set on the side of the stock and attached to the trigger guard. The

  timer was ticking down. It had 27 minutes left on it. Twenty-seven minutes

  would not only have placed the Pope in the square, it would have put him up on

  the stage. Konstantin checked his watch to be sure. The benediction was due to

  begin in 21 minutes. This gun was never intended to kill the Pope. Devere's call

  to the cell phone here had triggered the timer, setting everything into motion. It

  was like that kids' game, Mouse Trap. The shot would go off, itself triggered by

  the timer, the bullet would fly straight into the tree where it would startle the

  birds nesting there. The sudden explosion of movement and the ricochet of the

  gunshot would trigger panic in the crowd. In the seconds immediately after the

  shock of the gunshot someone close would then step in and kill the Pope while

  everyone else was looking frantically left and right for a shooter that didn't exist. He took the cell phone from his pocket and called Lethe to fill him in. "I hate to say it, Koni, but it makes sense," Lethe said in his ear. "Think

  about who we're dealing with here. If they've modeled themselves on the Sicarii,

  surely they'll mirror the Sicarii MO: get close, be trusted, and slip the knife in

  even as you're calling out for help."

  "Great," Konstantin grumbled. "Trust no one."

  He looked at his watch again: 19 minutes.

  "What doesn't make sense is why Devere would trigger the remote timer

  immediately after your visit. . . . He must have known we'd trace it and find the

  gun. He's not an idiot, you said so yourself. You don't plan something as

  elaborate as this and then blow it on a single phone call."

  "But it wasn't a single call was it? There were three. He played us.

  Mudak," he cursed in his mother tongue. "He hid the important call in plain sight,

  giving us something closer to home to worry about." He slammed the side of his

  fist off the window frame and cursed again. "Geneva!" he spat, the pain focusing

  his brain. "Swiss Guard! Every member of the Guard have to serve in the Swiss

  Army, right? That was the call. It's one of the Guard. The inner circle's been

  breached." Konstantin realized the implications of what he had just said. He had

  18 minutes before the papal cavalcade arrived at the stage, and the people he

  needed to trust the most to do their job, to protect the Pope, were the ones he

  could trust the least to do their job.

  He looked out of the window. There were perhaps a thousand people

  congregated in and around the square now.

  "What do we do?" Lethe asked.

  The truth was Konstantin had no idea. He knelt and started to strip the

  timer away from the gun, but stopped. Devere had warned the assassin--that's

  what the call to Geneva had been about--but it didn't mean he had called the

  man off. But if the gun didn't go off, the assassin wouldn't strike. That was a

  stone cold certainty. If the assassin didn't strike in the next half an hour, when

  they knew where he was, he could strike tomorrow or the day after or the day

  after, anywhere along the pilgrimage's long road. And if he was right and the

  assassin was part of the Swiss Guard, he could wait until they were "safe" in the

  Holy See and no one would be any the wiser. No, this was the one place they

  knew something was planned to go down.

  Knowing gave them a hand, if not the upper hand. There was a chance

  the assassin could take the gunshot to mean Konstantin wasn't as good as he

  was, wasn't as close. It was a risk. All he could do was get close to the stage.

  That way when the gun went off and the birds exploded from the trees in a
>
  flurry of wings and screams, he would be the one person watching the stage. It

  was a dangerous game to be playing, but he wasn't about to throw his hand in

  now.

  "We use the Pope as bait," he said, realizing, even as he said it, the

  stakes of the gamble he was about to make. It wasn't just one man's life he was

  playing with here.

  23

  The Beast with 13 Horns He wore the dagger in a ceremonial sheath nestled beneath his left armpit.

  The crowds cheered and waved their flags as they pressed up against the barriers, hoping to get a glimpse of the Pope. The noise of the people sent a thrill through his skin. It had been so long in the planning, so long since there had been honesty in the world. But it was coming. It was close. And when it returned they would have something to see.

  His fingers strayed toward the dagger. He felt its weight so close to his heart. It wasn't an ominous weight. It wasn't portentous. Like his task today, it was an honest weight.

  They had found the silver dagger in one of the suicide tombs unearthed by the earthquake at Masada. It had been returned to them while the world adjusted to the new millennium. No truth can lay hidden forever. That is the way of great truths.

  The tomb had contained the desiccated skeletal remains of a man, along with a document. They had no way of knowing exactly what the roll of papyrus actually was, what it said and whose words they were, because by the time they had unearthed it, it had been in such a wretched condition the individual folios had fused together, forming a thick pulp.

  But they had suspicions.

  How could they not?

  The world knew what had happened as the Roman legions had built their ramp up the side of the mountainside of Masada. It was the last fortress of the Sicarii, the freedom fighters bound to the service of the bloodline of the true Messiah, Judas Iscariot.

  And on the day when they took their own lives and ended the bloodline, it had been home to Menahem ben Jair and his brother Eleazar, the grandsons of Iscariot. If either of them had penned the testimony, the wisdom it contained would be priceless. What truths might it contain?

  But the papyrus was ruined beyond anything they had the resources to salvage. Mabus had wanted to try anyway. They had skills, they could find people they could trust. But the other man--the one who had taken the name Akim Caspi after they had found the dagger--had said no, that they could not risk the truth, so long lost, being destroyed.

  Caspi had brought the truth to him, and entrusted the silver dagger to his care. He welcomed the truth, pledging himself to the Disciples of Judas. They didn't know the secret of the blade until they deciphered the Testimony.

  They had turned it over to the Vatican's experts, knowing even as they did that there was no way the Church of Lies would release the truth it contained. That meant they would have to steal it back, but not until it had been restored and translated. It had involved careful thought and planning, like everything else, but because it was driven by truth, God had seen them through. Of course, he had never doubted. Why would He not want the truth known? After all it was His truth. They had put their own man on the inside, a priest who worked in the library. He monitored the restoration, then, anted ext was ready to be deciphered, sent word to Caspi so he could send in his own expert to oversee the translation and spirit the Testimony out of the Vatican before the truth could be buried again.

  The first revelation was its writer. What they had discovered in the hidden tomb was no less than the Testimony of Menahem ben Jair, grandson of Judas Iscariot, founder of the Sicarii zealots. Menahem ben Jair was the grandson of the true Messiah.

  The second revelation came in the body of the text itself. Learning the truth had not been easy. There were levels of truth in the words: first the bloodline itself, Menahem son of Jair, Jair son of Judas and Mary, the same Mary Magdalene the Church of Lies had painted as a harlot. The truth played out in the garden at Gethsemane, where he begged Judas to stay strong, to deliver him to the Romans, knowing to do so would break his friend. How could any man ask someone who loved him to deliver him to death? Still faithful to his friend, Judas shared that last kiss knowing he was damning himself because of the guilt he felt; because he knew he would not be able to live with it.

  He never met the son he fathered. But instead of being father of one he proved himself father of many. In that act of love not merely was Judas a saved man, he became the Messiah, the true Messiah in the Judaic tradition, the man whose sacrifice bought salvation for his people, the man who reunited them and offered them peace. There was nothing about Jesus, the Christian Messiah, being God the Father come to earth in the skin of a mortal man. The truths differed starkly.

  This was the truth that Menahem had cherished and held close, the promise he had made to Jair that he would never forget his grandfather's story, and in turn would not let the world forget. From that promise he had forged the Sicarii, men of the dagger, named for his grandfather's sacrifice.

  The third secret had been the forging of the dagger, what it was made from and the truth it represented. The blade had been fashioned by Eleazar and Menahem in the armory of Masada from the silver shekels paid to Judas Iscariot, the coins that bought the sacrifice--for it was not a betrayal, not remotely, it was a sacrifice--that an entire religion was founded upon.

  Even for its age, the dagger forged by Eleazar ben Jair was an exquisite piece of craftsmanship. To think this silver had been held by the true Messiah.

  Again his hand strayed to the dagger at his side, lingering over the blade.

  He wished he could read its story with his touch.

  He wished he could understand it all.

  Akim Caspi had found him in Geneva. He was young, impressionable, ripe to be imprinted with idealism. He had been drawn to Caspi. The man was enigmatic, but more than that he was inspirational. He talked about the lies of Matthew, whose Gospel sought to force the truth of Judas into fitting some Old Testament prophecy and how the Bible itself contradicted the death of Judas Iscariot. In the Acts of the Apostles he is said to have fallen down head first in a field and burst asunder in Akeldama, the field of blood. Matthew had Judas hang himself from a tree--and in doing so doom himself as a suicide to exile from heaven. He listened while Akim Caspi talked with such passion about how Matthew's words sought to bury the truth, how so much of these lies of the Church was founded upon were the reworkings of reality. Why paint Mary Magdalene as a whore if not to take away her importance to the true Messiah? Why not even mention Judas, most loyal, most beloved at all, in the Gospel of Peter?

  That Peter did not mention Judas of course led others to believe the silver itself could not exist if the man himself didn't; after all, how could you buy betrayal from a man who had never walked the earth?

  But why would anyone be surprised by this? Victors wrote the words remembered by posterity, which is why the Testimony of Menahem ben Jair was so fundamental to what Caspi believed. It was more than just words; it was the truth delivered first hand, truth that supported the Gospel of Judas itself. Jesus told Judas: You shall be cursed for generations. You will come to rule over them. You will exceed all of them, for you will sacrifice the man that clothes me. Matthew and Mark excoriate Judas: Alas for that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would be better for that man if he had never been born.But who gains from these lies? the would-be assassin asked himself. Who gains from these twisted truths?

  Caspi had been passionate in his sharing, and he clearly believed his truth. And even now, with the white Mercedes Benz nearing the stage, the young Swiss Guard knew it was a truth worth believing.

  It was a truth that made his heart race, his skin creep with anticipation. It was a truth that the world needed to know, needed to understand, simply because it was honest.

  It had taken almost a year before Caspi had shared his plan with him.

  It was a simple plan, filled with tragic symmetry.

  Two millennia after t
he silver brought about the death of Jesus those same coins, melded now into the form of a dagger, would be used to kill the Bishop in white, the Pope of the Church of Lies. If Matthew wanted to twist lies about the Messiah to fit prophecies from Zechariah, then they would take prophecies of their own, from every man who had predicted the rise of the Antichrist, and use this death of the False Father to prove these prophecies true.

  There were patterns within the patterns. The Prophecy of the Popes given by Malachy, the 12th-century Bishop of Armagh, offered 112 future Popes, according each an enigmatic phrase to identify them. The list, like all so-called prophecies, was enigmatic and open to interpretation, but there were truths in it that Caspi had identified. Truths that helped him believe their path was preordained, that now was the time. Those short phrases were important: Paul VI, Flower of Flowers; John Paul I, the Middleness of the Moon; John Paul II, the Labor of the Sun; Benedict XVI, the Glory of the Olive; and finally, the 112th name on the list, the final Pope, Petrus Romanus.

  The signs all pointed to the truth. The Flower of Flowers bore the Fleurde-lis on his coat of arms, the flower of purity and chastity. The Middleness of the Moon, Albino Luciani as he was born in Belluno, so close to bela luna, Beautiful Moon, reigned for only 33 days, dying before the new moon. The Labor of the Sun, born and died within a solar eclipse. The Glory of the Olive that would bring peace to a troubled world by demanding a sovereign state for Palestine, one might have reasonably thought, yet Caspi taught him otherwise. The Glory of the Olive, he argued, was the glory of the Olivet Discourse in the Gospel of Matthew, that the time of Tribulation was at hand. The prophecy of the Popes led them by the hand to the truth, that the true Messiah's return was at hand, the one who was everything this Christ of the Christians was not.

  The car turned into the square and the faithful began to cheer.

  His heart burned with the birth of the truth.

  Soon the world would know.

  Soon.

  24 Knife

  Then - The Testimony of Menahem ben Jair

  He crept up behind the holy man. The air was thick with musk meant to hide the filth of humanity. Sunlight streamed in through the narrow windows and scattered across the floor like gold coins given up in offering to the greediest of gods. Yitzhak, the priest, was on his knees, hunched over before the altar, mumbling his devotions in the temple's inner sanctum. The holy man didn't break away from his prayer. He crept closer, listening to the shallow rise and fall of Yitzhak's breathing and the gentle rise and fall of his prayer. There was hope in it, love, and strength. In a matter of heartbeats there would be nothing but empty silence where all of that had been.