The Blood Gospel

by Rebecca Cantrell James Rollins

  She stumbled back, aghast. “This is where and how the museum stores its extra collections?”

  Rasputin merely shrugged, as if to say, What is history to someone who has lived centuries?

  She wiped her hands on her jeans and looked around in dismay. A framed picture leaning against the wall behind the quilts looked like an original Dürer woodcut of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The priceless woodcut had been tossed in haphazardly with broken tools and old rotting tapestries. Overhead, a black bloom of mold stained the roof, marking an old leak.

  “This can’t be the right place,” she insisted.

  Rasputin chuckled and nudged Rhun good-naturedly. “She is endearing, isn’t she? This Woman of Learning of yours.”

  Rhun simply turned to Jordan. “You should try the detector in here.”

  As Jordan set about booting up the explosives sniffer, Erin refused to let it go. “Why has none of this been cataloged?”

  Rasputin pulled what looked like a dirty dishcloth off a sculpture, like someone rummaging through a garage sale.

  “Careful!” Erin touched the top of the exposed sculpture’s downturned head, ran a finger along an extended leg. “This is a Rodin. A dancer. It’s priceless.”

  “Likely,” Rasputin agreed. The monk moved to a stack of leather-bound books, picking through them. Scraps of paper fluttered out of his hands to the ground.

  Erin closed her eyes. She couldn’t watch, and she hated to think of the damage that had been done to the artifacts in the museum and to the historical record.

  Rhun sifted through a crate. “Why do you believe this is the right room, Grigori?”

  “The date.” Rasputin fingered a yellowed card affixed to the wall by a rusty nail. “This is one of the rooms where Russian forces, those returning in late May, warehoused the treasures plundered from Europe.”

  “How many other rooms are there?” Jordan had finally booted up his detector and swept it from side to side.

  “Several,” Rasputin said.

  A piece of plaster fell from the ceiling, narrowly missing Erin’s head.

  “Are they all this disorganized?” Her head throbbed in time to the flickering bulb.

  “Many are worse.”

  Sighing in defeat, she joined Rhun in his search.

  It took them an hour to go through the first nest of rooms. Rasputin’s minions did not help. They stood out in the corridor and smoked. Smoking wasn’t doing the artifacts any favors either, but Erin supposed it was just another grain of sand in the hourglass marking the inevitable decay of these treasures.

  Rasputin remained as gratingly cheerful as ever.

  “One down, but more to come!” he announced, and led them down a damp corridor.

  The next room, like the first, was crammed to the ceiling with a mishmash of useless and priceless objects, but here there was at least a theme—a martial or military one. Erin stared across the panoply of old Russian flags, piles of helmets, bayonets stacked up like cordwood, and what looked like a giant propeller stretching across the room.

  The space was cavernous. They could search a lifetime in just this one room and never find something as small as a book.

  Then Jordan’s machine beeped.

  51

  October 27, 7:18 P.M., MST

  The Hermitage, Russia

  Jordan whooped with delight.

  Now we can get down to business—and soon, hopefully, get the hell out of here.

  “Is the book here?” Erin hurried to his side, looking over his shoulder. Her breath brushed the back of his neck.

  He had to step away. “Maybe. I don’t know. But at least it’s a positive reading. Something with a chemical signature equivalent to Nobel 808 is close. That’s what I picked up on that chunk of rock in your pocket.”

  He swung the detector from side to side, almost bumping her. The sniffer led him to a tattered tapestry. He lifted it and it disintegrated under his finger, tearing apart with a quiet sigh.

  This time Erin didn’t scold him. She stuck close to his side.

  Jordan stepped past the tapestry, following each beep of the detector deeper into the room. It led him toward the giant propeller that rested atop a wooden crate in the center of the room.

  “I think that’s from a MiG-3,” he said, stroking a hand along the smooth metal. “Only a few thousand were ever made, but they kicked butt in dogfights on the eastern front.”

  “Is that what’s setting off your detector?” she asked.

  “Noooo …” He slowly knelt, pointing the tip of the device forward. “Whatever is triggering the detector is underneath the propeller. Probably in that crate.”

  “We will move the propeller,” Rhun said, nodding to Rasputin.

  Jordan glanced over his shoulder at the other men. It would normally take six or seven guys to lift this steel monstrosity. But then again, there was nothing normal about the pair.

  The two men crossed to either side of the giant propeller, each shouldering himself under one of the steel blades. At a silent signal, they both straightened, lifting the massive hunk of aeronautics with a groan of metal. From the strain on their faces, the weight was taxing even their strength.

  Jordan wiggled under the blades, trusting them not to drop it on his head. He reached the exposed crate and stared into its straw-filled depths. His heart thudded into his throat.

  Oh, God …

  “Anything?” Erin called.

  To either side of him, Rhun and Rasputin struggled with the sheer mass of steel. Overhead, the propeller began to shake in their weakening grips.

  “Freeze!” Jordan yelled. “Nobody move!”

  7:22 P.M.

  Hearing the panic in the soldier’s heart as much as in his words, Rhun went dead still, as did Grigori. A fleeting fear passed through him with razored wings, cutting through his resolve: had the propeller crushed the book?

  “What is it?” Erin asked. “Should I help you?”

  “No!” The salty scent of fear wafted from him. “Stay where you are. And I mean everybody. Or we’ll all die.”

  The soldier crawled backward away from the wall, his heart skittering.

  Rhun waited, the propeller growing heavier in his hands.

  Grigori gave him a mischievous grin. “Here we are, working side by side, one step from death, my droog. Just as in the olden days.”

  Jordan slowly rose to his feet. “You can’t put the propeller back down. There’s an unexploded ordnance stored in that crate. The detector did what it was designed for. Unfortunately, it found a bomb, not a book.”

  “Are you sure it’s a bomb?” Erin asked.

  “It’s a Soviet antitank missile. And yes, I’m sure.”

  As always, Erin kept arguing. “Maybe the book is under the missile—”

  “If it is, I’m not getting it out.” Jordan pointed to the hall. “Sorry, guys, but I think you’re going to have to take that to the far side of the room. If so much as a pound of weight presses on that missile, we’re all dead.”

  “Did you hear that, Rhun? We must be cautious.” Grigori gave a carefree laugh.

  The sound took Rhun back decades. Grigori had been the most foolhardy member of the trio, unconcerned about the prospect of death—not for himself, not for others. His blithe bravery had saved Rhun’s life many times, but it had also endangered it.

  “Should the two of you evacuate before we attempt to move it?” Rhun asked.

  “It wouldn’t help,” Jordan said. “If that missile goes off, it’ll take out the building and half a city block around it.”

  Erin’s heart sped up.

  “I suggest everyone make their peace with God, then.” Grigori’s lips curved into a familiar half smile. “On three, Rhun?”

  Together they lifted the propeller higher and inched toward the back of the room. Jordan and Erin ducked under the blades and helped clear the path for the others’ burdened legs.

  Once he was far enough away, Jordan waved them to lower the propel
ler to a mound of crates near the back of the space.

  “What if there are bombs in these crates, too?” Rhun asked, his voice strained by the sheer weight of the engine blades.

  Jordan swore, and Erin’s face paled.

  “Life is always a risk.” Grigori began lowering his end. “I see no point in perishing while holding this.”

  With no choice, doubting he could carry the weight another foot anyway, Rhun followed Grigori’s example. Together, they safely sat the propeller on the pile of boxes.

  They all waited, as if expecting the worst.

  But the crates held.

  Satisfied, Grigori called to one of his acolytes, telling him to seek out the museum curator in the morning and explain what they had found. Rhun was grateful that Grigori had assumed the responsibility to ensure that the missile would be removed.

  Over the next long, tense hour, they continued to search this room and others, hitting a series of false alarms, including a rusted truck muffler that Jordan’s detector sniffed out, which must have been exposed to a bomb long ago.

  At some point, Erin’s hair had come loose from its fastening and dusty grime now streaked her cheeks. Rhun could see that the chaos around them weighed on her. She seemed to be more upset that so many precious objects were hidden away than that they had made no progress toward finding the book.

  Grigori searched with his usual dogged patience, a counterpoint to his reckless daring. The Mad Monk was more careful and cunning than most believed.

  Jordan’s detector beeped again.

  Erin walked to his side. “Another car part?”

  “Let’s hope it’s not another missile.” Jordan moved closer to the room’s corner.

  Rhun followed.

  The device led them to a crumbling wicker basket holding linens that might have once been white. Thick dust had settled on the top, and black mold ate at the basket’s sides.

  Rhun pulled off the top sheet. A tablecloth. He set it atop a Louis XIV–era writing desk and reached for the next one.

  “The readings are getting stronger,” Jordan said. “Be careful.”

  Rhun lifted off another tablecloth, a pile of napkins, and a red Nazi flag.

  Grigori tensed when the flag was unfurled to reveal the black Nazi swastika. How many of his countrymen had died under the waving of that flag? Rhun crumpled the cloth and tossed it aside.

  Erin lifted out a linen pillowcase stuffed with oddly shaped objects. She set it on the floor and searched through it, item by item. She pulled out a book, but it was only a German code book.

  Rhun closed his eyes. Was it the Gospel’s destiny to remain hidden? Perhaps things were better so. Perhaps the best outcome would be if they never found the book. He opened his eyes. No. They must find it, if only to keep it from the hands of the Belial.

  Erin pulled blackened sardine tins out of the pillow sack—then she tensed.

  “Jordan! Rhun! Look!” She lifted out a gray concrete fragment identical to the ones that had encased the book.

  Jordan ran the sensor across the top. It chirped.

  Excited, she removed more fragments until the pillowcase was empty. She shook her head. No book.

  Rhun clutched his cross, attempted to hold back the tide of despair that accompanied the pain of burning silver.

  Had they come this far only to be disappointed again?

  Jordan poked through to the remainder of the basket with his device.

  The sensor began to beep again, steady as a heartbeat.

  8:31 P.M.

  Erin pulled the last threadbare sheet from the basket. She lifted it like a burial shroud, holding her breath, fearful of what she might discover, yet just as excited. But what she found both disappointed and confounded her.

  What is it?

  Resting at the bottom of the basket was a featureless block of dull gray metal about a foot in width and a little more in length. She lifted it carefully. It felt heavy, like lead.

  Jordan ran the explosives detector over it, sagging a bit. “This is definitely what set off my sensors. See the scorch marks? It must have been caught in the same sort of blast.”

  Rhun turned away, bowed over his cross in frustration.

  Erin refused to succumb to defeat. If nothing else, the oddity of the artifact intrigued her. Could this still be what they were searching for—not a book written by Christ, but a symbolic relic, a piece of ancient sculpture?

  She recalled the words of Father Piers, spoken first in German, then translated by Jordan.

  Es ist noch kein Buch.

  It is not a book.

  Is this what Piers meant? Or was this artifact just a piece of lead that had been contaminated by the fragments when it was tossed into the pillowcase with them?

  Something about the fragments also nagged at her, something she’d never really had a chance to investigate. But now that she had more pieces of the puzzle …

  She turned and handed the lead block to Jordan. “Hold this. I want to try something.”

  She then gathered the broken bits of rubble into one of the ancient sheets and took them out into the hall, where she had more room. With the fragments still in her pockets, she might have enough pieces to reassemble the casing more fully. Maybe then she could read the Aramaic lettering impressed on one side of the fragments. At the moment it seemed like a better idea than poking through more piles of rotting junk.

  She gestured for Rasputin’s forces to move aside, then spread the sheet across the floor. Grigori’s acolytes gathered around, watching her. She ignored their presence and lifted out the fragments. As she set about arranging the pieces into their original form, concentrating fully on her task, the sounds of Jordan and the priests rummaging next door receded.

  Her world became the puzzle.

  Sometime later, a hand touched her shoulder, making her jump.

  “We found nothing else in there,” Jordan said. “We’re ready to move on to the next room.”

  “I need another minute.”

  Jordan crouched down beside her. “What do you have there?”

  Bare overhead bulbs illuminated the fragments. She had organized them into a square of about one foot by one foot. Fitted together, they revealed a bas-relief of a drawing and impressions of Aramaic letters.

  The left side of the bas-relief depicted what looked like a skeleton topped by the Alpha symbol. The right showed the profile of a well-fleshed man with the Omega symbol crowning his head. The two figures were crossed together in an eternal embrace, while a braided rope looped from around the man’s throat to the lower vertebrae of the skeleton, binding them together.

  “What does that mean?” Jordan asked.

  Erin blew out her breath in frustration. “I have no idea.”

  Jordan traced it with his finger, his voice sharpening. “I’ve seen this skeleton.”

  “What? Where?” She ran back over the places they had been together: the tomb in Masada, the bunker, and the Russian church.

  “This way!” He uncoiled like a spring. He sprinted back into the room he had just vacated, almost bowling over Rasputin in his haste.

  Erin rushed after him, drawing both Rasputin and Rhun with her.

  “Such a volatile pair.” Rasputin spoke from behind her. “So hot-blooded.”

  She hoped that blood would stay right where it belonged.

  Jordan crossed back to the basket and lifted that strange block of lead. Black blast marks covered its surface. He rubbed the scorched area with his leather sleeve. “Look!”

  Erin leaned at his shoulder, only now seeing a faint pattern underneath the blast marks.

  He spat on his fingers and used them to rub away a circle of the soot.

  A skull grinned back at them from the lead, its backbone trailing down at an angle.

  It matched the picture on the fragments. Erin pictured a slurry of lime and ash being poured over this lead sculpture and drying like clay, hardening to create an impression of the design on the lead box’s top.
r />   Jordan stared up at her, laying a palm atop the lead surface. “Is this another box? First concrete, now lead. Could the Gospel be inside of that?”

  8:47 P.M.

  Rhun heard Jordan’s words, wanting to disbelieve. It seemed impossible. He reached one tentative hand toward the block, realizing he was acting just like Erin—needing to touch it to make it real.

  Did this truly hold the Gospel of Christ?

  After so many centuries of searching, he had thought he would never find it, had assumed his sin with Elisabeta had made him unworthy of finding it.

  Jordan passed the heavy leaden block to Erin’s outstretched hands. She polished away more of the soot with a grimy tablecloth.

  “I don’t see any seams.” She hefted it. “And it feels solid. It looks more like a sculpture than a box.”

  Rhun longed to take it from her and test the truth for himself, but he kept still.

  “I bet the Germans believed there was something in there.” Jordan tapped the blast marks. “It looks like they tried to blast it again and again. That’s why the sensor readings are so high.”

  Grigori jostled against Rhun, wanting to examine the object himself. If the book was still encased within this block of lead, Grigori must not have it. He placed himself between Grigori and Erin.

  “Have no fear, Rhun,” Grigori said. “I have no illusion that I am part of the prophecy.”

  Only now did Rhun even remember the prophecy. He had never truly believed its words, especially after Elisabeta. Yet now …

  “All three of you touch it,” Grigori said. “See if it reveals itself to you.”

  “Could it be that simple?” Jordan put a palm on the block.

  Erin rested her smaller hand next to his.

  Rhun hesitated, loath to attempt such an act in front of Grigori.

  As if reading his thoughts, Grigori beckoned with one hand. His dark followers crowded into the room. Their threat made real.

  Rhun placed his hand next to Jordan’s and Erin’s.

  8:50 P.M.

  Erin stood, afraid to move.

  The cold of Rhun’s hand chilled one side of her hand; the warmth of Jordan’s bathed the other. She couldn’t believe that she, who had devoted her life to science, was standing with her hand on a block of lead expecting miracles. What had happened to her over the last day and a half? If Jordan and Rhun hadn’t been standing next to her, she would have taken her hand off the block and jammed it into her pocket.