The Columbus Code

by mike Evans

  Winters stopped with his hand on the heavy, wooden chair he was about to pull out from the equally heavy table where José was motioning for them to sit. “The journal is here?” he asked.

  “It is.” Sophia’s eyes were bright, but they held a warning. “Brother José tells me others have traced it here but no one has been allowed access to it.”

  “Because they can’t prove they are a direct descendant?” Winters said.

  “No.” The monk shook his head. “Because they cannot prove their hearts.”

  So old Jacobo had been right, Winters thought.

  Brother José gestured for John to sit next to Sophia, which he did, but he was uneasy about what would follow. He didn’t know how he was supposed to prove his heart to this man who would obviously take a bullet rather than let the journal fall into the wrong hands.

  “I must ask you some questions,” Brother José said. “The answers will tell me everything.”

  Sophia squeezed his knee, but Winters didn’t need the warning. He’d faced tougher opponents than Brother José.

  “Señor Columbus,” Brother José said. “Does he seem un hombre loco to you?”

  “Do I think he was a crazy person?” Winters said. “No more so than I am to come here looking for my connection to him. I think he had a vision and he thought it came from God and he followed it.”

  “If I show you the journal, what will you do with it?”

  “I don’t intend to do anything with it,” Winters replied. “It doesn’t belong to me. It belongs here.” He moved to the edge of the chair and spread his hands on the table. “Look, my mother started looking for our link to Columbus because she said God told her to. I promised my mother I would continue the search. I owe her that and maybe God is telling me to as well—I don’t know. I’m here and I want to follow through.” He shrugged. “Once I’ve looked at it, I don’t know what will happen. I’ll probably go home. But I’m sure not planning to take it out of here with me. I only want to look at it.”

  Winters paused for breath and realized Sophia had been simultaneously translating while he waxed eloquent. He had no idea where any of it had come from.

  “I think you must see it,” Brother José said with a nod. He scraped the heavy chair back from the table, crossed the room, and made his way to a door on the far side. He pulled it open and disappeared on the opposite side.

  “John,” Sophia whispered, “do you realize what this means?”

  “Do you?”

  The hand she put on his was clammy. “We are about to see something no one else but these monks has seen since Gaspar Gorricio brought it here over five hundred years ago.”

  “And I’m not even Catholic.”

  “You’re not a practicing Jew either.”

  Winters looked warily at the door. “You think these guys believe that theory? Would they be this protective of Columbus’ stuff if he was Jewish instead of Christian?”

  “I think they’re just following the orders of Brother Gaspar.”

  “You think Gaspar knew Columbus was Jewish?”

  Sophia straightened in her chair. “I think you’re about to find out.”

  The door creaked open and Brother José entered wearing cotton gloves and carrying a glass case about the size of a box of chocolates. Inside it was a wooden box, burnished with age.

  Brother José set it on the table between John and Sophia, just within their reach. He handed each of them a pair of gloves. “Use these to touch it,” José said. “Otherwise, the oil from your skin will damage the pages.”

  He took a key from the folds of his coarsely spun robe and unlocked the glass case. Winters saw his fingers tremble inside the clumsy gloves and found himself holding his breath as the monk lifted out the wooden box.

  Sophia gasped audibly as he set it on the table before them.

  “Sí,” José said.

  “You see the inscription,” Sophia said, pointing. “Across the top.”

  Winters studied the letters scrawled into the wood. “Is that Latin?”

  “Yes. It says ‘Gaspar Gorricio.’” She slid on the gloves. “May I?” she asked the monk.

  His nod was almost indiscernible.

  Carefully and reverently, Sophia traced the letters with her index finger. “This is very old,” she observed.

  “Very old indeed,” the abbot said. “It has been here since Gorricio brought it in 1506.”

  Winters was willing to stop right there. It was worth the whole trip to see the joy on Sophia’s face.

  “I will warn you,” the monk said. “The papers are frail.”

  Winters was sure he meant fragile and that turned out to be an understatement.

  Brother José removed the rough-hewn lid from the box and lifted out a small book. The leather cords that had once held it together were rotted through and the heavy brown cover with its raised letters began to fall away in the monk’s hands. Brother José laid it between them, and it splayed open. A small, browned corner chipped off and floated to the tabletop.

  Sophia pored over the pages, gloved hands in her lap except to turn the leaves. Soft murmurs came from her throat.

  “It’s in Spanish, of course,” Winters said.

  “Castilian Spanish,” she said. “Once I get used to it, the reading will go faster. This I know so far.” She hovered a finger over the paper and read, “‘God made me the messenger of the new heaven and the new earth of which He spoke in the Apocalypse of Saint John. Having spoken of it also through the mouth of Isaiah, He showed me the spot to find it. We are rapidly nearing the end of the age.’”

  “He thought the new heaven and earth were the New World. Right?”

  “Listen to this. ‘This is the Divine providence that has guided me and will furnish Isabel and Ferdinand with the gold and silver for the re-conquest of Jerusalem . . . Jerusalem and Mount Zion are to be rebuilt by the hands of Christians as God has declared by the mouths of His prophets.’”

  Winters didn’t know whether to say it in front of the abbot, but he would bring it up with Sophia later—if Columbus was Jewish, he certainly wasn’t anti-Christian. It was like the two religions were supposed to coexist. Interesting thinking for a guy in the midst of the Inquisition.

  “‘The year has come in the succession of ages when the oceans will lose the bonds by which we have been confined. And immense lands hitherto unknown and unseen shall lie revealed.’”

  Winters found himself nodding. They could say Columbus was certifiable, but Winters had never known a mentally ill person who could write like that. He wanted to sit right there and listen to Sophia read the whole thing.

  Despite his apparent trust in the two of them, the monk was getting jittery. He rubbed his hands together in the unwieldy gloves and glanced uneasily toward the door more than once.

  “Do you have a photocopier?” Winters asked.

  The monk looked scandalized.

  “Perhaps you would let me photograph the pages?” Sophia asked.

  “No flash,” Brother José cautioned.

  “Of course not.”

  “And the photos will be only for your own use?”

  Winters nodded. “I have to consider that promise,” Sophia said, to his surprise. “I cannot make it lightly.”

  Winters could only stare at her . . . until it dawned on him. She was a Columbus scholar and this was the discovery of a lifetime. She would want to share what she knew. For Sophia, not being able to share it was worse than not knowing it at all.

  “Take the photos for me,” Winters said. “You can decide later whether you want to study them.”

  Sophia searched his face and slowly smiled. What he loved about the moment was that she didn’t seem surprised.

  Winters put on the second pair of gloves—as too-small for him as they were too-big for Sophia—and stood on her left side. “I’ll turn and you snap,” he said. “And Brother José, you pray.”

  “What am I praying?” José asked, eyes smiling.

  “T
hat I figure out what I’m supposed to do with all this.”

  “God will show you,” the monk said and closed his eyes.

  A few pages into the process, Sophia looked up at John. “I’m having trouble not reading it all right now.”

  “I promise I’ll share. Keep going.”

  She held his eyes the way she had hold of his arm—warm, soft, and unmoving. If she didn’t look away soon, he was going to kiss her.

  But just then, movement to the left caught his eye and seconds later, the door to the room banged open. A brown-robed figure filled the doorway, his face barely visible beneath the hood.

  José rounded the table and placed himself between the errant monk and the journal. “Please leave, Brother,” he said. “This is private business.”

  “Over there,” the man ordered. “Against the wall.”

  “I beg your pardon—”

  His words were cut off by the smack of something hard against his cheek and he fell sideways. Winters shoved Sophia under the table—and watched the pages of the journal scatter like confetti.

  With a gun in his left hand, the robed man swiped his right arm across the two facedown leaves of the journal still on the table. Winters automatically reached for his own gun and silently cursed its absence. Not only that, he couldn’t get to the guy with the heavy chair between them.

  Gun still clumsily in one hand, the pseudo-monk stuffed the pages into his robe. Pain shot up Winters’ leg as he kicked the chair into him, sending the man staggering backward. As he struggled to regain his balance, the gun came free and slid across the floor, out of reach for both of them.

  Surprisingly, the man abandoned his gun and instead lunged toward the doorway. Winters started after him, but he checked himself and stopped, hand on the wall. He could grab the gun and take him down, but he had no authority to do that. And who knew how many thugs in monk robes he had with him?

  Winters sprang to the window, calling over his shoulder, “Are you all right, Brother?”

  “Estoy furioso!”

  Winters interpreted that as an angry yes. He saw the robed man jump from the cloister wall. Moments later, the familiar banged-up compact car appeared on the road in the distance. Winters turned to Sophia, who peered at him from beneath the table, her hands clasped to her chest.

  “Did I hurt you?” Winters said.

  “No. But could I hand these to you?”

  Winters squatted.

  “I got everything that fell,” she said. Sophia unfolded her arms to reveal the pages of the journal.

  He took the pages from her and helped her to her feet.

  Brother José was now beside him, face ashen. His cheek was already starting to swell.

  “He took what was left on the table,” he said, “after you pushed the rest onto the floor.”

  “I’m sorry,” Winters said. “I just reacted.”

  “No.” He lapsed into Spanish that Sophia, now on her feet, quickly translated. “He says if you hadn’t done that, all of it would be lost.”

  “How much did we save?” Winters asked.

  “Everything except what we had already photographed, I think.”

  “You must leave.”

  They both looked at the monk.

  “When he finds he does not have it all, he will be back.”

  “We can finish the photographs—”

  “No,” Winters said to Sophia. “He’s right. We need to get out of here. What about you, Brother?”

  “I will call the police.”

  “Good plan.” Winters took Sophia’s elbow and steered her toward the door. “Brother José, you’ve been a prince.”

  “No!” The monk’s voice was shrill. “You must take la revista with you! Please!”

  “What—”

  “If not, the police will take it—as evidence—”

  “So lock it up again. Hide it,” Winters said.

  “But then he would have to lie,” Sophia explained. “We can keep it until it’s safe to bring it back.”

  “Which is going to be when?” Winters tried to edge her toward the door again but she grabbed the back of a chair and set her face.

  “When the police find this thief,” she said. “Then we can return it.”

  “Please.” The monk’s lips were blue. “You must take it away.” He grabbed the box from the table and thrust it into Winters’ hands. “I am begging you.”

  Sophia let the pieces of the journal fall into the box and slid the lid from the table. Winters tucked it under his arm and with his other hand guided Sophia toward the door. “Call the police,” he said to the monk. “Now.”

  “You have my number, Brother José,” Sophia called as Winters pushed her out the door.

  “Vaya con Dios,” Brother José said.

  Once they were out the door, all trace of Sophia’s stubbornness disappeared and she ran for the car, reaching it ahead of Winters.

  “Here,” he said, handing her the box. “You hold this, I’ll drive.”

  “I can—”

  “You’re gonna have to trust me.”

  She didn’t need to ask why. Winters had barely backed the car out of the gravel driveway when the heap driven by the thief squealed out from a side road ahead of them and stopped in the middle of the street.

  “Hold on, Sophia.”

  Winters took a hard right and skirted him. The car swayed and righted itself as Winters fishtailed into the side street. It would take only a matter of seconds for the guy to turn his car around, seconds Winters had to use to his advantage. He scanned both sides of the road and found a short alley that ran behind a row of squatty houses.

  “Get down!” he barked at Sophia. She started to look behind them but Winters pushed her head forward. “Get down.”

  The engine whined as he whipped the car into the alley, praying that no kid chose that moment to chase after his soccer ball. The alley dead-ended but Winters slid sideways over a gravel driveway, got the car back under control, and headed across an open field that spanned the distance to the next street, where a busy intersection would provide some cover.

  Winters tried to maintain control as the car bounced across the field. A particularly heavy bump brought a cry from Sophia. “Sorry!” he said. He glanced in the side mirror and saw the compact swerving on the driveway. “Get ready to stop.”

  He jammed his foot on the brake and watched in the rearview as a barrier of red dust rose up behind them, thick as San Francisco fog. Gunning the engine again, he jumped the curb at the edge of the lot and, to a cavalcade of honking horns, joined the traffic in the intersection. He winced as tires screamed behind them but he didn’t stop.

  One more look in the mirror told him what he needed to know. The intersection was a snarl of confusion the thief would have a hard time getting through. Winters pressed the gas pedal to the floor and they headed for the far side of town.

  When they were safely away, Winters slowed the car to the speed limit and placed his hand on Sophia’s shoulder. “You can get up now,” he said.

  Sophia lifted her head from between her knees and looked at him through a maze of hair.

  “Did I mention that I was claustrophobic?” she said with a smile.

  Leaving the monastery, they drove north until dusk. If the thief were going to catch up with them, he would have done so by then and Sophia knew of a small inn off the beaten path in Navarre. She looked a little frayed around the edges so Winters agreed to pull in.

  From the conversation with the owner, Winters gathered there was only one room available. “I am too afraid to stay by myself tonight anyway,” she said to Winters as she took the key. “I know you will be a gentleman.”

  Winters brought the luggage from the car and followed Sophia upstairs to the room. While he put their things in place, she went downstairs to find out about dinner. A few minutes later she returned with two plates of food. “This is all I could talk him into giving us,” she said. “The kitchen has already closed.”

  �
�I’m sure we’ll make do just fine,” Winters replied.

  They sat on the floor at the foot of the bed, their backs propped against the bed frame, and ate. Winters was too hungry to ask what it was and too tired to care. What he really wanted was to read the rest of the pages from the journal, but just then, eating seemed more important.

  As they finished their meal, he glanced over at her. “I think we should get you back to Barcelona first thing in the morning.”

  “What about the journal?”

  “I don’t know yet. You can photograph the rest of it tonight, so the trip won’t be a total waste for you.”

  “Huh,” she said.

  “What does ‘huh’ mean?”

  “It means even though you regularly speak before you think and with your cultural bumbling, you have rarely offended me. Until just now.”

  Winters frowned. “What did I say?”

  “The trip would be a total waste if I did not take information from the journal back with me? Is that what you think?” Her eyes were sharp with something he couldn’t quite discern. “Well?” she asked insistently.

  “Look,” Winters said, setting his plate aside. “This thing took a different turn this afternoon. It’s dangerous now. This isn’t what you agreed to.”

  “I think I can decide that for myself.”

  “No,” Winters said. “You can’t. I’m not going to be responsible for you being hurt because I’m carrying a Columbus artifact around with me.”

  “Then we make a deal.”

  “Uh-uh,” he said with a shake of his head. “No deals.”

  “If I am hurt I will take full responsibility.”

  “It doesn’t work that way.”

  “Is that a Secret Service rule?”

  “No. It’s my rule.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Sophia pushed herself up from the floor and set her plate on a table near the window, then she reached for her iPad. “We have Wi-Fi,” she said as she propped against a pillow on the bed.

  At least she was still speaking to him. “Listen, Sophia.” Winters was still seated on the floor. “I know how quickly this can go south—”

  “Oh!” she exclaimed.

  Winters turned to look in her direction. “You okay?”