The Thirteenth Apostle

by Michel Benoît

  “The Vatican is huge: don’t you have any clues?”

  “Just one, and it’s a slender lead. If it has indeed come to Rome, as I believe, it must be somewhere among the Dead Sea manuscripts it was found with. The Vatican will have received it after the Israeli War of Independence, around 1948. Do you have any idea of the place where Essenian manuscripts from Qumran might be kept, the ones that have not yet been examined?”

  Breczinsky rose to his feet. He looked worn out.

  “I can’t say right away, I need to think. Come and see me here in my office tomorrow afternoon: there won’t be anyone apart from you and Mgr Leeland. But I beg you not to tell him about our conversation, I shouldn’t have told you all this.”

  Nil reassured him: he could trust him, just as he had trusted Father Andrei. Their objective was the same: to inform the Pope.

  75

  “I raise my glass to the day the last Jewish settler leaves Palestine!”

  “And I raise mine to the definitive establishment of the Greater Israel!”

  The two men smiled before draining their glasses. Lev Barjona suddenly turned scarlet and choked.

  “By my tefillin, Mukhtar Al-Quraysh, what the hell is it? Arab petrol?”

  “Centerbe. A liqueur from the Abruzzi. Seventy degrees – a kind of drink that sorts out the men from the boys.”

  Ever since they had spared one another’s lives on the battlefield, a strange complicity had grown between the Palestinian and the Israeli – of the sort that once existed between the officers of regular enemy armies, and as sometimes exists between adverse politicians or executives of big rival groups. Fighting in the shadows, they feel at ease only with their peers, who are engaged in the same conflicts as they are. They despise the society of ordinary civilians, their dull, flat lives. More often than not they are locked in fierce confrontation with each other – but when they are not fighting, they won’t refuse to share a glass, a girl or two, or a common operation, if the opportunity of some neutral terrain arises.

  The present opportunity was provided by Mgr Calfo. He had proposed that they carry out one of those operations that the Church does not like to perform or even officially to admit – the sort where you get your hands dirty. Ecclesia sanguinem abhorret – the Church hates blood. Unable to get its dirty work done for it by a secular arm that tended to ignore it, the Church was now constrained to call in independent agents. These were usually men of the European extreme right. But they could not refuse the lure of media exposure, and always asked for their services to be rewarded with tiresome political manoeuvrings. Calfo appreciated the fact that Mukhtar had only asked for dollars, and that the two men had left no trace behind them. They had been as discreet as a breath of wind.

  “Mukhtar, why did you ask me to meet you here? You know that if we were seen together it would be considered by our respective bosses as an extremely grave professional failing.”

  “Come on, Lev, Mossad has countless agents, they’re all over the place. But not here: this restaurant only serves pork, and I know the manager – if he knew you were Jewish, you wouldn’t be able to stay under his roof for a minute longer. We haven’t met since the Germigny slab was brought to Rome, but you’ve just met our two scholar monks, and I listen in on them regularly. We need to talk.”

  “I’m all ears…”

  Mukhtar signalled to the manager to leave the flagon of centerbe on the table.

  “Let’s not beat around the bush, Lev. We’re playing the same game here. But I don’t know everything, and it bugs me: the Frenchman is starting to poke his nose into the Koran – there are things that Muslims won’t tolerate, you know. Let me make this clear: I’m not just on this mission for Mgr Calfo, Hamas is concerned too. But what’s less clear to me is the reason why you’ve got personal about it, meeting up with Nil and casually letting him in on information that’s worth its weight in gold.”

  “Are you asking me why we’re interested in that lost epistle?”

  “Exactly: how does this story about the thirteenth apostle concern the Jews?”

  Lev drummed his fingers nervously on the marble table: the pizze al maiale were a long time in coming.

  “The fundamentalists in Likud keep a close eye on everything that’s said in the Catholic Church about the Bible. For them, it’s essential that Christians are never able to cast doubt on the divinity of Jesus Christ. We have intercepted information that Father Andrei was allowing to leak out to people in Rome and to his European colleagues. This was in fact the reason why I was authorized to join you in the Rome express operation. It was high time – that scholar had discovered certain things that worry the folks in Meah Shearim.”

  “But why, in the name of the jinn? What difference does it make to you whether the Christians suddenly realize that they’ve fabricated a false God, or rather a second God, for themselves? The Koran has been condemning them for that over the last thirteen centuries. On the contrary, you ought to be satisfied that they’re finally admitting that Jesus was nothing other than a Jewish prophet, just as Muhammad says.”

  “You know full well, Mukhtar, that we’re fighting for our Jewish identity on every level, not just that of territory. If the Catholic Church were to question his divinity and recognized that Jesus never ceased to be anything other than a very great prophet, what would distinguish us from the Church? If Christianity turned back into something Jewish, went back to its historical origins – it would swallow up Judaism. Christians venerating the Jewish Jesus instead of worshipping their Christ-God would be a peril for the Jewish people, a risk that we can’t allow ourselves to run. Especially since they’ll immediately claim that Jesus is greater than Moses, that with him the Torah loses all its value – even though he taught quite the opposite: that he had come, not to abolish the Law, but to fulfil it. A Jewish prophet proposing a law more perfect than that of Moses: you know what Christians are like, the temptation would be too strong. They weren’t able to get rid of us with their pogroms, but assimilation would wipe us out. The fire of the crematoria has purified us: if Jesus is no longer God, if he becomes Jewish again, Judaism will soon be nothing more than an annex of Christianity, chewed up, swallowed and soon digested in the Church’s hungry belly. That’s why research like Father Nil’s worries us.”

  Two huge pizzas smelling appetizingly of fried bacon had just been set before them. Mukhtar tucked into his hungrily.

  “Just try a mouthful of that and tell me what you think. And at least we’ll know why we’re going to end up in hell. Mmm… The big problem with you Jews is your paranoia. You go looking for things to worry about everywhere – going too far for us! But I know what you’re like, and from your point of view you’re right. Above all, no cosying up to the Christians, or you’ll be diluted like a drop of water in the sea. Let the Pope shed tears at the Wailing Wall, but then everyone goes back to his own home. Agreed. Anyway, what are you going to do if little Nil persists in rummaging around?”

  “I got rapped on the knuckles when I tried… well, let’s just say I tried to put a stop to his work somewhat prematurely. Instructions are to let him carry on, and see what comes out of it. This is Calfo’s policy too. By meeting the little French monk and talking to him, I’ve given him a nudge in the right direction – and perhaps, that way, he’ll find what we’re all looking for. What’s more, Nil likes Rachmaninov, which proves he’s a man of taste.”

  “You seem to like him?”

  Lev swallowed a big mouthful of pizza al maiale and licked his lips: these goyim really knew how to cook pork.

  “I think he’s really nice, and even rather touching. This is something you Arabs can’t understand, since Muhammad never understood a thing about the prophets of Judaism. Nil is like Leeland, they’re both idealists, spirituals sons of Elijah – the hero and model for all Jews.”

  “I don’t know if Muhammad understood anything about your prophets, but I’ve certainly understood Muhammad: the infidels must not live.”

  Lev push
ed away his empty plate.

  “You’re a Quraysh and I’m a Barjona – a descendent of the Zealots who once upon a time terrorized the Romans. Like you, I’m defending our values and our tradition, unhesitatingly: the Zealots were also called sicarii because of their virtuosity at handling the dagger and their technique of disembowelling their enemies. But while I like Nil, Leeland has been my friend for twenty years. Don’t do anything to them without warning me first.”

  “Your Leeland has been walking hand in hand with the Frenchman, he knows nearly as much as him. And then, he’s a queer – our religion condemns men like him! As for the other guy, if he so much as touches the Koran and its Prophet, nothing will stop God’s justice.”

  “Rembert, a queer? You’re kidding! These men are pure, Mukhtar, I am certain of my friend’s integrity. What goes on inside his head is something else, but the Koran only condemns acts; it doesn’t go rummaging round in the brain. This mission concerns the integrity of the three monotheisms: don’t touch a hair on their heads without warning me. In any case, if you want to apply Koranic law to them, you’re not going to manage without me: it was child’s play in the Rome express, but in the middle of this city it’s going to be more difficult. Mossad leaves fewer traces behind it than Hamas does, as you know perfectly well… Here your methods are out of place.”

  When they went their separate ways, the flagon of centerbe was empty. But the two men walked down the deserted street as steadily as if they’d been drinking nothing but spring water.

  76

  Since daybreak, Sonia had been walking straight ahead, mechanically. She was mulling over what Calfo had asked her to do for him the next week: she wouldn’t be able to go through with it. “I’m nothing more than a prostitute now, but that’s just too much.” She needed to talk to someone, she needed to share her distress. Mukhtar? He’d send her back to Saudi Arabia. He’d confiscated her passport and shown her photos of her family, photos taken recently in Romania. Her sisters and her parents would be threatened, they would pay dearly on her behalf if she didn’t behave. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

  She had been walking up the left bank of the Tiber, and realized that she had just passed a crossroads: it was busy at this time of the morning. At the end of a broad, clear street that turned off towards the Capitoline, two ancient temples and the pediment of the Teatro di Marcello were visible. She didn’t want to go in that direction. There would be tourists, and she needed to be alone. She crossed the road: opposite her, the gate of Santa Maria in Cosmedin was open. She went through it and passed the Bocca della Verità without a glance; then she went into the church.

  She had never been here before, and was struck by the beauty of the mosaics. There was no iconostasis, but the church very much resembled those she had frequented in her youth. There was a peaceful and mysterious atmosphere in here, the Christ in glory was the same as that of the Orthodox, and so was the fragrance of incense hanging in the air. Mass had just been celebrated at the main altar, and a choirboy was extinguishing the candles one by one. She went up and kneeled in the front row of the pews, on the left.

  “A priest – I’d like to talk to a priest. Catholics respect the secrets of confession too, just as our priests at home.”

  At that very minute a priest was emerging through the door on the left – the sacristy, no doubt. He was wearing a broad surplice in white lace, without any particular distinguishing signs. His round, smooth face was that of a baby, but his white hair showed him to be a man of experience. She raised to him eyes made red by a night spent weeping, and was struck by the gentleness of his gaze. In an unthinking outburst, she straightened up as he walked by.

  “Father…”

  He looked her up and down.

  “Father, I’m Orthodox… can I still make my confession to you?”

  He smiled kindly at her: he very much liked the rare occasions when he could exercise his ministry of mercy in anonymity.

  The light reflected from the golden mosaics conferred on Sonia’s face, haggard with stress, the beauty of the Sienese Primitives.

  “I won’t be able to give you sacramental absolution, my child, but God himself will comfort you… Come this way.”

  She was surprised to find herself on her knees in front of him, without any grille or obstacle, in the Roman way. Her face was a few inches away from his…

  “Well now, what do you have to tell me…”

  As she started to speak, she had the impression that a weight was being lifted from her chest. She told him of the woman who had recruited her in Romania, then the Palestinian who had sent her to the harem of the Saudi dignitary. Finally Rome and the chubby little man, a Catholic prelate who had to be satisfied at all costs.

  The priest’s face suddenly moved away from hers, and his eyes narrowed.

  “This Catholic prelate – do you know his name?”

  “No, Father, but he must be a bishop: he wears a curious ring, of a kind I’ve never seen before. It looks a bit like a coffin – a jewel in the shape of a coffin.”

  The priest quickly slipped the gemstone of the episcopal ring he wore on his finger round so that it was hidden in his palm, and hid his right hand in the folds of his surplice. Sonia, absorbed in her confession, had not noticed this furtive gesture.

  “A bishop… how dreadful! And you say that he makes you do…”

  With some difficulty, Sonia told him of the scene in front of the Byzantine icon, the nun’s cornet tightly fitted to her head, her naked body offered to the man kneeling behind her on the prie-dieu, murmuring incomprehensible words about union with the Unspeakable.

  The priest brought his face closer to hers.

  “And you tell me that, next time you go to see him, he wants…”

  She related what the bishop had explained to her when he sent her away, causing her to flee in horror from his apartment. The priest’s face was now almost touching hers, and had become as hard as the marble on the Cosmatesque flagstones on which she was kneeling. He spoke slowly, separating out each word:

  “My child, God forgives you, as you have been abused by one of his representatives on earth and you had no choice. In His name, I today give you His peace. But you must not – you hear me: you must not – agree to go to the next meeting with this prelate: what he is making you do is an abominable blasphemy against Our Saviour Jesus Christ crucified.”

  Sonia lifted her distraught face towards him.

  “That’s impossible! What will happen to me if I don’t obey? I can’t leave Rome, my passport…”

  “Nothing will happen to you. First because God is protecting you, your confession has shown him that your soul is pure. I’m bound by the secret of the confessional, as you know. But I know a few people in Rome, and without betraying this secret I can make sure nothing happens to you. You have, alas, fallen into the hands of a perverse bishop, who has made himself unworthy of the ring he wears. The coffin adorning his criminal hand symbolizes the spiritual death which has already befallen him. But you are also in God’s hands – trust in him. Don’t go and see that bishop on the day you mentioned.”

  * * *

  The unexpected encounter with the priest was for Sonia like God’s answer to her prayer. For the first time since she had rushed down the stairs of Calfo’s apartment, she could breathe freely. This unknown priest had listened to her kindly, he had assured her of God’s forgiveness! Delivered of the burden that had been crushing her, she seized his hand and kissed it as the Orthodox do. She did not notice that it was his left hand – his right hand was still obstinately thrust into his surplice.

  As she headed towards the exit, the priest rose and went back into the sacristy. First he put his episcopal ring, bearing the arms of St Peter, back in its place. Then he took off his surplice to show his broad scarlet belt. With a precise gesture, he smoothed down his white hair and placed on the crown of his head a skullcap of the same colour, the Cardinal’s scarlet.

  Up until now, Catzinger had been deal
t a less good hand of cards than the Neapolitan. Without knowing it, Sonia had just slipped in a crucial card. He would use this card: it would be Antonio who would play it, Antonio, that most faithful of servants who had managed to evade the vigilance of the Society of St Pius V – the Andalusian who had never compromised nor deviated from his path, who was as supple as a Toledo blade, bending only in order to spring back into place.

  77

  Sitting in front of the reinforced door, the papal police officer had let them pass without checking Nil’s accreditation: they were well-known faces… Breczinsky took them to their table, where the manuscripts from the previous day were waiting for them.

  Nil had told Leeland that they wouldn’t be going to the Vatican until just after lunch: he needed to think things over. The trust the Pole had shown him had at first amazed and then scared him. “Has he talked because he’s desperately lonely, or because he’s manipulating me?” Never before had the quiet teacher from the Loire had to confront such a situation. He had set out to follow the trace of the thirteenth apostle: like him, he now found himself embroiled in conflicts that were too big for him to handle.

  Breczinsky had said that he wanted to help him, but what could he do? The Vatican was a huge place; its different museums and libraries must each possess one or several annexes in which thousands of valuable objects lay gathering dust. Somewhere among them, there was perhaps a crate of Napoleon brandy containing an odd assortment of Essene manuscripts – and one sheet, one tiny little sheet of parchment bound by a twirl of linen. The description given by Lev Barjona had remained graven into Nil’s memory, but what if the crate had been emptied and its contents dispersed at random by an over-hasty employee?

  Around the middle of the afternoon, he took off his gloves.

  “Don’t ask me any questions: I need to see Breczinsky again.”