Gospel Truths

by J. G. Sandom

  Lyman did not really like to lie, not because he felt bound by some moral stricture, some pang of conscience, but because he knew he wasn’t very good at it. He always preferred to tell the people he questioned exactly who he was. It made things easier that way. And he had long since learned to exploit the natural fear which most feel toward the police, the quiet guilt which comes of countless peccadillos and the superstitious knowledge that the law, like justice, does not always work as it’s supposed to. But as the phone rang and the coins fell, he remembered that according to Corporal Pini, Charles-Philip Duval had never filed a notice of complaint about a robbery or missing funds. If a scandal had occurred, it was obvious that the construction company’s senior owner didn’t want it to be common knowledge. The ringing stopped. “Hello,” he said. “My name is Randall, Terry Randall.”

  “Yes?” a girl replied.

  “Hello, hello.”

  “Yes, I can hear you.”

  “Sorry. The connection’s terrible.” He paused, releasing more coins. “I represent a chain of bed-and-breakfasts based here in London.” His accent was suddenly grotesque. “We are considering the construction of a new property and, frankly, I’m rather keen on Amiens.”

  “Oui, monsieur. How can I help you?” she said, and Lyman noticed the change in pitch. So far so good.

  “I’ll be en route to Paris tomorrow,” he continued, “and I was wondering if I might stop by and have a chat with Monsieur Duval on the way.”

  “Of course,” the girl replied, and they set a time.

  Lyman hung up. The concierge was eyeing him curiously from across the counter and for a moment Lyman was certain he had overheard his bald impersonation. He started toward the stairs, waiting for the concierge to say something, to call him back.

  “Monsieur Lyman.”

  Lyman stopped. “Yes?”

  “Would you come here a moment?”

  Lyman turned and approached the front desk. “Yes. What is it?”

  “I was wondering,” the concierge said, “if you wouldn’t mind taking this up to Monsieur Koster. His phone is still broken and, well, I’ve been up and down these stairs at least a hundred times today. The messenger wanted to deliver it himself, but I told him it was against our new security measures. Did I tell you about them?” He held out what appeared to be a business card.

  Lyman smiled and took it. “Yes, this morning,” he said. “Good show.” He waved the card. “And I wouldn’t mind at all.”

  Lyman waited until he had reached the second landing and was quite alone before he read the message on the card. For some reason it did not surprise him. Each case had its rhythm, he reminded himself again, and he had already sensed that this one was approaching yet another beat, a rising meter. He glanced once more at the card. It looked expensive.

  Mr. Koster,

  Charles Langelier, our illustrious Minister of Culture and a dear friend, informs me you are working on a book about the Notre Dame cathedrals. I have studied them at length and would be more than happy to assist you in any way I can. Come visit me in Paris, tomorrow morning at 10:00–51 rue de Varennes, near the Rodin Museum.

  Lyman turned the card over. Embossed in a simple script were the words Countess Irene Chantal de Rochambaud.

  He mounted the last few steps and knocked gently on Joseph Koster’s door. After a moment Koster appeared, his hair standing up at the back, his clothes crumpled as though he had been sleeping in them. “Oh, it’s you,” he said vaguely.

  “Sorry to barge in like this.” Lyman held out the note. “The concierge said it was for you.”

  Koster took the card, and Lyman watched his eyes carefully. No, there was no doubt. He was genuinely surprised.

  “Listen to this,” Koster blurted out. “That countess. You remember. The expert on Gnostics and the cathedrals.”

  Lyman nodded. It was incredible, he thought. He was practically shouting it to the hotel.

  “She wants to see me tomorrow.”

  “Really! How nice. Are you going?”

  “Of course I’m going. You heard Guy. She’s a real expert on these things.”

  “That’s right. Well, aren’t you lucky.”

  Koster looked up. “Thanks,” he said.

  They stood there for a moment without talking, Lyman waiting for the false bravado, the ingenuous facade to crumble, but it didn’t. He was good, this one, he thought. Or he was everybody’s fool. “How about dinner tonight, Joseph?”

  “Tonight?” Koster looked away. “I don’t know about tonight.”

  “I’ve hardly seen you since… you know. Since the robbery. And I’ll probably be on to Switzerland next week.”

  Koster shifted his weight. “All right,” he said.

  “Of course, if you already have plans.”

  “No, not at all,” Koster protested. He pushed his hair down in the back. “I’d love to, really. Is Italian okay? I’m fed up with French.”

  Lyman nodded, and another tumbler fell. “Italian would be fine.”

  • • •

  The Café Reggio was tucked away only a few hundred yards from the hotel in the shadows of the rue Lamarck. As they approached through the darkness, Lyman saw a bright pink Citroën poking like a tongue behind the showroom window right next door, and he wondered if this had induced young Koster to first try the restaurant. The entire street might have been lifted up from some American suburban town and dropped in Amiens. It had that quality of newness, like the smell of Styrofoam, the solidity and permanence of tent cloth compared with the cathedral in the distance.

  An old Wurlitzer was playing something with a mandolin, something Italian, Lyman supposed. The baritone was eager. There were lines of tables and a bar, and then a young girl with a paisley dress who showed them to their seats. Koster looked quite happy now, Lyman thought, as if he had resigned himself to the notion of this dinner and decided, finally, to make the best of it. He was so young, Lyman thought, so nonchalant about his honesty. All he talked about was Mariane.

  A tubby waiter in a cummerbund approached to take their order. “Pardon, pardon!” he said jovially. “Ready?”

  Ready for what? Lyman thought.

  “Try the osso buco,” Koster said. “It’s great. I’m having it.” He smiled at the waiter. “And a bottle of Amarone.”

  “Whatever,” Lyman said.

  The wine came and they chatted, but it was not until the waiter had brought their antipasto that Koster finally mentioned the archbishop. Lyman was poking at a piece of endive, trying to appear casual as the American rattled on about his book, about the world of intricate equations, about the labyrinth. Everyone had been so helpful, he explained, stuffing a slice of rolled salami in his mouth. Even his cousin had appeared, the one whom he had mentioned earlier, the one at the Vatican. Lyman sipped his wine, making it last. And then, like a confession, all the right words tumbled out: the Book of Thomas the Contender; the missal and the scholar Thierry.

  Or everybody’s fool, Lyman thought. Like me. The weakness of the logical mind is that the world is so illogical. Koster was being used by Scarcella and Grabowski. He was being duped. Who better to employ in such a search than someone versed in mathematics, than an architect?

  Up until now Lyman had pursued the case to France because he knew that somewhere on the line which ran from London to the labyrinth, somewhere along the way the man who had hidden in the shadow of Blackfriars Bridge would emerge into the light. Perhaps he already had. Grabowski had arrived, and Aldo Barbieri had been Scarcella’s man. Both the archbishop and the former Venerable Master. His two major suspects. Lyman took another sip of wine.

  Somewhere in the cathedral Jacques Tellier, the antique dealer, had found the Book of Thomas the Contender. With it, and with little more it seemed, he had left France for the town of Klagenfurt in southern Austria in order to sell it to Pontevecchio. The Fabiano scandal had just broken like a thunderhead in Italy. Pontevecchio was finished. The only thing that could save him now was the Gos
pel of Thomas, a document so old—and so heretical apparently—that its publication alone would cause irreparable damage to the Church.

  But Jacques Tellier was a cautious man. He knew the Book of Thomas the Contender was only valuable for its hiding place. Whoever knew that secret would be able to discover its connection to the labyrinth. That was the real prize. If you knew the answer to the labyrinth, you could find the master builder’s hiding place within. And armed with that knowledge you could use the same equation to unravel the labyrinth at Chartres, to finally find the thing for which Scarcella and Grabowski had each been searching for so long—the Gospel of Thomas.

  So Tellier had devised a rough insurance plan. He had placed a few clues to the labyrinth inside the locker at the terminal, and then handed the key to Pontevecchio. All that the banker had to do was collect the package from the terminal and call the telephone number at the bottom of the note for the final phrase in the equation. But Pontevecchio had never made it. He had gone off to London, too frightened to make the trip to France. He had gone off… and died.

  Now all that remained was the key, the key and that picnic basket waiting in the locker patiently for Captain Musel—like those time bombs waking under London streets, years after the Blitz. That was probably when Scarcella had first heard of it. If he had known earlier it was doubtful he had paid much heed or he would never have permitted Pontevecchio’s death. No, Captain Musel had probably been the messenger, wittingly or unwittingly, through the City of London Police. And with that knowledge Scarcella had sent his envoys out to search for Jacques Tellier, the only man who knew the gospel’s final hiding place and the secret of the labyrinth. But they had not found him. Or if they had, Lyman knew, he had not talked. For otherwise they never would have come for Koster at the Hôtel de la Paix.

  The waiter bounced back into view, his hands alive with steaming plates. A long thin bone wrapped in meat stared up at Lyman, the marrow like a Cyclops’s eye.

  “Go ahead,” Koster said, smiling across the table. “Dig in.”

  And then, Lyman thought, the American had come. That was the problem. “Tell me, Joseph,” he said, carefully inspecting the chunk of meat on the tip of his fork. “How did you first get this idea? The book, I mean. Was it your cousin’s influence?”

  “Didn’t I tell you? A publisher friend of mine suggested it.”

  “Oh, that’s right. What was his name again?”

  “Robinson. Nick Robinson. In fact I just talked with him on the phone the other day. Checking up on his investment, I guess.” Koster smiled. “He says he envies me, but every time I invite him to come over, he claims he’s just too busy.”

  Lyman chewed steadily. It wasn’t bad at all. “I wish I could do that,” he said. “I don’t mean writing a book.” He laughed gruffly. “I could never do that. I mean being able to take all of that time away from work.”

  “You’re not an architect. Besides, I was lucky.” He took a sip of wine. “They could have said no. I did before, you know, to Robinson.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean he offered me the book and I said no. I was busy at the time with a condominium project.”

  “Why did you change your mind?”

  Koster shrugged. “I didn’t. The project was canceled at the last moment. So I had no reason to stay.”

  “No, I suppose not. Tell me about your friend Robinson. How long have you known him?”

  “We went to college together, before I studied architecture in Switzerland. He was an amazing mathematician in his day, especially when it came to fractals. Really inspired.” Koster took another sip of wine. “You know, it’s funny,” he said. “I hadn’t seen him since my wedding when we suddenly bumped into each other at a party being thrown by Architectural Review. He hadn’t changed a bit. That’s when he asked me about doing the book. He even remembered this paper on the cathedrals that I’d done in college. I’d forgotten all about it, but not Nick. He knew it practically by heart. I was flattered. They were giving him some sort of award, but all he kept talking about was my paper. That’s Nick for you.”

  “Successful, is he?”

  “Are you kidding? He made more money trading options in a single year at college than I’ve made my entire life. Believe me, the calculation was simple. Then he bought this broken-down old publishing house which everyone but his grandfather said would ruin him.”

  “Did it?”

  “Of course not. He made another fortune. And if there’s anyone who doesn’t need more money, it’s Nick Robinson.”

  “Did you ever think it was odd that he should suddenly turn up that way, after all those years?”

  “Odd? What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just that, well, you were tired with your job. You told me your marriage was finished. You were desperate to make a change, and suddenly this old friend pops back into your life, the answer to all your prayers.”

  “If you put it that way. But don’t forget—I turned his proposition down.”

  “Yes, you did, didn’t you. Until your project was suddenly canceled.”

  “Frankly, I was lucky Nick never found another writer for the job. If he had, I never would have met Mariane, or you, or Guy, or had this chance to study the cathedrals.” He took another bite and said, “This trip has really changed me, Nigel. And I don’t just mean the book.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Do you? Well, what do you think of her? No, tell me truthfully.”

  Koster dreamed on about Mariane, breaking the thread. Lyman watched him eat between his sentences, the way he gestured, the way he exchanged his knife and fork at every mouthful.

  Perhaps it was just coincidence, Lyman thought. Yet he remembered that the first time they had met, Koster had revealed it had been Robinson who’d written to the Minister of Culture, Charles Langelier, for authorization to excavate the cathedrals of Notre Dame. A good friend, he had called him. Wasn’t Langelier the same man mentioned in the Countess de Rochambaud’s letter? Were they all good friends? Lyman frowned. Or perhaps Koster had traveled to Amiens simply of his own accord, to escape the failure of his marriage. It was so difficult to set a boundary on conspiracy once you had been betrayed. That was what drew the faces in the dark. That was what made a suspect out of chance. But the fact remained—Koster had arrived. Suddenly Scarcella and Grabowski both had access to a bright, experienced architect and gifted mathematician. Jacques Tellier may have disappeared. But here, like a godsend, was an alternative.

  Perhaps it was Grabowski who had found him first, armed with some knowledge of the gospels which he had gleaned already from Pontevecchio. Perhaps, in order not to be involved directly, the archbishop had seized upon his cousin’s interest in the Notre Dame cathedrals and was teasing him with legends, feeding him bits of information in the hope that he would gradually reveal the secret of the labyrinth.

  Or perhaps Scarcella had discovered him, by chance, as Lyman had. Perhaps Barbieri had seen Koster measuring the labyrinth, and followed him back to the Hôtel de la Paix with Lyman on that fateful evening.

  In the end it didn’t matter. By now Scarcella and Grabowski had doubtless come to some arrangement, as they had done through Pontevecchio so many years before. Lyman looked across the table. Koster was cutting at his osso buco with delicate concentration, and Lyman felt like shouting at him, shaking him awake. Everybody’s using you, he thought with vicious honesty. And then the final truth—including me.

  Lyman stabbed at his side order of spaghetti. It was cold already and he realized that they must have cooked it in the morning and used a microwave to heat it up. He began to cut it into pieces anyway, thinking as his hands moved that he had no choice now but to reconfirm his fiction. If he told Koster the truth, if he brought him inside, the American would realize that the man at the hotel had not just been an ordinary thief. And then there was Grabowski, a family member and a priest. Would Koster really help a stranger find the truth about his cousin, o
r would he simply leave France, out of loyalty, out of fear? It was too late. Lyman had no choice. The vagabond in London had failed to see Pontevecchio’s killer and now there was but one solution left. He had to draw them out, both Scarcella and Grabowski, to trip them up by using the American, to buy the truth perhaps with the only thing they both found valuable—the Gospel of Thomas. Lyman looked up from his plate. “What? What did you say?”

  “Like a detective.”

  “What detective?”

  “I mean I feel like one with this missal and the Book of Thomas the Contender. All the clues point to the labyrinth, but I just can’t seem to find the pattern.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “And another thing. You know that Chaldean Cup I mentioned, the one the missal says is hidden underneath the Chartres cathedral?”

  Lyman nodded. “What of it?”

  “I swear I’ve seen that shape before. It’s a perfect dodecahedron, a twelve-sided geometrical figure. And according to the missal, each side or pentagonal face is marked with a particular gemstone, six pairs in total, with one member of each pair of faces matched to its counterpart after a rotation of three tenths of a turn about the axis perpendicular to the two faces.”

  “Never mind,” said Lyman.

  “Maybe the countess will know. I wonder what she’s like.”

  Indeed, thought Lyman, as he took another bite. Ever since he had telephoned Monsieur Clermont a few days earlier, he had been trying vainly to determine the Countess de Rochambaud’s interest in the case. As curator of the Amiens Museum, Clermont had been the one responsible for sending her the missal, handed over to him by the Amiens police after its discovery in the locker. This in itself seemed perfectly natural. The countess was a recognized authority in the field. But Lyman found it difficult to understand why Clermont had parted with the document so soon, why he had been so eager to get rid of what was clearly a rare prize. Such magnanimous behavior deserved another look.

  Lyman finished the last of his spaghetti. It tasted of wet chalk and he washed his mouth out with a solvent portion of red wine. But did the countess work for Scarcella? Was she with the Church, or was she yet another independent player? “You’re so lucky, Joseph,” Lyman finally said, wondering if his words seemed as false and obviously duplicitous to Koster as they did to him. “It’s like a grand adventure, a treasure hunt.” He paused, forcing a smile. “I just want you to know that if there’s anything I can do, anything, just give me a shove and watch me go. Really.”