The Fifth Gospel: A Novel

by Ian Caldwell

  Opening my eyes again, I study the corkboard Ugo kept on his wall. Pinned to it is a diagram he made. It resembles a caduceus: two serpentine lines braided around each other. One is labeled GOOD SHEPHERD, the other LAMB OF GOD. Beside each loop are gospel quotations.

  Those words carve a swath of emptiness in me. The first time Jesus appears in the gospel of John, he is called “the Lamb of God.” No other gospel calls Jesus this, but the meaning is obvious. In the time of Moses, at the end of the ten plagues of Egypt, God protected the Jews from the Angel of Death by telling them to sacrifice a lamb and daub its blood on every door the angel should pass over. Now God was saving His people with a new Lamb: Jesus. Jesus saved us, spiritually, by his death. To this John adds a second metaphor: his Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd. A Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” There is a shepherd in the other gospels, a symbolic figure who finds joy in saving lost sheep, but the Good Shepherd in John is different. He will save his flock by dying. This diagram is morbid. Chilling. The Lamb and the Shepherd meet in death. One man dies so the rest may live. It seems ominous that this idea would’ve preoccupied Ugo just before he was killed. It reminds me of the e-mail he sent me. Ugo asked for help. I failed him.

  In the kitchen I hear Peter rummaging for food in the refrigerator. But I can’t find the voice to tell him no. I remember, years ago, Mona returning home from the geriatric ward after an old man had died. She was in agony; for some reason, she blamed herself. A wrong medicine. A failed intervention. But no man ever died on my wife’s watch because he begged her for help and she refused him.

  I lower myself into Ugo’s chair. Then suddenly I hear something. Peter, shouting.

  “What’s wrong?” I call out, rushing into the kitchen.

  He’s gone.

  “Peter! ” I roar. “Where are you? ”

  His head emerges beside a distant oriental screen. “Look!” he says.

  I lumber toward him, disoriented. There, behind the screen, is one of the large west-facing windows that overlooks the library courtyard below. He’s standing near it, holding one of Ugo’s pieces of suet.

  “Look at what?” I ask.

  He points to the floor. There, pecking at the suet Peter took from the refrigerator, is a small bird. A starling.

  “He just flew inside!” Peter says jubilantly.

  But he’s lying. The handle on the window is cocked at the wrong angle. He’s been opening this window himself.

  “Lock it,” I tell him sternly, feeling the nearness of something awful, narrowly averted. “Never do that again.”

  It’s thirty feet down to the stone courtyard. I’m shaking at the thought.

  “I didn’t,” Peter says crossly. And he stands on his tiptoes, raising his arm to prove it. He is inches from reaching the handle.

  Then I see it. There is shattered glass on the floor behind him. The pane behind the window handle is broken.

  “Did the bird do that?” I ask.

  But I already know the answer.

  “No,” Peter says angrily. “It was already broken.”

  The front door refused to budge. So someone entered this apartment through the window.

  I peer down again at the courtyard below. Thirty feet. I don’t even know how it could be done.

  “Stay right here,” I tell Peter. “Don’t touch anything.”

  Back in Ugo’s bedroom, I understand. Ugo didn’t leave the mess on this desk. He didn’t leave the chair pulled out.

  When I kneel, I see the pry marks on the iron safe.

  Against this safe, though, no crowbar had a prayer. It weighs as much as a man and has been bolted to the floor.

  The combination is the Bible verse in which Jesus established the papacy: first gospel, sixteenth chapter, eighteenth verse. You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Despite being battered, the mechanism is silky and the hinges make no sound. Ugo bought this safe to protect the manuscripts for his exhibit, and protect them it did.

  Everything inside is familiar. Two months ago, when he was stranded in Turkey, Ugo told me to lock up the manuscripts he didn’t need. The leftovers; the runts. But among them is one new jewel—a cheap, bonded-leather notebook that I’ve seen Ugo carry with him almost everywhere. I wonder if this is what the intruder came to find: the research diary containing Ugo’s notes.

  When I open it, a photo slips out. Seeing it, I feel my stomach clench. The man in the photo is lying on a tile floor. He appears to be dead.

  A priest. A middle-aged Roman Catholic with fine, dark hair and one limpid green eye. His nose is broken. Where his left eye should be, there is a black bulge slotted like a coin purse. The jaw beneath it is covered with blood. Pinned under his body, as if he was pushed down on top of it, is a sign written in a language I don’t understand. PRELUARE BAGAJE. Only some flicker of animation in his green eye suggests he isn’t dead, just badly hurt. On the back of the photo, someone has written:

  Be careful who you trust.

  I feel dizzy. The air hums.

  “Peter!” I shout.

  I close the photo back into the diary. From the corkboard I take the diagram Ugo made.

  “Peter, we’re leaving!”

  I shut the safe. Lock it. But the diary goes into my cassock. We won’t be back here again.

  Peter is waiting for me on the other side of the screen. “What’s wrong, Babbo?” he says, still holding the suet in his hand.

  I lift him in my arms and carry him out the door. I don’t tell him about the picture. I don’t tell him that I recognize the bloody priest.

  * * *

  AN UNFAMILIAR MAN is talking to a gendarme in the hall. He glances up at the sound of Ugo’s apartment door being locked, but we’re already slipping down another staircase. The older wings of the palace are corkscrewed with these private passages.

  “What are we doing?” Peter says.

  He’s too young to know these back ways, but he knows something’s wrong.

  “We’ll be out soon,” I say.

  The spiral staircase is narrow and unlit. In the darkness, the image of the bloodied priest returns to me. I haven’t seen his face in years. Michael Black, my father’s former assistant. Another Secretariat man.

  Peter murmurs something indistinct. I’m too lost in thought to ask him to repeat himself.

  So Ugo was not the first to be attacked. I wonder if Michael survived.

  Peter pushes impatiently at my chest.

  “What? ” I demand.

  “I said, why is that man following us?”

  I freeze. In the tight cylinder of the staircase, there are footsteps.

  CHAPTER 10

  I BEGIN DOUBLE-STEPPING, BUT the footsteps quicken. With a boy in my arms, there’s no higher gear. I feel Peter clutching my neck, forcing his face into the crook of my throat.

  Out of the murk, a shape descends. A silhouette nearly as tall as Simon. He’s wearing layman’s clothes.

  “Who are you?” I ask, backing away.

  In the dark, the man’s eyes are splinters of silver.

  “Father,” he says in a gruff voice, “what were you doing up there?”

  His face is completely unfamiliar.

  “Why are you following us?” I demand.

  “Because those are my orders.”

  I take one more step back. Another ten feet and we’ll be in public view.

  The man extends his arms so they press against the walls of the stairwell. He says, “Father Andreou?”

  In my arms, Peter’s body is tense. I don’t respond.

  The man reaches for something in his pocket. I begin to retreat. Then I see what it is: two metal laurels around a yellow-and-white Vatican flag.

  A badge.

  “I’m your security escort,
” he says.

  * * *

  “HOW LONG HAVE YOU been following us?” I say.

  “Since you left the Casa.”

  “Why aren’t you in uniform?”

  “Because those are the orders that came down from His Eminence.”

  I wonder if Lucio did this for Peter’s sake. To frighten him less.

  “Tell me your name,” I say.

  “Agent Martelli.”

  “Agent Martelli, the next time you follow us, wear your uniform.”

  He grinds his teeth. “Yes, Father.”

  “Are you the one who’s going to guard us overnight, too?”

  “Someone else will work that shift, Father.”

  “Who?”

  “I wouldn’t know his name.”

  “Tell him to wear his uniform, too.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  He waits, as if I’m delaying his own question: why were Peter and I in Ugo’s apartment? But priests don’t answer to policemen inside these walls. Peter and I turn and descend toward the light.

  * * *

  OUR ROOM AT THE Casa is a fourth-floor suite. Peter, who has never stayed in a hotel before, says, “Where’s the rest?” No kitchen, no living room, no toys. Boys in our building have told him that hotels are like heaven. But this can’t be heaven. There’s no television.

  A plain cross hangs over the narrow metal bed frame. The parquet floor, polished like a Secretariat priest’s shoes, reflects the featureless white walls. Other than a bedside table and a valet stand that seems designed for a Roman Catholic priest suit rather than any traditional robe, there’s only a radiator beneath a window. The window, though, opens onto the small inner courtyard of this oddly shaped building, and below us are earthenware flower boxes and a potted tree with fantastic stalks of sharp fronds resembling towers of green Christmas stars. The air smells of lavender.

  “Who was that man?” Peter asks, hopping onto the bed while still wearing his shoes, to test the lone pillow.

  “A policeman,” I say. “He’s going to help keep us safe.”

  There’s no longer any point avoiding it. The escort will be around us at all hours.

  “We’re safe here?” Peter asks, rifling the contents of the nightstand.

  “The gendarme station is right next door. Agent Martelli is keeping watch in the hall. And everyone here takes special care of guests. We’re completely safe.”

  He frowns at the Bible in the top drawer. It’s the Vulgate, the fourth-century translation that Roman Catholics consider the gold standard. Written in Latin, it seems intended to suit men from all nations, just as this hotel is. But Peter sighs. He knows the evangelists wrote in Greek, the first universal language. The contribution of our people is always undervalued.

  “I’m going to call Leo and ask him to bring up some food,” I say. It will give us more privacy than the dining room, and I could use the company. “What do you want?”

  “Pizza margherita from Ivo,” he says.

  “He’s not getting takeout.”

  Peter shrugs. “Then anything.”

  Leaving him to peruse the Bible he can’t read, I go to the small desk in the attached room. After phoning Leo, I brace myself. My next call is to Simon.

  “Alex?” my brother says.

  I start right in. “What happened to Michael Black?”

  “What?”

  “I found a photo in Ugo’s office. Is he still alive?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “What did they do to him?”

  “You shouldn’t have gone there, Alex. You need to stay safe.”

  “There was a warning written on the back of the photo. Why would someone have sent Ugo a warning? Because of his exhibit?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He never mentioned this to you?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t think he was robbed last night, Simon. I think all of this is connected. What happened to Michael; what happened to Ugo; what happened at the apartment. How could you not tell me Michael was attacked?”

  His silence is longer now.

  “Last night at the cantina,” I say, “when I showed you that e-mail from Ugo, you said it was nothing.”

  “Because it is nothing.”

  “Ugo was in trouble, Sy. He was scared.”

  Simon hesitates. “The reason I didn’t tell you about Michael is that I’m under oath not to talk about it. And what happened at the apartment—I spent every minute of last night thinking about it, and I don’t understand it. So please, I’m asking you to stay out of this. I don’t want to get you involved.”

  Pressure builds behind my eyes. My hand pulls at my beard. “You knew he was in trouble?”

  “Stop, Alex.”

  It’s all I can do to keep from shouting. Instead, I decide to hang up.

  An oath. He said nothing because of an oath.

  * * *

  IN ANGER, I DIAL the main number at the nunciature in Turkey. An expensive call, but I’ll keep it short.

  When the nun at the switchboard answers, I ask for Michael Black.

  “He’s on leave,” she says.

  “I’m calling from the Vatican on important business. Could you please give me his mobile number?”

  She offers it without a hitch.

  Before calling, I try to clear my mind. It’s been over a decade since I spoke to Michael, and we’re separated by a graveyard of hatchets. He turned his back on my father after the debacle of the Shroud’s radiocarbon dating. He also reported Simon for going absent without leave at work. Yet there was a time when I knew him better than any priest but my father. When I trusted him above any other man. That’s the Michael I try to think of as I dial.

  “Pronto,” comes the voice on the other line.

  “Is this Michael?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Alex Andreou.”

  The silence is so long that I fear there will be nothing after it.

  “Michael,” I say, “there’s something I need to talk to you about. In person, if possible. Where are you?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  His voice is almost exactly the way I remember it. Dry and sharp and impatient. But the flat American accent that was once so prominent has been smoothed by a decade of practice, making it easier to hear the note of defensiveness behind his words. To hear him trying to piece together why I’m calling.

  When I explain about the photo, he doesn’t respond.

  “Please,” I say. “I need to know who attacked you.”

  “None. Of. Your. Business.”

  Finally I tell him a man was killed.

  “What are you talking about?”

  It’s unexpectedly hard to talk about Ugo. I try to be concise—to say that he was a Vatican curator, that he had been working on the upcoming exhibit—but Michael must hear the emotion swelling in my voice. He waits.

  “He was,” I say, “my friend.”

  Just for an instant, Michael softens.

  “Whoever did that,” he says, “I hope to hell they catch him.” Then the gruffness returns. “But I’m not going to talk about what happened to me. You got to ask someone else about that.”

  I’m not sure if there’s an insinuation in it.

  “I already asked my brother,” I tell him. “Simon’s under oath not to talk about it.”

  Michael makes a derisive sound. There must still be bad blood between them. Or else this is the residue of something older, of the way he left things with my father.

  “Please,” I say. “I don’t care what happened before—”

  He howls. “You don’t care? I had my eye socket broken. I had to have my nose rebuilt.”

  “I mean whatever happened between you and Simon. Or my father. All I want
to know is who did this.”

  “You people are unbelievable! I might as well be talking to your father. You Greeks, always the victims. He’s the one who sent my career down in flames.”

  You people. You Greeks. I try to keep the anger out of my voice.

  “Please. Just tell me what happened.”

  He’s breathing heavily into the phone. “I can’t. I’m under oath, too.”

  Something snaps inside me. “I’ve got a five-year-old son who can’t sleep in his own bed because you took an oath?”

  Oaths. A bureaucrat’s best friend. How a desk-job bishop buries his mistakes: by swearing his priest-underlings to secrecy.

  “You know what?” I say. “Forget it. Enjoy your vacation.”

  I’m about to hang up when he shouts, “You asshole, my nuncio ran me up the pole for not being able to answer his questions. I don’t need it from you, too. If you want to know what happened, go ask the Holy Father.”

  I falter. “The Holy Father?”

  “That’s right. He’s the one who ordered it.”

  I’m caught by surprise. So that’s why Simon can’t tell me. There are oaths, and then there are oaths.

  But an uncomfortable feeling scrapes at me. John Paul would have no reason to silence something like this.

  “Michael, I—”

  Before I can speak another word, though, the line goes dead.

  * * *

  THE KNOCK COMES A moment later. Standing at the door is Leo, bearing a basket of food.

  “Who’s the stiff ?” he murmurs, stepping inside. He nods in the direction of Agent Martelli, who hovers a few feet beside the door.

  “The security detail my uncle got us.”