by Gregg Loomis
He was leaning on the counter that divided the room, counting his cash and inspecting the items that had been returned to him, when he caught the eye of the woman on the other side. Blond hair from a cheap bottle, she was exhibiting middle-age spread rampant. Her rump was fighting what might be a winning battle against the seams of her uniform pants. Buttons on her blouse strained against breasts of Wagnerian proportions.
"One of my cellmates, guy name of Leroy, got hurt a few hours ago. Can you tell me if he's okay?" She eyed him with the suspicion of one in a business where the customer is always wrong. Lang gave her his most engaging smile.
"He was just booked in this morning."
She moved to a point across the counter, running a hand around the edge of frizzy hair. "Y'remember the
cell number?"
Lang gave it to her and she moved to a computer, where she began to slowly click the keyboard.
"What'd you say his name was?"
"I only got his first-Leroy."
She shook her head, an effect of a lion shaking a scruffy mane. ''Ain' no Leroy nobody in that cell. Fact is,
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ain' no Leroy been booked in today." She gave him a smile, a glimpse of tobacco-yellowed teeth. "But then, the day ain' over." Lang felt a chill that had nothing to do with the room's temperature. "You sure?" She nodded, again with leonine effect. "I make mistakes, but this ain' one of ' em."
Lang knew the answer, but he had to ask. "If no such person was booked in here today, how'd he get in the same cell I was?"
She shook her head. "Ast the head jailer. I jus' work here."
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Atlanta, Georgia
Manuel's Tavern
The next evening
Lang and Francis found a booth, scarred with fraternity symbols, names, and dates clumsily carved into wood long yellowed by a half-century of human touch. Lang had not expected the food to improve in his absence. He was not disappointed. He also was not disappointed that the place was noisy, cluttered with five decades of political memorabilia, and filled with Emory grad students.
He felt he had come home.
"What's good?" he had asked a waiter in a T-shirt, soiled apron, jeans, and sneakers.
"The beer. Anything else, an' you better try McDonald's."
Same straight line, same punch line.
"I don't suppose the salmon is fresh," Francis asked.
"Father, I ain't lyin' to a priest," the young man said. "If Darwin's right, that fish been outta water long enough to grow legs." Both Lang and Francis ordered burgers, the most difficult thing on the menu to screw up.
Francis passed a plastic basket of fries, its paper liner translucent with grease. "Cuiusestdivisio, alteriusestelectio." One divides; the other selects.
Lang dumped about half on his plate, glumly noting that those on the bottom were well charred. "I should have chosen the half that weren't burned to ashes."
Francis regarded the red in the center of the burger he had ordered well done. "Neither of us come here for the food."
"I didn't come as a penance, either," Lang growled.
"No," Francis agreed, "but where else in Atlanta can we eat, drink, and try to unscramble that inscription without the waiter trying to turn the table?"
Like European establishments, a single beer would entitle the customer to remain at the table no matter how many people were waiting. Manuel Maloof, the original proprietor, had never believed in rushing his patrons through pitchers of beer, meals, or anything else.
Dinner, such as it was, was eaten with little conversation. Neither man
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wanted to be the first to mention the absence of Gurt, who had insisted on joining them here several times. Twice Lang glanced up from his meal, half expecting to see her returning from the restroom.
Finally, he shoved the plate away, half the burger remaining, and passed a copy of the Montsegur inscription to Francis. "Here are the actual words. See what you can make out of them."
Francis also had no problem leaving the rest of his meal uneaten. Gurt had apparently been at his elbow, too. He was relieved not to have to continue the charade of two old friends dining together as though nothing had changed.
He fished in a pocket, producing a pair of glasses, which he meticulously fastened around his ears. "First, tell me a little about the Emperor Julianspecifically, why he'd have an inscription carved on a wall in France."
Lang reached out to pick a fry from his plate, more to have something to do with his hands than renewed interest. "Like I said, last pagan emperor of Rome, hated the Christian religion, which had become acceptable, thought it dissed Roman culture. Before becoming emperor, he was governor of that part of Gaul."
Francis nodded, looking at Lang rather than the paper on the table before him. "Coincidence the carving was at the last stand of the Cathars?"
"Don't think so." Lang reached for another fry, thought better of it, and returned his hands to his lap. ''As you know, the Cathars were heretics, the object of, what, the Fourth Crusade?"
Francis nodded. "Thirteenth century, 1208, current events to you, but yeah. The Cathars questioned, if not denied, Christ's human birth or death, held him to be an angelic figure. They didn't particularly care where they worshiped, so a cave would have done fine, particularly one they could fortify. Innocent III, the Pope, got Simon de Montfort, father of the one in English history, to besiege the place for almost four years."
Lang leaned forward, his mind fastening on a single object. ''And the Merovingian kings?"
"My, but you are wandering far afield from ancient history tonight. Now you've jumped back to the fifth to seventh centuries. The kings of that dynasty ruled southwestern France, claimed they-were both the physical and spiritual heirs of Christ since His family fled there from what's now Palestine after the crucifixion. A couple of interesting characteristics: They were friendly to Jews, unlike any other European monarchs of that time, and believed their hair was the source of their strength."
"Like Sampson."
"Interestingly, yes. Sampson was a Nazarite, just as many people think Christ was. Jesus, the Nazarite, mistranslated to 'Jesus of Nazareth.' As for the Merovingians, unsubstantiated rumors still surface occasionally of both lateral and lineal descendants."
"Rumors the Church finds discomforting," Lang interjected. Francis's eyebrows rose as a smile crept across his face. "Food for the apostate mind. Like
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yours."
It was an old subject, one the two friends had debated often but one that served no real purpose tonight, save one.
"Let's agree that the Languedoc area of France seems to have spawned more than its share of heretics, religious wars, and legends concerning Christ."
"No argument about that."
Lang was eyeing the french fries again when the waiter picked his plate up. "Done?"
"Lang nodded. ''Yeah, thanks."
The young man surveyed the amount of food left on each plate. "Told you guys you should consider McDonald's."
"Veritasnihilveretur nisi abscondi, " Francis said.
"It's not the truth I fear, it's the tip," the waiter said.
Where else but at Manuel's?
Lang watched the retreating back of their server. "So where were we?"
"Somewhere in the turbulent history of the Languedoc."
"Oh yeah. I think the place, the main room at Montsegur, was a library, maybe a repository for early Christian writings the Cathars somehow had managed to salvage, maybe even something the survivors of Christ's family brought with them. Something Christian, anyway, since it drew Julian's attention. In addition to hating Christians, he was a prankster. He would have loved to embarrass the early Church in some way. Next, let's speculate the Cathars found this library or whatever it was, made a church out of it."
"And a fortress," Francis interrupted. "What you say makes sense. When Montsegur was besieged, the Cathars finally surrendered on the basis they wouldn't ha
ve to come down from the place for another couple of days. Perhaps time to secrete whatever they had, like the library."
"The library Hitler would have loved to possess," Lang said, signaling for a refill of the pitcher of beer. ''You know he had a passion for the supernatural or religious. Apparently, Skorzeny found something, truckloads of something."
The same waiter substituted a full pitcher for the empty one.
Francis filled his glass and stretched out into the corner of the booth, putting his feet up on the bench. "Okay, so much for the why of what you're looking for. Let's take a look at this inscription. I make it to be something like
'The Emperor Julian accuses-' "
"Accusatemis a noun, not a verb," Lang pointed out, making no effort to conceal his glee at his friend's mistake.
"Knew that-just wanted to see if you're on your toes. Problem is, we don't really know if 'we're dealing with a verb or noun. The ending's missing."
"It's in the wrong place for the verb."
"Only if we're dealing with prose."
''You think this is poetry?"
"Could be one of the seven meters of lyric verse, yes." Francis smiled.
"Perhaps you've forgotten that there are seven classic meters, or feet, of Latin
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lyric verse, anapest, or short-short-long."
"Which this isn't."
"And dactyl, or long-short-short ..." Francis looked at Lang with a mocking grin. "Surely you were aware of the structure of Latin poetry."
"Don't you guys have to take a vow of humility or something?"
Francis reached across the table to fill Lang's glass. "Okay, okay, so it probably isn't poetry." He put the pitcher down and examined the paper again.
"We've got a clear verb with ibit-someone, third person, commands."
Lang sipped from his glass. "Good bet it's the emperor. They tend to command a lat."
"Problem is, what? He commands an accusation? He could make his own."
''A synonym would be indictment. Suppose he orders the physical indictment, the writing be ... what?"
Francis adjusted his glasses as though the move would make the language intelligible. "Only other verb is sepelit, bury or entomb."
Lang was staring at his copy, beer forgotten. "Orders the indictment be entombed? Makes no sense. Let's take the easy part, rexisiudeaium, clearly 'king of the Jews.' "
Both men looked up, meeting the other's eyes. "Christ?" Lang asked.
"Wasn't that what they put on the cross, a sarcastic title given a condemned man?"
"True, but I'm not so sure it was totally sarcastic," Francis said. "In fact, why don't you take a look at that?"
"How?"
"Friend of mine, professor of Judaic studies at Emory."
Lang's glass stopped en route to his mouth. "Emory? Thought that was a Methodist school. They got Judaic studies?"
"Apparently so. Leb Greenberg and I speak on the same program occasionally. One of those ecumenical things where a Jew, a Catholic, and a Protestant speak on some of the same agendas about freedom of worship and how Americans tolerate all faiths. We had a Muslim imam, a Shiite. He quit when we wanted to add a Sunni"
So much for the feel-good of freedom of religion. "So," Lang asked, his glass resuming its journey, "what can Professor Greenberg tell us?"
Francis was contemplating his glass, clearly estimating if there was enough beer in the pitcher to fill it. "I'd like a background on this 'King of the Jews' thing from a non-Christian view. It might help us correctly translate Julian's inscription."
Still turning over the existence of a department of Judaica at a Methodist school, Lang asked, "Any reason you can't ask?"
Deciding a compromise was in order, Francis poured the pitcher's contents evenly into both glasses. "I think so. Although Leb and I get along fine, I think he'd be a lot more candid about a Jew's historical point of view with you than with me. I'm a priest; you're half heathen anyway."
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"Nicest thing you've ever said," Lang was motioning for the check,
"conceding I'm only part heathen."
"Don't let it go to your head."
Lang lost the flip of the coin for the tab, an act that had become merely ceremonial. Francis always won.
Lang suspected the priest had special help.
Outside, Francis stopped to admire Lang's new car, its black paint glistening under the streetlights. ''A Mercedes? I thought you like those little German toys, Porsches. This one even has a backseat."
Lang had not told him of the need to acquire new wheels, a car not quite so conspicuous as the destroyed Porsche, a highly visible, unique-sounding turbo cabriolet. There must have been hundreds of Mercedes just like this one in his neighborhood.
"CLK convertible." He opened the door and inserted the key. "Watch."
Pushing a button made part of the trunk flip open as the windows automatically receded into the doors. The top lurched upward and stopped.
"Pretty clever," Francis observed. "Now, what do you do to make it go all the way down?"
Lang pushed the button again. No response.
"Good question."
Both men stared at the car as though expecting it to solve the problem itself. At the price still visible on the sticker, not a totally unrealistic expectation.
"There's a MARTA station a couple of blocks away," Francis finally volunteered. ''You can't very well drive it with the top sticking straight up."
"Why do I get the feeling buying the extra warranty was a good investment?" Lang muttered. "Help me manually raise this thing in case it rains."
The top wouldn't go up, either. They left the car there, an expensive steel-and-chrome box with an open lid.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
DeKalb County, Georgia
Emory University
Two days later
Lang parked the Mercedes between an SUV with fraternity Greek letters on the rear windshield and a Toyota with a bumper sticker that proclaimed,
"Harvard: The Emory of the North." He was facing a quadrangle of leafy oaks. Two marble-sided, red-tile-roofed buildings on each side, one at each end. He checked his written directions and his watch. He had taken a circuitous route to ensure that no one had followed, but he was a few minutes early and it looked like he was in the right place.
Curious as to the existence of a Judaic studies program at a Methodist
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school, he had called up a catalog on the Internet, learning that the institution also had a Holocaust studies program. Searching further, he had pieced together an interesting history.
In the late 1950s, Emory's college had been a small and relatively obscure institution, serving basically as a minor league training ground for the university's regionally prestigious medical school. Liberal arts degrees were frequent consolation prizes given to disappointed doctor-aspirants.
A little-known professor of theology, Tom Altizer, changed that perception. He announced his theory that God was dead. Not departed, not disinterested, but dead, deceased, gone to wherever the Lord of Heaven might go.
Members of the Theology School faculty tripped over their academic gowns in a stampede to have the university's lawyers review Altizer's tenure contract.
Somehow the national media got wind of the story, slanting it to show the diversity of thought possible even at a small Southern, church-operated school.
Altizer became the most famous name associated with Emory since a man named Holiday, a nineteenth-century grad of what was to become the Dental School, went West for his tuberculosis, and teamed up with the Earp brothers at a dusty corral in Tombstone, Arizona.
Overnight, Emory became a touchstone of Southern academic liberalism. Students from other regions of the country began applying, particularly those who could afford the Ivy League schools but whose grades could not gain admittance. Some actually came to study something other than premed. Many were Jewish. Forgetting Altizer's heresy, the university added courses in w
omen's, black, Latin American, and Asian studies, embracing all diversity of thought.
As long as it was politically correct diversity of thought.
Lang had also read the professor's curriculum vitae. Son of Dutch Jews, he had spent part of his childhood in a series of Nazi death camps. After the war, he had immigrated to Israel, where he studied Hebrew history at several universities and gained a scholarship to Oxford. There he had completed his postgraduate work in Judaic-Christian thought and taught, before moving to Atlanta to be with his married daughter and a number of grandchildren. He had published several books, the titles of which were in Yiddish or Hebrew and unintelligible to Lang. Many of his articles, however, had English titles, although Lang had heard of few of the publications and assumed they were journals largely serving those who must submit to the academic imperative of publish or perish.
