Silver ota-1

by Steven Savile

  “It’s suitably vague that it could mean just about any Holy Father in any city of two rivers. There’s nothing to date it, nothing to make it even remotely insightful.” Abandonato breathed in slowly, then looked around the small garden as though he was about to whisper some heresy of his own. “However, in 1999 John Paul II intended a pilgrimage to Ur, birthplace of Abraham, to meet Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. Iraq is a land between two great rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. That pilgrimage was cancelled. Subsequent pilgrimages in 2000, 2001, and 2003 were also cancelled despite His Holiness’ desire to visit Ur. I am not saying they were cancelled in response to Nostradamus’ quatrain, but they were cancelled just the same. The city of the two rivers could just as easily be Paris, fed by the Seine and Marne. Should we cancel the Pontiff’s visit to Paris? Or is that a step too far? Are we jumping at shadows?

  “There are similarities, of course. Both so-called prophecies refer to the rose. But is that rose a way of saying springtime and grounding the prophecy with the time of blooming? Or could it be a person? Some have tried to say the rose was Princess Diana, England’s rose. It is a possible interpretation, just as Hitler was a possible interpretation of Hister and ‘from the roof evil ruin will fall upon the great man’ could relate to the Kennedy assassination. His only outright and correct use of a name was in the quatrain relating to Franco.

  “And for all the similarities there are glaring and irreconcilable differences. The third secret of Fatima talks of a city almost destroyed while Nostradamus sounds like a pleasant papal visit in spring. You tell me, because your interpretation is every bit as valid as mine, Noah. Are you seeing the problem with accepting prophecies here?”

  “I think I’m getting the picture,” Noah said. In truth he was. He might not have understood even half of what Abandonato had told him, but he didn’t need to. The priest was doing a damned good job of convincing him that fate was fickle, unpredictable, and basically everyone and his aunt had predicted the end of the world a dozen times. But that didn’t change the fact that four times the Vatican had cancelled the Pope’s pilgrimage to Iraq due to fears for his safety. Fears almost certainly put there by scaremongers pointing at the Nostradamus prophecies and asking why tempt fate? Of course this was different; the secret and the quatrain had been used not to predict an attack on the Pope but to threaten one.

  Noah was about to explain when a third man bustled into the small garden. He shuffled with his head down and hands clasped. Hi feet brushed over the stones. As he came closer Noah realized the young priest was holding a printout. “The results of the search you requested, Monsignore,” he held the paper out for Abandonato.

  “That will be all, thank you,” the priest said, taking the sheet and reading through the list of codices Nicholas Simmonds had signed off on during his time in the library. The young librarian shuffled back out of the garden. There were eighty-seven texts listed by name. Abandonato pursed his lips as he read through them quickly. Reaching the bottom of the page, he shook his head. “As I said, he was working on the Pre-Lateran and Lateran Hebrew codices. There’s nothing here I wouldn’t expect him to have handled.” He turned the sheet over and continued to skim the list of titles. Midway down something caught his eye.

  “Well now, perhaps this is something. You mentioned the Sicarii zealots, yes? According to this, Nicholas worked with one specific text that would be of interest for several reasons, The Testimony of Menahem ben Jair. If it is the text I am thinking of, it was in a dreadful condition when it was brought in a few years ago. I would need to check the precise date, but I believe the bequest came to us after it was discovered in an earthquake in the Masada region of the Dead Sea. I would need to check with my colleagues to be sure. I do know that our restoration team have been working on reassembling the original papyrus for quite some time.”

  “2004,” Noah said, as another piece of the puzzle slotted softly into place. Simmonds had been sent in to look for this book. Noah was certain of it. It made stone cold sense. Not only that, it was the only thing that made sense. The testimony had been recovered from the site during the Masada dig. Now Mabus wanted it back. What could it possibly say to make it worth all of these lives? “You said there were several reasons people might be interested in this testimony?”

  “Indeed. Ordinarily I would say with something like this the main interest has to be the historical nature of the find. Any document from the time helps provide us with a picture of the world as it was. Let’s not forget that even the most highly educated of men were not in the habit of recording their thoughts in writing. Thoughts were for thinking, for speaking, but not for writing down. Wisdom was passed on from father to son, in parables and stories. Anything that adds to our understanding of the time is precious. But, discoveries like this? Something like this doesn’t just cast a little light on the final days of the assassins’ cult, though that in itself is a priceless gift to our generation. No, this is far more because it was written by Menahem himself. And why was Menahem important?” Abandonato asked rhetorically. “I’ll tell you, Menahem ben Jair was important because not only was he the leader of the Sicarii zealots, he was also the grandson of Judas Iscariot. Tell me, who wouldn’t want to know the final mortal thoughts of this man? His secrets? Everything he held dear and wanted to set down for time immemorial? I know I would.”

  Noah thought about it as he followed the Monsignor back through the labyrinth of illuminated corridors toward a door that led out to Rome proper.

  “So, what do you think the testimony says?” Noah asked.

  Abandonato shook his head. “Truthfully, I do not know. I would not expect much wisdom-the man was a killer, his band of zealots little better than terrorists, though they would have called themselves freedom fighters, like the IRA, no?”

  Noah could see the comparison. The Sicarii wanting Judaea for Jews wasn’t dissimilar to the IRA wanting to reclaim Northern Ireland for the Irish, but sectarian attacks and bombs at Bishopsgate and Warrington and Canary Wharf, where children and two shopkeepers, ordinary decent people, died, made it difficult for Noah to think of them as freedom fighters.

  He made a noncommittal gesture.

  “Perhaps Menahem’s testimony was nothing more than a list of his beliefs? A manifesto of sorts so that anyone who found it could pick up his cause and fight for an unoccupied Judaea?”

  As a guess, it made sense, but Noah wasn’t entirely sure he believed the priest when he said he hadn’t read it. Skepticism was natural, but at some point it shifted into paranoia, surely?

  “So it wouldn’t be like finding a new gospel, then?”

  “In one sense, possibly. The word gospel is derived from the Greek euaggelion. It means quite literally ‘good news.’ In the sense you mean, though, the gospels include the four canonical books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as well as some extra-biblical gospels written in the second century. These gospels are the ‘good news’ written about Jesus the Anointed and organized as connected narratives that focus upon the kerygma, that which is proclaimed, and the Sitz im Leben, the situation in life. What motivated the gospel writer to put down his words? The intentions of the author arefundamentally important in the gospels,” Abandonato explained.

  Noah vaguely remembered the uproar surrounding the Gospel of Judas when it was recovered. The Judas Iscariot of his own gospel was both the betrayer of the Bible the world knew and simultaneously the hero of his own life. It was that aspect of the story that captured the imagination of the world-from being the most infamous traitor of all time Judas was suddenly presented as the most loyal and faithful companion, the only one who could be trusted to make the great sacrifice.

  It was the same with all of the so-called Gnostic gospels. They seemed to paint everything we knew in a different light. In Thomas, God didn’t need great houses of worship, since Thomas promised that God was beneath every stone and in every split piece of wood. God was in the details. God was in the stuff of life. That was the nature of His creation, and it w
as there in the middle of it, beneath the heavens, that He should be worshipped, not in houses of brick and stone.

  It was as Abandonato had said, subtle changes in translation of an existing text, or a subtle shift in the message of a “new” one could send tremors out through the world.

  Did the Church really want a sympathetic Judas?

  Wasn’t it easier for him to be vilified as the betrayer, motivated by greed and jealousy and all of these most human of sins?

  Did the martyring of Iscariot change the importance of the resurrection and the other miracles central to what had become the day to day faith of Christianity? Noah wasn’t a theologian, but it seemed to him that it did. It was a subtle shift, but it was a shift just the same. And then the natural extension of that line of questioning became: was that enough of a change for the Vatican to bury the secret?

  Noah wanted to think it was, but surely, then, Abandonato wouldn’t have mentioned the Testimony of Menahem ben Jair at all? He didn’t have to say Nick Simmonds had had anything to do with the document. After all, it was easier to hide something when no one knew it existed. Abandonato had broached the subject himself, suggesting that some people believed the third secret of Fatima had been doctored before its publication. Why wouldn’t the Church do something like that? And if it would do that, why wouldn’t it hide any documentary evidence that might prove dangerous to its fundamental belief systems?

  Noah’s head was spinning with it all.

  The only thing he knew for sure was that Nick Simmonds had been on the dig at Masada, where the Testimony had been unearthed, and he had followed it here to the Vatican two years later. That went beyond circumstance into still-hot smoking-gun territory. The rest was irrelevant.

  “Here we are,” Abandonato said. “If there is anything else I can do, you only have to ask.”

  “I’d really like to know what is in that testimony,” he said, knowing he was asking the impossible of the priest.

  ne of the Swiss Guard stood watch over the exit. He was dressed in his regular-duty uniform of simple blue with a flat white collar, knee-length black socks and a brown leather belt. He wore a black beret tilted slightly to the right. The simple uniform marked him as a newer recruit to the Guard. The blue was a lot less gaudy than the red, yellow, orange and blue motley of the Guard’s official dress. Of course, had he been stationed on the other side of the door, that is exactly what he would have been wearing, along with a ceremonial sword and halberd like something stepped out of Renaissance Rome. The guard’s face was impassive to the point of being sorrowful.

  Abandonato didn’t answer him. Instead he opened the door.

  The guard nodded slightly to the priest and stepped aside to allow Noah to leave.

  Noah wasn’t quite sure what he was seeing at first, but instinct quickly took over.

  The door opened onto the piazza, a little way beyond the two dry fountains. Noah had expected to slip out of the same small side door he had entered the Vatican through. This door led out into the grand piazza of San Pietro. He was aware of the long snake of tourists lining up to go into the basilica, but that wasn’t what he was looking at.

  Noah stared, fixated at a man as he lurched through the line of shadow The Witness cast across the center of the piazza. The man wore a long flapping raincoat completely out of keeping with the season. The coat was open and his body seemed to bulge disproportionately beneath it. The man clutched something in his right hand. Noah couldn’t see what it was. Something about the way the man was moving set all sorts of alarm bells ringing inside Noah’s head. He held his hand out in front of him like whatever he was holding was contagious. Noah saw the C4 strapped to his body before he saw the fear in his face. The packages of explosives were strapped around his belly with thick bands of gaffer tape. Noah couldn’t see the wires from where he was, but he knew that the device in his hand had to be a detonator. He didn’t hesitate. He couldn’t afford to wait for the Swiss Guard to react, and he had no idea whether they had a means to take the suicide bomber out anyway.

  He stepped out into the piazza. The sun streamed down, suddenly, horribly bright after the darkness of the Vatican’s endless corridors.

  “On your knees! Get down now!” Noah yelled, drawing his Heckler and Koch USP 9mm and pointing it straight at the bomber’s chest. He tensed, ready to pull the trigger. He couldn’t allow himself to think, not with hundreds of people in the piazza queuing up to file into St. Peter’s. Judging by his misshapen body, there was enough C4 strapped to the bomber to make a hell of a mess. One life for many; it wasn’t even a question.

  The man stumbled forward another step.

  And then another.

  People in the square were starting to look, drawn by the sound of Noah’s voice. Even if they didn’t understand his words, their delivery cut across the chatter and stopped them dead in their tracks.

  “You don’t have to do this!” Noah shouted at him, moving a step closer to meeting the bomber halfway. “Just put down the detonator, get down on your knees and put your hands behead your head!”

  He locked eyes with the man, willing him to open his hand and drop the detonator. But the man didn’t. He took another step closer to Noah. Noah could see the red of the button poking out from his clenched fist.

  “This doesn’t have to end this way!”

  The man shook his head violently. Noah could see the strain in every inch of his body. He was wired. Sweat peppered every inch of his skin, streaming down his face. He looked down at his hand and started to raise it.

  Noah dropped him. Three shots punched a neat triangle into the area around the bomber’s heart. The man jerked and spasmed, his body thrown into a violent pirouette. He twisted and hit the ground hard, face first. Blood spread around his head where his nose had opened up from the sickening impact. Noah walked toward the bomber, his H amp;K still aimed directly at him. He wasn’t taking any chances, not with the detonator still clasped in the man’s hand. All it needed was the slightest twitch and the whole place would go up.

  He didn’t hear the screaming. He didn’t hear the shouts of the Swiss Guard yelling for him to put the weapon down.

  He knelt beside the would-be bomber and pulled open his coat. There were wires sticking up from the blocks of C4, but they didn’t go anywhere. They were cut. The C4 wasn’t connected to the detonator in his hand. There was no way the bomb could have gone off. Noah tried to pry the detonator out of the man’s fist but couldn’t. It had been glued around the detonator. He couldn’t have dropped it if he had wanted to.

  Everything about this stank.

  He had killed an innocent man.

  Noah couldn’t afford to think about it.

  Even as he knelt down to rifle the dead man’s pockets, looking for a wallet or some form of identification, he knew he was missing something. Something important. Why did he keep walking? All he had to do was kneel down. He couldn’t detonate the C4 strapped to his body, so why did he carry on walking? There was only one reason for that: someone made him. Noah scanned the piazza. There were literally thousands of people, and they were all looking his way. One of them had scared this man so much he had carried on walking even though he knew the next step would be the death of him. Which meant it had to be more than fear for himself that kept him moving. Noah scanned the faces closest to him as though he might be able to pick the monster out of the crowd. Real life wasn’t like that. As long as the real terrorist in the square did nothing to reveal himself he could have been any Tom, Dick or Harriet looking at him.

  “Close the square off!” he barked over his shoulder. He twisted to see the guard. The man stood rooted to the spot in shock. “Snap out of it! I need you to close off the damned square. The man who poisoned the city’s here!”

  “Where-” the guard started to ask when Noah cut him off.

  “Move!”

  The Guard snapped to attention and stepped back through the door. He picked the radio up from the table and called in what had just happened.


  No one seemed able to believe what they had just witnessed. The bloodshed had shattered the sanctity of the place. Two more of the Swiss Guard had left their station and were running across the square toward them. He saw otherso ming, gesticulating that the piazza should be closed off. Behind him, Abandonato was rooted to the spot. A look of abject horror twisted his face. This was not in his philosophy. This kind of madness made no sense to the holy man. It was, however, the world in which Noah lived.

  Noah used the frozen moment of shock to get things done.

  He found a wallet and went through it quickly. There was no driver’s license, no credit cards, no store cards or Blockbuster cards, nothing that might identify the man. The only thing in the wallet was a single piece of folded paper. He teased it out and opened it up. It had two short lines written on it: Wehave tested your faith. Today we break it.

  He stood up and looked around the square again, slowly, his eyes moving from face to face. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he hoped to hell that he’d recognize it when he saw it. Horror? Fear? Shock? He chewed on his bottom lip. He had three thousand, four thousand possible suspects, and they were all just milling around like little lost sheep.

  Then, halfway across the square, he saw a solitary figure leaning against The Witness. Their eyes met for half a second and, smiling, the man saluted him. The gesture was laced with irony so thick it smacked of loathing. The man, dressed simply in jeans, plain white sneakers and a gray tee-shirt and blue hoodie was utterly unremarkable with his close-cropped, dark hair and five o’clock shadow. He had wanted Noah to see him. He pushed away from the obelisk. He was well built, muscular. The gray material of the tee-shirt strained across his pecs and biceps. Possibly ex-military, Noah thought, watching the way he moved. The notion was only reinforced by that mocking salute. He turned and started to walk toward the thickest part of the crowd.