The Judas Strain sf-4

by James Rollins

  “Certain enough to stake my parents’ lives on it.”

  Painter sat for a moment. He believed Gray. The prickling frustration of dealing with all the interagency squabbling washed away. If there was no mole…

  Gray’s voice grew fainter. “I can’t risk staying on the line any longer. I have to go. I’ll do my best to follow this trail, to see where it leads.”

  The line went silent for a moment. Painter thought Gray might have cut the connection, but then he returned. “Please, Director, find my folks.”

  “I will, Gray. You can be certain of that. And when I do, tell Vigor to expect a call from his niece. It will ring a few times, then hang up. That will be the signal that your parents are safe.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The phone clicked off.

  Painter leaned back.

  “Sir,” the communications officer interrupted, “we should have feed in another two minutes.”

  10:15 A.M.

  Istanbul

  Despite the need to hurry, Gray could not stop his feet from slowing as he approached the western facade of Hagia Sophia, awestruck by its size.

  Vigor noted his craned neck. “Impressive, isn’t it.”

  There was no denying it.

  The monumental Byzantine structure was considered by many to be the Eighth Wonder of the World. Seated atop a hill where once a temple to Apollo had stood, it overlooked the magnificent blue expanse of the Sea of Marmara and much of Istanbul. Its most striking feature, the massive Byzantine dome, glowed like polished copper in the morning sun, climbing twenty stories into the air. Other lower half domes buttressed it to the east and west, while additional cupolas spread out to either side like attendants to a queen, expanding the breadth of the massive structure.

  Vigor continued an ongoing history lesson about the place and pointed to the giant archways ahead that led into Hagia Sophia. “The Imperial Doors. It was through those doors that in 537, Emperor Justinian dedicated the church and declared, ‘Oh, Solomon I have surpassed thee.’ And it was through those same doors, during the fourteen-hundreds, that Sultan Mehmed, the conquering Ottoman Turk who had sacked Constantinople, poured soil over his head in a humble act before entering the church. He was so impressed that rather than destroying Hagia Sophia, he converted it into a mosque.”

  The monsignor waved an arm to encompass the four towering minarets that now rose at each corner of the grounds.

  “And now it’s a museum,” Gray said.

  “As of 1935,™ Vigor confirmed, and pointed to the scaffolding on the south side of the structure. “Restoration work has been almost continuous since that date. And not just on the outside. When Sultan Mehmed converted the church to a mosque, he plastered over all the Christian mosaics, as it is against Islamic law to depict human figures. But over the past decades, there’s been a slow and meticulous attempt to restore those priceless Byzantine mosaic murals. At the same time, there’s been an equal desire to preserve the ancient Islamic art from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, impressive sweeps of calligraphy and decorated pulpits. To balance such a project, the restoration work at Hagia Sophia required bringing in experts from all fields of architecture and art. Including consulting the Vatican.”

  Vigor led the way across the open plaza toward the arched entrance, following the flow of tourists. “As such, I thought that I might bring someone familiar with restoration, someone who has been consulted by Hagia Sophia’s curators in the past.”

  Gray remembered Vigor mentioning that he had sent someone ahead to begin the hunt for the golden needle in a massive Byzantine haystack.

  As they reached the doors, Gray noted a bearded giant of a man inside the doorway, blocking the flow of tourists. He stood with his fists on his hips, glowering at everyone. But when he spotted Vigor, he raised an arm in greeting.

  Vigor motioned him back into the depths of the church.

  Gray followed, anxious to get off the streets, unsure if any of the Guild trackers had reached their location. Until his parents were safe, he didn’t want to rankle Nasser in any way, to make the man question Seichan’s earlier subterfuge.

  Passing through the door, Gray glanced back toward the open plaza. He saw no sign of Seichan or Kowalski. Their two parties had separated as soon as they left the hotel. Seichan had purchased a prepaid throwaway cell phone. Gray had memorized her number. It was the only way of contacting her.

  “Commander Gray Pierce,” Vigor introduced, “this is my dear friend Balthazar Pinosso, dean of the art history department at the Gregorian University.”

  Gray’s hand was swallowed up by Balthazar’s grip. He stood just shy of seven feet.

  Vigor continued, “Balthazar was the one who first discovered Seichan’s message in the Tower of Winds and helped me with the angelic translations. He’s also good friends with the museum’s curator here.”

  “Lot of good that’ll do,” Balthazar groused in a deep baritone, and led the way into the main church. He waved an arm ahead. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.”

  The man stepped aside and the view opened.

  Gray gaped at the sight. Vigor noted his reaction and patted him on the shoulder.

  A long barreled vault stretched a vast distance ahead, not unlike entering a train station. Overhead, a series of arches and cupolas climbed to the central main dome. A second-floor colonnade framed both sides. But the most impressive sight was not anything constructed of stone — it was simply the play of light in the space. Windows pierced walls and lined the bottoms of domes, allowing sunlight to reflect off emerald-and-white marble, off gold-encrusted mosaics. The sheer volume of empty space, unsupported by interior pillars, seemed impossible.

  In awed silence Gray followed the two men down the long nave.

  Reaching the heart of the church, Gray stared up at the scalloped vault of the main dome, twenty stories over his head. Its ribbed surface was decorated with rippling gold-and-purple calligraphy. Around its bottom circumference, forty arched windows allowed in morning sunlight, creating an appearance that the dome was hovering over one’s head.

  “It’s like it’s floating up there,” Gray mumbled.

  Balthazar joined him. “An architectural optical illusion,” the art historian explained, and pointed up. “See those ribs along the underside of the roof, like the braces on an umbrella? They distribute the weight around the windows down to the flared pendentives seated atop massive foundation piers. Also the roof itself is lighter than it appears, constructed of hollow bricks kilned in Rhodes from the city’s porous clay. It’s a masterpiece of illusion. Stone, light, and air.”

  Vigor nodded. “Even Marco Polo was awed, to quote the great man, by ‘the apparent weightlessness of the dome, and the bewildering abundance of direct and indirect lighting effects.’”

  Gray understood. It was also strange to know that where he now stood, Marco Polo had also stood, the two men joined across the ages by their mutual wonder at and respect for the ancient builders.

  The only blemish to the effect was the wall of black scaffolding along one side that climbed from the marble floor to the top of the dome.

  It helped ground Gray in his situation. He checked his watch. Nasser would be arriving before nightfall. They had less than a day to solve this riddle.

  If his plan was going to work…

  But where to start?

  Vigor was asking the same of his friend. “Balthazar, were you able to question the museum staff? Has anyone seen anything like angelic script in here?”

  The man rubbed his beard and sighed. “I interviewed the curator, talked to his staff. The curator knows Hagia Sophia from its underground crypts to the tip of its highest dome. He insists nothing like angelic script can be found anywhere. He expressed one thought, though…something you’re not going to like to hear.”

  “What?” Vigor asked.

  “Remember how much of Hagia Sophia was plastered over from when the church was converted into a mosque. What we may be loo
king for could be hidden under inches of old plaster. Or it could have been inscribed on plaster that has since been cleaned away.” Balthazar shrugged. “So there’s a very real possibility that what we seek may be gone.”

  Gray refused to believe it. While Vigor and Balthazar discussed such matters in more detail, he walked away. He needed to think. He checked his watch again, a reflexive gesture. Nervous and worried. He didn’t even really see the time. He dropped his arm and crossed to the scaffolding. He should never have left his parents alone. His mother’s few words over the phone haunted him.

  I’m sorry. Your father. I needed his pills.

  Something must have happened. Gray had refused to take into account his father’s illness, his need for medication. Was his neglect a purposeful blindness, a refusal to accept his father’s true condition? Either way, his recklessness now threatened his parents’ lives.

  Gray sank down, cross-legged, and stared up toward the dome. He fought to clear his mind. His worries, fears, and doubts would not serve him. Or them. Taking a deep steadying breath, he exhaled slowly and let the drone of the tourists fade into the background.

  He pictured the church as it must have looked back in the sixteen-hundreds. In his mind, he repainted the walls again, whitewashing over the golden mosaics with plaster. He did so with concentrated deliberation. A meditative exercise. If only in his head, the old mosque came alive again. He heard the muezzin calling from the minarets over the ancient city. He pictured the supplicants knelt atop rugs, rising and falling, in faithful prayer.

  In such a place, where would the next key be hidden? Where in all this vast space, with its countless anterooms, galleries, and side chapels?

  As he sat, Gray spun his view of the church behind his eyes, like a three-dimensional computer model, studying it from all angles. As he did so, his finger absently traced in the plaster dust on the floor. He finally became aware of what he was drawing: the glyph of angelic script, the one inscribed on the back of Marco’s golden passport.

  He stared down at the single letter while still spinning the architectural structure of Hagia Sophia around in his head.

  “It was already a mosque,” he mumbled.

  He tapped the four circles, what Vigor called diacritical marks.

  Four circles, four minarets.

  What if the symbol was more than the first key to solving the riddle of the coded map? What if it was meant also to be a clue leading to the second key? Didn’t Seichan say something about that? How the one key would lead to the next?

  In his mind’s eye, he superimposed a schematic of Hagia Sophia over the symbol, positioning the minarets so it overlaid the diacritical marks. Four circles, four minarets. What if the symbol was supposed to also represent Hagia Sophia? A crude map with the minarets as anchors.

  If so, then where to begin looking?

  In the dust, Gray added an additional dotted line.

  “X marks the spot,” he mumbled.

  11:02 A.M.

  Vigor noted Gray crawling on his hands and knees near the center of the nave, sweeping the marble floor with his hands.

  Balthazar noted the man’s actions with a raised eyebrow.

  The two men crossed over to Gray’s side.

  “What are you doing?” Balthazar said. “If you’re planning on checking the entire floor by hand, you’ll be here for weeks.”

  Gray sat back, stared up at the dome as if gauging his position, then continued his sweep of the floor, working along the edge of the scaffolding. “It has to be here somewhere.”

  “What?” Vigor asked.

  Gray pointed back to where he had originally been seated. Vigor strode over and stared down at the smudged drawing in the dust. His brow crinkled.

  Gray spoke. “It’s a rudimentary map of Hagia, indicating where we should be searching for the next clue.”

  Vigor sensed the truth of Gray’s assessment, surprised yet again at the man’s unique ability to cogitate and analyze. It slightly frightened him.

  Gray continued to crawl, slowly working a specific section of the floor, gaining a few strange glances from some passing tourists.

  Balthazar tracked at his heels. “You think someone carved a bit of angelic script into the marble.”

  Gray stopped suddenly, his shoulder brushing the black scaffolding. His fingers returned to a spot he had just swept over. He leaned down and blew on the tile.

  “Not angelic script,” Gray said, and reached to his shirt collar.

  Vigor joined him. Both he and Balthazar knelt around the tile that intrigued Gray. Reaching out, Vigor felt the marble with his fingertips.

  Faintly inscribed in the tile, worn by ages and the erosion of treading feet, was the barest outline of a cross.

  Gray pulled out the silver crucifix from around his neck. Friar Agreer’s cross. He tested its dimensions and shape against the inscription on the tile. A perfect fit.

  “You found it,” Vigor said.

  Balthazar already had a small rubber mallet in hand, removed from his belt. He tapped at the tile. Gray’s brow pinched at the man’s deliberate work.

  Vigor explained, “It was how we found the hollow spot beneath the inscribed tile in the Tower of Winds. Percussion. Listening for any hidden cavity.”

  Balthazar worked across the tile, meticulous, but the furrows across his forehead deepened. “Nothing,” he finally mumbled.

  “Are you sure?” Vigor said. “It has to be here.”

  “No,” Gray said. He sprawled out on his back, staring up. “What’s Jesus staring at?”

  Vigor glanced to the vague figure of Christ in silver on the crucifix, then back up.

  “He’s staring at the dome,” Gray answered. “The same dome that transfixed Marco Polo. A dome lightened in weight through the use of hollow bricks. If you wanted to hide something that would last the ages…”

  Vigor craned, mouth wide. “Of course. But which brick?”

  Balthazar leaped to his feet. “I have an idea.” He ran off toward the rear of the building, shoving through a German tour group.

  Vigor offered a hand and helped Gray back to his feet. Gray collected the cross and hung it back around his neck.

  “Brilliant, Gray.”

  “We haven’t found the second golden paitzu yet.”

  Vigor knew Gray had pulled Seichan aside for a private few words before they separated. “What’s the urgency, Gray? With Nasser coming in a few hours, why even bother finding the second key?”

  “Because I want Nasser happy,” Gray said. Vigor read the worry in the young man’s eyes for his parents. “And to prove our use to him. We need him to keep us alive.”

  Vigor sensed the man was leaving some bit of the plot unspoken. Before he could question Gray further, Balthazar reappeared and hurried back to them. Breathless, he held out a small tool. “With all the construction going on, I figured someone had to have a laser pointer or level. Handy when working across such vast spaces.”

  Vigor’s colleague knelt down and positioned the laser device atop the inscribed cross and switched it on. Nothing seemed to happen.

  Balthazar picked up a pinch of plaster dust and cast it above the device. A scintillation of ruby brilliance lit up the dust. “It’s working.” He craned up. “Someone will have to climb up the scaffolding to find which brick is lit up by the pointer.”

  Gray nodded. “I’ll do it.”

  Balthazar glanced around guiltily — then handed him a chisel and hammer. “I got these, too.” He waved for Gray to hide the tools away. “You’ll have to be discreet. No one’s allowed up there without a special artisan’s pass issued by the Turkish government. I got permission from the curator to allow one of us up there. To take some photographs. Briefly. But the guard”—he nodded to the armed sentinel by the scaffolding’s ladder—“in this day of terrorist attacks, they’ve been trained to shoot and ask questions later. If they see you take a chisel to the roof…” His voice trailed off.

  “Beyond getting shot,” Vig
or warned, “we can’t be discovered in any regard. If we’re kicked out…if the police are summoned…”

  Vigor read the understanding in Gray’s eyes.

  Nasser would know.

  “And it’s not just our lives in jeopardy,” Vigor acknowledged.

  Gray’s parents would suffer, too.

  Sighing deeply, Gray lowered his voice, “Then we’ll need a distraction.”

  11:48 A.M.

  Halfway up the scaffolding, Gray kept his head ducked from the low bracings as he climbed. Reaching a landing of planks, he glanced below and spotted Balthazar. The tall man’s features were barely discernible as he stood with the museum curator. Gray leaned out to spot the scaffolding’s guard. The uniformed man had stepped away from his station to get a clear view of Gray’s progress.

  Under everyone’s watchful gaze, Gray continued onward. He reached the ring of windows along the bottom edge of the dome. Sunlight blazed through the arched glass. Gray caught a glimpse of the Sea of Marmara through one of them. Then he was above the windows. The way grew more shadowy. After another two minutes of scaling, he finally reached the top of the scaffolding and could touch the domed roof. In fact, he had to crouch to keep from hitting his head.

  All around, vast scripts of Islamic calligraphy cascaded down the scalloped walls. Immediately overhead, the dome’s central vertex cupped an ornate spiral of gold Arabic lettering, painted against a rich purple backdrop.

  Gray searched around the edge of the vertex. Small dust motes flickered with fire to the left, lit from below by the laser pointer. He spotted his target — a glowing ruby dot sighted on a deep purple section of plaster. Good. The color was dark enough that any hole in it should be hard to spot.

  At least he hoped so.

  Reaching the targeted brick required continuing on hands and knees as the domed roof arched downward.

  Once there, Gray crouched up and felt across the plaster. There was no carving. No angelic script. No other marking.

  He frowned. What if he was wrong?

  Unfortunately, there was only one way to find out. Gray waved his hand across the path of the laser, lighting up his hand.