The Library of the Kings: A Tom Wagner Adventure

by Roberts, M. C.

  The Pope stopped and stepped closer to one section of the wall. It looked seamless, but he swept his hand, Jedi-like, over a particular point, and a display appeared on the wall. He pressed a button and a section of the wall suddenly disappeared, revealing a room filled with high shelves made of some kind of transparent material. The shelves were stacked with thousands of scrolls.

  Hellen stepped closer to the wall in a daze, and Noah could not resist the urge to take a few photos with his phone, though he knew he could never show them to anyone.

  “The documents in these rooms are perfectly safe,” the archivist said, although more to himself. “They are protected against temperature fluctuations, moisture, light, air. Anything that could possibly damage them has to stay outside.” He was still surprised to find himself playing museum guide to this motley assortment of unexpected visitors. When they moved on, the wall turned white again, and the display switched off.

  Cloutard was smiling. Tom, seeing Cloutard’s covetous look, said, “No, François, you can’t take any of it with you.”

  “Merde,” Cloutard mumbled, looking as if he’d bitten into a lemon. The archivist looked at him with disapproval. He knew this Frenchman’s face from somewhere, but he could not pinpoint where.

  “Is there an index of the documents?” Hellen asked. “Does the Vatican have an overview of what it has and what they contain?”

  “We’ve had several teams working on them for decades,” the Pope replied. “Unaware, of course, that they are examining documents from the Library of Alexandria. Each conservator only works on a single scroll at a time, and does not know its origin. We try to reveal as little as we can. The documents are dated, scanned and digitally stored. Because of their age, however, even unrolling the scrolls is an extremely time-consuming process. Only then do others begin to explore the content.”

  “But we are far from finished,” the archivist added. “So far, we have only managed to record about twelve percent of the collection. It is practically inexhaustible,” he concluded proudly.

  They had reached the end of the corridor. The archivist now swept his hand over the wall, deactivating the smart glass. This time, however, it was not a room that appeared, but a niche in the wall. Inside it stood a wooden casket about twice the size of an attaché case. The antique piece seemed to exude a strange radiation in this otherwise sterile environment. The Pope nodded to the archivist, who pressed a button on the display. The protective glass slid upward and the base on which the casket was standing glided toward them.

  The Pope and the archivist crossed themselves, and the Camerlengo followed suit a moment later. The team stood alongside, breathless with anticipation.

  “You all know the story of the Tablets of the Covenant that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai, don’t you?” the Pope asked.

  “The Ten Commandments, stored in the Ark of the Covenant?” Tom asked.

  “Someone’s watched Raiders of the Lost Ark too many times,” Hellen said drily.

  “The stone tablets are here?” Cloutard’s voice trembled.

  The Pope looked at the archivist and smiled.

  “No, they are not. They are somewhere else.”

  Tom was about to say something, but Hellen cut him off: “And no, Tom. They’re not in the Ark of the Covenant in a warehouse at Area 51.”

  Noah and Cloutard shared a smile—Tom and Hellen couldn’t resist taking an occasional swipe at one another.

  “This casket has never been opened, but it contains the third stone tablet God gave to Moses,” the Pope said.

  Apart from those of the Pope and the archivist, every eyebrow rose.

  “The . . . the third stone tablet?” Hellen shook her head in disbelief. She wondered if her father had known about this, and if that was why he had become so obsessed. Cloutard held his breath—he seemed to be calculating the market value of a third tablet.

  “Does this mean there are five more commandments that no one knows about?” Tom asked, stifling a grin.

  “No. But everyone has heard of the third stone tablet,” the Pope said. “Everyone knows it.”

  Hellen’s face paled. She looked at the pope in shock, for she had suddenly realized what the third stone tablet must be.

  “Hellen, I think you know what it is, don’t you?” the Pope said. “Tell your friends what they are about to see.”

  All eyes turned to Hellen.

  “I am fairly sure that when you say the third stone tablet, you mean the Philosopher’s Stone.”

  Cloutard’s eyes narrowed. “The Philosopher’s Stone? The one that turns everything to gold?”

  “That’s the most widespread story about it, certainly, although it isn’t strictly true,” the archivist quickly said, his face stern. “The function of the Philosopher’s Stone is more to perfect everything, but—” He stopped short and his expression darkened.

  “But . . .?” Noah pressed.

  “It is no accident that the existence of the stone has been kept secret for millennia,” the Pope said. “Because perfecting is only one side of the coin.”

  The archivist, meanwhile, had opened the lock on the wooden casket. He looked one last time at the Holy Father, who nodded. The archivist reverently lifted the lid. Surprise registered on all of their faces. The casket wasn’t empty, to be sure, but its contents were not quite what they had expected.

  34

  A suite at the Hilton Vienna Plaza, Vienna

  The American rolled from side to side, unable to sleep. His mind was churning. Over and over again, he went through the information he had gathered in the last few days. He had to get to Rome as quickly as possible. His flight left in the morning, and he would only discover the name of his Roman contact then.

  For now, though, he lay on his back and stared at the ceiling of his sparsely furnished five-star hotel room. Over the years, he had stayed at several Hilton hotels in different parts of the world. This one, however, had a special flair. The furnishings were Art Deco and reminded him of the golden age of the imperial city. Hundreds of genuine masterpieces adorned the walls throughout the hotel, and the Carrara marble floor in the lobby never failed to impress. Immersed in his thoughts, he almost missed the quiet “click” from the living area. A split second later, the American was on the alert—someone had come into his room.

  The next moment he mentally cursed himself.

  Fuck. My gun’s out there, the American thought. It had been a long time since his days as a field agent. He’d grown careless, or maybe he was just getting old. He slid out of bed and tiptoed to the door to the living area, but first arranged two pillows end to end in the bed and covered them with a sheet. A closer look would reveal them for what they were, but the American did not expect the intruder to be equipped with night vision.

  The door opened slowly and a pistol with a silencer appeared, pointing at the bed. Five shots punched through the bed, then the gunman changed his aim and fired two more. The American was holding his breath just behind the door. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion.

  If the assassin simply left now, the American would do nothing—and he secretly hoped it would go that way. Close combat was no longer his forte; he wasn’t as young as he used to be. But his hopes were disappointed when he heard the assassin’s hand groping for the light switch. The American did not hesitate. He slammed the door shut before the man could turn on the light. The door struck the assassin’s forearm and the Glock fell to the floor. The American grabbed the intruder’s arm and dragged him into the room. He swung a punch at the man’s head, but his younger opponent’s reflexes were lightning-quick. His fist missed the man’s chin. The action and reaction caused them both to lose their balance, and they crashed together through the doorway and onto the floor of the living area.

  Both men were quickly back on their feet. The assassin grabbed a heavy candlestick from the table in the living area, while the American armed himself with an unopened complimentary bottle of champagne from the ice bucket on the t
able. The younger man lunged, brandishing the candlestick like a short sword, and stabbed the older man in his left shoulder. The American cried out as an old shoulder injury, a souvenir of Operation Desert Storm, flared. He gritted his teeth against the pain.

  The candlestick came at him a second time, but this time he was ready for it. He parried with the champagne bottle, which shattered the instant it collided with the candlestick. The American had been prepared for this and had closed his eyes, but the assassin got the full charge. Shards of glass and icy champagne sprayed his face. The American moved fast. The bottleneck that the American still held in his hand had become a lethal weapon. His hand shot forward and the broken bottle plunged into the assassin’s neck. Both men knew that the fight was over—the glass had severed the assassin’s artery. The man fell to the ground, gurgling and holding the wound at his neck. The American got to his feet, took a deep breath and turned on the light, only to recoil at the sight before him. The younger man’s despair at his rapidly vanishing life was inscribed on his face. There was a plea in his eyes. The American knew the man, and even now wished that he could help him. But a few moments later the young man’s body went limp. He was dead.

  They had met not so long ago, but there was no time to think about that now. He reached for his cell phone, entered his authentication code and requested a cleanup. The fact that the Agency kept a crew in Vienna that would clean crime scenes within a few hours was both amazing and fortunate. The American took off his bloodstained clothes, stuffed them into a garbage bag and went to take a shower. After that he packed the rest of his things and left the hotel room, hanging the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the doorknob as he went. He headed for the airport. His flight was leaving in a few hours anyway.

  35

  The papal chambers at the Vatican

  “Madonna mia!”

  The archivist crossed himself. He looked in shock at the Pope, who was struggling to recover from his own surprise. The casket in which the Philosopher’s Stone had been stored for centuries contained only part of the original stone. The emerald tablet had been broken. More than half of the recess in which it had lain was empty: two thirds of the stone were gone.

  Back at the table in the Pope’s chambers, Tom was the first to speak up. “I know the stone is probably worth a fortune, and I don’t want to downplay its historical value, but what is the point of the thing? Your Holiness, you said that the whole world might be in danger,” he said.

  “The myth of the Philosopher’s Stone first appeared during the Middle Ages,” the Pope said. “But it does not tell the whole story.”

  Now Hellen spoke up: “My father used to tell me about it. It always seemed to me that the research into the Philosopher’s Stone was just make-believe and delusions.”

  “That was the intention,” said the Pope. “Alchemy was supposed to become the realm of crackpots, so that people would stop looking for the stone.”

  “I always thought the Philosopher’s Stone was a kind of recipe for manufacturing gold,” Cloutard said.

  “The stone is an emerald tablet on which the formula is written,” the Pope explained. “But as I said earlier, the stone does not make gold. It perfects things. It makes worthless things valuable. It makes the sick healthy. It turns old people young again. At its most fundamental, it represents the transformation of the lowly into the exalted, the crude into the refined. In whatever form that might take.”

  “So the danger is that the stone will make you young, rich and healthy?” Tom said, his words laced with irony.

  “I’m afraid not. The stone, like all things in this world, follows the principle of dualism. As with everything else in life, the truth of the stone also has two sides.”

  Hellen nodded. “Like my father said: The stone heals and destroys, both at the same time. It makes you both poor and rich.”

  The pope buried his face in his hands. He was clearly shaken. “There is no telling what evil people are capable of if they use the stone.”

  “If they use the stone?” Cloutard asked. “What does that mean?” The Frenchman looked at the pope, genuinely curious.

  “Exactly how the stone is used is a closely guarded secret. It is not something you need to know,” the Holy Father said reverently.

  Tom looked doubtfully at the pope. “With all due respect, Your Holiness, this is a little too much hocus-pocus for me. I managed to get my head around that thing with the Sword of Peter last year, but this? The Philosopher’s Stone that can make gold and destroy the world?”

  He looked from the Pope to his friend Noah, the most rational man he knew. The Mossad-agent-turned-IT-wizard had no time for the supernatural or the occult.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Tom,” Noah said. “I used to write off all the conspiracy junk and crazy stuff swirling around the internet as ridiculous, too—the web is full of it, and most of it is just outrageous or stupid. But some of it really is credible. A lot of sources connect the stone to the great catastrophes, diseases, storms and epidemics of history, and much more.”

  “Noah is right. The stone has been misused often in the past. It has been stolen from the Vatican several times, but has always been returned.”

  “If Ossana and company are looking for it, then there’s probably something to it,” Noah went on. “The biblical plagues and the Black Death are just some of the disasters attributed to the Philosopher’s Stone.”

  The Pope nodded his agreement.

  “There were also reports about the stone in Count Palffy’s secret papers, which were probably Ossana’s source,” Hellen said now. “Famous people throughout history have tried to decipher the formula: Sir Isaac Newton and Franz Stephan of Lorraine, the husband of Empress Maria Theresa, to name just two. But there was one who was said to have actually used the Philosopher’s Stone to attain immortality—the French writer Nicolas Flamel. He was born in 1330, although the stories connecting him to the stone and immortality didn’t appear until well after he is supposed to have died. Most people probably don’t even associate his name with a real person—at least, not since J. K. Rowling used him in the first Harry Potter book.”

  Tom was amazed. He was about to raise an objection, but the door opened and a nun came in, pushing a trolley with tea and coffee. Tom recognized Sister Lucrezia immediately.

  “Dio mio, Signor Tom! What a pleasure to see you again!” The nun embraced Tom for a moment but released him immediately when she saw the Holy Father’s reproving look. “What are you doing here? Oh, before you say anything, I must call the others. Sisters Alfonsina, Renata and Bartolomea are also here.” She bustled out again before anyone could say a word.

  Tom looked at the Pope, who explained: “After the episode in Barcelona, I wanted to express my gratitude to the sisters, to grant them a wish if I could. And I must say I was overjoyed when they all decided that they would like to serve with me here in the Vatican.” He smiled, but his face quickly grew serious again. “But let us return to our problem. Wherever the rest of the stone is, AF must not be allowed to get their hands on it.” He looked around the group, his somber gaze moving from Hellen to Noah and Cloutard, before coming to rest on Tom.

  “You have to get the missing part of the stone back. It needs to be returned here, to be stored securely. The Vatican and I will be forever in your debt.”

  “May I be allowed then to explore the library more closely?” Hellen suddenly blurted, realizing as she spoke how out of place her interjection was. Cloutard, too, seemed eager when the Pope promised to put the full support and all the resources of the Holy See at their disposal. Noah, however, looked doubtfully at Tom, and Tom confirmed his doubts.

  “We wouldn’t know where to begin,” said Tom, looking around the rest of the team. “We stumbled into this by pure chance. We have no clue where the stone could be.”

  “Maybe we can help with that.” Sister Lucrezia had just re-entered the Pope’s chambers, this time with the other sisters in tow.

  The Pope narrowed his
eyes at the nuns. “You haven’t been eavesdropping at my door again, have you?”

  Sister Lucrezia reddened a little, but quickly gathered herself. “I hope, Your Holiness, that you might forgive my moment of weakness, but there is someone who might know more about the whereabouts of the stone.”

  36

  St. Peter’s Square, Rome

  Farid had paced up and down St. Peter’s Square countless times in the past few hours. A few minutes earlier, he had spoken on the phone with Armeen. She had sounded more desperate than ever; Shamira’s condition had worsened, and the doctors gave her only a few days to live if surgery wasn’t performed as soon as possible—an operation for which they had no money. Farid’s eyes had filled with tears as he lied to his wife.

  “Don’t worry. I will have the money we need before long. Everything will be work out. Soon Shamira will be well again.”

  Armeen knew that Farid was lying, but she also knew he was doing his best, so she said nothing more. Farid’s hands were shaking when he hung up. His despair grew, and with it his rage. He had to get the money from Cloutard, whatever the cost. Farid was also anxious to know what the Welshman would ask of him in return for his help in finding Cloutard. Nothing was ever free in these circles. He hadn’t yet told Armeen about that, and he would be careful not to. Impatiently, he looked at his watch.

  “Where is that damn Frenchman,” he grumbled aloud. He looked around immediately, but he was standing far enough away from the tourist groups for anyone to have heard him. His eyes scanned the large square nervously, and then he saw the little group. He was a hundred yards away, but they were unmistakable: the man in the wheelchair, another man, a woman—and Cloutard. Now three nuns had also joined the group. He saw them stop in front of the Arco delle Campane and talk. Farid turned away to avoid Cloutard’s eye, but kept glancing back over his shoulder.