The Thirteenth Apostle

by Michel Benoît

  – I realized that each of them is of the same length, exactly twenty-four characters. So my first conclusion was: this is a numerical code, one based on the symbolism of numbers – a very widespread hobby horse in Antiquity and at the start of the Middle Ages.”

  “A numerical code? What’s that?”

  “You know that twelve plus twelve is twenty-four?”

  Leeland gave a low whistle.

  “I bow before your genius: you spent a whole day to end up

  with that result!”

  “No jokes. Just listen. The numerical basis of this code is the figure 12, which in the Bible symbolizes the perfection of the chosen people: twelve sons of Abraham, twelve tribes of Israel, twelve apostles. If twelve represents perfection, two times twelve means that perfection raised to the absolute. For instance, in the Apocalypse, God in majesty appears surrounded by four-and-twenty elders, two times twelve. Each line of the inscription contains two times twelve characters: so each line is absolutely perfect. But two letters are missing for regular lines of twenty-four letters to be obtained: so as to obtain this result, they added a letter alpha at the beginning and a letter omega at the end. This way, they killed two birds with one stone, since they also introduced a transparent allusion to the Apocalypse of St John: ‘I am alpha and omega, the beginning and the end’. By its code, the text establishes a new, immutable world. Do you follow me?”

  “So far, so good.”

  “Now if two times twelve represents absolute perfection, the square of this perfection, i.e. twenty-four times twenty-four, is eternal perfection: in the Apocalypse, the ramparts of the Heavenly Jerusalem – the eternal city – measure one hundred and forty-four cubits, which is twelve squared. So that it can represent eternal perfection in accordance with this particular code, the Creed would need to be set out in twenty-four lines, each of then consisting of twenty-four characters: a perfect square. Okay?”

  “But there are only twenty-two lines!”

  “Exactly: there are two lines missing to form a perfect square. Now, it so happens that the text adopted at the Council of Nicaea contains twelve professions of faith. A very ancient legend relates that on the evening of the last supper in the upper room, each of the twelve disciples wrote down one of these professions of faith. This was a naive way of guaranteeing the apostolic origin of the Creed. Twelve apostles, twelve professions of faith, in twelve phrases each of them spread over two lines of twenty-four characters: in the rigorous language of a numerical code, that should have produced a perfect square, twenty-four lines of twenty-four characters. And as you see, there are only twenty-two lines: the square isn’t perfect – there is an apostle missing!”

  “What are you driving at?”

  “When they arrived in the upper room, on the evening of the last supper, there were twelve of them with Jesus – plus the prestigious host, the beloved disciple: thirteen men to bear witness. Halfway through supper, Judas left to go and make preparations for his Master’s arrest: twelve men remained. But one of the twelve was the one who would subsequently be fiercely eliminated from all the texts, and from men’s memories. This one could not be counted as one of the apostles, of those who wished to found the Church on their testimony. He had to be got rid of at any price, so that he could never be considered one of the Twelve. Dividing the text into twenty-four lines would have meant admitting that this person too had, that evening, written one of the twelve professions of faith in the Creed. So it would have meant authenticating his testimony, on a level with that of the other apostles. The missing double line, Rembert, is the incised place of the man who lay next to his Master on the evening of Thursday 6th April 30 AD, but who was rejected from the group of the Twelve when the Church was founded. It is the tacit admission that there was indeed, at Jesus’s sides, a thirteenth apostle!”

  Nil opened his folder and drew out the photocopy of the Coptic manuscript, which he handed to Leeland.

  “Here is my translation of the first phrase: The rule of faith of the twelve apostles contains the seed of its destruction. In other words, if the beloved disciple had added his testimony to that of the eleven apostles – if there had been twenty-four lines instead of twenty-two – the Creed would have been destroyed, and the Church founded on it annihilated. This inscription engraved into marble, in the eighth century, the elimination of a man: the thirteenth apostle. Many others apart from him, throughout the centuries, have opposed the deification of Jesus, but none of them have been pursued by such enduring hatred. So there was something particularly dangerous about him, and I wonder whether Andrei didn’t die because he had discovered what this was.”

  Leeland rose to his feet and played a few chords on the piano.

  “Do you think that the text of the Creed was coded right from the start?”

  “Evidently not. The Council of Nicaea was held in 325, under the control of Emperor Constantine, who demanded that the divinity of Jesus be definitively imposed on the whole Church. Arianism needed to be vanquished – it refused to accept this deification and endangered the unity of the Empire. We have several accounts of the discussions: nothing indicates that the elaboration of the Symbolon, which in any case is closely based on an older text, obeyed any but political considerations. No, it was much later, at the start of the Middle Ages – an era besotted with esoteric knowledge – that the need was felt to code this text and engrave it on a slab placed in a prominent spot in an imperial church. This was because they wanted to reaffirm – a long time later, but insistently – the elimination of a testimony that was deemed extremely dangerous.”

  “And do you really think that the unlettered peasants of the Val-de-Loire could understand the meaning of the inscription that they found in front of their eyes when they came into the church at Germigny?”

  “Certainly not, numerical codes are always very complicated and can be understood only by a very few initiates – who in any case already know what the code contains. They aren’t made, as the capitals of our Romanesque churches are, to instruct the ordinary people, but for a minority who enjoy the knowledge available only to initiates. No, the slab was engraved by imperial power to remind the elite who shared a part of that power – especially the bishops – of its mission: to maintain for all eternity, alpha and omega, the belief in the divinity of Jesus affirmed by the Creed, the belief that lies at the foundation of the Church – which itself was the main bulwark of imperial authority.”

  “Incredible!”

  “The really incredible thing is that from the end of the first century a kind of conspiracy seems to have been set up in order to conceal a secret linked to the thirteenth apostle. It appears periodically. There’s evidence of it from the third century in the Coptic manuscript, and more evidence in the eighth century in the Germigny inscription – maybe other clues here and there: I haven’t finished looking yet. A secret maintained by the ruling religious classes, one that runs through the history of the West… and, in Andrei’s footsteps, I’m about to put my finger on it. There’s just one thing I know: this secret could imperil the basis of the faith defended by the hierarchy of the Church.”

  Leeland was silent, like an animal darting back into its lair. It was his life that this hierarchy had imperilled. He rose to his feet and slipped on his coat.

  “Let’s get over to the Vatican, we’re running late… What do you think you’ll do?”

  “Tomorrow I’m going to sit down in front of your computer and start surfing the Web. I’m after two works by Church Fathers, identified only by their Dewey classification – they’re in a library, somewhere in the world.”

  * * *

  On the second storey, Mukhtar had listened in to the whole conversation. The “For Sale” sign had been taken down from the studio door and, the day before, he’d had time to move in. On a whitewood table, some electronic equipment had been set up, with a tangle of wires draped over it. One of these wires ran across the ceiling and led to the exact place on which one of the feet of the baby grand
piano rested. A microphone, no bigger than a small lens, was concealed under its hinge. You would need to have completely dismantled the piano to see it.

  The spools on the tape recorders linked up to this wire had been turning from the moment Nil arrived on the storey above.

  Earphones in place, he hadn’t missed a single word of the conversation, but he hadn’t understood much. Nothing, at all events, affecting his real mission. He took the tape off the second recorder: this would be going to the Vatican, and he’d get Calfo to pay for it. The first tape was for the Al-Azhar University in Cairo.

  51

  “My brothers…”

  This was the first meeting of the Society of St Pius V since the admission of the new brother. Modestly, Antonio was sitting in the place of the twelfth apostle at the far end of the table.

  “My brothers, I am in a position to reveal to you one of the proofs of the secret which it is our mission to protect: it has recently been brought to light, and has been in our possession for just a short while. I am referring to the inscription placed by Emperor Charlemagne in the church at Germigny – its hidden meaning could be grasped by only a few scholars. It is with great joy that I now present it for you to pay it your devotions. Second and third apostles, if you please…”

  Two brothers rose and stood before the crucifix, to the left and right of the Rector. The latter seized the nail piercing the Master’s feet. His two acolytes did likewise to the nail fixed into his right hand and his left. He nodded, and each of them twisted his nail in accordance with a numerical code.

  There was a click: the mahogany panel slid away.

  It revealed behind it a recess, in which there were three shelves. The one at the bottom, level with the floor, contained a stone slab erected on its base.

  “My brothers, you may approach to venerate the slab.”

  The apostles rose, and each in turn went over to kneel before the slab. The coating on it had been completely cleaned away: the Latin text of the Nicene Creed was perfectly readable, divided into twenty-two lines of equal length and framed by two Greek letters. Each brother bowed deeply, lifted his veil and placed his lips on the alpha and the omega. Then he straightened up and kissed the episcopal ring which the Rector held out to him, as he stood erect under the crucifix.

  Antonio was deeply moved when his turn came. This was the first time that he had seen the recess opened: inside, there were two material proofs of the secret whose preservation in itself justified the existence of the Society of the Twelve. Above the slab, on the middle shelf, there was a casket of precious wood, gleaming faintly. The treasure of the Templars! It would soon be offered to the brothers for them to venerate, on the next Friday, the 13th.

  The upper shelf was empty.

  As he straightened up, he too placed his lips on the Rector’s ring. Dark red highlights glinted here and there in the dark green jasper, cut in the shape of an oblong lozenge and set in a chiselled silver mount that gave it the shape of a miniature coffin. The ring of Pope Ghislieri! His heart pounded as he went back to his seat at the twelfth place, while the Rector pushed back the mahogany panel, which slid automatically shut with a click.

  “My brothers, the upper shelf of this recess was meant one day to harbour the most precious of all treasures, that of which the treasures we possess here are merely the shadow or the reflection. We suspect that this treasure does indeed exist, but we still do not know where it is to be found: our current mission will perhaps enable us to find it and place it in our guard, safe at last. Then we really will have the means to accomplish that for which we have devoted our lives to the Lord: we will be able to protect the identity of the risen Christ.”

  “Amen!”

  The eyes of the Eleven were lit up with joy, as their Rector went back to his place to the right of the central throne with its red-velvet cover.

  “I have relieved the twelfth apostle of the task of listening in on the conversations of the two monks: such surveillance would have required his presence for long periods, and this would have kept him immobilized to no purpose. My Palestinian agent will take over, and I will soon be in a position to bring you up to date on the contents of the first tapes – which I am analysing right now. The twelfth apostle will keep the Vatican book stacks under discreet surveillance. Father Breczinsky has not met him yet, and this will make things easier. For the time being I will keep track of all the information received by the Cardinal. As for the Holy Father, we will continue to keep him completely in the dark – such anxieties would only weigh him down.”

  The Eleven nodded their approval. This mission had to be carried out with great precision – the Rector had shown how efficient he could be.

  52

  Desert of Idumaea, 70 ad

  “Did you get any sleep, abbu?”

  “Ever since I came into the desert, I have been waiting for you and keeping close watch over the tremulous life still within me. Now that I’ve seen you again, I can depart into a different kind of sleep… What about you?”

  Yokhanan’s left arm dangled inertly at his side, and deep wounds scarred his naked torso. He stared anxiously at the old man, whose face bore the lines and wrinkles of illness. He did not answer, but sat down with an effort, next to him.

  “Once the legionaries had finished off Adon, they caught up with me at the Ein Feshka oasis and left me for dead there. Some Essene fugitives, who had managed to escape from the capture of Qumran and the ensuing massacre, slung me over their shoulders: I’d lost consciousness, but was still alive. For several months they looked after me in the community in the desert of Judaea where they had taken refuge. As soon as I could walk again, I begged them to come with me, to find you here – you can’t imagine my wanderings across this desert.”

  The thirteenth apostle was lying on a simple mat in front of the cave mouth. He stared at the deep defile that opened up before them, hollowed out by erosion in the red ochre rocks. In the far distance rose the mountain chain leading to Horeb, where God had, long ago, given his Law to Moses.

  “The Essenes… If it hadn’t been for them, Jesus would never have lived in the desert for forty days, in that solitude that transformed him. If it hadn’t been for them, I wouldn’t have met him when he came to John the Baptist, and he would never have met Nicodemus, Lazarus and my friends from Jerusalem. It was in one of the jars of the Essene caves that you placed my epistle, at Qumran… We owe so much to them!”

  “More than you think. In the desert of Judaea they are continuing to copy every kind of manuscript. Before I left them, they gave me this…” He placed a bundle of parchments on the edge of his mat. “It’s your Gospel, Father, as it is now circulating throughout the Roman Empire. I’ve brought it for you to read.”

  The old man raised his hand: he seemed to be keeping every movement to a minimum.

  “Reading exhausts me these days. You read it to me!”

  “Their text is much longer than your original narrative. They’ve stopped just correcting: they’re inventing new things. The way you described him to me, Jesus used to express himself as a Jew talking to Jews…”

  A faint flush of colour returned to the cheeks of the thirteenth apostle. He closed his eyes, as if he were reliving scenes that were deeply etched into his memory.

  “Listening to Jesus was like hearing the wind blowing across the hills of Galilee, like seeing the ears of corn bending down, ripe for harvest, and the clouds floating across the sky above our land of Israel… When Jesus spoke, Yokhanan, he was the flute player in the market square, the tenant farmer hiring his labourers, the guests going in to the wedding feast, the bridegroom arrayed for her bride… It was the whole of Israel, in its living flesh, its joys and pains, the sweet golden haze of evenings on the lakeside. He was a piece of music emerging from our native clay, raising us to his God and our God. Listening to Jesus meant that you received, like pure water, the tenderness of the prophets enveloped in the mysterious song of the Psalms. Ah, yes! He was indeed a Jew talking to Jews.�
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  “This Jesus you knew – they’re now putting long speeches in his mouth, making him sound like the Gnostic philosophers. And they are turning him into the Logos, the eternal Word. They say: ‘All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.’”

  “Stop!”

  From his closed eyes two tears trickled solely down his hollow cheeks, with their straggling beard.

  “The Logos! The anonymous divine principle of handme-down philosophers who pretend they’ve read Plato and harangue the crowds until they’ve got those idlers in their pockets – not to mention a few silver pieces too! Already the Greeks had transformed the blacksmith Vulcan into a god, and that whore Venus into a goddess, and a jealous husband into a god, and a boatman into a god too. Oh, how easy it is, a god with a human face – and how the public just love it! By deifying Jesus they are thrusting us back into the darkness of paganism from which Moses had rescued us.”

  He was weeping now, weeping gently to himself. After a moment’s silence, Yokhanan continued:

  “Some of your disciples have joined the new Church, but others have remained faithful to Jesus the Nazorean. They are driven from the Christians’ gatherings and persecuted, and some of them have even been killed.”

  “Jesus had warned us: You will be driven out of the assemblies, you will be handed over to torture and you will be killed… Do you have any news of the Nazoreans that I had to abandon in order to take refuge here?”

  “I’ve had some information from nomads. After leaving Pella with you, they continued their exodus as far as an oasis on the Arab peninsula, I think it’s called Bakka – a stage on the commercial route to Yemen. The Bedouin who live there worship some sacred stones, but they call themselves sons of Abraham like us. Now a seed of the Nazorean faith has been planted in Arabia!”

  “That’s good, they’ll be safe there. What about Jerusalem?” “It’s under siege by Titus, the son of Emperor Vespasian. The city is still holding out, but who knows for how long…”