I, Saul

by Jerry B. Jenkins

  Sofia put her phone on speaker.

  “Dad, how much did you tell Dimos?”

  “Only what you told me. What’s the problem? He’s trustworthy.”

  She shot a glance at Augie. “Maybe, maybe not, but he knows more than what I told you.”

  “What have you not told me, dear? How can I help if I don’t know everything?”

  “I’m talking about private stuff—things that happened since I talked to you.”

  The pause was too long to suit Augie. And when Malfees Trikoupis began again, he spoke deliberately, as if taking great care to not trap himself. “Private? And recent? Then—then how would I have been able to

  tell him something even I did not know?”

  “That’s my point, Dad. He shows up gung ho and ready to go, but he slipped up. He knows too much. Roger’s life is not the only one on the line here, and we feel like we’ve already been compromised by someone who’s supposed to be on our side.”

  “He is on your side! He is there on my behalf. You know I would do nothing to jeopardize your safety.”

  “Then how does he know all this stuff?”

  “You’re absolutely certain he has knowledge of your private conversations.”

  “Yes, at least two. He had to have access to my phone.”

  “No! How?”

  “I just asked you that.”

  “On my life, darling, I would never—.”

  “Augie and I are going to have to get to the bottom of this before we can continue working with Dimos. If he’s here to examine the parchment and determine its age, there’s nothing for him to do until then. Yet he’s already trying to make connections.”

  “I have contacts who could be helpful, Sofia.”

  “But what if Dimos were to say too much to the wrong person? Why don’t you call him back to Greece and let us call for him when we’re ready?”

  “No, no. Now, he’s there. I can talk to him, but let him establish the contacts and—.”

  “Then we’ll have to confront him. We have to know how he got access to my phone.”

  A long pause. “Just be careful not to accuse before you give him a chance to explain. Maybe it’s not as sinister as you think.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Nothing. It’s just that at my age I have been through many misunderstandings. You don’t want to jump to conclusions. Now, was Dr. Knox able to learn where the manuscript might be?”

  Augie shook his head. “No,” Sofia said. “I’ll keep you posted.”

  As soon as she was off the phone, Augie said, “Let me try something else. It’s what, seven hours earlier in Dallas?”

  He called Biff Dyer.

  “Augie! What’s up?”

  “You, I hope. Did I wake you?”

  “Honestly? Yeah. But we’ve got to get the kids ready for church anyway. You find Michaels? He okay?”

  “We’re all fine for now, Biff. I just need a little help. We think someone’s hacked Sofia’s phone, and we have to know who. Any way to figure that out?”

  “Won’t be easy. But give me her number and the serial number on her chip and I’ll try.”

  5:00 P.M.

  Augie kept checking his phone for word from Roger. “No sense heading out unless we have a clue where to look.”

  “Maybe he dialed you by accident.”

  “One way to find out.” Augie called Roger. No answer. Augie texted him, “on r way soon as u say where.”

  While they waited, Augie showed Sofia the first page of the memoir. “It has to be real, doesn’t it?” she said. “It just has to be. Has anyone ever discovered an older document?”

  “The Dead Sea Scrolls, and even some older fragments, but this is hundreds of pages all intact.”

  “What’s in the envelope?”

  “It’s addressed to Roger, who was to open it if anything happened to Klaudios. I shouldn’t open it unless something happens to Rog. He believes it tells where the rest of the originals are. The box is full of reduced photocopies of the rest of the manuscript. It’ll take me a long time to read through, but I have to do it when I won’t be disturbed.”

  Augie’s phone chirped. “It’s him! A picture.”

  They studied the image. “A corner,” she said. “Both street names are visible. He’s in the center of Rome on a Sunday? Isn’t that the Vatican across the Tiber there? Maybe he’s trying to hide in the crowd.”

  Augie reassembled the protective covers for the parchment. “We’ve got to get to him.”

  “Better take a cab,” she said. “Don’t want to be driving in that mess.”

  “What if we need to get him out of there fast?”

  “You wouldn’t be able to do it in a car anyway. Unless this were a James Bond movie.”

  Augie’s phone signaled a text.

  “br ur 9.”

  “cops kept.”

  “br mine. mattress.”

  Augie found the nine millimeter between the mattresses in Roger’s bedroom. It felt heavy enough to be loaded, but he made sure by releasing the magazine, then snapped it back in.

  “Pray I don’t have to use this,” he said.

  “I’ll pray you don’t get caught with it.”

  As he threaded his belt through the holster and positioned it in the small of his back, Augie said, “We can’t leave this stuff here.” He put the envelope in the safe and found a plastic laundry bag in the closet big enough to hold the parchment. He looped the bag over the top of a hanger, draped a shirt around it, and they headed for the parking lot.

  Augie hung the shirt in his rental car and stashed the laundry bag and the box in the trunk.

  At the main entrance the doorman waved for a white car with a TAXI sign on the roof. The crest on the door bore the Latin acronym SPQR (The Senate and People of Rome). Augie studied the picture on his phone and told the driver, “First street west of Piazza Navona.”

  Sofia whispered, “Think he’s running?”

  “I’ll ask,” Augie said. But before he could punch in the text, Sofia reached to turn his phone toward her.

  “This says he sent that picture from his tablet, Augie. Why not his phone like the original call?”

  “I don’t know. Better quality?”

  Augie tapped in, “on r way. u ok?”

  Nothing.

  “Driver,” he said, “could you hurry, please?”

  “Perdono?”

  “Potrebbe sbrighi, per favore?” Sofia said.

  Within minutes the driver had picked his way through heavy traffic, most of it heading toward the Vatican, and stopped at a curb near Piazza Navona. “We’d better split up,” Augie said. “You go north, then east. I’ll go south, then east. We’ll meet in the middle on the other side of the piazza. Don’t make it obvious we’re looking for anyone. Let him find us.”

  Augie didn’t expect to be recognized, but since someone had compromised his phone after Roger had called him in Dallas, they could have Googled him and found out what he looked like. If the number two man at the Art Squad really was behind all this, he could have tracked Augie’s flight from DFW to FCO.

  Augie had to consider all the possibilities. He had shown his passport to the carabiniere in the Naples train station, to the car rental clerk, to the policewoman near Roger’s apartment. He had even used it to check in to the hotel and to retrieve the stuff from Roger’s luggage locker. Augie could only hope the cop at the gymnasium who absconded with the Smith & Wesson had reason to not report that encounter.

  Sofia’s phone had been hacked too. For all Augie knew the Art Squad had been tailing them since they arrived. Could they have seen him stash the parchment in the rental? He didn’t want to be paranoid, but surely someone as highly placed as Aldo Sardinia could be that technologically savvy.

  When Augie turned north on the east side of the piazza, his phone vibrated. Augie fought to remain casual as he pulled it from his pocket. Roger had texted: “screwed up. ditched phone. holy cross now.”

 
Fortunately Augie had led enough tours to know the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross was almost immediately north of him. When Sofia rounded the corner at the end of Piazza Navona, he signaled her to wait there. As if she’d been born to espionage, she stopped at a kiosk and appeared to be studying what was posted there.

  When Augie passed behind her, he said under his breath, “Holy Cross.” As he reached the corner where the great university stood, he slowed as if just taking in its expanse. His phone vibrated twice. Texts from both Roger and Biff Dyer in Dallas.

  He checked Roger’s first. “c u. where 2 find me in a min.”

  Biff’s read, “success. can u talk?”

  “No.Text pls.”

  “K.”

  Roger again: “walk in shadows.”

  The sun was deep in the west already, so Augie moved to the east side of the complex where the buildings blocked its rays. As he turned the corner he noticed Sofia behind him.

  Another photo appeared on his cell, the sign for a tiny eatery. Roger texted, “200 ft left & down.”

  Roger must have believed he had eluded whoever was after him to feel safe below street level. Augie would have chosen higher ground, but then neither had he ever run for his life.

  Augie squinted into the sky at the thwock-thwock-thwock of a helicopter. The chopper looked official, military or police. His phone read, “that’s 4 me. u armed?”

  Augie responded, “u got 2 b kidding.”

  “have the 9?”

  “2 many people.”

  “b ready.”

  “Not 4 aircraft.”

  “hurry.”

  Augie thought it better not to be seen running rather than gawking like everyone else, so he just kept walking and looking up. The whirly-bird drifted south toward the other end of the piazza. Several polizia cars headed that way, as well as a few uniforms on foot.

  Augie slowed when he thought he’d gone about sixty yards, and Roger texted, “don’t miss it. where’d chopper go?”

  “South, past Navona.”

  “whew.”

  Augie saw the sign and trotted down a short flight of stone stairs, knowing Sofia was close enough to see him. The place was nearly empty, dingy with dark wood paneling lit only by a dim knockoff Tiffany. Roger peeked over the top of a menu from a booth near the back.

  The restaurant was secluded, but Augie feared they could be sitting ducks. He slid into the booth but didn’t like having his back to the door. “There’s an exit behind me too,” Roger said, nodding toward a rusty door under a sign with an arrow: Bagno.

  “Got to go?” Roger said.

  “Thankfully, no. Now what happened? How’d you wind up here?” Roger hesitated and looked up as a cameriera approached and set a dog-eared menu before Augie. “Cafffè?” she said.

  “Please, and some bread and olive oil.”

  She hesitated, so Roger said with a heavy French accent, “Per favore e solo pane.” He turned to Augie. “The olio d’oliva is on the table.”

  When the waitress left, Augie said, “I don’t know how you do that.”

  “Helps to know lots of languages.”

  Augie heard footsteps and saw Roger make eye contact as Sofia moved past and slid into the next booth with her back to them, close enough to listen.

  “So I go for a walk,” Roger said, “and I want to be back to the Terrazzo by the time Sofia and the other guy get there. But I’m convinced I can’t stay hidden much longer with the whole government looking for me.”

  “You’re right,” Augie said.

  “So I grab a cab and head this way, thinking I’d just like to see the sights again, maybe for the last time.”

  “You said you screwed up.”

  “Did I ever.”

  Roger fell silent again when the cameriera delivered warm bread and approached Sofia, who ordered a salad.

  Roger continued, “You know I’ve been changing phones almost every day, but like an idiot, while I’m walking around here I start wondering

  whether Sardinia has been trying to call me. The only number he has for me is my old voice mail. So I dial in and listen to a bunch of messages from travel agencies, then to a few calls from people horrified by what they saw about me on the news. I finally get to one from Sardinia. Says I’d better find him before he finds me or I’m gonna regret it. What else is new, right? Then it hits me. All that time I spent listening to messages left my new phone vulnerable. Of course they’d be monitoring my voice mail.”

  “But your distress call to me was from that phone.”

  “Just before I ditched it south of Navona. I was a couple of blocks from where the carabinieri had set up a checkpoint. With that phone I’d been carrying I might as well have fired off a flare. I speed-dialed you, tossed the phone, and got moving north.”

  “You should have grabbed a cab back to the hotel.”

  “I should have done a lot of things, Augie, but I’ve never been hunted before. That chopper went south because they tracked my phone to the trash bin.”

  “Creative. Why not down a sewer grate?”

  “Like I said, I’m an amateur.”

  Augie’s phone buzzed and he found a text from Biff. “See below number used 2 hack ST’s.” Augie didn’t recognize it, but slid his phone across the table to Roger. “Slip this to Sofia.”

  Roger stretched and reached the phone behind him to Sofia. As soon as she looked at the screen she whirled in her seat and glared at Augie.

  32

  Anticipation

  FIRST-CENTURY ROME

  The next night the guards lifted away the new wood disk that covered the hole in the floor, and as Luke descended, Paul darted toward the light as a moth to flame. When the covering slid back across the opening, Paul moaned.

  “Patience, my friend,” Luke whispered. “I’ve brought the lamp.”

  “I have been in utter darkness other than around midday when they delivered a bowl of the wretched cold gruel.”

  Luke lit his lamp and pulled food from his pockets. The condemned man sighed and bowed his head to give thanks. With a crust of bread in his shaking hand, he said, “I have lived through shipwreck, stoning, flogging, and prison, but this blackness is the worst. When my friends who walked with Jesus quoted Him about casting men into outer darkness, I could barely comprehend it. Now I shudder at the thought. At least I feel His presence, even while enduring this.”

  Luke reached with the hem of his sleeve to wipe tears from Paul’s cheeks.

  “Luke, I look forward to heaven more every day.”

  “You know what I look forward to every night? Your wonderful story. I pray for you constantly while reading it.”

  I hardly slept that night, so eager was I to break the news to Rabban Gamaliel in the morning. During breakfast I pestered Father about things at Hillel he would have no way of knowing.

  He merely smiled. “Life is easier when you simply let it unfold.”

  “What will I do onboard when we sail home?”

  “Stay out of the way of the crew, study, pray, try to keep from becoming seasick.”

  “Have you ever been seasick?”

  “Once on a short fishing trip when I was a little older than you, and once was enough. As I hung over the bow, adding chum to the water, someone assured me I wouldn’t die from seasickness. But it was the hope of dying that was keeping me alive.”

  I laughed. “You need to tell Rabban Gamaliel that story!”

  “No I don’t, and neither do you. He’s probably heard it. It’s an old joke.”

  All the way to the Hillel school I ran and threw rocks and sticks at trees and even whistled. I couldn’t help imagining coming back here with my whole family. No more sitting in a classroom with a bunch of kids just memorizing and reciting and asking a question or two. I would be conversing with a leading scholar, digging deeply into the texts.

  Gamaliel welcomed us into his office.

  Father said, “Can you tell our verdict by the boy’s smile?”

 
“I’m pleased,” the headmaster said. “Too often new students are fearful, knowing the work will not be easy.”

  “I don’t want it to be easy,” I said. “I want to be challenged, to learn all there is to learn.”

  “That’s the kind of a student I was,” Gamaliel said. “I still am. I work every day with members of the Sanhedrin who clearly feel that because they have attained some status, they can no longer be taught. I hope you find, as I have, that the more you know, the more you realize how much you don’t.”

  “I can’t wait to get started.”

  “You are going to be a joy to teach. But beware, bright and thoughtful as you are, even you will find we push students to their limits. At home you may be far ahead of others your age, but we attract the best students from all over the world. Distractions may creep in. What else are you passionate about?”

  “He’s very athletic,” Father said, “but he is a scholar at heart.”

  “Females are not a distraction?”

  “Not until yesterday,” Father said with a smile.

  My face burned. How could he say that in front of the girl’s father?

  Gamaliel said, “It was not lost on me that you were taken with Naomi. As you become interested in the opposite sex, you may find your studies suffering. We will strive to keep your mind on your education.”

  Embarrassment shut my mouth. While Gamaliel and Father chatted, I sat studying the floor, hoping my humiliation would pass.

  Father must have noticed, because he changed the subject. “I’m told there is a good market for quality tents here.”

  But before Gamaliel could respond, someone passed his door and he called out, “Oh, Nathanael, a moment please!”

  That was the first time I laid eyes on a man for whom, as an adult, I would work for many years. He was dressed in priestly robes and had an orange beard. Gamaliel introduced us and said, “Nathanael is vice chief justice of the Sanhedrin and teaches here when he has time. My own son Simeon, who was recently bar mitzvahed, is one of his students.”

  I must have looked surprised, having just met Simeon, because Nathanael said, “Rabban Gamaliel’s son is a fine-looking lad but does not yet look his age. And you,” he said, nodding at me, “though small, if you had a beard, look as if you could teach here.”