The Last Cato Page 6

  “I have some good news, Dr. Salina.”

  “Oh, yeah? Tell me…,” I murmured, not the least bit interested.

  Stefano logged off the Internet near lunchtime, and we started to review the material we had filed. After the first time through, we eliminated all Italian documents. After the second meticulous screening, we finally got what we were looking for: five press reports published between Wednesday, February 16, and Sunday the 20th of the same year. An English edition of the Greek newspaper Kathimerini, a bulletin from the Athens News Agency, and three Ethiopian publications called Press Digest, Ethiopian News Headlines, and Addis Tribune.

  The story said that on Tuesday, February 15, a small rented Cessna 182 had crashed into Mount Helmos, on the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece, at 9:35 p.m. The dead included the pilot, a twenty-three-year-old Greek man who’d just gotten his pilot’s license, and the passenger, Ethiopian Abi-Ruj Iyasus, age thirty-five. According to the flight plan given to airport authorities in Alexandroupoli, in northern Greece, the plane was headed for the Kalamata Airport, on the Peloponnesus, and was due to land at 9:45 p.m. Ten minutes before, without any SOS, the plane flew over the heavily wooded Mount Helmos at an altitude of 7,736 feet, abruptly descended 2,000 feet, then vanished from the radar. Firemen in nearby Kertezi were immediately alerted by airport authorities. They hurried to the site and found the wreck, still smoking, scattered over a radius of a kilometer. The dead pilot and passenger were hanging from nearby trees. The story was then picked up in Greek newspapers, the report was corroborated by correspondents they had in the area. In the Kathimerini there was also a very blurry snapshot of the accident where I was able to make out Abi-Ruj on a stretcher. It was hard to recognize him, but I had no doubt it was the same man I had so intensely studied. His face was etched in my memory after having looked at his autopsy photographs over a thousand times. The correspondent from the Athens News Agency described in detail both men’s mortal wounds. Apparently, the scarification hidden under his clothes had gone unnoticed.

  “Good morning, Doctor.”

  “Good morning, Captain,” I answered without looking up at him. I couldn’t take my eyes off poor Abi-Ruj.

  An offhanded sentence in the Athens News Agency report grabbed my attention. The firemen found, lying on the ground at the feet of Iyasus’s cadaver, as if it had slipped out of his hands after taking his last breath, an ornate silver box which, they surmised, had opened on impact, and strange pieces of wood had fallen out of it.

  The Ethiopian newspapers gave very few details about the accident, mentioning it only in passing. They requested readers’ help to locate the relatives of Abi-Ruj Iyasus, who was a member of the Oromo tribe, a community of shepherds and farmers in central Ethiopia. They sent their request to refugee camps (the country was going through a devastating famine), but additionally—and this was the strangest part—to the religious authorities of Ethiopia, since they found “very valuable holy relics” in the deceased’s possession.

  “You might want to turn around and take a look at what I have to show you,” the captain insisted.

  The door to the lab behind me opened and closed softly. It was Glauser-Röist.

  I grudgingly turned around. The Swiss man’s craggy face wore an enormous smile. In his hand was a very large photograph. I took it with all the indifference I was capable of mustering and cast a disdainful glance at him. My expression changed immediately once I realized what I was looking at. Within the image you could make out a wall of red granite, brightly lit by the sun. On the wall were two small crosses within rectangular frames topped off by small seven-pointed radiate crowns.

  “Our crosses!” I uttered enthusiastically.

  “Five of the most powerful computers in the Vatican have been working nonstop for four days to come up with what you have in your hand.”

  “Just exactly what do I have in my hand?” I would have jumped for joy, except at my age that might have been fatal. “Tell me, Captain, what do I have in my hand?”

  “A photograph representing a portion of the southwestern wall of the Orthodox monastery of Saint Catherine of Sinai.”

  I could see that Glauser-Röist was as happy as I was. His grin was earnest and wide, although his body didn’t move a millimeter. He was as steady as ever. His hands were shoved deep into his pants pockets, and his face expressed a joy I never would have expected from a man like him.

  “Saint Catherine of Sinai?” I whispered. “The Monastery of Saint Catherine of Sinai?”

  “You got it. Saint Catherine of Sinai. In Egypt.”

  I couldn’t believe it. Saint Catherine of Sinai was a mythical place for any paleographer. Its library, while inaccessible, was the most valuable repository in the world of ancient codices, second only to the Vatican’s. And like the Vatican Library, it too was shrouded in mystery.

  “What does Saint Catherine of Sinai have to do with our Ethiopian man?” I asked, puzzled.

  “I don’t have the slightest idea. In fact, I’d hoped we’d work on that today.”

  “Well, then, let’s get to it,” I agreed, pushing my glasses up onto the bridge of my nose.

  The bowels of the Vatican Library contained a large number of books, memoirs, compendiums, and treaties on the monastery. Yet most people didn’t have the vaguest idea that such an important place existed: an Orthodox temple located right at the foot of Mount Sinai, in the heart of the Egyptian desert, surrounded by sacred summits and built around a site of outstanding religious importance. It was the place where Yahweh, in the form of the burning bush, gave Moses the Ten Commandments.

  The history of the temple was legendary. Around the fourth century, in 337, Empress Helen, the mother of Emperor Constantine, built a beautiful sanctuary in that valley. From that moment, numerous Christian pilgrims began to journey there. Among those first pilgrims was the famous Galician nun Egeria, who traveled through the Holy Land from the Passover of 381 until the Passover of 384. In her skillfully narrated Itinerarium, Egeria recounted that where the monastery of Saint Catherine of Sinai would later be erected, a group of hermits tended to a small temple whose apse protected the sacred bush, which was still alive back then. Because the temple was located on the road connecting Alexandria to Jerusalem, the hermits were constantly attacked by ferocious groups of desert nomads. Two centuries later, Emperor Justinian and his wife, Empress Theodora, ordered the Byzantine builder Stefano de Aila to construct a fort to protect the holy place from raids. According to the most recent investigations, the walls were reinforced over the centuries and to a large extent even rebuilt. Of the original building, only the southwest wall remained, and it was adorned with the same strange crosses that were scattered on our Ethiopian’s skin. The primitive sanctuary was repaired and improved by Stefano de Aila in the fourth century; since then, it has drawn the admiration and amazement of scholars and pilgrims throughout the world.

  In 1844 a German researcher was admitted to the monastery’s library, where he discovered the extremely famous Codex Sinaiticus, the complete copy of the New Testament, the oldest copy ever found, which was dated to the fourth century. Of course, this German researcher, one Tischendorff, stole the codex and sold it to the British Museum, where it still remains and where I had the opportunity to eagerly observe it because, at the time, I was working on its twin, the Codex Vaticanus, which was from the same century and most likely of the same origin. The simultaneous study of both codices would have allowed me to carry out one of most important works of paleography ever. But it was never made possible.

  By the end of the day, we had managed to gather a thick, very interesting stack of documents about the strange orthodox monastery, but we still hadn’t clarified what the relationship was between the scarification on our Ethiopian man and the southwest wall of Saint Catherine’s.

  My mind was used to quickly synthesizing and extracting relevant data from a tangle of information, so I had already concocted a complex theory based on the elements that repeated th
emselves in the history in front of us. Since I was not supposed to know a good part of it, I could not share my ideas with Captain Glauser-Röist, but I was dying to know if he had reached similar conclusions. Deep down inside, I burned with the desire to squash him with my deductions and show him who was the cleverest and most intelligent of the two. In my next confession, Father Pintonello was going to have to impose a very stern penitence to expiate my pride.

  “Very well, we’re done,” Glauser-Röist said casually as the afternoon waned. Satisfied, he slammed closed a heavy volume on architecture which he had been studying.

  “What’s done?”

  “We are, Doctor—our work. We’re done.”

  “Finished?” I mumbled. My eyes were wide with surprise. Of course I knew my role in the investigation would end sooner or later, but it hadn’t crossed my mind that I would be eliminated with such matter-offactness and at such an interesting point.

  Glauser-Röist looked at me for a long time with what little sympathy and understanding his rocklike nature allowed. It was as if over our twenty days together, a mysterious bond of trust and camaraderie had been created between us which I hadn’t noticed.

  “We have completed the work they assigned us, Doctor. There is nothing more for you to do.”

  I was so disconcerted I couldn’t speak. I felt the knot in my throat tightening till I could hardly breathe. Glauser-Röist observed me at length. I grew so pale he must have thought I was about to faint.

  “Dr. Salina,” murmured the embarrassed Swiss Guard, “are you ill?”

  Physically, I felt perfectly fine, but my brain was ticking away like a machine. I concentrated, hoping that my dissatisfaction would contain itself to the confines of my mind and not extend to the rest of my body. “What do you mean, there’s nothing more for me to do?”

  “I’m sorry, Doctor,” he whispered. “You received an assignment and now it’s done.”

  I opened my eyes wide and looked at him. “Why are they shutting me out, Captain?”

  “Monsignor Tournier told you why before we started, Doctor. Don’t you remember? Your paleographic knowledge was essential to interpret the symbols on the Ethiopian man’s body. This is just one small part of the ongoing investigation which far surpasses anything you can imagine. Unfortunately, I am not authorized to tell you a thing, Doctor. Regrettably you must step aside and resume your usual work. Try to forget what has happened over the past twenty days.”

  Well, well! It was all or nothing for me. Of course, when facing such a powerful and unalterable hierarchy as the Catholic Church you either save yourself or get thrown to the lions.

  “Do you realize, Captain,” I enunciated clearly so he didn’t miss one syllable of what I was saying, “that Abi-Ruj Iyasus, our Ethiopian, is but a small cog in a large gear that has been set in motion? For some reason, someone is looking to steal sacred relics from the True Cross. Do you realize, Captain?”

  My God, what desperation was pushing me to talk that way! I was like an old actor in a Greek play speaking to the Gods.

  “Behind all this there must be a religious sect that considers itself the descendants of traditions that go back to origins of the eastern Roman Empire, Byzantium, Emperor Constantine, and his mother, Saint Helen, who not only ordered the construction of Saint Catherine of Sinai, but also discovered the True Cross of Christ in 326?”

  With its gray eyes, Glauser-Röist’s colorless face, framed by the blond and metallic reflections of his head and jaws, looked even more like one of those ferocious white marble heads of Hercules on display in the Capitolinos Museums of the Palazzo Nuovo in Rome. But I didn’t give him time to take a breath.

  “Have you given any thought to the fact that on Abi-Ruj Iyasus’s body we found seven Greek letters, ΣTAYPOΣ, that signify “cross,” seven different crosses with seven different designs that reproduce those on the southwestern wall of the Monastery of Saint Catherine of Sinai—and that each one of these crosses is topped by small sevenpointed radiate crowns? Do you realize that Abi-Ruj Iyasus was in possession of important relics of the True Cross at the moment he died?”

  “That’s enough!”

  If looks could kill, I’d have been dead in an instant. The sparks that leaped from his eyes sent charges like flaming arrows in my direction.

  “How do you know all that?” he roared, storming over to where I stood. He tried to intimidate me, but he didn’t scare me. I was a Salina.

  It wasn’t especially hard to connect the strange pieces of wood found by firemen at the feet of Iyasus’s cadaver with those “very holy and valuable relics” mentioned by the Ethiopian newspapers. What wooden relics could mobilize the highest levels of the Vatican as well as the rest of the Christian churches? The scarifications on Iyasus confirmed it. According to a legend generally accepted by ecclesiastic students, Saint Helen went looking for the Holy Sepulchre and discovered the True Cross of Christ in 326, during a trip to Jerusalem. According to the well-known Golden Legend of Santiago of the Whirlpool,* as soon as Helen, then eighty years old, arrived in Jerusalem, she tortured the wisest Jews in the country until they confessed whatever they knew about the place where Christ had been crucified. Helen was relentless in her search, and soon she succeeded in wrenching the information out of them. Thus, they led her to the supposed location of Golgotha, the mount of Calvary—whose location still remains a mystery—where about two hundred years before, Emperor Adriano had had a temple built dedicated to Venus. Saint Helen ordered the temple to be demolished, and during the excavation they found three crosses: Jesus’s, of course, and those of the two thieves crucified next to him. To find out which was the Savior’s cross, Saint Helen ordered a dead man brought to the site and as soon as they placed the corpse on the True Cross, the man’s body came back to life. After the miracle, the empress and her son built a lavish basilica on that site called the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, where they kept the relic. Over the centuries, numerous fragments of it were distributed throughout the world.

  “How do you know all that?” the captain roared again, very angered, coming to within inches of me.

  “Perhaps you and Monsignor Tournier thought I was an idiot?” I protested energetically. “Did you really think that by denying me information or keeping me in the dark you could use just the part of me that interested you? Come on, now, Captain. I won the Getty Prize for Paleographic Investigation. Twice!”

  The Swiss man stood still for several, never-ending seconds, his eyes boring into me. Many thoughts must have passed through his mind at that moment: rage, powerlessness, fury, and finally, a flash of prudence.

  Abruptly, and in utter silence, he gathered up the photographs, ripped down the silhouette of the Ethiopian, and put all the sketches, notebooks, and images into his leather portfolio. He shut down the computer, and without saying a word—not even good-bye, not even turning around to look at me—he left my lab, slamming the door so hard the walls shook. At that moment, I knew I’d dug my own grave.

  How can I explain what I felt the next morning? When I ran my ID through the card scanner, a red light blinked on the small screen and a siren went off. Everyone in the foyer of the Classified Archives turned to look as if I were some criminal. It was one of the most humiliating moments of my life. Two security guards, dressed as civilians and wearing dark sunglasses, stood in front of me before I even had time to beg God to let the earth swallow me. Very politely, they asked me to accompany them. I closed my eyes so tight they hurt. No, this couldn’t be happening; surely it was a terrible nightmare and I would wake up at any moment. But the pleasant voice of one of those men brought me back to reality: I was to go with them to the office of the prefect, Reverend Father Ramondino.

  Already knowing what the Reverend Father was going to say, I was on the verge of refusing to follow them and just begging the guards to let me go back home. But I didn’t say a word, and accompanied them docily, more dead than alive, knowing that my years of work in the Vatican were over.

&nb
sp; It’s simply painful to record what happened in the prefect’s office. In a very correct and amiable conversation, I was officially informed that my contract was terminated. (I would be paid, of course, to the last lira what the law specifies in these cases.) The Reverend Father reminded me that my vow of silence concerning anything surrounding the archives and the library remained in effect until my death. He also said that he had been very satisfied with my services and hoped, with all his heart, that I found another job in keeping with my many talents. Finally, slamming his hand against the table, he told me that I would be seriously sanctioned, even excommunicated, if I said one word about the subject of the Ethiopian man. With a firm handshake, he bid me farewell at the door of his office, where Dr. William Baker, the secretary of the archives, was patiently waiting for me with a medium-size box in his hands.

  “Your things, Doctor,” he said with a contemptuous look.

  I knew I’d become a pariah, somebody the Vatican never wanted to see again. I would be ostracized and would have to leave Vatican City.

  “Will you give me your ID and key, please?” concluded Dr. Baker, handing me the box that contained my meager personal possessions. The closed box was sealed with wide, gray industrial tape. For an instant I wondered if it also contained the red hand Isabella had made me.

  But the worst was yet to come. Two days later, the general director of my order summoned me to the main office. Of course, she didn’t receive me herself; she was always loaded down with a thousand responsibilities. The assistant director, Sister Giulia Sarolli, explained that I had to leave the Piazza delle Vaschette apartment—as well as the community. I was being sent with great haste to our house in County Connaught, Ireland, where I would be made charge of the archives and old libraries in various monasteries throughout the area. There, Sister Sarolli added, I would find the spiritual peace I so needed. I was to present myself in Connaught next week, between Monday, March 27, and Friday, the 31st. Sister Sarolli asked me when I’d like to arrive in Ireland. Perhaps I wished to spend some time in Sicily, saying good-bye to my family before I left? I turned down the offer with a simple nod. I was so demoralized I couldn’t even speak.