The Book of Q (53 page)

“Look! Look!” said Ivo.

Pearse nodded and again pushed down with all his weight. Another quarter of an inch.

Ivo brought his hands to his face, his muddy little fingers shaking with anticipation. Petra did her best to keep them out of his mouth. Ivo at once latched onto her arms, eyes fixed on the stone, his feet hopping every time there was even a hint of movement. “Look, Mommy! Look!”

“I see it, sweetie.” She tried to rub the mud from his hands with her own.

On the fourth try, the stone finally gave way, the bar rotating flat into the slot. Pearse pulled his arm up from the hole and sat, a little winded from the exertion. As he looked into Ivo’s eyes, he felt a faint tremor of anticipation, a distant echo of what he had known in Phôtinus.

The “Hodoporia” was here.

He reached his hand into the gap and blindly groped his way through. There was an odd feel to the air, somehow heavier, yet with none of the dampness he expected. The few times his fingers rubbed against the stone, there, too, he was surprised by the texture, dry and cold, flawlessly smooth, no signs of decay. He attributed it to the strange mechanism, the bar and counterweight evidently having produced an almost perfectly insulated space. With his arm halfway down the opening, he hit on something metallic with rough iron edges, the feel of tiny bolts running under his fingertips. Another box.

Ambivalence or not, his heart kicked into high gear.

He reached his fingers around the side of the box and began to lift. He half-expected it to be tied down, one more trick to unravel before bringing it into the light. Instead, it came up easily. Angling it through the opening, he set it down at his side.

The box was identical to the one Ribadeneyra had used on Athos. Same size, same meaningless latch. Pearse looked up at Ivo and Petra.

“Well, here it is,” he said. Channeling his nervous energy, he reached
back into the hole and pulled up on the bar. The two stones came back together. He then began to push the dirt back in.

Ivo quickly knelt down, the same chocolate-hopeful expression spread across his face as he offered to help. “It’s pretty old, isn’t it?” he said.

“Pretty old,” answered Pearse, tamping down the last of the soil. He brushed away as much of the dirt on his hands as he could, then picked up the box and sat on the lip of the fountain. Ivo stood and edged in close to his side, his eyes transfixed on the prize now in Pearse’s lap.

The mud was still thick under his nails as Pearse struggled with the latch. It finally gave way, the same velvet and gold coins waiting inside. This time, though, the glass dome was considerably bigger. It had to be; a scroll, not a booklet, lay underneath. Like its “Perfect Light” counterpart, it was bound in leather, two tie-strings holding it together. He was about to separate the dome from the velvet, when he saw the state of his hands. He turned to Petra.

“I probably shouldn’t touch it,” he said. “You’re going to have to open it up.”

She hesitated.

“I could do it,” piped in Ivo, ready to grab the dome.

Petra moved in quickly. “That’s okay, sweetie.” She reached over and placed the box on her lap. With a nod of encouragement from Pearse, she gently pulled the dome from its sealant. She looked at him.

“Go ahead,” he said, a strange tingling now in his throat.

She placed her hand on the scroll and immediately pulled it away. “It’s … oily.”

The moisture of the leather
… Pearse could only marvel at Ribadeneyra’s ingenuity. He’d created enough of a vacuum both inside the fountain and the dome to keep the scroll in relatively good condition.

“That’s a good thing,” he said. “Try untying the straps. Gently.”

She started to touch them, then stopped. “You’re sure you don’t want to do this yourself?”

He smiled. “Did I leave my sink next to your sixteenth-century map?”

“I just think—wouldn’t it be smarter if you did this?”

As much as he now desperately wanted to hold it, he knew he couldn’t take the risk of harming the scroll. “I think we should see what’s inside.”

Again she hesitated. “All right.” She deftly inched the knot apart, then laid the strands at the side.

“Now peel back the binding. If you feel anything start to give, stop.”

She did as she was told, rolling back the first inch of leather. A strip of vellum appeared, straw-colored, gritty even to look at. She turned to Pearse. He nodded; she rolled back a bit more.

The edge of a separate sheet of parchment, distinct from the scroll itself, suddenly appeared between leather and vellum.

“What do I do with that?” she asked.

For a brief moment, Pearse entertained the frightening thought that perhaps they’d uncovered the next clue on the wild-goose chase. Unwilling to indulge it for more than a few seconds, he said, “Just keep rolling it back.”

Another few turns, and she had unrolled enough so that the separate sheet could be pulled out easily. With a little encouragement she did just that, holding it out in front of him so he could read it.

“It’s from Ribadeneyra,” he said as he read the Latin. “April 1521. ‘Take the gold … leave the scroll’”—his eyes racing along—“‘let this be an act of contrition….’” More nodding as he explained. “It’s the same thing he did on Phôtinus. Except this time he finishes up the story.” Paraphrasing as he went, Pearse read, “He got here in 1520…. He knew he wasn’t well…. Mani found him this spot to die…. ‘Praise be to Mani,’ so forth and so on.” He nodded for her to flip the sheet over. “That’s interesting.”

“What?”

“It says he helped design the fountain. He even laid some of the stonework….” Reading several lines, Pearse said nothing, his eyebrows arching as he scanned the text. “Wow.

That’s why,” he finally said. “That’s why what?” she asked.

“You really were very clever, weren’t you?” he said to the sheet, disregarding her question. “A Manichaean through and through.”

“What?” she asked again.

He looked over at her. “Ribadeneyra. He explains why we found those pieces of parchment eight years ago in Slitna.” Before she could ask, he continued. “According to this, before he died, he sent a handful of men out with packets of pressed vellum, each filled with messages written in Eastern Syriac, not Latin. Something about the purity of the original tongue.”

“Eastern what?”

“It’s not important. The point is, the men were told to hide the pieces in churches throughout Europe. That’s what we found. Each of the
packets had a clue to where the ‘Perfect Light’ scroll was hidden. In other words, he basically had them replant the clues that he’d found himself during his twenty-year search. He’d already reburied the ‘Perfect Light’ scroll back in Istanbul before heading west, and he was banking on the fact that someone, at some point in time—depending on Mani’s will—would piece the packets together and find his way to the ‘Perfect Light.’”

“The scroll your monk friend gave you in Rome.”

“Cesare. Exactly. His friend, a man named Ruini, actually found the ‘Perfect Light’ scroll in Istanbul. He then gave it to Cesare, who gave it to me. The ‘Perfect Light’ was what lead me to Phôtinus, where, instead of finding the real prize, I found Ribadeneyra’s own little book—the one with all the cryptograms—which was simply meant to add one more step to the hunt for the ever-elusive ‘Hagia Hodoporia.’”

“This,” she said, holding up the recently unearthed scroll.

“Right. Before he died, Ribadeneyra hid the ‘Hodoporia’ inside this fountain, and then sent his last helper back to Phôtinus to hide the little book of cryptograms in the Vault of the Paraclete. End of story.”

“Cautious man,” she said.

“Or terribly devout. The two seem to go hand in hand with these people. At least when they’re dealing with their ‘Hodoporia.’”

She thought about it, then said, “Don’t you think it’s a little strange that you happened to be there when one of those packets was found outside of Slitna, and now you’re here?”

Pearse looked up from the page. It took him a moment to respond. “We gave those pages to Salko, didn’t we?”

She nodded.

Again, he waited. He turned to her. “I can’t worry about that now. I need to find out what this thing is. There’s a woman in Rome who’s depending on that.”

She placed the sheet back in the box, then looked at him. “Things have gotten a little more complicated, I think.” She held his gaze, then looked past him to Ivo, whose head was resting up against Pearse’s shoulder. “How are you doing, sweetie? You holding up okay?”

Ivo nodded quickly. He then looked at Pearse. “How are you doing, Ian?”

“Fine, Ivi. Fine.”

Ivo pulled in even closer, and, in a whisper, said, “Can I have one of those gold coins?”

Pearse smiled. “Sure. Take as many as you want.”

Petra reached into the box and handed him several of the coins. “Why don’t you go play with them over there, sweetie. We still need to read some more of this.”

Ivo skipped off, hands cupped around the coins. He picked a spot about twenty feet from them and sat down.

Petra continued to watch him. “Much more complicated.”

Pearse watched the boy, as well. And he nodded.

Without warning the sound of an explosion rocked the courtyard, followed by a violent tremor. Ivo quickly got to his feet. At the same instant, the children playing soccer darted into the middle of the courtyard and lay flat on the ground. Within seconds, others were emerging from the buildings—the old and the young—the courtyard’s center their focus, as well. Petra handed Pearse the box and ran toward Ivo, who had already run out into the open area and was now lying facedown with the rest. Pearse followed, all of them flat on the ground when the sound of sirens began to blare.

“That didn’t sound like an artillery shot,” he said.

“It wasn’t,” she answered.

“Then why are we all lying out in the open like this?”

She looked over at him. “Because some habits die hard, Ian.”

He remembered his days in Slitna, the first rule of survival: get out of the buildings. He peered around at the old women and children, all of them facedown in the grass and dirt. Slowly, the heads began to rise. Each one listened intently for the sound of another blast. As the minutes passed and the sirens grew louder, they began to get to their feet. En masse, they headed for the passageway.

Pearse, Petra, and Ivo fell in behind, close enough to hear snippets of conversations, the word
crkva
the most frequent.

Pearse leaned into Petra as they walked. “What church are they talking about?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

The maze of alleyways took them back toward the marketplace, more and more people on the streets as they neared the open area. Pearse felt the heat of the explosion before he saw it, that once-familiar tang of gasoline and sulfur. With the rest, he stopped at the edge of the marketplace, far enough out, though, to see a building rising in flames no more than a hundred yards from them.

The scene was mayhem, people lying in the street, two cars on their
sides, undercarriages on fire. Storefront glass lay scattered everywhere; a few larger shards had landed with such force that they looked liked great crystal teeth imbedded in the pavement. Nothing was more harrowing, though, than the sight of the bloodied survivors screaming their way down the street, one woman carrying a child who was clearly no longer alive. Others had raced out to help them, some from an unseen ambulance corps, still more from the growing crowds, the area a haze of zigzagging bodies.

Pearse pushed his way through, unaware that he was still toting the iron box in his hands. He never felt the tug from Petra as he raced out and headed for the first person he could reach.

She was a woman in her twenties, seated almost serenely on the ground, staring mindlessly at her leg. Somehow, something metal had twisted its way into her calf. Pearse pulled off his coat and draped it around her shoulders; she didn’t seem to notice he was there. He looked up to see if there was anyone even remotely medical nearby, but there were too many people to make out anything clearly.

“And the fish,” she said, now looking up at him. “Before he runs out of it.”

Pearse looked down. There was hardly any focus in her eyes. He nodded. “You’re going to be fine,” he said.

He noticed an area across the way where they were beginning to bring the wounded. He looked back at the woman. “I’m going to pick you up now. Is that all right?”

The woman said nothing.

As carefully as he could, he placed one arm under her leg, the other around her back, and began to lift. At once, she started screaming. Moving as quickly as he could across the street, he arrived at the makeshift triage area, a voice somewhere in front of him telling him where to put her. Pearse set her down.

“That’s great. Thank you. Now you need to clear this area,” the man said. “No more heroics today.”

Pearse began to answer, but the man was gone.

It was then that he realized he had left the box in the middle of the street. He spun around to try to find it, only to see Petra and Ivo standing with it. She no longer had the “baby”; Ivo had lost his kerchief. More than that, his skirt remained up around his waist, his muddied pants in full view. Pearse started toward them. He was barely out into the street when he saw a man in a dark suit converging on them.

Pearse began to run. Ducking through the mayhem, he watched as Petra began to make her way into the crowds at the edge of the marketplace, the black box in hand. It was clear from her body language that she was fully aware of the man trailing after her. She and Ivo slipped into the mass of people, the man—speaking into a radio—ten yards behind them. Within seconds, he, too, was moving through the crowds. Pearse fell in behind all three.

At once, he realized Petra was trying to use the crowd to get herself around the perimeter of the marketplace. With Ivo in tow, though, she had no hope of losing the man; the spacing between them began to close. Pearse drew nearer as well, the man so intent on his prey that he never considered the possibility that he might have a tail of his own. Only once did Petra look back, Pearse certain that she had seen him. He wasn’t sure if it would make a difference, but at least now she knew he was there. How long Ivo could keep up with her was another question entirely.