Papal Decree (2 page)

‘Pope John Paul specifically instructed me to have Your Holiness carefully read the contents of this folder today. He left all the information specifically for you in this envelope,’ Ambrosiano explained, handing over the sealed envelope. ‘No one else may read it.’

Benedict looked at the priest, the cardinals, and the envelope. ‘I shall respect his will,’ he said at last.

The two cardinals heard this as a request to retire, and complied without delay. The wish of a pope was an order.

‘Read it at your leisure, Holy Father,’ the Jesuit priest said, going out. ‘When you’re ready, just call.’

Benedict closed his eyes and leaned back. Thousands of thoughts flooded his mind. He was going to read a secret shared only among popes. What an extraordinary way to begin his reign. Moments later he broke the seal on the envelope the Pole had left. The paper smelled musty.

Benedict was filled with curiosity after reading the letter Lolek had written almost twenty-seven years ago. What could be inside this folder?

The envelope held a small gilt key that opened the folder. He took out almost one hundred pages and started reading. Soon he realized by the sting of his tired eyes that he was not prepared. He read some passages again to make sure he had read them correctly, others he raced through as quickly as possible, as if to escape something distressing or inconvenient.

He finished reading after midnight. Exhausted, he locked up the folder and shut it in the desk drawer. Drops of sweat stood out on his forehead. His hands trembled. He laid his head on the desk until he regained some control over his nerves. Finally he calmed down. When he pushed himself up, he felt older, exhausted.

‘God have mercy upon us,’ he said, making the sign of the cross.

At this moment Father Ambrosiano returned to the papal office. Ratzinger looked different. Sorrow was wasting his soul. Silence was punishing him. The Jesuit knew why. This time he didn’t kneel to kiss the pope’s hand. Ratzinger approached him humbly and fell at his feet. He sobbed with tears that fell in torrents.

‘Forgive me, Father. I have sinned,’ the pope implored, closing his eyes.

Ambrosiano caressed the pope’s head with a comforting hand. ‘I know, my son. I know.’

Father Ernesto Aragones knew that his hour would come. It was a question of minutes. Sooner or later he would end up finding him inside. The light given off by the candle flame gave the place a murky yellow look. Shadows swarmed over the walls and the floor like drunken phantoms from other times. But the father was not there to let himself be frightened or enchanted by the spells of the place.

The watchman could not be found anywhere. He was his last hope. Otherwise he wouldn’t find anyone to help him. Natural for that hour of the night. The tourists had left long ago to find other attractions, more of the body than of the soul. Sweat spread over his face. He was very nervous, but the moment demanded lucidity. He felt like a crusader in the land of infidels who had to perform one last act of heroism.

Aragones made him out in the apse, next to the stairs that led to the Chapel of Adam, leaning against Golgotha, and escaped as quickly as he could. His eighty years didn’t allow him much speed or flexibility. He took off his shoes to silence his steps. He set his shoes very straight on top of the stone of Unction, where supposedly the body of Christ was prepared for burial: not on this one, which dated from 1810, but in this place, at least according to legend. He forced himself to walk under the rotunda and enter the tomb. There was no holier place for Christians, though it was totally unknown to the masses. For Ernesto it was a great privilege, despite his fear. To give himself to God in the place where the body of Jesus Christ had been laid before His resurrection on the third day. How ironic. Ernesto felt fear as he knew he would. Few could go through this moment safely and without fear.

Aragones heard steps in the rotunda outside. It was him. He searched his memory to retrieve an image of the man next to the grilles of the Chapel of Adam. He was tall. He wore a well-cut suit and a blue shirt, but no tie. Unimportant details, but his mind retained them. He couldn’t make out the color of the suit precisely, since the place was poorly lit during the day, to say nothing of the night.

My Father, protect Your servant,
Ernesto prayed, kneeling on a marble flagstone. He made the sign of the cross unhurriedly, shut his eyes, and prayed. There was nothing more to do.

Shadows still trembled on the walls in an ever more frenetic rhythm, matching the pounding of his heart. Reaching a certain height, they stretched out gigantically, and despite Ernesto’s closed eyes and a moment of apparent calm, his heartbeat accelerated in his chest for what would be the last in his life. He knew it. He remained kneeling on the marble flagstone, which protected the rock that had borne the weight of Christ. But Ernesto wasn’t thinking of this. In his final moments, he needed some inner peace.

He felt breath down the back of his neck.

‘Good evening, Father,’ the killer whispered next to Ernesto’s left ear, as if he didn’t want to disturb the souls wandering through the sacred place. An inhuman coldness, almost lifeless. He got no response, obviously. ‘I want to ask you a question,’ the intruder explained. ‘You may choose to answer or not.’

He waited a few moments for this to sink in.

‘Where is it?’

It was not the question he expected. Terror filled his veins.
He knows,
he thought without saying a word.
Oh, my God. He knows. How is it possible?

‘Who are you?’ He tried to buy himself some time. Sweat dampened his face.

A blow struck on the back of the neck, pushing him forward. He steadied himself on the marble flagstone, a few inches from the floor.

‘Don’t answer a question with a question. Where are your manners, Father?’ the tall man asked, raising his voice.

‘Who are you? Who are you looking for?’

Another blow. ‘Again? You all have a very limited repertoire.’

You all?
He knew of their existence? Ernesto opened his eyes. He would do everything to protect the secret, but he failed … completely.

He felt a cold object press into the back of his neck. Lifeless, without will. The most faithful servant.

‘You have ten seconds. Use them well.’

Who was he?

Nine. How could he be so well informed?

Eight. Someone had betrayed them?

Seven. The Status Quo had been broken. From this moment on, it would be every man for himself.

Six.

Protect our beloved Roman Catholic Church, which does everything for Your honor and glory.

Five.
I give myself to You, my Father.

Four.
I serve You at all times.

Three. A tear slid down his face.

Two.
I die in peace.

One. He leaned over with both of his sweaty hands on the sacred flagstone and shouted, ‘Forgive him, Father. He knows not what he –’

The bullet robbed him of the rest of the words. He saw shadows dancing on the walls before collapsing heavily on top of the marble flagstone. Finally he danced with them. He saw and heard nothing more.

The less one knows, the more one believes. It has always been that way and will be until the end of time. Today, commonly known natural phenomena that can be easily explained with the efficiency of science, such as thunder and eclipses, were once considered the anger of God, an omen of the world coming to an end. Believers knelt at every altar, appealing to Saint Barbara, Saint Christopher, and others to intercede with the Creator, Our Lord God, Allah, Jehovah; each one choosing an offering to placate the ire of the god, whoever He was. In earlier ages, intercession came through other saints and gods, now lost in the sands of time, forgotten forever. And the world just kept turning, as we know today, with no interest in the beliefs of those who inhabited it.

Nor did these beliefs matter to the man descending twenty steps, firmly gripping the handrails on each side. Age had not been kind to him. Deep wrinkles were etched in his face, like scars from a whip, reminders of past troubles. The rest of his body bore other reminders: a crippled leg that wouldn’t work as he wished it to, eyes that saw poorly, even with the aid of thick glasses – defects of an overworked, abused body that hadn’t been properly cared for.

He took one step at a time toward an underground structure built in the 1950s by five good men. They had constructed a deep shaft with an elevator. However, he considered the entrance, twenty steps up and down, safer. He wasn’t thinking about his old age or the impediment of his limbs or the twenty steps he would have to climb up now that he was halfway down. It wasn’t a route he took daily; only once a year, on the same date, the eighth of November.

The underground structure was located several hundred feet from a large house, surrounded by leafy trees showing the dead foliage of autumn. The entrance was inside a wooden shed the employees had probably used in times past to store yard tools. It looked abandoned, full of dust and spiderwebs, probably a home for animals that didn’t like humans showing up.

At the center of the shed was a bench that hid the entrance to the underground vault. It wasn’t as heavy as it looked. It was easier for the old man to move it than to descend those stairs. Once down, the route was short. About a hundred feet to another door, a metal structure a couple of feet wide, with bolts the size of a man’s leg. Sixty years ago, one would have had to insert a key in the proper place to activate the mechanism to open it, but now, with technological advances, an entirely electronic lock had been installed. It opened by an optic sensor, and he looked into it for a few seconds. A blue flash passed in front of the old man’s eyes and validated his identity. The eyes matched those registered by the viewfinder:

The mechanism set off an opening operation that, despite its being a logical sequence of releasing locks, sounded to Ben Isaac like disconnected noises coming from within the structure. Only at the end of the process did the two exterior cranks turn, upon which the heavy door opened outward with an exhalation of air, as if it were a living thing. One by one, the fluorescent lights turned on automatically, illuminating the interior of the vault. One hundred square feet of thick stone walls. The interior was two and a half yards high, enough to hold a standing person.

Everywhere the lights emitted a uniform white brilliance, leaving nothing hidden. The place itself was hidden enough dozens of feet above in the abandoned shed among the trees a hundred feet from the large house.

The walls consisted of cold, hard granite, making the closed room cool. The white tiles of the floor reflected the light. There was nothing on the walls. Bare. Three display cases stood alone in the center of the room, topped with three glass panes that prevented oxygen from seeping inside. In the lower left corner of each case, a gauge indicated the temperature of fifty-five degrees. In each of the cases were documents: two parchments and two more recent documents.

Ben Isaac moved to the case on the left that contained a parchment and looked at it. Time had been kinder to that document than to his old body … or so Ben Isaac thought, resentfully. What did he know of that document’s history? Whose hands it had passed through, and how it had been treated over the years, centuries, millennia, until this day, November 8, the anniversary of its discovery with other scrolls in Qumran in 1948? It had been in his possession in this same place for more than sixty-five years. It dated from the first century
A.D.
, according to the most advanced scientific method of dating that money could buy, and in this regard Ben Isaac couldn’t complain. His money could buy anything. It was a small document, compared to the others, its edges worn away and scorched on the upper right side. It must have lain close to a fire on some cold night, or someone may have held it, with criminal intentions, over a flame. Whatever the reason, the burn had not damaged the text that Ben Isaac knew by heart and sometimes recited to himself in the language in which it was written, a dead language for most people, on nights he couldn’t sleep. Those nights.

Rome, year 4 of the reign of Claudius, Yeshua ben Joseph, immigrant from Galilee, confirms he is the owner of a parcel of land outside the walls of the city.

He couldn’t fail to be moved every time he saw that piece of parchment with those letters written by a Roman scribe about a man who would change the course of history for billions of people over the centuries. Jesus himself, son of Joseph, grandson of Jacob, heir of David the great, Solomon the wise, the patriarch Abraham, according to ancient legend.