The History Thief: Ten Days Lost (The Sterling Novels) (74 page)

Michael breathed on it once more for a second look, and then it hit him. Biometric scanners react to the physiological aspects of what they are scanning, including body heat. The watch was a cold, inanimate object and produced nothing that replicated body heat. Michael remembered hearing once that a thief had been able to break into a bank after taking a printed image of the manager’s fingerprint and licking the paper to simulate the physiologic attributes of an organic being.

Michael breathed on the face of the watch again, this time a bit more heavily. He placed it immediately in front of the biometric scanner. A small flashing green light lit up its face.

Within a moment, the heavy doors hissed slightly open as the pressurized climate of the vault equalized with that of its exterior.

Inside Michael studied the stacks of simple, plain, drab-colored metal drawers. Each was only a few inches high and labeled with heavy calligraphy.

Overhead, a fan automatically turned on to recreate the pressurized environment. Michael could feel the cool air around him rise upward.

Looking at the labels centered on each drawer, he saw that they were labeled sequentially by date. Inside one of these drawers, Michael knew he would find the letter from Henry the VIII announcing his intent to divorce: the letter that anchored into history the beginning of the Anglican Church’s separation from the Catholic Church. Inside, he knew that he would find countless documents that the pedagogical world would salivate to study.

Michael scanned further and nearly lost his breath when he saw a series of drawers that were labeled not with dates but with hieroglyphs. A number of them began with a symbol of a raven-headed man.

It was Horus, the first Jesus in written form.

Slowly opening the drawer, Michael could feel his heart beating erratically and a slight film of perspiration across his brow beginning to form.

But this wasn’t why he was here.

He closed the drawer.

Under any other normal circumstance, Michael would have given a fortune and more to study the drawers’ contents.

But this day wasn’t a normal one.

Continuing his search, Michael traced his fingers along the shelves from top to bottom and left to right, and then stopped when he found the one he had hoped would be there; it was a date that shouldn’t be there.

October 5th, 1578.

It was a date that didn’t officially exist in the Christian world.

Four into Fifteen, Ten are Lost Forever.

When October 4th had ended in 1578, the next day became October 15th as had been ordered by Pope Gregory XIII.

“Well, I’ll be,” said Michael aloud. “They put it right here and in plain sight.”

Michael inhaled deeply and held his breath for a long moment. With an equally long and controlled exhale, he slid the drawer open.

Inside were long and wide layers of a few dozen parchments stacked one atop another. Folded in half like a book, the spine of the parchments was tied by multiples of tightly woven green and red string; so many that the woven string resembled a thin rope. At the bottom of the parchment, the two-tone string was secured to the drawer by a thick and heavy red wax seal; it was a simple security feature.

Try and remove the book, and the wax seal would break.

Without removing the book from the drawer, Michael opened the parchment and began to read.

Page after page, he carefully turned.

His eyes grew wider with each new turn.

It became quite clear that what he was reading was the recording of a collection of debts held by the Order of Christ.

The bound volume contained a century’s worth of monies—fortunes—owed to the Order. On the pages were names that belonged to noblemen, merchants, kings, wealthy families—and popes.

All had been heavily indebted to the Order of Christ.

Some still were.

The treasury stolen from Sebastian wasn’t mounds of jewels, coins, and gold.

It was debts.

Halfway through the bound parchments, Michael stopped. He nearly did a double take and had to read it twice.

“Unbelievable!” he whispered.

He slapped the palm of his hand on the top of the metal shelving with such force that his palm numbed. He wanted to shout out loud, but he held it in; instead, he gritted his teeth with anger. In an instant, he knew who was behind the madness of the last forty-eight hours.

Closing the bound parchments, he left them inside. He wouldn’t need them. He took care as he slid the drawer closed.

Michael readied to leave, but stopped in his tracks. Turning, he studied for a moment the drawers labeled in hieroglyphs.

What the heck,
he thought,
how many more chances will I get to be back in this room?

Back to the hieroglyph-labeled drawers he went. Slowly, he pulled one open. The parchments were bound in the same manner as the debts belonging to the Order had been. Michael stared at each page; all were written in demotic, a cursive derivative of Egyptian hieroglyphic writing.

With each flip of the page, Michael’s breathing grew faster; he thought of his father, a professor of religious studies at the University of Denver, who would undoubtedly have gone into cardiac arrest if he were able to read what Michael now read.

Michael scanned the pages fast, nearly disregarding his current situation. He became further engrossed with the passing of each page.

And then he stopped and suddenly stood upright.

“Jesus!” Michael proclaimed. His hands started to shake. He had to squeeze the outside edges of the drawer to regain his composure.

Taking a breath, he looked down at the parchment and read the demotic script again, wanting to make sure he was translating correctly.

“I can’t believe what I’m reading,” he said through a laugh. “I knew it—if only Dad could see this!” And then Michael realized that his father could. Removing a small digital camera from his pocket, Michael took a few photos of the documents.
Happy Birthday, Father’s Day, and Merry Christmas, Dad,
Michael thought as he slid the camera back into his pocket.

After taking one last long look so he could remember correctly the demotic, he carefully slid the drawer closed and focused once more on the mission at hand.

He couldn’t wait to share with—and show—his father what he had just learned.

With expediency, he retraced his steps. In the old study room, the same sturdy guard wasn’t there to meet him. To the contrary, he was met with more than a dozen of them; half of which now had their weapons trained on him after he burst through the door leading into the room.

Sheepishly, Michael put his hands in the air and asked the nearest one, “You guys know where the newspapers are kept?”

An olive-skinned, dark-haired man who was clearly in charge forcibly made his way toward Michael. But he didn’t answer Michael’s question; the joke was lost on the leader of the Swiss Guard.

An unheard command separated the remaining two men between him and their leader as they made way for a fast-approaching, very large, and seriouslooking man. Every part of him shouted the need to fear him except for his eyes, which were set sleepily and deep into his face.

But that didn’t seem to make Michael feel any better.

The head of the Swiss Guard stood in front of Michael and put his thick hand on Michael’s shoulder as he gruffly inspected the bloodstained bandage poking out from under Michael’s coat.

The man didn’t introduce himself. Instead, he snapped his fingers and barked in Italian for a medic.

Michael shrugged him off. “I’ll be fine. You’ve got two dead bodies in there.” Michael pointed toward the Tower of Winds. “One is in the archives.”

“And my archives, Dr. Sterling?” The voice didn’t belong to the towering soldier in front of Michael. It was the senior conservator’s. “Were you careful, as I had asked?”

Michael wanted to say he had been, but that wouldn’t have been entirely true. “I’ve left everything in its proper place. But the man behind all of this opened fire in the lower levels. I’m afraid a few books may have been damaged.”

The old man shuffled forward. He was still hunched but made every effort to stand erect as he quietly asked, “And the ones that belonged to Sebastian?”

Michael was shocked. The old man knew about King Sebastian; he knew about the documents.

The conservator sensed Michael’s shock. “You seem surprised, Dr. Sterling.”

“But if the church knows, why not make things right; why allow all of this to have happened?”

“Who is to say what is right, Doctor? What are we to do—hmm?”

Michael didn’t have an answer.

The old man repeated his question, “Tell me, then, what of Sebastian’s documents?”

“They are still there,” Michael replied. “I didn’t need them.”

The conservator nodded and leaned in even closer. “And what else, Dr. Sterling, what else did you come across?”

Michael wasn’t going to answer; he didn’t need to. The old man’s question was apparently meant to be rhetorical, and he said, “I’m sure that you are fully aware that demotic is still a quite challenged language; many still argue vociferously to its true translation. Be careful, Dr. Sterling, be very careful with what you think you may have come across.”

A sudden still filled the air as all of the men in the room stopped moving. The mood shifted to one that was somber. On the far end, two men were carrying a stretcher. On it was a body covered by a red and white blanket.

It was the colonel.

The conservator’s lips formed a weak smile that couldn’t hide his emotion. He laid his hand atop Michael’s. “I’m sorry about the colonel. He was one of my oldest and dearest friends.”

Turning, the conservator shuffled away, not wanting the American to see the small tear in the corner of his eye.

In the old man’s place, the head of the Swiss Guard returned. A medic was at his side, along with three more Swiss Guard. “These men will accompany you to our visitor’s quarters. There, you will be looked after by one of our medical professionals. You can shower and rest. Clean clothes and food will be provided to you.” The head of the Swiss Guard dug into his pocket and handed Michael a phone. It was the one that he had given to Sonia before pushing her and York out of the door to the Tower of Winds.

“The rest of your party has already been provided for and attended to; Staff Sergeant York is receiving medical attention as we speak, and your wife is handling the procedure.” Then the towering head of the Swiss Guard leaned down to Michael. His eyes no longer carried the look of a drowsy man. They were open and pulsating. “Dr. Sterling, once you are fed, cleaned, bandaged, and in comfortable clothing, you will be escorted to the airport along with your wife and Staff Sergeant York. You will be taken to your destination of choice. Consider it our way of saying thank you. However, please allow me to be quite clear: once you have left this nation, you will never again return.”

Standing upright, the man gestured to his underlings to take Michael away.

“Ever?” asked Michael.

“Ever,” repeated the head of the Swiss Guard with finality.

Michael slipped the phone into his front pants pocket and thought,
Sonia and York? I guess they never made it to the safe house.

As the head of the Swiss Guard walked away, Michael shouted, “And the crown and the shroud; what of them?”

The man stopped in his tracks. He looked uneasily from left to right; and then turned to Michael as he replied, “Dr. Sterling, the Crown of Thorns and the Shroud of Turin were never out of our sight or control. We’ve known where they have been throughout this entire ordeal. Efforts are already under way to retrieve them.” With another snap of his fingers, he silently commanded his men to follow his orders.

It was then that Michael noticed the golden pendant hanging around the man’s neck. His coat had hidden it, but when he had motioned to the other guards, the neckline of his coat had creased enough for Michael to see it. It was a golden bee, the same necklace the colonel wore on a chain around his neck; it was the symbol of the Watchmen.

Michael moved his eyes from Swiss Guard to Swiss Guard. It didn’t take long, especially when he knew what he was looking for; of the dozen men in the room, each had a gold chain around his neck. Their coats covered most of the chains, so he couldn’t see if they carried the same pendant, but one of the Swiss Guard had knelt over the colonel’s body; it looked as if he were kissing the colonel’s hand.

Standing, the man had tucked his gold pendant back into his shirt.

A golden bee.

Michael bolted toward the head of the Swiss Guard and grabbed him by the elbow, spinning him around. “You are all Watchmen!”

The man didn’t smile nor did he frown; the creases of his face said nothing. He shook Michael’s grasp from his elbow and barked out more orders in Italian. The assigned guards and medic quickly surrounded Michael; gently but firmly, they escorted him away.

Before getting too far, Michael said, “By the way, one of your men was in this room ten minutes ago—you might want to have a chat with him; he’s with the Order.”