Nowak raises a hand in the air and says in a mild voice, “His Holiness commands a change in the dubium. No more on this topic, please.”
Mignatto scribbles something blindly on the pad between us.
Dubium: what is to be proved. The scope of the trial.
The presiding judge is so surprised that he says something to Archbishop Nowak in Polish. The older judge asks, “Which topic is His Holiness referring to, Grace?”
“The exhibit of Doctor Nogara,” Nowak says.
Mignatto seems frozen. His eyes never leave Nowak. But under the table he clamps his hand on my forearm and squeezes. If the tribunal can’t hear about the exhibit, then Simon has no possible motive. The trial is all but over.
“Are you sure, Your Grace?” the presiding judge asks.
Across the courtroom, the promoter of justice is agog.
Archbishop Nowak nods. “You may continue, if you wish, with another topic.”
At the witness table, Bachmeier clears his throat. He isn’t competent to speak on any other topic.
The judges confer. Finally the presiding judge says, “Doctor Bachmeier, you are excused. The tribunal will adjourn until tomorrow.”
Nowak rises. The gendarmes open the doors for him, and he quietly shuffles out.
Mignatto calmly opens his briefcase. He places the legal pad inside, then seems to remember something and jots a note on it. The promoter of justice is already buzzing nearby, hovering between the defense table and the bench, waiting to confer.
“I’ll call you later,” Mignatto says to me. Before closing the briefcase, he tears off the top sheet, folds it over, and hands it to me. Then he joins the promoter on his way to meet with the judges.
Archbishop Nowak is already gone when I reach the courtyard outside. I sit on a bench by the gas station and close my eyes to collect myself. Few times in my life have I felt more acutely that my prayers have been answered. Then I open the sheet of legal paper. On it, Mignatto has written a single line:
I think we just found out who your brother’s guardian angel is.
CHAPTER 26
AS I WALK back to the village to pick up Peter, I look at the papal palace in the distance and wonder about what I’ve just seen. Boia is trying to force Simon to talk. Nowak is trying to keep the exhibit a secret. Battle lines seem to crisscross the palace. If John Paul supports the exhibit—if he supports Simon—then none of this should be happening. He has the power to stop the trial; he has the power to bring Cardinal Boia to heel. But when a pope nears death, he sometimes finds that old friends are wolves in priests’ clothing. Archbishop Nowak has been forced to play the role of illusionist, creating the mirage of a strong pope to stave off a power vacuum. That mirage can last only so long.
What puzzles me most is the disappearance of the Diatessaron and where it might be now. Why would Ugo have taken it from the museum? To distract the Orthodox at Castel Gandolfo from the news about 1204? Or to prove something to them? The last time Ugo and I worked on the Diatessaron, he proposed a theory that could’ve sealed the final gap in his research. If true, it would’ve proven that the Shroud came to Edessa in the hands of one of Jesus’ disciples. And it would’ve located that proof in the Bible itself.
* * *
LEARNING THE GOSPELS BECAME Ugo’s mania in the final weeks we worked together. He studied them the same way he drank. I would be reading in bed after Peter had gone to sleep, and my mobile phone would ring: Ugo, asking whether Jesus really turned water into wine, since John is the only gospel to claim he did. Knocks on the door during breakfast: Ugo, wondering if Jesus really raised Lazarus from the dead, since John is the only gospel to claim he did. A message left at the pre-seminary: Ugo, trying to understand why John left out twenty of Jesus’ healing miracles and all seven of Jesus’ exorcisms.