The Fifth Gospel(46)

            My fears got the better of me. Without waiting, I placed the Diatessaron on its shelf and made for the door.

            As soon as Ugo saw me move, he turned back and darted toward the Diatessaron. “The book!” he rasped. “The book! ”

            The sound echoed through the vault. The silhouette turned. At that moment, the timer on Ugo’s watch went off. Instantaneously, the lights on the timer went out. The vault went black.

            “Run! ” Ugo shouted into the pitch.

            I sloped through the darkness, moving toward the sliver of emergency light beneath the steel door. Behind me, something lurched into motion. I could hear a tattoo of footfalls, then a piercing mechanical scream.

            The alarm.

            “Go! ” Ugo shouted. “I have it! ”

            I swung into the hallway and ran for the elevator. As I frantically pressed the button, Ugo appeared, carrying the Diatessaron.

            “Hurry!” Ugo cried. “He’s coming!”

            The doors opened, and we rushed inside. In the moments before they shut again, I stared out, frozen with surprise, waiting for a glimpse of the man’s face.

            But the vault remained silent. He never came.

            As the elevator car rose, Ugo cradled the book in his hands and closed his eyes.

            “Who was that?” I asked.

            “I don’t know.”

            “We need to tell my uncle.”

            But at the top of the elevator shaft, the gendarmes were waiting. Ugo and I were taken into custody. An hour later, Don Diego arrived to free us.

            “You found what down there?” Uncle Lucio demanded when we returned to his palace.

            Ugo’s answer, in retrospect, probably saved his skin.

            “Eminence,” he said, placing the manuscript on Lucio’s desk, “I’ve discovered the fifth gospel. And I’m going to use it to authenticate the Shroud of Turin.”

            Never had I seen my uncle forget his anger so quickly. “Tell me more,” he said.

            Only later would we piece together the second surprise of that night: that the gendarmes never found the other man in that crypt.

            “Who was he?” I asked Ugo later.

            “I wish I knew,” he said. “I never saw his face.”

            “His voice, though. Did it sound familiar to you?”

            Ugo frowned. “Odd. Now that you mention it, I had meant to ask you the same thing.”





CHAPTER 9





ON THE ELEVATOR ride down from Lucio’s penthouse, I can’t stop thinking of the priest in the library vault. I wonder why my uncle can’t finish Ugo’s exhibit without help from Simon. I wonder why Ugo wanted to keep the finale a secret. There must be something he didn’t want anyone finding out.

            Peter tugs at my cassock. “When is Simon coming back?” he bleats.

            “I don’t know. He has to help Prozio Lucio right now. And we have to check in to the Casa.”

            “Why?”

            I lower myself to his level. “Peter, we can’t go home.”

            “Because the police are there?”

            “Things are just going to be different for a few days. Okay?”

            Different. He knows this word. A slinky synonym for worse.