Papal decree

8

The professor stared at the students seriously with his arms crossed over his chest. The women considered him fascinating, the men respected him. He looked about forty and was in excellent physical shape. He never smiled or changed his tone of voice. Always confident. He made them think, challenged them, since this was his job as a professor of philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He cleared up doubts with new questions and another point of view. He didn’t give easy answers. Reflection and reasoning were the best weapons for surviving in the real world. They wouldn’t free them from death, but they would prolong their life.

‘The church always finds the solution in Holy Scripture. It’s all there. No one needs to wander lost, because the Bible is also a book of philosophy,’ he explained.

What a waste, the female contingent thought. Such an attractive person dedicated to the life of the church, a disciple of Our Lord Jesus Christ, a man of God.

Malicious tongues, anonymous sources, not that credible, said he was close to Pope Ratzinger. It was just a rumor, for no one could say if it was true or not.

‘Erotic also, and pornographic,’ a male voice was heard to say, coming from the door, at once revealing a much older man, with white hair, beard, and mustache. His age showed, along with a gleam of playfulness. The smile of a rebellious child who has done some mischief.

‘Jacopo, you never change,’ the professor said accusingly without altering his tone of voice.

‘Were you about to tell a lie, Rafael?’ he said, looking at the class provocatively. ‘The Bible is the first historical, fantastic, science fiction, gospel, thriller, and romance novel since the beginning of time.’

‘Do you need something, Jacopo?’ Rafael asked firmly. ‘I’m in the middle of a lecture.’

‘I beg your pardon for sticking my sensible opinion into these minds instead of what you stick in there… whatever that is,’ he joked. ‘Do you know that after all these centuries and millennia, everything we read in the Bible still has no archaeological confirmation? None. And many of the “characters”?’ — he sketched quotation marks in the air as he said the word — ‘and locations that are cited in this book, so important to so many, are not mentioned anywhere else? Only the Bible mentions them, but since it is the Bible…’ He stopped talking and assumed a serious tone. ‘I need to tell you something.’

‘Can’t it wait?’

‘Obviously not,’ and he left the classroom.

Rafael excused himself from the class and promised he’d be only a minute.

‘What’s happening?’ Rafael asked when he left and shut the door. ‘What is it that can’t wait?’

‘Yaman Zafer,’ Jacopo said.

Rafael’s eyes lit up. Now Jacopo had all his attention. ‘Yaman Zafer?’

‘Yes,’ the older man confirmed.

Rafael turned his back and sighed. Jacopo didn’t see him close his eyes. He might have cried, but he didn’t know how. Life sometimes dries up a person’s eyes, making him weep blood inside instead of water outside.

Jacopo was not the type of man who could be called sensitive. Sixty-six years had set a cloak of rationality over his feelings, shielding him from human emotions… or at least he liked to think so. Rafael couldn’t shield his feelings, but even so he was the coldest bastard Jacopo knew.

‘Do you have any more information?’ Rafael asked, turned back to him again, looking at him with sad, serious eyes.

‘Someone called him in the middle of the night to talk about a parchment. That’s what Irene said. He caught a flight the next morning, and…’ He left the rest unspoken.

‘Where?’ the priest wanted to know.

‘Paris. An old refrigerator warehouse on Saint-Ouen.’

Rafael continued to look at him steadily and then headed for the exit.

‘Paris it is.’