The Book of Q

three

Giacomo Cardinal Peretti sat silently across from the canopied bed, the slight figure of Boniface X lying peacefully under white linen, head propped gently atop a single silk pillow. The room-three hours ago empty save for the two of them-now swarmed with doctors, security, clerics, lawyers, each caught up in whispered conversations, a collection of nuns kneeling in prayer, oblivious to the hushed activity. Peretti had been the last to speak with him, the last to hold his hand, his friend of forty years offering a final word of warning before drifting off: “Watch yourself, Gigi. Von Neurath wants to sleep in this bed more than you know.” A quiet smile, and then gone.

Peretti hadn’t needed the reminder, the halls even now alive with talk, his private secretary having brought him updates on two separate occasions as to the already-vigorous “campaigning”-none of it permitted by canon law, all of it greedily devoured by the Vatican’s inner circles. No more than three hours since Ezio’s death, and the politicking was well under way. The thought sickened him.

He stared at the ashen face, the high forehead dusted with tufts of gray-white hair, lips with a tinge of blue that matched the veins in his ears. The once-lined face seemed somehow smoother, even the neck taut under a stifling collar. The perfect facade for a spiritless body. Insignificant amid the self-serving swirl of motion all around him.

Peretti knew he had limited time with his old friend. The Cardinal Camerlengo-representing one of the more macabre offices within the church-would be arriving within the hour to lock up the private apartments, break the papal seal, and start the preparations for the novemdieles, the nine days of mourning. He had already announced that the conclave would meet on the ninth day, much sooner than was usual, but certainly within his authority to decide. Most thought it was because the current Camerlengo, Antonio Cardinal Fabrizzi, was in his late seventies, eager to make his interregnum stewardship as short as possible. Peretti had other ideas. Fabrizzi was one of von Neurath’s longtime allies.

“I need all of you to leave,” Peretti said quietly, loudly enough, though, to bring a sudden silence to the room. One of the security men started to answer, but Peretti raised his hand. “Just a few minutes. I’m sure he’ll still be here when you get back.” He remained seated, eyes fixed on the body, face devoid of expression.

The nuns were the first to go, crossing themselves as they stood, each turning to Peretti with a gentle nod before heading for the door-Carmelite sisters, ever mindful of a cardinal’s wishes. A slow trickle of lawyers and doctors soon followed, the two or three security men the last to leave. Finally alone, Peretti stood and walked to the bed. Again, he stared into the lifeless face, hoping for some reassurance. He half-expected the eyes to open, a naughty smile to creep across the lips. “Gone at last,” Ezio would say, a wink, spindly legs springing to the floor.

Peretti knelt at his side, his head drooped in prayer.

“What were you so concerned with on Athos, Itzi?” He looked up and gazed at the serene face. “And why did you go without telling me?”

Angeli moved to the kitchen table, two cups of coffee in hand. She passed one to Pearse, then sat, the tale of the Austrian having required another pot.

“On the other hand,” she said, doing her best to convince both him and herself, “the men from security might simply have been that-men from security. They might actually have been trying to recover something they thought could be a threat to the church. A bit more aggressively than one would have expected, but still-”

“No.” Pearse shook his head, staring into the coal black of his cup. “Even if you dismiss Cesare and Ruini-and I’m not saying you can-think about who would want the scroll.” He placed the cup on the table and looked at her. “There are two possibilities. One, someone who hears about its discovery, tracks it down, and then does what you did-decodes the map and uncovers the link to Athos. At that point, he’d realize the prayer is only a first step, not the ultimate prize. He’d also realize that he doesn’t need it anymore-he’d already have the information necessary to get him to Athos, before anyone else, and retrieve whatever is there. So even if he were to lose the scroll, there’d be no reason for him to hunt it down.”

“True,” she conceded.

“Or two,” he continued, “someone who hears about it, but who never gets his hands on it, and therefore never has a chance to decode it. No decoding, no map. No map, and the prayer-in his eyes-would fall into the category of intriguing pieces of parchment rumored to exist, but lost to the ages. At best, he might do a little academic poking around to see if it wasn’t all a hoax.

“Neither possibility, however, would prompt the kind of zeal our Vatican friends have displayed. Unless”-he leaned in over the table-“they knew it was a map before they’d heard about the discovery, a map to something worth a great deal to them. The question is, given what you’ve told me, how would anyone, except a Manichaean, know that?”

“I see.” She let the words sink in before responding further. “No, you’re right. No one has ever thought of the ‘Perfect Light’ as a map. No one could have, given that there’s never been a written copy of it before.”

“So the only person who would go to such lengths for the scroll,” he concluded, “is someone who would have known it’s a map before the written version had ever been found.”

“And that,” she admitted, “limits the field considerably.”

The silence that followed only brought home the enormity of what they were saying. After a few moments, she spoke. “It would mean that those men from the Vatican are a part of something that dates back over seventeen hundred years.”

“It would also mean,” he added, “that, considering they’re still after the scroll, they have no idea where it leads. That’s why they’re so eager to get their hands on it.” Again, silence. Pearse took a long sip of coffee. “I suppose that gives me something of a head start.”

“What?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “You can’t be serious. If what you say is true about Ruini and this monk friend of yours, we have to take this-”

“To whom?” His conversation with Dante-had it really only been yesterday? — flooded back. “No one outside this room is likely to see a link between the confirmed heart attack of a priest and a fifteen-hundred-year-old acrostic, much less the unconfirmed disappearance of a monk and the promise of something older than the Gospels somewhere in Greece. Even the church would be hard-pressed-” He stopped, the sudden recollection of the television image storming back. “If von Neurath is involved”-the thought far more unsettling aloud-“who’s to say how deep this goes? Or how mysterious the Pope’s illness really was?”

“You’re making a very big jump there.”

“Am I? If we both agree these men are tied to the Manichaeans, you know better than I do what they had in mind for the Catholic church all those centuries ago. I can only imagine how their ‘hyperasceticism’ has evolved, their need for ‘one, pure church.’ Not the most pleasant place to be if they succeed. Plus, they’d have to destroy the current church to do it.” He waited. “Given what’s happened to Ruini and Cesare, not to mention my little run-in with security, are you willing to take the chance I’m wrong?” Her silence was answer enough. “The only way to find out is to get to Athos first.”

What she said next took him completely by surprise. “We could destroy it.”

“What?”

“The scroll, my notes, everything. Let whatever is on Athos stay on Athos. I can hardly believe I’m saying it, but it seems the only way.”

“To do what? Leave these men totally unaccountable? Athos is the only thing that might explain what they’ve been waiting to do all this time.”

“And with no way to find it,” she insisted,“they won’t have that chance.”

“Of course they have a way to find it. They have you and me.”

It was an obvious point, but one Angeli clearly hadn’t grasped until this moment.

She started to say something, then stopped. Instead, she looked at Pearse; she then picked up her cup and slowly began to drink.

After several seconds, he said, “I … didn’t mean to say it that way.”

“No, no,” she replied evenly, cup still clasped in her hands. “You’re right. Of course.” It was clear she was doing her best to stifle a growing unease. “They found your monk, you, no reason to think they won’t track me down, get the name of the monastery.”

“They want the scroll. They know I have it. They’ll want me.” He could see his efforts to placate were having little effect. “But if I get to Athos first …”

“Yes? And then what?”

He tried a smile, a shake of the head. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Maybe it’ll force them out into the open.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.” For nearly half a minute, she sat there, staring at the table. Finally, she placed the cup down, swept a few crumbs onto the floor, and stood. “I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

Again, Cesare’s voice echoed in his head. “I’m sorry I involved you in this.”

It took her a moment to respond. Finally, she began to nod to herself. “I involved myself in this a long time ago.” She turned to him. “You don’t dream of finding a scroll like yours for an entire career and then run away from it when it’s right in your hands.”

“This is more than just a scroll.”

“They’re all more than just scrolls, Ian. That’s what I’ve been telling my students for thirty years. Wouldn’t make much sense not to take my chance to prove it, now would it?”

He knew she was grasping at anything to stem the anxiety. Who was he to argue with the method?

“There’s a phone call I need to make,” she said as she moved to the door. “And I’ll have to transcribe my notes so you can read them.” She needed to focus on the hunt, not on its implications. A map. Nothing more. She stopped and turned to him. “And some new clothes. A Catholic priest on Athos … now that wouldn’t make much sense, would it?”

An hour later, she handed him a large manila envelope filled with yellow pages. Two hours after that, she returned to the apartment with numerous packages under each arm. He had used the time to catch a quick nap, then to acquaint himself with the envelope’s contents. Even given the little he had read, he was astounded at how simple it all became when focused through an expert’s lens.

She had done well. Pants, shirts, backpack-all the necessities. It had been a long time since he’d forgone the customary clericals. While he was trying on a green pullover, she removed one of the last items from the bag. A wad of cash. He looked at her quizzically. Before he could respond, she took his hand and placed the money in it.

“Lire, drachma, even some American dollars. They seem to like those wherever you go.”

“I can’t take-”

“Yes, you can.” She smiled. “You probably won’t need all of it, but best to be safe.” He tried to hand it back, but she stepped away. “And how, exactly, were you going to get to Greece and back? On a credit card?” She shook her head. “That can be traced. So, too, can withdrawals from a bank machine.” She was showing a great deal more savvy than he was himself. How had he planned to get to Athos and back? He realized he had no choice but to pocket the money.

“The man in Salonika is a former student of mine, Dominic Andrakos,” she continued, now folding the bag. “I’ve told him you’re a colleague. I gave you the name Peter Seldon.”

“What?” Pearse was genuinely surprised.

“Well, I had to make up something. I don’t want to get Dominic involved in all of this. Peter’s a winegrower I know in California. Excellent Chardonnay. It was the first thing that popped into my head.”

Again, best to let her handle it in her own way. Come to think of it, the alias actually made sense. More than protecting Andrakos-admirable in itself-he knew his own name might draw attention on Athos. She really was better at this than he was.

“You’re interested in Ambrose and his possible link to St. Photinus,” she continued.

“There is no link.”

“Yes, but Dominic doesn’t know that.” She deposited the folded bags in a drawer. “His interests have always been somewhat later-ninth century, Photius’s split with Nicholas the First, that sort of thing. Makes him very well connected on Athos. He said he’d be delighted to arrange things. He’s expecting you sometime tomorrow, late afternoon.”

She had obviously managed to put their earlier conversation from her mind. His was a research junket. Perhaps even something of a game. A wad of cash. A new name. A former student. Access to Athos. That he would have to use his Vatican passport at the border-something else easily traced-hadn’t penetrated her defenses. He would get to Greece. That was as much as she cared to discuss.

He slipped his priest’s shirt, jacket, and collar into the backpack. From experience, he knew how persuasive they could be at the borders. Together with the Vatican seal on his identification papers, they’d be enough to impress an indifferent guard. The manila envelope was the next to go inside.

“You know,” she said, busying herself with something at the counter, “what you find might be more than you expect.”

Her sudden willingness to revisit the real issue surprised him. “I realize that. Whatever the Manichaeans have-”

“That’s not what I meant,” she said firmly, her back still to him. He stopped loading the pack and waited for her to explain. “What if it is older than the Gospels? What if it does alter the way we understand Christ’s message, the church?” She turned to him. “I know you’ve always had trouble with the structure, but this goes a good deal beyond that. They think it could actually tear down the church. Regardless of how the Manichaeans would want to use it, as a Catholic, Ian, how much are you willing to find?”

For the first time in hours, Pearse recalled his first reaction to the scroll. Not apprehension. Not fear. Only wonder. The possibility of Christ untethered. The purity, the connection that he’d always craved. Sola Scriptura. How much more powerful could it be than that? And if no longer in the scroll, then in whatever awaited him on Athos. Disentangled from the Manichaeans, it posed none of the threat Angeli was investing it with. At least not to him.

Maybe that was why he was so eager to go after it, why he had so quickly taken the task as his own. For the Manichaean threat? For himself? In all the excitement, he hadn’t really bothered to ask. Nor could he have. The two were now inexorably tied together. The questions would have to wait.

“I don’t know,” he replied.

“You might want to figure that one out.” She stared at him for a moment longer, then opened her purse and pulled a baseball from it. She tossed it to him. Without thinking, he reached out and caught it. “I found it in the Rinascente,” she said. “Amazing what they have there these days.”

Tracing his fingers across the seams, he smiled. “You remembered.”

“A priest tossing a little ball in a cafe so he can figure out an ancient picture grid? Yes, that’s not something one forgets.” Now she smiled. “Just make sure the monks don’t catch you. They’d probably confiscate it.”

The surreal quality of their last hours together remained with Pearse for much of the train trip to Brindisi, sleep an impossibility. She had insisted on taking him to lunch, along with giving him a brief summary of Athos’s history, all in a vain effort to lend some normalcy to the situation. More than not, though, they had eaten in silence. There was enough conversation around to relieve them of the burden. As one might have expected, talk of the Pope had monopolized every table. More like touts than a grieving flock, the clientele of the cafe had been placing odds: Peretti at two to three, von Neurath at even. Other names had entered the mix, as well, Pearse amazed by the familiarity the lunchtime crowd displayed with the inner workings of the Sacred College. Silvestrini at four to one (too old); Mongeluzzi at six to one (too young); Iniguez, Daly, and Tatzric all at ten to one (too foreign). Enough of a distraction, though, for both of them.

The good-byes had been brief, awkward at best, both trying to downplay the events of the last day. He had made it to the station by 1:30.

The choice of train, then ferry, had been an easy one. Overland routes would have taken days, not to mention the precariousness of a jaunt through the former Yugoslavia. And, Vatican ID notwithstanding, Pearse knew that passport control at the Adriatic was far less strict than at any of the airports he might have tried. Not that he thought the Austrian could possibly be monitoring all of them-although at this point, he had no idea how extensive the network might be-but best to make it as difficult as possible to track him. The Brindisi ferries sailed for two destinations: Albania and Greece. Unless the men of Vatican security had a sixth sense, the port wouldn’t warrant much consideration. No, the boats were his best bet. Lots of tourists to get lost among at this time of year.

The train pulled in at 6:46. By 8:00 P.M., he had reserved a cabin on a 10:30 ferry-L140,000 for overnight passage to Igoumenitsa, on the southwestern coast of Greece. He would worry about the next leg of the trip tomorrow.

For two hours, he sat in a small Greek-style cafe by the piers, several cups of coffee, something resembling a gyro, and Angeli’s notes to pass the time. He was trying to commit the layout of St. Photinus to memory-descriptions of benchmarks she had gleaned from the scroll with remarkable detail. But his lack of sleep was beginning to tell. Every so often, he found his eyes drifting, scanning the area along the street leading to the wharf, looking for what, he didn’t know. Easier to concentrate on the casual meanderings of tourists than on the minutiae of a hastily scrawled map.

Those making the trip began to show up at around nine o’clock.

They wandered in the distance, their movements muted, the cafe too close to the strip of shoreline to permit anything but the sound of lapping tide against the pier. Pearse found himself listening intently to it, slowly attuned to the Adriatic’s gentle glide, its beat less emphatic than the one he had grown up with on the Cape, the waves landing without the fullness he had come to expect of the sea.

And if only for a moment, he let his mind slip back to that past, recalling the hours he had spent alone on the beach, the glare angling itself lower and lower onto the surf-vivid blue into pale lemon-and all he’d had to do was cradle himself at the water’s edge, the unmetered swish erasing everything and everyone around him. Not as a visual cleansing, but as a timbred one, the surge after surge of sound to engulf him.

Maybe that was what he was hoping to find on Athos.

A horn sounded near the ticket office. He looked up and saw the crew beginning to let people on board. The present resumed focus. Along the pier, the tourists were in full buzz, a rival ferry about to head out. He turned to the backpack and slotted everything inside, then made his way to the men’s room at the rear of the cafe-priest’s shirt, jacket, and collar to replace the green jersey he had been wearing since Angeli’s, a quick wash of the face to snap some life into his eyes.

Within ten minutes, he was walking up the gangplank of the Laurana-another reminder of those summers on the Cape, the ferry a larger cousin of the boats he’d taken out to the Vineyard-his outfit and papers eliciting the desired response from the official. A few meaningless questions, his signature and stamp on various forms, followed by the deferential nod reserved for members of the clergy. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Pearse found his cabin-the room no more than six feet across, a narrow iron-framed bed bolted to the far wall, a tiny steel sink wedged into the corner. No window.

Perfect insulation. More comforting than perhaps he cared to admit.

His eyes bolted open at 6:00 A.M. to an overwhelming sense of panic. It lasted less than a second, but it was long enough to get him upright, the taste of stale breath in his mouth. Sitting in the pitch-black of the room, he knew exactly where he was, no need to remind himself of the last day and half. His appreciation for his surroundings had less to do with the momentary shock than with the way he had slept-on the edge of consciousness, eyes opening from time to time, dreams melding with the reality of an airless room, 3:30 the last time he had checked his watch. He was grateful for the last few undisturbed hours.

He had dreamed of Dante, uneven images returning again and again, always the same, the monk leading him through St. Photinus-a monastery neither of them had ever seen-but always away from the prize, away from the parchment he knew to be inside.

“You’re taking me the wrong way, Dante. She said it’s to the left.”

“You don’t want to go to the left. Please, Ian, do as I ask.”

“But it’s right there. I know it’s there.”

“They’re old friends. Trust me.”

“But it’s-”

“Trust me. They will change everything.” The face suddenly Petra’s. “How much are you willing to find, Ian? How much?”

It wasn’t difficult to explain the dream, or why she had appeared. At one point, his eyes had opened to the blackened cabin, certain that she was there with him. Hardly the first time. Anxiety, evidently, owed nothing to linear time.

By 6:30, he was showered and shaved, on deck with those who had taken the cheapest way across-a single seat. Most were still asleep, signs of late-night drinking, and who knows what else, in evidence. Even with the odd amalgam of smells, a crisp breeze managed to cut its way through, salted wisps on his tongue. Finding an area by the rail, he peered out.

He had never seen the Adriatic in sunlight, its coloring far more vivid than he had expected, almost with a dimension to it. Even the sun seemed sharper here, a constant pulse streaking the curls of water in a saffron blue.

It was exactly as Petra had described it, those moments when she would threaten to steal him away to Dubrovnik, find a boat, and just drift. The two of them. “Now, that wouldn’t be so bad, would it?” He would smile, tell her about the Cape. And she would laugh.

“Either one,” she would say. “Either one.”

The first hint of shore appeared in the distance. He stared out for a moment longer, then checked his watch. Another forty minutes before docking.

It had been eight hours since Brindisi, time enough for the name of a priest to appear on a computer manifest, no sixth sense needed to place him on the Laurana into Igoumenitsa. Still less trouble to catch a flight to Athens-or perhaps a private airfield somewhere nearer the port-so as to meet the ferry. Pearse realized he needed to be a little less conspicuous. He looked around and saw a group of three young men beginning to shake off the effects of the previous night, yawning and speaking Italian as they joked with one another. He noticed their clothing, similar enough to his own-nondescript pants, faded shirts. He pulled himself from the rail and started toward them.

By 7:30, he would make sure they were all fast friends.

Nigel Harris’s last-minute announcement of a press conference had caught the media completely by surprise. Most hadn’t expected rumblings from that quarter for at least another six months-Tony Blair’s promised timetable for elections. CNN had been the first to jump, offering the 7:00 A.M. slot, completely at a loss, though, as to what the colonel-former colonel, they had to remind themselves-was proposing to unveil. His rather public departure from the council, and his subsequent tours through Europe and the States, had made him a hot topic. Several op-ed pieces over the last few months in the New York Times, Corriere della Sera, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine hadn’t hurt his notoriety, either. If he wanted the early-morning slot-Nigel over coffee and toast-they were more than happy to oblige. It suited him. After all, “the new dawn” seemed to be a mainstay of his rhetoric.

He’d thought about the BBC. Bit more respectable. Bit more homegrown. But the Beeb didn’t have the international cachet CNN could offer. They’d replay the conference again and again throughout the day, beaming him out to every one of their stations. And, if nothing else, international was the word of the day.

The pundits had been on the air since nine o’clock the previous night, speculating. Nightline had devoted an entire segment to the upcoming announcement. And given the time difference, they were promising to stay on the air-2:00 A.M. Washington time-to give their own spin on things when he finally got through talking. One guest had mentioned the possibility of a post in Blair’s government. Given the PM’s recurring run-ins with the Archbishop of Canterbury, he needed all the help he could get. Someone else had suggested that a new U.S. cabinet post might be more to his liking. The term spiritual adviser had been tossed around with a certain degree of playful cynicism. Still one more had speculated on a reconciliation with the TC, a way to solidify the “new Christian voice for the millennium” through a revamped Testament Council. Whatever it was, most of the major networks throughout Europe and the States were putting time aside. Harris was news. And news meant ratings. His own PR people had told him he’d be busy for the next few days. Wasn’t that the point?

With a go from the producer in the London studio, Harris stepped to the microphone at 7:04. He pulled two note cards from his jacket pocket and began to speak.

“Good morning. My name is Nigel Harris, and let me first extend my thanks to CNN for organizing all of this at such short notice, and to you for allowing me to join you during your no doubt busy mornings. I promise to be brief.

“As many of you know, I stepped down as executive director of the Testament Council over a year ago. I was convinced, at the time, that an organization of its kind could achieve only limited gains within a secularized society, and that faith and politics, difficult as it was for me to admit, would never find a common ground in creating our future. I saw the selfsame efforts, both here in Europe and in the United States, coming to naught, and felt, perhaps, that our time had passed. I realize now that I was wrong.” He paused. “It has never been clearer to me than today that those goals can be achieved only by the mutual cooperation of both. Faith must infuse politics. Politics must guarantee the rights of its faithful.”

Again he paused, aware that, somewhere in the council’s London headquarters, the phones were ringing off the hook. “No, we had no idea he was coming back, either,” they’d be saying. He would have loved to have been there to see the surprise on their faces during the next few minutes. “I have also come to realize that such cooperation cannot be limited in its scope. At the council, we set our boundaries too narrowly. Our agenda alienated, rather than embraced. When the desire to strengthen the family, restore commonsense values, and foster religious liberty becomes the tool of political one-upmanship, then the issues of greatest concern to a faithful constituency can only become lost in the fray. I know that was not the council’s intention to begin with, but, sadly, that is where the TC stands today.

“Several months ago, I therefore decided that there was a need for a new kind of leadership, an international organization that could meet the expansive needs of a new millennium, the new dawn. With the hope of stemming the cultural crisis that continues to batter away at the very heart of our social fabric, I brought together a group of political, civic, and religious leaders-names that will be made public at the end of this broadcast-who share my concerns. In the hope of inspiring inclusion, we have dubbed ourselves the Faith Alliance. At this very moment, the alliance is putting the final touches to a proposal, which we will present to various government leaders around the world, on how best to build a morally girded bridge to the next millennium. We are fully aware that this is only the beginning of the dialogue, but it will mean nothing without your support. I am, therefore, here this morning to tell you that a copy of that proposal, along with the alliance’s mission statement, will appear in newspapers around the world one week from today. With it, our telephone numbers, fax numbers, and E-mail addresses, so that we can be certain that your voices-the voices of decency, civility, and cohesion-will be heard.

“We are taking this step because we feel that, in a world connected by the flick of a computer key, we can hardly sit back and allow the values dearest to us, and to our children, to remain at risk. Ours has been called a godless society, a great wasteland, a society so self-indulgent that we’ve become easy prey for those who would take advantage of our materialistic pride and our spiritual negligence. A new kind of terrorism abounds, which takes the godless as its victims. It becomes imperative, therefore, that wherever we can inspire faith, we must act with vigilance. Wherever we can find common ground, we must cultivate it so as to protect ourselves. Religious and, indeed, moral commitment can no longer be seen as quaint relics in an enlightened world of reason, where technology has become our surrogate divinity. Our children’s future is too important to allow us to become so distracted.

“Let me say that the Faith Alliance will not be concerned with such divisive issues as national health, balanced budgets, tax reforms, deficit reductions, European fiscal cohesion, or any other such issues, which, though important in specific arenas and to specific politicians, have only shifted our focus away from what truly matters. Our message extends beyond political borders and therefore has no partisan agenda.

“In the next few weeks, you will come to know what we in the alliance hope to achieve. Our hope is that you will choose to embrace it. After all, it would be meaningless without your support. All I ask is that you take a look at what we have to say. Consider it. I feel confident that you will agree we must all find a way to reinject a spiritual and ethical purpose into every facet of our lives. If not for ourselves, then for the future, for that brave new dawn. What else is there?

“I thank you for your time and your patience. Are there any questions?”

Twenty arms sprang up at once. Harris pointed to a familiar face in the second row. Margaret Brown, BBC News.

“Mr. Harris,” she began, “I appreciate your desire to keep things vague, but could you elaborate on what exactly you mean by religious vigilance? Which religion are we talking about?”

“Vigilance in inspiring faith, Margaret. I believe that to be a staple in every religion. The point here isn’t to find what separates us, but what connects us. When the proposal comes out, I believe it will become quite clear that the issues we are confronting transcend those kinds of boundaries.”

“Yes,” she continued, shouting above the next surge of hands and questions, “but wasn’t that the same claim you made when you were with the council? Not a Christian agenda, not a conservative agenda. And yet it turned out that wasn’t the case at all when it came to your lobbying efforts with Parliament. Is the Faith Alliance just another special-interest front?”

“I’m not sure what you mean by ‘front,’ Margaret, but I will say that my choice to look beyond the council had more to do with the focus of the message than with the message itself. Spiritual commitment isn’t something that should be marginalized. Jim,” he said, pointing to James Tompkins from the Times.

“Yes. Mr. Harris, you said the proposal will be in papers around the world. That can run into a tidy sum of money. Where, might we ask, is the funding coming from?”

“That kind of information will be made clear in the mission statement.” It was obvious to everyone in the room that the question period was going to be just that. Questions, no answers. Still the hands went up.

A reporter from the Independent jumped in. “You mentioned the Faith Alliance will be an ‘international organization.’ Could you give us a little more detail on that?”

“Let me put it this way. If, say, the Bank of England here, or the Federal Reserve in the States, has to take Japanese, Russian, European-what have you-economies into consideration when they set policy, I believe a crisis of values must also extend beyond borders. The linkages … that’s the word they like to use now”-a few titters-“aren’t just with our financial interests. The global community must be just that-global. And while we need to be sensitive to the cultural differences among us, we must also be willing to find that common ground so as to allow for some kind of connection when we tap into a part of the world that isn’t our own. My son, like most of our children, I would venture a guess, is an absolutely avid Internet guru. To be quite honest, I use him as mine more often than not.” More titters. “The point is, when he starts chatting with a little chap in, say, France, or Australia, or who knows where, I want to know that they’re speaking the same language. That they have that commonality. And that they find comfort in it. That, ultimately, is what we hope to achieve.”

One or two more pointed questions, followed by another series of less-than-coherent riffs from Harris, and the press conference came to a close. He was well aware of what the reporters thought of him and his meandering responses. So be it. He wasn’t trying to impress them. The soon-to-be-released list of names would be more than enough to keep them happy. His concern wasn’t the people who ran the media; it was those who watched it. And for them, bells and whistles were just fine. How many of them could get beyond the verbiage anyway? Bells and whistles. Best to leave it at that.

The harbor at Igoumenitsa comes up quickly from the open sea, a wide U of coastline dotted with houses, apartments, hotels, all nestled by the shore, shielded to the rear by the northernmost chain of the Pindus Mountains. The hills slope more gently at the rim of the town, easy rolls of grass and trees lilting their way to within half a mile of the water. Once a bustling port where an Alcibiades or a Nicias might have gathered his fleet to sail against Sparta, the town now contented itself as a tourist hub, the central jumping-off point for Corfu, a few beaches and resorts all that remained of any particular interest.

Even so, Pearse stood astounded by the beauty of the place. As did his newfound companions. All four looked on in silence as the ferry docked, the beach a powdered white that seemed more snow than sand. And what had dazzled on the open sea now found definable texture in the wood and stone of the piers and buildings, chiseled gray topped by the ceramic red of undulating tiled roofs, each one shimmering under the gaze of an early-morning sun. If he had ever conjured an idealized form of Greece, Pearse now knew Igoumenitsa to be that image. The expressions on the three faces to his left told him he wasn’t alone.

Over a quick breakfast, he’d learned they were making the trek to see a friend play in a summer-league soccer match in Beroea just west of Salonika. Amiable enough. More than that, they’d mentioned something about a bus. He’d asked to tag along.

Pearse made certain they were in the middle of the crowd as they took to the gangplank. Still not sure what he was looking for, he let his eyes wander-as casually as he could-along the faces of those waiting by the dock.

They were, as far as he could tell, all part of the tourist trade: hawkers of various activities, trinkets, transportation to the nearby resorts, all managing some semblance of Italian, articulated in thick Greek accents. Passport control was a formality; no one seemed to care that the priest had opted for mufti. Onshore, he stayed close to his friends, adopting the easy gait of a longtime confidant, arm on a shoulder as he laughed and nodded to the tales of their journeyman goalie friend. Evidently, the travails of what amounted to minor-league European soccer made triple-A ball sound like high living. Pearse tried to respond as if he knew what he was talking about. A few quizzical looks from the Italians, followed by bursts of jovial laughter-the much-hoped-for slap on the back-made the onetime trio into the perfect quartet.

As far as he could tell, no one showed any interest in them. Once or twice, he glanced around, ostensibly to check something in his backpack, tie his shoe. Nothing. At the bus station, he again made a quick sweep of faces-half the ferry, it seemed, hoping to squeeze onto the one bus out of town. Still nothing. Maybe Vatican security wasn’t as keen or as capable as he’d thought. He bought a ticket, climbed on board-Igoumenitsa (in rather atypical Greek fashion) showing the good sense to coordinate ferry arrivals and bus departures-and settled in. Within twenty minutes, his three friends were well on their way to catching up on the previous night’s sleep.

The more than eight hours necessary to travel the less than two hundred miles were due, in large part, to the pit stops along the way. First World and Third commingled with relative ease. At each station-a loose definition, to be sure-the driver took a few minutes to stretch his legs, chat with some of the locals, an occasion for everyone to escape the sauna inside. Sometimes, he even played up to the crowd, offering brief historical tidbits on the landscape-tales of the Centaurs, Jason and his Argonauts-although never allowing more than a few questions before shuttling everyone back on board.

At each town, Pearse marveled at the wide vistas of feral land, from a distance so lush. Closer in, the green patches tore up through the rough soil, wild vegetation seizing upon whatever turf it could. It was as if the earth here were too old to offer more than token assistance to anything staking a claim. Browned from the sun, the grass and trees tilted at an endless sky, faint hints of a distant past appearing from time to time on the roadside, all treated with casual indifference. A country of ruins could decide which it chose to celebrate.

The soccer trio managed to sleep through it all; their absence, however, didn’t free Pearse from the obligations of small talk. An Italian, clearly uncomfortable in the heat-white handkerchief ever present at neck and brow-took each of the layovers as a chance to bemoan his situation to whoever would listen. A missed ferry, a business opportunity lost. After the third stop, Pearse was the only one not trying to steer clear of him. The burden of a priest’s sensitivity. Only when the man began to ask Pearse about himself did the priest become more standoffish.

“Just on holiday,” he answered.

“Where to?” the man pressed.

“Wherever the spirit moves me.”

After that, he found reasons either to stay inside or to make his way to the men’s room during the stops, avoiding the minitours altogether. He felt strange reacting as he did, innocent questions treated with such suspicion, but he knew he had no choice. From now on, he would have to set aside his more charitable instincts. Even in something as simple as a friendly chat. He watched as the man finally began to engage his seatmate; there, too, the saturation point came quickly. If not for the handkerchief man getting off at the next stop, Pearse wondered how long the other man could have taken it.

Reminding himself why he was on the bus, Pearse returned to the notes, piecing together the bizarre customs Angeli had detailed, each one attesting to the eccentricities of the Manichaeans. Albeit vague, the descriptions were no less intriguing: dramatized versions of the “heavenly ascent”; ritual ceremonies of “illumination” to test the commitment of an initiate; secret rites of bathing and eating imbued with mystical properties. Amid all the bumps and jolts of the ride, only one came across with any distinction: an elaborate ritual of greeting that appeared at the beginning of each of the letters. Unlike the transcriptions of the prayer, these showed no variation. Five identical steps, which, although not physically possible to experience in a letter, were at least described with enough detail to provide a clear picture. By the time they stopped for lunch, Pearse found he could recite the “signs of reception” himself.

One more insight into the Brotherhood of the Light.

The choice to stop at Kalambaka, he discovered, had less to do with the town’s extensive choice of eateries than with its small railway station. Five miles off the Salonika road, it was the only chance to catch a train east or south-Larissa and Athens, and everything in between-before the bus headed north. More than that, it was an hour’s break from the stifling heat of the midday sun.

Actually, Kalambaka was quite charming, far larger than anything they had come across thus far, and with a central square that boasted several cafes and restaurants. All, no doubt, for the tourist trade.

Before choosing one, Pearse decided to see if there was a train to Salonika-via Larissa-that might be quicker than the bus. Finding his way to the station, he discovered that, yes, in terms of hours spent, the train would lop off over three from the trip. In terms of real time, however, the one to Larissa didn’t leave for another six. Of course, had he been going to Athens, he could have left within the hour. Not all that surprising.

So as not to make the jaunt to the station a complete loss, he stopped by the news kiosk and picked up one of the local papers. Probably a good idea to bone up on his Greek.

It was while he was getting his change that he noticed the handkerchief man’s seatmate standing by the information booth. Evidently, Pearse wasn’t the only one looking for something a bit quicker than the bus. And yet, if only for a second, Pearse thought he had caught the man staring at him.

He told himself it was nothing-after all, they had been on the bus together. It was natural for someone to glance at a familiar face. Hadn’t he just done the same thing? Still, there had been something there, something in the sudden turning away of the eyes. In a moment of pure paranoia, Pearse imagined the hushed conversation between the two men on the bus, the first assault having come up empty. Stifling the urge to bolt out of the station, he slipped the coins into his pocket and, as casually as he could, headed for the exit. Even so, it was all he could do not to glance over his shoulder as he pushed through the door.

Crossing the street, he managed a peripheral view of the station; the man was also making his way back to the stores and cafes, and always at a constant distance. The more Pearse thought about it, the more he realized that the precautions he had taken in Brindisi, and again in Igoumenitsa, had retained a kind of fanciful quality. Watching a few tourists. Finding a group to walk with. Easy responses to an unseen threat.

He couldn’t help but wonder if that threat had just made itself known.

And yet, it didn’t make any sense. If either of the men were with Vatican security, why would they have waited until now to approach him?

Unless, of course, they had never intended to make contact at all. It suddenly dawned on him that the Vatican needed only to track him. They had no idea where the “Perfect Light” was sending him; all they needed to do was put someone on the bus, then let the priest lead them to the parchment. The possibility that he might be switching to the train had simply forced their hand.

He felt his face flush as his mind continued to race. He stopped and gazed into the window of a shop; from the corner of his eye, he saw the man pausing to tie his shoe. It was all the confirmation he needed. With no alleyways or tunnels in the offing, he realized he had no chance of losing the man before getting back on the bus. He had to find another way.

With that in mind, he headed into the square. A large group from the bus was sitting at what was clearly the best cafe Kalambaka had to offer. Too many people, he thought. Instead, he walked past the fountain to a far less prepossessing establishment on the opposite end of the square. Even the waiter seemed surprised by his arrival. Undaunted, Pearse sat and began to glance through the menu. As he did, he noticed that the man had stationed himself directly across the square, his view unimpeded. Pearse signaled for the waiter, pointed to something on the page, then asked for a coffee. The waiter nodded and disappeared.

Two minutes later, he returned with the cup and placed it on the table. Pearse took a sip, then asked for the men’s room. The waiter pointed toward the inside of the restaurant, whereupon Pearse stood and headed back. Once inside, he kept himself far enough in so as not to be seen from the outside, but with a perfect view of the man across the square. Five minutes passed before the waiter drew up to his side with a plate of something brown. Pearse handed him several bills and told him to place it on the table outside. The waiter did as he was told, then returned to the kitchen.

And Pearse waited.

It was nearly ten minutes before the man began to make his way toward the cafe. The look on his face showed concern. Pearse pulled himself farther into the shadows. For several minutes, he watched as the man seemed unwilling to break the plane of tables and chairs, doing his best at casual surveillance. Finally, he had no choice but to step through. He was almost at the table, when Pearse suddenly emerged. Before the man could respond, Pearse drew up to him.

“Hello,” he said with sufficient surprise. “Weren’t you on the bus from Igoumenitsa?”

With no other choice, the man returned the smile. “Yes. Yes, I was.”

“The talkative Italian. He sat next to you.”

A second nod. “Yes. That’s right.”

“Well, you must join me for lunch.”

Only a moment’s hesitation. “That’s very kind of you.”

For fifteen minutes, they chatted about absolutely nothing, Pearse careful to keep track of the time. Without any prodding, he explained he was on his way to Athens. The train in twenty-five minutes. Amazingly, so, too, was the man. What a coincidence. Perhaps they could travel together? Pearse thought it a splendid idea. They finished their meals, headed back to the station, and, after buying two one-way tickets, made their way to the track.

Much to his relief, Pearse discovered that the Greek trains were all of the old European style: side doors to the platform from each compartment. He made sure that he and his companion picked one toward the back of the train. With five minutes to spare, they were seated next to each other, the conversation more and more insipid with each passing second.

Waiting another two minutes, Pearse suddenly winced.

“Is something the matter?” asked the man.

Pearse took several breaths, then said, “Stomach.” He smiled. “It acted up back at the restaurant. Not sure Greek cooking agrees with me.”

The man nodded, a look of concern in his eyes.

“But I think I can wait until we’re moving,” he added.

The man’s smile returned.

With a shrill whistle, the train began to move. Waiting as long as he dared, Pearse stood and, with his apologies, slid open the door to the corridor and headed for the back of the car, having made sure to pick one without a rest room. As he moved, he could sense the man staring after him; still he continued slowly. With a sufficient show of frustration at not having found a men’s room, Pearse pushed through the connecting doors and into the next car. He shot a glance back, the tint of the glass obscuring the view. Even so, he could tell that the man had gotten to his feet. Not waiting to see what he might do, and feeling the growing tremor of acceleration, Pearse broke into a sprint along the corridor. Darting into the last of the compartments, he bent over, opened the door-the tail end of the platform now sailing by at an ever-increasing speed-tossed the backpack out, and jumped.

The impact was instantaneous, his body rolling along the cement four or five times before he came to a stop. The pain in his shoulder and side was intense. His face, however, came through unscathed, locked within the protection of his arms. Lying flat, he glanced back at the train. The final car was just now slipping past the platform, the door he had used for his escape open and empty. Seconds passed before a figure appeared, too distant to make out with any accuracy. Its body language, however, was more than enough: frantic disbelief as the train banked away, its speed having become too great a deterrent for a second leap.

Pearse had lost his would-be tracker. Somehow, the pain in his shoulder seemed far less severe.

An official came running up, spewing Greek too fast for Pearse to keep up. Something about the company not being responsible for injuries. Pearse got himself to his feet, nodded, and, with a little shrug, answered, “No toilet paper.”

Five minutes later, he emerged from the station rest room, having taken care of whatever scrapes and tears he had inflicted on himself. Five minutes after that, he was safely back on board the bus.

The audacity of the last half hour hit him only as the bus began to pull out. Rather than a sense of elation, or even relief, he felt overwhelmingly light-headed.

He pulled down his window and let the wind slap at his face.

Beroea came and went, quick good-byes for his three friends. Half an hour later, the bus was driving through the outskirts of Salonika, city streets growing all around them.

Though bolstered by the misdirection in Kalambaka, Pearse remained cautious. It had been several hours since then, more than enough time for his lunch companion to get in touch with someone else. Sending them to Salonika was just too obvious a choice.

With that in mind, Pearse attached himself to the first clump of passengers off of the bus, he at its rear, head tucked low into the shoulders of those around him. Even so, he had no idea what he would do should someone appear. He’d used up his one flash of brilliance in Kalambaka. Clutching at the strap of his pack, he stepped through the platform gate and into the central hall.

Far grander than he’d expected, the station opened up under a vaulted dome of steel and glass, a series of tobacco shops, shoe-repair stalls, and newspaper kiosks all littered about, the tinny sound of overamplification echoing with each muffled announcement.

Head still bent, Pearse noticed a man-no more than twenty-five-making his way toward the recent arrivals. A man who seemed to be staring directly at him.

For the second time in the last few hours, Pearse felt the blood drain from his face. He edged his way deeper into the group.

Still the man came, heading straight for him. Pearse knew it was pointless to run. From the corner of his eye, he spotted a guard by one of the exits. He was on the verge of breaking toward him, when the young man did something Pearse never expected.

He waved, a hesitant smile on his face.

The movement stopped Pearse in his tracks.

“Professor Seldon?” The young man continued toward him. “Peter Seldon?”

It took Pearse a moment to remember.

“Yes…. Yes, that’s me,” he answered.

“Oh, good,” the man said, pulling up to his side. “I was a little worried. Dominic Andrakos. Professor Angeli-”

“Of course. Yes. Hello.” The two men exchanged a handshake.

“You were worried you wouldn’t find your way to my place?” Andrakos asked.

Pearse realized the relief on his face must have been all too obvious. “Something like that.”

“Understandable.” Andrakos smiled. “Salonika can be a bit tricky. The professor described you over the phone. She said you were coming by ferry. As there’s only one bus a day from the west, I took the chance. My car is just out front.”

“Lead the way,” Pearse added in Greek.

“Oh? You speak,” he responded in kind. “The professor didn’t mention that.”

“Enough to get by. I’m much better with the classical.”

“Then this will be good practice for you.”

Ten minutes later, they were fighting the traffic on Odos Egnatia, one of Salonika’s broader avenues, Andrakos spouting bits and pieces of historical insight as they drove. Mario Andretti as tour guide. Pearse kept a hand on the car’s dashboard, nodding each time the younger man took a breath. Had it not been for the speed and the still-unsettling few moments at the station, he might actually have enjoyed the ride. As it was, he was simply glad to be getting closer to the mountain.

The guard at the desk nodded to Kleist, no need for identification, not even a second glance at the package in his hands. Security had been punched up since the Pope’s death, most buildings within the Vatican under continuous surveillance. As a senior officer, Kleist was becoming a familiar figure around the City. In fact, he’d been to the Domus Sanctae Marthae four times in the last two days. Not that surprising, given that the six-story hospice would soon be home to the hundred or so members of the conclave. The cardinals had been forced to stay in makeshift quarters at the Papal Palace for centuries; now, they enjoyed far more spacious living during their deliberations. John Paul II had seen to that. Boniface had found no reason to change things back.

Having surveyed the building several times now, Kleist wished the late Pope had. The whole thing was too spread out, too disjointed, much more difficult to control.

His concern, however, had little to do with the cardinals’ safety. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Trying to bury upward of a hundred men under fifty tons of marble and stone would, he was discovering, require twice as many explosives as would the Papal Palace. Much greater chance of discovery. That the plastique would be in the building for less than an hour once the call came through made little difference. Impromptu spot checks by the bomb squad-dogs in tow-could be expected each night the conclave sat in session. And once they had chosen a new Pope, Kleist knew security would be taken to an even higher level. All of which meant that while the world celebrated the election, he would be racing around the hospice, twelve to fourteen minutes to plant the bombs between the dogs’ departure and the cardinals’ return.

Added to that, von Neurath had been adamant that certain fragments from the explosives remain sufficiently intact to allow for positive identification. They had gone to too much trouble acquiring the casings-ones that their Syrian dealer had assured them had come from the private cache of the Dar Hadjid, one of the more ruthless militant groups out of Iran-not to leave enough detritus for the source to be traced. The choice to target the third and fifth floors, therefore, had as much to do with room assignments as with engineering. Certain crucial cardinals on the fifth; best chance for surviving fragments on the third. As von Neurath had said, two birds with one stone: Allah’s stamp on the atrocity, more room for their own in the Sacred College. He had displayed a genuine delight in detailing the strategy.

And yet, the actual horror of what they were planning troubled Kleist far less than the cardinal’s explicit instructions that he discuss the preparations with no one but him. Usual protocol required Blaney, Ludovisi, and the contessa to be kept apprised of every detail. Von Neurath had explained that the lines of communication needed to be restricted at this point. Why was not his concern. Still, it seemed odd.

Reaching the fifth floor, he pulled a collection of brackets from the package, along with a section of blueprint, and moved down the corridor. The schematic was surprisingly clear. Inside several heating vents and ceiling ducts along the hall, he attached two sets of the metal supports, less than a minute for the epoxy to harden at each stop. It had been the same that afternoon on the third floor. One or two more trips, and everything would be in place.

Back on the ground floor, he nodded to the guard on his way out. “Everything looks fine.” Kleist smiled.

“Wouldn’t have expected anything else,” answered the man.

Good to hear, thought Kleist as he stepped out into the night.

The university’s junior faculty housing made Pearse’s Vatican rooms seem lush by comparison. Andrakos insisted on a glass of something before they headed out; given the last day and a half, Pearse readily accepted. They toasted over a tiny wooden table in what passed for the kitchen, both men downing the liqueur in a single swig.

“Hooo.” Pearse coughed several times, his eyes filling with tears. He’d had ouzo before. This was definitely not ouzo.

“Yamass,” said the young Greek. “You won’t get this quality booze for a couple of days.”

“That might be a blessing in disguise.”

Andrakos smiled and tilted back his glass, refilling both before Pearse could say no. “They water down everything on the mountain.”

“I can understand why.” If he’d had any concerns about Andrakos’s driving before, he couldn’t wait to see him on the road after two of these.

Surprisingly, the alcohol changed very little. In fact, it seemed to heighten his skills. While Pearse replanted his hand firmly on the dashboard, Andrakos took the car in and out of alleys, crisscrossing and circumventing the afternoon traffic with extraordinary ease. Amid the whirlwind, he even managed to throw in a few more sights-a fleeting view of the Arch of Galerius, sixty feet of weathered stone and marble, its side piers lopped off, leaving only a gated torso, several bands of reliefs chiseled below, a glimpse into the city’s Roman past.

“A little reminder of home for you,” said Andrakos.

“Doesn’t look like Boston,” said Pearse.

“Ah,” said Andrakos. “I meant your current home.”

“You’d love Boston. Just remember to take the car.”

Pearse was permitted only a few seconds to take it all in before they were zipping past mosques and minarets, a quick glance at Ataturk’s birthplace, confirmation of Salonika’s role as meeting place between East and West. An equal-opportunity guide, Andrakos enjoyed recalling his city’s tug-of-war history, secure in the fact that whatever her conquerors had tried to impose, they had never escaped her singular imprint. Salonika was forever Greek, its relics-Roman, Turkish, Armenian-infused with the image of that Hellenic past.

It was only when he realized they were making their way deeper into town, rather than out to the mountain, that Pearse spoke up.

“Travel visas,” Andrakos explained. “No documents, no monks.”

Less than five minutes later, they pulled up in front of the Ministry of Macedonia and Thrace, which, as far as Pearse could see, was Agiou Dimitriou Street’s answer to Rome’s Palazzo Borghese, though on a far less opulent scale. The ash gray building stood back from the street, a pebble garden leading to the entrance steps, with arched columns beyond. Inside, the fantasy quickly faded, stark walls amid a bureaucrat’s maze of offices, along with two bizarre modern sculptures standing sentry at the door. A far cry from the Berninis he had hoped for.

Andrakos hurried them through the main hall, hellos and nods to just about everyone they passed. The same held true on the second floor, first names for most, smiles and waves following him down the corridor. Clearly, Angeli had chosen her contact well.

He headed for the office at the far end, not bothering to knock before venturing in.

“Yasu, Stanto,” he said, moving straight for the desk.

The man in the chair looked up, a slightly older version of Dominic, a brother’s glare in his eye. “Don’t you even bother to knock, Nikki? I could have had someone-”

“I told you I was coming. We need the papers.”

It was then that the older Andrakos noticed Pearse at the door. “Oh, yes. Hello,” he said in English. “Please come in.”

Pearse stepped inside, at once taken by the view through the window-picturesque church, several bubble domes atop a ceramic roof, clear indication of Stanto’s favored position at the ministry. A view like that took years to acquire.

Dominic was already busy with various piles on the desk.

“They’re not in there.” Trying his best to curb his annoyance, Stanto smiled at his guest, then pulled the pages from his brother’s hands, continuing in a hushed Greek. “Look, Nikki, I can’t keep making last-minute arrangements for you. This is a serious office, not your private travel agency. The boys on the mountain can get very upset.”

“They love me out there,” replied Dominic, a wink to Pearse as his brother pulled a second set of pages from his hands.

“They love God, Nikki. They tolerate you.”

“Barely tolerate.” Dominic laughed. “By the way, the professor speaks Greek.”

The older Andrakos hesitated before turning to Pearse. “Oh. Of course,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m sorry. Constantine Andrakos. I’m not usually this-”

“No need to apologize,” said Pearse, shaking his hand. “Peter Seldon. I’m the one you should be taking to task. It’s my fault that this has all been so last minute.”

“You’re nice to say so, Professor, but you don’t know Dominic. It isn’t the first time.” He reached into a drawer and pulled out two rather impressive-looking envelopes. Pearse noticed they were both addressed to the Holy Community of Mount Athos, the great imperial crest-the double-headed eagle of Byzantium-at the top. “They delivered the diamonitirio fifteen minutes ago. The ink is probably still wet.”

Dominic took the passports and, trying his best at a pose of servility, asked, “And the boat? Did you get the boat, Stanto?”

“Yes, I got the boat,” he replied, as if to a child. “It’ll be waiting for you at Ouranopolis. Brother Gennadios will meet you at Daphne. He said he’s looking forward to seeing you.”

“I told you they loved me.”

“I think he meant the professor.” He turned to Pearse. “Gennadios mentioned he once did some work on Ambrose.”

“Really.” Pearse smiled. “I … can’t wait to talk with him.”

Dominic was already at the door. “I’m sure you’ve got plenty of work to do. Wouldn’t want to get in your way.”

“No, you wouldn’t want to do that,” said the older Andrakos. “Just try and get there in one piece.”

The eighty miles to Ouranopolis-the Gate of Heaven, little more than a village at the base of the Athos Peninsula-took just over two hours, remarkable, given the condition of the roads.

“I once did it in an hour and forty-five.” Andrakos beamed as they parked on a street barely wide enough for the car doors to open. “A friend of mine claims an hour and a half, but he did it alone. Mine still stands.” He pulled out a piece of paper, scribbled something on it, then placed it under the wiper. “It’s for the fellow who lives here,” he explained. “Just telling him when we’ll be back, and to move the car if he needs to.” Pearse noticed the keys still in the ignition. A different way of life in Ouranopolis.

They emerged onto another street, this one slightly wider, a few patches of cobblestone in need of repair. It wended its way down through the village, the small houses on either side like giant sandstone steps leading to the shore.

“The place seems empty,” said Pearse.

“Most of the boats are still out on the water. But it’ll be loud enough in about an hour. Once they get back and start drinking.”

“More of the stuff we had at your place?”

Andrakos laughed. “That’s rice water compared to this. I won’t tell you how many times I’ve come out here and not quite made it out to the mountain.”

“Different kind of research.” Pearse smiled.

They neared an ancient tower hovering by the water. One or two windows pockmarked its upper reaches, stucco unevenly slathered along its face, scars of brick peeking through. It peered down, superior only in its height, the one sign of real civilization against the timeless backdrop.

“From what I’ve heard,” said Pearse, “you’d probably need something a little stronger than ouzo if you had to take care of these monks. They tell me they’re a pretty austere bunch.”

“Austere? These boys take it so seriously, they don’t allow anything female on the mountain at all. Anything. No sow, no cow, no hen. And all because a couple of them got a little friendly with some of the shepherds’ daughters about a thousand years ago…. Probably why they call it the Garden of the Virgin.”

Pearse laughed. “I’m not sure the Holy Mother would agree.”

“Why? Even she wouldn’t be allowed out there.”

Arriving at the shore, they headed out along a narrow jetty, its wood and spikes groaning under the weight. A small cabin stood at the end of the pier, a single light inside. Andrakos stepped toward it. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

The door smacked shut, followed by the din of conversation. It quickly faded as Pearse moved to the edge of the landing. For the first time in days, he stood alone.

It would have been enough to close his eyes, trace the lapping of the waves, once again less frantic than those he had known on the Cape; or to breathe in, the taste of tangerines mixed with hewn grass on his tongue; or to shut them all out and simply gaze at a sun already dipping to the Aegean, clouds streaked a beet red against the thickening blue of a summer sky. Instead, he had them all, a barrage of pure radiance, somehow releasing him from all thought. His eyes fixed on a point perhaps a hundred yards out, a patch of perfect stillness. Weightless. And for a few moments, he was there, freed from everything around him, floating, adrift. He could feel the water rise about him, cup his head and arms, effortless.

“Now you know why the monks come.” Andrakos was by his side, silently staring out. “And why the mountain is theirs.”

Pearse continued to hold it in his grasp, unwilling to let go until Andrakos had moved off. He then turned, the image almost too perfect-a small fishing boat tied up some ten yards back, squat captain, tangled gray beard.

Greece was making good on all its promises.

Andrakos remained by the wheel, chatting with the captain for the length of the trip, leaving Pearse alone to take in the full measure of Athos from the sea. He stood at the prow, hands clasped to the rusted metal rail, an ever-increasing sense of insignificance as the mountain opened up in front of him.

What began as a rise of grass and trees soon gave way to the surge of ragged stone, slopes crumbling toward the sea, rock clusters strafing the ground, green-and-white embers shimmering against a dusking sky. And wherever the blanketing of oak and brush tried to assert its will, wide scarps of serrated wall rose up to thwart all but the most vigorous attempts. Even the scattered tufts of misted cloud that floated above offered little more than false hope against the unforgiving and relentless terrain.

The God of Athos was a vengeful God, testing his faithful, unwilling to grant them an easy piety.

And yet, the mountain’s beauty was undeniable, not simply for its fierce grandeur but for the totality of the place, a finite depiction of the rift between sea and sky. Unpeopled, it held a kind of primal wonder.

Pearse stood breathless, awed by its majesty, more by its carnality, a living, breathing earth. The mountain was holy, less for the men who chose it as their refuge as for the touch of the divine in its every aspect. A sanctity conferred by the brutality of nature.

That truth gained even-greater clarity as the first of the monasteries emerged, perfect linear form rising from the rugged chaos of the mountain face. Neat rows of balconies and roofs hovered above the slopes, a bell tower with fattened Byzantine dome peeking out from the tidy angularity. The sun lay too low to permit any real detail, lights from within shimmering a constellation’s outline of the tiny city above. The pattern ducked and turned at odd moments, projecting wild limbs from the main body. Too soon, though, it slipped from sight, another configuration appearing in the distance, the mountain’s zodiac taking shape against the now-darkened sky. Some of the monasteries had dared to climb high, blurring the distinction between earth and stars; others had pitched low in tapered valleys, their shape like the flow of untamed water. Each a pocket of perfect order, a thousand years of strict devotion.

And one, he knew, the guardian of a parchment whose truth transcended even the splendor of the mountain itself. Staring up into the sky, Pearse understood-perhaps for the first time-what it was that had brought him here. And what it was to be so close.

As the boat bobbed along the shore, his gaze fixed on the tip of the mountain, its peak lost in a crown of cloud. Even at night, though, one could make it out, the glow from the single monastery at its base bathing the nimbus in a golden hue.

St. Photinus stood alone at the edge of the peninsula, the most sacred of sites reserved for the holiest of the monasteries.

The captain slowed the engine and let the boat drift toward the piers of Daphne, the village-halfway down the peninsula-as far as he could take them. From here, they would go by mule or truck, depending on the severity of Photinus’s approach.

Grinding the engine into reverse, he angled the boat in between the others moored at the dock, the sound jarring against the quiet of the place. Pearse saw Andrakos slip the man a few bills before grabbing his pack and joining him on the pier.

The place lay deserted, a few muffled sounds from the town above, nothing to compete with the boat as it pulled away. Andrakos headed up the stairs, surprisingly silent, Pearse behind. When they reached the road, they found it empty, as well. Andrakos dropped his bag and sat; Pearse did the same. Still, not a word. Obviously, there were new rules on the mountain. The only sound was the clink of glasses from some unseen tavern, a few drinks before the last of the boats headed back to Ouranopolis.

They didn’t have long to wait before the sight of two bouncing lights appeared off to the right, Andrakos quickly getting to his feet. As the truck pulled up, he swung the pack onto his shoulder and placed his hands at his back. The sham supplicant from his brother’s office now transformed into the real thing. Pearse followed his lead, a pose of quiet respect as the monk stepped out to greet them.

“Who are you fooling, Dominic?” Brother Gennadios laughed as he approached, rapping the younger man on the arm as he drew up. He wore the classic black robe of Greek Orthodoxy, the bonnet on his head tilted at a somewhat daring angle. His forearms, now around Andrakos’s back, were thick and muscular, a rug of hair extending as far as his knuckles. Pearse noticed the impish smile on the younger man’s face as Andrakos looked up.

“I had him going,” he answered, nodding to Pearse, the familiar twinkle back in his eyes.

Gennadios turned to Pearse, eyes wider still as he grabbed both of his shoulders and pulled him in close, a kiss on each cheek. His grip was exceedingly powerful, the two men roughly the same height, the monk a good hundred pounds heavier. The softness of his beard surprised Pearse.

“Professor Seldon. What a pleasure. I’m Gennadios. I apologize for the time you’ve had to spend with this one, but life is filled with tests, none more trying than young Andrakos here.”

“He’s not so bad if you’ve had a few drinks.”

Gennadios erupted in laughter, then cupped Andrakos’s neck in his hand. “Like an open book, Dominic. Like an open book.” He turned again to Pearse. “You didn’t let him drive, did you?”

Before Pearse could answer, the monk was shuttling them into the truck, packs tossed in the back, the front seat a patchwork quilt of vinyl and duct tape. Squeezed inside the cab, Pearse guessed that the white Ford had been around longer than Gennadios himself, the crunch from the gearbox confirmation as they set off.

The drive at night was far less compelling than the view from the water, intermittent shots of the mountain quickly obscured under a tangle of leaves and thickets. What few openings they came to offered only momentary bursts of stars. Without someone familiar at the wheel, Pearse realized, the road would have been impossible to traverse, hardly a light to warn of the sudden twists and turns, at one point the monk forced to take the truck down to a virtual stop so as to manage one of the hairpins. Even at ten miles an hour, the constant bouncing from the combination of rutted road and shockless wheels made communication all but impossible. It was something of a lifesaver. Gennadios was pouring forth with what seemed to be everything he knew about Ambrose. Pearse smiled and nodded, happily unable to catch more than a word or two here and there.

Fifteen minutes into the lecture, the monk pulled the truck over.

“… which might have changed Augustine’s entire outlook. Anyway,” he said, shouldering his door open and tossing the keys onto the dashboard, “you should come out my side. We wouldn’t want to lose you over the edge on your first night.”

Pearse peered out at the sudden drop off to his right, then slid across and joined the other two at the front of the truck. Gennadios handed him a lantern.

“The rest, we do by foot.”

The climb did little to help conversation, a rigorous pace through the interior of the mountain. The trees and brush sprang up far thicker here, paths just wide enough for a mule laden with supplies, gnarled undergrowth making for precarious footing. The lanterns were more to keep Gennadios in sight than to give any sense of the tip of the peninsula. Even with a breeze off the water, Pearse felt the sweat mount under his shirt, a balmy midsummer evening moistening the air. It felt good, something his body had been craving. If not for Gennadios wheezing his way up, Pearse would have pushed the pace, happy to lose himself in the physical exertion.

They climbed in dim silence for perhaps twenty minutes before emerging on an open bluff, a tiered expanse of rock, earth and sage beyond. Fifty feet to their right, the mountain seemed to come to an abrupt end, the drop-off some eight hundred feet, a full moon perched just beyond the edge of the cliff. Below, they could hear the roll of the surf. Above, a faint glimmer of light poked through.

It was St. Photinus staring down at them.

“It gets easier from here,” intoned Gennadios, clearly winded. “Another twenty minutes or so.”

He was spot-on, the monastery inching out over the last of the hillocks some fifteen minutes later. Smaller by a considerable degree than the rest of the “cities” on the mountain, Photinus still managed a rather imposing glare from its frontal assault. A stern line of cypresses stood guard along the outer wall, bits and pieces of which dated back as far as the fourth century. Most of the loose stone had been replaced by brick and mortar over time, Byzantine and Ottoman architecture colliding in a wild melange of turrets and flying buttresses. On either side, the walls matched the rise of the mountain, uneven steps climbing high along the slope, disappearing into an overgrown wood perhaps two hundred yards above, the overall effect that of a headless turtle attempting to take flight.

But it was the sight directly in front of them that demanded attention. Two ironwork doors-vast shields arching to a stone gate thirty feet high-recalled a time when the monks of Athos had been forced to fight for their piety, pirates a constant menace, a long-abandoned gunwale still visible along the topmost part of the wall. Even Photinus’s motto, etched crudely into the stonework above the doors, conveyed the dual message of refuge and resistance.

Take Peace Within These Walls and Gird Yourself to Dwell in an Armor of Loveliness and Light.

As the peninsula’s first line of defense against attack from the sea-and forever caught up in the squabbles of distant emperors and sultans-Photinus had long ago learned to guard its privacy well. Even now, it was considered the most insular among a community renowned for its isolation.

And yet, the doors stood ajar, three or four lamps from the courtyard inside lighting the last few yards of their approach.

As they entered, Pearse was astounded by the silence, no monks coming out to demand their papers. Instead, they walked undisturbed to the fountain at the center-a simple pool with a strangely ornate spout. It was a monk in prayer, the water trickling from his eyes, as if tears. Pearse stared at it for several seconds. He couldn’t help but wonder if the tears were meant for the one true and holy Christian church, a disturbing thought as he joined the other two. They were cupping great heaps of water, Gennadios on the fountain’s ledge, handful after handful to his neck. The hike had gotten the better of him. Only then did Pearse realize how thirsty he was himself. It was several minutes before any of them spoke.

“Nice climb,” Pearse finally said. “I suppose you must make the trek quite often,” he added, dabbing his neck and shoulders.

The monk breathed heavily before answering. “Maybe twice in the last six months. It’s not something I look forward to.”

“You don’t get out much, do you?”

“Get out much? I don’t understand.”

“Well, if you’ve left only twice-”

“Oh, I see what you mean,” he said, the smile returning to his face. “Dominic obviously didn’t explain. I’m not a Brother of Photinus. My home is the Great Lavra,” he added, giving a quick flick of a finger somewhere off to the east, “the second oldest on the mountain, a mere babe compared to this one. We go back only as far as 963. But Photinus, well, it’s been around since-what is it, Dominic, 384, 85? No one’s quite sure.” He returned to the water.

“Not my period,” Andrakos answered.

“Always the best excuse,” said Pearse, Angeli’s smile appearing in front of him.

Andrakos started to respond, then stopped.

Gennadios laughed. “You’ve actually shut him up with that one. I must remember it.”

Pearse waited for Andrakos’s smile, then asked, “So it’s all right for us to be here?”

“Well, I wouldn’t have made that trip with you if I weren’t sure,” said Gennadios.

“All of the monasteries have a kind of open-door policy with one another,” Andrakos explained. “If you and I had walked in here alone, we’d be in a lot of hot water right now. As long as we’ve got the bearded one with us, they know it’s okay. I’ve actually never been to Photinus myself.”

“Five, six hundred years ago,” added the monk, “that wouldn’t have been the case. Now, with fewer than two thousand of us scattered among the monasteries, we’ve let things loosen up a bit.”

“Without this one here”-Dominic placed an overly enthusiastic hand on Gennadios-“I wouldn’t have been able to see half the archives I’ve needed for my work.”

“And with this one,” the monk nodded, taking Andrakos’s hand from his shoulder, “you’ve managed to get me in all sorts of trouble with half the abbots on the mountain. Brother Timotheos at Stavronikita still isn’t talking to me.”

“That’s because he’s taken a six-month vow of silence.” Andrakos laughed.

“It’s still no excuse.”

Pearse laughed as well, the sound echoing throughout the empty courtyard. It seemed to prompt movement from one of the far buildings, a strange aggregation of striped archways topped by a maroon attic with gabled roof. A small figure appeared from a side door, another black cassock gingerly making its way across. He seemed to glide across the flagstone.

“I see you made it without too much trouble,” he said as he neared them, catching Gennadios in middip, the larger man spinning around and at once pulling the diminutive monk into his barrel chest, an embrace that would have gotten the better of a man twice his size. Still, the little monk held his own.

“You need a bath” were his first words as he disentangled himself from the bear hug. “And our fountain won’t do.” The two laughed.

“It’s good to see you, too,” said Gennadios as he stood to make the introductions. “Professor Seldon, Dominic Andrakos, this is Brother Nikotheos, librarian of St. Photinus, and a man with a finely tuned nose.”

There was an almost feminine quality to his face, delicate olive-shaped eyes, soft white skin amid the wrinkles. Even his beard seemed to soften its texture. His hands, however, betrayed his years, browned and bony. Pearse guessed Nikotheos to be somewhere in his early seventies. “We don’t usually allow guests to arrive after the second meal-in fact, we don’t usually have guests at all-but Gennadios explained your work on Ambrose. I wasn’t aware he’d ever made the trip.”

“I guess that’s what I’m here to find out.” Pearse smiled.

“Yes.” It was clear he’d expected a bit more by way of explanation. When none came, he nodded to the little group and said,“Well, let’s get you to your rooms, perhaps a quick tour. It’s late for us.”

Pearse’s was the last of the cells they came to, more of the flagstone, stark white walls, a small desk and iron bedstead below a single window. The glass panes were pulled open, the smell of minted olives in the air.

As he had done for Gennadios and Dominic, the monk retrieved two bowls from the shelf by the door, one filled with dried fruit and nuts, the other with rose-scented loukoumi, the Greek version of Turkish delight. He placed them on the desk.

“In case you get hungry during the night. We’re up before the sun, first prayer at four.” He turned to go, then stopped. “Oh, I meant to ask-are you Orthodox or heretic?”

It was a question Pearse had hoped to avoid. He knew that the few non-Greek Orthodox they permitted on the mountain were generally of the harmless tourist variety. Those who wished to see the manuscripts were put to far greater scrutiny. Too long a history of disappearing documents, miraculously reappearing in the British Library and the Vatican, had made the monks justifiably wary. Their distrust of Catholics verged on mania.

“I’m a Catholic,” Pearse responded.

“Oh, I see.” Nikotheos’s expression remained unchanged. “How sad for you.” Again, he moved to the door, then stopped. “I wouldn’t make that public knowledge. Several of the brothers feel quite strongly about it, the abbot included.” A smile. “But we’ll make sure you get to see the manuscripts. I’d love to find out how Ambrose ties in with us here.” And with that, he was out the door, pulling it shut behind him.

Pearse tossed his pack onto the bed and stepped to the window, a light mist having settled in the last few minutes. Such was the whim of mountain air. It hung on the upper reaches of the buildings, the moon lost behind it. Even so, he could see the monastery stretch out in front of him, the slope of the mountain giving his third-floor cell a near-panoramic view.

It was far bigger than he had imagined, wide pockets of open area extending up to unseen distances, all of them surrounded by a wide assortment of fifteen centuries of architectural evolution. Closer in to his right, the fountain continued its endless trickle of water, the patter echoing in soulful meter; only the occasional brush of leaves and a flapping of wings broke through the silence. As he continued to stare out, he saw Nikotheos arrive in the courtyard, the monk moving slowly, snuffing out lamps as he went. The area grew dark, save for one or two paraffin lamps glowing in the windows above, late-evening prayers, last-minute assurances.

For the most part, Pearse had little idea what lay out in the darkness. Nikotheos’s quick tour had been just that-quick. One or two of the smaller chapels, refectory, library-all in swift succession, only the last of them, he had discovered, behind locked doors.

“There was an incident at the Great Lavra a few years back,” the monk had explained. “Raiders in motorboats with guns. They stole quite a few manuscripts, gold reliquaries, even a few icons. They were caught, thank heavens, but the damage had been done, illuminations ripped out, destroyed. We keep these doors bolted at night now. Not what I would like, but what can you do?”

Pearse had been relieved to hear that the rest of the place remained open. From Angeli’s notes, he knew he’d have no need for the library and its manuscripts.

Unfortunately, that was all he knew. Little of what he now saw resembled the map she had drawn. Much had changed in nine centuries, most of the buildings fourteenth- and fifteenth-century additions, still others from the golden age of the czars, when Russian Orthodoxy had taken Athos under its protective wing. The one piece that tied the ancient Photinus to its more modern progeny was the outer wall itself, a basic triangle, the entrance doors a fixed landmark situated at the center of its base. He had to hope Angeli’s calculations were accurate enough to lead him from the fountain courtyard to the “Vault of the Paraclete,” a room somewhere within one of the more ancient buildings still standing.

It was odd to think how close he was to whatever was hidden within the Vault, how long the parchment had waited to be found.

If, of course, it was still there. And if Angeli had deciphered the scroll correctly. Too many variables.

A breeze lifted off the water, more of the olive and mint, a gentle reminder of the world he now inhabited. For some reason, the face of the priest from San Bernardo filled his thoughts, the ancient shoulders swaying back and forth, the whispered chant from his weathered lips. Pearse imagined the old man would have liked it here.

He turned to the bed, and he noticed a monk’s robe hanging on the door, evidently the preferred garb even for guests. Perfect, he thought. He would rest for an hour, then go. Better with everyone asleep.

After all, he had to be back by first prayer.

“O existent in very truth.

O being which beholds the aeons in very truth.

Unseen unto all but me.

Unseen unto all.

Eeema, Eeema, Ayo.

O self-originate that lacks nothing and is free,

I have come to know you and to mix with your immutability.

I have girded myself to dwell in your armor of loveliness and light.

And I have become luminous.”

The boy, no more than sixteen, rose from his knees, trying his best to mask the relief pounding in his chest. It was the last of the prayers he would have to recite on his own. The rest, he knew, he could do in his sleep, had been doing in his sleep for the last six months. Preparation on preparation.

Hair parted neatly to one side, he wiped away the few beads of perspiration that had collected on his brow and upper lip. Dressing this morning in his hotel room, he’d assumed the air in the grotto would be cooler, the four floors of solid rock beneath the Ninety-fourth Street armory enough to fend off the heat. No such luck. The thick initiate’s robe wasn’t helping matters, either.

It just went to show how little an Ohio boy knew about New York summers.

Six others waited with him on the beama, the raised platform at the grotto’s center, each of their faces illuminated in a billowing light from torches placed along the walls. Several ancient tapestries hung down as well, not even a hint of air to ruffle their faded colors. If the elect were hoping to shroud the ceremony in a kind of medieval patina, they were more than succeeding. The young men stood entranced.

“You have been formed within the orbit of the light,” chanted the trio of elect, who stood behind the group of initiates.

“So that in your company I might have life in the peace of the saints,” they responded as one.

“And so we welcome you. For the light is within your bosom, an unreproachable light, the sign of the prophets within you.”

“O Iesseus-Mazareus-Iessedekeus.”

“O Mani Paraclete, prophet of all prophets.”

“Eternally existent in very truth.”

“Eeema, Eeema, Ayo.”

The princeps-the highest of the elect-now passed behind each of them, the ritual laying on of hands, a silent prayer. He wore a white cotton shawl pulled up over his head, the rest draping to his knees, a distant cousin of the Jewish tallis in all but the missing Hebrew lettering at the collar. Even the way he manipulated the fringed corners bespoke a connection to an Aaronic past. When he had finished, he kissed each of them on the cheek, followed by the sign of the cross on their foreheads, the sign of the trihedron at their breasts. One by one, the boys stepped down from the beama and took their places among the thirty or so men seated in the chamber. The boy returned to his father’s side.

No words of congratulations. No recognition of any kind.

When the last of them was seated, the princeps removed the shawl from his head and placed it around his shoulders, the face of John Joseph Blaney now revealed to the assemblage. “Let us recall the Primal Aeons,” he said; the gathering rose. “The Deep,” Blaney began.

“The perfect parent, prior source, and ancestor,” they responded.

“Silence.”

“The betrothed. Thought, loveliness.”

“The Intellect.”

“The only-begotten, the parent and source of the entirety.”

“Truth.”

“The betrothed.”

“The Word.”

“The parent and source of fullness.”

“Life.”

“The betrothed.”

“The Human Being.”

“The Human Being.”

“The church.”

“The betrothed.”

“These are the Primal Aeons. Through them, we bind our wills to Your knowledge; through our knowledge, we are bound to Your will. In the Father of Greatness, who resides in the realm of Light. In the Power of the cosmos, who brings our salvation. In the Wisdom of the ages, who returns us to the wholeness of our church.”

“In the Father, the Power and the Wisdom.”

Blaney stepped back to a small podium at center. “And let us recall the ‘Perfect Light, the True Ascent.’”

As one, the voices began:

“It is from the perfect light, the true ascent that I am found in those who

seek me.

Acquainted with me, you come to yourselves, wrapped in the light to

rise to the aeons.

For I will illumine in your illumination;

I will ascend in your ascension;

I will unite in your union.

It is I who am the riches of the light;

It is I who am the memory of the fullness….”

The boy continued to chant, his mind wandering as the words flowed freely. For as long as he could remember, he had committed the prayers to memory, the rituals that had prepared him for today, his father as guide. Always in strict isolation, so different from the shallowness of Sunday, when he would watch his father play the role of minister, stand behind his pulpit and preach words that seemed so far from the truth.

As his mind drifted, so, too, did his gaze, faces all around him, many of which he recognized from neighboring towns-Davenport, Kenton, Elmsford-none of which he had ever associated with the private world he and his father had shared.

Until today.

The journey north to the elect. The day of illumination. Entrance into his cell.

Everything would change now. He had been told as much. How, he didn’t know. Standing among his brothers, reciting the “Perfect Light,” it didn’t seem to matter.

Eeema, Eeema, Ayo.

The fruit was all but gone, the bowl of loukoumi licked clean. He’d been hungrier than he’d realized, the confection far better than he’d expected.

Waiting for the last of the paraffin lamps to flicker out, Pearse donned the robe and stepped out into the open-air corridor, a tree-lined atrium three stories below. The sleeves hung a bit too long, though an ideal spot, he discovered, to conceal the notes he had with him. Not that he was anticipating anything, but best to have the pages out of sight should someone appear. Looking to minimize that chance, he kept his lantern dark as he moved past the other cells, the monks either asleep or oblivious to his late-night wanderings.

With one hand flat against the wall, he inched his way back to the stairs, the moon having broken through, making all but the last few steps relatively painless. Once outside the dormitory walls, he found a darkened nook and fired up the lantern, careful to keep it low at his knees. No bonnet, no beard, but at least with the lantern shining out-and not up-he could see where he was going without casting any light on his upper body.

As quickly as he could, he began to retrace his steps through the various alleys and courtyards, one or two cats leaping out at inopportune moments to accelerate an already-lively heartbeat. But no monks. Even so, he found himself moving ever more stealthily, reduced to tiptoes for the last twenty yards or so, the area by the fountain far more exposed than he’d remembered.

Reaching the protective shadow of the great doors, he paused to reorient himself.

The collection of buildings he had seen earlier now appeared to meld into one another, a kind of flattened crescent, the moon offering just enough of a gloss to bring them into focus. Likewise, the water splashed in an ivory white, its lapping reflection trapped within the fountain walls, the area just beyond its reach somehow darker by contrast than the rest of the courtyard. Drawn in by the tranquillity of the scene, he began to feel far more attuned to the design of the monastery. Granted, he had only a small portion of it in front of him, but the discrepancies between Angeli’s map and the actual layout seemed to melt away, the spacing far less compact, readable, a growing sense that perhaps he might be able to locate the signposts specified in the scroll. Or maybe it was just faith. Or the fact that the mist had lifted. Either way, he retrieved the pages from his sleeve, glanced at the first few, and set off.

It was remarkable how much she had teased from the text, or rather, how much the Manichaeans had been able to hide within their prayer. Half the notes on Photinus detailed landmarks chosen for what was, no doubt, their staying power: bends in the outer wall, ancient pieces of stonework planted deep in the earth, rises and falls in terrain that no amount of building or digging could disrupt. Those things that they knew would endure.

And, of course, as Angeli had promised, the distances between them.

Following the line of the wall to his left, he counted off the prescribed thirty-five paces to an arched hollow directly across from a small olive orchard, just as the notes described. Truth to tell, it had been thirty-one, but given the likelihood that he was a good deal taller than his tenth-century counterpart, Pearse quickly reasoned away the disparity. With that in mind, he shortened his gait, and arrived at the next landmark with extraordinary precision-“time placed in stone”-the first of two sundials situated at opposite ends of a garden at the orchard’s center. Both sprouted an assortment of paths, only one of them leading up a short incline. It was the one he was meant to take, out beyond the orchard fence, past a natural spring, to the edge of the monastery’s outer wall.

It was there that he met his first setback. For several minutes, he couldn’t find a series of steps described as “notches in the great partition.” His hands traced the wall face as Pearse became more and more concerned that he was somehow overlooking something. Struggling with a thick matting of overgrown saplings, he finally unearthed the first step, then the second, the rest of them so cleverly imbedded in the wall that had he not known what he was looking for, he would have missed them entirely. Even as he climbed, he needed his hands to feel out each one in front of him, lantern light insufficient to the task. Halfway up, he slowly realized that if not for the steps, he would never have been able to find his way past a group of buildings-thirteenth- or fourteenth-century, by his estimation-situated along the wall. How the Manichaeans had known to avoid what must have been open land back in the tenth century was anybody’s guess. He continued to climb.

A gust of wind swept up as he reached the top of the wall, his hand quick to the stone face to steady himself. Momentarily staggered, he found it impossible not to stare out at the horizon, an explosion of stars so vast that he was forced to drop to one knee lest he lose himself over the edge. The Aegean swelled some three hundred feet below, its rhythm in strict counterpoint to the endless array of glitter quivering above. He tried to regain his feet, but his body refused, once again beguiled by the perfect synchrony of light and darkness. For all his doubts-his fears of a Manichaean ascetic-Pearse had, at least, come to appreciate its singular truth, palpable at a moment like this.

As close to heaven as they could get.

The echo of Angeli’s voice roused him from his meditation. He forced his eyes back to Photinus and spotted the second set of steps just on the other side of the buildings. His body low, he traversed the top of the wall, then made his way down.

A courtyard opened up at the base of the steps. Scampering across it, he came to a bridge no more than ten feet across, a tiny rill below-more rocks than water-its trickle heard, not seen. He checked the notes; there was no bridge mentioned. Evidently, this was a “recent” addition. Instructed to follow the water upstream, he placed his hand on the bridge’s stanchion and leapt down the five or so feet before making his way along the sod and mud, careful to keep his lamp high. The footing grew more and more tricky, slick rock causing him to keep one hand almost in the water so as to maintain his balance. Forty yards along, he pulled himself back up the bank.

What had appeared as a collision of trees and stonework from his cell window now opened up as the onetime heart of the monastery, the buildings retreating further and further into the past. And yet, the deeper in he moved, the more he sensed a loneliness from those he passed, too many of them abandoned, remnants from a time when Photinus had boasted five hundred monks within its walls. Now it held barely eighty, the rate of apostasy increasing with each year, the malady of “teddy-boyismos,” as Nikotheos had called it-the lure of Salonika-having grown to epidemic proportions. The old monks were dying off, the novices fleeing, leaving the buildings to stand empty and alone.

Pearse felt only token sympathy. The fewer monks around, the less likely he might run into one.

All such concerns quickly faded when, at the top of a steep rise, he came face-to-face with a double row of columns, the facade for a cloister peeking out through the gaps.

This time round, he needed no cats to set his heart racing.

“Twin rows of eight will guard the Vault.”

Somewhere within those walls waited the parchment.

Staring up at the building as a whole, he quickly understood why the Manichaeans had chosen it for their hiding place. He reckoned it stood almost at the center point of the three outer walls. More than that, it had been designed in such a way that, as far as he could tell, access to it was possible only from the route he had taken. The back and side walls seemed to grow out of the mountain, a half-chiseled sculpture tearing itself from the rock. Only the front colonnade was fully realized, the “twin rows” revealing an archway at the center. Pearse removed the last few sheets from his sleeve and started in.

Four portico walkways flanked a narrow quadrangle to form the interior, a courtyard of dusted earth and wild grass at its center. Unlike anything he had seen up to this point, the cloister clung to a late Roman past, a building that might very well have predated even the Manichaean presence at Photinus. Bringing his lantern to eye level-and relying on a suddenly lustrous moon-he followed the line of archways that extended to his left. The stone had softened over the centuries, but the rigid lines of each column could still be seen even in the half-light, the pedestals beneath linked in a continuous low wall. The arcade itself had not faired so well, the flagstones chipped and cracked, clumps of vegetation pushing their way through, odd mounds of dirt scattered throughout, the mark of animal scavenging. Every so often, a window or door would appear along the walled side of the arcade, the rooms within showing equal disrepair, some, though, with hints of long-faded mosaics-a partial crucifix here, the hand of the Virgin there-all shining back at him in the lantern light. From the varying sizes and shapes of the cells, it was clear that the place had once housed a virtually independent community within Photinus, far more than just the simple cloister it purported to be.

Further confirmation awaited him at the third corner of the quadrangle-access to a subterranean level, highly unusual for a cloister of its age. Nestled within a miniature rotunda, he found a set of circular steps leading down. Eighteen of them. The notes were, once again, right on the mark.

Trouble was, it was the last of the detailed entries. The final two “clues” were far more cryptic, abstract phrases, with no directions of any kind. Even on the bus, they had struck him as out of place. “Those who enter may see the light,” followed by the equally vague “The one unmoved takes wing.” He had recognized the first as a biblical passage, somewhere in Luke his best guess, but pinpointing the source had done little to explain its meaning. The second had baffled him altogether. He had hoped that by now something would have appeared to clarify at least one of them; otherwise, why make the map so specific, only to leave the most crucial bits indecipherable? He was faced with two possibilities: Either the Manichaeans had thought the phrases obvious enough on their own or they had decided to throw in one last bit of “hidden knowledge” to keep things interesting. A touch of the gnosis at the bitter end. Had he been a betting man, Pearse would have opted for the latter, which meant that if he was going to find the parchment, he had to start thinking like a Manichaean.

Reaching the bottom of the steps, he could make out little more than ten feet in either direction, the lantern light only sharpening the vacancy beyond. It was enough, though, to see that the lower level was a virtual carbon copy of the cloister above, save, of course, for the central courtyard, which here had become a mass of solid stone. A pair of corridors branched out from the corner stairwell, the first legs of the quadrangle disappearing into a dusted emptiness. Gone were the sounds of the night that had accompanied him thus far, the absolute quiet matched only by the unrelenting darkness.

Lamp at arm’s length, he started down the corridor to his left, his focus on the side walls, uneven rock chiseled from the mountain. From time to time, a rusted torch holder would appear, centuries beyond use, bits of stray iron hanging precariously from eroded pins. As to the cells, they came at regular intervals, six to eight paces between each, tiny hovels drawn of all air, dirt floors beneath. Surprisingly, several of them retained the faint aroma of burned leaves-why, he couldn’t explain-instant memories of long-ago bonfires quickly erased by the immediacy of the place. More difficult was determining what most of the rooms had been used for-storage, prayer, perhaps even ritual-bits of mosaics once again scattered throughout. He spent several minutes studying the tiles, hoping to find something that would invite him to “enter” and “see the light,” but there was nothing. Only a neat pattern of cells to bring him back to the stairwell, no farther along than when he had set off.

Undaunted, he retraced his steps. When he reached the stairs for a second time, he planted himself against the rock and closed his eyes. The need for a little guidance. Where would they have hidden it? The silence brought him back to the notes. It’s a game for them, he thought as he stared down at the pages. So how would they hide the “knowledge”? For want of anything better to do, he counted out the Syriac letters. Thirty-five. No luck there; the cells had stopped at twenty-two. Evidently, the Manichaeans hadn’t placed much stock in numerology. Look at the words. It has to be in the words. He continued to stare at the phrase. “Those who enter may see the light.” The light. He knew it was no metaphor for them, no spiritual allusion, but something tangible, real. Up to this point, he’d assumed “the light” had referred to the parchment. That was real. Enter and find it. Clearly, that wasn’t the case. So what down here contains the light? He began to wonder if he’d somehow missed a tray of melons along the way.

Frustration began to set in. He tilted his head back against the wall, eyes lost to the void in front of him. For nearly a minute, he stood there, thoughts of the notes slowly supplanted by an uneasy appreciation for the space around him-cold, slick walls, lifeless cells, all part of an ancient cavern left to its own decay, desolate in its entirety. What he had seen only moments before as a piece to the puzzle now took on a far more unsettling reality, one separated from any other living soul by a maze of alleys and walls and streams. Urged on by the profound isolation of the place, those images began to fly through his head in a dizzying array, so overwhelming that he began to lose all hope of retracing his steps. The pounding in his chest accelerated. Instinct snapped his head to the right, the lamp with it, a need to know that the other corridor remained empty. All that stared back was a swirl of dusty air clinging to the lantern light. Beyond it, pure darkness, childhood fears crowding in, lungs tightening, an overpowering desire for light, real light, to relieve him of his self-conjured frenzy.

Fighting it, he suddenly experienced a moment of perfect clarity.

“Those who enter may see the light.” The light.

In that instant, he knew exactly what the phrase meant. The guidance he had sought. It didn’t refer to the parchment; it referred to light itself. Actual light, to erase the darkness and dispel the fears. Light in its most tangible form, even for a Manichaean.

All he needed to do was find its source.

His heart slowed, the air once again breathable, the glint of possibility holding his panic at bay. Thinking back on the last fifteen minutes, he knew the source wasn’t in any of the cells; he’d searched them too well to have missed something that obvious.

Or had he? It suddenly struck him that perhaps the light he was looking for needed complete darkness to make itself known. Any sort of shading would only undermine a Manichaean design, light and darkness understood as polar absolutes. The lantern he had brought with him had marred that purity.

In an act of Manichaean faith, he opened the glass and blew out the flame.

It took him several minutes to accustom his eyes. Oddly enough, he began to feel a kind of comfort within the pitch-black, his body somehow less delimited, unobtrusive, more a part of the rock than an affront to it. No longer defined by the ring of light cast from his lamp, he could almost fade into the darkness, safe in its embrace-a growing respect for the Manichaeans’ subtle affinity for the two realms.

When the first hint of light did appear, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, not for the light itself, but for its location. Thin lines of white slowly formed along the ceilings of both corridors, threadlike streaks at perfect intervals, as if a hundred spiders had decided to weave one strand each of silk. Impossible to make out above the garish yellow of the lantern, they now glimmered pristine against a blackened backdrop. He moved out toward the first, brushing his fingers along the ceiling, the strip of light matching the topography of his hand. Cupping his fingers toward the side wall, he expected to catch the light in his palm. Instead, the beam disappeared. Only then did he see the light shining on his knuckles. Amazed, he turned toward the solid rock courtyard. The light was coming from in there.

At once, he began to trace his fingers along the topmost edge of the courtyard stone, only to find a pattern of tiny holes hidden within. Each time he covered one, another strand of web disappeared, reborn with the removal of his finger. He’d paid no attention to the giant hunk of rock situated at the center of the four corridors; now, he ignored all else. He lit the lantern and began to examine the fissured stone. Drawing up to within a few inches of the first hole, he discovered something far more provocative.

Etched into the wall was a disjointed collection of Greek letters, most of which lay hidden under a healthy layer of dust. Sweeping the grit away, he saw they combined to form a block of writing; on closer inspection, a verse from the Bible. Ephesians. The armor of God. Like the steps he had discovered in the monastery’s outer wall, the letters here had been carved with such ingenuity that they virtually blended into the contours of the rock. His adrenaline started to rise. A few feet down, another verse. This one Old Testament. So it went, around all four sides, no sign, however, of the simple invitation from Luke.

When he realized how stupid he had been, he nearly smacked himself on the head. Of course the verse from Luke wouldn’t simply be waiting for him. It, too, would be hidden in the text. Taking his lead from the “Perfect Light,” he scanned each of the verses again, this time searching for an acrostic. At the far end of the second wall, he came upon the letters hidden within a passage from Revelation, the irony not lost on him. Once more, he read the inscription from bottom to top:

He pulled back and surveyed the area around the verse. The rock face resembled a tiny mountain range, the cracks in the wall like rivers and streamlets crisscrossing its terrain. Lifting the lantern in a wide arc, he tried to locate some hint of a door in the fissures, but to no avail. No way through, no way over. A none-too-distant echo. With little else to go on, he ran his fingers along the lettering, unsure of what exactly it was he hoped to find. He took particular care with the word light, pressing against each of its letters as if one of them might miraculously propel him through the solid wall.

He wasn’t far off when, pushing at the last, he felt something give way, the miniature? burrowing deeper into the rock. A moment later, he heard the sound of releasing, an entire section of wall moving perhaps an inch backward, guided by some unseen hinge. Stepping back, he watched as a seemingly unconnected series of cracks-oddly etched beams-joined together to create the outline of a door. A remarkable piece of engineering. Muscling his shoulder into the rock, he pushed his way through.

The sudden spray of light from within-a milky white radiance far purer than anything he had expected-forced him to wince. It seemed to emanate from the walls, an undulating mass of flawlessly smooth stone. Directly in front of him, six steps led down to the floor, which reflected an equal luster, no less luminous than the arched ceiling above, the overall effect that of a cube of light dug deep into the rock. He made his way down, sliding his fingers along a nearby ridge of wall-cold, wet, tacky to the touch. It gave the impression of something primeval, as if it had been culled from the very soul of the mountain. Even when he noticed the real source of light-a group of torches placed at the far end of the sanctum-he continued to marvel at the stone’s effect. That the flames implied a recent visit from someone other than himself didn’t deter him. Instead, he concentrated on the torches, too dim to be producing the kind of light enveloping the space. Somehow, the walls, the floor, the ceiling were absorbing the torchlight and throwing it back with an added vibrancy.

Even from behind the six tapestries that hung along the four walls.

Putting the geological mystery to the side for the moment, Pearse drew up to the tapestry nearest him. Considerably faded-early medieval, his best guess-it appeared to depict the Ascension of Christ: a lamb asleep in the lower right-hand corner, angels flanking Him on both sides, more of the heavenly host above. Christ blessed them all as He rose, clouds parting before Him, His face and torso far rounder than one might have expected. More curious, He wore the robes of an Old Testament mystic, a book covered with astrological symbols clutched in His right hand.

At first, Pearse attributed the idiosyncrasies to a Byzantine style, but the longer he stared, the more he realized how much of the scene felt incongruous, the usual cast of characters somehow miscast-the Virgin Mother nowhere in sight, the apostles conspicuously absent. Even the way the light radiated from Christ seemed skewed.

It slowly dawned on him why. This was no Ascension, but a Heavenly Ascent. No Christ, but a Manichaean prophet. Enoch, as Pearse now recalled his Apocrypha. Who else would be holding the Book of Celestial Physics? He glanced around the chamber. Each of the tapestries wove a similar story of a Seth or an Enosh, the figures virtually indistinguishable from one another. Only one of them stood out-the largest, hung along the back wall, depicting a man twice the size of the rest. Miniature versions of the other prophets stood within his open palms, their tiny auras subsumed within his own brilliance.

Mani, the Paraclete, larger than life.

From his vaunted perch, the Great Prophet stared down on the chamber, gnosis issuing from his every pore in a stream of letters and symbols woven into the cloth, the focus of his attention a raised platform at the center of the room. His gaze seemed to indicate its special importance. Pearse followed Mani’s cue and moved toward it.

A series of wooden sculptures, each no more than two feet tall, surrounded the four sides of the pulpit-Byzantine figures carved in narrow ridges, maroon and aqua pigments peeling from their faces and hands. They looked like typical Eastern icons, eyes peering up at the tapestries, each of the little men in a classic pose of humble piety. And yet, there were subtle differences among them-a hand gesture, the tilt of a head-enough to draw Pearse closer. As he moved from one to the next, he realized how much they varied, each one with its own specific identifying mark: an olive branch clasped to the breast, a garland rung about a shaven head, a tiny book held in the right hand. A book? At once, he turned back to the tapestries, instantly aware of the connection. Each of the sculptures represented one of the figures on the walls. Like Saint Jerome with his lion, or Saint Catherine with her wheel, the Manichaean prophets defined themselves by their own artistic props.

But whereas six of them hung from above, the grouping around the platform numbered seven. Pearse quickly matched statues with tapestries, the odd one out all too obvious when he finally came to it. Its short hair and lack of a beard had confused him at first. Only when he looked more closely did he see the tiny indentations at the center of each palm. Jesus as prophet. Jesus as one more in a long line leading to Mani. Why He had been denied His Heavenly Ascent remained a mystery. Perhaps to confirm Mani’s elevated position. Pearse had no answer. What he did have, though, was far more exhilarating.

Compared to the others in the chamber, Jesus remained earthbound, static. Unmoved.

Pearse needed only to help him “take wing.”

He placed the lantern on the platform and knelt by the figure. Its robes draped to the ground, a hint of sandal peeking out, enough to reveal a rusted nail driven through the arch. At first, Pearse thought it was merely decorative, a symbol of Christ’s final agonies; bending closer in, he realized it was actually bolting the statue to the stone below. He glanced at the other figures; each was managing with a single brace attached to the platform behind. Jesus alone required a separate means of mooring.

Pearse dropped to his chest and began to examine the few inches between the back of the figure and the pulpit. This time, he could find no release mechanism. Pulling himself to his knees, he placed his hands around the statue’s waist and gently tried to lift it. The wood groaned from the mild exertion, the stone below shifting ever so slightly. A hint of movement. More than that, he watched as a powder puff of dust rose from behind the robes as he released, caught in an unseen stream of light. He inched over to the side and lifted again, this time his eyes fixed on the stone. There. A thin shadow along the back edge seemed to deepen as he pulled, another crack of light. The stone was rising. More dust as he let go. He tried it several times, but the bolt refused to give way, no more than half an inch before it locked the stone in place. He needed something to wedge into the gap, something to force the stone up from below.

He surveyed the chamber. Nothing but tapestries and statues stared back. He glanced over at the torches, each one firmly affixed to the wall by a web of ironwork, thick bands of metal impossible to dislodge.

So what about a rusted one?

Jumping to his feet, he grabbed the lantern and ran to the steps. Two minutes later, he was using the lamp’s base to hammer against an eroded pin hanging from one of the corridor walls. A long metal strip dangled at its side, both closer and closer to release with each strike. The sound jarred, its echo a dull thud within the wildly shadowed space, lantern light flying in every direction. With a sudden clang, both pieces fell to the floor. Pearse snatched them up. A minute later, he was maneuvering the long strip into the half-inch opening.

Again he tried to lift. And again the stone refused. He pressed his full weight onto the improvised lever-his arm and chest muscles straining at the effort-bringing the gap to nearly an inch before his body started to shake. With one last surge, he drove down onto the iron wedge, hoping to snap the stone from its bolt, but his knees began to slide out from under him, twisting him to the side. The lever shifted as well, forcing the stone away from him rather than up. To his complete amazement, both continued to move, the stone scraping a few inches across its neighbor before his arms finally gave out.

The bolt, he discovered, had been designed not to keep the statue in place but to act as its pivot. Reaching his fingers into the gap formed by the rotation, he shoved the stone farther, the sound of grinding slate on slate reverberating throughout the chamber. When he had opened up a wide-enough breach, he picked up the lantern and stared into the hollow.

A pit some two feet deep opened up below the statue, more of the luminous stone forming its walls. At its center sat a square metal box perhaps ten inches high, twice that in both length and width. He reached down and pulled it up. It was lighter than he expected. He set it atop the platform and stood, marveling at its simplicity.

A plain box, untouched for nearly a thousand years, more remarkable for what he knew to be inside.

It was almost too much to think of opening it, a kind of ecstatic wonder at the prospect. To this point, he’d been playing a game, prodded by a Manichaean dare, distracted by its ingenuity. Now, all the ciphers, the meanings within meanings, fell away. He stood alone, a single iron latch between himself and an unimagined reality. He didn’t think of Angeli’s warning, nor of his own desire for clarity. He felt only insignificance, the mountain before him again, a divinity he could revere but never fathom. Paralysis born of faith. He sat, light-headed, the shimmering whiteness of the chamber draining him still further.

He had no idea how long he had been sitting, staring, when a flicker of torchlight snapped him back into focus. He reached for the box, an instant of resolve enough to bring his hand to the latch. More a device to keep the agents of decay at arm’s length than to provide additional security, it easily gave way under a bit of pressure. Evidently, anyone who had gotten this far could be trusted with the contents. He lifted the lid, a strange odor wafting out, somehow familiar, though he couldn’t quite place it.

More unsettling, though, was what he saw. A small dome of glass rested on a swath of velvet, between them what looked to be a leather-bound codex, no bigger than the size of his hand. A waxlike substance coated the crease where glass met velvet-a sealant of some sort-further protection against the elements. Next to it lay a pile of gold coins, their presence equally jarring. But it was the dome itself that troubled him most, the glass far too pure to have come from the hand of a tenth-century artisan, its craftsmanship that of the fifteenth or sixteenth century. All sense of wonder quickly faded; he dislodged the glass from the strip and picked up the codex. Flipping it over several times, he realized it, too, belonged to a different age. In fact, it was no codex at all, but a prebound book, the style of binding mid-Renaissance, the texture of the paper-when he finally opened it-confirmation of the dating.

The final slap was the language. Latin. Angeli had promised Greek. Where was the parchment they had gone to such lengths to protect? Where? And what had someone left in its place? His frustration and disappointment began to boil to the surface.

“I don’t suspect you’ll find much on Ambrose down here.”

The sound of the voice bolted Pearse to his feet, all traces of anger quickly lost to the momentary shock. He spun toward the door.

There, peering down at him from the steps, stood Brother Nikotheos, a small revolver in his hand.

The monk waited. He set his lantern on the top step and slowly made his way toward the platform.

“A monk with a gun,” he said. “That doesn’t look right, does it?” Pearse remained stock-still as Nikotheos spoke. “Then again, neither does your being down here. I can explain the first. The second …” He let the phrase trail off as he drew closer. “How did you find your way into this place?”

Pearse watched as Nikotheos caught sight of the box, then the pit, his sudden surprise all too obvious. A moment of confusion. And yet, he had shown none of it while moving through the chamber, no hesitation with the tapestries or statues. Only with the hidden cache. Which meant he had been here before. Felt comfortable here. And that could mean only one thing.

Once again, Pearse would have to think like a Manichaean.

Stifling the pounding in his chest, he tried to recall the words from the prophetic letters, the “signs of reception.” He knew they were his only recourse. Placing the book on the pulpit and, eyes ever on the monk’s, he slowly began to speak in Greek: “In the salutation of peace, I extend myself to you. In the radiance of light, I call you brother.” He held out his right hand, palm turned to the ground.

For what seemed an eternity, Nikotheos said nothing. He looked down at the outstretched hand, then at Pearse, a slight narrowing of his eyes. In that moment, Pearse thought he had miscalculated entirely, the man in front of him no part of the Manichaeans. He half-expected him to press the gun closer; instead, he watched as the monk slowly let it drop to his side. A moment later, he was extending his hand, placing it on top of Pearse’s. When he finally spoke, his words were barely a whisper: “For the light is within your bosom, an unreproachable light, the sign of the prophets within you.”

Heard aloud, the phrase momentarily stunned Pearse, a thousand-year-old legacy come to life. Quickly recovering, he replied, “O Iesseus-Mazareus-Iessedekeus.”

“O Mani Paraclete, prophet of all prophets.”

“Eternally existent in very truth.”

“Eeema, Eeema, Ayo.”

The two men stared at each other, Pearse now unsure how to render the words he had read into action. He had no cause to worry, as the monk immediately released his hand and stepped toward him. Kissing Pearse on both cheeks, Nikotheos made the sign of the cross on his forehead-two fingers and thumb, in strict Orthodox fashion-followed by the tracing of what looked to be a triangle over his heart. That’s what that meant, Pearse thought to himself. It had been the one part in the letters he hadn’t understood. Pearse repeated the gestures, then both men embraced.

As Nikotheos pulled away, he said, “Be received into our community.”

Pearse nodded once, eager to keep his responses to a minimum. A ritual of greeting was one thing; an entire canon of belief was another. The monk appeared to be thinking the same thing, his expression that of a man not yet fully convinced.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve spoken those words,” he began, the gun-albeit at his side-in plain view. “You’re the first from an outside cell to come to the mountain in many years.”

“Yes,” answered Pearse

“And the first unannounced.”

Again he nodded. Clearly, it would take more than a few memorized lines to quell the lingering doubts. However much he wanted to guard against anything that might expose him, Pearse knew he had to engage the monk, gain his trust. More than that, he recognized the opportunity that now presented itself. Here was a modern-day Manichaean, a man with insights into a world of which Pearse had only begun to scrape the surface. He had to make the most of it.

“None of them was allowed inside this chamber, though,” Nikotheos added, the suspicion growing in his eyes. “None of them even knew of it. And yet, here you are. Without anyone to show you the way.”

A telling admission, thought Pearse. The Manichaeans on the mountain kept their Vault hidden, even from their own, despite the fact that they had no idea what it held. Nikotheos’s reaction to the pit had said as much.

“It’s what I was sent to find,” Pearse answered. “The Vault of the Paraclete.” He expected the added detail to put the monk’s mind at ease.

Instead, Nikotheos’s eyes went wide. It was several moments before he responded. “How did you know that?” he asked, his tone far more pointed than only moments before.

“Know what?”

“The name. How did you know the name?”

The response puzzled Pearse. “I don’t understand.”

“The Vault of the Paraclete. Only those of us of Photinus know that name. It’s been ours to protect for a thousand years. Yet, somehow you know it.” Nikotheos tightened his grip on the revolver. “You find the Vault. You know its name. And you come from the outside. How is that possible?”

Pearse stood motionless. He slowly realized what he had unearthed-the final line of defense between parchment and pursuer. None but the monks knew of the chamber’s name; and they knew nothing of what they protected. The ideal security system, one set up in such a way that should anyone ever have come across a reference to Athos or Photinus in his search for the parchment, his reward upon reaching the mountain would have been blank stares from the monks. “Parchment? We know of no parchment.” Were that person to have mentioned the Vault, he would no doubt have met a far more unpleasant fate. Even now, Pearse couldn’t be sure just how reluctant Nikotheos was to use the revolver. He imagined that the one thing holding the monk back was the fact that his captor was inside the Vault and not asking to be shown to it.

Pearse had little choice but to up the stakes. “Then there must be another source.”

Again the monk’s eyes narrowed, the suggestion even more perplexing. “Another-That’s impossible. No one else knows of it. No one else could have known of it. Not even the summus princeps.”

Not yet willing to dive into whatever the “summus princeps” might be, Pearse knew he needed to make the most of the monk’s confusion. As casually as he could, he asked, “Do you know why you keep these torches lit all the time?”

The question had the desired effect. “Why we … What are you asking me? What other source?”

“Do you know why?” Pearse repeated.

Again, the monk hesitated. “We keep the name hidden, the torches lit.”

“And yet you’ve never asked why?”

“Why?” His frustration mounted. “There was no reason to ask. We protect the eternal flame for Mani. What other source?”

Pearse let his eyes wander to the walls and tapestries. “It was so I could find this place,” he said, his tone now almost inviting. He turned and looked directly at Nikotheos. “You’ve kept the torches lit so that the ‘Perfect Light’ could lead me here.”

“What?” His reply was barely audible. “The ‘Perfect Light’?”

“The other source.” Pearse paused. He had to see how much the monk knew of the scroll. “Do you understand now?”

Nikotheos stared back, confusion slowly giving way to a moment of profound realization. “The scroll?” he asked in whispered disbelief. “You have the scroll?” The significance of what he had said only now struck him. “And it brought you here.” His eyes grew wider still. “The ‘Hagia Hodoporia’ is here.” Pearse watched as the monk’s gaze tracked the discovery from pit to box to glass to leather-bound book. His puzzlement returned. “That … can’t be. The ‘Hodoporia,’ it’s supposed to be-”

“Much older,” Pearse cut in. “Yes. I know.”

Hagia Hodoporia, he thought. Holy Journey. The treasure hidden away for almost a millennium. In two words, Nikotheos had confirmed not only his familiarity with the hidden knowledge of the “Perfect Light”-something evidently not restricted to the Roman Manichaeans alone-but also his complete trust in Pearse; who other than someone of the highest order could know of such things? The former explained away all the “impossibilities”; the latter gave Pearse the freedom to delve deeper.

“So you have it?” the monk prodded. “The written text of the ‘Perfect Light’?” A moment later, he was looking around the Vault in childlike wonder, as if he’d forgotten Pearse entirely. “The ‘Hodoporia’ was here all along. And we never knew it.”

“Yes,” said Pearse.

The monk’s eyes caught on the tapestry of Mani, a giddiness now in his voice. “You know, you grow up hearing the stories, all about how the scroll was hidden away from our enemies. Hidden so well that it became lost even to us. Or stolen. Or destroyed. The myth of the ‘Perfect Light.’ Mani’s will, I suppose.” He turned back to Pearse. “And you believe one day a man will find it, unearth its mysteries, and discover the path to the ‘Hagia Hodoporia.’ The stuff of adolescent fantasies.” His smile broadened. “And yet, here you are. That one man.” A genuine admiration animated his face. “Tell me, when did you find it? The scroll, I mean.”

Pearse waited. “A few weeks ago. We needed time to decipher it.”

“Naturally.” The monk suddenly realized he was still holding the gun. He quickly placed it in the pocket of his robes. “You understand the precaution.” He now sat back on the edge of the pulpit. “Had we been told, we could have helped-”

“It was best this way.”

“Of course.” He nodded, a newfound deference in his tone, even in the way he held himself. Pearse realized that if nothing else, a Manichaean knew his place in the hierarchy. Nikotheos truly believed that the man who had discovered the lost scroll-and who now had access to the “Hodoporia”-had come from the very highest echelons of the church; he thus warranted a considerable respect. Pearse had no intention of convincing him otherwise. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he recalled John J.’s simple words of advice to a newly ordained priest, a young man uncomfortable with the pressures of the confessional: Plant the seeds, Ian. Give them the room to unburden themselves. And listen. Strange how appropriate they seemed in so incongruous a setting.

“The summus princeps made the decision,” said Pearse, testing the waters.

“Of course.” The monk nodded. “He’s always been fascinated with the ‘Hodoporia.’”

He, thought Pearse. A who, not a what. An invitation for more probing. “You can understand why he wanted to handle everything as discreetly as possible. Especially,” he added, not sure what he hoped to hear in response, “given the events of the last few days.”

“The cardinal has always been a cautious man,” answered the monk.

Pearse tried to mask the astonishment in his eyes. The cardinal. Had Nikotheos just confirmed von Neurath’s involvement? Pearse had no choice but to press further. “Nothing,” he continued, “not even the ‘Hodoporia,’ can be allowed to get in the way of the election.”

“I understand.” Again the monk nodded. “Imagine it. With the ‘Hodoporia,’ he’ll be able to use Rome as no one ever has. It will expedite everything.”

Again, Pearse had to stifle his reaction. Use Rome. What else could Nikotheos mean but von Neurath on the papal throne? And expedite what? A Manichaean in the Vatican … the catalyst for the “one true and holy Christian church”?

Before Pearse could respond, the monk’s eyes flashed with a sudden insight. “Or is it the other way around?” This time, he waited for Pearse; when no answer came, he continued. “The cells were alerted because he anticipated the recovery of the ‘Hodoporia’? Which would mean”-he let the thought sit for a moment-“that the vacancy in Rome wasn’t simply good fortune?”

The cells … alerted. Pearse knew he had to tread carefully; even so, the implications of what Nikotheos was saying demanded greater clarification. “The ‘Hodoporia’ and the great awakening go hand in hand,” said Pearse. “The cells must be ready to act.”

“‘The church will be one and His name one,’” intoned the monk, as if reciting a well-practiced verse of prayer. Before Pearse could dig deeper, the monk added, “But this isn’t the ‘Hodoporia,’ is it?”

No matter how eager he might have been to learn more about the cells, Pearse knew he had no choice but to follow Nikotheos’s lead. The monk probably knew little of what was to happen beyond his own cell. A handful of monks on a strip of mountain weren’t going to play too large a role in the “great awakening.” Even so, Pearse couldn’t help but regret the lost opportunity. “Not from what I’ve seen,” he answered. “No.”

“Then what is it?”

It was a question he hadn’t had time to ask himself. “Another piece in the puzzle?” he mused.

Nikotheos nodded. “Still, I’m sure he’ll be eager to hear about it.”

“Yes.”

For the first time, the monk seemed to relax, the night’s excitement obviously having taken its toll. Stepping away from the pulpit, he said, “You can call after first prayer if you like.”

“Call?” This time, Pearse’s surprise got the better of him.

“It’s not all paraffin lamps and outdoor plumbing these days,” he countered, now beginning to make his way to the door.

Pearse did his best at a smile. “Of course.” To his great relief, Nikotheos had misunderstood his reaction.

“We have a telephone, a fax machine.” He pointed up at the steps. “Even something in the door. We installed it after the Great Lavra incident.” He stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “You were the first to set it off. It was how I knew you were here.”

Pearse nodded. As much as he wanted to hear the voice on the other end of the line, he knew contact with Rome was out of the question. It might confirm von Neurath’s role, but it meant serving himself up. Without the ‘Hodoporia,’ he still had no leverage, nothing to force their hand. “I need some time to study this,” he said, picking up the book and easing it into his pocket. “Before I make that call.”

“Of course.” Nikotheos had reached the top step.

Pearse bent over and slid the stone back into place. Jesus was once more in line with the other prophets. The monk, meanwhile, gazed out at the Vault, a newfound appreciation etched across his face. “The ‘Hagia Hodoporia,’” he mused. “Who’d have thought it?” Pearse retrieved the glass, the velvet, and the box, then joined him at the top of the stairs. He, too, took one last glance.

Not surprisingly, his gaze came to rest on the larger-than-life figure of Mani. No doubt due to his own exhaustion, Pearse thought he saw a momentary glint of concern cross the Great Prophet’s eyes.

Maybe he had more leverage than he realized.

Giacomo Cardinal Peretti pored through the diaries, every thought-personal and papal-inscribed within their pages. Boniface had kept meticulous journals, all locked away in the bureau by his bed, unknown to all but his closest allies. That Peretti had removed the only key from around his lifeless neck, then borrowed the last three volumes-June through August-had gone unnoticed by the security men. It would be days before any of them would think to go through the late Pope’s personal effects.

Now, sitting alone in his own rooms-his accustomed bedtime long past-Peretti sifted through the minutiae with tremendous care. Little in the first volume had drawn his special attention: a draft version of an encyclical on faith, lengthy diatribes on the continuing abuses in Kosovo, growing concerns about von Neurath’s ambition. At the end of the second, however, each entry began to include several lines on something far beyond the daily tasks of office, sentences replaced by bullet points.

Peretti read:

July 9: Istanbul discovery still too speculative. Documentation sparse. Islamic text? (Ruini convinced early Gnostic.) Language source uncertain. Some form of Coptic, Aramaic? R concerned by Kleist arrival. (K > von N??)

July 13: Source Syriac. Ruini not familiar with language. Second part Greek (letters??). Old Testament references > Apocrypha? Imagery unusual. Prophetic journeys (Seth as prophet??). Syriac text given to Professor Alihodja (Dept. of Coptic studies). R working with letters.

July 19: Partial translation > Secret Book of John. (Seth, Enoch not part of Gnostic tradition > misattribution??) 3rd or 4th c. Letters through 10th (????).

July 22: Gnostic text only as introduction. Ruini insists “Perfect Light” (???) (fifteen versions, variations). Alihodja unfamiliar with “PL” (all the better). R looking for textual indicators > language still problematic.

July 26: Ruini has text. Alihodja unreachable (???). Thinks has link with Athos (Orthodox???). “Vault of the Paraclete” (???). Return Rome tomorrow.

July 30: If Athos, Ruini speculating something 1st c. (time frame, scope). > If so, why Kleist > von N interested? Ruini no answers yet. Sudden news of Alihodja heart attack. (foul play???) R convinced.

August 5: Sebastiano dead, as well. Only myself to blame. No sign of text. What is on Athos?? And where??

The last entry ended with a prayer for Ruini, a personal recrimination for not having seen the obvious dangers, and one last question:

Von N > “Perfect Light” > Athos: Is what connects them worth killing for?

Peretti closed the book. His friend’s death two days later was answer enough.

A Manichaean prayer and Athos. What was von Neurath up to?

He had waited ten minutes in his cell, time enough to be sure that Nikotheos wasn’t still lurking about. Keeping the robe and bonnet on, Pearse had then made his way back to the great doors, along the open bluff, through the wooded trails, before coming to the ancient Ford. Three in the morning. Another hour to matins. Enough time to get him off the mountain.

What had taken Gennadios fifteen minutes took Pearse forty, the road to Daphne no less treacherous on the return trip. With the first hints of dawn-a gray matted backdrop as yet unwilling to cede the day to the sun-so, too, came the first boats out of the harbor. Dressed in monk’s habit, Pearse had little trouble securing a ride to Ouranopolis, the backpack accepted with a curious look from his still-groggy captain. A gift from a recent visitor, Pearse explained. God’s will that he put it to use. The man shrugged, then pulled the boat out into the Aegean. Oranges, not God’s will, were his concern this morning.

Ten minutes into the ride, the drone of the engine gave way to the echo of the simandron-the long wooden beams used for calling the monks to prayer-each with its own particular timbre, deep, resonant tones of muted whale song bouncing off the scarps of the mountain. Last night, their music might have drawn him in, heightened his sense of reverence; now, they only reminded him of the hunt.

Another ten minutes and the din began to fade as the first sign of sun peeked through from above the tower at Ouranopolis, the hamlet already alive, boats busy with early-morning cargo for the mountain. A lone monk easily slipped through the swirl of movement, the narrow street where Andrakos had left the car still hidden under predawn shadow. Pearse quickly removed the robe and bonnet, tossed them onto the backseat, and fired up the engine. Within minutes, he was back on the highway.

The question was, To where? Igoumenitsa, Athens, and Salonika were no longer possibilities; the news from Photinus would no doubt send the Vatican men to all three, and far quicker than Pearse would be able to get to any of them. More than that, he knew Nikotheos would waste little time in alerting the Greek police to the disappearance of one of the monastery’s most valuable manuscripts. Not to mention the issue of Andrakos’s stolen car. Given the time limitations, and the nature of the various border options, Pearse decided on Bulgaria, his best bet Kulata-according to the map in the glove compartment-an hour and ten minutes if the roads were kind. He had to hope Nikotheos had waited until after matins before checking on his guest.

As Athos slipped farther and farther into the distance, the Holy Mother seemed more than content to remain by his side, her watchful gaze keeping the roads all but empty, no trace of police during the seventy-five-minute hurtle through the Greek countryside. She was equally kind at the border, a shift in guards-men impatient to get home-a priest’s collar and Vatican papers once again sufficient to grease the wheels. Ten minutes from the small outpost, he pulled the car over and exhaled, trying his best to focus on what to do next.

It was only then that he realized he had no idea where he was meant to go. Everything since San Clemente had propelled him along without much time to think, one task to the next, a small leather-bound book having replaced the scroll. Aside from that, though, he had to admit he was no further along than when he had left Rome. Granted, there was the confirmation from Nikotheos as to von Neurath’s role, the hint of something to be “expedited,” “cells” in the waiting-hardly enough, though, to bring the diverse pieces together.

Settling on what he did have, he reached for the backpack and pulled out the leather-bound book.

The first page revealed the now-familiar Manichaean greeting, this time in Latin. Though six centuries removed from the last of the “Perfect Light” letters-the date, “April 28, 1521,” scribbled at the top-the “signs of reception” remained identical in form and meaning. New to the layout, however, was a small triangle-one half of it darkened, the other half empty-occupying the top right-hand corner of the page. As with the odor from the box, it momentarily registered with Pearse. But he was too caught up in the text below to give it much thought.

There, in a stylized Latin, read the tale of one Ignacio de Ribadeneyra:

For those who have happened upon this book in an act of plunder and sacrilege, let me assure you that you will find nothing in these pages to rouse your interests. Take the gold pieces I have left you as ransom. Leave the book unharmed as your first act of contrition.

For those, however, who have come to this through the “Perfect Light,” do not let anger win the better part of your soul. Rather, accept from me, Ignacio de Ribadeneyra, a poor brother of the monastery of Sanctus Paulus, the deepest apology at your disappointment. You have only to recall the ravages of the day, the great schism wrought by an heretical priest, and you will understand the choice I have made to conceal the “Hagia Hodoporia” far from the walls of Photinus. If I am ajudged to have acted with recklessness or with fear, know that my decision was dictated by the strictest faith and guided by the hand of Mani.

My journey to the “Hodoporia” began in the second year of the reign of Giuliano della Rovere, known to Christendom as Julius II. My place within the world at that time was to the north of the great city of Valladolid, a gathering of monks of the Hieronymite order, ever vigilant in our work for the Savior. To those who ventured into our abbey, we were healers of the sick, devoted to the word of Rome, and constant in our Catholic faith. To ourselves, we were minions of the Great Prophet, men who awaited the signs of the great awakening.

It was in the winter of 1504 that I reached my sixteenth year. Having completed nine arduous seasons of study in the ways of the Living Gospel, I was told that I should make the great journey, that my future was to be found in the search for the lost scroll. None from my poor monastery had ever been so chosen. Why such an honor fell to me, I do not know. Nor have I found an answer in these past twenty years. Quick of mind and eager of spirit, I know that it was the will of Mani alone that ensured my success, nothing else.

With much anticipation, I set off from Palencia for the palace of Cardinal Vobonte, a man of considerable power at the court of the French king, and a brother devoted to the restoration of the scroll. I toiled for many months under his tutelage, schooled in the history of the scroll, and made privy to the wonders of the “Hodoporia.” My mentor was a man of unending compassion, purity of heart, although his devotion to the scroll did at times overwhelm me, so fervent was his commitment. It was not long, however, before I began to share his great zeal, once again Mani’s will that I should excel, my training quickly absorbed. With the last snow of the season freshly packed on the ground, I set out from Paris.

Would that I had carried my devotion as far as its gates. Would that I had been resolute. How might the world be changed now. But it was not to be. I was a boy of sixteen, unaware that I should not see France, nor my beloved Spain, for nearly twenty years. Perhaps, as I write now, ever again. It is, I know, just punishment for the life I have led.

Such is the price of weakness.

The first years of my journey came and went with a speed I cannot now fathom, lost in a haze of indulgence, for which I remain in constant struggle to atone. First to Lyons, then Milan, Bremen, all the while convinced that I was seeking out long-lost traces of the letters from the scroll; instead, I was steeping myself in the depravity of the age. For seventeen years, I let the world of darkness seduce me, not in wines and meats, nor in things of the flesh, but in a different kind of self-delusion, my soul profligate in its duty to the light. Like Augustine before me, I was too young or too prideful for the demands of such a journey; my faith was strong, but my head swam with questions, my place and purpose in the world undetermined. Was the scroll, its meaning, to be my own redemption? So much clouded my mind, a wave of indecision that forced me into a world I was perhaps too simple to understand. My love of God, my faith in Mani, though ever present, did not hold me to the task I had been set. A test of will? I cannot say. If so, I was tested, and I failed.

How often I wished that I had but copied a few lines from the Living Gospel, taken with me the words of Mani to temper my own will. Then, perhaps, I might have curbed my distraction. (Or is that merely my pride speaking once again?) But to carry such things was too dangerous, the deception of the good Catholic never to be placed at risk. It was a role I learned to play all too well, my own corruption no exception within the world of the debauched popish church.

And so unto this wanton life befell the ravages of the times of which I have spoken, and which, even now, consume the better part of the Christian world. When that heretic priest arose, I should have taken it as a sign to shake myself from my torpor, to seize the chance and redeem myself in the eyes of Mani. But I did not. Instead, I took this Luther to be a Brother of the Light, his contempt for Rome proof of his convictions. I convinced myself that he had found the “Hodoporia,” for what else could so shake the gates of the ecclesia impura? Surely his words at Wittenberg had been a prelude to the great awakening. Surely it was all evidence of the Great Hand of Mani. Once again, I was self-deceived. This Luther was no brother, his message one of division, not unity.

How rife the world was for such upheaval. How perfect the time for the “Hodoporia” to assert its will. How miserable my own existence.

At last awakened from my slumber, I only compounded my iniquity. Like Jonah to Tarshish, I ran further from my duty, now to the East and the city of the Turks. Can I say that I knew I would find the scroll within its walls? I must confess, I cannot. I ran to Constantinople to bury myself in a world unknown. Yet even in my own depravity, Mani guided my steps. Even in my humanity, He allowed me to find the seeds of my salvation.

The story of my redemption is one of Mani’s power….

Pearse flipped through the next few pages-Ribadeneyra’s own version of Confessions-his salvation, in keeping with Augustine’s, at the age of thirty-three while sitting in a garden in Istanbul. But whereas Augustine had succumbed to the flesh-“give me chastity, and give me constancy, but do not give it me yet”-Ribadeneyra had fought a far less tangible enemy: his own self-doubt.

Pearse wondered if such uncertainty ran like a common thread through all those who sought the scroll. His own affinity for the Hieronymite monk grew with each page.

And yet, he couldn’t help but ask just how seriously he was meant to take it all. The phrase “Take it and read” gave way to the equally inspiring, though now familiar, “Those who enter may see the light.” Clearly, Ribadeneyra had chosen the phrase after having seen the scroll and deciphering its message. Still, it made for compelling narrative. Even more absorbing were the tales of midnight jaunts to abandoned churches, secret messages delivered by Orthodox priests, a vision of Mani himself appearing to set the wayward brother on his proper course-all of it ultimately leading the monk to “enter” an eleventh-century church, the scroll hidden within one of its long-forgotten crypts. Soon thereafter, the decoding of the text, the connection to Photinus, the Vault of the Paraclete. Piety rewarded. Certainty reclaimed.

Pearse could only hope for such results.

On unearthing the “Hodoporia,” however, and on reading its contents, Ribadeneyra had made the momentous decision that the brothers of Mani, and the world in general, were not yet ready to confront its power. His certainty had evidently brought with it a residual serving of pride.

How much of the Pure Tongue flies through these pages. How simple the words, their source undeniable. Yet their power demands too much of us, their truth too great a threat. Are such thoughts a blasphemy? Perhaps. But a blasphemy we cannot confront in this age. Too much now conspires against the “Hodoporia” to unleash its power. Too much would be lost in the frantic swirl of heresies that abound. And if not lost, then abused in aid of this Luther, thus sealing the fate of Mani’s return. No. The “Hodoporia” must appear when all is at peace, when the papal church once again grows well pleased with itself and is not armed against its enemies. (How I regret the chance I let pass. How long I shall live with the shame.) Then shall the “Hodoporia” assert its power, and thus make a place for the fullness of the light.

It was here that Ribadeneyra offered his truest indication of faith. Or perhaps the only rationale for his own inaction:

But it is for Mani alone to decide when that time shall come. He alone shall know when the “Hodoporia” shall be revealed.

Now certain he was acting in the best interests of all Manichaeans, Ribadeneyra had returned to Istanbul, reinterred the scroll (for the one “worthy enough to accept the task”), and concocted another bit of gnosis, so that, “centuries from now,” another might discover it-Ruini, as it turned out-and “unmask the path to the Holy Truth.” Mani would keep the scroll well hidden; Ribadeneyra would handle the “Hodoporia.”

Pearse turned to the next page for the first installment of the monk’s “hidden knowledge.”

There is a town on the Drina….

The Drina River. Bosnia. Pearse’s eyes shot to the top of the page. The small triangle.

And he remembered.

Half an hour from the Bulgarian border, he’d crossed into Macedonia, now three hours ago, each passing mile a nod to the Holy Mother’s continuing generosity. Or perhaps to the ancient animosities between the Greeks and their neighbors to the north. Whichever it was, he was counting on that lack of communication to delay any alerts out of Athos. Still, he couldn’t expect to sustain his run of good luck at the border posts. Ill feelings notwithstanding, there’d been too much time since his hasty departure from the mountain. The collar would soon lose its charm.

Unless, of course, the border he intended to cross lay in shambles. With one eye on the map, the other on the road, he knew he had only one choice: Kosovo. Over a year ago, the refugees had been pouring out, thousands of them crammed into camps littered along the Albanian and Macedonian borders. But there had been too many of them, thousands more shipped off to Turkey, Armenia, Greece-wherever friends or relatives had been willing to house them. Now, those same refugees wanted back in. Trouble was, there was no place to put them, entire villages buried under rubble. More than that, the Serbs weren’t exactly encouraging them to reclaim their homes; mines were once again springing up all over the place. Still, the refugees came. And with them, a rebirth of the camps. Not that the rest of the world was taking much notice. That was last year’s news. The horror of the camps, however, remained the same.

Callous as it might sound, Pearse knew that a priest on a relief mission could easily get lost in one of them. Or at least be deemed lunatic enough to be let through without too many questions. He was banking on the latter. More to the point, Kosovo would be the easiest place to disappear once Nikotheos’s call went through to Rome. Mention of the “Hodoporia” would no doubt kick the Austrian and his cronies into high gear. Even if they should find the car-which he planned to abandon a few miles from the border-the chances of locating him within the mayhem were slim at best. Somehow, he would find his way to the Drina.

Where along the river, however, was another question entirely. The latest Manichaean word game had nothing to do with acrostics as far as he could tell; this time, the gnosis lay hidden in what Ribadeneyra had described as “language alchemically transformed.” His explanation had done little to clarify:

Everything has not only one virtue but many, just as a flower has more than one color, and each color has in itself the most diverse hues; and yet they constitute a unity, one thing.

Still mulling over the sixteenth-century instructions, Pearse pulled into the “last petrol in Macedonia.” He’d expected to see some signs of life this close to Kosovo; instead, the road had become empty, the last half hour driven in complete isolation.

And yet, the solitude shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. During his first pit stop some eighty miles back-what had passed for a gas station, shack and seedy little pump-he’d been told that, this time, the UN was trying to keep the refugee camps to a minimum-Senokos and Cegrane to the south of the capital, Blace to the north. Those not involved had no desire to get too close.

The mayhem was at Blace-twelve kilometers on, according to the sign at the rest stop. On foot, Pearse knew, he could be there in a few hours.

The rest stop had clearly been designed for the onetime bus tours destined for the St. Nikita monastery, its minimalist cafeteria-glass as its walls-nestled into an opening in the trees. The pump here was pristine compared to the first he had seen, the name of the gas something unpronounceable, accents and consonants in the vast majority. Pearse pulled around to the back, grabbed the pack, and headed for the building. He left the keys in the ignition. If someone wanted the car, they were more than welcome to it. Let the men from the Vatican chase after an opportunistic refugee.

Inside, the place was equally bare, save for a man and woman at one of the far tables, both under a cloud of cigarette smoke. At the first sign of Pearse, the man jumped to his feet.

“Dobro utro.” He beamed as he made his way across. A few more incomprehensible words, then a hand indicating the tables.

Pearse shook his head, and smiled, the international sign for “I have no idea what you’re saying.”

No less genially, the man continued. “How am I helping with you?” A nod. “You make to understand?”

Pearse returned the nod and said, “Telephone?” Immediately, he saw the disappointment in the man’s face. “And food,” he added, the man’s expression at once brighter. Pearse then pulled out a few of the American bills. The man’s face again beamed.

“Telephone. Food. Excellent.”

Two minutes later, Pearse was doing his best with the operator. Eight minutes after that, he was being pulled away from a plate of something utterly unrecognizable, though surprisingly tasty, his call having gone through.

Professor Angeli’s voice was a welcome relief. It took him no time to bring her up to speed on Photinus and the little bound book.

“Yes, but where are you?” she asked.

Pearse hesitated. “Probably best if you don’t know that.”

A pause on the other end of the line. “I see.” When he didn’t answer, she admitted, “I suppose you’re right.” He could sense her unease, the reality of his situation-and her own reacquaintance with it-a bit too much. “All right…. You say it’s from a Spanish monk. Coded language. What did he call it?”

“‘Language alchemically transformed,’” answered Pearse.

“No, no. The other phrase. The one from Pliny.”

“Oh.” Pearse turned to the page, quickly skimming through several passages. “‘Quaestio lusoria,’” he read.

“Yes. ‘Quaestio lusoria,’” she repeated. Clearly, his warning had unnerved her more than he realized; her tone remained distant. More than that, it wasn’t like her to need any kind of reminder when it came to the world of esoterica. “I might have a book on that. Hold on for a second” Pearse listened to the sound of her receding footsteps, followed by almost a minute of silence. When she picked up again, she seemed no less edgy. “Carlo Pescatore,” she said. “The Art of Renaissance Wordplay. I knew I had it somewhere.” He could hear her scanning the pages, the usual hum conspicuously absent. “Yes. Here it is,” she began. “According to Signore Pescatore, a quaestio lusoria was a kind of puzzle….” Another flip of a page. “Primarily the domain of poets. Steeped in classical references.” She stopped, the first hint of the old Angeli creeping though when she continued. “Now that’s interesting. He says it could be considered the great-grandfather of the modern cryptic.” A few more flipped pages before she said, “You’ve always been very good at these. Like that Greek poem with Ambrose, remember?”

“Sure.”

“Well, it’s similar to that,” she explained. “Except with this, it’s more about anagrams and word reconfigurations, not just transpositions. That sort of thing.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Good. Because, in some form or another, I believe that’s what Senor Ribadeneyra has given you. It ties in perfectly with the Manichaeans. Meaning hidden within language.” Again a pause. “How many entries are there?”

Pearse counted out the lines of text. “About twenty-five.”

“I see.” Again, a pause. “Might be a bit tricky in Latin. If you want, you could … read them to me over the phone. I’m not so bad with these things myself.”

Pearse hadn’t heard the request; he was already trying his hand at the first entry. It took him a moment to adjust his thinking. As he read, he began to see what she was talking about. On its own, the phrase made no sense whatsoever. Reading it as a cryptic-a bit of repunctuation here and there-he saw at once what Ribadeneyra was after. He wants an anagram of a word that means “He that walks in battle,” Pearse thought. He continued to stare. “He that walks in battle.” Something so familiar to it, hours and hours of Catholic school and seminary Greek and Latin swimming in his head. His “gift” as he’d so often been told. He closed his eyes. “He that walks in battle.” A moment later, he had the answer. Gradivus. From the Aeneid-the epithet of Mars. He quickly jotted down the letters on his palm. He read the rest of the clue. “Who turns the seventh to a fifth.” The seventh. He let his eyes drift. A musical seventh? The seventh Commandment? He stared back at the word. Or is it easier than that? His eye stopped on the u. The seventh letter? “Turns … to a fifth.” The fifth letter of the alphabet? With nothing else to go on, he replaced the u with an e. An anagram of Gradives. He then wrote the letters in a circle, the surest way to work out an anagram. Ten seconds later, he had the answer.

Visegrad.

“There is a town on the Drina….”

At the same moment, Angeli broke through on the line. “Father?” Again, a pause. “Hello? Why don’t you read me the first one?”

He was about to answer, then stopped. To this point, he’d attributed her hesitation to a concern for him. Now, something in her voice told him otherwise. “Is something wrong, Professor?”

“No.” Her response seemed devoid of any emotion. “Nothing.” Before he could answer, Angeli screamed into the phone. “Destroy the book! Destroy it! They-”

A momentary clattering on the other end, followed by silence, then the sound of another voice on the line. “Listen carefully, Father.” It was a man, the accent familiar. The Austrian. “Find the ‘Hodoporia.’ Bring it to us. Do you understand?”

The line disengaged.

Pearse walked to Blace in a daze, the couple from the rest stop having insisted he take something strong to drink before setting out. Language aside, they had seen enough in his expression to know what he needed. Rakija, homegrown brandy. Though far more lethal than the stuff Andrakos had served him, it went down easily, the color returning to his face with the second shot.

Now, alone on the road, he continued to see the image of Angeli in front of him. Screams, then silence. The men of the Vatican had been there all along, heard everything. He couldn’t remember if he had told them about the Drina, Kosovo, the car. Had he mentioned Visegrad? All of it flew through his mind, the shock and the brandy making accurate recall impossible.

And yet, what did it matter? There was no need to track him now. No need to find out where Ribadeneyra’s book would lead him. He was a priest. He wouldn’t let her die. He would give them what they wanted. No matter what the consequences.

A reasonable argument four days ago. Now, he didn’t know. Delivering the “Hodoporia” would assure both his and Angeli’s deaths. That much, he did know. A surprisingly cold bit of analysis from a man of faith. Perhaps he was learning the ways of the Manichaeans too well. But to abandon her-and to convince himself that their methods were dictating his own callousness-was that really his only choice?

With no answers, he found himself on the ridge of a hill, below him the first signs of the madness sprawling out from Kosovo. A group of outsized tents appeared along the border, impromptu barricades circling large tracts of what, until recently, had been open land. Just beyond them, the rim of another mountain rose up thick with trees. He had been told that the police had cleared the camp weeks ago, a resettlement agreement with the Serbs all but signed. Naturally, it had fallen through, and Blace-a village of perhaps a hundred homes-was once again teeming with refugees.

From his vantage point, he saw the array of initials painted on the roofs of the tents-UN, NATO, IMC, ICRC, ACT, UNICEF, and a host of others he didn’t recognize-all cataloging the impotence of a world unable to deal with the most recent Balkan flare-up. Seven hundred years of emperors, sultans, presidents, and kings hadn’t managed to bring resolution. Why these thought they could, he didn’t know. From the looks of it, most of those posted to Blace were simply trying to hold whatever they could in check.

The closer in he walked, the more unbearable the smell became. The first of the tents was still a good half mile off and already the stench of urine hung in the air. It was difficult to delineate the smells as he approached the first barricade: soiled clothes, unwashed flesh, an animal-like odor-wet fur doused in something sickly sweet-impossible to avoid. Not even a hand to the nose could keep it at bay, the air so thick with filth that it seemed to attach itself to every fiber of clothing, skin, hair. And yet, Pearse had little trouble ignoring it, the sights beyond the fence enough to overload his senses. Even from this distance, he could make out the faces, the thick frames of kerchiefed women, children-too big to be carried-clutched in weary arms. Some wandered about; others crouched in small groups, none talking, all with a stare of resigned helplessness, disbelief having long ago abandoned them. Bosnian, Kosovar-it made little difference. A new locale. Nothing else to distinguish them save the passage of eight years.

Pearse hadn’t expected the place to jar him as it did, the “Hodoporia,” Angeli, and all he had learned on Athos momentarily erased from his thoughts. Even he had let himself believe that the worst had ended a year ago. Not from what he saw now. No doubt it was the reason he failed to notice the soldier driving up from his left, the man outfitted in field camouflage, the Jeep with the UN insignia on its hood. The man pulled to a stop and stepped out.

“Oproste te, Tatko. Mozam li da go vidam identifikacija?”

Pearse turned, needing a moment to refocus his attention. Unsure what he had just heard, he shook his head.

In a slow, deliberate English-the accent pure Brit-the soldier repeated, “Your identification, Father.”

“You’re English,” Pearse answered, pulling out the worn Vatican passport and handing it to the man.

“Yes,” he replied, scrutinizing the papers. “And you’re not Italian.” After a few moments, he handed back the passport, a taut smile on his lips. “An American Vatican priest. Rather interesting. And what exactly are you doing here, Father?”

Pearse tried to return the smile. He needed something that sounded convincing. “I was supposed to join a relief group in Skopje, but my plane was delayed. They told me to come here. I managed to get a lift to St. Nikita.”

“A relief group?” The soldier’s smile widened. “We’ve plenty of those, Father. I’m afraid you’ll have to be a bit more specific.”

With only a momentary pause, he answered, “The International Catholic Migration Committee.” It was the first thing he could think of, a dim recollection from a recent edition of L’Osservatore Romano that the ICMC was somewhere in Macedonia tending to the refugees. Pearse had to hope the Holy Mother was still by his side.

The soldier sized up the priest. “You’re traveling rather light for a man on a relief mission.”

“My bags are with the group,” he answered, once again allowing the words to spill out on their own. “My itinerary, my contacts. All I’ve got is my Vatican passport.”

“I see.” A voice over a radio suddenly broke through, the soldier quick to respond. As he talked, he moved out of earshot, his eyes, though, never straying from Pearse. After several minutes, he returned.

“May I ask what you have in the pack, Father?”

Pearse shrugged. “A change of clothing. A few books.”

The soldier reached out his hand. “May I? Security. I’m sure you understand.”

Pearse nodded and handed the man the pack. He watched as the soldier tossed through it. He nearly flinched when the man pulled out the Ribadeneyra. He began to flip through its pages.

“It’s … Orthodox prayers,” Pearse said. “I thought, perhaps, being in this region-”

“Certainly, Father. I just have to check for anything concealed.”

Pearse nodded again. The soldier moved on to his Bible. Again, a quick flip through. He then placed it inside, rezipped the pack, and handed it back to Pearse.

“Terribly sorry about that, Father, but we’ve had a bit of a problem with … people trying to get inside.”

“I can understand that.”

“Yes.” The soldier smiled. “The ICMC. Nice chaps.” Again, he waited, then said,“Well, we can’t settle it out here. Hop in. We’ll see if we can’t find someone inside to straighten this out.”

Grazie, Madonna.

Fifteen minutes later, Pearse sat inside a Red Cross tent, awaiting the attention of a harried young woman behind a makeshift desk. It became readily apparent that a lost priest didn’t rate as a priority amid the constant flurry of activity. Pearse was more than happy to be viewed as an inconvenience, something to be shuffled along without too many questions.

As he waited, his gaze settled on a mother and her two sons sitting on the ground, boys of about ten and twelve, the younger held close to her chest, the other long and lanky, his chin resting on two propped fists, a worn leather satchel in his lap. The mother had somehow retained her impressive bulk, her boys not so fortunate, the older with a face well beyond his years. He was at that age when the nose grew too full, the ears too wide, a man’s features on a boy’s face. Awkward for most, it seemed sadly fitting here. The boy caught sight of Pearse, stared for a moment at his collar, then at his boots. He then looked directly at him.

“Koje ste religije?” asked the boy.

Pearse was surprised to hear Serbo-Croatian. “I’m a Catholic,” he answered in kind.

The boy nodded, then pointed to the boots. “Those are good for walking.”

Pearse looked at his boots, then at the boy. “Yes. You don’t come from Kosovo, do you?”

“Yeah, Kosovo. Medveda. In the north.”

“Your Serbo-Croatian is very good.”

A hint of a smile. “It’s a good language to speak now.”

Pearse recalled the few encounters he’d had with Albanians eight years ago. All of them had spoken a second language. Often Serbo-Croatian. Sometimes German. Never English. “Are you a Catholic?” he asked.

“No. Muslim.”

“Then why did you want to know my religion?”

The boy straightened up. “When the Protestant priests came to our village to tell us about Jesus, they had lots of money, drove nice cars. The Catholic ones were poor, told us that that was the way they were supposed to be.” Again he looked at the boots.

Pearse understood. He glanced at the boy’s feet, roughly the same size as his own, his shoes with little life left in them. Pearse reached down, untied his laces, and tossed the boots across. “How about a trade?”

Again, the hint of a smile.

The shoes were a remarkably good fit, the patches of ventilation something he would get used to. “Do you know how long you’re going to be here?” Pearse asked.

The boy shrugged as he rubbed at a scratch along the toe of his new boots. “We can’t go back to Medveda-at least that’s what they say. Wherever they send us, they want the whole family together. My grandmother and sisters were sent somewhere in Turkey. They’re not sure if they’ve come through here or not. And I don’t know where my father and older brother are.” He looked up. “Are you here to save people?”

The question, laced with as much cynicism as a twelve-year-old could muster, stunned Pearse. He stared at the boy.

For the first time since leaving Rome, he had no choice but to confront his own hypocrisy, a priest using his clericals as a means of deception. The boy, of course, had meant something entirely different. His was a disdain for the words meant to soothe a people trapped in a reality with no place for such gestures. Either way, the remark had the desired effect, Pearse forced to reevaluate his own intentions. People were dying here; worlds were being torn apart. Here. Where a priest should be. Yet the Manichaeans were forcing him to ignore that, disregard the one aspect of his calling he’d never questioned.

“I don’t know,” he finally answered.

From his expression, the boy hadn’t expected that response from a priest. It took him a moment to answer. “Thanks for the boots, Father,” he said, then nodded toward the desk. Pearse turned, to see the woman calling him over.

He turned back to thank the boy, but the boots had already reclaimed his attention. More buffing. Something far more useful than a priest.

Pearse stood and made his way across.

At the desk, he realized the woman was still in the midst of countless other tasks. She pointed for him to take a seat. Another few minutes, and she finally turned to him. “You’ve been very kind to wait so patiently, Father.” Her English was tinged with a French accent, her tone genuinely apologetic. “Somehow, we’ve misplaced you, is that it?”

“Actually, I’ve misplaced myself,” he said. “I’m supposed to be with the ICMC.”

“Ah.” She turned to a pile of papers on the desk, then brought up a new screen on her laptop. As she sorted through it all, Pearse looked back at the boy. He had nestled himself into his mother’s side, eyes shut. Pearse watched, hoping to see even a hint of innocence slip across the face. None.

“You’ve missed them by three days,” she said as Pearse turned back. She held a small folder in her hand, several stapled sheets within, her eyes fixed on the screen. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you where they might be with any accuracy right now.” She turned to him. “Is there someone we should contact, Father?”

“Then where would I be the most useful?”

“Excuse me?”

“Kosovo, Albania? Where would I be able to help?”

Her expression told him she wasn’t prepared to deal with an overly eager priest. “Help? Father … it’s not really a question of where-”

“I’m sure one more pair of experienced hands, not to mention a priest’s presence, would be welcome somewhere,” he said, his tone firm, though not aggressive. “I was in Bosnia during the war. I know the region, the language, the people. There must be someplace where they could use me.”

The woman continued to look at him. Two of her coworkers suddenly descended, each one spewing rapid-fire French, the woman drawn into the exchange, her frustration more and more apparent as the debate went on. When they finally moved off, she turned back to him, her focus elsewhere. “You want to go someplace you can help,” she said offhandedly. “Right.” She placed her hands on the desk. “Look, Father, it’s not our usual policy-”

“I don’t imagine too much that’s ‘usual policy’ is going on these days. I don’t think I’m a threat to anyone.”

“Of course not, Father. That’s not the point.”

“And I was supposed to be with the ICMC.” He was actually beginning to believe it himself. “Doesn’t that mean anything?”

“It’s just that we can’t take responsibility-”

“I’m not asking you to. I’ll be responsible for myself. I’m just asking where you think I could do the most good.” He could see she was beginning to teeter. “Or,” he added, “I could continue to pester you for the next few days or weeks or months, until you give in and let a priest do his job.”

“I see.” A resigned smile inched across her lips. “Months.”

“Months.”

Her eyes narrowed; she began to sift through a pile of folders on her desk. “It’s only because I’m a Catholic, Father.” A moment later, she held up a single sheet in her hands. “There’s a transport of medical equipment going out to Kukes in an hour. They’re short one person.” He couldn’t be sure if her willingness to accommodate him had as much to do with his pleas as it did with the harangue from her fellow workers; he didn’t really care. Again, she looked up at him. “You’re sure you’re comfortable with this, Father? Kukes is-”

“Far tamer than Omarska ever was.” The mention of the former Serbian camp stopped her short, a newfound respect in her eyes. “I was there in ’92. I think I’ll be able to handle Kukes.”

She pulled out another file, asked him to sign at several places, then handed him a laminated card. “The truck will be at the west gate in an hour.” Before he could thank her, her two friends were back, more of the bluster. Pearse turned to go, the woman’s voice quick to stop him.

“Father,” she said, now standing, leaning into him as she spoke. “I was wondering … I … haven’t taken confession since I got here….”

Pearse smiled, aware of how long it had been since he had given it. “Of course. I’ll be outside.”

He would do what he could in Kukes. Spend a day. Token assistance. But the recollection of Angeli’s voice told him it would be all he could afford.

Two hours later, he sat across from a Red Cross official in the back of a truck, a young Indian doctor at his side. No one bothered to talk. The ruts in the road were seeing to that.

Somehow, they even managed to dampen the sound of the exploding mine.

“When?”

Blaney stared at the paintings on the wall across from his desk. He hardly noticed them, his focus so completely trained on the voice on the other end of the phone line.

“Yesterday. Around noon.”

“And I’m only finding this out now?”

“They thought they’d be able to pick him up again before-”

“Before I found out that they’d lost him?”

Silence on the other end.

“We believe he made his way to Athos and-”

“Of course he made his way to Athos,” said Blaney. “Even the cardinal knows that. The calls have been coming in since five this morning. And you’re sure he wasn’t hurt at the station in Kalambaka?”

“Yes…. I was told he got up at once. No injuries. But, as I said-”

“I know. No one was close enough to him at that point to be sure.” Blaney took a deep breath. He couldn’t let anger get in his way. “All right. We’ll assume he’s heading west. My guess is he’ll try for Bosnia, maybe Albania. He obviously knows the region. And he knows he can get lost in there. We just have to hope he makes a mistake.”

“Yes, Father.”

“And I want you to get in touch with me the moment you make contact. No one else, this time. And no delays. Are we clear on this?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Good.” Blaney waited. “Then go in peace, my son.” He hung up the phone and turned to the woman standing by the door. “You say he sounded well, Gianetta?”

“Yes, Father.”

“But you didn’t see him?”

“No, not really, Father. Only from the window as he walked off.”

“And he didn’t say why he wanted to see me? He didn’t mention a … something he wanted to show me?”

“No, Father.”

“All right,” he said. “Thank you, Gianetta. You may go.”

She nodded, then left the room, closing the door behind her.

Again, Blaney stared at the pictures. No injuries. At least there was some good news in that.

Pearse had been lucky, a few bruised ribs, some lacerations, a twisted shoulder. The worst of it was the concussion. At least four or five days before the doctors at Kukes would let him go.

The Red Cross man and the young Indian had also escaped relatively unscathed. The driver, however, hadn’t fared so well. He lay next to Pearse, a battery of tubes hooked up to his arms, little sign of life save for the slight rising and falling of his chest. The heat inside the tent wasn’t helping.

It had been a day and half since the accident, Pearse only now able to focus his thoughts and prayers on the man for more than a few minutes at a time. Still, it was an improvement. It was also enough to get him out of his own cot; he stood. With his head pounding, he walked to the flap of the tent and stepped outside.

What he saw made Blace look like a resort. Pearse could almost taste the stench with each intake of air, thousands upon thousands of bodies more animal than human everywhere he looked. During the war in Bosnia, he’d visited two or three such camps, nothing to compare with the sprawl he now encountered. Hundreds of small tents dotted the mud-filled pastures, patches of gravel here and there where ICRC engineers had tried to stem the drainage problems. The toilets stood in a row along a steep slope, gravity their best hope against blockage. Everywhere, webs of rope line stretched from tent to tent, clothes hanging from them, an open-air tenement at eye level. Pearse knew the drill. Nothing to wash with, save the rainwater.

The town itself-bombed beyond recognition even a year after the official cease-fire-blended into the morass of canvas landscaping, the few remaining buildings given over to medical facilities. Even so, he was told that the spillover into the camp was beginning to take its toll, especially with the hot weather. Humidity meant flies; flies meant the threat of epidemic. A section of the camp had been isolated for several weeks, though never quarantined, family members insisting they be kept together. There was little any of the relief organizations could do to dissuade them.

An hour walking. It was all he could handle his first time out.

As much as knew he needed to get moving-Angeli’s voice never far from him-he also knew the doctors were right. He needed to take the time to recover. What they probably didn’t realize, however, was how much more they had given him.

For three more days, as his head cleared, he did what he could, “Baba Pearsic” allowed again to act the priest. Women, children, old men-the latter in the familiar flat hats, wool jackets, and countless layers of clothing-all seemed strangely comforted by him, those who knew they wouldn’t survive the camp eager to talk with him. Not about God or faith, but simply to talk. There were plenty of village hohxas wandering about, holy men to handle the more elaborate Muslim rites.

At night, he managed what little sleep he could, trying to ignore the occasional screams within the camp, depravity, like a virus, having spread even to the hunted. It only sharpened his memories. No one ever talked of rape, he remembered. Not because it was a sin, or because it might be too painful for the women involved, but because husbands and fathers thought of its victims as abominations, forever unclean, no matter what the circumstances or who the perpetrator. Proof that barbarism played no favorites.

It wasn’t all that difficult for the “Hodoporia” to slip to the back of his mind.

On the fifth morning, he was in the medical tent, the driver still stretched out on a bare mattress. Pearse had been with him through the latest surgery and half the night. When the most recent dose of morphine began to kick in, Pearse stood and started for the next mattress.

A voice from behind broke in: “I told you you could give absolution.”

The words in English stopped Pearse in his tracks. Not sure if he had heard correctly, he turned. The face he saw nearly knocked him to the floor.

“Salko?” Mendravic was already sidestepping his way through the mattresses, the same immense figure he had known a lifetime ago, his embrace as suffocating as the last one they had shared.

“It’s good to see you, too, Ian,” Mendravic whispered in his ear. He then stepped back, the familiar grin etched across his face. “Father, I mean.”

It took Pearse several seconds to recover. “Salko. What are you-”

“The priest’s outfit suits you.”

Still dazed, he asked again, “What are you doing here?”

“That’s all you have to say?” He laughed.

“No, I’m …” Pearse could only shake his head. Without warning, he pulled Mendravic in and embraced him again. “It’s so good to see you.”

“You, too. You, too.”

When Pearse finally let go, he was no less confused. “I still don’t understand-”

“Fighting the Serbs. I’ve been smuggling people in from Pri?stina for the last few months. Mainly through Montenegro.”

“So why here?” It seemed to be all he was capable of saying.

“Because two days ago, I heard about a ‘Baba Pearsic’ in Kukes-an American who’d been in Bosnia. Slitna, to be exact. Most of the Catholic priests are either in the north or in Macedonia. I thought I’d come and see for myself. And here you are. So, how’s the head?”

“That’s unbelievable.”

“You’ve stayed in one place for a few days. Not so unbelievable. Again, how’s the head?”

“About ninety percent.”

“So, better than it was before.” He laughed.

Pearse was about to answer, when movement from one of the beds broke through.

“You do what you need to do here,” Mendravic said. “I’ll be outside.”

Twenty minutes later, Pearse joined him. They began to walk.

“You make a good priest.”

“You make a good rebel.”

Again, Mendravic laughed. “Don’t flatter me. I’m not with the KLA, but I understand what they’re doing. It was the same with us. Except here, Dayton only made Milos?evic? stronger. Until your friends in the West understand that, there’s really no choice but to fight these people.”

“So you never went back to Zagreb?”

“Of course I went back. It never felt right. It wasn’t mine anymore.”

“And Slitna? You knew the people there.”

Mendravic took hold of his arm and stopped. “Slitna?” Pearse began to list names; again, Mendravic cut him off. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“Petra didn’t tell you?” Before Pearse could respond, Mendravic continued. “The entire village was destroyed. Wiped out. The day after you left. You were very lucky.”

“‘The entire …’” The news hit Pearse as if it had happened yesterday. “Why?”

The loss seemed no less immediate for Mendravic. He shook his head. “They never really needed reasons.”

“But you and Petra-”

“We were also very lucky. Off getting something-I don’t remember what. Whatever we were so desperate to find in those days. When we came back, it was as if the place had never existed. Except for the rubble. And the bodies.”

“I … didn’t know.”

“Yes. Well … I was sure Petra would have told you-” He stopped abruptly, only now aware of the look in Pearse’s eyes. “When was the last time you spoke with her?”

“Petra? A month, maybe two after I left. Why? Is she all right?”

“Oh, she’s fine. She’s outside of Sarajevo now. Teaching again.” He started to walk. “She has a son.”

Pearse smiled to himself. “So she got married. Good for her.”

“No. She never married.”

Pearse’s reaction was immediate. “My God. Was she-”

Again, Mendravic cut him off. “No. Nothing like that. You didn’t have to worry about that with Petra.”

Pearse nodded.

“The boy turned seven just this May,” Mendravic added, his gaze now straight ahead.

“Really?”

“Really.”

It took another moment for Pearse to understand what Mendravic was saying. Seven years.

Pearse stopped. A son.

The Croat continued on, Pearse unable to follow.