The Lost Testament

113

Antonio Morini sat in his office at the Vatican and read again the Italian translation of a short report he had just been sent. It had been released by the British Museum in London and had been headlined ‘Early Second Century Forgery Discovered’. He’d read the text three times in Italian and had found the original English version on the Internet and had read that twice as well, and he still wasn’t sure what to make of it.

Could it be possible that the parchment that had caused so much consternation in the corridors of the Vatican when it had been stolen in 1965 had actually been a forgery all the time? Techniques for examining ancient documents had improved out of all recognition over the previous half-century. It was, he supposed, at least possible that what had been believed by the Vatican’s scholars to be a contemporary description of a trial held two thousand years ago could actually be shown using modern methods to be nothing of the sort. That was one possibility, and there was no real reason to doubt it. The second option was that the parchment was precisely what the Vatican had believed it to be all along, but for some reason the people who had it in their possession had decided to publicly renounce the truth and go along with the idea of it being a second-century fake.

And in fact, he suddenly realized, it really didn’t matter which version of the truth was actually the truth. The Vatican and Christianity were off the hook, so to speak. If anyone in the future examined the parchment again and came to the conclusion that it was the genuine article, then they would have an uphill struggle to prove their case against the authoritative analysis that would be provided by the British Museum when the full report on the relic was released in a month or two.

Morini leaned back in his chair and breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, he could lock away the protocols in the safe and return to his normal duties. Hopefully he could forget the terrible doubts that had been plaguing him over the last few days. Shove them to the back of his mind and pretend they had never existed.

The Englishman hadn’t answered his phone for the last two days, and Morini hadn’t known quite what to make of that. He’d try one last time, to discuss the report that had just been released. He would need to call him off the hunt, because any other deaths now could open up the entire thing all over again.

He changed into his usual civilian clothes and left the Vatican City. He would, he thought, treat himself to an ice cream today, now that the operation had finally been terminated. It would make a pleasant change to wander the streets of Rome in a carefree manner, as opposed to the nervous tension which had been his constant companion for the previous week or so.

He headed towards his normal café, but as he turned almost the last corner, and walked down the tiny alleyway adjacent to the café, he was suddenly aware of a man approaching him quickly from behind, and he turned to see who it was.

The moment he did so, the stranger, a heavily built man with a dark complexion and black hair, slammed into him and knocked him to the ground, driving the breath from his body.

‘I warned you,’ the stranger growled. ‘If you didn’t give me Bronson, I told you I’d come after you.’

A flash of mortal terror coursed through Morini’s body as he realized who the man was.

‘You don’t understand,’ Morini said, his voice laced with terror, ‘I need to—’

‘It’s too late for that now, monsignor, far too late.’

The Spaniard leaned down — it almost looked as though he was helping the old man up — and with a single powerful blow drove the knife that he had concealed under his jacket deep into the Italian’s body, thrusting up under the ribcage and seeking out the vital organs of the upper torso. The tip of the blade ruptured Morini’s heart, and almost immediately the Italian moved no more.

‘Debt paid in full,’ Tobí murmured, then stood up, straightened his jacket and walked away without a backward glance.