The Lost Testament

10

Father Antonio Morini stared at the sheets of paper on the desk in front of him and clasped his hands together almost as if he was in prayer. The conclusion seemed utterly inescapable. The nightmare that he’d hoped he would never experience while he was in the Holy See had materialized. Somehow, the relic that he had hoped — had, in fact, come to believe — had been either destroyed or lost for ever, had apparently reappeared, and in Cairo, of all places. He stood up abruptly from his desk and walked across to a small wall safe located in one corner of his office. Unusually, the safe had both a numeric keypad and a physical keyhole. Morini loosened the neck of his habit and pulled out a long chain at the end of which was a slim silver key. He inserted the key in the lock and turned it once clockwise, then entered a six-digit code which he personally altered at the end of every week, and turned the key clockwise a second time. Then he removed the key, grasped the handle on the left side of the door, rotated that a quarter of a turn and pulled open the door.

Inside the safe, hidden beneath a pile of folders, was a slim and sealed red file, devoid of any name or other identifying features apart from the single Latin inscription A cruce salus, which translated as ‘From the cross comes salvation’. Before he had listened to his dying predecessor, Morini would have had no difficulty asserting that that statement was the absolute truth. But with his newfound knowledge, it seemed to him more like a cruel joke.

He took out the file and carried it back to his desk where he cut through the tapes around the heavy seal, the impressed image on the wax causing him to cross himself as he recognized it.

The Annulus Piscatoris, the Ring of the Fisherman, was an important part of the regalia of every pope, a new version of the ring being cast for each incumbent, and was kissed as a mark of respect by visiting dignitaries. In the past it had also been used as a signet to authenticate documents signed by the occupant of the Throne of St Peter, but that practice had stopped in 1842. Its use was clearly a measure of the importance of the documents contained within the file.

Morini extracted the contents, a mere half a dozen sheets of paper, five of them providing information and a series of instructions, and the other one a very short list, bearing only three names, together with brief information about those individuals and their international telephone numbers. He placed the last sheet to one side and then began to read the secret protocols that had been entrusted to him alone.

The document began by stating that the protocols had been formulated by the reigning pope just under half a century earlier, and had been approved by every pontiff since then, including the present occupant of the Throne of St Peter. Even so, Morini was scarcely able to believe what he was reading. Several times, in his office in the Secret Archives, he stood up and walked around his desk as he struggled to reconcile the implications of the orders he was reading with what his conscience was telling him.

But in the end, and despite his personal misgivings, he knew absolutely where his duty had to lie.