The Lucifer Gospel

26

While they’d waited for Pyx to create their new identities, Simpson had told them about his relationship with the vanished monk and with the man who’d been after him for years, Abramo Vergadora. According to Simpson, Hilts was correct; not only was Vergadora now a sayan for Israeli Intelligence-the Mossad-he had once been an active member, back before it, or Israel itself, had even existed. In the late thirties Simpson had met the Italian Jew at Cambridge, where Vergadora was reading anthropology and archaeology under Louis Clarke and T. C. Lethbridge, who was curator of Anglo-Saxon Antiquities at the Cambridge Archaeological Museum. With the war Vergadora chose to join British Intelligence in Switzerland rather than return to Italy and face persecutions under Mussolini. He eventually joined the so-called Jewish Brigade, which infiltrated German-speaking Jews into Germany toward the end of the war as resistance fighters and spies. Through his work he discovered DeVaux’s history with his own archenemy Pedrazzi, and also learned that after Pedrazzi’s disappearance in the Libyan Desert, DeVaux had briefly reappeared in Venosa to dig in the old catacombs, and then fled again, this time to America. Somewhere along the line, perhaps with the help of old friends at the Vatican, he managed to change his name to Peter Devereaux and resurfaced as an assistant curator at the Wilcox Classical Museum at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.

“Pretty obscure,” Hilts had commented.

“Obscure perhaps, but fitting,” replied Simpson, nibbling on a small piece of baguette slathered with fresh churned butter and goose liver pate. “The Wilcox is entirely given over to Greek and Roman antiquities, including one of the world’s best collections of Roman coins and medallions. Just like the one you found on Pedrazzi.”

DeVaux-Devereaux had kept a low profile at the university for years, but according to Vergadora he had continued his researches and also his connections with the school in Jerusalem. According to Vergadora, and confirmed by Simpson, the school was more than simply an institute for biblical archaeology; it was also a Vatican listening post in a chronically troubled part of the world and always had been.

According to information gathered covertly by his friends in the Mossad, Vergadora found out where DeVaux had been hiding and what his new identity was. Following this information, at least according to Simpson’s story, Vergadora also found out that the onetime Vatican archaeologist had made a discovery of profound religious and historical significance: the so-called Lucifer Gospels, written by Christ himself-after the Crucifix-ion. The gospels, sometimes also known as Christ’s Confession, told the story of how Christ’s place was taken by his brother James in the Garden of Gethsemane and then “betrayed” by Judas to the Roman soldiers who came to arrest him, the soldiers having no idea of what Christ looked like. Christ, with the help of several recently converted Romans, was spirited away into the wilds of the Libyan Desert, where he lived a long life as a hermetic monk. His own mythology eventually became confused with that of the Lost Legions, Zerzura, and his so-called Aryan protectors, the blue-eyed fair-haired Knights of Saint Sebastian. All of this, of course, completely denied the entire foundation of the Catholic Church and of Christianity as a whole; a disaster of monumental proportions when even the most basic tenets of the Church were under attack. Even more bizarrely, it seemed that DeVaux-Devereaux had made this discovery in the United States. By his estimation the gospels had been transported by early Templar explorers deep into the central United States, perhaps along with the greatest treasure of all: the bones of Jesus Christ himself. Myth or reality, either way it was a story with powerful implications for everyone.

DeVaux-Devereaux’s discovery eventually led to an agreement to meet, but on neutral ground. The onetime Vatican historian knew that his information, and his proof, were inherently both incredibly valuable and equally dangerous. The meeting was to take place in Nassau in the Bahamas, easy enough for both parties to reach, on board the French passenger liner the Ile de France, now renamed the Acosta Star. The man he was to meet with was a scholar named Bishop Augustus Principe from the Pontifical Institute of Biblical Studies in Rome. Unfortunately, soon after leaving the Bahamas, with DeVaux-Devereaux on board, the ship caught fire and sank. In the process the ex-priest and Bishop Principe were killed and the secret of the Lucifer Gospel lost. First Vergadora and then Simpson had managed to check the bare facts of the story and found them to be true: there had been a spate of three-way coded correspondence between the school in Jerusalem, the Vatican secretariat, and the man known as Peter Devereaux in Lawrence, Kansas, and the Acosta Star had in fact sunk somewhere in the Caribbean on Thursday, September 8, 1960, at 11:22 p.m. with a man named Peter Devereaux listed on the passenger manifest.

And that was that. The story that had begun in the hot sands of the Libyan Desert had its final chapter in the blue-green waters of the Caribbean, a journey of two thousand years and twice that many miles. A journey, like many involving the word and deeds of many gods, that had been drenched in the blood of the innocent and guilty alike.

The rest of the trip from Lyon to Paris was completely uneventful. The train pulled in to the Gare de Lyon exactly on time and a well-mannered Parisian taxi driver took them across the city to the Petit Pont, crossed Ile de la Cite to the Left Bank and deposited them in front of the five-story Hotel Normandie on the rue de la Huchette, a narrow, forgotten backwater off the Place St. Michel that looked as though it hadn’t changed much since Napoleon’s time, or at the very least since German soldiers wandered down its one long block looking for local color on furlough in the City of Light. There were butchers, bakers, a tobacconist, two other hotels of the same pension class as the Normandie, a place that sold orthopedic supplies, and an assortment of other small businesses of the kind found in any other neighborhood. The Cafй St. Michel on the corner fed them a decent meal and a bottle of vin ordinaire, and then they went to their separate beds, exhausted. The following morning, after they consulted first a telephone directory and then a map, they discovered that the Canadian embassy on avenue Montaigne was within reasonable walking distance. They set out in the bright morning sunlight, crossing the Seine at le pont des Invalides, then heading up toward the Champs-Elysйes and the upper end of the diplomatic district off the avenue Foch. The embassy turned out to be a discreet assembly of three Napoleon III buildings on a pleasant, tree-lined street and without a red-coated Mountie in sight. With some trepidation Finn and Hilts ventured inside. The interior had obviously seen some anti-Osama renovations, but in the end the whole process was a completely predictable affair of plastic chairs, number taking, and polite lines in bank lobby zigzags. An hour after entering the embassy they exited, the possessors of two blue-and-gold Canadian passports.

“Well, that was easy,” said Hilts, relieved. They turned down avenue Montaigne, heading back to the hotel.

The takedown was professional, perfectly executed, and went without a hitch. There was a man in front, dressed casually in jeans and a dark blue sweatshirt, with a rottweiler on a leash, and two men behind, armed. A green Mercedes pulled up on the left, the rear door swinging open. One of the two men behind stepped forward, nudging something hard into the small of Finn’s back, urging her into the car, the second man doing the same to Hilts, while the man with the rottweiler stood by, blocking the possibility of an intrusion from people on the sidewalk, the dog growling low in the back of its throat. One of the men behind climbed in after Finn and Hilts, the second slammed the door, and the car began to move. It had all taken less than twenty seconds. Finn managed to look out through the rear window. The man with the dog was moving off as though nothing at all had happened, and the second man went off in the opposite direction.

Finn and Hilts were crushed together in the rear seat, a man on either side of them. A third man sat in the front seat beside the heavyset driver. The man beside the driver turned. His hair was dark and very short. He had a full beard and was wearing tinted glasses, and had a small leather folder in his hand with an ID card showing the famous sword-through-the-world-with-the-scales-of-justice logo of Interpol on it. He showed it first to Hilts and then to Finn without a word, glared at them, then snapped the folder shut and turned in his seat, facing forward.

Finn folded her hands in her lap, heart pounding. Beside her Hilts folded his arms across his chest and glared at the space between the driver and his companion. Finn had only been in Paris once before, and then only for a few days. The scenery blowing past meant nothing; broad avenues, statues, trees, long faзades of buildings that all seemed to date from roughly the same Empire period of architecture. A sense of grandeur and grime, of packed, wide sidewalks and chaotic traffic. The Mercedes stopped and started, the driver swearing and blowing his horn along with the rest of them. But the driver wasn’t swearing in French; it was some dialect of Arabic full of spitting gutturals. A barked word from the man beside the driver shut him up.

“Said bousak, Hmar!”

They sped through a traffic circle and Finn saw that they were going up a wide boulevard, an outdoor market set up with dozens of stalls and vendors laid out on the broad, tree-lined sidewalk to their right. They swerved to avoid a car on their left and Hilts slammed against the man beside him. The man gasped and flinched, his face twisting in agony as he lurched against the door. Hilts pushed harder and the door swung open, the photographer’s thrusting shoulder heaving the screaming man hurtling out of the car and into traffic. From behind them came a horrible thumping sound and the screeching of brakes, but almost before anyone could react Hilts’s right hand moved in a blur and four inches of wavy-bladed steel was suddenly jutting from the base of the driver’s neck. He shrieked, both hands flying up from the wheel to flail at the black-handled instrument sticking out of his neck. The car swerved, jolted wildly, and then hit something hard. The car came to a rocking halt. Grabbing Finn’s hand, Hilts threw himself out of the car and into a pile of cabbage.

“Come on!” he yelled. They climbed to their feet and staggered away from the wreckage of the car. The man beside the driver was struggling with his air bag. The driver had pulled the blade out of his neck and was desperately trying to stem the squirting fountain of blood with his bare hand.

Together Finn and Hilts ran through the market, slamming into shoppers and sending string bags full of groceries flying in all directions. Tradesmen swore as they raced on, and they felt hands reaching out to grab at them. Finn could hear a police whistle and in the distance a siren.

Suddenly the flat, cracking sound of an automatic pistol tore through the air. The man from the car was firing at them. The people around them in the market began to panic, dropping to the ground or scurrying away, yelling and screaming. There was a hot breeze half an inch from Finn’s cheek, and then came the sound of the gun again.

“The Metro!” Hilts yelled, dragging her to one side. They were at the end of the line of market stalls. The last one was butted up against the rail of the opening that led down into the subway. Hilts vaulted over the railing and Finn followed him, landing on her feet, almost toppling down the stairs, terrifying a woman and her poodle as they came out of the tunnel. Limping after the long drop, they hobbled down the white-tiled tunnel, fumbled with change to buy a carnet of tickets at a machine, and stumbled through the big pneumatic doors just as a train rattled into the station. They waited until the train came to a stop, then pushed their way on as soon as the doors hissed open. They sat down, chests heaving, and Finn saw their pursuer squeezing himself illegally through the rubber bumpers of the pneumatic doors at the platform entrance. The horn sounded and the man was forced to step onto a car six or seven down from the one they were sitting in.

“He got on,” she whispered to Hilts.

“I saw,” he answered.

“What do we do?”

“I’m thinking.”

“Think faster.”

The train banged through the station then headed into the intersecting tunnels that cut beneath the city. The wheels screeched as they rounded each turn, the cars rocking and heaving. They were on the first and oldest of the subway lines in Paris, Number One, and it felt like it.

“He’ll move ahead each time we stop, maybe a couple of cars each time. That gives us three stops before he’s on top of us.”

“Where’s that?”

“Where did we get on?”

“Some place called St.-Mandй de something or other.”

“Where does that leave us?”

Finn checked the map over the door.

“Reuilly-Diderot.”

“Is it a main stop, a what do you call it, a correspondence stop?”

“No.”

“What’s the next one of those?”

“Nation,” she answered. “Two stops.”

“Be ready to get off there. We have to lose him.”

“Where did that knife come from?”

“Your friend Simpson gave it to me in the car when you were asleep. Nasty little thing, a front-loading switchblade, state of the art. Made in Italy. He said he had two.”

“Who were they?”

“Not Interpol, that’s for sure. The guy was speaking Arabic and the other guy swore at him.”

“I heard.”

They came into the next station-Porte de Vincennes. A few people trickled on and off. The horn sounded and the train moved off again.

“Head for the doors,” said Hilts. They got to their feet and stood in front of the right-hand doors.

“L’autre cote,” instructed an old man in a raincoat and a dark blue beret. He was smoking a hand-rolled cigarette directly under a sign stenciled on the window that read DEFENSE DE FUMEUR.

“What?” said Hilts.

“Other side,” Finn translated. “I know that much French. I think he means the platform is on the other side.” She smiled at the old man. “Merci,” she said.

“Parle a mon cul, ma tete est malade,” the old man answered, making a sour face.

“What did he say?” asked Hilts.

“Nothing very nice, I don’t think,” Finn answered. The train thundered into the station. It was much more modern than the previous ones and had half a dozen different tunnel exits. They chose the closest, cutting through the throng of arrivals and departures.

“Where are we going?”

Finn checked the line. “Etoile.”

“What’s that?”

“The Arc de Triomphe.”

“Where we started.”

“Approximately.”

Hilts looked back over Finn’s shoulder, searching the crowd spilling out onto the platform.

“See him?”

“Not yet.”

The horn sounded as a train came into the station. Behind them the pneumatic doors began to close. The train screeched to a halt and the doors of the cars slid open. Hundreds of people swarmed past them.

“There!” Finn spotted the man with the beard and the tinted glasses pushing his way onto the platform. Someone yelled at him, cursing, but he ignored it. Hilts grabbed Finn by the elbow and thrust her forward into the nearest car. He followed, watching over his shoulder. The doors slid closed, leaving the bearded man on the platform. As the train pulled out, leaving him behind, Hilts saw him lift a cell phone to his ear.

“He’s making a call. Bringing up reinforcements. Shit!”

“We can’t stay on the train for very long,” said Finn. “He could have people waiting for us ahead.” She looked up at the map above the doors. If the man with the beard was quick enough and smart enough he’d realize that he could even get ahead of them by going one more stop on the Number One line-Bastille-then double back on them using the secondary Number Five line that ran between Bastille and the southern stations. The Paris Metro was incredibly complex, and after more than a hundred years of development there wasn’t a building in the city that wasn’t within five hundred yards of a subway stop.

At the very least there would be someone waiting for them at Montparnasse-Beinvenue, the next big corresponding stop, with half a dozen lines crossing each other. They pulled into the station at Place d’Italie and then moved out again. At least he hadn’t been quick enough to get someone in place there. According to the map they had only two chances before the next big stop. It was going to be either Denfert-Rochereau or Raspail. She didn’t know anything about either place, but both were close to Montparnasse, once the center of bohemian life in Paris, but now not much more than a slightly down-at-the-heels tourist area full of cafйs advertising themselves as Lenin’s Favorite Restaurant or Hemingway’s Bar.

“Next stop then,” Hilts said. Once again they moved toward the doors. The train slowed then came to a squealing halt. They got out of the car and headed down the crowded platform. As the train pulled out Finn glanced across to the opposite side of the tracks and saw the startled look of a man on the other side-the same man who had pushed Finn and Hilts into the car outside the Canadian embassy. He stared for a moment, open-mouthed, then sprinted for the exit.

“They’re on to us!”

Finn and Hilts ran to the nearest exit, then climbed up the long flight of stairs, ignoring the parallel escalators. They reached the upper lobby and crossed it, rushing out of the big station. They pushed through one of the three arched entrance doors, breathing hard. Without stopping they ran out into the street, dodging traffic, and made it to the circular plaza in the center, mounted with a huge bronze statue of yet another man on a horse. Once upon a time Paris must have been a wonderful place to own a foundry, Finn thought.

“Which way?” she said.

“Doesn’t matter. We have to lose him. Run!”

He took her hand and pelted into the street. A car screeched to a halt next to a taxi stand. A Mercedes, this one blue. The man with the rottweiler jumped out, minus the dog. Behind them the man on the platform was dodging through traffic, crossing the street toward them. They swerved, reaching the sidewalk, and ran headlong up a short flight of steps and through a pair of tall black doors, open against the summer heat.

A man in a uniform sat on a stool beside a turnstile set up in the middle of a large, dark, marble-floored room. He looked bored. A sign on the turnstile read: E10. Ten euros. Hilts jammed his hand into his pocket, pulled out a few crumpled notes and shoved them into the attendant’s hand. They rushed through the turnstile, and Finn looked back over her shoulder to see if the men were following. So far there was no sign of them. She turned again. In front of them was nothing but the circular entrance to a staircase in the floor.

“What is this place?” Hilts asked, staring at the dark spiral of stairs at his feet. “Is this some kind of sewer tour?”

Finn knew. She’d read about it in a guidebook the last time she was in Paris. Not the sewers.

This was the entrance to the Paris Catacombs, home to the dead of centuries, millions of them, hidden deep beneath the streets of the old city.