All at once she realized that tears were rolling down her cheeks. She wasn’t sobbing, or even crying, really. They were just tears, welling up out of nowhere. And just as suddenly as they had started, they dried up, and she realized that she was shivering, but not with cold. It was something more primal, rising up from deep inside her. Feeling a need to shake it off, she rose to her feet and continued her walk, climbing across the rocks and finding a small pathway that snaked its way along the shore.
She followed it, past three more rocky inlets, and reached another, more remote, bay at the southern tip of the island. There didn’t seem to be any roads leading down to it. A crescent of virgin sand arced away from her, ending with another headland that rose into a towering, jagged overhang.
She looked down the beach in the diffused twilight, and an odd shape attracted her attention. It lay on the far end of the bay at the edge of the rocks. She squinted, willing her eyes to pull it into focus, and she was aware that her breathing was quickening, her mouth suddenly dry. Her heartbeat raced ahead.
It can’t be, she thought. It isn’t possible.
And then she was running along the sand until, gasping for breath, she came to within a few feet of it and stopped, her mind reeling at the possibility.
It was the falcon figurehead, all tangled up in the harness of its rig, the orange floaters wrapped, half-deflated, around it.
It looked intact.
Chapter 82
Tentatively, Tess reached out and touched it. She ran her hands over it, her eyes ratcheted (make something increase or decrease in segmented steps) wide, her imagination propelling her back through time to the days of the Knights Templar, to Aimard and his men and their final, fateful voyage on the Falcon Temple.
A tangle of images flooded her mind as she tried to remember Aimard’s words. What had he said exactly? The chest was placed into a cavity that had been carved out of the back of the falcon’s head. The remaining void had been filled with resin, then covered with a matching piece of wood that was hammered into place with pegs. That, too, had been sealed with resin.
She examined the back of the falcon’s head closely. She could just about discern the marks of where resin had been packed in, and, feeling around carefully with trained fingers, she found the edges of the lid and the pegs that had held it in place. The seals all looked unscathed, and no water seemed to have seeped into the resin-covered cavities. From what she could see, it was highly likely that whatever had been locked away inside the chest was still safe and undamaged.
Looking around, she found two chunks of rock and used them as a hammer and chisel to break into the cavity. The first few layers of wood flaked off easily, but the rest proved to be stubbornly solid. Searching around the beach, she came across a piece of rusted steel rebar (steel reinforcement bars placed in concrete ) and used its sharp, broken edge to scrape through the resin. Working feverishly and with total disregard for any concerns of conservation the archaeologist in her would have insisted upon only weeks ago, she was able to claw her way under the timber lid and into the cavity. She could now see the edge of the chest, small and ornate. Wiping her sweaty brow, she scraped off enough of the resin from around the chest and used the rod to dislodge it. Sinking her fingers around it, she finally managed to lift the small box out.
All of her excitement came surging back and she tried to control it, but it was next to impossible. She actually had it in her hands. Although the chest was intricately decorated with silver carvings, it was surprisingly light. She carried it into the lee of a large rock where she could examine it closely. There was an iron hasp (latch, fastening (on a trunk, door, etc.) with, not a lock, but a wrought-iron ring. She used the rock to hammer at the hasp until, finally, it came away from the wood and she was able to lift the lid of the chest and peer inside.
Carefully, she lifted out the chest’s contents. It was a package, wrapped in what appeared to be an oiled animal skin much like the one Aimard had used to protect the astrolabe, and tied with leather thongs 皮带, 皮条. Very slowly, she unfolded the skin. Nestling in it was a book, a leather-bound codex (collection of pages sewn together (earliest form of the book).
The instant she saw it, she knew what it was.
It was inexplicably familiar, its humble simplicity belying its prodigious contents. With trembling fingers, she lifted up the cover slightly and peered at the writing on the first sheet of parchment inside it. The lettering on it was faded but readable, and, as far as she could tell, the codex’s contents were undamaged. She knew, with absolute certainty, that she was the first person to see it, the mythical treasure of the Knights Templar, ever since it was put into the chest seven hundred years ago by William of Beaujeu and entrusted to Aimard of Villiers.
Except that it was no longer a myth.
It was recti.
Cautiously, aware that this should be done in a laboratory or, at the very least, indoors but unable to resist the urge to get a better look, Tess opened the codex a bit wider and lifted up a sheet of parchment. She recognized the familiar, brownish tint of the ink used at the time made from a mixture of carbon soot, resin, wine dregs, and cuttlefish ink. The handwriting was difficult to decipher, but she recognized a couple of words, enough to know that it was written in Aramaic. She had encountered it occasionally in the past, enough to be able to identify it.
She paused, her eyes riveted on the simple manuscript in her
hands.
Aramaic.
The language spoken by Jesus.
Her heart pounding noisily in her ears, she stared at parchment, recognizing more words here and there.
Very slowly, almost unwillingly, she began to fathom just what she held in her hands. And to realize who had first touched these sheets of parchment, whose hand had written these words.
They were the writings of Jeshua of Nazareth.
The writings of the man the entire world knew as Jesus Christ.
Chapter 83
Gripping the leathery skin that held the codex, Tess walked back slowly, along the beach. The sun was setting, the last glimmer of light poking through the gray wall of cloud that lingered on the horizon.
She had decided against carrying the chest back, choosing to hide it behind a large rock instead, in order not to attract unwanted attention. She would come back for it later. Her mind was still floundering (struggle helplessly; move clumsily) with the implications of what she believed she held in her hands. This wasn’t a shard of pottery, it wasn’t Troy or Tutankhamen. This was something that could change the world. It had to be handled, to say the least, with extreme care.
As she approached the small cluster of houses at Marathounda, she took off her cardigan and wrapped it around the small pouch. The two fishermen had already left the taverna, but she got one of the men there who recognized her from earlier that day to drive her back to the doctor’s house.
As she stepped inside, Mavromaras greeted her with a big smile. “Where have you been? We’ve been looking for you.” Before she could rattle off some lie, he was herding her deeper into the house, toward the bedrooms. “Come, quickly. Someone wants to see you.”
REILLY WAS LOOKING AT HER, his breathing mask gone, a valiant attempt at a smile on his dried lips. He was sitting up at a slight angle, propped up against three large pillows. She felt something shift inside her.
“Hey,” Reilly said, weakly.
“Hey yourself,” she answered, relief breaking across her face. She felt uplifted in a way she’d never experienced before. She turned and, trying not to attract Eleni or the doctor’s attention to it, laid the bundled cardigan casually on a small cabinet facing the bed, before approaching Reilly and stroking his forehead softly. Her eyes moved over his bruised face and she caught her lower lip with her
teeth, feeling some tears welling up.
“It’s great to have you back,” she managed in a small voice.
He shrugged, his face brightening slowly. “From now on, I choose where we go on vacation, all right?”
Her face lit up, and she was unable to stop a tear from trickling down. “You got it.” She turned, her moist eyes beaming at the doctor and his wife. “Thank you,” she mouthed. They just smiled and nodded. “I -we both owe you our lives. How can I ever repay you?”
“Nonsense,” Mavromaras replied. “We have a saying in Greek. Den hriazete euhnristo, kathikon mou. It means there’s no thanks necessary for what is a duty.” He glanced at Eleni, exchanging an unspoken signal. “We’ll leave you,” he said softly. “I’m sure you have a lot to talk about.”
Tess watched them turn to leave, then hurried up to the doctor and gave him a hug, kissing him on both cheeks. Blushing through his tan, Mavromaras smiled modestly and stepped out of the room, leaving them alone.
As she turned to move back to Reilly’s bedside, she spotted the bundled cardigan that sat there on the cabinet like an unexploded bomb. She felt awful at being deceitful, both to the generous couple who had saved her life and to Reilly. She desperately wanted to tell
him about it, but she knew the timing wasn’t right.
Soon, though.
With a heavy heart, she summoned up a smile and joined him at his bedside.
REILLY FELT LIKE HE’D been away for weeks. He felt an odd, stinging numbness in his muscles, and there was a dizziness in his head that just hung there. One of his eyelids was still partially shut, and the uneven depth perception wasn’t helping either.
He didn’t remember much, beyond shooting De Angelis and hurling himself into the sea. He’d asked Mavromaras how he’d gotten there, and the doctor could only give him the sketchy details he had heard from Tess. Still, waking up and finding out that she was there, and in one piece, was a huge relief.
He tried raising himself carefully into a sitting position, and it brought a slight wince of pain onto his face. He settled back against the pillows.
“So how did we end up here?” he asked.
He listened as Tess told him what she remembered. She also had a black hole in her memory from the freak wave to waking up on the beach. She told him about the hit he took to the head, how she’d strapped their life jackets together, and about the wave. She told him about the hatch cover and showed him the deep cut on her arm. She wanted to know why the Coast Guard vessel fired on them, and Reilly told her about his journey from the moment De Angelis had stepped out of the helicopter in Turkey.
“I’m sorry,” she said contritely, when it finally came up. “I don’t know what came over me. I don’t know, it was just -I must have been out of my mind, leaving you there like that. This whole mess, it’s just…” She couldn’t find the words to express her remorse.
“It’s okay,” he countered, a faint smile crossing his cracked lips. “Let’s not talk about it now. We both made it, and that’s the main thing, isn’t it?”
She nodded reluctantly, beaming her appreciation, and he continued, explaining how it had been the monsignor all along, killing the horsemen in New York, even manning the gun himself on board the Karadeniz. He told her how he had shot De Angelis.
And then he told her about Cardinal Brugnone’s revelations.
TESS FELT A HUGE pang of guilt when Reilly took her through what had been revealed to him at the Vatican. The monumental truth about what she had found on the beach, confirmed to him by the very people it stood to harm the most, had electrified every pore on her body, but she couldn’t show it. She did her best to appear stunned, asking questions, hating herself more and more with every fake reaction. She wanted to whip out the codex and share it with him right there and then. But she couldn’t do it. A deep-set unease was etched across his face, and she knew that what Brugnone had told him, the lie at the heart of the Church, was a wound that had to be hurting. There was no way she was going to inflict the finality of its physical proof on him this soon. Right now, she wasn’t even sure if or when she could ever do it. He needed time. She needed time, too, to think things through.
“Are you gonna be okay?” she asked hesitantly.
He stared into the distance for a moment, his face clouding as he obviously struggled to put his feelings into words.
“It’s weird, but this whole thing, Turkey, the Vatican, the storm… it just feels like a bad dream. Maybe I’m too drugged up or something, but… I’m sure it’ll hit home at some point. Right now, I’m so tired, I just feel completely drained, but I don’t know how much of it is physical and how much of it is something else.”
Tess scrutinized his weary face. No, now was definitely not the right time to tell him about it. “Vance and De Angelis got what they deserved,” she said instead, brightening, “and you’re alive. There’s cause for faith in that, isn’t there?”
“Maybe,” he half-smiled, unconvincingly.
REILLY’S EYES MOVED OVER her face, and, although nodding off to sleep, he found himself thinking about the future. It wasn’t something he had ever really thought about, and it surprised him to have it cross his mind now, here, barely alive on this distant shore.
For a fleeting moment, he questioned whether or not he wanted to go on being an FBI agent. He had always liked being with the Bureau, but this case had cut deep. For the first time ever, he felt tired of the life he had chosen, tired of spending his days thrashing around inside the heads of demented lowlifes, tired of experiencing the worst the planet had to offer. He wondered idly if a career change might help restore his appreciation for life -maybe even his faith in mankind.
He felt his eyelids drooping.
“Sorry,” he barely managed, “I think we’ll have to save this till later.”
TESS WATCHED REILLY SINK into a deep sleep and felt exhausted herself.
She thought about what he had joked about, about choosing vacations. It brought a smile to her face, and she shook her head lightly. She mused that a vacation was just what she needed, and she knew exactly where she would take it. All at once, Arizona seemed like heaven. She decided she would go straight there. She couldn’t even conceive of going back to the office. Just change planes in New York and go see her daughter. And if Guiragossian
and anyone else at the Institute didn’t like it, then to hell with them.
It suddenly occurred to her that there were lots of interesting things for an archaeologist to do in the southwestern states, and she remembered that Phoenix had a world-class museum. Then she glanced at Reilly. Chicago born and raised, New Yorker by adoption, obviously addicted to being right in the thick of it. She wondered if he could ever give it all up and trade it in for a quiet life in a desert state. And somehow, quite suddenly, that seemed to matter. A lot. Maybe more than anything else.
