My ears rang and my head was starting to throb as Blake Threader and I stood watching the black Cigarette disappear from the harbor.
“Better get something for that eye,” Threader said. “Believe you’re gonna have yourself a worse shiner than me. Come on. I got just the thing.”
I followed him back to his boat. The captain disappeared into the cabin and returned carrying a six-pack of beer. He handed me a can, took one for himself, popped it open, and gulped half of it before belching and taking a seat on the edge of the dock.
“I appreciate your help,” I said, lifting the can like a toast to him. “Hope you know what you just stepped into.”
Threader downed the rest of his beer. “Yup. Believe you just hired yourself a captain.” He popped open another can and swallowed as if he were drinking water. “So, Niki found herself a little scroll, did she? That what this is all about?”
I wasn’t sure how much to tell him. “It’s a long shot. Could be nothing.”
“Where we going?”
“Pialigos.”
“Pialigos? That ain’t nothing. You could charter a damn rowboat for a trip like that.”
I hesitated. “Then Kyropos.”
“To hell you say! Kyropos is sputtering. Why the devil would anyone in their right mind want to go out there?”
I didn’t have a good answer for that one. I would have much rather been talking to the pilot of a seaplane.
“If it’s any consolation,” I said, “we’re not actually going to Kyropos. There’s a small island next to—”
“The Rock? That’s worse. Ain’t nothing but an empty pile of rocks. What makes you think there’s a scroll out there?”
Something told me Threader wasn’t the type to appreciate my explanation. “It’s a long story.”
“I see. Don’t ask no questions; just sail the damn boat. That it?”
“Something like that.”
I watched Threader guzzle more beer. “Don’t matter. If that girl wants to go to the edge of Hades, and we ain’t gonna be too damn far from it, then I’ll take her to the edge of Hades. When we going?”
“Two days.” I hoped he’d back out.
“Two days?” Threader turned toward his boat and downed the rest of the beer. He stood, energized, crushed the can in one hand, and tossed it out in the water. “Guess I’d better get to work. Don’t worry, Adams. She cleans up real nice. You wait and see.”
I studied that heap of flotsam Threader called home. There was nothing in me that believed the captain could be ready, but I at least owed him the chance to prove himself wrong.
“Good luck,” I said, and I turned to leave.
“You tell Niki I’ll get her there and back safe and sound,” Threader called out. “The only thing we got to worry about is that damn volcano. That thing decides to blow, there ain’t no place to hide in the open sea. No place. If you don’t die in the explosion, you suffocate in the ash. If that don’t get you, the tsunami will. It goes, we go. It’s that simple. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. It’s risky, Adams. Just hope you understand that.”
I nodded that I understood, though, having no previous experience with the fury of a volcano, I was sure that I didn’t. It added nothing to my comfort to know that a salty old dog like Threader was worried about sailing into the face of that restless beast. Sore and depressed, I shoved the pistol into my backpack and turned to leave. I stopped when I remembered I hadn’t thanked the captain for helping me out.
“Threader?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for showing up. I may not have fared so well if you hadn’t.”
Threader laughed. “Maybe you better have a look in the mirror. You might not have fared quite as well as you think.”
I opted for the cable car out of the caldera. Even so, by the time I reached the top, my head felt as if someone had clamped it in a bench vise and whacked it tight with a ball pein hammer. Milling tourists passed in a blur.
The throbbing increased when I spotted Niki sitting on a park bench in the shade of a cypress a few yards away. She wasn’t alone. A pudgy, bald-headed, thick-browed, middle-aged guy with a short-sleeved paisley shirt, baggy shorts, and sandals sat next to her—tourist most likely, used-car salesman from one of the cruise ships, getting his kicks by hitting on one of the local beauties.
I started to relieve Niki of the fly, but I stopped. They appeared to be having a deep, possibly intimate conversation. Were they friends? Lovers? The guy didn’t strike me as her type. But then what did I know about the types attractive to a Greek archaeologist? It could have been his floppy ears, that dimpled chin, or maybe the big gap between his two front teeth. Hell, it could have been his bone structure for all I knew.
I stopped a few feet in front of the engrossed couple. The guy was the first to look up. He had one of those annoyed, move-along-pal-I-saw-her-first kinds of looks. Then Niki noticed me, squinted, and studied me as if I were some kind of a science project. I tried to smile, but it hurt too much. That’s when her curiosity turned to horror. She shot straight off the bench.
“Oh my god! What have you done?”
I almost touched my cheekbone but decided against it. “Got in the way of a fist, I guess.”
“A fist? You have been fighting?”
She made it sound like a bad habit of mine. “Actually, I met up with our friend, Giacopetti.”
“Gustavo Giacopetti? He did this?”
“He had a little help from his gorillas. If it hadn’t been for Threader—”
“Captain Threader? You found him?”
“Yup. He probably saved me a visit to the hospital.” I glanced at her gawking companion. I didn’t even know the guy, and already he annoyed me. “Looks like you found somebody too.”
Niki, still frowning, turned as if she’d just become aware of her tagalong.
“Stuart Adams, I would like you to meet Father Jon Andros, a friend of many years.” She reached up and touched my cheek lightly. “We should get some ice.”
I liked it that she cared.
“You can call me Father Jon,” the guy said, extending his hand to me. “I think Niki is right about the ice.”
We shook hands, but the father thing just didn’t jibe. “Tell me you’re not talking about a monk kind of father.”
“Why not? Do you wish to make a liar out of me?” The father laughed. “Yes, I am the monk kind of father. Why do I gather that this surprises you?”
Something in his tone suggested that he relished the deception. Irreverence for his position, maybe, like he’d been doing it too long. Or maybe not. What did I know about monks? Take all my knowledge, fluff it up, and blow it with a hair dryer, and it’d still have plenty of legroom inside the hull of a sunflower seed.
“Guess I thought you guys wore cowls, counted beads, rode donkeys, walked around with your hands up your sleeves—that kind of thing.”
My assessment drew a gratified smile from him, but it drew something else from Niki.
“Forgive him, Father,” she said. “I told you he is an American, a hardheaded American.” She turned to me, her eyes still full of concern. “You are sure you do not need some ice? It will help with the swelling.”
At that moment, nothing would have pleased me more than to be lying in a hospital bed with her tending my wounds. Unfortunately, we had a monk to contend with, a monk who didn’t look like a monk and who seemed a little too proud of it.
“I don’t think the swelling’s gonna need any help,” I said. “Don’t worry, Doctor. I’ll live.”
“With a fat eye, you will live,” Niki said. “But it is your fat eye.” She dismissed the problem with an annoyed flutter of her eyelids. “Father Jon is the only one I can talk to about the scroll. He used to work in the Secret Archives under none other than Salvatore Sorrentino. This is how he first learned of the scroll. He has some information that I think you will find incredible.”
Just when I thought a monk in a paisley shirt and baggy shorts was about all the incredible I could handle, the father pulled a cigar from his shirt pocket and held it up.
“Do you mind if I smoke?”
Was this guy for real? With a glance, I tried to shoot the question to Niki. She was looking away, intentionally avoiding eye contact with me.
“If it doesn’t bother him”—I nodded toward the sky—“it won’t bother me.”
“Thank you,” Father Jon said, and with a thumbnail, he struck a wooden match and lit the cigar. When he closed his eyes and took a couple of thoughtful puffs, he reminded me of a pawnshop owner I knew in Denver.
“Ahhh. Not even God could object to the smell of a fine Cuban cigar.
“I have known Salvatore Sorrentino since he was a monsignor at the Archives,” Father Jon explained. “I can tell you that he is a man who will go to any length to preserve the integrity of our theology, including doing business with the notorious Raphael. The cardinal has made a number of secret purchases from this man. Raphael disguises his voice, and couriers always handle the actual transactions, but Sorrentino is quite certain that Raphael and Gustavo Giacopetti are the same man. Who else is in such a key position to acquire the phenomenal quality of artifacts that Raphael so consistently offers? Yet, the cardinal, relishing the benefits of maintaining his surreptitious contact with this mystery man, issued strict orders for me to tell no one. You are the first.”
I was sure my face was swollen enough to hide my doubts about that one.
The father went on. “The Vatican’s ability to acquire such priceless artifacts, Sorrentino argues, serves a much higher, therefore justifiable, purpose. One such item was a letter written by Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian born a few years after the crucifixion of Jesus. One evening, after the cardinal had a little too much wine, he told me about the letter. He worried that if it fell into liberal hands, it would force a complete revision of the Church’s most sacred doctrines. Sorrentino keeps the letter in a vault in his office. One day he was away, and I noticed he had forgotten to close the door to the vault. I started to lock it, but I could not. My curiosity, I have to confess, got the better of me. I found the letter and read it. It told of the existence of a scroll, written in a strange script, by a foreign scribe with a name none other than Anatolios. This scribe, according to Josephus, traveled with our Lord.”
I was massaging my temples, doing my best to give the impression that I was interested in the father’s story. “Jesus traveled with a secretary?”
“It is quite feasible,” Niki said. “In Gethsemane, for example, Jesus took Peter, James, and John to pray with him in his darkest moment. All three disciples fell asleep, and yet the words and actions of Jesus were well documented—in minute detail. By whom?”
“But I don’t get it,” I said, recalling Barnes’s photograph of the scroll. “If Anatolios was a secretary to Jesus, why would he write in an ancient Minoan script?”
Niki agreed. “Aramaic or even Hebrew would make more sense. It does not seem likely that Jesus or anyone else would be able to read such a rare script as Linear A. This makes no sense.”
“I have grappled with this question myself,” the father said. “Anatolios was undoubtedly bilingual. He may have translated the scroll into the language of his ancestors to give it an appearance of authenticity. Did not our Pialigarian prophet vow to return to Pialigos with the lost knowledge of his ancestors?” He shrugged, and then he waved a finger of warning. “We must tread very carefully. There may be no connection between the letter of Josephus and the scroll depicted in Mr. Barnes’s photograph. None whatsoever.”
“But what about Sorrentino?” I asked. “He must think there’s a connection. Why else would he offer ten million for the scroll? The photograph bothered him. Why?”
“The cardinal is worried,” Father Jon explained, “and I can tell you why.” He took a puff from his cigar. “According to Josephus, Anatolios and Jesus himself were disciples of a certain Essene mystic.”
“Disciples?” I said. “I didn’t know Jesus was a disciple of anyone.”
“Precisely. And this possibility, I assure you, is what has Sorrentino so upset.”
“But why should this be so upsetting?” Niki asked. I sensed that she and the father had discussed this subject before, that she was bringing it up again for my benefit. “Everyone knows that eighteen years of the life of Jesus remain unknown to us. There is persistent speculation that he studied with the Essenes during this time. Why not? Even St. Paul studied under the renowned Gamaliel. Why would Jesus not also have had a mentor?”
“I will tell you why he must not,” Father Jon said, his voice suddenly full of more authority than his appearance commanded. “For a man like Sorrentino, it is of the utmost importance to maintain the doctrine of the absolute divinity of Jesus—taught by God, not by any man. To the cardinal, the revelation that Jesus was the student of someone would undermine, perhaps even destroy, this most important doctrine.”
The paisley shirt was beginning to make a little bit of sense. Intuitively, I couldn’t buy into most of the homogenized rhetoric I’d heard in my Bible classes with Alyssa. A God of love ready to sentence me to a life of eternal damnation if I didn’t comply? To me, that was like saying you could freeze to death in the middle of an Arizona summer. Through his years of intensive studies, the father probably had learned better than I the political, and very human, forces that lay behind the theology of sin and punishment. Why else would he, in good conscience, shed the beads, the cowl, the donkey? Would I have done less? Maybe I was closer to the father’s point of view than I realized.
“So what if he did learn from someone else?” I said. “Would it lessen the value of what Jesus taught, change the good things he did?”
“Not to you and me,” Father Jon replied. “But Sorrentino is opposed to considering any variations or modifications of our doctrine. If the scroll reveals a written precedent for teachings attributed as original to the Master, then critics will be quick to point out that the wisdom of Jesus did not come from God but from another man. You can see how the Church’s doctrine of the divinity of Jesus could easily be compromised. The cardinal’s fear that the foundations of Christianity could be severely undermined is not without merit.” The father had been talking to Niki and me; now he turned to me. “Niki told me of your vision—the bearded man on the island next to Kyropos. You may find this intriguing. According to Josephus, the name of our Essene mystic was none other than Marcus.”
“Marcu … ?” The name caught in my throat. Now this whole thing was starting to get personal.
“Fascinating, do you not agree? What if Marcus imparted the Three Measures of Wisdom to Jesus and his secretary, Anatolios? This is but one of the many reasons why I am completely intrigued with this scroll. If it truly embodies the teachings of Marcus, teachings that Jesus himself would have studied in the isolated desert environment of this Essene, it would bring us a giant step closer to an understanding of the Jesus of history rather than the Jesus of mere theology.” Father Jon took another large puff from his cigar and blew the cloud of smoke over his shoulder. Still looking at me, he said, “I would be honored if you would permit me to join you in this quest for the scroll.”
“You mean … you want to go to Kyropos?”
“Yes. I believe I can be of help.”
Somehow the concepts of monk and help didn’t coalesce. I shook my head. “It’s too dangerous, Father. And I’m not just talking about volcanoes.” I pointed to my throbbing eye. “I don’t think one of these would look too good on a monk.”
“I would agree,” Father Jon said, studying the damage. “But you see, Gustavo Giacopetti, he is Catholic. He knows that bringing harm to a man of the cloth would greatly jeopardize his chances of winning an immortal soul. He would not strike me. Perhaps my presence would discourage him from giving you another eye to match that one … or worse.”
“Maybe,” I said, but I doubted it. “Giacopetti knows what we’re after, and there’s some pretty big dollar figures floating around this scroll. Millions, maybe. Now I don’t mean any disrespect by this, Father, but I know enough about your penance system to figure that a guy with that kind of dough could buy himself a pretty safe passage through your pearly gates. Whack a monk, shell out a few bucks, get your forgiveness, and go about your business. Isn’t that how it works, Father?”
“Whacking a monk? Hmm.” He stroked his chin. “Whacking a monk would be quite costly. But you are right. Most any sin is subject to forgiveness, if you have enough money. So, allow me to explain something. I do not fear men like Gustavo Giacopetti. Do you know why?”
“No.”
“I will tell you. Many years ago, I took a vow to seek the truth, wherever it leads. The truth is my strength, my protection. Something tells me that this scroll contains a truth far beyond anything the world has known. The Three Measures of Wisdom … perhaps they are the key to Atlantean success. Now I wonder if they are not of even greater value. Perhaps they are the basis of principles out of which the Master formed a more profound teaching, one that is now lost among the thistles of Christian theology. It would mean a great deal to me to know that I did something to help bring the truth of the Master to light. I am begging you to allow me to join you in this quest.”
Maybe the guy needed to prove something to his peers … or to himself for that matter. Then again, he might have been as sincere as the tears pooling in his eyes suggested. Even if he wasn’t sincere, what difference would it make?
“If it’s okay with her,” I said, nodding toward Niki, “it’s fine with me.”
Niki shot back. “I told the father that he would have to ask you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
Niki and I looked at each other for a moment. She was beginning to trust me, and for some reason, that bothered me more than the idea of having a monk tag along.
“All right,” I said to Father Jon. “Why not. I just want to make sure you understand that this is no Wednesday night bingo fund-raiser for God. Things could get ugly real fast.”
Father Jon’s broad smile squeezed a tear down his cheek. “Thank you, Stuart. May I call you Stuart?”
“Please do.”
“You worry that things could get ugly? Let me assure you. For me, nothing … nothing could be uglier than a Wednesday night bingo fund-raiser for God.”
J Douglas Bottorff 