Gospel (99 page)

“Oops.”

“Oops is right. Anyway, Nathan of Gaza testified that this 23rd letter and 23rd Alphabet had been revealed to Zevi and to him. Rabbi Rosen, you'll recall, solved the mysteries of the
Gospel of Matthias
within two weeks, right? He was also, briefly, Professor of Kabbalah here. I always figured he must have had access to some kabbalistic book somewhere that gave the key to the Meroitic language. Little girl, in the forty years since Rabbi Rosen worked on
Matthias,
I went through every book in his office and in his house. I have gone through every library slip of every book he ordered from the library, and then as the years wore on and I checked each book for its index—tens of thousands of books—I kept thinking one day,
one day
I would turn up the page in the book that Rabbi Rosen must have known about that held the key to this impossible language.”

Lucy was thrilled, breathing excitedly. “So now, with the 23rd Alphabet in mind, did you find the book?”

Both she and the rabbi noticed an exhausted Patrick O'Hanrahan plodding toward them, trying unsuccessfully to radiate ruddiness.

Rabbi Hersch: “No, the book I don't have. But I feel this is a breakthrough nonetheless. He must've known where the 23rd Alphabet was written and I bet you wherever
that
book is, we will find the key to whatever version of Meroitic the
Gospel of Matthias
is written in.”

“Morning all,” said O'Hanrahan raspily. “I think I'll go in search of coffee.”

As he went to engage a waiter, Lucy turned to the rabbi and said quietly, “I think I better go home.”

The rabbi folded his arms, suppressing a smirk. “You've lost your credibility with me, little girl. You say good-bye to me, it's a sure bet you'll be where Paddy is the next time I see him.” Then he was serious. “But it's a good idea. Before the Middle East blows up. Not trying to scare you, but I'd bet money there'll be a war. Iraq versus the Saudis, Syria against Saddam Hussein—everyone against Israel, you can bet on that.”

Lucy thought: that's not all that's going up in smoke.

O'Hanrahan looks on his last legs. I understand, she told herself, he can't go home to nothing, to his sister, to poverty, to ridicule—he'd rather die in the desert, given his last rites by a Coptic monk in a cave. But I can't keep following him down and even further down, Matthias or no Matthias.

“Rabbi, sir,” she asked, “what will become of Dr. O'Hanrahan? Is he going to get to translate and write a book about the
Gospel of Matthias?
As you know, it's his dream. I think it actually keeps him alive.”

Rabbi Hersch smiled wanly. “Don't hold your breath for that book—the man has trouble writing a grocery list. But I'll make sure what happens is for the best.”

O'Hanrahan arrived at the table. “What's this about doing what's for the best?”

The rabbi didn't cower. “What's for the best is that you oughta go home and get some medical help.”

O'Hanrahan treated this as a joke. “Aww, Lucy is just overreacting here—”

“And the deskman? And the soldier who left his name with the deskman, who I called.”

O'Hanrahan, boxed in a corner, turned fierce. “Checking up on me, huh?”

“That's not all,” said Rabbi Hersch, getting all the fireworks over with. “I've already contacted Father Vico and his Franciscan superiors. For an arranged sum they are willing to hand over the scroll to Hebrew University today.”

O'Hanrahan stammered, “You … you can buy them off? Okay, okay, that's good news, right? We'll work on it together at Hebrew University.”

The rabbi did not flinch. “You might as well know that I've called Philip Beaufoix to come—”

“No!”

Lucy cringingly looked on as O'Hanrahan lost his demeanor and reason—he heard Father Beaufoix's name and all he could taste was betrayal. “So that's it, is it, Morey? You're going to rub me out of the whole project? Why did you bother asking me to help you in the first place?”

The table of diners beside them stiffened, sensing a scene.

“Because I thought you could help me.”

“You should have left me where you found me,” O'Hanrahan said, a catch in his throat. Lucy looked down at her plate. “You should have let me alone rather than raise my hopes—”

“Would you calm down,” said his friend. “Who says you're off the project? You're still with me, working on this. Why are you overreacting so? We just need a little help to crack this language barrier…”

“Lucy,” said O'Hanrahan, “it's time to pack up. We're leaving.”

Lucy looked up, confused. “But—”

“On the four o'clock overnight bus to Cairo. We have an appointment with the Pope of Alexandria's library in Cairo.” O'Hanrahan turned an accusing glance on the rabbi. “You watch us, Morey. We'll solve this mystery before you and Philip figure out the first sentence. God, as if … as if he didn't have enough books to his name already, enough glory!”

Rabbi Hersch threw up his hands. “You can still write the goddam book!”

“Right,” said O'Hanrahan darkly, “I can have Beaufoix's
leavings,
what you two can spare me, like it's some academic hand-me-down. Lucy, let's go.”

So it had ended as badly as Lucy had feared. She felt all the stares of the dining room upon her as she walked O'Hanrahan from the chamber. Lucy felt a sadness for the professor, not the least for his old friendship tearing under the stress of O'Hanrahan's failed dreams …

“Luce, I'm going on upstairs. Come see me when you get packed,” he added lightly, as if nothing had transpired.

He's not thinking straight, she figured. His mind is out of control, just like his physical health—

“Hey,
there
you are.”

Lucy spun around to see Gabriel, looking tan in a St. Eulalia T-shirt and jeans, sitting in a recessed room of the lobby behind a potted plant.

“Only a half-hour late,” he said, motioning to his watch.

Lucy had forgotten about their Wednesday appointment; nothing could have been less important to her at this moment.

“I called your room and you weren't in, so I waited down here,” he explained, lurking behind the flowers. “Hey, the rabbi's, like, gone, isn't he? I don't want to run into him.”

“Look,” she began, “the rabbi and Dr. O'Hanrahan have had a fight, so I gotta go upstairs…”

“What about us? I thought we were going to spend the afternoon together.”

Lucy glimpsed the rabbi leaving the dining hall. “We can't, I'm sorry. Duck down, Gabe. Here comes the rabbi.”

Rabbi Hersch turned at the reception desk, not even seeing Lucy across the lobby.

Gabriel: “He's going to see his friend outside, I bet.”

Lucy slowed in her progress. “What friend?”

“Some two-bit hood he knows. I saw them … Lucy?”

Lucy briskly walked toward the plate-glass wall at the front of the lobby to see if she could see Rabbi Hersch depart.

“You're bound to have noticed him,” said Gabriel, following cautiously behind her. “Worst dresser I've ever seen.”

Lucy lingered behind a column. Outside, Rabbi Hersch was talking with the Man in the Cheap Suit. Money in an envelope was being fanned between them, counted. The rabbi pressed the money into the man's hands. Then the rabbi turned to go, but Mr. Cheap Suit said something and the rabbi got in the man's car, a red Ford Golf.

“This isn't good,” said Lucy, watching the car drive round the circular driveway of the King David Hotel, departing for downtown.

The Man in the Cheap Suit had tried to steal the scroll in Ballymacross—was he working for the rabbi there? And in Florence, and Assisi? Was the rabbi spying on them?

Gabriel: “I spent a lot of time sitting in a car outside the hotel where O'Hanrahan and Rabbi Hersch were staying once I got working for Father Vico. Hersch and that guy would meet for coffee and stuff.”

Lucy was heartsick. “That man has stalked us for weeks. He once blew up a safe in Ireland, after you and Brother Vincenzo cleared out.”

Gabriel considered that. “See what I mean?” He then added, “Never trusted the old Jew anyway.” Gabriel was bouncing at her heels like a puppy. “I want to take some pictures in the Old City, Luce. You and me over here? What will Judy say? Of course, no one will believe it's you. You look so different now.”

Lucy regained herself, though still distracted. “Hm?”

“Hey, not that you were fat or anything,” he said, protecting the compliment from any female objection, “but you've lost a lot of weight and you look great.”

“Thanks,” she said absently. She would have to go upstairs and tell Dr. O'Hanrahan about Rabbi Hersch and the Man in the Cheap Suit—

“But there's something else different. A glow in your cheeks,” he joked. “Like my sister Liz when she had her kid!”

A very dark thought crossed Lucy's mind for the first time.

Ooooh, a very dark thought.

“So whadya say? Tea in the Christian Quarter?” Gabriel had a whole afternoon planned. “I wanna get some of those sesame pretzels—”

“Uh, Gabe,” she said, breathing more shallowly, “I have to pack now and talk to O'Hanrahan. You'll forgive me for not going to take pictures with you?”

He looked like he wouldn't. Lucy leaned over and kissed him goodbye.

“Something wrong?” he asked as she made her way to the elevator.

Yeah, something could be wrong, she told herself.

She couldn't pursue
that
thought in all its implications!

In the elevator she became consumed, every cell in her body, to getting away from all the skullduggery and infighting, the intrigue and insecurity. She wanted to sleep in her own bed in Chicago again, see her mother, see Judy even. It would crush Dr. O'Hanrahan to be abandoned. But she was determined to confront this right away. She knocked on O'Hanrahan's door and identified herself.

“There's something very important we have to discuss,” she began.

O'Hanrahan looked radiant, humming as he spritely packed his things. The phone rang.

“Oh,” he said, suppressing a smile, “it's that ass Father Vico again. Can you get it for me and say I've gone out?”

Without thinking, Lucy did what she was told. It was Father Vico and he sputtered Italian into the phone with a bit of English.

“Wait, slow down, Father,” said Lucy. “
What
are you saying?”

O'Hanrahan mouthed that he wasn't here.

“He's not here.” She listened to the hysterical Franciscan. “The scroll is what?”

Lucy grew wide-eyed at what Father Vico was saying.

Lucy, shaken, beheld O'Hanrahan calmly packing. “Yes, I'll be sure to tell him, Father … Yes, I will tell him as soon as I see him, to get in touch with you. Yes, Father … Yes, I will pray too, Father, now … Bye-bye, Father,” she said at last to the talkative man, setting the phone down and turning immediately to the professor: “Dr. O'Hanrahan, I've got some bad news. It seems the scroll has been stolen again!”

“Yep.” He arched an eyebrow and said quietly, “I had it stolen.”

Lucy let her mouth fall open.

O'Hanrahan lifted up his jumbled bathrobe in his suitcase, and underneath it was a scrollcase. “There she is. Stolen from the depths of the Franciscan chambers of the Holy Sepulcher.”

“But who could have…” Then she breathed, “Gabriel.”

“That's right. He told me he was going to leave the Franciscan order and that he didn't approve of them anymore, and I said, good, then steal back that scroll. It was an easy thing apparently—Gabriel had watched Father Vico take it in and out of the safe. Plus, Gabriel gets on with Brother Antonio and I didn't ask any questions. I suppose he swiped it this time to patch things up with me, so I said a few nice words and we hugged and…” He descended into a parody of Gabriel: “It was a very special growth experience.”

Lucy asked simply, “Why didn't you let me in on your plan?”

“Because you and Morey were getting so chummy. Didn't want to risk it. Hey, did Gabriel mention to you what he was going to do for me?”

No, she thought selfishly. The world runs circles around me as usual. She mumbled, “And all that business downstairs with Rabbi Hersch…”

“I should get an Oscar, huh? Look, you saw for yourself, Morey intended to get the scroll back and buy off the Franciscans, and call in Beaufoix, which he's entitled to do.”

“It
is
his scroll,” Lucy reminded him.

“No ma'am.” O'Hanrahan slammed the suitcase closed. “It's mine. It is my destiny, and no one else's with the possible exception of
you.
”

Lucy was speechless.

“Are you still interested in an academic post, Miss Dantan?” O'Hanrahan walked about the room gathering papers for his satchel. “You know how hard it will be to get a job once you finish that worthless doctorate? You do have the sense God gave you to realize that the
Gospel of Matthias
will make your career, even as my assistant. And it is no exaggeration to say we might get rich and we might get famous.”

And we might get killed, thought Lucy.

They looked at each other a moment.

“And,” concluded O'Hanrahan, “none of those dreams can come true if we're one of twenty committee members to work on it, okay? Now that I've got
Matthias …
” He patted the suitcase. “… we have become, de facto, the most important people working on this project. Can't very well be told to go home now, can we?”

Lucy felt many things at once. There was a pull of loyalty to the rabbi … but hell, there he was connected to the Man in the Cheap Suit. Maybe no one was trustworthy, maybe O'Hanrahan's maneuver was the true salvation of the
Gospel of Matthias.
Up to now her role had been pleasantly decorative, she could sit back and enjoy the travel. But now it was getting serious. Briefly, she ached for home again, deep in the clutches of Chicago, back where things were simpler and dictated to her …