Gospel (111 page)

“You like, sir?” asked the proprietor of the shop. A white foreigner was rare enough to attract his whole family, who lingered in a beaded doorway to observe this transaction.

O'Hanrahan lifted a Dom Perignon under his nose and inhaled—oh, precious incense! The tobacconist, short of customers this season, could barely contain himself and his greed, imagining the unloading of his expensive stock. O'Hanrahan in his marketplace play of interest and disinterest glimpsed out the window to the street. He saw Clem Underwood walking by the store outside.

“Excuse me!” he said in a rush, bolting for the door.

Underwood, holding a small gym bag, nonchalantly stood at the curbside, looked left then right—not seeing O'Hanrahan—and proceeded to step into the street, searching for a taxicab. O'Hanrahan was upon him the moment before he turned, babbling, “Oh, Mr. O'Hanrahan, hello there—”

O'Hanrahan snatched the gym bag from his hand.

“No!” Underwood clutched the gym bag and at one point was being led by it; it resembled a man leading his dog around him in a circle, the dog's teeth firmly attached to a rag.

“Whadya got here, Mr. Underwood?” panted O'Hanrahan, getting red in the face.

“Just some stuff…”

O'Hanrahan broke free and to the amusement of everyone on the street, made his way to the alley between the tobacco shop and a deserted travel agency.

“You no buy cigar?” cried the dispirited tobacconist, running from his store.

Underwood, surrendering before O'Hanrahan's bulk, stood aside glumly as O'Hanrahan opened the gym bag in the alley. Inside, as O'Hanrahan was relieved to find, was his decoy, the 14th-Century
Contendings of St. Andrew.

“I'll give you some money for it,” said Underwood sheepishly.

O'Hanrahan grabbed Underwood by the lapels of his ill-fitting suit and pressed him against the wall: “
Why
did you steal my scroll?”

“Don't hurt me!”

Recognizing a weakling, O'Hanrahan shook him an extra time and donned his fiercest madman's expression hoping to terrify Underwood, rather enjoying his own performance. “You're from Merriwether Industries, right?”

Underwood's thick round glasses fell from his face. “Yeah, sort of…”

“What does a multinational conglomerate want with my ancient scroll?”

O'Hanrahan relinquished his grip, but kept one hand on Underwood's lapel. “You see, Mr. O'Hanrahan, my client wants it—”

“Who?”

Underwood seemed unwilling, but O'Hanrahan raised an eyebrow in ire and Underwood crumbled: “Charles Merriwether, Chairman of the Board.”

O'Hanrahan had learned from Mustafa al-Waswasah back in East Jerusalem that Chester Merriwether II, the industrialist's father, formerly owned the
Gospel of Matthias,
having acquired it shadily after World War Two. “All right, you tell me, Clem, why does Charles Merriwether wish to get my scroll back in the family?”

“He's going to give it to a friend.”

“What friend?” Underwood didn't know and O'Hanrahan wouldn't accept that he didn't know, so Underwood received another bone-disconnecting shake from O'Hanrahan. No, really! cried Underwood. He didn't tell me who he wanted it for! O'Hanrahan threatened, deviously, to stomp on Underwood's glasses, then tear out by the roots his dwindling supply of hair. Underwood flailed and hit O'Hanrahan in the face—by accident probably—with his sharp black ring.

“Oops,” said Underwood, immediately horrified of the consequences.

“Why, you little…” O'Hanrahan lifted Underwood off the ground: “What friend—tell me!”

Underwood moaned, “Awww, c'mon. He's not gonna tell someone like me.”

O'Hanrahan relented.

The professor: “What do you think the Sudanese authorities will say about your little theft?” He belatedly thought of Lucy. “You didn't harm my assistant Miss Dantan in any way, did you?”

No, never! he pleaded.

O'Hanrahan turned to the entrance of their alley to see a number of curious African and Arab faces staring intently. The next moment the crowd parted and the same compact Sudanese soldier appeared. Major Nessim. Two soldiers with submachine guns lurked behind him. “Mr. O'Hanrahan,” he said, “you seem too very much to find trooble.”

“This man is a thief!” O'Hanrahan declared.

Underwood straightened out his crumpled suit and immediately rearranged his hair to its most propitious pattern.

“My stepdaughter,” O'Hanrahan asserted, “will be more than cooperative in testifying for the police that this man is a thief, Major. He broke into my room and stole this … this document that I have brought to Khartoum to use in my studies.”

The Sudanese officer was impassive. O'Hanrahan couldn't detect a flicker of interest or predisposition behind his eyes. After a moment the major ordered his men to lead Mr. Underwood away, and suggested that O'Hanrahan return to the El Qasr Hotel and stay there until he arrived for further questioning.

Lucy was waiting for him in the hallway outside his room. “Dr. O'Hanrahan!” she smiled. “Good news, in a way.” She started right in, pleased that she had withstood some excitement while he was gone. “I saw Clem Underwood from my balcony out on the street and I ran to your room and fixed it so the decoy gospel was hidden under your bed.”

O'Hanrahan was out of breath from his adventures in the alley and from walking up the stairs. “Good girl.” O'Hanrahan held up the inconspicuous cardboard tube that held the
Contendings of St. Andrew.
“As you see, Mr. Underwood ran afoul of me in a nearby alley and he is now in the hands of the police. Now Lucy, where's the real
Gospel of Matthias?
”

“I was afraid to keep it in my room. I mean, I couldn't tell if all this police attention you've been getting is part of a big scam to arrest you, and then search our rooms thoroughly.”

O'Hanrahan patted her on the shoulders. “You're learning to outthink these people, good for you. Now where is it?”

Lucy whispered, “In the maid's closet down the hall, behind a box of diapers and some cleaning fluids.”

O'Hanrahan wished to check on it. They walked to the end of the hall. Their nostrils registered the bathroom mildew and the reeking toilet chamber ahead. Beside these fixtures was a little room for the maid's supplies. Lucy turned the handle on the door, but it was locked. She panicked for an instant. “The maid must have locked it,” she said.

O'Hanrahan went down to the desk. The hotelkeeper and his wife were suspicious and resentful of O'Hanrahan since he had caused the police appearance at their little establishment earlier. Where is your maid? O'Hanrahan asked. She may be finished with her work and she may have gone home, the proprietor's wife said. O'Hanrahan ascended the stairs again.

“I found her!” said Lucy, referring to a short, stooped woman who vainly lifted a moth-eaten veil before her aged face, her toothless mouth, when O'Hanrahan approached. She mumbled in Arabic.

O'Hanrahan listened, deciphering with difficulty.
“La la,”
he assured her in Arabic, we don't think you've stolen something from our rooms. May we see your supply closet?

They followed this poor woman down the hall, with O'Hanrahan wondering how a woman so old and slow managed any amount of work. As they approached the stench of the toilet chamber, he decided that maybe she didn't manage very much work after all. She turned and examined them both, remembered her veil and raised it coquettishly, then turned her key in the closet door.

Lucy stepped around her, as O'Hanrahan apologized for their use of the woman's domain. Lucy moved aside the cleanser and some towels …

“It's not here,” she said bloodlessly.

O'Hanrahan anxiously asked the woman if she had seen a small leather case, a foot-and-a-half long. No, she shook her head. O'Hanrahan wondered if she was after money … she didn't seem capable of such a complicated maneuver. “Fatima!” she called out presently.

Lucy didn't meet O'Hanrahan's glance.

An insolent twenty-year-old woman appeared in more modern attire, a longish black dress, no veil. She met the older woman's eyes with annoyance. Must be mother-daughter, thought Lucy. The women exchanged irate Arabic with one another and wearily the younger woman led O'Hanrahan, Lucy, and the maid to a trash bag.

“It's in there?” O'Hanrahan asked in horror, imagining how a delay of a few minutes might have seen this bag on its way to the incinerator.

The young woman, while berating her mother, opened the garbage bag and O'Hanrahan, spotting the leather tube, reached through wet rags and food scraps and removed the scrollcase.

“Thank God,” breathed Lucy.

The older woman harangued her daughter. The daughter must have assumed the foreign object in the closet was one of her mother's many affronts.

Back in O'Hanrahan's room, the professor handed Lucy the cardboard tube while he wiped off the scrollcase. Then he spread out the
Gospel of Matthias
upon the bed, still in its clear-plastic airtight envelope, to see if it was damaged. Their whole Khartoum mission had gone off the rails with this arrest and now their hasty departure the next day. It would be good to see Ethiopia again—possibly the only country on earth in worse shape than the Sudan, he thought grimly. But they have a good library too—

There was a knock on the door.

The hotelkeeper cried out that it was he, with some new towels.

Lucy opened the door. Behind the hotelkeeper was Major Nessim in his immaculate white uniform and his two submachine gun–toting soldiers. Bringing up the rear was Clem Underwood, who craned to look into the room. “Miss Dantan,” he nodded, filing past her.

O'Hanrahan drily, “Can I help you?”

The hotelkeeper scampered away, wanting to be out of gunfire range, no doubt. Major Nessim looked to Underwood. Underwood looked at O'Hanrahan, and said, “I think we'd better take that scroll there, Patrick.”

Having scammed bribe money from O'Hanrahan, then the U.S. government, reasoned O'Hanrahan, our Major Nessim has figured out that Underwood is attached to some mighty big purse strings too. O'Hanrahan wondered how much the major was offered to lend his soldiers to this scroll-napping enterprise.

“Hand it over,” goaded Underwood, his pudgy fingers moving like some sea creature's tentacles.

O'Hanrahan glanced at Lucy, who was willing herself to be invisible. O'Hanrahan moved to the
Gospel of Matthias
laid out on the bed. “I'm not sure I'm going to let you have it, Clem. Are you prepared to kill me?”

Underwood squirmed apologetically. “Awww, it's not gonna come to that, Mr. O'Hanrahan,” he said, nervously twisting his ring.

Lucy clutched the cardboard tube with the
Contendings of St. Andrew
; she noticed her knees were shaking. Well, they had had a good run, but it was over now. I suppose the wished-for outcome at this point was to get out of the Sudan without ending up in jail—

“Move away!” yelled the major. His lieutenant cocked his Kalishnikov.

Lucy felt faint. Expectations were lowering fast: she'd settle for getting out alive.

O'Hanrahan, with his hands up, backed away from the bed.

Underwood approached the bed and examined the
Gospel of Matthias
in its airtight envelope. “You know,” he mumbled, “this doesn't look like…”

Lucy thought of something!

She bolted for the door, pushing aside one of the soldiers.

“Stop her!” cried Underwood. One soldier stayed with his gun trained on O'Hanrahan, and the other darted for the door after Lucy. He grabbed her in the hallway, tackled her to the floor—the cardboard tube with the
Contendings of St. Andrew
flew from her hand and rolled down the hall. The old maidservant rounded the corner, invoked Allah in terror, and tottered away.

“No!” screamed Lucy, as the tall, thin African soldier, more annoyed than angry, pressed her to the floor. Lucy put on a show, she screamed, she begged him not to take the gospel … but she was led back to the room sobbing and miserable. Underwood gentlemanly handed her his handkerchief.

Underwood recognized the cardboard tube. He slipped out the 14th-Century vellum and laughed contentedly, handling it gingerly. “Very nice, very nice,” he cooed. “You're a clever man, Mr. O'Hanrahan. You almost had me going for that scroll, whatever it is, all laid out on the bed just waiting for me.”

“You bastard,” O'Hanrahan seethed, adding as he could to Underwood's mistaken impression.

Lucy, acting upset in a bravura performance, noticed an insignia on the handkerchief, like the one on Underwood's ring. The symbol she and Dr. O'Hanrahan had both encountered before …

Underwood: “I knew you were clever when you stopped using Mr. Merriwether's credit card.”

“Because you were following us using our receipts,” O'Hanrahan said. “Nothing too clever about that … but how did you know we were in Khartoum?”

Underwood was cocky. “Miss Dantan has been kind enough to send in reports of your whereabouts every few days.”

Lucy recoiled in shock. O'Hanrahan stared hard at her—it occurred to them both at the same time: Dr. Shaughnesy.

“The ring,” Lucy mumbled. “It's the same ring!”

She remembered where she'd seen the insignia now: on the ring on Dr. Shaughnesy's long, sepulchral fingers. Dr. O'Hanrahan had raved for years that his unseating from the Theology Department was part of a Masonic plot—my God, his paranoia may have been justified!

“Dr. Shaughnesy,” she said. “You guys are Masons.”

“And not just any,” he said, chuckling. “Scottish Rite but with an added Persian ceremony known only to our elite brotherhood. Mr. Merriwether, one of our members, has quite a few people looking for this and there's a $20,000 reward for who gets it first!” He was delighted like a child. “So thanks for the money, Mr. O'Hanrahan. Dr. Shaughnesy is a fine lodge brother and for his help Mr. Merriwether is going to show his appreciation. I'm sure,” he added to O'Hanrahan, “that must warm your heart to at least know one of your own former colleagues will make out well on this too.”