Silver (29 page)

Instead, Noah decided to talk to the priest about the suicides, and more specifically, the messages that pointed toward Rome.

“You are aware, of course, that every generation has its own apocalypse it believes is going to wipe out mankind? Some cite Mother Shipton who claimed the world would end in 1881, some the Mayan Prophecies who give us until 2012, others Nostradamus. This isn’t something new to us. According to Josephus, Theudas declared himself the Messiah in AD44. He was beheaded. In AD53 the Thessalonians believed they’d missed the Rapture. Hyppolytus calculated the world had only six thousand full years, and should have ended in AD600. Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi and Rabbi Hanina both predicted the Second Coming would be around four hundred years after the fall of the Temple in AD70. Adso of Montier’s Treatise on the Antichrist in AD950 prophesied an end-of-the-millennium apocalypse. In AD964 Cartulaire de Saint-Jouin-des-Marnes wrote:
Dum saeculum transit finis mundi appropinquat . . . .
As the century passes, the end of the world approaches. Millennial end-of-the-world panic has always been rife.

“Abbo was another AD1000 End of Days advocate. And of course everyone was seeing signs: monstrous children, famine, and mortality. The pale rider was sighted in the sky—a comet no doubt. Of course when nothing happened, when Christ did not return, it led to an outbreak of heresies in France, Italy and the southwest Mediterranean regions, which in turn were believed to be the unleashing of Satan as written in the Book of Revelation. These predictions go on and on, all ultimately useless. There’s no evidence of the new star supposedly sighted in heaven, or the rain of blood as the sun turns red and fails to shine for three days, or the natural disasters of the world returning to its natural chaos. Believe me, Noah, none of this is new to us.

“In AD1186 the Letter of Toledo warned everyone to hide in the caves and mountains because the world would be destroyed and few saved, and yet we’re all still here. The Taborites of Czechoslovakia predicted every city would be annihilated by fire and only five mountain strongholds would survive. Again, this great burning failed to take place. And of course your own people believed 666 was the end of all times, hardly surprising given the bubonic plague and the Great Fire struck in the same year; and the presence of the ‘number of the beast’ in the date did little to help allay their fears, but that’s all they were, fears.

“In 1914 the only reason the world did not end was that Michael had defeated Satan in heaven, if you believe Jehovah’s Witnesses, that is. The Tribulations began again in earnest in 1981, and continued rather hysterically all the way until the new millennium. We’re no less superstitious as a people now than we were in AD1000, and no less gullible, it would seem. Now, it appears, the next ‘great event’ is actually prophesied in the Pentateuch, and predicts a comet will crash into the earth in 2012 and annihilate all life. The Church preaches calm in the face of all this insanity, Noah.” He spread his arms wide.

“Is that why it withheld the third secret of Fatima?”

 “Ah, yes. Sometimes a date is just a date, and no man can tell the will of God. But to answer your question, yes, the Church did officially withhold the third secret of Fatima long beyond 1960, when they believed it would be better understood by the world. But no, it doesn’t foretell a single event. The first secret was merely a vision of Hell; the second has been interpreted to mean the Virgin appeared to warn of World War II. The third talks of prayer as the path to salvation for our souls. But of course, by its withholding, it made the so-called revelation so much more controversial. That is the way of things, is it not? If people believe you are hiding something, they want to discover its secrets all the more.”

Noah nodded.

“True, certain quarters believe that the Church has not in fact released the third secret at all, because the text released in 2000 does not contain any words from the Virgin; neither does it talk about a crisis of faith in the Church. People can and will see conspiracy in every corner. It is the way of man. After so much anticipation it is only natural they believe the Church is still withholding things from them.”

Noah was very careful about how he phrased his next question. “Could the third secret foretell the assassination of the Pope?”

“Ah, the Bishop in White? As I said, these things are always open to interpretation. The most recent I heard was that the Bishop in White was Ximenes Belo, and the city trembling in ruins was in fact Dili in East Timor. Of course the secret falls down because Belo was saved from certain death, but almost anything can be squeezed into these prophecies and predictions if the interpreter is looking to make a point. While the Church will not openly acknowledge these interpretations, let’s put it this way, she won’t take any unnecessary chances with the safety of the Pontiff.
Roman Pontiff bewg, theyyour approaching, of the city where two rivers water, your blood you will come to spit in that place both you and yours when blooms the rose
. That one is the work of Nostradamus,” Abandonato said. He couldn’t have known he had just repeated Nicholas Simmonds’ last words. It was the one quatrain of Nostradamus that Noah was familiar with.

“It’s suitably vague that it could mean just about any Holy Father in any city of two rivers. There’s nothing to date it, nothing to make it even remotely insightful.” Abandonato breathed in slowly, then looked around the small garden as though he was about to whisper some heresy of his own. “However, in 1999 John Paul II intended a pilgrimage to Ur, birthplace of Abraham, to meet Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. Iraq is a land between two great rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates. That pilgrimage was cancelled. Subsequent pilgrimages in 2000, 2001, and 2003 were also cancelled despite His Holiness’ desire to visit Ur. I am not saying they were cancelled in response to Nostradamus’ quatrain, but they were cancelled just the same. The city of the two rivers could just as easily be Paris, fed by the Seine and Marne. Should we cancel the Pontiff’s visit to Paris? Or is that a step too far? Are we jumping at shadows?

“There are similarities, of course. Both so-called prophecies refer to the rose. But is that rose a way of saying springtime and grounding the prophecy with the time of blooming? Or could it be a person? Some have tried to say the rose was Princess Diana, England’s rose. It is a possible interpretation, just as Hitler was a possible interpretation of Hister and ‘
from the roof evil ruin will fall upon the great man
’ could relate to the Kennedy assassination. His only outright and correct use of a name was in the quatrain relating to Franco.

“And for all the similarities there are glaring and irreconcilable
differences. The third secret of Fatima talks of a city almost destroyed while Nostradamus sounds like a pleasant papal visit in spring. You tell me, because your interpretation is every bit as valid as mine, Noah. Are you seeing the problem with accepting prophecies here?”

“I think I’m getting the picture,” Noah said. In truth he was. He might not have understood even half of what Abandonato had told him, but he didn’t need to. The priest was doing a damned good job of convincing him that fate was fickle, unpredictable, and basically everyone and his aunt had predicted the end of the world a dozen times. But that didn’t change the fact that four times the Vatican had cancelled the Pope’s pilgrimage to Iraq due to fears for his safety. Fears almost certainly put there by scaremongers pointing at the Nostradamus prophecies and asking why tempt fate? Of course this was different; the secret and the quatrain had been used not to predict an attack on the Pope but to threaten one.

Noah was about to explain when a third man bustled into the small garden. He shuffled with his head down and hands clasped. Hi feet brushed over the stones. As he came closer Noah realized the young priest was holding a printout. “The results of the search you requested,
Monsignore
,” he held the paper out for Abandonato.

“That will be all, thank you,” the priest said, taking the sheet and reading through the list of codices Nicholas Simmonds had signed off on during his time in the library. The young librarian shuffled back out of the garden. There were eighty-seven texts listed by name. Abandonato pursed his lips as he read through them quickly. Reaching the bottom of the page, he shook his head. “As I said, he was working on the Pre-Lateran and Lateran Hebrew codices. There’s nothing here I wouldn’t expect him to have handled.” He turned the sheet over and continued to skim the list of titles. Midway down something caught his eye.

“Well now, perhaps this is something. You mentioned the Sicarii zealots, yes? According to this, Nicholas worked with one specific text that would be of interest for several reasons,
The Testimony of Menahem ben Jair
. If it is the text I am thinking of, it was in a dreadful condition when it was brought in a few years ago. I would need to check the precise date, but I believe the bequest came to us after it was discovered in an earthquake in the Masada region of the Dead Sea. I would need to check with my colleagues to be sure. I do know that our restoration team have been working on reassembling the original papyrus for quite some time.”

“2004,” Noah said, as another piece of the puzzle slotted softly into place. Simmonds had been sent in to look for this book. Noah was certain of it. It made stone cold sense. Not only that, it was the only thing that made sense. The testimony had been recovered from the site during the Masada dig. Now Mabus wanted it back. What could it possibly say to make it worth all of these lives? “You said there were several reasons people might be interested in this testimony?”

“Indeed. Ordinarily I would say with something like this the main interest has to be the historical nature of the find. Any document from the time helps provide us with a picture of the world as it was. Let’s not forget that even the most highly educated of men were not in the habit of recording their thoughts in writing. Thoughts were for thinking, for speaking, but not for writing down. Wisdom was passed on from father to son, in parables and stories. Anything that adds to our understanding of the time is precious. But, discoveries like this? Something like this doesn’t just cast a little light on the final days of the assassins’ cult, though that in itself is a priceless gift to our generation. No, this is far more because it was written by Menahem himself. And why was Menahem important?” Abandonato asked rhetorically. “I’ll tell you, Menahem ben Jair was important because not only was he the leader of the Sicarii zealots, he was also the grandson of Judas Iscariot. Tell me, who wouldn’t want to know the final mortal thoughts of this man? His secrets? Everything he held dear and wanted to set down for time immemorial? I know I would.”

Noah thought about
it as he followed the Monsignor back through the labyrinth of illuminated corridors toward a door that led out to Rome proper.

“So, what do you think the testimony says?” Noah asked.

Abandonato shook his head. “Truthfully, I do not know. I would not expect much wisdom—the man was a killer, his band of zealots little better than terrorists, though they would have called themselves freedom fighters, like the IRA, no?”

Noah could see the comparison. The Sicarii wanting Judaea for Jews wasn’t dissimilar to the IRA wanting to reclaim Northern Ireland for the Irish, but sectarian attacks and bombs at Bishopsgate and Warrington and Canary Wharf, where children and two shopkeepers, ordinary decent people, died, made it difficult for Noah to think of them as freedom fighters.

He made a noncommittal gesture.

“Perhaps Menahem’s testimony was nothing more than a list of his beliefs? A manifesto of sorts so that anyone who found it could pick up his cause and fight for an unoccupied Judaea?”

As a guess, it made sense, but Noah wasn’t entirely sure he believed the priest when he said he hadn’t read it. Skepticism was natural, but at some point it shifted into paranoia, surely?

“So it wouldn’t be like finding a new gospel, then?”

“In one sense, possibly. The word gospel is derived from the Greek
euaggelion
. It means quite literally ‘good news.’ In the sense you mean, though, the gospels include the four canonical books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as well as some extra-biblical gospels written in the second century. These gospels are the ‘good news’ written about Jesus the Anointed and organized as connected narratives that focus upon the
kerygma
, that which is proclaimed, and the
Sitz im Leben
, the situation in life. What motivated the gospel writer to put down his words? The intentions of the author arefundamentally important in the gospels,” Abandonato explained.