The Thirteenth Apostle (14 page)

“It's not a question of money: you're casting doubt on everything they're working for. Together with Judas, you were the disciple my brother Jesus liked best. We know how Peter got rid of Judas, how he eliminates any obstacles on his path. If you disappear as the Iscariot did, a whole portion of memory will disappear too. You need to get away, quickly, and this may be the last time we'll see each other. So I beg you, tell me in which place the Essenes buried Jesus's body. Tell me where his tomb is!”

This man had neither Peter's ambition nor Paul's genius: he was just an ordinary Jewish man asking after his brother. He replied with some vehemence.

“I lived with Jesus for a much shorter time than you did, Iakov. But none of you can possibly understand what I understood about him. You, because you're viscerally attached to Judaism. Paul, because he's always been familiar with the pagan gods of the Empire, and dreams of replacing them with a new religion based on a Christ reconstructed in his own way. Jesus doesn't belong to anyone, my friend, neither to your followers nor to Paul's. He rests in the desert now. The desert alone can protect his body from the Jewish or Greek vultures of the new Church. He was the freest man I have ever met: he wanted to replace the Law of Moses by a new law written not on tablets, but in men's hearts. A law with no other dogma than love.”

James's face darkened. Nobody can touch the Law of Moses: it is the very identity of Israel. He preferred to change the subject.

“You need to leave. And take my mother Mary far away from here: she seems so happy with you…”

“We have a great deal of affection for each other, and I venerate Jesus's mother: her presence at my side fills every minute with joy. You're right, I no longer have any place in Jerusalem or Antioch – I'm leaving. As soon as I know where I'm going to pitch my wanderer's tent, I'll ask Mary to come and join me. Meanwhile, Yokhanan can act as a go-between. For him, she's practically a second mother.”

“Where do you think you'll go?”

The beloved disciple gazed around. The shadows were now lengthening in the
impluvium
, but the window in the upper room was still lit up by the light of the setting sun. It was the room of the last supper with Jesus, eighteen years ago. He needed to leave this place, which was now nothing but an illusion. And seek reality where Jesus himself had found it.

“I'll head east, into the desert: it was during his stay in the desert that Jesus accomplished his transformation, it was there that he realized what his mission would be. I often heard him say, with a smile, that he was surrounded by wild beasts there and that they had respected his solitude.”

He looked Jesus's brother full in the face.

“The desert, James… Perhaps that is now the only land which the disciples of Jesus the Nazorean can call their own. The only place where they can feel at home.”

32

As he took off his choir vestments after the office of lauds, the Father Abbot noticed how drawn and pale Nil's face appeared.

Just as he reached his office, the telephone rang.

Twenty minutes later, when he hung up, he was both perplexed and relieved. He had been surprised to hear Cardinal Catzinger in person informing him that a great honour was to be bestowed on his abbey: the skills of one of his monks were urgently required in the Vatican. An ancient music specialist who worked in the Curia needed help for his investigations into the origins of Gregorian chant. This was important research, which the Holy Father himself hoped would greatly improve relations between Judaism and Christianity. In short, Father Nil was expected forthwith in Rome, so as to put his expertise at the service of the Universal Church. He would be absent for only a few weeks, and he should take the first train: he would be staying at San Girolamo, the Benedictine abbey in Rome.

Just as the late lamented Father Andrei had done.

You don't quarrel with orders from Cardinal Catzinger, the Father Abbot reflected. And Father Nil's recent behaviour had been giving him cause for concern. It was better to shift problems as far away as possible.

Mgr Calfo had been obliged to interrupt his Sunday of pleasures for a moment and hurry over to his nearby office, but he had not managed to reach his Cairo counterpart. He strode briskly up the steps of his apartment block: what awaited him upstairs made him forget the drawbacks of his very Neapolitan paunch, and gave him wings.

Actually, the only jewels on the body of Sonia as she slept were the glints in her hair. Calfo gazed at them appreciatively. “Ah, Baudelaire, what a poet! But personally, I never give them jewels: just a money shot, as it were.”

Mukhtar had been quite right: not only did Sonia turn out to be extremely talented in the erotic arts, but she was also perfectly discreet. Taking advantage of her slumber, he quickly picked up his telephone and dialled the Cairo number again.

“Mukhtar Al-Quraysh, please… I'll hang on, thanks.”

This time they'd managed to get hold of him: he was just back from prayers at the Al-Azhar mosque.

“Mukhtar?
Salam aleikom
. Tell me, are your students leaving you any free time right now? That's great. Get a flight to Rome and we can meet up. It's about continuing the little mission I entrusted you with, for the good of the cause… Collaborating with your favourite enemy? No, it's too early for that, if necessary you can contact him in Jerusalem. Oh, a
few weeks at most! That's right, at the Teatro di Marcello, as usual:
discrezione, mi raccomando!
”

He hung up, smiling. The man to whom he had just been speaking was occasionally invited to lecture at the celebrated Al-Azhar University: he was a fanatic, an ardent defender of Islamic dogma. Getting an Arab and a Jew to work together, two sleeping agents of the most formidable special services in the Middle East, so as to protect the most precious secret of the Catholic Church – all very ecumenical, of course.

It was during his time as Papal Nuncio in Cairo that he had first come across Mukhtar Al-Quraysh. The diplomat and the dogmatic theologian had each discovered that the other was burning with the same hidden inner fire, and this had created an unexpected bond between them. But the Palestinian was not seeking, as he was, to reach transcendence by means of erotic celebrations.

Sonia uttered a little moan and opened her eyes.

He laid the phone down on the bedroom floor, and leant over to her.

33

“Go back to Rome, Mukhtar. The Council of Muslim Brothers has managed to persuade Hamas of the importance of this mission. Their terrorist attacks would not be enough to protect Islam if the revealed nature of the Koran were to be undermined, or if the sacred person of the Prophet – blessed be his name – risked being sullied by the least little insinuation of doubt. But there is one thing…”

Mukhtar Al-Quraysh smiled; he had been expecting this. His dark skin, his muscular build and his shortness of stature brought out in contrast the tall silhouette of Mustapha Mashlur, venerated by all the students at the Al-Azhar University of Cairo.

“It's your relations with the Jewish guy. The fact you're friends with him…”

“He saved my life during the Six Days' War in '67. I was alone and unarmed in front of his tank in the desert, our army had been routed: he could have driven right over my body, it's what happens in war. He halted, gave me a drink and allowed me to live. He's not a Jew like the others.”

“But he
is
a Jew! And not just any Jew, as you know full well.”

They stopped in the shade of the Al-Ghari minaret. Even now, at the end of November, the old man's translucent skin felt vulnerable to the sting of the sun's rays.

“Do not forget the words of
the Prophet: ‘Be the enemies of the Jews and Christians, they are friends with each other! Anyone who takes them as friends is siding with them, and Allah does not lead a people who are in error'.”

“You know the Holy Koran better than anyone, Murshid” – he called the man by his title of “Supreme Guide” to show his respect. “The Prophet in person did not hesitate to form an alliance with his enemies for a common cause, and his attitude is binding in law, even in the case of Jihad. It is not in the interests of either Jews or Arabs to see the age-old foundations of Christianity being shaken to the depths.”

The Supreme Guide gazed at him with a smile.

“We reached that very conclusion a good while before you did, and that's why we'll let you get on with it. But never forget that you are a scion of the tribe that saw the birth of the Prophet – blessed be his name. So behave like a Quraysh, since you bear that glorious patronymic: your friendship for that Jew should never let you forget who he is, or who he is working for. Oil and vinegar may come temporarily into contact – but they will never mix.”

“You can be reassured, Murshid, that the vinegar of a Jew will never bite into a Quraysh: I am thick-skinned. I know that man, and if all our enemies were like him, we might have peace in the Middle East.”

“Peace… There will never be peace for a Muslim until the entire earth bows down five times a day before the kiblah indicating the direction of Mecca.”

They left the protective shade of the minaret and walked in silence towards the entrance of the madrasa, whose dome sparkled in the sun. Before going in, the old man placed his hand on Mukhtar's arm.

“And the girl – you trust her?”

“She's better off in Rome than in the brothel in Saudi Arabia where I took her from! She's behaving herself for the moment. And she has no desire at all to be sent back to her family in Romania. This mission is simple, we're not using any sophisticated tricks: just the good old home-made methods.”

“
Bismillah Al Rahim
. It'll soon be time for prayers, let me go and purify myself.”

For the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brothers, the successor of their founder Hassan al-Banna is, in the eyes of Allah, just one
Muslim –
one submissive human – among others.

Mukhtar leant against a pillar and closed his eyes. Was it the caress of the sun? He could see the scene in his mind's eye: the man had leapt down from his tank and walked towards
him, his right hand raised so that his gunner wouldn't shoot. All around them, the Sinai desert was again swathed in its usual silence, the routed Egyptians were fleeing. Why was he still alive? And why was this Jew not going to kill him there and then?

The Israeli officer seemed to hesitate, the features of his face totally immobile. Suddenly he smiled, and held out a water gourd. As he drank, Mukhtar noted the scar across his forehead, where his hair was cut very short.

Years later, the Intifada exploded in Palestine. In a back alley in Gaza, Mukhtar was cleaning out a block of hovels that the Israelis, coming under pressure and being forced to retreat, had only just abandoned. He came into a yard gutted by grenades: a Jew lay slumped at the foot of a low wall and was groaning quietly as he clutched at his leg. He wasn't wearing the uniform of Tsahal – he was probably a Mossad agent. Mukhtar pointed his Kalashnikov at him and was about to open fire. But when the Jew saw the barrel of the weapon aimed at his chest, his face, crumpled in pain, grew more animated, and he sketched a smile. There was a scar extending from his ear to under his helmet.

The man from the desert!
The Arab slowly stopped aiming his gun at the Jew, cleared his throat and spat. He slipped his left hand into his short pocket, and threw the man a small bundle of emergency bandages.

Then turned on his heel and barked out a brief order to his men: keep advancing, there's nothing and no one in this dive.

Mukhtar sighed: Rome is a beautiful city, plenty of girls to be found there. More than in the desert, that was certain.

He would indeed go back to Rome. With pleasure.

34

Three days later, Nil was trying to settle down on the uncomfortable seats of the Rome express.

He had been completely taken aback to learn he had been summoned to Rome, without any explanations being given. Ancient music manuscripts! The Father Abbot had handed him a train ticket for the following day – it would be impossible for him to go back to Germigny and take a second photo of the stone slab. As well as his files – for he mustn't leave anything compromising in his cell – he had slipped into his suitcase the negative he had stolen from Andrei's office. Would he be able to get anything out of it?

With surprise he noticed that his compartment was almost empty, and yet all the vacant seats were reserved. Just one passenger, a slender middle-aged man, seemed to be asleep, huddled in the corner by the corridor. Since they had left Paris, they had simply nodded to one another. His head was haloed by a mass of blond hair, with a long scar running through it.

Nil took off his clerical jacket and placed it – folded so that it would not get crumpled – on the seat to the right of him.

He closed his eyes.

The aim of monastic life is to track down the passions and eliminate them at their root. From the time he had entered the novitiate, Nil had been well schooled: St Martin's Abbey turned out to be an excellent establishment of self-renunciation. Since all his strength was bent on his search for truth, this caused him little pain. On the contrary, he was glad to be freed from those instincts that enslave humanity, for its greater woe. He could not remember getting angry – a degrading passion – for a long time now. So he hesitated to put a name to what he had been feeling for the past few days. The death of Andrei, the sloppy inquiry,
the line hastily drawn under it all: verdict, suicide – a shameful end. In the monastery they were spying, searching rooms, stealing belongings. Now he was being packed off to Rome like a parcel.

Anger? At all events a mounting irritation, as irritating for him as the sudden epidemic of an illness that had long been kept at bay by regular vaccination.