Glenn Cooper - Book of Souls

The man smelled rank, probably worse than the corpse. “Monsieur Jacques Vizet, sir. A pious man, a shipowner.”

“When did he die?”

“When? In the night.” The man was anxious to change the topic. “Would you care to give alms to a poor man?” His toothless, leering smile disgusted Edgar, but he nevertheless reached for his purse and gave the wretch his smallest coin.

“What purpose was that?” Jean asked him.

“Another name for my precious book,” Edgar said gleefully. “Come, let us run the last!”

When they arrived, panting and sweating at the Pre-auxclerc, their fellow students were filing back into their classroom for the prescribed session of liturgical study. Principal Tempete, himself, was patrolling the yard in his long brown cloak, plunging his cane into the snow as if he were stabbing the earth. Plumes of hot breath indicated he was muttering to himself. “Cantwell! Cauvin! Come here!”

The boys gulped and dutifully approached the bearded tyrant. Jean decided this was not an ideal time to correct the cleric’s non-Latinate fashioning of his name.

“Where were you?”

“We left the College grounds, Principal,” Jean answered.

“I know that.”

“Was that not permitted?” Jean asked innocently.

“I asked where you went!”

“To the Cathedral de Notre Dame, Principal,” Edgar said suddenly.

“Oh yes? Why?”

“To pray, Principal.”

“Is that so?”

Jean chimed in, seemingly willing to lie for his new friend. “Is it not better, Principal, to exercise the soul than the poor body? The Cathedral is a wondrous place to praise God, and we were much benefited by the interlude.”

Tempete pumped his hand on the cane handle, frustrated that he could find no excuse to wield it like a club. He grumbled something unintelligible and trod off.

It was all Edgar could do to keep himself focused enough to avoid the whip for the rest of the day. His mind was elsewhere. He desperately wanted to get his hands on his book and find out if the snow did indeed taste like custard.

The snow had stopped falling in the evening, and as the students made their way back to their dormitory after final chapel, the bright moonlight was making the surface of the courtyard snow appear like it was studded with millions of diamonds. Edgar looked over his shoulder and saw that Jean was making a beeline to follow him. For a skeptical soul, he was certainly overcome with a zestful enthusiasm.

Jean was on his heels when Edgar entered his room, and once the candles were lit, he hovered as Edgar retrieved the book from his chest.

“Find the date,” Jean urged him. “Twenty-one February, come on!”

“Why so are you so excited, Jean? You do not believe in the book.”

“I am anxious to expose this fraud, so I can return without distraction to my more productive studies.”

Edgar snorted. “We shall see.”

He sat down on his bed and tilted the book to catch the light. He flipped the pages furiously until he found the first entry for the twenty-first of the month. He stuck his finger at the spot and flipped forward until he saw the first notation of the twenty-second. “My goodness,” he whispered, “there are names aplenty for a single day.”

“Be systematic, my friend. Start from the first and read to the last. Otherwise, you will waste our time.”

In ten minutes, Edgar’s eyes were red and dry and the fatigue of a long day was catching up with him. “I am more than halfway through, but I fear I will miss something. Can you finish the task, Jean?”

The two boys traded places, and Jean slowly moved his finger down the page from row to row, name to name. He turned a page, then another, blinking rapidly and silently mouthing all the names, some of them difficult or impossible to decipher owing to the multiplicity of languages and scripts.

Then his finger stopped.

“ Mon Dieu!”

“What is it, Jean?”

“I see it, but I can scarcely believe it! Look, Edgar, here-21 February 1537 Fremin du Bois Natus!”

“I told you! I told you! Now what do you say my doubting French friend?”

And then, a quarter page below he spied this: 21 February 1537 Jacques Vizet Mors.

He tapped the entry with his finger and bade the amazed Jean to read it also.

The spasm began in his diaphragm and rose through his chest into his throat and mouth. Jean’s sobs alarmed Edgar until he realized his friend was shedding tears of joy.

“Edgar,” he exclaimed, “this is the happiest moment of my life. I now see, in one instant and with absolute clarity, that God foresees all! No amount of good works or prayer can force God to change His holy mind. All is set. All is predestined. We are truly in His hands, Edgar. Come, kneel with me. Let us pray to His Almighty Glory!”

The two boys knelt beside each other and prayed for a long time until Edgar slowly lowered his head against his bed and began snoring. Jean gently helped him onto his mattress and covered him with his blanket. Then he reverentially returned the large book to the chest, snuffed out the candles, and silently left the room.

Isabelle worked for an hour making a careful translation onto a lined pad. Calvin’s handwriting was no better than a chicken scrawl, and the old French constructions and spellings challenged all her linguistic skills. At one point she paused and asked Will whether he’d care for a “little drinkie.” He was sorely tempted, but he resolutely declined. Maybe he’d give in, maybe he wouldn’t. At least it wasn’t going to be a snap decision.

Instead, he decided to text a message to Spence. He assumed the fellow must be crawling out of his skin, wondering how he was getting on. He wasn’t inclined to deliver blow-by-blow progress reports-it wasn’t his style. For years at the Bureau, he drove his superiors to distraction by holding his investigations close to the vest, offering up information only when he needed a warrant or a subpoena, or better yet, when he had the case all wrapped up in ribbons and bows.

His thumbs were absurdly large on the cell-phone buttons, and the mechanics of texting never came to him naturally. It took an inordinate amount of time to send the simple message: Making considerable progress. 2 down 2 to go. No guarantees but hopeful. 1 thing certain. We now know a lot more than we did before. U won’t be disappointed. Tell Kenyon that John Calvin is involved! Hope to be back in NY in a couple of days. Piper.

He hit SEND and smiled. It hit him: all this sleuthing around the old house, the intellectual thrill of the chase: he was enjoying himself-maybe he’d have to rethink his notions of retirement, after all.

Fifteen minutes later, the message was forwarded from the Operations Center at Area 51 to Frazier’s BlackBerry. His Learjet was taxiing to a halt on the Groom Lake runway. He was due for a morning briefing with the base commander and Secretary Lester, who’d be patched in via videocon. At least he’d have something new to report. He read the message a second time, forwarded it to DeCorso in the field, and thought, who the hell is this John Calvin guy? He e-mailed one of his analysts to get a rundown on all the John Calvins in their database.

His analyst had the diplomatic good sense to baldly reply with a link to a Wikipedia page. Frazier scanned it before stepping into the briefing room in the Truman Building deep underground at the Vault level. For Christ’s sake, he moaned to himself. A sixteenth-century religious scholar? What was his job turning into?

Isabelle put her pen down and announced she was done. “Okay, a little background. Calvin was born in 1509 in a village called Noyon and was sent to study in Paris round about 1520. He went to a couple of schools affiliated with the University of Paris, first the College de Marche for general studies, then Montaigu College for theology. You sure you don’t want a drink?”