Jonathan Rabb - The Book of Q

It was several seconds before Cesare answered. “What?”

“The Sox. They’re within four. Might be time to be getting a little nervous.”

Cesare stared at Pearse. “What was the score?”

Pearse continued to gaze at the far wall. “They called it in the sixth. Ten-run rule.”

Cesare couldn’t hide the first hint of a smile. “I thought that was just for Little League?”

Pearse shrugged.

“Well, it’s as close as they’ll get,” said the monk.

Now Pearse smiled. He hoisted himself up, placed a hand on Cesare’s shoulder, and patted the weathered cloth. “Always the pessimist.”

“It’s just that you people never learn, that’s all.” For the first time in the last twenty minutes, he seemed to relax.

Cesare was just getting to his feet when the lights suddenly flicked on in the corridor. At once, panic, then a look of concentrated calculation fixed in his eyes. “The lights for the tourists,” he said as he moved to the door. “They can only be turned on from two floors above.” He scanned the corridor, then turned to Pearse, extending the tube to him. “It’ll take them a few minutes to get down here. Take this and put it back in the hole.”

“Dante, I’m sure-”

“Please, Ian, do as I ask. If this is nothing, you can laugh at me later. Just do this.” Pearse took the tube. “Put the stones back around it, keep your lantern off, and wait ten minutes before leaving. I’ll … try to distract them by going now. Meet me outside the Colosseum in an hour.”

Before Pearse could answer, the monk was through the door, the sound of his feet quickly receding down the corridor. Reluctantly, Pearse did as he was asked and turned off his lantern, the room at once pitch-black save for a tiny patch of light bleeding in through the doorway. The area by the stones, however, remained in complete darkness. He placed the lantern on the floor, then knelt so as to locate the hole. Feeling his way down the wall, he found the opening and slid the tube inside; then, one by one, he replaced the stones. He checked his watch: 4:40. Leaning his head back against the wall, he dropped his shoulders and closed his eyes.

The Manichaeans . Pearse couldn’t help but smile. Scourge of the true believers . Fifteen hundred years trapped in obscurity, and they were now forcing him to sit in a damp cave in the basement of a church waiting for the lights to go out. What could be more appropriate, he thought, from the “Brothers of the Light”?

Truth be told, even Augustine had been drawn in by the Manichaean mystique, a devoted member for a time, enticed by the sect’s response to the great question of the day: Whence comes evil? Pearse recalled how the subject had amounted to nothing less than a mania with the early Christians, all of whom had agreed, Not from a perfect God. But if not from God-source of all things-then from where? The Manichaeans, from the bits and pieces he remembered, had opted for a rather ingenious approach: the Persian dualism-the world torn between two combatant kingdoms of light and darkness, spirit and nature-forcing men to rely on reason to distinguish between the two. Suddenly, self-knowledge had held the key to salvation. Perhaps above even faith-a step the young Augustine had ultimately refused to take. How bitterly had he then turned on his onetime comrades, branded them heretics, forced them underground, a nascent sect destined for extinction. How vital it had been for him to stamp out the dangerous, if subtle, simplicity of their teaching.

And how dramatically, Pearse thought, had all that changed in the last fifteen hundred years. The Mass upstairs: still in the midst of Communion, now an everyday occurrence, no need to ponder its deeper meaning, the controversies long ago forgotten. No more battles to be won, no heresies to be put down, nothing that might provoke any real debate.

Faith at its most docile.

Shaking the more modern doubts from his mind, Pearse tried to concentrate on Cesare. As much as he wanted to dismiss the claim that Ruini’s death had been anything but natural, the intensity in the monk’s plea now forced him, if only for a moment, to consider the other, far more unsettling possibility. Even then, it didn’t make any sense. The newspapers had said heart failure. So, too, had the church. Why? To cover up a scroll? The Manichaeans? It was … absurd.

The sound of footsteps in the corridor brought his eyes open. Without thinking, he edged himself closer to the wall. It was an unnecessary precaution, as he sat shrouded in darkness, but the instinct to feel rock against his back won out over reason. He waited, certain that in a few moments a familiar face from the church above would peer through the doorway and ask him the embarrassing question: what exactly was he doing here? He tried to think of an answer as the steps drew closer, but there was something to them that stole his attention-too measured, too precise. Whoever was out there was coming slowly, as if looking for something.

Or someone.

For the first time since the strange jaunt had begun, Pearse felt uneasy. He pulled his knees into his chest and stared into the light coming from the corridor.

“He’s moving to the old church.” The sound of Italian echoed in the hall, the voice from a radio. “We have him.” All at once, a figure ran past the doorway, too fast for Pearse to catch any features. A man of average height. Dark hair. A raincoat. A few more seconds, and the sound of his steps faded to nothing.

Pearse didn’t move. The intrusion of the voice had been enough to jar him, but the words were what froze him to the ground.

We have him .

Anxiety became genuine fear, Cesare’s sense of urgency now his own as Pearse tried to conceive a logical explanation for the last half minute. But he couldn’t. The passionless voice over the radio coupled with the terror in the monk’s eyes discounted every choice but one. The old church .

Without thinking, he bolted upright, his head nearly knocking into the ceiling as he moved to the door, lantern once again in hand. He inched his face out and peered along the corridor. Nothing. Running out, he ducked low, only to realize some fifteen seconds later that he had no idea how to get to the old church. Rough walls had given way to smoother ones, the roof now affording a few inches above his head, but there was no indication of which was the right way to go. He had passed a stairwell a few yards back; now he stood at the crossroads of three separate paths, each extending into distant shadows. He stopped and tried to listen for any movement up ahead, but the sound of flowing water made that all but impossible.

He chose the central alley, careful to keep his movements as quiet as possible, all the while his ears perked up for the least bit of sound up ahead. Still nothing. He reached the end of the passageway and again had a choice of two. Trying to orient himself, he closed his eyes so as to visualize the twists and turns he had made, superimposing some vague map of the church over his various meanderings. It only confused him more. He opted for the left, again picking up the pace, soon aware that he had gone much too far not to have passed the underground church. But there had been no turnoff, no other possibilities other than straight ahead. He thought about turning back, but he knew that would be equally futile.

After a maddening few minutes, he finally came to a set of stairs. Taking them two at a time, he barreled his way up, first one level, then the next, his collar soaked with perspiration as he finally emerged at a large iron gate. For a panicked moment, he remembered the key Cesare had needed. Here, however, it was only a metal pole wedged into the stone floor, enough to lift it a few inches and slide the gate back. A sign reading PRIVATO hung on the other side. He pulled the gate shut behind him and walked into a small atrium, a door at the far end, the church’s cobblestoned courtyard visible through the glass.