Paul Christopher - The Lucifer Gospel

“Then I guess we’ve reached a dead end,” said Finn. All she wanted to do now was leave, to have some time to think about everything that had happened during the last few days.

“Perhaps so,” said the old man. “It depends of course on what you were trying to accomplish in the first place.”

“We want to find out why everyone’s so interested in this Lucifer Africanus guy for one thing,” said Hilts. He stood up, walked to the table and picked up the cigarette case, snapping it shut over the medallion. “Interested enough to kill for sixtyfive years ago, and interested enough to kill for now.” He handed the old tin box to Finn, who dropped it back into the pocket of her jacket.

Vergadora peered up at them over his glasses from the other side of the table and slipped the pipe out of his mouth. He pushed a nicotine-yellow thumb into the bowl, tamping down the plug of ash and tobacco.

“My suggestion would be to abandon your quest before your curiosity kills you like it did Pedrazzi,” the white-haired gentleman cautioned. There was something in his voice now other than the soft tones of a retired professor. The warning sounded more like a threat, and a threat with something dark and menacing behind it. “Old secrets are like old wounds; they fester.”

“How long have you worked for Mossad?” asked Hilts flatly.

“You mean Hamossad Le’mode’in U’le’tafkidim Meyuchadim, the Institute for Coordination? Israeli Intelligence?” The old man smiled. “Believe me, young man, I really am nothing more than a retired university professor.”

“Sure you are,” said Hilts. He turned to Finn. “I think we should be going.”

Finn stood.

“Thank you for your help, signore,” she said, and held out her hand.

Vergadora climbed to his feet. He shook her hand, his grip strong and firm. “You are traveling in dangerous seas,” he said. “It would be a shame if you were hurt in a battle that was not yours to fight.”

“Maybe you’re right,” she replied. He seemed sincere enough, but again there was an undertone of threat in the old man’s voice.

He walked them to the door and stood at the entrance as they climbed back into their rental car, and watched them as they drove away down the long drive that ran between the poplars and through the ancient grove of olive trees. Then he turned and went back into the villa.

“So what do you make of all of that?” Hilts asked as they drove away.

“I’m not sure,” said Finn, gearing down as she made the turn off Vergadora’s drive, then up again as the car reached the main road. “I wasn’t kidding, all that talk gave me a headache.”

“A lot of it was just that, talk,” grunted Hilts. He tapped his fingers on the dashboard angrily. “The old man’s very good at his job, I’ll give him that.”

“What job?”

“Leading us down the garden path. All that crap about Pedrazzi. He knows something about what Adamson’s up to in the here and now. Forget about the past.”

“What was that about him working for Israeli Intelligence? That’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it-just because he’s Jewish?”

“It’s not because he’s Jewish, it’s about what he knows-how well and how much. Not to mention the fact that there aren’t too many people around who know the original name of the Mossad. Nobody’s called it the Institute for Coordination since the fifties. A retired history professor who knows that much about the current state of the intelligence community is more than just a retired history professor. I’m pretty sure he’s at least a sayan, if not something else.”

“What’s that?”

“The sayanim are Israeli ‘sleepers,’ all over the world, in all walks of life, ready to help an operation at a moment’s notice. He fits the profile perfectly.” Hilts shook his head. “He even has his pal Al Pacino at City Hall as an early-warning system.”

“Why would he warn us off that way?” Finn asked. “He hasn’t been hanging around in his villa for all these years waiting for us.”

“Not us,” said Hilts. “Anybody who came along showing interest in Pedrazzi or the rest of the story.”

“But why?” Finn insisted. “It’s ancient history. When you get right down to it, does anybody really care about some man who commanded a legion two thousand years ago?”

“The operative date is two thousand years ago. Most of the Western world, the U.S. in particular, sets its watch by that particular clock. The Catholic Church is based on it.”

“Sure,” Finn said and laughed, easing her foot off the gas as they came up behind an ancient tractor pulling a wagonload of manure. “An old Jewish rabbi working for the Vatican.”

“Add it up,” said Hilts. “They tried to kill us in Cairo. A monk from Jerusalem starts sniffing around. Adamson and his pals are up to something in the desert that’s not quite kosher, as Vergadora would put it. We wind up crossing paths with somebody who’s playing possum in a place that’s historically and recently connected to whatever’s going on. A man who’s just waiting for someone to come along and say the magic words, Luciferus Africanus. A man with his own secrets.”

“Such as?”

“Remember when I got up to use the bathroom back at the villa?”

“Yes.”

“I wasn’t using the bathroom, I was snooping.”

“And?”

“Why does an old rabbi who clearly doesn’t like our murderous friend from the past, Brother DeVaux, have the number of another Franciscan monk in his personal telephone book?”

“Was there an address?” Finn asked. They had reached the traffic circle for the Autostrada. They could go either west toward Rome or north to Milan.

“Yeah, there was an address.”

“Where?”

“Lausanne, Switzerland. The Monastery of St. Franзois. Where Vergadora spent the war with Signore Olivetti, remember?”

Finn turned north.

Finn Ryan, still fully dressed, lay on the bed in her hotel room and listened to the sounds of the sleeping city. She and Hilts had driven straight through from Venosa, stopping only once for a quick bite to eat at a roadside restaurant. The made the journey in a little less than eight hours. They spent another hour and a half getting thoroughly lost in the two-thousand-year-old metropolis, finally dumping the rental car in what seemed to be Milan’s last available parking spot, then walked until they found a relatively inexpensive hotel willing to rent them rooms without reservations and almost no luggage.

The rooms turned out to be tiny, perched under the eaves on the top floor with a view out over the dusty street instead of the hotel courtyard, with its newly renovated open-air garden and restaurant. Both of them were too tired for food, so they’d simply said good night and gone to their separate rooms. But sleep had not come. She was worried, and even the warm night air seemed charged with apprehension. She longed for a bath, but to strip and slip into the welcoming heat would somehow make her too vulnerable. Visions from old Alfred Hitchcock movies swarmed through her mind like buzzing bees.

Through her open window Finn could hear the distant sound of traffic, and closer, the echoing of tapping, high-heeled footsteps on the hard cobbles of the street and the sound of shrill female laughter. Someone made a comment and the woman laughed again, while a male companion made a mocking, hooting sound. Suddenly she started as she heard the muted shriek of a train whistle cutting through the dark night air; Milan’s gigantic and brutal Stazione Centrale hunched like one of Mussolini’s stone nightmares only a few blocks away, the huge white granite hulk proof of the clichй that if nothing else Il Duce had made the Italian trains run on time.