Paul Christopher: The Lucifer Gospel

“He must have slipped it into my jacket when he grabbed me,” she whispered hoarsely. “I didn’t know.”

“So now what do we do?” said Hilts, driving them away.

Finn let her head drop back wearily again and closed her eyes. Who knew what the scroll contained? What promise, what words, what power?

“I’ve Got An Idea.” She Smiled.

Finn stood on the Promenade Deck of the Freedom of the Seas and leaned over the side, watching as the smooth green waters of the Caribbean parted for the massive bulk of the 158,000-ton vessel. To Finn the enormous thing barely counted as a ship except for the fact that it had a relatively sharp end and a reasonably rounded one.

She knew she was old-fashioned, but to her ships were supposed to evoke some sense of passage and adventure, not simply be huge, top-heavy excuses for rock walls to climb, surf-slide wave machines, and monolithic shopping malls that floated. The boat even had its own television station broadcasting regular, enlightening programs on exactly what percentage you should tip various staff members on board.

Finn, who could remember traveling across the Atlantic on the stately and sophisticated QE2 with her parents, wasn’t particularly impressed by a ship with the naval architecture of a Wheaties box and the marketing style of a Wal-Mart. If a ship like this ever hit an iceberg it wouldn’t sink, it would come apart like pieces of LEGO.

Still, it was the only way to accomplish what she wanted to achieve and it had given them an excuse to visit with Lloyd Tereo and Tucker Noe and Lyman Mills at Hollaback Cay before setting out from Nassau as the Freedom made her inaugural cruise of the islands after her recent launch. They were well over the Tongue of the Ocean now. Finn wondered how many people jacking up their credit cards on board had even the slightest awareness of the depth of water underneath the thin metal skin of the big white ship. Barely six feet of Finnish aluminum and sheet steel between them and a two-mile drop into oblivion.

She stared out over the expanse of bright water and thought about the weed-and-coral-shrouded ghost of the Acosta Star, lying out there, not too far away now, hidden by the rolling ocean, keeping her secrets and her dead. Would Freedom of the Seas have an ending like that, a burial at sea? Not likely. In a few years, when her silly innovations became passй and were no longer cost-effective, she’d probably wind up being hacked to pieces for scrap on the breakers beach at Alang on the Indian coast, the great and terrible grave-yard for ships past their time.

For a moment, feeling the soft Caribbean breeze on her cheek, she found herself thinking about Devereaux and her father and poor old Arthur Simpson, found murdered in a ditch in Over the Hill, a dangerous and unsavory part of Nassau where an old white man had no business being. His throat had been slit and his wallet and watch were stolen, but Finn knew he’d almost certainly been a victim of Adamson’s thugs.

Nothing had been heard about Adamson’s own disappearance and demise beyond a press release that said the billionaire businessman had been lost during a sandstorm at the Libyan dig. There had been no mention of the Lucifer Gospel or Finn and Hilts’s involvement with its discovery. According to her friend Michael Valentine in New York, their involvement with the death of Vergadora in Italy had been put down to a case of mistaken identity and forgotten. Hilts of course was positive that Mickey Hearts’s Italian connections had something to do with the whitewash.

“Hey,” said Hilts, joining her at the rail. “You about ready?”

“Just about,” she said and nodded, smiling.

“You’re sure you want to do this?” asked her friend, a look of concern on his handsome face. His eyes were hidden behind the amber lenses of his sunglasses, but he was frowning. “We’re talking about an incredibly valuable historic artifact.”

“Devereaux was right,” she said quietly. “For the Gospel or any part of it to fall into anybody’s hands would be the wrong hands.” Behind her a twelve-year-old in a bikini was trying to climb onto a surfboard on the machine-made roller in the pool behind her. It sounded like a washing machine coming alive. “Some secrets should remain secrets, some mysteries should remain mysterious.”

“Then why did he give it to you?” asked Hilts.

“To give me the choice. To give me the chance to do the right thing.” She shrugged. “Maybe to let someone else make the final decision.”

“That makes you the Last Keeper,” said Hilts.

Finn took the scroll, bound in leather with its gold chain around it, out of her bag. She held it in her hand tightly for a moment and then with a single, rushing movement she pitched the bundle as far as she could out into the air. Together they watched as it arced through the bright morning air, then finally hit the surface of the emerald sea and vanished beneath the waves.

“Not anymore,” she said at last. “Not anymore.”