“Francis is one of the Church’s most beloved saints, but he didn’t invent the notion of caring for the poor. It was ingrained in Christianity from the beginning. And now, two millennia later, thousands of Roman Catholics around the world are doing the same thing, every hour of every day. I think that’s worth preserving, don’t you?”

“I once told Lucchesi that I would never want to live in a world without the Roman Catholic Church.”

“Did you? He never mentioned it.” They arrived at the basilica. “Shall we go inside and see the paintings?”

“Next time,” quipped Gabriel.

It was three fifteen. They retraced their steps to the abbey, and once again Donati rang the bell. A moment passed before a male voice answered. He spoke Italian with a distinct British accent.

“Good afternoon. May I help you?”

“I’m here to see Father Jordan.”

“I’m afraid he doesn’t accept visitors.”

“I believe he’ll make an exception in my case.”

“Your name?”

“Archbishop Luigi Donati.” He released the call button and gave Gabriel a sidelong glance. “Membership has its privileges.”

The lock snapped open. A hairless, black-habited Benedictine waited in the shadows of an internal courtyard. “Forgive me, Excellency. I wish someone had told us you were coming.” He extended a soft, pale hand. “I’m Simon, by the way. Follow me, please.”

They entered the church of San Pietro through a side door, crossed the nave, and emerged into another internal court. The next door gave onto the abbey itself. The monk conveyed them to a modestly furnished common room overlooking a green garden. Actually, thought Gabriel, it was more like a small farm. Surrounded by a high wall, it was invisible to the outside world.

The Benedictine asked them to make themselves comfortable and then withdrew. Ten minutes elapsed before he finally returned. He was alone.

“I’m sorry, Excellency. But Father Jordan is praying now and wishes not to be disturbed.”

Donati opened his briefcase and removed the manila envelope. “Show him this.”

“But—”

“Now, Don Simon.”

Gabriel smiled as the monk fled the room. “It seems your reputation precedes you.”

“I doubt Father Jordan will be so easily impressed.”

Another fifteen minutes passed before the British monk returned. This time he was accompanied by a small, dark man with a weathered face and a shock of unkempt white hair. Father Robert Jordan was wearing an ordinary cassock rather than the black habit of the Benedictines. In his right hand was the envelope.

“I came here to get away from Rome. Now it seems Rome has come to me.” Father Jordan’s gaze settled on Gabriel. “Mr. Allon, I presume.”

Gabriel said nothing.

Father Jordan removed the page from the envelope and held it up to the afternoon light streaming through the window. “It’s paper, not vellum. It looks to be from the fifteenth or sixteenth century.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it,” replied Donati.

Father Jordan lowered the page. “I’ve been searching for this for more than thirty years. Where on earth did you find it?”

“It was given to me by a priest who works in the Secret Archives.”

“Does the priest have a name?”

“Father Joshua.”

“Are you sure?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m quite certain I know everyone who works in the Archives, and I’ve never heard of anyone by that name.” Father Jordan looked down at the page again. “Where’s the rest of it?”

“It was removed from the papal study the night of the Holy Father’s death.”

“By whom?”

“Cardinal Albanese.”

Father Jordan looked up sharply. “Before or after His Holiness died?”

Donati hesitated, then said, “It was after.”

“Dear God,” whispered Father Jordan. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

27

ABBEY OF ST. PETER, ASSISI

THE MONK RETURNED WITH AN earthenware carafe of water, a loaf of coarse bread from the monastery’s bakery, and a bowl of olive oil produced by an abbey-supported cooperative. Father Jordan explained that he had worked there the previous summer, repairing the damage done to his body by a lifetime of teaching and study. It was obvious he had spent a great deal of time in the out-of-doors of late; his sunbaked face was the color of terra-cotta. His Italian was animated, flawless. Indeed, were it not for his name and his American-accented English, Gabriel would have assumed that Robert Jordan had lived his entire life in the hills and valleys of Umbria.

In truth, he had been raised in the comfortable Boston suburb of Brookline. A brilliant Jesuit academic, he served on the faculties at Fordham and Georgetown before coming to the Pontifical Gregorian University, where he taught history and theology. His private research, however, focused on the apocryphal gospels. Of particular interest to Father Jordan were the Passion apocrypha, especially the gospels and letters focusing on Pontius Pilate. They were, he said, depressing reading, for they seemed to have but one purpose—to acquit Pilate of the death of Jesus and place the blame squarely on the heads of the Jews and their descendants. Father Jordan believed that, intentionally or not, the Gospel writers had erred in their depiction of the trial and execution of Jesus, an error compounded by the inflammatory teachings of Church Fathers from Origen to Augustine.

In the mid-1980s, he learned he was not alone. Without the knowledge of the Jesuit superior general or his chancellor at the Gregoriana, he joined the Jesus Task Force, a group of Christian scholars who attempted to create an accurate portrait of the historical Jesus. The group published its findings in a controversial book. It argued that Jesus was an itinerant sage and faith healer who neither walked on water nor miraculously fed the multitudes with five loaves of bread and two fish. He was put to death by the Romans as a public nuisance—not for challenging the authority of the Temple elite—and did not rise bodily from the dead. The concept of the Resurrection, the task force concluded, was based on visions and dreams experienced by Jesus’ closest followers, a view first put forward in 1835 by the theologian David Friedrich Strauss, a German Protestant.

“When the book was published, my name didn’t appear in the text. Even so, I was terrified my participation would become public. Late at night I waited for the dreaded knock at the door from the Holy Office of the Inquisition.”

Donati reminded Father Jordan that the Holy Office was now known as the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.

“A rose by any other name, Father Donati.”

“I’m an archbishop, Robert.”

Father Jordan smiled. His participation in the task force, he continued, did not shake his belief in the divinity of Jesus or the core tenets of Christianity. If anything, it strengthened his faith. He had never believed that everything in the New Testament—or in the Torah, for that matter—happened as described, and yet he believed with all his heart in the Bible’s core truths. It was why he had come to Assisi, to be closer to God, to live his life the way Jesus had led his, unburdened by property or possessions.