Contract With God by Juan Gómez-Jurado Read Free Book Online Page B

she wasn’t listening, Andrea went into the bedroom to pack.

9
    RELICS CRYPT
    VATICAN CITY
     
    Friday, 7 July 2006. 8:29 p.m.
    The knock at the door startled Brother Cesáreo. Nobody came down to the crypt, not only because access was restricted to a very few people, but also because it was damp and unhealthy, despite the four dehumidifiers that hummed constantly in each corner of the enormous space. Pleased to have company, the old Dominican friar smiled as he opened the security door, standing on tiptoe to embrace his visitor.
    ‘Anthony!’
    The priest smiled and embraced the smaller man.
    ‘I was in the neighbourhood . . .’
    ‘I swear by God, Anthony, how did you manage to get this far? This place has been monitored by cameras and security alarms for some time now.’
    ‘There’s always more than one entrance if you take your time and know the way. You taught me, remember?’
    The old Dominican massaged his goatee with one hand and patted his large belly with the other, laughing heartily. Under the streets of Rome was a system of more than three hundred miles of tunnels and catacombs, some of them over two hundred feet beneath the city. It was a veritable museum, a maze of winding, unexplored passages that linked almost every part of the city, including the Vatican. Twenty years earlier, Fowler and Brother Cesáreo had dedicated their spare time to exploring those dangerous and intricate tunnels.
    ‘It looks like Cirin will have to revisit his flawless security system. If an old dog like you can slip in here . . . But why not use the front door, Anthony? I hear that you’re no longer persona non grata with the Holy Office. And I’d love to know why.’
    ‘Actually, now I may be a little too grata for some people’s taste.’
    ‘Cirin wants you back in, doesn’t he? Once that low-rent Machiavelli gets his teeth into you, he doesn’t let go easily.’
    ‘And old guardians of relics can be stubborn too. Especially when speaking of things they’re not supposed to know about.’
    ‘Anthony, Anthony. This crypt is the best kept secret in our tiny country, but its walls echo with rumours.’ Cesáreo waved his arms at the surroundings.
    Fowler looked up. The ceiling of the crypt, supported by stone arches, was black from the smoke of the millions of candles that had illuminated the space for almost two thousand years. In recent times, however, a modern electrical system had replaced the candles. The rectangular space was roughly two hundred and fifty feet square, part of which had been hewn from the living rock by pickaxe. On the walls, from ceiling to floor, were doors that concealed niches containing the remains of various saints.
    ‘You’ve spent too much time breathing in this horrible air, and it certainly doesn’t help your clients either,’ said Fowler. ‘Why are you still down here?’
    It was a little known fact that for the past seventeen hundred years in every Catholic church, no matter how humble, a relic from a saint had been hidden in the altar. And this site housed the largest collection of such relics in the world. Some of the niches were almost empty, containing only small fragments of bone, while in others the whole skeleton was intact. Each time a church was built anywhere in the world, a young priest would pick up a steel suitcase from Brother Cesáreo and travel to the new church to deposit the relic inside the altar.
    The old historian took off his glasses and wiped them with the hem of his white habit.
    ‘Security. Tradition. Stubbornness,’ said Cesáreo in answer to Fowler’s question. ‘The words that define our Holy Mother the Church.’
    ‘Excellent. Besides the damp, this place reeks of cynicism.’
    Brother Cesáreo tapped the screen of his powerful Mac book Pro on which he had been writing when his friend arrived.
    ‘Locked in here are my truths, Anthony. Forty years of work cataloguing bone fragments. Have you ever sucked on an ancient bone, my friend? It’s an