The Lost Island by Douglas Preston Read Free Book Online Page B

parchment, and buckram. In the middle stood a refectory table and chairs. The room beyond was exactly its opposite: a sterile white-walled laboratory, all stainless steel and plastic surfaces, lit by stark fluorescent lighting.
    Glinn motioned toward the table. “Please, sit down.”
    Gideon complied silently, and Garza took a seat opposite him. A moment later a lab-coated technician came in carrying an enlarged digital reproduction of the strange map that had been hidden beneath the Chi Rho painting. With a nod from Glinn, he laid the map out on the table, then withdrew.
    Glinn opened a sideboard beside the fireplace, revealing various cut-glass decanters and bottles and a small refrigerator. “Would anyone care for a drink?”
    Gideon shook his head.
    Glinn poured himself a measure of port in a hand-blown tumbler. He brought it to the table, took a sip, gave a small sigh of satisfaction, and laid his claw-like hand down on the map.
    “I’d like to tell you a story about a man named Saint Columba.”
    Gideon waited.
    “Columba entered the Clonard Monastery in Ireland around the year 550. He was a big, powerful man, strong and self-assured, not at all the stereotypical image of a humble monk. He was also charismatic and intelligent, and he quickly attracted notice. His mentor at the monastery was a monk named Saint Finian. As the years passed, Columba’s fame and circle of friends grew. However, over the course of a decade, the two men—student and teacher—gradually came into opposition. In 560, they got into a terrific argument over who had the right to copy a rare psalter. Both had fiery tempers, and both had powerful friends. The dispute escalated, drawing in others, until it culminated in a fight—a battle, in fact. A horrific slaughter ensued, in which as many as three thousand people were killed. It became known in history as the Battle of the Book. The church was horrified and, blaming Columba, decided to excommunicate him. But Columba pleaded with them. He managed to avert excommunication by agreeing to go into exile in the savage hinterlands of Scotland and convert three thousand pagans to atone for the three thousand killed in the battle.
    “So he and a group of monks departed by sea from Ireland to Scotland, carrying with them Columba’s priceless collection of manuscripts. They landed on a lonely island off the coast of Scotland, in the heart of the tribal lands of the Picts. There, Columba founded the Abbey of Iona.”
    Glinn paused, slowly lifting the glass full of tawny liquid to his thin lips and taking a long sip.
    “Enter our client. I regret that I cannot reveal his identity. Suffice it to say he is a man of unimpeachable integrity who has only the good of humanity as his goal.”
    “Or so the client assures us,” Garza rumbled.
    Glinn turned to Garza. “So I assure you. You well understand, Manuel, our requirements about client confidentiality.”
    “Of course. But as chief of operations for this project, I’d like to know who I’m working for.”
    There was a brief, uncomfortable silence. Finally, Glinn cleared his throat and went on. “Our client is, among other things, a collector of medieval manuscripts. In his searches, he came across an incomplete set of documents kept at Iona: Annales Monasterii Columbae , ‘annals of the monastery of Columba.’ It was a sort of daily journal of the goings-on at the monastery. They were written in Latin, of course. It was a very rare find, as these sorts of records almost never survive.
    “The Annales told a curious story about a monk who found an old Greek manuscript among the monastery’s stores of secondhand vellum. The vellum had already been scraped, ready to be bleached and reused. According to the journal, however, the old Greek text was still legible. The monk read it, was amazed, and brought it to Saint Columba.”
    Glinn plucked a sheet of paper from his jacket pocket and referred to it. “The manuscript in question was an early