The Lost Testament by James Becker Read Free Book Online Page B

in addition to the two words that Mahmoud had already partially deciphered and that he had believed were parts of proper names. None of them appeared to be particularly helpful. In the order in which they appeared on the parchment, the translated meanings were: “down,” “along,” “fighting,” “battle,” “soldiers,” “street,” “house,” “ran” and “cloak.” And there was another word that he couldn’t make any sense of because it didn’t appear in the dictionary—could that be another proper noun, perhaps the name of a town or other location?
    It looked to him as if it was a description of a skirmish, possibly between a Roman legion and some unspecified enemy, but exactly who that enemy might have been, and where and when the conflict had taken place—because he had never heard of any town or country that sounded like the proper name he thought he’d discovered—he had absolutely no idea.
    But Husani believed that it was worth pursuing. If the skirmish was important enough, then commercial organizations such as museums and even the history departments of universities might be interested in acquiring it, as well as the antiquarians and collectors of relics around the world who were his usual big-spending customers.
    Clearly, what he needed to do was get far more of the text deciphered. And he had a good idea how that could be done, and exactly who could help him.

10
    Father Antonio Morini stared at the sheets of paper on the desk in front of him and clasped his hands together almost as if he was in prayer. The conclusion seemed utterly inescapable. The nightmare that he’d hoped he would never experience while he was in the Holy See had materialized. Somehow, the relic that he had hoped—had, in fact, come to believe—had been either destroyed or lost forever, had apparently reappeared, and in Cairo, of all places.
    He stood up abruptly from his desk and walked across to a small wall safe located in one corner of his office. Unusually, the safe had both a numeric keypad and a physical keyhole. Morini loosened the neck of his habit and pulled out a long chain at the end of which was a slim silver key. He inserted the key in the lock and turned it once clockwise, then entered a six-digit code that he personally altered at the end of every week, and turned the key clockwise a second time. Then he removed the key, grasped the handle on the left side of the door, rotated that a quarter of a turn and pulled open the door.
    Inside the safe, hidden beneath a pile of folders, was a slim and sealed red file, devoid of any name or other identifying features apart from the single Latin inscription
A cruce salus
, which translated as “From the cross comes salvation.” Before he had listened to his dying predecessor, Morini would have had no difficulty asserting that that statement was the absolute truth. But with his newfound knowledge, it seemed to him more like a cruel joke.
    He took out the file and carried it back to his desk, where he cut through the tapes around the heavy seal, the impressed image on the wax causing him to cross himself as he recognized it.
    The
Annulus Piscatoris
, the Ring of the Fisherman, was an important part of the regalia of every pope, a new version of the ring being cast for each incumbent, and was kissed as a mark of respect by visiting dignitaries. In the past it had also been used as a signet to authenticate documents signed by the occupant of the Throne of St. Peter, but that practice had stopped in 1842. Its use was clearly a measure of the importance of the documents contained within the file.
    Morini extracted the contents, a mere half a dozen sheets of paper, five of them providing information and a series of instructions, and the other one a very short list, bearing only three names, together with brief information about those individuals and their international telephone numbers. He placed the last sheet to one side and then began to read the secret protocols