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“For God’s sake, did you have to destroy it to see it?”

“Unfortunately, yes. The Chi Rho page had an ultra-heavy underpainting of white flake, a medieval paint made with lead. We had to remove that to see what was underneath.”

“What could possibly be more important than what was there?” Gideon asked angrily. “You yourself said the Book of Kells is the finest illuminated manuscript in existence!”

“We have reason to believe what’s underneath is more important.” Glinn turned back to the technician. “Ready?”

Stanislavsky nodded.

“Run it.”

The technician raised the stage on the analyzer, adjusted some dials, and punched a command into a digital keyboard. A faint, blurry drawing sprang to life on the embedded screen. Slowly, like a master, Stanislavsky adjusted various dials and controls, fine-tuning the image. At first it looked like a random series of dots, lines, and squiggles, but slowly it came into sharper view.

“What the hell is that?” Gideon asked, peering more closely.

“A map.”

“A map? To a treasure?”

“A map to something better than a treasure. Something absolutely, utterly, and completely extraordinary. Something that will change the world.” Glinn’s gray eye fixed itself on Gideon. “And your next assignment is to go get it.”

12

Gideon and Garza followed the wheelchair of Eli Glinn as it glided through the long, silent upper corridors of EES, heading to an area Gideon had never been in before. They passed through a door leading into two small rooms, dimly lit. Gideon, still struggling with surprise and residual anger, looked around. The first room was a gem-like library, its mahogany bookcases filled with rich leather bindings, winking with gold. A Persian rug covered the floor, and at the far end stood a small marble fireplace, in which burned a turf fire. There was a rich smell of leather, 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 Greek geography, and it described various legendary wonders of the world. Among these was a most intriguing place: an island ‘far in the West, where the earth meets the sky.’ The geography went on to mention a ‘great cave overhung with laurels on the face of a cliff far above the sea.’ There, the manuscript claimed, a ‘secret remedium could be found, the source of eternal healing.’ The manuscript contained directions to this location, which was ‘beyond the land of Iberia, two thousand dolichoi west of Tartessos.’ Iberia was the name the ancients gave to Spain, and Tartessos was believed to be an ancient city at the mouth of the Quadalquivir River. A dolichos was a Greek measure of distance equaling about a mile and a half. In short, this was a location far, far beyond the boundary of what was then the known world.”

“Two thousand dolichoi west of Spain?” said Gideon. “That’s three thousand miles. That would put this cave in…in the New World.”

Glinn smiled and replaced his glass on the table. “Exactly.”

“So you’re saying these Greeks discovered the New World?”

“Yes.”

Gideon merely shook his head.

“The old Greek manuscript gave this wondrous island a name: Phorkys, after an obscure god of the sea. Columba believed that God had placed this manuscript into his hands for a reason. He and his monks, being Irish, were already expert seafarers — and they had excellent ships. So Columba ordered an expedition to seek out Phorkys and bring back the remedium, the healing balm.

“According to the journal, the monastery outfitted three ships, and a group of seafaring monks sailed from Iona, initially bound for the Mediterranean, preparing to follow the directions in the old Greek manuscript. They were gone for years. Columba eventually gave them up for lost. Finally, one sorry ship returned with half a dozen survivors. The monks had quite a story to tell.”