“So break it,” he replied.
Tess exhaled with frustration. It was pointless to argue with the man. She just fumed in silence and slid her fingers under the upper fold of the sheet. As gently as she could, she popped the seal off the parchment, but still couldn’t help cracking it in two. The seal had fulfilled its purpose, even hundreds of years after it had been put in place.
Tess folded the sheets open slightly, making sure she didn’t crack them.
The writing on them was indeed different. The words they held were written in Roman literary cursive script—that is, in Latin, not Greek.
“What is it?” Abdulkerim asked.
“It looks like a letter.” She squinted as she studied it. “My Latin’s not great.” She held it up to him. “Can you read it?”
The Byzantinist shook his head. “Greek, no problem. Latin, not my speciality.”
She perused the text, then her gaze rushed to the bottom of the last sheet.
“’Osius ex Hispanis, Egatus Imperatoris et Confessarius Beato Constantino Augusto Caesari,’” she read out. She paused, her neurons ablaze with the significance of what she could be holding in her hand, which was trembling. Lost in her own world for a brief moment, she mouthed, in a low voice, “Hosius of Spain, imperial commissioner and confessor to the Emperor Constantine.”
Zahed’s eyebrows rose in a rare display of piqued curiosity.
“Hosius,” Abdulkerim observed. “The bishop of Cordoba. One of the Church’s founding fathers.”
“The man who presided over the Council of Nicaea,” Tess added. Something occurred to her as she said it. “Nicaea’s near here, isn’t it?” she asked.
The Byzantinist nodded, frowning with confusion as he processed the information. “It’s close to Istanbul, but yes, I suppose it’s not that far from here. It’s called Iznik nowadays.”
Tess could see that he was bursting to ask her a hundred questions and was just barely managing to hold himself back. Nicaea was an iconic word as far as the early days of Christianity were concerned. There were a lot of unanswered questions as to what had really happened at that historic gathering back in A.D. 325, when Constantine the Great had summoned the senior bishops from all of Christendom and forced them to settle their disputes and agree on what Christians were supposed to believe in.
Tess looked over at Zahed. “We need to get this translated,” she told him.
The Iranian was also lost in his thoughts. “Later,” he replied. “Pass them over to me.”
Tess took one last look at the document, hesitated, then folded it and placed it back inside the codex as she had found it. She handed both books back to him, and he slipped them into his rucksack.
“Let’s see if there’s anything else buried with him,” he said as he handed the pick back to her.
Tess’s mind stumbled. The man didn’t seem at all fired up by what they had just unearthed. She thought of questioning it, but decided against it. Instead, she just got back on her knees and dug and prodded around the rest of the grave.
There wasn’t anything else buried there.
She looked across at the Iranian.
He seemed dissatisfied. “We’re missing something.”
Tess couldn’t hold back anymore, and her exasperation spilled over. “What are we missing?” She flared up angrily. “This is it. We’ve done everything we can. I mean, hell, we found his grave. We found these texts, and whatever’s in them, that’s already one hell of a find. These gospels … they’re unique. And this man, Hosius … he was Constantine’s head priest. He was there when Constantine decided to become a Christian. He was at Nicaea, for God’s sake, he was there when all the arguments about what Jesus really did and what he really was were thrashed out and when Christianity became what we know it as today. It’s where they came up with the Nicene Creed that churchgoers still recite every Sunday. His letter can tell us a hell of a lot about how that really happened. What more do you want? What the hell are we doing here anyway? What more do you think you’re going to find?”
The Iranian smiled. “The devil’s handiwork, of course. All of it.”
“There is no devil’s handiwork. They’re old gospels.” Just as she said it, she grimaced. An understanding came bursting out of the dust and the darkness.
“You don’t get it, do you?” he said, mocking her. “These writings and whatever else the Templars were transporting terrified those monks so much that they were willing to murder to keep them hidden. Then they killed themselves when they lost control of them. They’re not just gospels. To them, they are the devil’s handiwork. They refer to them as something that could devastate their world, their Christian world.” He paused, then added, pointedly, “Your world.”
“And that’s why you want them?”
His smile broadened. “Of course. Your world is already crumbling. And my guess is, this could really help you along your downward spiral. Coming on the back of all these pedophile scandals the Vatican has been so helpful in suppressing? The timing couldn’t be better.”
A nasty chill prickled the back of her neck, but she tried not to show it. “You think you can undermine people’s faith that easily?”
“Absolutely,” the Iranian shrugged. “I think your people are more deeply religious than you give them credit for. Which makes them all the more vulnerable.”
“I know how religious a lot of us are. I just don’t think anyone really cares about the fine print.”
“Maybe not all of them … but a lot of them do. Enough of them to really cause problems. And that’s good enough for me. Because that’s what it’s all about. That’s what you people don’t understand. This battle, this war, between us … this ‘clash of civilizations,’ as your people like to call it. It’s a long-term fight. It’s not about who’s got the biggest gun. It’s not about landing one big killer punch. It’s about attrition. It’s about killing the body slowly, with lots of well-placed jabs. It’s about relentlessly chipping away at the soul of your enemy with every opportunity you get. And right now, your country’s in bad shape. Your economy’s shot. Your environment’s shot. No one trusts your politicians or your bankers. You’re losing every war you get into. You’re more divided than ever and you’re morally bankrupt. You’re on your knees on every front. And every jab, every uppercut that can help bring you further down is worth pursuing. Especially when it comes to religion, because you’re all religious. All of you. Not just the churchgoers. You’re even more religious than we are.”
“I doubt that,” Tess scoffed.
“Of course you are. In more ways than you realize.” He thought for a beat, then said, “I’ll give you an example. Remember that earthquake that killed tens of thousands of people in Haiti recently? Did you notice the way your leaders reacted to it?”
Tess didn’t get the connection. “They sent money and troops and—”
“Yes, of course they did,” the Iranian interrupted. “But so did the rest of the world. No, what I’m talking about is how your leaders really felt about it. One of your most popular preachers went on national television when it hit. You remember that? He said it had happened because the Haitians had made a pact with the devil. A pact with the devil,” he laughed, “to help them get rid of the French tyrants who ruled over them a long time ago. And the amazing thing is, he wasn’t laughed off the stage. Far from it. He’s still hugely respected in your country, even though he just sat there making the same ridiculous speech preachers have been making for hundreds of years, whenever an earthquake or some other disaster strikes. But here’s the part I find really telling. He wasn’t the only one. Your own president—your liberal, modern, intellectual president—he makes a speech about it and he says that ‘but for the grace of God,’ a similar earthquake could have hit America. Think about it. What does that mean, ‘but for the grace of God’? Does he mean God’s grace is protecting Americans and that His grace chose instead to wipe out the people of Haiti? How different is that from what that preacher was saying? You really think your president’s any less religious, any less superstitious, than that madman?”