Lux Domini: Thriller: A Catherine Bell Story Read online

  Contents

  Impressum

  Title Page

  For Gene

  You will be the Thirteenth

  Prologue

  The Secret

  1

  Light and Darkness

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  Traitor

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  The Next Step

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  LUKE

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  73

  74

  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  80

  81

  82

  83

  84

  85

  Epilogue

  Author’s Notes

  Acknowledgements

  About the translator

  About the author

  Glossary

  Notes

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organisations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Lux Domini by Alex Thomas

  Text copyright © 2018 by Alex Thomas.

  Translation copyright © 2018 by Christine Louise Hohlbaum

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Previously published as Lux Domini by Blanvalet in Germany in 2011. Translated from German by Christine Louise Hohlbaum. First published in English by Alex Thomas in 2018.

  www.alex-thomas.london

  Cover design by Anke Koopmann — www.designomicon.de.

  ISBN: 9781983058714

  For Gene

  You will be the Thirteenth.

  You will be cursed by the other generations,

  and you will come to rule over them.

  (Gospel of Judas)

  Prologue

  Judas Iscariot had chosen suicide.

  The barren tree from which his corpse hung appeared to be encircled by a sinister veil. The surrounding field seemed diseased like the skin of a leper. Not a single breeze stirred the air, as if the earth around the dying tree along with the dead had given its last breath. Not even the crows wanted to sit upon the tormented branches to have a go at the corpse.

  Joseph of Arimathea shielded his eyes from the brightness of the sun. He shivered then, and despite its power, the sun’s light couldn’t seem to warm this place.

  "Take this man down!" he commanded to both young men he had brought with him to bury the dead man.

  Joseph owned a burial place near Golgotha. It was there that he had brought the body of Jesus and where he would have Judas brought, to a small grave nearby.

  The sky turned black, as if a torrential downpour would happen at any moment over Jerusalem. But Joseph doubted that even a single raindrop would make its way to this field. Both boys severed the noose and let the dead fall to the ground. Joseph thought he could almost hear the barren tree breathe a sigh of relief.

  "It’s not what you think," Maria Magdalene had said, looking at him with her ageless eyes. "His fate is also our own. We have to search for him and find him."

  Joseph set about on his way and finally came to this place. A seemingly God-forsaken place about which not even the scavengers wanted to know. He sighed. Maria, Bartholomew, Philip and he should have been on their way to Alexandria by now.

  Joseph watched as the two young men rolled the corpse into a strong, grey cloth. Oddly the dead body didn’t give off an odour. Decay had barely set in. Neither of the boys said a word, but Joseph knew that they wished nothing more than to get out of there as fast as possible.

  Suddenly, one of the boys paused and carefully bent over Judas.

  "What is it?" asked Joseph in alarm.

  "I see something hidden here," the young man said, carefully pulling out two scrolls wrapped around one another from the dead man’s robe.

  In that very moment, Joseph could feel a tiny breeze blow over the field. A soft rain fell across his face and body and over the entire wretched ground. As he took both leather scrolls in his hands, he couldn’t help but shiver. Was this perhaps Judas’ justification for his betrayal?

  Tiny raindrops began to form on the backside of the outer scroll. For some inexplicable reason, Joseph peered over the tree and into the sky, only to see an enormous rainbow. A sign?

  For a brief moment, Joseph toyed with the idea of reading the scrolls, but something deep within him warned him not to, told him that he had no right to do so. He recalled Maria’s words once again: "His fate is also our own. We have to search for him and find him." In that moment, he knew to whom he should hand over the scrolls.

  The Secret

  1

  September 29, 1978, Rome, Vatican City

  "Have you discovered anything, Doctor?" Kleier heard the youthful and impatient voice of his assistant behind him. He felt the dust and grime on his sweaty face and tasted the dirt on his tongue. This inept bungler, who had only gotten the job due to his family ties, pushed him over the edge. The researcher, who had gotten his doctoral degree in archaeology, slowly approached the new dig site, pushed his glasses and the spotlight resting on his helmet back in place, bowed down and began to carefully free the earth from the debris with a trowel until he came up against something. Specks of dust danced in the rays of light. The outline of a square stone shone forth beneath the dust, along with the hint of a door handle that looked like it was a part of a trap door. Trap doors were commonplace down here.

  "Looks like it, Sebastiano."

  With his strong hands that were accustomed to hard work, Kleier swept away the dust and the stone until he had freed up the handle. Three months prior he had worked at an archaeological site in Old Jerusalem – in Golgotha – when His Holiness John Paul I. had unexpectedly called him to Rome. They had come upon an unknown and completely atypical tunnel system in the depths of the Vatican’s grottos, a type of labyrinth that wasn’t even recorded on Antonio Bosio’s layout maps. Bosio had been considered the early seventeenth century Columbus of the Roman catacombs.

  "May I help you?" Sebastiano had maneuvered himself a few centimetres closer through the
tight shaft. His face was covered with dust.

  "No, there’s not enough room," explained Kleier. "The brush please." The assistant handed him the brush, which was more like a sturdy hand-held brush, and tried to steal a fascinated look over the doctor’s shoulder onto the site. Even Sebastiano seemed to sense that something extraordinary awaited his discovery deep down beneath the base of St. Peter’s Basilica.

  The researcher carefully brushed away the remaining dust in the crevices of the ornamentation and slowly noticed the symbol of a coat of arms on the stone — a papal coat of arms! Although a part of it was really the handle. In that moment, Kleier realised what stood before him. It was the coat of arms from Pope Pius XII, the head of the Church who, as the highest moral authority of the Catholic Church, had kept a stony silence during the Holocaust.

  Sebastiano stretched his neck to come a few centimetres closer. Kleier grabbed the handle and tried to pull open the iron trap door. He managed to open it with little effort as the door was supported by invisible mechanics. Now the rectangular iron trap door stood in his way of the tiny space and he couldn’t see inside the opening. He peered over the open trap door. Sebastiano did as well. Unfortunately, by doing so, the assistant pushed the archaeologist in such a way that the stone fell forward through the opening, breaking away part of the solid ground and falling with a bang to unimagined depths below. For a millisecond Kleier imagined wrapping his hands around Sebastiano’s neck and slowly squeezing the life out of him, but in the next they both lay paralysed on the ground and waited until the noise subsided. All they could do now is pray. The hollow space beneath their feet seemed to be enormous and the ground beneath their bodies could give at any moment if they didn’t distribute their body weight evenly. The researcher asked for a larger spotlight, crawled to the opening, leaned himself over the edge and held the light against the endless darkness.

  "Good God!"

  The iron trap door had fallen down a broad set of stairs without a railing and had ended in pieces at the bottom of the steep descending steps. Judging from the size of the stairs, the room that lay beneath him and Sebastiano must be enormous.

  Kleier signalled to his assistant not to move, then crawled forward a bit. Yes, he even crawled a tad toward the stairs covered in debris while Sebastiano, who lay flat on the ground, held watch. He circled the beam of light until it finally reached the wall. Using the light as his guide, he began to search the large room as he slowly and carefully moved down the naked stairs. He gave a start and almost cried out when he thought he had come across a monster with his light beam.

  No, it was just a painting he had never seen before. There was nothing human about the painting. It was too perfect to be human. Somehow the section that was now illuminated by his spotlight reminded him of an old Jewish writing that was not found in the Bible. The passage with Michael, the supreme angel, to be exact. On Mount Carmel he had proclaimed to the prophet Elias the end of the world.

  The beam of light travelled further along the same wall. Kleier saw how fire and sulphur streamed down from heaven upon the godless people on the wall painting. Lamentations in the eternal underworld. It was a disturbing sight. But he kept going, allowing the light to wander further until he came upon a row of slender, spiral-life columns. In the distance he saw something that looked quite like…he held his breath.

  A library!

  Pius’ secret private archive? Could that be the library that Pius had brought to safety and hidden from the Nazis?

  Kleier could hear Sebastiano calling from above as to whether everything was all right. Of course everything was all right. More than all right! He collected himself and approached the first shelf as he looked about and hoped that his eyes would quickly adjust to the darkness. He finally reached one of the wall shelves. There were a lot fewer rows than he had hoped. In fact, there were only three. He looked over the old volumes, randomly took out a few and discovered that they had been prepared for storage down here.

  All of the works were written in Latin; all of them were organised according to their content and chronology. It appeared that they were all copies and translations of much older works. After several more samples, Kleier realised that these were unknown Christian works — apocryphal books from the Bible. The archaeologist looked about him for a volume that he could take up to the surface as evidence of his findings.

  A slender scarlet red binder jumped out at him. It was the only red one on the shelf. Besides it had a good size for carrying back up. He opened it. A story of the apostles? In apocryphal book form? That could be very interesting!

  After readjusting the spotlight, Kleier began to scan the text, letting Sebastiano know periodically that he was still alive so as to keep him calm. In less than fifteen minutes the researcher knew he was holding a revolution — or better yet — a bomb in his hands. After reading this apocryphal text, he began to view the Pius’ pontificate, the history of the papacy and, yes, even the history of the entire Catholic Church in a new light.

  Shaking with excitement, Kleier forced himself to remain calm and hid the volume under his work clothes. This was enough for starters.

  Slowly, but surely he made his way back to the entrance and pulled the light away from the dark-as-night opening. In response to his assistant’s questioning look, he gave him a quick and impatient wave.

  They crawled back to the wider and higher main tunnel in silence. Dr. Kleier had received strict instructions from His Eminence Cardinal deRossi, should he come across anything unusual during his work. And this was certainly something extraordinarily extraordinary!

  ***

  About an hour later Kleier hurriedly entered the Palace of the Holy Office and ran up the centuries-old, well-worn stairs. The Roman worldwide Inquisition still held watch here.

  As he reached the antechamber of the prefect’s office of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he sensed the secretary’s unusual inner tension. Monsignor Merlo remained loyal to his superior and had even rejected retirement in order to continue his work under deRossi. Word had it that the old secretary knew just about as many secrets as the cardinal himself.

  "What may I do for you, Doctor?" asked Merlo. His superficial ease may have convinced Kleier, if he hadn’t known the old man any better.

  "I must speak to His Eminence, Monsignor. Urgently."

  Merlo shook his head apologetically as he tactfully scanned the archaeologist from head to toe in his dirty work clothes. "I’m afraid it’s not possible, Doctor. His Eminence is currently in a very important meeting."

  Kleier had to contain himself. What could be more important than his unbelievable discovery beneath the base of the Vatican?

  "It is incredibly urgent," he said with great effort. "It is about the foundation of Roman Catholicism."

  Merlo did not look impressed. Too many enemies and challenges had already attempted to shake the Catholic faith. Unsuccessfully up to this point. He gave him a mild, yet tired smile.

  "I must ask for your patience, Doctor. The meeting of His Eminence cannot be disturbed."

  "It has to do with archaeological excavations," Kleier added for emphasis. He nearly stomped with his right foot. Luckily at the last minute he remembered that Merlo was no idiot and that he naturally knew it was about archaeological excavations. He must have remembered deRossi’s instructions about Kleier’s mission. Something outrageous must have happened that he was now not allowed immediate access to the prefect.

  "What has happened, Monsignor?"

  Merlo seemed torn, but since he trusted Kleier and he knew he couldn’t prevent that the media would catch wind of it and broadcast it to the world, he decided to tell him.

  "His Holiness is dead."

  Light and Darkness

  2

  June 12, 1984, Chicago, Catholic Primary School for the Gifted

  Catherine shyly looked about her in Dr. Beverly Florena’s office on the first floor. It was small, simple and — unlike a lot of the other rooms in the school �
�� well ventilated. To the left of the door stood a shelf full of books against the wall. From the window, one could see the top part of the schoolyard where the older children enjoyed a break. But at the moment the courtyard was empty, even though it was lunchtime. Catherine was the cause for the break’s abrupt ending.

  "What’s your name again?" Dr. Florena asked as if she didn’t know. She curiously peered above the eggshell coloured file that lay before her on her desk.

  The girl carefully shifted her small frame on the overly wide chair. "Catherine. Catherine Bell."

  It appeared her behaviour had set the entire school off kilter. Even still, she would do it again if she had to.

  "How old are you, Catherine?" asked the teacher.

  "Nine. Almost ten."

  With her long blonde hair and blue eyes, Dr. Florena looked like an angel to the schoolgirl. The woman in her mid-fifties had no idea how attractive her unpretentious appearance was.

  "You know why you are here, my child?" asked Dr. Florena softly. Catherine nodded hesitantly.

  "Yes."

  The teacher took a deep breath, but her face remained open and friendly.

  "You said Mr. Eliot was a bad man. You approached him in the schoolyard in front of all the other children and teachers and told him he was a murderer."

  Catherine nodded and remained silent.

  "You know what a lie is, my child?"

  "A lie is an untruth," replied Catherine without moving in her chair.

  The teacher looked pensively at the girl.

  "To tell one is a very bad thing, Catherine."

  "I know."

  "What made you call Mr. Eliot a murderer then?"

  "I could see his dark thoughts."

  Several seconds went by in silence. In the background Catherine could see the old hunched over janitor walking across the schoolyard with his bucket and broom.

  Dr. Florena finally broke the silence: "It is a terrible thing to accuse an innocent person of murder. You will apologise to Mr. Eliot."