The shrewd young priest from Lirey buys the shroud from Simone for thirty florins. Thirty pieces of gold.
Prices have gone up since the last time Christ was sold.
CHAPTER 39
Avignon
The Present
I checked the rearview mirror, and sure enough, another car pulled from a parking space and fell in behind me. It looked like the car I’d seen the prior day, and this time I got a good enough look at the grille to tell that it was a black BMW. I even thought I recognized the driver’s large, shaved head from the airport-security photo of Reverend Jonah’s hulking bodyguard. Just as Descartes had predicted, Junior was tailing me to Geneva.
A quarter mile up the street, the wall was punctured by a gate, the Saint Joseph portal. I turned right, through the gate; behind me, a horn blared angrily. Checking the mirror again, I saw that a white panel truck — service vehicles look the same the world over — had run a stop sign and cut in front of the black sedan, tucking in almost on my bumper. When the light at the intersection turned green, I threaded the car through the narrow opening, then turned immediately right onto the three-lane road, Saint Lazarus Boulevard, which ringed the outside of the wall to my right. The road was like a modern-day moat of asphalt, swimming with cars rather than barracudas. Out my left window was the emerald-green Rhône, and as I checked my mirrors for the BMW, I caught a brief glimpse of Saint Bénézet’s Bridge downstream. The banks of the river in this stretch were lined with barges and dredges, as well as old canal boats that had been transformed into luxurious houseboats. A small crane was bolted to the stern of one of these canal boats, and dangling from a cable, hoisted high above the reach of thieves, was an old-fashioned three-speed bicycle, much like the one gathering dust in my garage back home.
A quarter mile upstream the road branched; one lane continued to hug the wall, while the other dived into a tunnel. A road crew was working near the mouth of the tunnel, and a flag-man was motioning cars slowly forward. As I approached, he stepped from the curb and began waving his flag. I braked, but he waved my car through, as well as the white panel truck behind me, before stopping the line of traffic. At the front of the line of stopped cars was the black BMW, and I smiled as I imagined Junior fuming at the delay.
Halfway through the tunnel I slammed the car to a stop, put the gearshift in neutral, and leaped out, leaving the engine running. Behind me, the side door of the white panel truck opened, and out sprang a gray-haired man who could have been my brother, wearing khaki pants and a blue shirt that mirrored my own outfit exactly. My look-alike nodded to me, tucked himself into the Peugeot, slammed the door, and took off. I hopped into the van, and the door slid shut. Inside, I could barely see Descartes in the dimness; he was just finishing a radio transmission, and as he did, I noticed a pair of headlights through the rear windows, rapidly closing the distance with our slow-moving van. “It won’t take him long to catch up with the Peugeot,” Descartes said. “That was très bien fait—very well done. Twenty-three seconds.” In less than half a minute, the switch — taking me out of the Geneva-bound car and putting a double in my place — had bought us a day’s delay. A day and a half in which to find the hidden bones or — failing that — to get the Native American skeleton that was en route from Knoxville. It was, I suddenly realized, another switcheroo: a look-alike, a stand-in — and it was standing in for another fake relic at that.
When we emerged from the tunnel, our driver turned right at the first intersection. The black BMW roared past, its speed and dark windows defeating my efforts to see the driver’s features.
“The decoy — my doppelgänger; the fake me,” I said to Descartes. “Who is he?”
“Just one of our inspectors; a guy who happens to look like you.”
“Lucky him,” I said. “How much danger do you think he’s in?”
“On the way to Geneva, zero. On the way back, maybe more. They might try to ambush him and get the bones.” The inspector shrugged. “He has military experience and tactical training. He’s smart, a good driver, a good shot. He can take care of himself. But risk is part of the job.”
The van lurched as the driver doubled back toward Avignon. “You think Junior will fall for it?”
“Let’s hope so.” He waved a finger at my clothes. “He saw you get into the car dressed like this, and he’ll see your double get out of the car dressed like this. So unless something makes him suspicious, he’ll assume it’s you.”
His “unless” dug into me, the way a splinter on a rough wooden railing can snag a passing finger. “What might make him suspicious?”
He shrugged. “If they had someone watching at the other end of the tunnel, maybe they noticed the extra twenty seconds it took for the car to go through. The police, we might notice that kind of thing. Your FBI might notice. But these guys aren’t that good. They’re fanatics, not cops or spies.”
“Fanatics brought down the World Trade towers,” I pointed out. “Never underestimate the power of fanatics.”
“I don’t underestimate their power,” he said. “Just their capabilities. As far as we can tell, only the preacher and the big guy came to France for the bones of Jesus.”
“The bones of not-Jesus,” I corrected.
“True,” he conceded, “but we can’t tell that to them. If they learn the truth, they have no reason to keep mademoiselle alive. We must pray that they continue to have faith in our lies.”
I wasn’t much of a praying man, but there in the back of a lurching van bumping its way back to my hotel, I sent out a request to God, or to the universe: Whatever it takes, truth or lies, help me get Miranda back safely. I thought of Meister Eckhart’s criticism of the hypocrisy of praying Thy will be done but then complaining about the outcome. But I wasn’t praying Thy will be done; I wasn’t that virtuous or pious. I only wanted Miranda back, safe and sound.
The van turned again, entering the old city, and hugged the wall until it reached the tower that faced Lumani. The driver pulled onto the narrow sidewalk and stopped with the van’s side door directly aligned with Lumani’s wooden gate. “Stay here,” Descartes reminded me, “until the decoy gets back from Geneva.”
“Do I have to? This feels like house arrest, and it’s gonna drive me crazy. I’d really rather help you look for the bones.”
“It’s too risky,” he said. “If the preacher sees you, he knows you’re not in that car. Then he kills mademoiselle. Non, you must stay out of sight. We will keep looking for the bones. Now go.” He tapped the van’s driver on the shoulder. The driver got out; luckily, he was skinny as a rail, or he’d never have managed to squeeze through the narrow gap between his door and the wall of the house. Stepping into the street, he checked carefully in both directions, then gave a quick, low whistle. Descartes slid open the van’s side door, and without even having to lean out the opening, I put my key in the lock and opened the wooden gate. Then, in one step, I was inside the sheltering wall, latching the gate behind me. This maneuver took even less than the twenty-three seconds in the tunnel. Très bien fait, I thought. And Please, bring her back.
CHAPTER 40
A40 Motorway, Switzerland
The Present
In a three-mile stretch of tunnel carved through the mountains on the route from Geneva, Switzerland, back to Lyon, France, a black BMW whips to the left and surges forward, rapidly overtaking the old Peugeot that’s chugging up the gradual grade. The German car rockets past the French one as swiftly as Hitler’s tanks darted around France’s Maginot Line back in 1940; it cuts in front and then brakes hard. The hulking bald driver, Junior — a name he hates, even though he, too, uses it for himself — checks his mirror, expecting to see the Peugeot’s hood dip sharply, expecting to hear tires screeching in a panicky, reflexive stop — after all, the gray-haired guy in the piece-of-crap Peugeot is some kind of egghead professor, right? — but instead, the Peugeot darts to the right, wedging itself between the decelerating BMW and the wall of the tunnel.
Meta
l rasps and shrieks as the Peugeot rakes the entire passenger side of the BMW, clipping the outside mirror at the same moment it rips a warning sign off the right wall of the tunnel. The Peugeot driver’s window is down and suddenly Junior sees what appears to be a pistol in the professor’s hand: a pistol pointed out the open window; a pistol pointed — shit! — at him. Next thing Junior knows, the Beemer’s passenger window is shattering and he’s ducking for his life, and the Beemer is veering wildly to the left, where it slams into a concrete abutment, pushing the radiator back into the engine block and knocking the left front wheel off the frame. The steering-column airbag explodes, punching Junior in the face, breaking his nose, adding injury to insult. He’s not sure which hurts worse, the broken nose or the knowledge that he’s been outmaneuvered and outsmarted by an aging egghead in a piece-of-crap car.
CHAPTER 41
Avignon
The Present