Jon slumped down on Kevin’s sofa, moving his head in a slow arc from side to side as the full ramifications ran together in his mind. Then he looked up. “Well, there’s our material evidence. And the evidence is actually a keystone, bracing up both sides of our mutual interests: Second Acts and the remains of St. Paul. How incredibly, wondrously, fabulous! Both authentic!”

Kevin agreed—enthusiastically. “And of course, you can guess my next question.”

“I can. ‘When may I tell the Holy Father?’”

“You’ve got it.”

“Well, if you tell him now, he might not take too kindly to what we’ve—I’m sorry—what I’ve done.”

“I doubt that. He’ll be overjoyed that both Second Acts and St. Paul are authentic.”

“Maybe, but that cardinal with the five names will be furious.”

“True. Done without his sacred permission.”

“So why don’t we do this? Let’s have St. Paul’s remains ‘discovered’ several weeks after we announce the codex to the world. Benedict could persuade Cardinal Many Names to have archaeologists examine the interior of the sarcophagus. We know what they’ll find, and it will be a delightful corroboration to silence all the naysayers—”

“Of which there’ll be a whole chorus, I’m sure.” Sullivan nodded, then added, “Yeah, I think that would be the best way to handle it. And I trust you’ll keep me abreast of how the scholarship is moving on Mark and Second Acts.”

After Jon landed at Logan and hurried into Shannon’s waiting arms, he jabbered almost incessantly on the drive back to Weston about his adventure at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, though without mentioning his culminating discovery. Never one to mince words, Shannon let him know exactly what she thought of his escapade. It was beyond risky, she said, and more in the nature of foolhardy, rash, juvenile, and even reckless. Jon winced at each of those adjectives but kept his peace until they were home. Then, on the kitchen table, he booted up his laptop and paraded the views of no less than the skeleton of St. Paul. Now Shannon was mute, the back of her right hand covering a mouth that had sprung open in awesome surprise.

While the photographs had exonerated him so far as his wife was concerned, Jon realized that much of her comment was absolutely on-target, and—but for good fortune—things might have turned out very differently, with a massive negative impact on his own good name and reputation. It was a near thing.

The next morning, Jon turned the crypt photographs over to techie friends at MIT for enhancement. He did not, of course, disclose the provenance of the pictures or the probable identity of the skeletal remains in them. When they were returned—enlarged and printed in color—his friends had a little fun at Jon’s expense with comments like “Aha, so you’re professor by day, ghoul by night!” “Dr. Frankenstein, I presume?” and “When do you unveil your new pet monster?”

More significantly, Jon took the prints to a colleague Dr. Theophil Samuel, dean of radiology at Harvard Medical School, who resembled an aging Sigmund Freud. “First off, Ted,” Jon asked, “do we have a man or woman here?”

Samuel looked quickly through the photographs, sometimes squinting. “Male. Unquestionably, a male. Not a big person, but male nevertheless.”

“How do you know? What do you look for to determine that?”

“Relative bone size. Narrow pelvis—couldn’t deliver a baby.”

“Okay. Now, perhaps you can’t tell from the photographs, but do you have any guess as to his age at death?”

“Hmmm. Oh, I think I can . . . come reasonably close. See those extraphytic accretions at the edge of the bones? They develop over age. So I’d say . . . hmm . . . someone in his sixties—maybe a shade younger. If I had the remains, I could also check the teeth for wear from grinding and therefore age.”

“That’s quite impressive. All right, please also check out these enlargements of the neck area.”

Dr. Samuel studied the new photographs, then hauled out a large magnifying glass to zoom in further. “Strange,” he said, “there’s definite disarticulation, a definite gap between vertebrae five and six in the cervical plexus. Hmmm, and also a . . . a very consistent, flat abrasion of some kind along the top edges of vertebra five.”

“Any idea of what could have caused that?” Jon asked.

“Some very poor neck surgery, perhaps,” he trifled. “Where did you get these photos—from Yale Medical School?”

Both chuckled; then Samuel commented, “Well, if someone were, say, beheaded, he’d look very much like this . . . if his relatives wanted to make the departed look more natural by trying to piece the bones together again. This isn’t King Louis XVI of France, is it—he of guillotine fame?”

“No. Earlier.” Jon immediately regretted saying that since he should have pleaded ignorance in the interests of nondisclosure.

“Well, then, Charles I of England? Or even, say, John the Baptist?”

“No,” Jon said, chuckling. Then he shaded the truth just a bit. “We really don’t know for sure.”

“Well, I’d go so far as to say that this poor fellow was probably beheaded by a sword rather than an ax.”

“How in the world can you tell that?”

“An ax would cause wedge-shaped damage on the vertebrae. But look at the gap between these vertebrae: it’s perfectly parallel. A sword had to be used. This fellow was dispatched by one swift cut of the sword. At least his torment was brief.”

“And you can tell that because there are no other slash marks on the neighboring vertebrae?”

“Exactly.”

Twenty centuries after the fact, Jon felt relief that Paul’s pain had been brief. Still, he cringed a bit at what Paul had to suffer, and while on the nasty subject, he thought of other victims. “Reminds me of ‘Crazy Boots’ Caligula, the sadistic Roman emperor who ordered a victim killed ‘with a blow and a half so that he could feel he’s dying.’”

“Pleasant fellow indeed! Still, you do seem to have a good hunch as to the identity of these bones. And if so, why aren’t you telling me? Remember, you started hinting with that word earlier.”

“You don’t miss a thing, do you, Dr. Ted?”

“Aw, c’mon, Jon. How about a little hint?”

“Can you keep a confidence?”

“Of course.”

“The bones are probably part of . . . a skeleton in Rome.”

Dr. Theophil Samuel thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I’ll need more than that,” he said. Clearly the eminent radiologist was hardly an expert in the early church.

“Best I can do, Ted. When it’s time for the news to break, you’ll be the first to know. I promise. But thanks for your help. It was . . . more strategic than you may realize.”

“Anytime.”

Again, every last clue only further identifies the remains, Jon thought on the way back to his office.

Now there was strong material evidence indeed, despite the theft of the codex, evidence of an extraordinary nature. “Isn’t this all we really need, Jon?” Shannon asked when she saw him clenching his fist at mention of the missing codex. “We have every word, for goodness’ sake. We can publish exact facsimile copies of the codex—even in the exact colors to match the ink of the lettering and the tan of the vellum on which it’s written. All the scholars working on the codex are content with black-and-white facsimiles, which are actually clearer than the codex itself. Fact is, we don’t even need the codex anymore.”

“Lots of truth there,” Jon admitted. “But we’re treading sacred ground here. It’s almost like tampering with God’s Word and the faith of believers to suggest, in effect, ‘Hey, your Bible has been fine up to now, but we have several necessary improvements.’ Without the genuine article, I’m afraid that copies will simply not convince them.”

“Maybe, maybe not. Anything more from the CIA on their search for the codex?”

“Only this: Dillingham learned that three of the men who were on duty at the airport security line the morning Bartholomew and his party took off are members of Islam Forever, a far-right religious party in Turkey. Whether or not that’s significant, no one knows at this point, but I think it could be very important. The switch had to have been made at the Istanbul airport.”

“But why go to all that trouble making a crude replacement? Why didn’t they simply take the codex and run?”

“Can you imagine the huge fuss the patriarch would have made when the attaché case came out of the scanner much lighter than before? Of course, that could have happened anyway had he opened the codex after it exited the scanner. But they played their chances, and it gave them enough lead time to make off with the codex. Or maybe pass it on to others.”

Earlier, Dillingham had asked Jon for help on a watermark the CIA labs had discovered on the foolscap paper. Instead of a literal cap with bells attached to its flaps in the headgear of a medieval court jester—the origin of foolscap after all—the consistent watermark looked like a crescent and star over an earth surface with the Star of David and a cross embedded in dust. Such a logo was obvious, and both Jon and Osman al-Ghazali quickly translated it: Islam victorious over Judaism and Christianity.

Could it help identify the perpetrators? “Unfortunately it’s not a big clue,” Dillingham told Jon. “The paper is manufactured in Egypt, but it’s used throughout the Middle East.”

“But this had to be an inside job, Mort,” Jon said, giving the privileged appellation a test run. “Else how could the perpetrators know when the patriarch was coming through the security line and, above all, the exact dimensions of the codex for their copy?”

“That’s clear,” he agreed. “For some time now, our operatives in Istanbul have been using the Orthodox Patriarchate as their second home, checking out every last person on the staff there.”

“They have? I hope they aren’t disrupting the business of the patriarchate now that Bartholomew has returned.”

“Quite the opposite. Bartholomew is just as eager as you to locate the codex. He’s cooperating in every way possible.”

Jon thought of another tack. “Has anyone received a . . . any kind of a ransom note for the codex? We haven’t. Has Bartholomew?”

“No, not that I’ve heard.”

“Well, where do things stand as of now? What are your plans?”

“We’re doing a stronger background check on the three religious party members at the airport security line. Our Turkish counterparts are a big help—all secularists, thank goodness.”

“Good move. And . . . thanks for all your continuing help, Mort.”

“Not at all, Jon. I’m still trying to make up for that tongue-lashing I gave you some weeks ago.”

“Aw, don’t worry about that,” he said.

Jon received regular updates, assuring him that the Constantine Codex and Canon committees of the Institute of Christian Origins were working with a near-maniacal drive to complete the opening scholarship on both documents. Slogans like “Urgency, Security, Action” had proven quite unnecessary in urging them on, so very extraordinary was the excitement associated with the Constantine Codex.

Computer studies of the material proved most helpful. The Gospel of Mark was programmed for grammar, syntax, vocabulary, and favorite phraseology, as was the book of Acts. The newly discovered texts were then subjected to the same programming with stunningly similar results. The immediately adverb, so typical of Mark, appeared also in the new ending, which had no mention whatsoever of those clearly embarrassing references to snake-handling and drinking poison that showed up in later attempted conclusions to the Gospel and had always been regarded as spurious by the best scholarship. Jon and Shannon found it particularly pathetic that several cults in Kentucky and Tennessee made this central in their worship.

Similarly, just as computer studies had shown the book of Acts to have been written by the same hand as Luke’s Gospel, so the same hand was demonstrated in First and Second Acts. Above all, not a single verse in any of the newly discovered material conflicted in any way with the existing biblical text.

Should the newly discovered texts become part of the Bible? The Canon committee had been asked to explore that question, but it was quite divided on the issue. Jon and Shannon concluded that it was still too early to venture much of a working plan for that group.

Perhaps the greatest of all wonders in the entire enterprise was that confidentiality seemed to be holding. In Rome, no one had noticed the plugged one-inch circular hole in the lid of the St. Paul sarcophagus, according to a communication from Kevin Sullivan, although Benedict XVI was constantly inquiring about Jon and the codex.

In Cambridge, the only slight breach in security seemed to be the day that Zachary Alexander, an Associated Press stringer in Boston, came to Jon’s office to inquire about “some important document” he was supposed to have discovered somewhere in Turkey after the debate at Hagia Sophia and then delivered to the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul. Even as his heart nearly froze in midbeat, Jon affected a forced smile and asked the man where in the world he had heard such a thing.

“My cousin Brett has the AP desk in Istanbul,” Alexander said, “and he wanted an interview with the patriarch because of all the in-and-out traffic there after you left.”

“And did the patriarch grant it?”

“No, he didn’t. It was Brett’s guess that some old manuscript—or whatever—was involved.”

While a “white lie” of denial might have been justified at this point, Jon tried redirection instead. “It was my wife Shannon who found an old document at Pella, which really isn’t all that important. But she’d prefer no publicity on it until she’s done the usual translation and commentary.”

“Hmm . . . figures, I guess.”

“Tell you what. Let’s make a deal—you stay mum on this for now, and you’ll be the first media person I call when it’s time to go public. Deal?”

“Deal.”

It was a close shave, but no cigar. Obviously—despite the stolen codex—the good Lord was watching over their enterprise. If only the missing codex weren’t such an unforeseen and totally loathsome complication!