The 13th Apostle. Richard Heller

much, just like any other accounting journal.”

      “Because that’s exactly what it is,” Gil said simply.

      This diary, both parts of it, was almost certainly one of the Church’s Books of Record, Gil explained. Elias was probably the most literate of the monks. It would have been natural to choose him as the official Keeper of Records for his monastery.

      From what Gil could surmise, Elias had used the first section of the diary for the record-keeping for which the book was intended and had used the second half of the book as his personal diary. By putting his hidden message into the same format as the accounting pages that filled the front of the diary, then placing it in the back part of the book, all of the pages looked alike from start to finish; especially to those who couldn’t read.

      “But what if someone could read?” Sabbie asked.

      “Elias must have thought that wasn’t likely or he wouldn’t have done it this way,” Gil said.

      He shook his head slowly. There was something else he wasn’t seeing. It kept popping into his thoughts, then disappearing before he could get hold of it.

      “But you think it’s in here?”

      “The location of the scroll? Yeah, it’s got to be,” Gil concluded. “I’d bet my life on it.”

      Gil waited for Sabbie’s usual comeback. She looked up with no trace of a smile. Her silence scared the hell out of him.

      SIXTEEN

      Day Seven, mid-morning

       Office of the Translator

      Gil had been hard at work since seven in the morning and, with the exception of a raging headache, he had nothing to show for it. Sabbie, on the other hand, strolled in at her own leisure.

      “Well, how nice of you to join us,” he said sarcastically.

      “I had some things to take care of. I should have told you I’d be late.”

      “Among other things,” Gil continued.

      Sabbie looked up in surprise.

      “You know you might have warned me that the guard last night was going to give me a better feel than I’ve had from anyone in years,” he said.

      She smiled at his description.

      “Or that almost every piece of paper on my person, including my used Kleenex, would be open to inspection,” he went on. “I expected it on the way in, but why did they do it last night, on the way out? Never did that before,” he mused.

      “As of yesterday, you were moved up to a Level Three Security Risk. Once you saw the diary, you gave up the right to physical privacy. That’s the trade-off.”

      Gil threw her a dirty look.

      “You don’t want to know what a Aleph or Bet have to go through,” she laughed.

      “Then how come you get to pass by the friendly hands of our Gestapo Museum guard with only the lightest of pat-downs?”

      Her smiled faded and a soft sadness crept across her face. “You don’t want to know,” she said quietly.

      “Yes, I do. Come on. How come you get special treatment?

      She moved closer, her face only inches from his, and smiled impudently. “Because most people, especially men—but women too—feel funny about touching someone who’s been raped. Even if it’s nothing more than a standard security frisk, it makes them uncomfortable. In my case, they would rather risk my smuggling sensitive information out of the Museum than to chance offending me and creating a scene.”

      Gil struggled to sort through her comeback. If Sabbie had wanted him to know she had been raped, she had chosen a particularly lousy way to tell him. No accident, he concluded. She wasn’t about to waste the shock value of it. He wasn’t certain what she expected but he wasn’t buying into the game.

      “I didn’t know,” he said simply. He stared back unblinkingly.

      “About which, the rape or people’s reactions?” she asked haughtily.

      “Either.”

      “Well, it’s true. Once people know you’ve been raped, they never treat you the same again. Every time they see you, the first thing they think about is the rape. You can see it in their eyes. It affects how they treat you, how they speak to you, certainly, how they touch you.”

      Her tone, though it had started out as defiant, had become honest and passionate.

      “It’s probably a lot like being fat or being a nun,” she continued. “Few people are able to get past that first big fact. In my case, it works to my advantage. I get to bypass the groping sweaty hands that wait for you every time you leave the building, while you get a free thrill every time,” she added with a mischievous grin.

      “Thanks a lot!” he said sarcastically.

      “So, how’s it going?” she asked.

      “What, the pattern-hunting? It’s not,” Gil admitted.

      “What would help?”

      “A good smack in the head with some particularly heavy object might do the trick. Look, as far as I can see, Elias’ message says nothing about the scroll. Nada, zilch, zippo,” he concluded with a pop of his lips.

      “Come on,” she said warmly. “You need a break.” She took him by the hand and walked toward the door. “I’m going to show you what you’ve been working for.”

      The next two hours passed as if they had been minutes. The Museum’s plethora of riches, beauty, ingenuity, and sheer antiquity were overwhelming. He had expected to see Judaica, historical finds of disintegrating paper and rusted metal. He was met with fourteenth-century sculptures of Venus, astounding riches of Turkish Sultans, the works of Pollock, Ernst, Rembrandt, Rodin, and hundreds of other treasures that, each in itself, would have warranted its own place of exhibit.