"The third meeting place-"

"I hope there will be no need for a third meeting place," Addaio interrupted. "If Mendib leaves the jail alive, he must not survive the first meeting. Is that clear? We run a great risk in this. The carabinieri will surely follow him, and they are experts at their job. We must find a team that is able to do what must be done and disappear without being caught. It will not be easy, and it is most regrettable, but we cannot give him a chance to contact one of us. Is that understood?"

The men nodded gravely. One of them, the oldest of all, spoke.

"I am Mendib's father's uncle."

"I am sorry."

"I know that you do this to save us, but is there no possibility of getting him out of Turin?"

"How? They will have a team following him wherever he goes. They will photograph and tape-record everyone who goes near him or whom he approaches, and then they will investigate those people. We would fall like a house of cards. Even if he manages to elude them for a time, he is now known to them, marked. They will post his photograph with police across Europe. I feel the same pain you do, but I cannot allow him to reach us. Against all odds, we have maintained our vows for over two thousand years. Many of our forefathers have given their lives, their tongues, their possessions, their families in this cause. We cannot betray them or betray ourselves. I am sorry."

"Very well, pastor. I understand and accept your judgment. Will you allow me to do it if the boy leaves prison alive?"

"You? You are an honorable man, an elder of our community. How can you do it? You are his great-uncle."

"I have no one. My wife and two daughters died three years ago in a car accident. I planned to return to Urfa to spend my last days with what remains of my family. I will soon turn eighty, I have lived as long as God has wished me to live, and He will forgive me if it is I who takes Mendib's life and then my own. It is the most sensible way to do this."

"You will take your own life?"

"Yes, pastor, I will. When Mendib goes to the Parco Carrara, I will be waiting for him. I am his great-uncle; he will suspect nothing. I will embrace him, and in that embrace my blade will take his life. Then I will stab that same blade into my heart."

No one in the group uttered a word. They looked at the old man in respectful-awed-silence.

"I am not sure this is a good idea," Addaio finally replied. "This is not something we-I-can expect you to do. And they would have your body. They will discover who you are."

"No, they will not be able to find that out. I will pull out all my teeth and burn off my fingerprints. For the police, I will be a man of no identity."

"Will you truly be able to do this?"

"I am weary of life. I will make the same sacrifice so many of our brothers have. Let this be my last act of service-the most painful-so that the community may survive. Will God forgive me?"

"God understands why you do this."

"Then if Mendib leaves the prison, send for me and prepare me for death."

"If you betray us, the rest of your family in Urfa will suffer for it."

"Do not offend my honor or my name with threats. Do not forget who I am, who my ancestors were."

Addaio lowered his head in a sign of acceptance, and the old man left their circle to be alone with his thoughts.

The pastor broke the silence that Mendib's great-uncle left in his wake. "What is the status of Francesco Turgut, the porter at the Turin Cathedral?"

He was answered by a short, muscular man with the look of a stevedore, who worked as a janitor in the Egyptian Museum.

"Turgut is frightened. The people from the Art Crimes Department have interrogated him several times, and he believes that the cardinal's secretary, a Padre Yves, considers him suspicious."

"What do we know about this priest Yves?"

"He is French, he has influence in the Vatican, and soon he will be made auxiliary bishop of Turin."

"Might he be one of them?"

"He might be. He has all the characteristics. He is not a typical priest. He belongs to a family of aristocrats, he speaks several languages, has an excellent education, excels at sports… and he is celibate, totally celibate. You know that they never break that rule. He is a protege of Cardinal Visier and Monsignor Aubry."

"Who we are sure belong to their order," Addaio said flatly.

"Yes, there is no doubt of that. They have been very skillful in infiltrating the Vatican and reaching the highest ranks of the Curia. I would not be surprised if someday one of them became pope. That, truly, would be a mockery of fate."

"Turgut has a nephew in Urfa-Ismet, a good boy. I'll have him go live with his uncle," the pastor mused.

"The cardinal is kind; I imagine he will allow Francesco to take in his nephew."

"Ismet is quick-witted; his father has asked me to look after him. I will give him the mission of establishing himself in Turin and preparing to relieve Turgut when the time comes. To do that, he will have to marry an Italian girl, so he can remain in the cathedral as porter in place of his uncle. In addition, he will keep an eye on this Padre Yves and try to find out more about him."

"Is our tunnel still undiscovered?"

"It is. Two days ago the head of the Art Crimes Department inspected the underground tunnels; there were soldiers with him. When he came out, the frustration on his face told it all. They found nothing."

The men continued to talk and drink raki until late that night, when the bride and groom took leave of their families. Addaio, who did not drink, had not even tasted the liquor. Accompanied by Bakkalbasi and three men, he left the hotel where the wedding party had taken place and made his way to a safe house that belonged to one of the members of the community.

The next day he would return to Urfa. He had planned to go to Turin himself, but that would put the community at ultimate risk. He had given very precise instructions; everyone knew what they were to do.

He spent the rest of the night praying, seeking God in repeated exhortations, but he knew, as he always knew, that God was not listening-God had never been near to him, or given him any sign. Yet he, Addaio, miserable Addaio, had destroyed his life and the lives of so many others in His name. What if God didn't exist? What if it was all a lie? Sometimes he had let himself be tempted by the devil and allowed himself to think that his community was kept alive by a myth, by dusty dreams, and that none of what they had told the children was true.

But diere was no turning back. His life had been chosen for him: to serve the community and lead it and, above all, to secure for it the shroud of Jesus Christ. He knew that they would try once again to prevent that-they had been doing so for centuries. The community had fought back as it could, tracking its adversaries and their plunder through the centuries, tracing their activities in pursuit of a common goal. The knowledge they had gathered led down tantalizing avenues, to mysteries and answers Addaio sensed lay just beyond his grasp. But there was no mystery about his overarching purpose on this earth. Someday the community would recover the sacred cloth that had been bequeathed to it, and it would be he, Addaio, who at long last achieved that impossible goal.