The Eighth Day (11 page)

Danny blinked. “No?”

Solemnly the priest shook his head.

“Well, it’s the first
I
ever heard of it. Mostly, people jump—or maybe they shoot themselves,” Danny insisted. “Or else they take pills or something.”

“Yes, of course, you’re right. But in the context of the faith—in the context of
Christianity
—this sort of thing has a long history.”

“It does?” Danny looked puzzled. His religious upbringing had been minimal. Anything was possible, of course, but if people were running around walling themselves up for Jesus, you’d have thought he’d have heard about it. “A long history?”

The priest took a long sip of wine, then topped off his glass and savored its color against the light from a nearby window. “The world,” he announced, “is the enemy of salvation. And always has been. It’s the battleground for the soul, the place where the flesh meets the devil. Withdraw from the world, and the devil can’t touch you.” Another sip, and he leaned closer. “They were called ‘anchorites’—from the Latin,
anachoreo,
meaning ‘I withdraw.’ The earliest ones went into the desert and lived in caves. The strangest were the stylites, who spent their lives on tops of pillars.”

“Pillars?”

“Classical ruins,” the priest explained.

“And they spent their
lives
there?! Sitting on a pillar?”

The priest nodded. “Most of their lives,” he confirmed. “Later—in the medieval era—they were . . . entombed. In the walls of the churches. The north walls.”

“Entombed,” Danny repeated.

“I think this is the word. It means
per seppellire vivo
. Buried alive. It’s the right word, no?”

Danny nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “it’s the right word.”

“I thought so, but sometimes my English . . . it goes away. In any case, these anchorites were put into small cells—
anchorets
—behind the altar. The anchorets had little windows—
slits
, you call them—so the holy men could watch the mass and receive food. But, once inside, they never left. There weren’t any
doors
.”

Danny was dumbfounded. He imagined what it must have been like—not from the point of view of the anchorite, who was obviously mad, but from the point of view of those who’d come to church to pray. The eyes in the walls. He shivered.

Inzaghi chuckled. “It wasn’t just men,” the priest told him. “There were anchoresses, as well. And like the men, once they were walled in, once they became ‘prisoners of faith,’ they were ‘dead to the world.’ Officially—and in fact. They didn’t exist, except to be fed.”

“Jeezus,” Danny muttered.

“You should read Chris’s book,” the priest told him. “It’s a bit academic, a little slow, but well worth it—especially the chapter on what he calls ‘the reluctant anchorites.’ ”

Danny frowned. “And who were
they
?”

“Well,” Inzaghi said, “
they
were anchorites who didn’t
want
to be anchorites. Men and women—infants and children—who were walled up against their will.”

The waiter arrived with their salads, gave each of them a triple twist from a pepper grinder, and withdrew with a soft “Prego.”

“These anchorites who didn’t want to be anchorites—” Danny began.

“You really should read Chris’s book. Do you have it?”

Danny nodded. “
The Radiant Tomb
. Yeah, I brought it with me.”

“It’s all in there,” Inzaghi told him.

“I’ll look at it tonight.”

The priest shrugged. “You know,” he said, leaning forward and speaking in a confidential way, “I must say I’m not at all clear why it is you’re here, Detective. I mean if Chris committed suicide . . . ?”

“Well, that’s just it,” Danny replied. “We’re not entirely sure it
was
a suicide.”

A soft “aaaahhhh” escaped from the priest’s lips. Wordlessly he laid his fork upon the table, placed his hands in his lap, and looked directly at Danny.

“It’s possible,” the American said, “that Mr. Terio’s death was a homicide.”

The priest nodded slowly. “That would make more sense,” he decided.

It was Danny’s turn to look surprised. “It would?”

Inzaghi continued to nod. “Chris was upset when he left Rome. He was worried. Maybe a little more than worried. Maybe
frightened
.”

All of a sudden, Danny was obliged to play detective for real. “And why was that?”

“Something happened to him.”

“In Rome?”

“No,” the priest told him. “In eastern Turkey.”

That figures,
Danny thought. Terio had spent a part of his sabbatical there, and even after he’d returned to the States, he’d made phone calls to Istanbul, so . . . “What was he doing there?”

Inzaghi spread his hands in a hapless gesture. “Research.”

“On what?”

“A new book.
Avatars of Syncretism
.” The priest smiled. “He wasn’t so good with titles.”

Danny frowned. He
almost
knew what the words meant. Five or six years earlier, they’d gone in one ear and out the other in a Western civ course that he’d taken during his sophomore year in college. Let’s see:
avatar
. He frowned.

Inzaghi saw his puzzlement and took pity on him. “Christian was studying the founders of certain religions in the Near East, religions that embraced elements of other religions.”

“Like . . . ?”

“Mani and Zoroaster,” the priest replied. “Baha’Allah and Sheik Adi.”

The first three names were vaguely familiar, as if they’d been part of a multiple-choice question in that same sophomore year. They connected to three obscure religions: Manicheism, Zoroastrianism, Baha’i. But Sheik Adi meant nothing to him—which was fine. A sheriff’s detective wouldn’t know any of this stuff. So he said, “Hunh!,” sipped his wine, and forked a bit of arugula into his mouth.

Once again, Father Inzaghi came to the rescue. “They were all founders of religious sects in the Middle East.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“So you’ve heard of them?”

It was Danny’s turn to shrug. “Most of them.”

“But not Sheik Adi.”

Danny nodded.

“I thought so,” Inzaghi said. “The Yezidis are not so well known.”

“ ‘Yezidis’?”

“Sheik Adi. He was the Yezidis’ man.”

Danny rolled his eyes, finding the not-so-bright detective’s role disturbingly easy to play.

“It’s a Kurdish tribe,” the priest explained. “A sub–ethnic group.”

Danny nodded glumly.
Kurds,
he thought.
Now we got Kurds.
The truth was, he didn’t know any of this stuff—not really. Like the Kurds. All he knew about the Kurds was that they were in Turkey or Iraq (or maybe Iran). And persecuted! That was it. One fact, maybe two, and he was tapped out on the entire subject of the Kurdish people.

“Sheik Adi was their prophet,” Inzaghi added, and, taking up his fork, impaled a sheaf of greens.

“Whose prophet?”

“The Yezidis’, “ the priest replied. “Chris went over there to study the
Black Writing
.” Inzaghi smiled. “It’s their
Bible
,” he added. “Their sacred text.”

Danny sat back as the waiter returned with their main courses—a delicious-looking steak for Inzaghi and for himself linguini dusted with flecks of black truffle. He was wondering how to maneuver the conversation around to the computer. Idly he asked, “So why do they call it the Black Writing?”

Inzaghi chewed thoughtfully on a forkful of steak, considering the question. Then he said, “Who knows? I’m not sure why the Yezidis do
anything
the way they do. I mean, we’re talking about people who pray to the Peacock Angel!”

Danny looked skeptical. “They worship peacocks?”

“Satan,” the priest said.

Danny chuckled. “Sorry, Father, but . . . how do you get from peacocks to Satan?”

Inzaghi smiled in a way that was not meant to be patronizing, but . . . “They’re a symbol of the devil.”

“Peacocks?”

“Yes.”

Danny thought about it. “So you’re saying these Kurdish guys . . . they worship the devil?”

“Exactly. Not all Kurds, not at all. Most Kurds are Muslims.”

“Just these—what?—Yezidis.”

“Exactly. The Yezidis venerate Satan.”

Danny stared. “You’re kidding me.”

The priest shook his head and chewed his steak.

“You mean, like . . .
Satan
Satan?”

Inzaghi nodded and went on to explain that although they were once more numerous, the Yezidis now numbered about a million. “They’ve been persecuted for a very long time,” the priest explained. “You can imagine. They’ve suffered terribly—first as Kurds and then as Yezidis. It’s a real double whammy.”

Danny shrugged. “Yeah, well, you worship the devil, you’re gonna get
criticized
.”

Inzaghi laughed. “It’s not what you’re thinking,” he told him. “They’re not sacrificing children or riding around on brooms. They’ve made a conscious decision to venerate Satan because the
Black Writing
tells them that on the eighth day God grew weary of the world and gave it over to the devil. To them, the devil is not evil; he’s the Tawus, sort of the chief angel.”

“Like Lucifer.”

“Like Lucifer without the fall, yes.”

“That’s interesting,” Danny said, “but . . . getting back to Terio . . . you said he was upset, that something happened in Turkey.”

The priest shifted in his chair, as if he’d been suddenly discomfited. “Right.”

“So? What happened?”

Inzaghi took a deep breath. “According to Chris?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Chris said—I know it sounds ridiculous, but . . . he
said
he’d seen the devil.”

The Brits have a word for it, a word Ian used every chance he got:
gobsmacked
. And that’s what Danny was. For a long moment Danny didn’t know quite what to say. Finally, it occurred to him.
“What?
”

“I said, ‘He
said
. . . he’d seen the devil.’ ” A nervous laugh.

“Get out!”

The priest shook his head.

Danny didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He might be a Catholic boy, but religion had never been much of an issue in his family. While some part of him held out the possibility that there might be a God, he came from a long line of lapsed Catholics—virtual agnostics. Except for a couple of spinster aunts who were devout, the role of the Church in the lives of the Cray clan was to supply a framework for rites of passage. Crays might get married in the Church, and they might baptize their kids there (his own baptismal certificate was in a manila envelope in the bottom drawer of his mother’s rolltop desk). The Church might oversee their funerals and help bury them. Some might even go to mass more or less regularly, especially when they got older—although his parents hadn’t reached this point yet. But no one in his family (except the aunts) was religious; no one actually believed in the
devil
.

Evil was real, he knew that, but it was not incarnate. The devil was like . . . the Tooth Fairy.

“So what did he look like?” Danny asked at last. “Horns, tail, what?”

The priest shook his head, looking slightly embarrassed. “Chris didn’t say. Just that he was riding in a Bentley.”

“The devil.”

“Right.”

“And this was where?” Danny asked.

“Somewhere in eastern Turkey.” Inzaghi leaned forward with a sly grin and added, “You’d think the devil would have a Rolls, wouldn’t you?”

Danny gave an uncertain chuckle. What was he supposed to say to that? What would
a cop
say? Was the priest
testing
him or
kidding
him? “Weird,” he said.

“I agree.”

As the waiter cleared their plates, Danny decided it was time to cut to the chase. Producing the FedEx receipt that he’d fished out of Terio’s trash, he asked Inzaghi if he could take a look at the professor’s computer. “We’re hoping there may be something on it. Something that might help in the investigation.”

The priest frowned, and Danny thought,
Uh-oh.
“I’m afraid I don’t
have
it,” Inzaghi told him. “Not actually.”

“Why not?” Danny asked.

“Because it’s still in Customs.” According to the priest, an import tax of more than a million lire—about five hundred dollars—had yet to be paid. Until the tax was discharged, the machine would remain in the Cargo Terminal at Leonardo da Vinci Airport. “You know how it is,” Inzaghi told him. “I’ve asked for the funds, but it could take months. And the truth is, it will be nice to have a laptop, but I don’t actually
need
it. There are other computers I can use.”

“Then why did he send it to you?”

Inzaghi chuckled. “It was just a present. I always wanted a laptop, and Chris—he was always complaining about its weight. I remember him joking that ‘a portable computer’ was an oxymoron.”

Danny laughed. “So it was a hand-me-down—”

“Exactly!” the priest replied. “Only not so cheap, as it turned out. If he’d sent it to my office—in the Vatican—I’d have it by now. But he sent it to my flat in the Via della Scrofa. That’s in Rome, and so we must pay Caesar.”

Danny thought for a moment, then leaned forward, elbows on the table. “What if I get it for you?” he asked. “I can expense it through the sheriff’s department. And after I’ve had a look at it, I’ll make sure you get it back right away.”

The priest pursed his lips, sat back, and thought it over. After a moment, he inclined his head in a consent, as if to say,
It’s a deal.
Then he reached into his pocket and produced a beautifully made business card, which he presented to Danny. “The number at the top is my apartment in the Casa Clera. I’m usually there at night. But you can always get me on the mobile—except when I’m in church. I shut it off when I’m there.”

“Terrific,” Danny said. He scrawled his cell-phone number on the back of one of Frank Muller’s business cards and handed it to the priest.

“I’ll give you a letter for Customs,” Inzaghi promised. “And a copy of the manifest. You shouldn’t have any problems at the airport.”

“That’s very kind,” Danny told him.

“Not at all,” the priest replied. “One good turn deserves another.”