Papal Decree Read Free Page A

autumn. The entrance was inside a wooden shed the employees had probably used in times past to store yard tools. It looked abandoned, full of dust and spiderwebs, probably a home for animals that didn’t like humans showing up.
    At the center of the shed was a bench that hid the entrance to the underground vault. It wasn’t as heavy as it looked. It was easier for the old man to move it than to descend those stairs. Once down, the route was short. About a hundred feet to another door, a metal structure a couple of feet wide, with bolts the size of a man’s leg. Sixty years ago, one would have had to insert a key in the proper place to activate the mechanism to open it, but now, with technological advances, an entirely electronic lock had been installed. It opened by an optic sensor, and he looked into it for a few seconds. A blue flash passed in front of the old man’s eyes and validated his identity. The eyes matched those registered by the viewfinder:
    IDENTITY RECOGNIZED
    BEN ISAAC
    8 NOV 2010 21H13S04
    ACCESS PERMITTED
    The mechanism set off an opening operation that, despite its being a logical sequence of releasing locks, sounded to Ben Isaac like disconnected noises coming from within the structure. Only at the end of the process did the two exterior cranks turn, upon which the heavy door opened outward with an exhalation of air, as if it were a living thing. One by one, the fluorescent lights turned on automatically, illuminating the interior of the vault. One hundred square feet of thick stone walls. The interior was two and a half yards high, enough to hold a standing person.
    Everywhere the lights emitted a uniform white brilliance, leaving nothing hidden. The place itself was hidden enough dozens of feet above in the abandoned shed among the trees a hundred feet from the large house.
    The walls consisted of cold, hard granite, making the closed room cool. The white tiles of the floor reflected the light. There was nothing on the walls. Bare. Three display cases stood alone in the center of the room, topped with three glass panes that prevented oxygen from seeping inside. In the lower left corner of each case, a gauge indicated the temperature of fifty-five degrees. In each of the cases were documents: two parchments and two more recent documents.
    Ben Isaac moved to the case on the left that contained a parchment and looked at it. Time had been kinder to that document than to his old body … or so Ben Isaac thought, resentfully. What did he know of that document’s history? Whose hands it had passed through, and how it had been treated over the years, centuries, millennia, until this day, November 8, the anniversary of its discovery with other scrolls in Qumran in 1948? It had been in his possession in this same place for more than sixty-five years. It dated from the first century A.D. , according to the most advanced scientific method of dating that money could buy, and in this regard Ben Isaac couldn’t complain. His money could buy anything. It was a small document, compared to the others, its edges worn away and scorched on the upper right side. It must have lain close to a fire on some cold night, or someone may have held it, with criminal intentions, over a flame. Whatever the reason, the burn had not damaged the text that Ben Isaac knew by heart and sometimes recited to himself in the language in which it was written, a dead language for most people, on nights he couldn’t sleep. Those nights.
    Rome, year 4 of the reign of Claudius, Yeshua ben Joseph, immigrant from Galilee, confirms he is the owner of a parcel of land outside the walls of the city.
    He couldn’t fail to be moved every time he saw that piece of parchment with those letters written by a Roman scribe about a man who would change the course of history for billions of people over the centuries. Jesus himself, son of Joseph, grandson of Jacob, heir of David the great, Solomon the wise, the patriarch Abraham, according to ancient