TS 3 Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Guntram de Lisle's diary

July 22^nd, 2014 

I started the day very early. At 4.00 a.m. to be precise. I was never an early bird, but this was simply ridiculous. At 5:30 a.m. I took the plane to Rome and at 9:00, I was in San Capistrano, ready for the stupid second photo shooting. How top models do this every day is beyond me. I have a growing respect for them. 

Once more, the nice journalist, Mariana Paschi was there like in Zurich, and she quickly chose where she wanted to make the photos; the living room, the corridor, the stairs and under some of the pictures in Konrad's collection. We spoke about art and that was it. She and her photographer left at twelve, just as agreed.

I gathered my papers and the special package I had to deliver in Bari. I couldn't trust anybody with it. Maybe one of my father's men, but something inside me told me to go by myself. After all, I nearly destroyed the cup last night. It was the most stupid accident. I had Enrico's copy of the cup and I took it to the cabinet where the original was kept. I took the copy out of its box and compared it with the original. Both were identical. I felt a bit bad about “cheating” the Order with the copy but I'm more and more doubtful about our abilities and commitment to our Lord, Jesus Christ. 

I took the original and closed my eyes because once more, its shiny nature was giving me the creeps. This is no ordinary glass. I carefully placed the cup inside its velvet layered wooden box and did my best to cover it well, so no harm would befall upon it. I closed the lid and placed the box on top of one of the benches. I closed the tabernacle again, I knelt down in front of the real chalice with the forms and turned around to pick up the box. 

It fell from my hands. 

The box was slippery as butter. 

I closed my eyes and swore because I was sure the crystal wouldn't have survived the fall. I know my left hand is generally useless and I hardly use it, but this time there was no cause for the accident. I had gripped it well. 

I opened the box, expecting to find the chalice in shards but it was perfect. Not a single scratch on it. Without thinking it, I mumbled “Thank you, God,” and pressed the closed again box against my chest. 

I don't know how to describe it and probably it was the product of my stress and imagination but the thing felt warm. Warm as hot. A kind of warm that comforts you and suddenly, I knew I had to take it to Bari by myself. The warmth also gave me strength to continue with all the tasks that laid in front of me. 

“You're not happy here too,” I said to the cup and bit my lips because speaking with things leads to you know what. I had enough with Russia. I walked to the bench in front of Friederich's tombstone and sat there for a long time. 

“I wish you were still here and tell me what you think,” I said to Friederich and in a way, it didn't feel strange to be speaking with someone gone. “I'm doing my best to get Konrad home.” I said. “I only wish that you were here to see him back.” 

In that precise moment, I knew we were going to be fine. Don't ask me why because I don't know and there's still a lot to do before I have him back, but I just knew it. 

I took the car from San Capistrano to Roma Termini. I had the box in a backpack and had changed myself into something more comfortable. I had left all my bodyguards in Rome but just when I was in front of the ticket vending machine, I heard a voice. 

“Fuck, you still owe me that trip to the South.” 

I turned around and there was Fefo. “Were you not supposed to be in France?” I asked. 

“Charming as always. You're quite grumpy as boss,” he answered. “Besides I have the tickets.” 

“I said no company this time.” 

“Whatever,” shrugged Fefo and took the backpack from me. I was going to tell him a few things but he was running away to the platforms with the chalice. I had to run after him. 

Breathless I caught him at the entrance to the platform. “Go home, Fefo.” I grunted and took the backpack back. 

“How rude! I'm here to escort you.” 

“Who invited you? I didn't.” 

“Lacroix told me to come along and I thought, why not? We were never in the south of Italy. Bari, la terra dil rimorso. Tarantella and witches. What else can you ask for?”

“I'm not making tourism!” I shouted him. “You're supposed to be working!”

“Write me a note for the boss.” He winked at me and began to walk towards the train. I had to run too because he had the tickets and I didn't want to be left behind. 

“I'm the boss!” I shouted again but he didn't care and jumped inside one of the wagons. I followed him. 

It was first class. 

“Why on earth did you buy this?” I asked when I caught up with him, standing in front of two seats. 

“Because you need good old Fefo to know what style is,” he smirked. “Don't pout and you'll get the window seat.” 

“You should be in France,” I repeated again and took the window seat after I carefully placed the backpack in the shelf upon our heads.

“I can't. Trouble with Mirko. Antonov thought it was for the best that I returned here. He's a bit jealous that I'm with John and one thing led to the other and he turned up nasty and I nastier and...” 

“All right.” I said. “I get it.” 

“This little shit is crazy. He kicks me out of my flat in the middle of a restaurant and then, he gets jealous because I'm with John. He doesn't eat but doesn't let the others eat too. Gata Flora. On top, he doesn't follow orders. Who the fuck does he think he is? Our superior because his cousin is the super general boss? Antonov had to put him in line.” 

Exactly what I was expecting from Mirko. He's a great guy to have on your side, but if you rub him on the wrong direction, he's a wildcard. I only hope he's not up to do much damage. I'll have to speak with Ratko about this. 

“I have a lot of work to do.” I said to Fefo and he told me that he had a whole new level of the Angry Birds galaxy to conquer. Does he understand that I'm the guy who's signing his checks now? I think not. My only comfort is that he doesn't pay much attention to Konrad too. 

Fefo took the seats on the other side of the corridor. When I looked at him he said, “Plan B. Use the extra seats. You're pissed off. If you were nice, we would be sitting together, buddy-buddy kind of. I'm not going to buy you a coke. Definitively.” 

The cretin didn't buy me lunch when the girl with the trolley passed by our seats. I had to do it. He knows that my Italian sounds horrible and makes Italian people laugh their asses at me. Even Konrad speaks it much better than me. 

I returned to my work, ignoring those ugly birds’ evil laughs resounding everywhere. In stereo.

“Hello Guntram.” I rose my eyes from the iPad and there was Altair, standing there, dressed in a plain normal brown suit. 

“Are you stalking me?” I asked him but he smiled bewitchingly. “Really.” I huffed, feeling my anger begin to boil. 

“I wanted to discuss some business with you.” Altair sat next to me. I noticed that Fefo had put his hand away from his gun. He's also getting paranoid but an Arab looking man standing next to me is like calling for trouble. 

“Altair, you know this is not going to work. You will never agree to our conditions and they're non-negotiable. The bank's building is for sale but...” 

“I'll agree to your conditions if you agree to mine,” he interrupted me. “It's not too much to ask for.” 

“We can't deliver what you want. It's impossible. We have to think on our customers' interests.” I said while my mind was furiously reviewing all the shit we wrote on the terms of sale document. 

“Why don't we discuss this over dinner?” 

This Arab is really persistent. Well, he's Emirati. Are there not enough blonds in Europe that he has to follow me everywhere? He should move to Sweden or Norway. 

“I really enjoyed our lunch together in London and we should give a chance to ourselves,” he added with a smile.  

“Altair, you know that's impossible. I told you so.” I repeated the drill tiredly. 

“Nothing is impossible. I'm offering you a solution to your problems and my affections for you are true. I never felt so good around somebody like when I'm with you. Why don't you come to London with me? Anywhere you want.” 

“Do you want that I move in with you?” I asked in shock. What's wrong with him? The nerve of him! 

“Why not? Why would you stay here? In my country, you'd be respected and appreciated, unlike here.” 

Did I hear it right? Last time I checked, Saudis were hanging homosexuals from cranes just like Iranians do. Maybe things are better in the Emirates but I wouldn't bet on it. Julius told me a story about he and someone from Arabia and it didn't last long because the guy had to return home to his family before the scandal would have been huge. Julius was left heartbroken and with a fat savings account.

“Altair, I'm married and have no intentions to leave my husband.” I said clearly. “So stop sending me presents or phoning me. There's nothing between us or will ever be. Is that clear? Even if you were the last man on earth, I would never go to you.” 

“Nobody ever treated me like you do before. All the people I know flatter me all day... and I do the same. If someone makes me a favor it is because they expect my generosity in return. You were generous to me just because you are like this.” 

“Believe me there's nothing generous about me.” I said and he dared to take my hand between his! 

“I don't believe it. I know your heart. It shows in your art.” 

I was speechless because he was like another Constantin but from the Middle East. I paint shit and that's all! I don't know what's wrong with him or with me. I caught him looking at me with adoring eyes and I'm quite out of the market, so to speak. Fuck, I'm over thirty, with a heart condition, handicapped, have a horrible temper and there's nothing left from the idealistic youth of ten years ago. My beauty is gone since a long time. 

This man should get a shrink or an optometrist very soon. 

I got caught in the warm shine of his brown eyes. They're nice, much nicer than Constantin's. If I wouldn't be married and he were a normal Joe, perhaps I would be considering asking him on a date. 

“Hey you, the vulture,” I heard Fefo's voice and thank heavens that that imagination of mine took a hike and I stopped pondering nonsense. “Get in line to fuck with him. I'm there since 1996.” 

Altair looked at me transfixed. “It's true,” I mumbled dying of shame at Fefo's atrocious choice of words. I guess poor Altair was never spoken like that. 

“Don't you have something else to do?” Fefo said and opened his jacket a bit showing his weapon. “Or somewhere else to sit?”

“Who is this person?” Altair asked me. “Is he your manservant?” 

I guess that was an idiomatic problem because we don't use that word around here. Not anymore. Dieter would strike on me if I did. 

“No, he's a friend from my schooldays.” I answered and Altair looked down at Fefo like you would look at a cockroach, and a dirty one on top. 

“We will speak again, Guntram,” he told me seriously. “Once we are more... undisturbed.” He rose and walked away and I knew right at that moment why Arab men are so dangerous. They simply wait for their enemies' corpses to pass in front of them and usually they get away with it. I mean, you can't rise to the top in such a court if your character is weak. The Order bad days might be nothing compared to a normal day in the Emirati royal court.  

“Great, Fefo, you just pissed off one of the richest men in the Middle-East,” I told him. “This guy manages the wealth of the Emir.” 

“Nothing new. I managed to piss off Repin and Lintorff in the same day. I make friends everywhere I go.” 

“Just be careful. He's not used to be contradicted. For him, if I say no, it's like a game. If someone else does it, it's bad news.” 

“Don't worry about me,” Fefo shrugged. “Now tell me from where did you dig out that fucker.” 

I spilled the whole story and he sighed. “You're a magnet for psychos, Guti. Try to calm down a little. Turn that mojo of yours down or do something about it. Buy a burka if you have to.” 

I would have strangled him but I had to keep my cool. I preferred to tell him to keep his mouth shut about my meeting with Enrico. 

“Of course,” he said. “Are the Serbs giving you a hard time?” 

“This has nothing to do with that.” 

We arrived to Bari on time. Enrico and his people were already at the train station. We drove away from the city but Fefo was left with Enrico's people in his house. I think he protested a bit but I said that it was OK. I drove with Enrico alone to another estate of his in the city outskirts. 

The villa was impressive, perhaps from around mid-nineteenth century, classical and well maintained. Nothing tacky as someone would expect from an Italian mobster, but Enrico is a musicologist besides being a businessman, not your usual brute with money. Michel told me that his family had been “serving” the de Lisles since the eighteenth century and giving a hard time to the Bourbons for even longer. 

I stepped down from the car and followed Enrico inside the house. We were greeted by an old -really old- priest who was introduced as Pater Severino from the Benedictine Order. We sat in the living room and I unpacked the box. Both men were almost jumping out of their seats. 

“You must understand that we can't assure a hundred percent the origins of this object. Don't get your hopes too high. Our Lord isn't in an object. He's much more than that.” I forewarned them but heck if they were listening to me. 

I placed the box over the marble coffee table in front of us. With great care, I opened the lid and removed the crimson velvet to display the dark caramel glass resting inside. I could hear a gasp of wonder when they saw it. 

I took the chalice in my hands and handed it to the priest. He took it and his eyes were filled with tears. I felt bad about it because the man's devotion was true but was the cup also true? I truly hated my ancestors for telling such stories just to gain “an army for free”. 

Or maybe Guillaume was truly convinced of its authenticity and all of us shed our blood for it because it was the noble thing to do. For a second, I hated Illuminism for it had destroyed all faith in us. No matter what my heart thinks, my reason tells me I'm wrong and that there's no reason for the supernatural. We choose to believe because... I don't know why. We just do it out of habit or sheer need.

“Are you really yielding it to us, my son?” the old man asked me. 

“You will look after it better than me,” I replied. “I only ask you that the legend around this chalice is kept secret and that it will be only used for the major ceremonies. It's an antiquity nevertheless.” 

“Don't you believe in it?” 

“I can't believe in it knowing my family as I do, but I believe that its place should be in a holy place, not in a bank's vault. You will look after it better than me.” I repeated.

“If you don't believe in its sanctity, why do you treat it with such utter respect?” Don Severino asked me and I didn't know what to tell him. “Your respect doesn't come from fear of divine retaliation.”   

“I don't have an answer for that yet.” I told the truth. “There's something about it but I'm afraid to deceive people with my own feelings about it. Anyway, God is bigger than any object or thing that is on this earth.” 

Did I say that? I just killed all devotion to saints’ relics within the Catholic Church. I can sign up for excommunication now. 

“We know you're a Cathar,” Enrico said gravely. “Perhaps that's why your family was chosen to be the guardians of the cup. Yours isn't an easy way.” 

“I was rose a Catholic,” I protested but both of them looked at me skeptically. “I follow the teachings of our Mother the Church,” I repeated firmly. “Enrico, you know all what I've done over the past month had been to protect our Christian brothers.” 

“You don't believe in the Vatican, though the new Pope comes from your own land.” Enrico said. “Don't deny it.” 

“The Vatican is a rotten place.” I said earnestly. “But not our faith.” 

“I will not judge you, my son,” Don Severino said. “We are grateful to you and we will protect this “object”, as you call it, with our lives.” 

“Would you like to see where we are going to keep it?” Enrico asked me and I nodded.

Once more, we drove to an old church in the middle of nowhere. The place was horribly hot and the landscape around it looked like a desert but the church was built in such a way that it was partly dug in the underground, making the air inside it fresher than in the outside.  I was a bit surprised that inside the place there were several people, almost eighty or even hundred already sitting on the wooden benches, all quiet like the grave. Some were young, some were very old. All of them men and from different races. I think I saw Thabo and some of his men there too.

All the people looked at me expectantly and I felt very nervous because they were “inspecting” me from head to toe. I nearly missed that the old church was a Romanesque building and that the capitals of the columns were heavily ornamented with scenes from the life of Christ. Strangely, there was a sort of Moorish air to the palm tree leaves carved in the stone. It was unlike anything I've seen in a church before, but perhaps it was a Coptic thing.  

I followed the priest towards the altar and gave the box to him. He showed the chalice to the congregation and all of them knelt down in one single movement, as if they were a collective body. It gave me the creeps as the air was charged with an electrical power that rose goosebumps in me. All the men there couldn't keep their eyes apart from the chalice and I would have sworn it glowed. 

But that could be the reflection of the sunlight on the tiny threads of gold “melted” inside the glass. I mean, when I was in Torcello with Konrad, all the crowns of the saints in the mosaics glowed in the darkness because the gold reflected the slightest ray of light filtering through the small windows or from the flames from the candles.

I don't know any more but at that moment I knew that I had done well in bringing the cup there. 

To my astonishment, the mass followed the Tridentine rite. We all took communion with me as the last person and I felt like crying but I restrained myself quite well, or at least, nobody paid attention to my silent tears. 

I will probably go straight to hell for all what I have done in the past month but for a brief moment, I felt that I could be forgiven for all my sins. It was a love that wasn't human. It was more than that and I felt I could have burst from the ecstasy of knowing God at this time. 

This is something I will not forget anytime soon. 

The Mass was over and the chalice was put back in the tabernacle. I left the church and stood at the entrance with Enrico standing next to me. I could hardly understand what people were telling me and why they were hugging me with real brotherly affection. For them, it was like a feast and they were all happy in a contained way. I think many thanked me but I was like in a cloud and had trouble to understand what they were telling me. I did my best to be polite to them. 

“Are you all right?” Enrico asked me and I made up an excuse about the heat and being very tired. He was kind enough as to drive me back to his house. 

“What is the name of the church?” I asked Enrico. 

“Santa Maria,” he told me. “It was built in the eleventh century and the Holy Grail was here a few times before. The people you see here are its defenders and we are grateful to you. If anything happens with the Order because trouble will rise once the Lintorffs are back, you can trust us.” 

“Were there Copts too?” I asked. 

“We are all brothers in Christ,” Enrico said with a shrug. “There’s even a Sufi or two but they're a minority and mostly help with translations or as liaisons with the brothers in Alexandria. They were the two men in the back who didn't take communion. As I said, we are not truly part of the Order. We are with them because we need their support but the moment they start giving us trouble, we will go away. We are with you, not with them.” 

I was nearly dead on my feet when I returned home at one in the morning. Fefo had been a bit concerned about me when I disappeared for five hours but I told him to be quiet. We landed in Zurich at twelve and I think he had to shake me awake. I was soundly sleeping all the way back from the airport. 

I went to the children's bedroom and they were sleeping. The twins at least. Kurt opened his eyes the moment I entered in the room. 

“Did you see the lights now?” he asked me and I frowned. 

“Go back to bed. You're dreaming.” I tucked him back under the covers. 

“The lights in the cup. Did you see them now?” he asked me again and my heart froze. I looked at him in shock. How on earth did he know where I was going? I told nobody but my father and he didn't see the boys today. 

“Yes, I did,” I confessed slowly. 

“Do you believe in it now?” 

“Yes, I do.” I admitted and Kurt closed his eyes finally falling asleep again. 

I went to work to the office. It really makes no sense to try to sleep tonight.