Indeed, the Catholic Church exerted a strong influence over Kavanaugh. Early on, his mother had hoped he would become a priest. His father knew otherwise. Colin was devout on Sundays, but he did love his Saturday nights. His annual visits to Rome brought him rewards of both.
However, now Colin Kavanaugh was thinking less of his ongoing affairs and more about the powerful job he would inherit. His mind went back eighteen months to when Martin Gruber told him his plan.
“So, what do you think, my boy?” Gruber had asked across the desk.
“Like I’ve been hand-picked by God for the best job.”
He could still hear Gruber’s laugh. It was a hearty, big laugh. Then it abruptly stopped. With chilling authority came a declaration that Colin Kavanaugh only recently understood.
“Oh, not by God. And it’s far from the best job. But make no mistake, you should consider it the most important job in the world.”
Two
Close to Russia’s border with Mongolia, China, and Kazakhstan, a rock face rises thirty meters above the Anuy River. This by itself is not unusual. But when the light hits the base correctly, an opening to a cave becomes visible. Today, it is known as Denisova. It contains more history than has ever been reported.
The name is owed to a hermit who lived there in the eighteenth century. Dionisij, or the more anglicized Denis, was something of a character. He rarely came out of the shadows, but those who saw him would never forget. He had long, scraggly hair and a filthy, knotted beard. The river provided his food supply, his bath and his toilet, though he fished more than he bathed.
Prior to Dionisij’s time, Neolithic herdsmen huddled within the cave, bracing themselves against the cruel Siberian winters, unchanged for thousands of years. They left drawings, evidence that they were there and what they experienced.
Dionisij inhabited the cave’s main chamber, away from the wind. It offered him some comfort and a spiritual sense, for atop the high arched ceiling was an opening that shot seemingly holy shafts of sunlight downward.
After his third winter, Dionisij grew tired of digging through the river ice that was the thickness of two hands. He decided to become more of a hunter than a fisherman. He sharpened his spears as his ancient ancestors had and sat in wait within his lair.
Days and nights went by with no red meat in sight except for a cold fox that was attracted by his fire. It came closer; then, sensing danger, it left. A squirrel tested the opening, but it too was skittish. Finally, a rabbit, brave enough to explore the source of the light and the warmth, ventured further. This would be his dinner.
However, Dionisij’s throw went wide. The rabbit dodged, scurried past him and ran deeper into the cave.
Dionisij’s hunger fed his quest. He lit a torch from his fire and followed the rabbit. He had no frame of reference of how far he walked, but he was captivated by what he saw.
First, staggering rock formations. Then a lake, a magnificent lake seemingly with no end. He touched the water. It was warm as if God himself had breathed on it.
The hermit continued, forgetting his hunger pangs. He came to another tunnel. It was tight, but navigable. Why hadn’t I explored more before? the hermit wondered.
He stepped onto what he thought were small rocks. Only they weren’t rocks. At least rocks like he’d seen before. He bent down and picked up what looked to be a tiny piece of bone that had hardened to stone. There were other odd things: a jaw or teeth, but maybe not. They, too were hard as rock.
Dionisij couldn’t grasp the experience or the significance. Such understanding would not come in his time. However, he took advantage of what it offered: food, warmth, the spoils from placing traps, and bathing in the hot springs-fed lake.
A month later, an old priest, on a full day’s walk, arrived at Dionisij’s cave with a satchel of dried food and a heavy frock for the hermit. It was a trek he repeated every spring. The priest was surprised to see the hermit looking better than the previous year. He had more color and life, as if food were not a problem.
The hermit, still grateful for the priest’s kindness, accepted the gifts then told the white-haired clergy why his stomach was full and his body clean.
The priest listened to Dionisij’s story which went far beyond just the artifacts he produced. It reminded him of a conversation he long ago overheard between two cardinals in Rome. They’d whispered about a cave in Italy and the mysteries it revealed.
“Close your ears forever to the words that mistakenly came your way. It is none of your concern,” he’d been told under threat of excommunication. “Forget whose lips they came from. Forget everything.”
Of course he didn’t. Now fifty years later, the exchange came back to him with the belief that his superiors needed to know. He told the hermit to take him inside the cave. Deep inside.
The way was lit by Dionisij’s single oil lamp. However, it was the proverbial blind leading the blind, two men tripping over a past they couldn’t begin to fathom.
On the walls were crude, ancient cave paintings of primeval hunters bringing down great beasts, and on the cavern floor, hollowed out stone bowls and rocks shaped like teeth. The priest collected some of the finds. Dionisij insisted on holding onto things that he needed to survive. But there was no shortage of relics.
The hermit beckoned him further.
They entered a vast chamber. The priest gasped. Ahead was nothing, or a nothingness. He approached slowly with his right hand extended. At the point he thought his hand would disappear into the void, he felt a smooth surface, something that seemed like a wall, carved out from the rocks. Or, he thought, within it. Dionisij had worked on it, scraping away layers of stone. So had ancients before him. The wall was flat, completely vertical from base to ceiling. More astounding, even with their two torches, the wall absorbed all light. It was utterly, frighteningly black.
With authoritarian command, summoning God, Jesus and the Holy Mother, the priest ordered the hermit to leave, never to return to the chamber for fear of opening the door to hell.
Dionisij, preferring to stay warm, clean and well-fed, did as he pleased after the clergyman left. But he never got through.
Back at his abbey, the priest wrote a cardinal in Moscow about the discovery. More than a year later, a stranger came to the cave. Thereafter, no one ever saw Dionisij, and the section of the cavern that raised the priest’s interest became impassable due to a devastating cave-in.
The story of Denisova Cave might have been lost completely had the priest not committed his observations to his memoirs.
Three
“No ‘I think,’” Gruber demanded of Kavanaugh. “Never ‘I think.’ Never! Own what you say. If you don’t own it, then it is not ready to be said.”
“I am sure.” Am I? Yes, for goddamned sake. “Our firewalls are secure. No viruses. No intrusions.”
Gruber nodded. For all that he knew about history, he also kept current on computer technology…and threats. “Hackers?”