The young man surveyed the amount of food left on each plate. "Told you guys you should consider McDonald's."
"Veritas nihil veretur nisi abscondi, " Francis said.
"It's not the truth I fear, it's the tip," the waiter said.
Where else but at Manuel's?
Lang watched the retreating back of their server. "So where were we?"
"Somewhere in the turbulent history of the Languedoc."
"Oh yeah. I think the place, the main room at Montsegur, was a library, maybe a repository for early Christian writings the Cathars somehow had managed to salvage, maybe even something the survivors of Christ's family brought with them. Something Christian, anyway, since it drew Julian's attention. In addition to hating Christians, he was a prankster. He would have loved to embarrass the early Church in some way. Next, let's speculate the Cathars found this library or whatever it was, made a church out of it."
"And a fortress," Francis interrupted. "What you say makes sense. When Montsegur was besieged, the Cathars finally surrendered on the basis they wouldn't have to come down from the place for another couple of days. Perhaps time to secrete whatever they had, like the library."
"The library Hitler would have loved to possess," Lang said, signaling for a refill of the pitcher of beer. ''You know he had a passion for the supernatural or religious. Apparently, Skorzeny found something, truckloads of something."
The same waiter substituted a full pitcher for the empty one.
Francis filled his glass and stretched out into the corner of the booth, putting his feet up on the bench. "Okay, so much for the why of what you're looking for. Let's take a look at this inscription. I make it to be something like 'The Emperor Julian accuses-' "
"Accusatem is a noun, not a verb," Lang pointed out, making no effort to conceal his glee at his friend's mistake.
"Knew that-just wanted to see if you're on your toes. Problem is, we don't really know if 'we're dealing with a verb or noun. The ending's missing."
"It's in the wrong place for the verb."
"Only if we're dealing with prose."
''You think this is poetry?"
"Could be one of the seven meters of lyric verse, yes." Francis smiled. "Perhaps you've forgotten that there are seven classic meters, or feet, of Latin lyric verse, anapest, or short-short-long."
"Which this isn't."
"And dactyl, or long-short-short…" Francis looked at Lang with a mocking grin. "Surely you were aware of the structure of Latin poetry."
"Don't you guys have to take a vow of humility or something?"
Francis reached across the table to fill Lang's glass. "Okay, okay, so it probably isn't poetry." He put the pitcher down and examined the paper again. "We've got a clear verb with ibit -someone, third person, commands."
Lang sipped from his glass. "Good bet it's the emperor. They tend to command a lat."
"Problem is, what? He commands an accusation? He could make his own." ''A synonym would be indictment. Suppose he orders the physical indictment, the writing be… what?"
Francis adjusted his glasses as though the move would make the language intelligible. "Only other verb is sepelit, bury or entomb."
Lang was staring at his copy, beer forgotten. "Orders the indictment be entombed? Makes no sense. Let's take the easy part, rexis iudeaium, clearly 'king of the Jews.' "
Both men looked up, meeting the other's eyes. "Christ?" Lang asked. "Wasn't that what they put on the cross, a sarcastic title given a condemned man?"
"True, but I'm not so sure it was totally sarcastic," Francis said. "In fact, why don't you take a look at that?"
"How?"
"Friend of mine, professor of Judaic studies at Emory."
Lang's glass stopped en route to his mouth. "Emory? Thought that was a Methodist school. They got Judaic studies?"
"Apparently so. Leb Greenberg and I speak on the same program occasionally. One of those ecumenical things where a Jew, a Catholic, and a Protestant speak on some of the same agendas about freedom of worship and how Americans tolerate all faiths. We had a Muslim imam, a Shiite. He quit when we wanted to add a Sunni"
So much for the feel-good of freedom of religion. "So," Lang asked, his glass resuming its journey, "what can Professor Greenberg tell us?"
Francis was contemplating his glass, clearly estimating if there was enough beer in the pitcher to fill it. "I'd like a background on this 'King of the Jews' thing from a non-Christian view. It might help us correctly translate Julian's inscription."
Still turning over the existence of a department of Judaica at a Methodist school, Lang asked, "Any reason you can't ask?"
Deciding a compromise was in order, Francis poured the pitcher's contents evenly into both glasses. "I think so. Although Leb and I get along fine, I think he'd be a lot more candid about a Jew's historical point of view with you than with me. I'm a priest; you're half heathen anyway."
"Nicest thing you've ever said," Lang was motioning for the check, "conceding I'm only part heathen."
"Don't let it go to your head."
Lang lost the flip of the coin for the tab, an act that had become merely ceremonial. Francis always won.
Lang suspected the priest had special help.
Outside, Francis stopped to admire Lang's new car, its black paint glistening under the streetlights. ''A Mercedes? I thought you like those little German toys, Porsches. This one even has a backseat."
Lang had not told him of the need to acquire new wheels, a car not quite so conspicuous as the destroyed Porsche, a highly visible, unique-sounding turbo cabriolet. There must have been hundreds of Mercedes just like this one in his neighborhood.
"CLK convertible." He opened the door and inserted the key. "Watch."
Pushing a button made part of the trunk flip open as the windows automatically receded into the doors. The top lurched upward and stopped.
"Pretty clever," Francis observed. "Now, what do you do to make it go all the way down?"
Lang pushed the button again. No response.
"Good question."
Both men stared at the car as though expecting it to solve the problem itself. At the price still visible on the sticker, not a totally unrealistic expectation.
"There's a MARTA station a couple of blocks away," Francis finally volunteered. ''You can't very well drive it with the top sticking straight up."
"Why do I get the feeling buying the extra warranty was a good investment?" Lang muttered. "Help me manually raise this thing in case it rains."
The top wouldn't go up, either. They left the car there, an expensive steel-and-chrome box with an open lid.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
DeKalb County, Georgia
Emory University
Two days later
Lang parked the Mercedes between an SUV with fraternity Greek letters on the rear windshield and a Toyota with a bumper sticker that proclaimed, "Harvard: The Emory of the North." He was facing a quadrangle of leafy oaks. Two marble-sided, red-tile-roofed buildings on each side, one at each end. He checked his written directions and his watch. He had taken a circuitous route to ensure that no one had followed, but he was a few minutes early and it looked like he was in the right place.
Curious as to the existence of a Judaic studies program at a Methodist school, he had called up a catalog on the Internet, learning that the institution also had a Holocaust studies program. Searching further, he had pieced together an interesting history.
In the late 1950s, Emory's college had been a small and relatively obscure institution, serving basically as a minor league training ground for the university's regionally prestigious medical school. Liberal arts degrees were frequent consolation prizes given to disappointed doctor-aspirants.
A little-known professor of theology, Tom Altizer, changed that perception. He announced his theory that God was dead. Not departed, not disinterested, but dead, deceased, gone to wherever the Lord of Heaven might go.