was Friday afternoon and Conan felt a wave of bureaucratic inertia swamping his resolve.
‘See you Monday, Kenny.’
• • •
‘There’s not much about it on the net. I had to go dark.’
‘Really?’
Lucia was at her sister’s place and had asked him to call her back from a public phone – which he’d located in a bar near his hotel. The call could still be traced and transcribed but it was far less likely than if they spoke on their own phones.
‘Did you know there’s actually a Vatican Dark Web?’
‘Dark Web for everything,’ said Conan. ‘Pretty spooky was it?’
‘Let’s just say there are some weird people who want to do seriously perverted shit to each other. That’s all you get on Vatican Dark … pervy weirdos … but they knew about Epistola Clementis … or said they did.’
‘Well?’
‘Well, as far as I can tell, the Epistola Clementis means the Letter of Clement … one of the early popes.’
‘Right.’
‘It’s all about the pope’s authority … where he gets his power from.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘Conan … you’re not taking it seriously!’
‘Yes, I am,’ he said. ‘I’m just waiting for you to get to the important bit.’
‘Back in the first century,’ she said, her voice singing with sarcasm, ‘the pope’s authority was pretty important. It still is in some places.’
‘But why is it important in Ord City in 2030?’
‘I don’t know … that’s your job. But let me finish will you?’
‘Sorry.’
Conan grinned, feeling a surge of affection for Lucia and wishing he was with her.
‘Okay,’ she continued. ‘There was a bit of a scandal about the Epistola Clementis many years after Clement’s papacy. As the church was becoming the official church of Rome … in place of Jupiter and Thor and all that lot … some bright spark lawyer questioned the source of the pope’s authority.’
‘Isn’t it supposed to come from JC?’
‘Exactly. JC gave to Peter – the first pope – the powers of binding and loosing, symbolised by the crossed keys of the Vatican.’
‘Crossed keys?’
Conan was remembering the frozen symbol on Wing Ho’s lap top – a pair of crossed keys.
‘Yes. Jesus apparently said to Peter: whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth will be loose in heaven. This is the source of the pope’s authority.’
‘Okay … so what was the scandal?’
‘This is the interesting bit,’ said Lucia. ‘At the critical time – just as Christianity was becoming the pre-eminent religion and blended with the Roman emperor’s secular power – there was a big debate about the pope’s authority. Some people were saying: we accept that JC passed the powers of binding and loosing to Peter, but JC was the son of God and able to do shit like that. How do we know the same powers were truly passed on to other popes?’
‘Aaahh … good question,’ said Conan.
‘A really important question,’ said Lucia, ‘because, at the time, the secular authority was stronger than the spiritual authority. If everyone accepted the pope’s power came from God himself it was really going to change things.’
‘So how’d it turn out?’
‘At the peak of the debate,’ said Lucia, ‘someone turned up what was supposed to be an old letter from Clement … saying among other things: oh, by the way, Peter passed onto me and all future popes his powers of binding and loosing.’
‘Very convenient,’ laughed Conan.
‘It was … not least as Clement wasn’t the second pope after Peter. He was third, fourth or fifth … the early records aren’t that clear.’
‘Wow.’
‘Wow indeed. One of the shoddiest stitch-ups of all time. But it worked. Everyone agreed that the letter made the pope the boss and Christianity went on to become the dominant ideology and power source for well over a thousand years. It’s still pretty powerful.’
‘Wow,’ said Conan again, feeling a creepy sort of fear despite his devout atheism. ‘I can understand why Lammas doesn’t want to talk about it.’
‘Who’s Lammas?’
‘Oh … one of the blokes up here who interests me. What you’re saying is … without the sudden appearance of this dodgy letter … Christianity might have lost its momentum and even disappeared around three or four hundred AD.’
‘Exactly right,’ said Lucia. ‘And considering the enormous impact of that one dodgy letter, it’s incredible how little information there is on the web … the legitimate web that is.’
Conan was deeply impressed.
‘How did you get all this?’
‘I had to play a game with a charming individual called Bishop Satanus,’ said Lucia. ‘You really don’t want to know any more. Let’s just say I didn’t respect myself in the morning.’
‘I owe you big time Lucia. And … when I get back … ’
There was a heavy silence on the end of the phone.
‘Gotta go,’ said Lucia, and the phone went dead.
Conan put the phone down and glanced around the bar, feeling weirdly paranoid. There must be some deeply innate superstition in all humans he reflected. Conan had grown up in a Catholic household but had never quite believed in God. He’d tried to believe it, as a kid. Really tried. But the whole thing was so patently absurd and it was pretty clear to Conan, even as a boy, that no one else truly believed. No one lived their life – absolutely – as though they genuinely believed all the ancient hogwash they drivelled on about.
Around the age of fourteen, Conan suddenly understood that he was an atheist – to his mother’s dismay – and was constantly amused by the antics of believers. The best part of two thousand years, he laughed to himself. All that history: the crusades, the reformation, the inquisition – the long war with money and science for control of hearts and minds. And none of it might have happened but for some forgotten scribe bodgying up a fake letter to win an argument, back before Adam bowled offies for Eden.
He walked back to his own hotel and sat in the bar, still feeling an odd tingle of paranoid fear. He ordered a beer and glanced about the room, speculating about the lives and motives of those
