The Last Cato by Matilde Asensi Page A

rubbed his forehead, and corrected himself… “worked in the Greco-Roman Museum of Alexandria.”
    “You no longer work there?” I wanted to know, surprised.
    “It’s time for a new story, Doctor.” Glauser-Röist leaned over again to the leather portfolio resting on the floor and again took out the package wrapped in linen, covered with sand from the Sinai. This time he didn’t give it to me. He laid it carefully on the table. Holding it with both hands, he contemplated it with an intense metallic sparkle in his eyes. “That day after I left your lab, as you already know, I met with Monsignor Tournier, and caught a plane to Cairo. Professor Boswell was waiting for me at the airport, commissioned by the Copto-Catholic Church to serve as my interpreter and guide.”
    “His Beatitude Stephanos II Ghattas,” interrupted Boswell, nervously placing his glasses at his side, “the patriarch of our church, personally asked me to do everything in my power to help the captain.”
    “The professor’s help has been inestimable,” added the captain. “We wouldn’t have… this” —he pointed to the package with his chin—“if it weren’t for him. When he picked me up at the airport, Boswell already had a vague idea of what I needed to do, and he put all his knowledge, resources, and contacts at my disposal.”
    “I’d like another cup of coffee,” Cardinal Colli interrupted. “What about the rest of you?”
    Monsignor Tournier glanced at his watch and nodded. Glauser-Röist got to his feet again and left the room. He took several minutes more than I could bear in that company, but finally he returned with an enormous tray of cups and a large coffee urn. As we served ourselves, the captain continued speaking.
    Entering Saint Catherine of Sinai turned out to be a difficult task, explained Glauser-Röist. For tourists there is a limited schedule of visits and an even more limited route around the monastic enclosure. Since Glauser-Röist and Boswell didn’t know what they were looking for or how to look for it, they needed plenty of freedom of movement and time. So, the professor concocted a risky plan that worked like a dream.
    Even though in 1782 the Orthodox monastery of Saint Catherine of Sinai was freed from the Patriarchate of Jerusalem for vague reasons (it became known as the Orthodox Church of Mount Sinai), the patriarchate continued to have certain control over the monastery and its head, the abbot and archbishop. His Beatitude Stephanos II Ghattas used his influence to ask the patriarch of Jerusalem, Diodoros I, to send letters of introduction for Captain Glauser-Röist and Professor Boswell so that the monastery would willingly open its doors to them. Why should Saint Catherine accept the request from the Patriarchate of Jerusalem? Very simple—one of the visitors was an important German philanthropist interested in donating several million marks to the monastery. In fact, in 1997, desperately needing money, the monks had agreed for the first and only time in the history of the monastery to lend some of its most valuable treasures for a magnificent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The idea was not only to obtain the money the museum had paid handsomely for, but to attract investors to finance the restoration of their ancient library as well as their extraordinary, yet dilapidated, collection of icons.
    Thus trying to find a way to get the investigation off the ground, Captain Glauser-Röist and Professor Boswell went to the offices of the Orthodox Church of Mount Sinai in Cairo and told their barefaced lies. That same night they rented an all-terrain vehicle and set off across the desert to the monastery. The abbot, His Beatitude Archbishop Damianos, a kind, extremely intelligent man, received them in person and offered them his hospitality for as long as they wanted. That same afternoon, they began to inspect the abbey.
    “I saw the crosses, Doctor,” murmured Glauser-Röist, clearly