Free The Thirteenth Apostle by Michel Benoit Page B

monks to live in a community, but alone in the face of God.
    Not only had someone violated Father Nil’s sanctuary, but someone had rummaged around and stolen what he found. He glanced at the folders scattered in disorder across the table. Yes, someone had not been content with ferreting around in the drawer: the most voluminous of his files, the one on the Gospel according to St John, was not in its usual place. It had been slightly moved, and opened. Nil, who had used it every day since his classes had started, immediately saw that some of his notes were not in their right order, the logic of which was known to him alone. He even thought that some pages had disappeared.
    A rule of Benedictine life had just been violated – he had evident proof of the fact. And there must be an extremely serious reason for that. He had the vague sense that there must be a link between the unusual events of these last few days – but what?
    He had become a monk against the wishes of his family, who were non-believers. He remembered himself as a young novice. The truth… he had pledged his whole life to seeking it out. Two men had understood this: Rembert Leeland, his codisciple during the four years he had been a student in Rome, and Andrei. Leeland was now working somewhere in the Vatican, and Nil found himself alone, facing questions that he was unable to answer – and filled with a barely contained anguish that had not left him since the end of summer.
    His hand smoothed down the thick file on St John’s Gospel: it was all there. In fact, Andrei had not ceased to tell him as much, while refusing to give him any more information or to allow him into the library in the north wing. He could do no other: obedience was the rule. But Andrei was dead, perhaps because of that obedience. And his own cell had been searched, in violation of the immutable rules of the Abbey.
    He had to do something.
    There was an hour to go before vespers. He got up, went out into the corridor and made his way resolutely towards the stairs leading to the libraries.
    * * *
    Thanks to his good visual memory, he had recorded every little detail of Andrei’s note in his mind. Coptic manuscript (Apoc.) – probably a Coptic apocalypse. Apostle’s letter , then the three mysterious M M M , and the stone slab at Germigny. The thread linking all these mysterious elements must be lying unnoticed somewhere in the books of the library.
    He came to Andrei’s office, situated just next to the wing devoted to Biblical Studies. Ten yards further on was the corner of the north wing, and the entry to the library of Historical Studies.
    The librarian’s door had no more of a lock than any other cell in the monastery. He went in, switched the light on and sat heavily on the chair where, for so many happy hours, he had enjoyed conversations with his friend. Nothing had changed. Along the walls, the bookshelves with their piles of freshly labelled books: recent acquisitions, waiting to be definitively catalogued in one of the three wings. Underneath, the metal drawers in which Andrei filed the photocopies of the manuscripts on which he was working. The Coptic Apocalypse must be somewhere among them. Should he begin here?
    Suddenly he gave a start. On a shelf, there were several rolls lying in disorder: the negatives of his manuscripts… Among them, in the first row, he immediately recognized the one he had used to photograph the Germigny slab. Andrei had left it there, without giving it another thought, before his departure for Rome.
    Nil’s photo had just been stolen, but they hadn’t thought about the negative, or maybe they hadn’t had time to inspect the librarian’s office. Without hesitating, Nil got up, took the roll off the shelf and slipped it into his pocket. The last wishes of a dead man are sacred…
    Just in front of him, hanging from the back of the chair, he recognized the jacket and trousers that Andrei had