The Omega Factor(83)
Fuentes assessed Bernat de Foix.
Master Dati of the Dominicans had provided some background information. De Foix was a successful businessman with a reputation for fairness and honesty, two traits essential for someone owning and operating an auction house. No criminal record. No bad publicity. Nothing negative. Except that he was clearly a deeply troubled man.
“I thought Cathars detested wealth and all things of this world?” he asked de Foix.
“I thought priests were to be celibate.”
Fuentes smiled. “As did I. Did you have Father Tallard killed?”
“The world enjoys one less predator.”
He took that as a yes. But he wondered, “Cathars do not kill.”
“I killed no one.”
“You just ordered it done. Same thing.”
“No. It is not.”
“So then you would say that Pope Innocent III, who ordered the Albigensian Crusade, bears no responsibility for the tens of thousands who died?”
De Foix said nothing. But the logic was impeccable.
It was indeed the same thing.
He pointed a finger. “You may have violated the consolamentum.”
“You know of our practices?”
“I’ve studied Catharism. Of course, I believed it to be in the abstract, that the religion no longer existed. Yet, here I am, face-to-face with a Perfectus. Your salvation from this evil world may now be in jeopardy.”
But he saw that de Foix did not care. All he wanted was the ruin of Gerard Vilamur, and he was willing to risk his soul to get that.
Impressive.
And telling.
“Why did you choose to sponsor the restoration of the Just Judges reproduction?” he asked.
De Foix cast a curious look. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Please just answer the question.”
Fuentes had to gauge for himself whether the act was intentional or merely a fortuitous event.
“I thought it would gain me some notoriety. The cost was relatively low and the amount of publicity high.”
“Another of those things your religion deems evil.”
“We’ve adjusted.”
He chuckled. “I suppose you have. Did you know the original lay beneath the reproduction?”
“I had suspicions.”
“From other Cathars?”
No reply.
But that was okay. He was convinced that this man knew nothing of the Just Judges’ significance. Nothing of Jan van Eyck, Joan of Arc, or the Blessed Virgin.
Nothing of les Vautours.
Just a vengeful opportunist.
Perfect.
Exactly as he’d hoped.
Bernat was feeling uneasy.
True, these were men of the church, but his kidnapping and their treatment of him seemed more in line with mobsters than prelates. Nothing all that unusual, if history was any teacher. Surely, Cathars from long ago had thought the same thing about an invading army storming the countryside, pillaging and plundering, destroying everything and everyone in its path, all in the name of God.
Cathars had it right.
This world truly was evil. Everything in it tainted by evil. It was a place to escape from, to leave behind. How many times had he come and gone before? How many other lives had he experienced? Impossible to say. He’d intended for this to be his last since he’d accepted the consolamentum and was now a Perfectus. But the cardinal could be right. Innocent III was as guilty of murder as every one of the crusaders. No difference. And the same was true for him. He would have to start the consolamentum all over. But he flushed those troubling thoughts from his brain and refocused on the more immediate problem.
“You’re a prince of the church,” he said to Fuentes. “What are you going to do about Vilamur? He’s a criminal. A disgrace.”
The cardinal faced Vilamur. “What do you say to that, Archbishop?”
“I categorically and explicitly deny everything he says in its entirety.”
“You see, Monsieur de Foix, the archbishop maintains that you are a liar.”
“I have proof.”
“Not anymore,” one of the other men said. The tall one. “We removed all of the files and information on the archbishop that we found in your study. And we found this.” The man displayed the glass vial with Vilamur’s saliva. He’d planned on taking it to the DNA laboratory when he returned from Ghent. “You have nothing.”
“And I doubt that you have discussed this with anyone, other than the one compatriot,” Fuentes said. “Friar Rice, what was the name you found on the email?”
“Andre Labelle. He sent the video of the archbishop leaving Father Tallard’s house, with the body inside. We can only assume he recorded it.”
“Other than this Monsieur Labelle,” Fuentes said, “and perhaps a few within the Cathars, I doubt anyone else knows anything.”
This man was both perceptive and thorough. What had he stumbled into? What was happening here? Something far more than Vilamur’s adultery.
“Tallard is still dead,” de Foix spit out. “There will be an investigation.”
“Actually,” Fuentes said, “there will not. That body has been removed and disposed of, the house thoroughly cleaned. No one will ever see that pedophile again. The authorities will simply think he fled. A warrant will be issued for his arrest, and that will be the end of it. The men you hired to kill him will, of course, never say a word.”