St Paul’s Labyrinth: The explosive new thriller perfect for fans of Dan Brown and Robert Harris!

Hora est.

He smiled.

‘What is it?’

‘I think one of my students wanted to let me know that it was time to stop talking.’

He walked over to the door with the bag under his arm and turned off the lights. He showed the message to Judith on the way.

The hora est – the hour has come – was the phrase with which the university beadle entered the room exactly three-quarters of an hour into a doctoral candidate’s defence of their thesis before the Doctoral Examination Board. At this point, the candidate was no longer permitted to talk, even if the beadle had entered mid-sentence. To most candidates, the words came as a huge relief.

‘That’s quite witty,’ Judith said, handing back the phone. ‘Odd that it was sent anonymously though.’

‘Probably scared that their wit will get them marked down.’ He deleted the message. Just as he was about to lock up the lecture hall, he noticed that someone had left a telephone on one of the tables, an iPhone that looked brand new. He walked back into the hall, picked it up and put it in his jacket pocket. Its owner would appear at his office door soon enough. The students were practically grafted to their phones.

They walked outside and headed for the university restaurant in the Lipsius Building. It had been called the Lipsius for years, but Peter still called it the LAK, the name of the theatre and arts centre that used to be there.

‘Mark is probably there already,’ Judith said, tenderly. ‘You know him. One o’clock means one o’clock.’

Mark was a professor in the theology department, a brilliant man with a history of mental illness. He and Judith were in a ‘LAT’ relationship, living together in every way except that they had each kept their own little houses in the Sionshofje. Because of the hofje’s rules, actually moving in together would mean moving out of the Sionshofje, and neither of them wanted to leave the picturesque little courtyard.

Inside the restaurant, students and tutors sat at long tables. A monotone din of chatter and clatter filled the room. The warmth and smells from the kitchen made the air in the room stuffy and humid.

As Judith had predicted, Mark was already sitting at a table and saving two seats for them. He waved.

They visited the buffet counter on their way over to him. Peter chose an extra-large salad and a glass of fresh orange juice and Judith picked up a bowl of soup with a slice of bread and cheese.

‘Well done,’ Judith complimented Peter, giving his stomach a teasing little pat.

Mark was already half way through his meal by the time they sat down. Judith kissed him lightly on the cheek, something that still gave Peter a pang of envy, even after many years.

‘What are your plans for the afternoon?’ Peter asked.

‘I have an appointment with someone at two, sounds like an older gentleman,’ Judith said. ‘He’s inherited some bits and pieces from a Jewish aunt’s estate. He found me via the museum. I’m going to drop by and see if any of them are suitable for our collection.’

‘Sounds good,’ said Peter.

‘Oh, usually these things end up being a disappointment, to be honest. But every now and then something special turns up. A bit like The Antiques Roadshow. Diaries, letters from a concentration camp, or just interesting everyday bits and pieces like kitchen utensils, tools and so on. You never know. I usually enjoy it anyway. They often just want someone to talk to …’

‘Never a dull moment with you, is there?’

‘Never a dull moment, no,’ she agreed. ‘And I want to plan a lecture for Monday, nothing out of the ordinary, really. I’ve got the next few days to myself.’ She put her hand on Mark’s arm.

‘Yep,’ said Mark. ‘I’m off to Germany again. A week with no phone, no internet, totally cut off from the rest of the world. Heaven.’

Once or twice a year, Mark retreated to the depths of the German forests, beyond the reach of cell phone towers, to ‘reflect’, as he called it. Judith would tease him by suggesting that he had a secret mistress, but she knew that he needed time to recharge now and then. He always came back revitalised, full of energy. The only compromise he made was that he agreed to venture back into civilisation once a week to call Judith and let her know how he was.

‘And this afternoon,’ Mark continued, ‘I want to spend a couple of hours working on an article I’m writing with Fay Spežamor. You know her, right? The Czech classicist, curator of Roman and Etruscan Art at the Museum of Antiquities.’

‘I’ve met her a few times, yes,’ Peter said. ‘Funnily enough, hers is the only mobile phone number I know off the top of my head. If you remember the first two numbers …’

‘Then you just need to keep adding two,’ Mark finished his sentence.

None of them spoke for a while.

‘Were you planning to do anything this afternoon then?’ Mark asked.

‘I’m going to go into town to see them install the container in the Nieuwstraat. I’ve been following the project a bit. The Cultural Heritage Department invited me. Daniël Veerman, Janna Frederiks … They’ve promised to let me know if they come across anything interesting.’

‘Oh yes! I wanted to show you something!’ Mark said suddenly, as though he hadn’t heard what Peter said at all. He pushed his tray aside. Underneath it was a large envelope, addressed in neat, unmistakably old-fashioned handwriting.

‘To the most noble and learned professor doctor M. Labuschagne,’ he read with amusement. ‘I need to send the author of this letter a quick reply this afternoon.’ He took a large bundle of densely typed pages out of the envelope. They had apparently been written on an old-fashioned typewriter. ‘This is one of those things …’ he said, leafing through them as though he was looking for something specific. ‘Ever since I graduated, people have been sending me things. Amateurs writing to tell me that they think they’ve found the code that makes the Book of Revelation all make sense, or that they have definitive proof that Jesus didn’t die on the cross …’

‘Or that the Apostle Peter is buried in Leiden,’ Judith joked.

They laughed.

‘But this … Look, usually it’s nonsense and probably not worth holding onto, but I keep everything. I might do something with them one day. Sometimes an idea seems crazy, or the whole world thinks an author is mad, but sometimes these people are just way ahead of their time. I had another one today, a Mr …’ He looked at the title page. ‘… Mr Goekoop from Zierikzee, Zeeland. It’s about the Burcht. He says that it originally had an astrological function. Look, he’s even drawn some diagrams.’

Mark held up a sheet of paper with a surprisingly good pen-and-ink illustration of Leiden’s castle. The artist had left space between the battlements so that the whole thing strongly resembled a megalithic circle, like Stonehenge.

‘He has this whole theory about how the first rays of the sun shine through the Burcht’s main gate on the equinox on March twenty-first, taking the earth’s precession into account. The precession is the way the axis moves. The earth is like a spinning top, its axis is never exactly vertical. It’s a bit complicated … He uses all these calculations to try to show that the original castle must have been built more than two thousand years ago. According to him, the word megalith is derived from the Greek mega-leithos, or, Great Leiden.’

‘That should be easy to check. Tomorrow is March twenty-first.’

‘Yes. But actually, it’s not that easy. The earth’s axis has shifted since then. Anyway, that part about the megalith is bunk, and the rest too, probably. Look at this; he thinks he has further proof of his theory in the three trees in the middle of the castle. Because they’re arranged in exactly the same way as the three stars on Orion’s belt. You know, like the Pyramids in Egypt.’

‘And that would make the Rhine the River Nile, I suppose?’

‘He says that the Rhine is the Lethe, or the Leythe, one of the five rivers of the underworld in Greek mythology, just like the Styx. According to him, the name Leythe is connected to Leiden of course.’

‘And this is what you spend your time on,’ said Peter.

‘It amuses me. You never know what someone is going to come up with. Sometimes the amateurs make surprising discoveries. But what fascinates me about this story is his theory that the Burcht was a centre for sun worship. He does have a point about the name Lugdunum …’

‘The Roman name for Katwijk.’

‘That’s right. But he reckons that it was originally the name given to the hill that the Burcht stands on. Lug is the name of the Celtic sun god, and dunum means “hill” or “mountain”. “Lug Hill”, or if you want to translate it more loosely, “the hill where Lug is worshipped”.’

‘With that sort of reasoning,’ Peter countered, ‘you could prove that Mr Goekoop’s hometown of Zierikzee can be traced back to the Greek goddess Circe. And that would put the city of Troy somewhere in Zeeland.’

Mark put the papers back in the envelope. ‘All the same, I always send these people a polite reply. That’s usually enough to satisfy them.’

Judith picked up her tray. She had already eaten her soup and bread.

‘Are you leaving already?’ Peter asked, a little disappointed.

‘I’ve got that appointment at two o’clock. I’m going back to my office to get my things. We could get together for a nightcap later this evening if you like?’

Peter nodded.

Judith rested her hand briefly on Mark’s shoulder. He tilted his head a little to meet it, like a cat reaching to be petted. She winked at Peter and went to tidy her tray away.

‘So, Lug then,’ said Peter, bringing the conversation back to where they had left it.

‘Yes, Lug, but there have been lots of other sun gods over the centuries of course. Fascinating subject, actually. That’s what the paper I’m working on is about. A bit of pop history about how they’re always born on the third day after the winter solstice, on the evening of the twenty-fourth of December, a symbolic celebration of the arrival of light in a dark world. Born to a virgin, usually in a cave, a star appears, they’re adored by shepherds, kings come bearing gifts, a wise man predicts that this is the saviour the world has been waiting for, and so on …’

‘Yes, I know those stories. By the way, did you manage to see some of the eclipse this morning?’

‘No, barely gave it a thought to be honest.’

‘It was cloudy anyway. I don’t suppose there would have been much to see.’

‘Probably, but … where was I? Oh yes, the sun gods … They always die round about the time of the spring solstice and they’re resurrected three days later. Attis, Osiris, Dionysus, take your pick. The god dies or his son dies, there’s a day of mourning, and then on day three, there’s unbelievable joy when the god rises from the dead. Just like the natural world around them that appeared to have died in the winter, but then comes back to life.’

Of course, Peter had also read about the early Fathers of the Church and how they had become confused when they saw the similarities between the Gospels and these other stories that were evidently much older. The only explanation they could give was that the older stories were the work of the devil. Satan would have known about the circumstances under which Jesus would be born and so he established the sun gods’ rites centuries earlier in order to confuse people.

‘My article will lay out the parallels between all sorts of basic Christian concepts and the religion’s sacred mysteries. It’s terribly interesting. Take Orpheus and Eurydice, Demeter and Persephone … all variations of the same theme. The cult of Dionysus slaughtered a bull every year. The followers ate the meat and drank the blood so that they could become one with Dionysus, a communion, and share the power of his resurrection.’

‘It’s … Listen,’ Peter interrupted him. Mark was usually fairly introverted, but once he felt at ease with someone, it could be very difficult to get him off his soapbox. ‘I still need to take my bag back to my office, and the mayor’s coming for the opening at two o’clock …’

Mark smiled and held his hands up apologetically. ‘No problem.’

Peter finished his last few forkfuls of salad and emptied his glass. He opened his mouth wide and bared his teeth like a laughing chimpanzee.

‘Not got anything stuck between my teeth, have I?’ he asked. Mark reassured him that he hadn’t.

They said goodbye and Peter walked to his office in the archaeology faculty next to the LAK.

Peter’s office hadn’t changed in more than twenty years. It was almost like a living room to him. The same three pictures had always hung on the walls: The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, a poster of a famous painting of Burgemeester Van der Werff by Gustave Wappers, and a large photograph of Pope John Paul II in his popemobile.

There were weeks when he spent more time in his office than in his flat on the Boerhavenlaan. He even kept a change of clothes in the cupboard for the odd occasion when he spent the night on the three-seater sofa.

When he pulled the stack of papers from his bag, the envelope fell out onto the floor. Intrigued, he picked it up and opened it. The note inside didn’t contain excuses for an unfinished assignment. Instead, written neatly in the middle of the sheet of the paper, was:

Rom. 13:11

But it was the text below it that suddenly made his mouth feel dry. He dropped the note, repulsed, as though he was throwing a used tissue in the bin.

Hora est.

2

Friday 20 March, 1:45pm

Peter looked at his watch. Quarter to two. He would need to hurry if he was going to make it to the Nieuwstraat on time. The anonymous note had disturbed him more than he wanted to admit. That ‘hora est’, the same message that he had received by phone, made him feel uneasy. He went to his bookcase to get a bible, but then realised that he didn’t have time. He knew that Romans 13:11 referred to Paul’s letters to the Romans in the New Testament, but his knowledge of the scriptures wasn’t good enough to be able to recall the passage from memory.

He reluctantly left the bible on his desk, then closed the door and headed for town.

It was against his principles to look at his phone when he was walking – he resented having to give way to people who shuffled around like zombies, their eyes glued to their screens – but he opened the Biblehub.com website to look up what the scripture was about.

The connection was slow. When images of hell had come up in one of his lectures, on a whim, he’d asked his students about their own ideas of hell. Without missing a beat, one young man answered: ‘Hell is a place where the internet is really, really slow.’

Peter hoped he wouldn’t bump into anyone he knew. The page loaded sluggishly as he walked through the Doelensteeg and along the Rapenburg to the Gerecht square. He clicked on ‘Romans’ and, at last, on ‘13’. He’d reached the Pieterskerk church by the time the text finally appeared on his screen.

It was almost two o’clock now. It wouldn’t do to be late. He impatiently closed the cover on his phone. He knew that the scripture would still be there when he opened it again.

He continued his route at a brisk pace, walking through the narrow alleys that led to the Breestraat, past the town hall and then he went left. As he crossed the river via the colonnades of the Pilarenbrug, the library came into view.

The council’s decision to move the city’s waste containers underground had been brought about by a plague of seagulls. As the crow flew, the college town of Leiden was a mere ten kilometres from the coast. Nests full of gulls’ eggs were easy prey for the foxes that had been reintroduced to the dunes, and hordes of the birds had fled to the city. They pecked open the bags of rubbish left out for collection, scavenged in bins and grew increasingly aggressive. Various measures had been taken to deter them: replacing the seagulls’ eggs with plastic dummies, birds of prey, pigeon spikes on roofs, all without success. The hope was that the city would be less attractive to the birds if the city’s rubbish was moved underground.

Peter stopped to catch his breath on the corner of the street. He studied himself in a shop window. A little on the portly side, it was true, a day or two’s worth of stubble, and a full head of hair that was just a bit too long. The image in the window was, in fact, a bit flattering; the reflection didn’t show the deep lines he knew he had on his forehead or the dark circles under his eyes.

‘For now we see through a glass, darkly …’ he said to himself quietly.

He tucked his shirt neatly into his trousers, and felt the student’s forgotten mobile phone in his jacket pocket. He made a mental note to call one of the numbers on its contacts list when he got a chance. Whoever it was would surely be able to tell him who the phone belonged to.

A large crowd had gathered around the excavation site. The Leiden press of course, local residents, all sorts of dignitaries, and workmen, recognisable from their yellow helmets and orange vests. Part of the area around the excavated pit was fenced off with barriers and red and white tape.

‘Hullo! Peter!’ he heard Arnold van Tiegem shouting. Peter could tell from the exaggerated joviality of Arnold’s waving that he had already made a head start on the drinks reception that would be held later.

Twenty years ago, Peter’s old tutor, Pieter Hoogers, had retired and vanished off into the sunset directly after his farewell address. Everyone had expected that Peter would take his place as full professor, but after a couple of months of typical academic machinations, the university had produced a surprise candidate seemingly out of nowhere: Arnold van Tiegem, a senior official at the Ministry of Housing, Planning and the Environment who had found himself sidelined. He had studied Soil Science at the University of Wageningen in the distant past and that had been deemed sufficient qualification to lead the faculty. The fact that he would also bring with him a one-off grant of five million guilders ultimately convinced the board of his suitability for the post.

After he was appointed, it turned out that Arnold was in the habit of going missing now and then, often for days at a time. At first, his disappearances were reported to the police, but because he always reappeared a few days later, people accepted the fact that he sometimes simply checked out for a while. He liked to compare these episodes with John Lennon’s ‘lost weekends’ and saw them as part of a grand and exciting life.

Peter made his way to the tall bar tables where his suspicions were confirmed by a number of empty beer bottles and two half-empty bottles of wine.

Daniël Veerman was standing at one of the tables. He surreptitiously rolled his eyes as he moved his gaze from Arnold to Peter. Daniël was in his early thirties and the quintessential archaeologist: he had long, dark hair that undulated down to his neck, tiny round spectacles perched on his nose with intelligent eyes behind them, a trendy beard that looked casual but was well-groomed. He had once told Peter that he had done nothing but dig for treasure when he was a child. While other children played nicely in the sandpit, heaping the sand into mountains or building sandcastles with buckets and spades, he was usually found outside it, digging holes in the dirt.

Peter shook Daniël’s hand and then greeted Janna Frederiks, who was leading the project for the Cultural Heritage Department together with Daniël. Peter was less familiar with Janna, a serious, remarkably tall woman – almost two metres in height – whose head was permanently bowed at a slight angle, as though she was scouring the ground in the hope of finding something interesting.

Arnold opened another bottle of beer, and poured it down his throat in a couple of gulps. Then he smoothed his long, grey hair back with a small comb, a nervous tic that he performed countless times each day. He probably thought the little flick of a mullet that this made at the back of his neck was terribly bohemian. Combined with his enormous paunch and spindly legs, he reminded Peter of a circus ringmaster. Put a top hat on his bloated head and he’d look just the part.

‘He just lives for these moments, doesn’t he?’ Peter whispered to Daniël.

‘He’ll post the photo of himself with the mayor on Facebook as soon as it’s over,’ Daniël added, laughing. He gave Peter a sideways look. ‘It was good of you to come, Peter. I really appreciate it.’

‘You don’t need to thank me. I’m happy to be here. I wanted to come and wish you luck. I’m here for you and Janna, not for myself, like Van Tiegem.’

‘He’s a great networker though, you have to give him that. And your department needs one of those, right?’

Peter was about to say something cutting in reply, but a round of applause interrupted him. Mayor Freylink had arrived in full regalia with the chain of office around his neck.

‘What’s the plan, exactly?’ Peter asked.

Daniël carried on looking straight ahead and clapping for the mayor who was walking past close to where they were standing. ‘I’ve dumped a bit of sand in the hole,’ he answered. ‘He’s going to take it out with the digger. And that will be the project’s symbolic launch.’

‘Not very elegant, is it?’

‘Well we could have sent him down there with a bucket, but I thought this would be more refined. Freylink was enthusiastic about it anyway. And he used to be a historian, as you know, so he’s glad to be closely involved. He’s even been to a building site to practise.’

The applause died out.

A small excavator came towards them. Little black clouds of smoke escaped from the long, thin exhaust pipe on its roof.

‘I’d better get over there,’ said Daniël. Janna followed him. He turned around to look at Peter. ‘We’re going for dinner at El Gaucho tonight with the team. You’re very welcome to join us if you’d like to come along.’

Peter gave him a thumbs-up. Maybe I could ask Judith to go with me, he thought.

He took the opportunity to take a quick look at his phone. He skimmed through chapter 13 of Paul’s letter to the Romans and recognised the contents straight away. It was about allegiance to the authorities who had been placed above you. A text which had often been misused throughout the course of history, and for which Paul had been heavily criticised. Pay your taxes, do as you are told, don’t be rebellious, ‘for there is no authority that does not come from God’. Whoever opposes authority opposes one of God’s agencies, and thereby opposes God.

Little wonder, then, that the people of Leiden suddenly found themselves drawn to Calvin when the Spaniards were at the city’s gates. He said that you could rebel against your rulers. People were often inclined to choose the convictions that best suited their own interests …

Suddenly, the student’s phone began to vibrate. Peter was surprised that it hadn’t happened before now; youngsters spent more time in conversation with people they couldn’t see than with the people who were right next them. But first, he wanted to read the specific verse that had been written on the note. ‘Let no debt remain outstanding,’ he read, ‘except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law …’ Here it was, verse 11:

And do this, understanding the present time: the hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.

The hour has already come …

‘Hora est,’ Peter repeated, absent-mindedly making quiet, smacking sounds, as though trying to taste the words on his tongue.

He read the rest of the scripture aloud to himself in a staccato mumble, as though this would help him to decipher a message hidden in the words.

The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armour of light.