Evangelium - Book 3 E-Book

Laporte Gilbert

• Herausgeber: Le Tram Noir - INT
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: Evangelium
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 126

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

A series of murders motivated by the theft of ancient manuscripts...

The diabolical murderer is still at large, and the investigation is stalling. All this, not to mention the disastrous impact on the investigators' private lives.
Lieutenant Martin Delpech's ex is threatened, and Claire Demange has been kidnapped. While searching for his wife, the Bible historian finds himself trapped on a sinking barge in the Seine.
Join Lieutenant Delpech in the third volume of his thrilling new investigation, which will pit him against the violence of a fundamentalist psychopath, Vatican henchmen, religious extremists, and a messianic sect. Will he manage to escape this nightmarish struggle?

WHAT THE CRITICS THINK

A deep dive into the world of Catholic fundamentalism. For those with a thirst for theology.- HannibaLectrice,

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gilbert Laporte was born in Paris and lives in the south of France. He completed his higher education in Nice and worked as an executive at several large companies. He divides his leisure time between reading history, cinema, music, travel, and writing.

Leseprobe

Cover

Title page

1

INQUISITIO

Chatou. Yvelines.

Martin Delpech was riding his motorcycle, a roaring Harley Davidson, towards the home of Antoine Cacciari, the name that the shooter from Croissy-sur-Seine had thrown at him just before dying. As usual, he was going alone, without notifying his partner or anyone else from the squad.

A psychopath never showing mercy to a cop, even before passing away, the young officer suspected that he hadn’t been given the name of an accomplice. So, he had done some digging on the individual in question to find a link to his investigation.

Not clean, this guy…

He discovered that Antoine Cacciari, sixty-three years old, was a wealthy retired trader. The man was suspected of being part of an international mafia organization, and had commissioned at least eleven murders. He had never been arrested, except in his youth for minor offenses. Tax audits had never detected any fraud, although there were also suspicions of money laundering.

In short, the perfect mafioso living a golden retirement…

The lieutenant parked his shiny motorcycle in front of the entrance gate of the immense mansion. The building was three stories high, and the entire length of the property—about five thousand square meters—was bordered by a canal where pairs of mallards were noisily flapping about in the unfrozen parts of the water.

The residence was a registered monument. Entirely built in the art nouveau style, it was decorated with floral motifs carved in the stone facade, and its wrought iron balconies imitated elegantly twisted branches. Delpech estimated that the property was worth several million euros.

The gate opened silently. A certain Thomas Cerdagne emerged from a brick cottage adjacent to the entrance and signaled him to come over with an authoritative gesture. Delpech didn’t appreciate his attitude and took pleasure in slowing his pace. He seized the opportunity to examine the young man. His youthful blond appearance failed to conceal his cruel eyes, and the lieutenant figured he belonged to the scummy side of the new generation that feared nothing, respected nothing, and resorted to the most extreme violence at the slightest provocation.

His long gray coat was slightly open, revealing a bulge under the left side of his jacket.

The little punk is armed…

“Please show me your badge and hand over your weapon, if you have one. It’s a matter of security,” he said with a superior air. “Even if you are a police officer, you are on private property here.”

“Come take my gun if you dare,” Martin retorted, not liking being given orders, especially not by someone younger than him.

Cerdagne paled.

However, Delpech didn’t give him time to think. A sharp kick to the shin made him bend forward in pain, instinctively lowering his hands to the spot. Martin seized the opportunity to quickly position himself behind him and strangle him tightly with his left arm. He swiftly slipped his right hand under the young thug’s coat to extract a brand-new Beretta from his holster.

Martin pressed the gun’s barrel firmly against the thug’s cheek.

“You don’t give me orders, jerk! Never! Understood?”

The other was no longer as tough and had suddenly lost his false bravado. He adopted a more diplomatic tone.

“Alright, okay… I just wanted to see your badge, that’s all… security issue, and we have the right to do that. It’s private property here.”

“I prefer it that way, my dear…”

Martin relaxed his grip and handed him his tricolor badge.

“Is that good enough, sweetheart?”

“Fine, but you don’t have to mock me,” the thug replied bitterly.

Martin observed the weapon with a connoisseur’s eye.

“Nice gun: Beretta 92, 9 mm. Effective, but heavy… I’m confiscating your toy, I’m afraid you might hurt yourself with it,” the lieutenant quipped as he headed towards the main entrance of the house. “Besides, it’s not very smart of you to wander around with a gun that has its serial number filed off…”

A butler was already waiting for the officer on the porch. He invited him with a stiff gesture to follow him inside and guided him to a vast living room richly decorated with antique furniture, its walls covered in old paintings. Antoine Cacciari was dressed in an elegant tweed suit. Martin scrutinized the man. Despite being in his sixties, with white hair, he was still a handsome man who maintained his figure and had a certain presence.

Cacciari gestured to a comfortable leather armchair with his hand to invite his visitor to sit.

“May I offer you a coffee, dear ssir?” he proposed in a very posh tone.

“No, thank you. I’ve had my fill this morning,” Martin replied, eager to get to the point.

Cacciari, who was trying to remain calm, blinked nervously.

“I observed your display of strength from the window. Was that really necessary? Who do you think you’re impressing with such an attitude?”

“At least, I’m making it clear that I didn’t come here for a simple routine visit nor with the intention of being hoodwinked.”

“I could file a complaint for violence against one of my employees who was just doing his job on private property…”

“I could say that this little thug threatened me with a gun with a filed-off serial number, and I merely defended myself against him.”

“The ‘little punk thug,’ as you call him, graduated from business school.”

“A gunman with a diploma? We’ve seen it all…”

“The world is changing, dear Sir. What was your name again?”

“Lieutenant Martin Delpech, Paris Judicial Police; criminal brigade.”

“The famous Crime Squad from 36 quai des Orfèvres? What an honor! But you’re in the Yvelines here. What brings you to this unusual visit?”

The officer ignored his remark.

“Beautiful home,” he noted, admiring the molded ceiling and the imposing Art Nouveau glass chandelier from the Nancy school. “Business must have been good for you back when you were active. If you’ve retired, of course…”

“I am indeed retired today, but I entrusted my businesses to managers, which allows me to maintain a pleasant standard of living…”

“Nice businesses indeed. Online gambling, porn sites… the latter point seems a bit contradictory with your interests in the Church of Jesus and Holy Mary, from what I’ve heard.”

Cacciari remained unperturbed by the officer’s allusion.

“I make charitable donations to associations. And so what? It’s my right.”

“I have no doubt,” Martin scoffed, that allows you to benefit from tax breaks, and besides, a religious association is quite handy for laundering money quietly, by ‘miracles,’ for example…”

Cacciari stiffened in his seat.

“You came here intending to insult and belittle me?”

“No, rest assured. I’m not here to discuss the rackets you run against SMEs to ‘protect’ them from viruses and other cyber intrusions. Viruses and intrusions that your organization specializes in infecting the systems of those who don’t pay… no, in fact, I just wanted to chat about Hugues Baillard.”

Cacciari looked genuinely surprised.

“Hugues Baillard? I don’t know him…”

“He was a wealthy industrialist, Delpech continued. He lived nearby, in Croissy-sur-Seine.

“Lived?”

“Yes, unfortunately he passed away.

“And how does that concern me? Do you think I’m the murderer?”

“No, I’m the one who took him out.”

“I don’t understand…”

“In fact, he threw your name at me before dying.”

“I repeat, I don’t know this guy, and I’m surprised he was informed of my identity.”

“I believe you. I don’t think he was one of your friends.”

“What makes you say that?” Cacciari questioned.

“Let’s just say this gentleman wasn’t in the same line of business as you,” Martin said, taking wicked pleasure in playing “cat and mouse.”

“What was his occupation?”

“Pretty ordinary distractions,” Martin quipped, “like torturing people with medieval methods, finishing them off by slitting their throats and branding a neat 666 on their foreheads with a branding iron. He had set up a magnificent torture room in his basement for that.”

The expression on his interlocutor’s face froze.

“What’s wrong? You suddenly seem worried…”

“Not at all, but this kind of character doesn’t seem very reputable to me…”

“I think I did you a great service by sending him to his maker. Now, I have a question for you: what could a disturbed Christian fundamentalist hold against you?”

“I had no relationship with this character whom I have never met in my life. So, I have no idea.”

He seemed sincere.

“Certainly, but he might have been looking to pay you a visit and add you to his list of victims. Not having had the time, he might have thrown your name at me to poke my nose into your affairs. For what reason? Religious war? I’ve looked into the Jesus and Mary temple. Quite the flashy ‘religious association’… Using modern marketing methods and cutting-edge technology to rake in the donations. Nothing to do with our poor dusty country churches that are emptying out…”

His interlocutor let him speak while trying to maintain an impassive face.

“Could this be a new form of war between Catholic traditionalists and the Evangelical pastors inspired by American management methods?”

“Listen, I believe this conversation has lasted long enough. I only make donations to this religious community and nothing more, and I don’t want to hear your fabrications any longer.”

“It’s true, I sometimes tend to get a bit carried away,” Martin admitted. “But it allows me to consider hypotheses that others could never discern.”

“For example?”

“For example, people who might be in a very bad mood because you’ve stolen sacred manuscripts from them, to sell them to the highest bidder,” he added as he rose from his seat.

“That’s just another fabrication!”

“We’ll see…”

Martin headed for the exit and turned to Cacciari just before crossing the threshold.

“I hope for your sake that the guy I took down was alone, but I don’t believe it for a second. So, a piece of advice, lock your doors tightly and avoid wandering around unaccompanied.”

2

AMOREM

Article published in the daily “LES ECHOS DES YVELINES”

Did Jesus really exist?

If he’s not a myth but a man, what was his true personality?

Jesus left no trace in the histories of his contemporaries. He wrote nothing, probably because he thought the Apocalypse was nigh. Saint Paul wrote letters about him without having ever known him. The gospels, for their part, were written several generations after his death by believers. We have no testimony from his lifetime. The closest source we can cite is that of Flavius Josephus, who was born a generation after Jesus’s death.

What does this ancient historian tell us in the Testimonium Flavianum?

[…] Jesus was a wise man, if one should call him a man. He was a doer of wonders, a master of those who received the truth with joy. […] That one was the Christ. […] Those who had loved him did not cease, for he appeared to them after the third day, alive again. The prophets had said these things and ten thousand other wonders about him. […].

This text, whose original has been lost, is undoubtedly a Christian testimony and does not stem from a neutral historian’s work. Flavius Josephus, whose real name was Yosef ben Matityahu, was an orthodox Jew, and it is unlikely that he reported facts so favorable to Christianity. Altering manuscripts was common in antiquity, and the debate is still ongoing among historians who believe that certain phrases were added by a believer or those who think that the entire text regarding Jesus is a forgery.

So, if this testimony is so doubtful, what can we discover today about the personality of Jesus in the oldest manuscripts?

The usual discourse of the Church shows us a benevolent individual who evolves in a pastoral setting. Is he merely the gentle Jesus who turns the other cheek and gives to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, or also a rebel against the Romans occupying the land of YAHWEH?

Saul, the Saint Paul of Christians who evangelized the Greco-Roman world, is not one of the twelve apostles. He teaches us nothing in his Acts about the daily life of Jesus, for he is only interested in the figure of Christ. But by preaching the Lord Jesus Christ in all his splendor, did Saul not cause us to lose the authenticity of the rabbi Yehoshua?

Who was he, this master thinker, this rabbi, doer of miracles?

A “gentle Jesus,” really? But then, why did the Romans choose flogging and death by crucifixion, a fate reserved for the punishment of the most heinous crimes of rebels and intended to instill terror in the population, rather than a simple death by strangulation or stoning by his Jewish peers? How is it that during Jesus’s arrest, Peter had a sword to cut off the ear of one of the high priest’s servants? Is this an allegory or were the apostles really armed?

Would Jesus have asked to forgive one’s neighbor? I quote him in the Gospel according to Saint Luke (19, 27): “As for my enemies, those who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slay them in my presence.” One understands, moreover, how with words of such violence the Inquisition could find justifications for its acts…

Jesus the peaceful who asks that we love one another? But then, why did he declare: “Do you think that I have come to establish peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” (Gospel according to Saint Luke: 12,51). Not to mention Saint Matthew (10,34) “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

Jesus compassionate towards human misery? While in the tradition according to Saint John (9,2-3), it is stated: “Rabbi, who sinned, he or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered: Neither he nor his parents sinned, but it is so that the works of God might be made manifest in him.”

Jesus opposing slavery? Not at all. He heals a Roman slave without reproaching his master (Luke 7,10). Furthermore, he declares in Luke (12,47): “The servant who, knowing the will of his master, has not prepared or done according to his will will receive a great number of blows.”

Jesus preaching family love? Not according to Saint Luke (14,26) in any case: “If anyone comes to me without hating his father, his mother, his wife, his children, his brothers, his sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” Matthew confirms as well (10,35-36): “For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. A man’s enemies will be those of his own household.”

Lie? Slander that all this?

No, simple quotations from the canonical gospels.

The work of the historian, for his part, leaves no room for beliefs, which are an individual affair. He analyzes the texts, and nothing but the texts, showing the utmost critical spirit to try to approach reality as closely as possible.

It is not a God-Man that these writings reveal, but a contradictory man, his sublime messages, certainly, but also furious angers.

His humanity is therefore all the more striking and passionate.

God for some?

Yes, but nonetheless a man in his anger and revolt.

Pierre Demange.