Abbey of Montserrat

The Abbey of Montserrat is a timeless stone monastery perched on a sheer cliff in Catalonia, Spain, built into the face of a vertical precipice and accessible by an ancient cogwheel train that claws its way up a dizzying incline. For more than four centuries, the sanctuary has endured the relentless pull of gravity, never slipping from its original purpose: to insulate its occupants from the modern world. It was here, in the famed library of Montserrat, that Edmond Kirsch requested a private audience with three prominent religious leaders—Bishop Antonio Valdespino, Rabbi Yehuda Köves, and Allamah Syed al-Fadl—who had just finished attending the Parliament of the World's Religions, a conference held near Barcelona that year.

The Library and the Meeting

The library of Montserrat is a rectangular chamber whose high walls are lined with ancient leather-bound tomes, with freestanding bookshelves jutting out like ribs and cast-iron radiators that clang and hiss, giving the room an eerie sense of being alive. An ornately balustraded walkway encircles the second story. This sacred room is rumored to contain uniquely rare texts accessible only to the monks who have devoted their lives to God and who are sequestered on the mountain. Bishop Valdespino, who arranged the meeting, told Kirsch that few outsiders had ever entered the library. Inside, the three clerics faced Kirsch like a tribunal, with no chair set out for him, creating an ambience more like an inquisition than a friendly meeting of scholars. Kirsch, feeling more bemused than intimidated, studied the three aging men and thought of them as the Holy Trinity he had requested—the Three Wise Men.

Kirsch's Presentation and Its Aftermath

During the meeting, Kirsch used his oversized smartphone with a vibrantly colored mosaic case to dial into an ultrasecure server, enter his forty-seven-character password, and live-stream a rough cut of the presentation he planned to share with the world. He told the clerics that he had made a scientific discovery that would affect the world's faithful in a profound way, quite possibly causing a shift that could only be described as disruptive. The three men reacted with profound surprise, concern, and anger. Bishop Valdespino urged Kirsch to reconsider making the information public, and Kirsch told him he would think about it for the next month—though he actually planned to go public in only three days. After the meeting, Valdespino left Kirsch a threatening voice mail, warning that if Kirsch did not call him back, the bishop and his colleagues would consider a preemptive announcement to share, reframe, and discredit Kirsch's discoveries in an attempt to reverse the untold damage he was about to cause the world.

Significance in the Narrative

The Montserrat meeting is the catalyst for the entire plot. It is the event that makes Kirsch's discovery known to the three religious leaders, who then become targets: Allamah al-Fadl is found dead in the desert, Rabbi Köves is murdered in Budapest, and Bishop Valdespino becomes the prime suspect in the assassination of Kirsch. The meeting also provides Kirsch with a public relations maneuver—he can later claim he consulted with religious leaders before his announcement, suggesting open-mindedness and impartiality. The library itself, as a repository of sacred texts, stands in stark contrast to Kirsch's scientific revelation, which he believes will shatter the foundations of the world's religions. The location's isolation and sanctity underscore the gravity of the confrontation between science and faith that lies at the heart of the novel.