"It's . . ." Carrie's voice choked off and she cleared her throat. "It's her, Dan. It's really her."
"Well, it's somebody."
A jumble of emotions tumbled through Dan. He was numb, he was exhausted, and he was angry. He'd been preparing himself to comfort Carrie when she discovered she'd been played for a fool. Entering the cave was supposed to be the last step in this trek. Now he had one more thing to explain.
The scroll, the careful and clever descriptions of this area of the Wilderness were one thing, but this was going too far. This was . . . ghoulish was the most appropriate word that came to mind.
"Look at her, Dan," Carrie said. "It's her."
Dan was doing just that. The woman's robe was blue, its cowl up and around her head; short, medium build, with thick strands of gray hair poking out from under the cowl. Her wrinkled skin had a sallow, almost waxy look to it. Her eyes and lips were closed, her cheeks slightly sunken, her nose generous without being large. Even in the wavering light of the flash beams, she appeared to be a handsome, elderly woman who might have been beautiful in her youth. She looked so peaceful lying there. He noticed her hands were folded between her breasts. Something about those hands . . .
"Look at her fingernails," Carrie said, her voice hushed like someone whispering during Benediction. Obviously she shared his feeling that they were trespassing. 'They're so long."
"I hear they continue to grow . . . the nails and the hair . . . after you're dead."
Carrie stepped closer but Dan gripped her arm and held her back.
"Don't. It might be booby-trapped."
Carrie shook off his hand and whirled to face him. He couldn't see her face but the anger in her whisper told him all he needed to know about her expression.
"Stop it, Dan! Haven't you gone far enough with this Doubting Thomas act?"
"It's not an act, and I wish there was more light."
"So do it, but there isn't. I wish we'd brought some sort of lantern but we didn't. This is all we've got."
"All right," he said. "But be careful."
Dan fought a sick, anxious dread that coiled through his gut as he watched her approach the body. And it was a body. Had to be. Too much detail for it to be anything other than the real thing.
But whose body? What sort of mind would go to such elaborate extremes to pull off a hoax. A sicko mind like that would be capable of anything, even a booby trap.
Of course, there was the possibility that these actually were the earthly remains of the mother of Jesus Christ.
Dan wanted to believe that. He dearly would have loved to believe that. And probably would be fervently believing that right now if not for the fact that the scroll that had led them here had been proven beyond a doubt to have been written two years ago.
So if this wasn't the Virgin Mary, who was she? And who had hidden her here?
Carrie was standing over her now, staring down at the woman's lifeless face.
"Dan?" she said. "Do you notice something strange about her?"
"Besides her fingernails?"
"There's no dust on her. There's dust layered everywhere, but not a speck of it on her."
Dan stepped closer and sniffed. No odor. And Carrie was right about the dust: not a speck. He smiled. The forger had finally made a mistake.
"Doesn't that indicate to you that she was placed here recently?"
"No. It indicates to me that dirt—and dust is dirt—has no place on the Mother of God."
As he watched, Carrie sank to her knees, made the sign of the cross, and bowed her head in prayer with the flashlight clasped between her hands.
This isn't real, Dan thought. All we need is a ray of light from the ceiling and a hallelujah chorus from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to make this a Cecil B. DeMille epic. This can't be happening. Not to me. Not to Carrie. We're two sane people.
Impulsively, gingerly, he reached out and touched the woman's cheek. The wrinkled flesh didn't give. Not hard like stone or wood or plastic. More like wax. Cool and smooth . . . like wax. But it wasn't wax, at least not like any wax Dan had ever seen.
He heard a sob and snatched his hand away. . . but the sound had come from Carrie. He flashed his beam toward her face. Tears glistened on her cheeks. He crouched beside her.
"Carrie, what's wrong?"
"I don't know. I feel so strange. All this time I thought I believed, and I prayed to her, and I asked her to help me, to intercede for me, but now I get the feeling that all that time I didn't believe. Not really. And now here she is in front of me, not two feet away, and 1 don't know what I feel or what I think." She looked up at him. "I don't have to believe anymore, do I, Dan? I know. I don't have to believe, and that feels so strange."
One thing Dan knew was that he didn't believe this was the Virgin Mary. But it was somebody. He played his flashlight beam over her body.
Lady, who are you?
Another thing he knew was that Carrie was heading for some sort of breakdown. She was teetering on the edge now. He had to get her out of here before she went over. But how?
"What do we do now?" he said, straightening up.
He felt her grip his arm as she rose to her feet beside him.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean we've found her . . .or someone . . .or something. Now what do we do?"
"We protect her, Dan."
"And how do we do that?"
Carrie's voice was very calm, almost matter of fact. "We take her back with us."
13
Tel Aviv
"What's the matter, baby?" Devorah said from behind him, casually raking her sharp nails down the center of his back.
Kesev sat on the edge of the bed in Devorah's apartment. They always wound up at Devorah's place, never his. They both preferred it that way. Kesev because he never allowed anyone in his apartment, and Devorah because when she was home she had access to her . . . props.
He'd met her last year. An El Al stewardess. She could have been Irish with her billowing red hair, pale freckled skin, and blue eyes, but she was pure Israeli. Young— mid-twenties—with such an innocent, girlish face, almost childlike. But Devorah was a cruel, mischievous child who liked to play rough. And when it came to rough she preferred to give rather than receive. Which was fine with Kesev.
Their little arrangement had lasted longer than any other in recent memory. Probably because her job took her away so much, she'd yet to grow tired of his black moods and long silences. And probably because Devorah had been unable to find a way to really hurt him. Kesev absorbed whatever she could dish out. She considered him a challenge, her perfect whipping boy.
So Devorah seemed happy with him, while he was . . . what? Happy? Satisfied? Content?
Hardly. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt something approaching any of those.
The situation was . . . tolerable. Just barely tolerable. Which was more than he'd learned to hope for.
"You weren't really into it tonight," she said.
"Sorry. I . . . I'm distracted."
"You're always distracted. Tonight you're barely here."
Probably true. A vague uneasiness had stalked him all day, disturbing his concentration at the Shin Bet office, stealing his appetite, and finally settling on him like a shroud late this afternoon.
More than uneasiness now. A feeling of impending doom.
Could it have something to do with the Resting Place? He followed the wire services meticulously and there'd been no word of a new Dead Sea scroll or startling revelations regarding the Mother of Christ. Not even a ripple.
But that was hardly proof that all was well, that all was safe and secure.
"I'm afraid I'm going to have to cancel our date for tomorrow," he said, turning to face her.
She lay sprawled among the sheets, her generous breasts and their pink nipples exposed. Even her breasts were freckled. But she didn't lay still long. She levered up and slapped him across the face.
"I don't like broken promises!" she hissed
between clenched teeth.
The blow stung but Kesev didn't flinch. Nor was he angry. One deserved whatever one got when a promise was betrayed.
"There is a hierarchy of promises," he said softly. "Some promises take precedence over others."
"And this promise," she said. "Is this what distracts you?"
"Yes."
"Does it involve another woman?"
"Not at all." At least not in the sense you mean.
"Good." She smiled as she clicked a handcuff over his right wrist. "Come. Let Devorah see if she can make you forget all your mysterious distractions."
The Judean Wilderness
It had taken some heavy persuasion, but Dan managed to convince Carrie to leave the cave so they could talk outside. . . in the light . . . in the air . . . away from that . . . thing.
He felt instantly better outside. It had seemed like night in there. Even though the entire tav rock was in shadow now, he squinted in the relative brightness.
And he was still staggering from Carrie's words. He'd never thought they'd find anything on this trip, so he'd never even dreamed that Carrie might want to ...
"Take her back? To the U.S.? Are you serious?"
"We have to," she said. "If we don't, other people might decipher that other scroll you mentioned and find her. The wrong kind of people. People who'd . . . misuse her."
"Then why don't we just move her from here and bury her where no one will find her?"
She wheeled on him. "This is the Mother of God, Dan! You don't just stick her in the dirt!"
"All right, all right." He could see she wasn't rational on this. "But even if we could get her back home—and believe me, that's a big if—what'll we do with her? Give her to a museum? To the Vatican?"
"Oh, no. Oh, Lord, no," she said, vigorously shaking her head. "We've got to keep her secret. She was hidden away for a reason. We have to respect that. Imagine if the wrong religion got hold of her, or some sort of satanic cult. Think how they might desecrate her. Now that we've found her, we have a very clear duty: We have to take her back with us and hide her where no one else can find her."
"You're not thinking, Carrie. We'll never get her past customs."
"There's got to be a way. Your friend Hal says people are smuggling archeological artifacts out of the Mideast all the time. Call him. He can tell you how."
"Call Hal? Sure. Hand me the phone."
"This is not a joking matter, Dan."
He saw her tight features and the look in her eyes and realized how serious she was. But she wasn't thinking straight. Finding that strange body in there, whoever it was, had jumbled up her rational processes. He had to get her away from here, get her calmed down so she could get some perspective on this whole situation. . . .
And calling Hal might be just the excuse he needed.
"All right. We'll call Hal and see what he says."
Her expression relaxed. "You mean that?"
"Of course. We'll drive back to the highway, maybe go to En Gedi . . ." He glanced at his watch. "It's seven hours earlier in New York so we can still catch him in his office. And we'll ask his advice."
"You go," she said. "I'm staying here."
"No way, Carrie," he said. "No way I'm leaving you sitting up here at night in the middle of nowhere."
"I'll be all right. Now that I've found her, you can't expect me to leave her."
"If she is who you think she is, she's been fine here for two thousand years. One more night isn't going to matter."
"I'm staying," she said.
Dan had humored her as far as he could. He wasn't backing down on this point.
"Here's the deal, Carrie," he said, fighting to keep from shouting. "Either we go down to En Gedi together or we stay up here and starve together. But under no circumstances am I leaving you alone. So it's up to you. You decide. And make it quick. Because when night falls, we're stuck here—I won't be able to find my way back to the highway in the dark."
They went round and round until she finally agreed to accompany him to En Gedi in return for a promise to come straight back to the tav at first light.
The downhill trip going was shorter by hours than the uphill trip coming, but it seemed much longer. Carrie hardly spoke a word the whole way.
En Gedi
They lay side by side in their double bed in the local guesthouse. Dan's arms and legs were leaden with fatigue as he floated in a fog of exhaustion. Here they were, in bed together in one of the world's most ancient resorts, a green oasis of grasses, vineyards, palm trees, and even a waterfall in the midst of the barren wastelands. A beauty spot, a lowers' rendezvous, mentioned even in the ancient Song of Solomon, and all he could think of was sleep.
Not that Carrie would have been receptive to any romantic advances anyway. She'd seemed more than a bit aloof since they'd left the tav.
That and the knowledge that they'd be returning to the Wilderness tomorrow only heightened Dan's fatigue.
Hal had been no help. As soon as they had arrived in En Gedi, Dan called him and explained that they needed a way to get a five-foot-high artifact out of the country.
"Quietly, if you know what I mean."
Hal had known exactly what he meant and gave him a name and a telephone number in Tel Aviv. He'd said he was very interested and wanted to see this artifact when it reached the states. Dan had thanked him and hung up.
Yeah. Thanks a lot, Hal.
Nothing was working out the way he'd hoped. He'd expected Hal to tell him to forget it—no way to get something that size past the inspectors. Instead of no way, it was no problem.
Damn!
Carrie had remained in a sort of semidream state. What little conversation she'd initiated had been whispers of "Can you believe it? Can you believe we've actually found her?" as they stocked up on twine, blankets, work gloves, a pry bar, a lantern, and hundreds of feet of rope.
And now, beside him in bed, after a long silence . . .
"I've been thinking . . ."
"Great," Dan said, dragging himself back from the borderlands of sleep. "Does that mean you're giving up this ca-ca idea of bringing that corpse home?"
"Please don't refer to her so coarsely. Please?"
"Okay. Just for your sake. Not because I believe it."
"Thank you. Now tell me: Who do you think wrote the scroll?"
"A clever, phony bastard," Dan said.
"All right," she said with exaggerated patience. "Let's humor Sister Carrie and assume that the scroll is genuine. Who wrote it?"
"We've been over this already. A Pharisee. An educated man."
"But what of the passage where he says 'I do not fear killing. I have killed before, slipping through the crowds in Jerusalem, stabbing with my knife. And I fear not damnation. Indeed, I am already thrice-damned.' That doesn't sound like a Pharisee."
"What'd you do, memorize that translation?"
"No. But I've read it a few limes."
More than a few, Dan bet.
"Some of the upper-class Israelites, a few Pharisees among them, got involved with the anti-Roman rebels, some with the zealots. These were a rough bunch of guys, sort of the Israelite equivalent of the IRA. They mounted guerrilla attacks, they murdered collaborators and informants and generally did whatever they could to incite revolt. These were the guys who gathered at Masada after the fall of Jerusalem. They held out for three years, then all 950 of them chose to die rather than surrender to the Roman siege. This scroll writer—fictional scroll writer—is patterned after that sort of zealot."
"He was a pretty tough cookie then."
"Extremely. Not the kind you'd want to cross."
"I wonder what happened to him?"
"He's probably hanging around, laughing up his three-striped sleeve, waiting for someone to chase the wild goose he created."
He regretted the words immediately, but he was tired, dammit.
Carrie yanked the sheet angrily and turned onto her side, her back to him. "Good night, Dan. Get som
e sleep. We're out of here at dawn."
"Good night, Carrie."
But exhausted as he was, thoughts of the forger kept sleep at bay. And the more Dan thought about how this slimy bastard had sucked Carrie in, making her believe all this nonsense, the more he wanted to get back at him.
And removing that corpse or whatever it was from its cave was the perfect way.
Then it wouldn't matter who came searching for the secret atop the tav rock—The New York Times, the Star, or even a mission from the Vatican itself—all they'd find was an empty cave. The tomb is empty! There'd be no turmoil, no orthodox confusion, no Catechismal chaos. And the forger would be left scratching his head, wondering where his clever little prop had disappeared to.
Dan smiled into the darkness. Two can play this game, Mr. Forger.
Tomorrow Carrie would have enthusiastic help in her efforts to smuggle the forger's prop out of Israel.
After that, Dan would have plenty of time to coax her back to her senses. If he could. He was more than a little worried about Carrie's mental state. She seemed to be drifting into some religious fantasy realm. He sensed some strange chemistry between her and that body that he could not begin to comprehend. A switch had been thrown inside her, but what circuits had been opened?
Maybe it all went back to her childhood. Maybe it was all tied up in the abuse by her father. Little Carrie had been a virgin and no one had protected her; now here she was with what she believed to be the Virgin Mary and the grown-up Carrie was going to become the protector.
More parlor psychoanalysis. But perhaps it gave some clue as to why this artifact was so important to Carrie.
Too important, perhaps.
And that frightened him. How would she react when it finally became clear—as it must eventually—that the body she thought belonged to the Blessed Virgin was a hoax? What if she cracked?
Whatever happened, he'd be there for her.
But what if he couldn't bring her back?
He stared into the darkness and wished Hal had brought him another sort of gift from the Holy Land. Anything but that damned scroll.
Tel Aviv
F Paul Wilson - Novel 03 Page 13