Will was quiet. After a moment MacCameron rose, getting ready to leave.
“Will, take the church bell tower across the street there as an example. Last time I was here I went over and looked around,” MacCameron continued. “They say that its bells have been ringing, pulled by hand, every day since 1776.”
“Yes, that’s true. Everybody knows that.”
“How do you know it?” MacCameron asked.
“Well, you just told me,” Will replied.
“Do you trust me enough to bank your life on it?”
“Of course not,” Will retorted.
“How else do you know the history of that church bell tower?”
“Oh, common knowledge of the folks here in Monroeville. And I’m sure that there are historical documents in the local museum that spell it out.”
“The historical documents would be the best evidence?”
“Probably,” Will answered.
“How do you know that you’re not being lied to? That the chimes you hear from that tower are not chimes being sounded by some kind of recording? How do you know that the tourists aren’t just being told a pack of lies?”
“I don’t know that—not for sure.”
“Is there a way to find out for sure that someone is still pulling those ropes by hand?”
“Obviously,” Will said. “Just walk over and meet the bell-puller personally.”
MacCameron smiled the kind of smile that told Will that his point had been made. Will was beginning to sense where MacCameron was headed, but he wasn’t ready to acknowledge it.
“So what does that prove? What’s your point?” Will asked as MacCameron started for the door.
Then MacCameron stopped and turned around. His eyes were soft and he had a big smile.
“The point,” the old Scotsman said, “is this: It’s time to take the step. It’s time to walk up to the power that is pulling the ropes—to personally encounter the Great Master of the bell tower, the First and the Last, the Alpha and the Omega. The One who tolls the bells of heaven and earth. The One who spins the planets as if they were mere child’s toys. Are you ready to take that step?”
There was only a shrug from Will Chambers.
“Ah, that’s a pity. I will pray for you, Will. That you will take that step of faith. That you will invite his Son, Jesus Christ, into that place in your heart where the will resides, and where true love begins.”
MacCameron said goodbye and left the office. Will sat at the table tapping his pen for a few minutes, feeling oppressed.
Outside, the bells of St. Andrew’s Church began to toll.
47
IT WAS EARLY EVENING, AND THE SUN WAS LOW on the horizon, sending blazes of orange and red off the surface of the water, and casting long shadows along the decks of the U.S. Navy destroyers that were anchored in the harbor there.
Just off that harbor in Newport News, Virginia, things were crowded within the small office that was serving as an intelligence command center. The expanding team of federal agents who had been tracking the movements of Abdul el Alibahd now included the participation of the FBI and Army intelligence as well as the CIA and Naval intelligence.
As the team divided up their paper-wrapped dinners from a local hamburger joint, the Deputy Director of CIA Operations addressed the group.
“Our last information on the black gull had him heading into Khost near the Pakistan border. Then we had no further intelligence until late last night. That’s when our sources told us that there was a report—unconfirmed as of yet—of a possible sighting of the black gull entering Libya. Then this morning we received a report of another possible sighting of several of his personal bodyguards in Lisbon. If he is with those bodyguards, and we believe he is, that means that he probably flew out of Libyan airspace and directly over to Lisbon by private jet. He’s obviously moving fast. We contacted our CIA operations people in Lisbon, as well as the Portuguese authorities. And of course, we have red-tagged him through Interpol. We are trying to draw the net tight before he leaves Lisbon.”
“What are the scenarios for his destination?” one of the agents asked.
“One bet is that he is heading down to some of the small islands along the western edge of Africa, possibly just off of the coast of the western Sahara. Maybe to establish some new training camps there.”
“Any other scenarios?” another agent asked.
“Sure. It doesn’t seem to make much sense that he would go north. So that leaves only one more direction.”
“West. To the United States,” a naval officer interjected.
“Yes,” the CIA director affirmed. “But that could also mean Mexico. Or Canada—even the Newfoundland area, which is the closest. But how could that make any sense?”
One agent raised his hand and volunteered a thought.
“Maybe he’s decided to take up commercial fishing,” he quipped sarcastically. “In which case, I’ve got a boat with a big hole in the hull I could sell to him.”
After the sardonic laughter died down, the director returned to the same question. This time there were no volunteers. There were only puzzled faces as they wondered why the black gull might choose to move across the Atlantic Ocean.
48
DRIVING ON HIS WAY TO DR. ALBERT REICHSTAD’S deposition, Will Chambers called Tiny Heftland on his cell phone.
He asked Tiny if he would get in touch with some of his old contacts in the Israeli police. He wanted to find out everything he could about the death of Tony Azid. Will told Tiny what he had discovered thus far.
Because Azid was an Arab, and was killed in his shop in Bethlehem, a city under the newly negotiated joint jurisdiction of the Palestinian police and the Israeli police, the Palestinian police had primary responsibility to investigate the antiquities dealer’s death. As a result of their review, the Palestinian police had ruled it a suicide. The Israeli police had also showed up at the scene, but did not file an official report. That was apparently standard procedure in cases of overlapping police jurisdiction.
Tiny agreed to try to re-establish some of his Middle East contacts and see if he could interview the Israeli police who had been at the scene of Azid’s death. But he said he couldn’t promise anything.
When Will finally arrived at the conference room of Sherman’s law firm to take Dr. Reichstad’s deposition, he was surprised to find that J-Fox Sherman was still in New York. Sherman had one of his associates sitting in for him.
Reichstad looked rested, well-tailored, and confident.
Will immediately inquired of Reichstad’s lawyer when they would be producing the 7QA fragment in accordance with Judge Kaye’s order.
“Immediately after our hearing with Judge Kaye on Monday,” the associate lawyer replied. “If your defense has not already gone down in flames as a result of Judge Kaye’s ruling on our Summary-Judgment motion, then we will produce it that same afternoon. However, we expect that Judge Kaye will be finding in our favor on both issues—reckless conduct by MacCameron, and the lack of truth in his published article. And when that happens, then your request to inspect the 7QA fragment will obviously be moot, and we will be under no compulsion to produce it at all.”
Will knew that if Riechstad’s lawyers achieved a total victory on Monday, the original fragment would not have to see the light of day. In fact, Reichstad might conceivably never permit anyone outside his own, tightly controlled staff of experts to ever scientifically examine the 7QA fragment.
After Dr. Reichstad had been sworn in by the court reporter, Will questioned him about the various written allegations he had made in his lawsuit against MacCameron. Reichstad handled himself with ease.
Next Will asked him about the alleged damage to his professional reputation he claimed had been caused by MacCameron’s article. Reichstad’s response showed that he had been immaculately prepared by his lawyers, and that he was well aware of the presence of the court video camera.
“My reputation among my peers and colleagues
was, for a period of time, devastated,” Reichstad recounted. He described a gathering held at one of the Harvard faculty’s homes shortly after MacCameron’s article was published, a reception to honor his discovery of the 7QA fragment. Reichstad told how he had been humiliated.
“I was there with my professional colleagues—my academic peers—and when they raised their glasses to toast me…” Reichstad said, his voice trembling with drama and emotion, “there was a voice raised from a corner of the room…it sent chills down my spine, and it literally broke my heart.”
“What did the voice say?” Will asked.
“The voice shouted out, ‘Murderer! Murderer!’”
“And then another voice yelled out against me also.”
“What did that voice say?”
“Well,” Reichstad continued, his voice quiet and intense, and putting his hand to his forehead as if to soothe some blinding psychic pain, “that other voice said ‘Fraud!’ That’s exactly what that other person said. ‘Fraud!’”
“There I was,” Reichstad concluded, “with a glass in my hand, being toasted for the greatest biblical archaeology discovery of all time—and right then and there, I am called a murderer and a fraud in front of my family, my friends, and my colleagues.”
“Do you contend that my client, Reverend Angus MacCameron, had anything to do with your being embarrassed at this party?” Will asked.
“I certainly do! The article in that miserable little right-wing magazine, Digging for Truth, had come out the week before. In that article your client accused me, in essence, of being a murderer and a professional fraud. Of course I blame your client for my humiliation. My wife burst into tears. We left the party and drove home in silence. I have never been so embarrassed in all of my long career as a scholar and a scientist.”
“Do you deny having any personal knowledge about the death of Harim Azid—or Dr. Richard Hunter?” Will asked pointedly.
“Of course I have no such knowledge!” Reichstad bellowed. “Don’t be absurd!”
“Did you conspire with any person, anywhere, at anytime, to kill Harim Azid or Richard Hunter?” Will asked, looking straight into Reichstad’s face.
“Your question is so degrading and so stupid it doesn’t deserve a response,” Reichstad said with a look of utter disgust.
“That’s where you are wrong,” Will countered. “When you filed a legal document in a federal court called a Complaint, instituting a lawsuit against my client, accusing my client of lying about you and being reckless in his publication of that article, and then demanding that my client pay you money—a huge amount of money—as a matter of fact, basically asking my client to pay to you the equivalent of the annual budget of a small island republic—then you put yourself into a position in which you must answer my questions, Dr. Reichstad. That’s the way the law works. Now please answer my question.”
With that, Will had the court reporter read the full question back again.
Reichstad had a smirk on his face when he finally answered.
“The answer to that question is this: I am absolutely, one-hundred-percent not guilty of what your client is accusing me of.”
“And do you deny that your obtaining of the 7QA fragment—and your evaluation of it—and your published interpretation of it—were, and are, well below the standards of the average expert in biblical textual antiquities?” Will asked, and then turned to the lawyer from Sherman’s firm and said he knew it was a multiple and compound question, and he would be glad to divide it up for Reichstad to more easily answer.
The junior attorney smiled and said that wasn’t necessary. He knew Reichstad could handle “even the poorly formed questions that you are trying to throw at him.”
Reichstad leaned forward onto the conference table and looked at Will Chambers. “What kind of man are you, Mr. Chambers, questioning my work as a scholar? What could you possibly know about the years of painstaking work I’ve done in my field?”
“Apparently,” Will said, turning to the junior partner, “your client is incapable of answering my ‘poorly formed questions,’ judging by his last response. Would you like to instruct him to answer the question—or shall I?”
“Do give Mr. Chambers an answer, Dr. Reichstad,” the associate said, “so we can all go home and start our weekend.”
Reichstad folded his hands on the table, and spoke slowly, punctuating each word: “I deny that any of my work regarding 7QA was below the standards in my field. Furthermore, I will tell you right now, Mr. Chambers, that my work on the 7QA fragment is among the finest work ever known in the field of biblical textual antiquities.”
Will paused a moment. He was astounded at Albert Reichstad’s capacity for self-aggrandizement. Then Will led him into the final series of questions.
“Was your interpretation of the 7QA fragment motivated by a desire to deal a devastating blow—to bring an end—to conservative Christian scholarship on the issue of the resurrection?”
“Of course not!”
“Do you consider such conservative Christian scholarship—and let’s define that term as the school of thought that holds that, in the original manuscript text, all of the Gospel stories reliably recounted a bodily resurrection of Jesus—do you consider such conservative Christian scholars to have been—well, how should I put this…have you ever considered such conservative Christian scholars to be on the level of ‘cavemen’ who haven’t learned the secrets of fire, or the wheel?”
Reichstad laughed. Then there was silence.
“Absolutely not. I do not reach my conclusions because of my dislike of conservative Christian scholarship. I reach my conclusions based on the scientific method.”
“So you would deny any kind of ‘theological agenda’ in trying to disprove the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth?” Will inquired.
“I certainly deny that. I absolutely deny that.”
“One hundred percent, absolutely deny it?” Will followed up with a wry smile.
“Yes. One hundred percent, absolutely,” Reichstad said with finality and gusto.
“Doctor,” Will concluded, “tell me every book and paper you have authored on the subject of Jesus of Nazareth.”
“Counsel,” Reichstad’s attorney interrupted, “you already have, as an exhibit in this deposition, Dr. Reichstad’s professional curriculum vitae. His long-form résumé. All of his published works are listed right there in front of you.”
“Is that true?” Will asked Reichstad. “Are they all listed right here?”
“Yes.” Reichstad responded with a sigh. “Everything is listed there,” and he pointed to the papers on the conference table.
“Are you sure you haven’t forgotten anything?”
“Yes, I am sure. Everything I have written about Jesus of Nazareth is listed on my curriculum vitae, which you have right in front of you,” Reichstad answered with irritation in his voice.
“And you are as sure of that as you are of, well, the fact that you were not involved in the deaths of Azid and Hunter? As sure of that as you are of the fact that you have not committed scientific fraud?”
“Yes. As sure,” Reichstad replied, and glanced at his lawyer as if he were searching for reassurance of some kind.
When the deposition was over, Will extended his hand to Reichstad, who merely sniffed and turned, and walked away.
When Will Chambers got into his Corvette in the parking structure he opened his briefcase, and pulled out the slender little book of Reichstad’s that MacCameron had brought to their last meeting. He opened it up and re-read the book’s prologue once more. Then he closed it, put it back in his briefcase, and started back toward Monroeville.
49
BY THE TIME WILL ENTERED MONROEVILLE it was dark, and the streetlights were on. He planned to stop by the Robert E. Lee Motel first and pick up his belongings, check out, and bid that place a fond, and final, adieu. With the money from Billy Joe Highlighter’s church paying some of Will’s legal fees, he had been able to ren
t a small apartment.
Will stopped at the lobby to pay for his stay and encountered the usual stout, expressionless desk clerk there. After Will had paid his bill the man reached down under the desk with some effort and pulled something out. It was a folded piece of paper.
“You received a message today,” he said in his extra-coarse sandpaper voice, handing the note to Will.
When Will opened it up, he saw a communication that had apparently been printed in the desk clerk’s own writing.
Will—
See you in court on Monday. I’ll be in the audience section cheering you on.
Jacki
As Will smiled and stuffed the note in his pocket the desk clerk asked him simply, “Girlfriend?”
“No, just a friend,” Will replied.
“Nice to have friends like that,” the desk clerk commented, thrusting his hands in the pockets of the gray sweatpants that were stretched over his wide waist.
“Yes. It sure is.”
“You a lawyer?”
“Yes. I’m Will Chambers,” he said extending his hand out to the other man.
“Vernon Dithers,” the clerk said, shaking his hand.
“Well,” Will said as he lifted his suitcase and swung his suit hanger over his shoulder, “it was good to meet you, Vernon. And thanks for giving me the message.” He loaded up his Corvette so he could head over to his office.
He wanted to pick up some other parts of the Reichstad vs. MacCameron file and take them home with him for the weekend. “Home” was now the small apartment he had found a few blocks down from his office. He would stay there until he was able to finish his dispute with the insurance company.
Down deep Will wondered if there was any way he was going to be able to remove himself as a suspect in the arson without divulging the identity of the public defender he had met in New York that day. And until he resolved that question to the satisfaction of the insurance company, they would not pay off his fire loss.
The Resurrection File Page 28