The last thing the staff did, before locking the doors to the sixty-five-million-dollar compound, was to drain the Olympic-size swimming pool.
Then the parade of moving vans and transports began rumbling past the property’s “For Sale—By Appointment Only” sign and down the desert road on their route to the highway that led to Las Vegas, and points beyond. The convoy of trucks, bearing the spoils of Warren Mullburn the multinational corporate raider, snaked its way along, creating clouds of dust in the Nevada desert like a procession of some modern-day Genghis Khan.
Only this Genghis Khan had already skipped town.
The only trace of Mullburn’s presence in the Nevada desert was the now-vacant collection of buildings known as “Utopia,” and a decaying corpse that would be found months later in the nearby hills. The murdered body, identified as one Bruda Weilder, had been left to be preyed on by the beasts of the wilderness.
While his small army of agents and employees were moving his worldly goods, Warren Mullburn was on the telephone from Switzerland, talking to his attorneys. The subject was how to fend off a possible criminal indictment against him. The law firm was Kennelworth, Sherman, Abrams & Cantwell—the Washington, D.C., office.
However, the attorneys were worried about a potential conflict of interest in representing Mullburn because of the possibility that Dr. Albert Reichstad, also their client, might be named as a conspirator by the grand jury. That, of course, would be a shame—if not a tragedy—for the firm, as Mullburn was a high-profile client, and was certainly in a position to pay every penny of their high-profile legal fees.
But the decision of the attorneys in that firm about representing Mullburn became much easier when, about three A.M. that Sunday morning in Jerusalem, Reichstad would suddenly become indisposed from being the client of Kennelworth, Sherman, Abrams & Cantwell—or any other law firm for that matter.
Reichstad had been working through the night inside the excavation tent at the burial site at St. Stephen’s Gate. His assistants had all left for the night and returned to their hotels. A disturbance farther down the eastern wall of the Old City had drawn all of the guards away from the area momentarily.
A man, carrying what looked a little like a black trombone case, was climbing the hill just above the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane. He stopped at the spot where he could view St. Stephen’s Gate and the great white tent of Dr. Reichstad.
The man opened the case, took out a lightweight missile launcher, and rapidly assembled it. Then he loaded in an armor-piercing missile, pointing it toward Reichstad’s archaeological dig site, and looked through the sighting device until he had the center of the white tent perfectly lined up. When he squeezed the trigger the missile left a faint wisp of smoke behind it as it flew across the small valley that separated the Mount of Olives from the old wall at St. Stephen’s Gate and slammed into the excavation area where Reichstad was in the process of using an X-ray machine to analyze the ancient corpse that was scheduled to be moved the following day.
After the explosion, very little of Dr. Reichstad—and nothing of the corpse—was left. Reichstad was able to be identified only because a few of his teeth were found at the scene of the missile hit.
News reports indicated that no suspects had yet been named by either the Israeli government or the Palestinian Authority. However, several media accounts speculated on whether “Christian fundamentalists” intent on preserving belief in the resurrection of Jesus could be linked to the murder of Dr. Reichstad and the destruction of the tomb at that archaeological site.
The Secretary General of the United Nations, a few days later, had the occasion to comment on the attack. He remarked that “it was time for all nations, peoples, and groups to renounce that kind of religious fanaticism that breeds violence.” And then, while urging “Christian leaders around the world to exhort their flocks and congregations to be tolerant toward ideas that might challenge their own deeply held beliefs,” the Secretary General suggested that it might be time to take concrete steps regarding religious extremism.
“Let our children and grandchildren,” he continued, “see the twenty-first century as the time when all the people of the earth come together, through the United Nations, to prevent the spread of that species of religious fundamentalism that threatens global peace.”
76
AWEEK AFTER REICHSTAD’S DEATH, following the memorial service for their murdered boss, Dr. Victor Beady and Dr. Curtis Jorgenson sat in Beady’s car, a quarter of a mile down the road from their research center, and talked.
They were unaware of the van parked around the corner of the next crossroad, screened from them by some trees. The two occupants of the van were monitoring the conversation through a listening device that had been planted in Beady’s car radio.
One of the men, listening intently through his headphones, was Nathan Goldwaithe, sometime member of the Israeli Mossad. The other man, who was sitting next to him in the back, adjusting the sound levels, was Caleb Meir, a fellow agent.
“This is ridiculous, conducting business in the car this way…” Jorgenson said while he fidgeted in the passenger seat.
“No, not at all. Mullburn has the whole building and grounds wired and bugged. There are remotely controlled video monitors everywhere,” Beady reminded him.
“So what is the report? Have they named any suspects in the Reichstad thing?”
“Not that I know of. But I have read a few reports speculating that it may have been the work of ‘Christian fundamentalists.’ That’s grand—and amusing, don’t you think?”
“What is the plan…I need to know what our plan is…”
“Stop worrying. Take a Valium. We are now in the second phase. Nothing’s changed. And this phase is much more airtight than the first part. Besides, when Reichstad filed that idiotic lawsuit against MacCameron he ended up destroying any chance we had to really exploit 7QA.”
“Now that Reichstad is…he’s gone…I’m beginning to wonder. Are you sure it was a good idea?”
“Of course. With Reichstad out of the way, and the corpse in that tomb blown to oblivion, who is to say who that corpse really was? All the data disappeared in the explosion. And now we can actually turn Reichstad into a martyr for the cause of scientific enlightenment, and get on with running this show our way.”
“But I’ve still got questions about out ability to pull off this second phase. That’s why I wanted to talk. How can you be absolutely sure you can produce the results we want?”
“How? Because I’m the world’s greatest expert in radiocarbon dating since W.F. Libby, who invented it—that’s how.”
“You may be sure about your carbon-dating, but what about your genetic manufacturing? Are you sure you can get our parchment and ink to test out to 700 B.C. a hundred times out of a hundred? If we’re going to pull this off with a single fragment, it’s got to reliably date older than all the existing Old Testament manuscripts.”
“Why do you think I’ve been doing all this in the basement of that ugly, stuffy, windowless building? Of course I can do it. Now all we have to do is get in touch with the right people in Syria, or Iraq, or Iran. Can you imagine how much they’ll be willing to pay us for our little Deuteronomy production—when we tell them that the inscription on it reads that God gave ‘Israel’ to the Arabs, through Ishmael?”
In the van, listening to the conversation, Nathan gave his partner a flinty look. They nodded to each other as they finished capturing it on tape. The next day they would return the rental van, destroy the audio equipment, and convert the final audiotape to a tiny electronic strip that would fit into the end of a fountain pen. Nathan would carry that fountain pen clipped inside the pocket of his leather sport coat as he boarded the airplane in New York. In less than forty-eight hours he hoped to share his information with ranking officials within the Mossad, a few trusted members of the Knesset—and perhaps even the prime minister of Israel.
77
BECAUSE IT WAS
WARM THAT SUNDAY MORNING in Monroeville, the big windows of the Mount of Olives Church of the Risen Savior were cranked wide open. The gospel choir was singing and swinging and moving together like an undulating field of wheat. The sounds of their hymn, and the snare drum and electric guitars that accompanied them, floated across the river and could be heard on the other side where some boys were fishing by the shacks that dotted the bank.
Inside, Brother Henry Bickford, the pastor, strode up to the pulpit as the church rang with the sound of three hundred “Amens.”
“We are pleased,” he began, “to have a special guest, a brother with us this morning. Someone who had medical problems—very serious medical problems. To the very point of death!”
When the “Amens” died down, he continued.
“But the Lord healed him, and brought him here to us today. The Lord, who does all things perfectly…the Lord, who is from Everlasting…the Lord who takes the sting out of death and snatches victory out of the grave!”
The congregation exploded into a great, surging, joyful noise. Someone was shaking a tambourine.
As the pastor introduced him, Reverend Angus MacCameron slowly stood up, leaning on his cane, and waved to the smiling faces in the jammed church sanctuary.
MacCameron wore the face of a man who had come back from the grave, but whose heart was still lingering at another grave—and on the memory of the woman who had been called into eternity before he was.
While MacCameron had been struggling to survive a heart attack and a stroke, his wife, Helen, had quietly lost her long battle with lung cancer. Helen had been buried in a cemetery in northern Virginia in a simple ceremony, attended by Fiona Cameron, the members of her musical group, and a few friends of the MacCameron’s from church. Will Chambers had been there. Angus MacCameron, because of his critical medical condition, had not.
However, there had seemed to be a powerful though invisible presence of Angus during the funeral. It was a palpable feeling as the casket of his beloved wife was lowered into the ground. Perhaps it was because of the bagpiper who played an old Scottish hymn at the graveside. Or perhaps it was simply that—as those near him knew—Angus was the kind of man who had always loved his wife more than life itself.
When Angus had regained consciousness and could be told that Helen had died, he had mourned his wife—and the fact that he had not had a chance to tell her goodbye. But then he had said, through his tears, “Now I will simply have to give my darling wife that ‘goodbye’ in glory, at the same time I give her my most magnificent ‘hello.’”
After Angus had resumed his seat in a tall, ornate chair just behind the pulpit, Brother Bickford continued.
“Now, Brother MacCameron is going to deliver a message this morning called ‘The Resurrection of Jesus—the Power and the Glory.’ But first, we are going to be blessed again by our choir as they lift their voices to the Lord.”
In the third row from the front was Hattie the cleaning lady, wearing her best white hat. She adjusted her reading glasses as she studied the church bulletin.
Sitting next to Hattie was Will Chambers. Will shifted his Bible to his hand that was nearest to Hattie, and reached his other one over to the slender, graceful hand that was resting next to him on the pew. He folded the fingers of his big hand around the woman’s hand, enclosing it.
Fiona laughed quietly and removed Will’s hand from hers, and whispered to him, “Da always taught me that it was not appropriate for a lady to hold hands with a man during church.”
“Hands?” Will asked slyly.
“Yes,” Fiona replied.
Then Will moved his little finger over and wrapped it around Fiona’s little finger.
“Will!” Fiona said with another hushed laugh, “You are such a lawyer.”
After the church service, Will and Fiona were going to drive to Generals’ Hill. Will wanted to show her the construction that was going on at the site of his old house. Rather than trying to replicate the pre–Civil War mansion that had burned to the ground, he had decided on something else. He had always wanted to build a huge log house, the kind that had a massive stone fireplace and high, timbered ceilings.
Will Chambers was about to do exactly that.
The new home would be built, its walls raised, its roof established, on the scorched ground of the past. Will walked hand-in-hand with Fiona, as they looked upon the beginnings of construction on what had been a hill of desolation. Now, with Fiona at his side, and a peace that lay within like a calm ocean, Will knew that this was a place where old things had passed away. He also knew, just as surely, that for him all things were becoming new. The long night was over. Resurrection had begun.
About the Author
Craig Parshall is a highly successful lawyer from the Washington, D.C., area who specializes in cases involving civil liberties and religious freedom. He is also a frequent spokesperson for conservative values in mainstream and Christian media. Now, in The Resurrection File, he shows himself to be a gifted novelist.
THE CHAMBERS OF JUSTICE SERIES
by Craig Parshall
The Resurrection File
When Reverend Angus MacCameron asks attorney Will Chambers to defend him against accusations that could discredit the Gospels, Will’s unbelieving heart says “run.” But conspiracy and intrigue—and the presence of MacCameron’s lovely and successful daughter, Fiona—draw him deep into the case…toward a destination he could never have imagined.
Custody of the State
Attorney Will Chambers reluctantly agrees to defend a young mother from Georgia and her farmer husband, suspected of committing the unthinkable against their own child. Encountering small-town secrets, big-time corruption, and a government system that’s destroying the little family, Chambers himself is thrown into the custody of the state.
The Accused
Enjoying a Cancún honeymoon with his wife, Fiona, attorney Will Chambers is ambushed by two unexpected events: a terrorist kidnapping of a U.S. official…and the news that a link has been found to the previously unidentified murderer of Will’s first wife. The kidnapping pulls him into the case of Marine colonel Caleb Marlowe. When treachery drags both Will and his client toward vengeance, they must ask—Is forgiveness real?
Missing Witness
A relaxing North Carolina vacation for attorney Will Chambers? Not likely. When Will investigates a local inheritance case, the long arm of the law reaches out of the distant past to cast a shadow over his client’s life…and the life of his own family. As the attorney’s legal battle uncovers corruption, piracy, the deadly grip of greed, and the haunting sins of a man’s past, the true question must be faced—Can a person ever really run away from God?
The Last Judgment
A mysterious religious cult plans to spark an “Armageddon” in the Middle East. Suddenly, a huge explosion blasts the top of the Jerusalem Temple Mount into rubble, with hundreds of Muslim casualities. And attorney Will Chambers’ client, Gilead Amahn, a convert to Christianity from Islam, becomes the prime suspect. In his harrowing pursuit of the truth, Will must face the greatest threat yet to his marriage, his family, and his faith, while cataclysmic events plunge the world closer to the Last Judgment.
The Resurrection File Page 45