Absolute Proof

by Peter James

  ‘I have been given three sets of compass coordinates – the first is for the location of the Holy Grail.’

  ‘The Holy Grail?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘That’s a pretty big ticket,’ Ross said, noting it down.

  ‘Not as big as the next, Mr Hunter. The coordinates for the location of a significant item relating to our Lord, Jesus Christ.’

  ‘Does it come with a certificate of origin?’

  ‘Please, Mr Hunter, as I said to you, I’m not some kind of a crackpot. Please hear me out. The third set of coordinates is for something so important it will, I assure you, have a tumultuous impact – in a truly positive way – on the world.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me what this is?’

  ‘In due course but not now, not until I can be sure you are the right man for this. But let’s say the third set relates to the Second Coming.’

  ‘The Second Coming?’

  ‘That is correct.’

  Ross thought for a moment and doodled a halo. ‘OK. Have you checked any or all of these out, Dr Cook?’

  Cook took a sip of his tea, then nodded pensively, lost in his own world. ‘Indeed, I have. I’ve checked out the coordinates for the Holy Grail. They give the location as Chalice Well in Glastonbury.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘As you know, this has long been reputed to be the place where Joseph of Arimathea is buried. Chalice Well is one of Britain’s most ancient wells, in the Vale of Avalon, between Glastonbury Tor and Chalice Hill.’

  ‘I do happen to know quite a lot about that, actually. I wrote a large piece on the Glastonbury Festival and the myths surrounding Glastonbury Tor for the Guardian a few years ago. All the Arthurian legends about the Holy Grail stem from around there.’

  ‘Good, then you will know what I am talking about. Of course, there is disinformation put out by enemies of Our Lord. I suspect you are man enough, Mr Hunter, to see beyond that. It’s probably one of the many reasons why your name was given to me as the man who could help me.’

  ‘So, have you investigated this claim?’

  ‘I’ve been there with dowsing rods and with a metal detector, in a wide arc around where the compass coordinates pinpoint, and there is something down there.’ Cook’s eyes lit up with an almost messianic zeal. ‘Chalice Well is run by a group of trustees, whom I then approached, asking for permission to carry out an archaeological dig, but despite explaining why I wanted to do this, they refused.’

  ‘Did they give you a reason?’

  ‘I’ve done all I can to persuade them, but I just don’t think they take me seriously. I believe it would be very different with you – with your reputation for integrity, they’d have to take you seriously.’

  ‘That’s very flattering.’

  ‘True, Mr Hunter.’

  ‘There is a very big problem,’ Ross said. ‘From what I remember from my own research, yes, it is possible that Joseph of Arimathea came to England after the crucifixion.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Cook said. ‘Quite likely sailing across the flood plains of the Somerset Levels, bringing with him the chalice that contained some of Jesus’s blood from his crucifixion, and arriving at the legendary island of King Arthur’s Avalon, a hill now known as Glastonbury Tor. For safekeeping he buried the chalice in a secret place. Seven centuries after the death of Jesus, Glastonbury Abbey was built. In 1191, monks at the abbey claimed to have found the graves of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. I believe all records were lost during Henry VIII’s Reformation – when the Protestant Church broke away from the rule of Rome, and most monasteries were razed to the ground with their relics and records destroyed or lost forever.’

  Ross sipped some of his tea. ‘Yes, but during research for my article I discovered that many of the medieval monks were pretty commercial animals, and income from tourists was as important for the monasteries as it is for many seaside resorts today. Quite a number of scholars have said the discovery of these graves was made up, aimed at getting religious tourism. How much do you know about this, Dr Cook?’

  ‘I know all about it. As a shrine, the place would have been visited by thousands of pilgrims. There would have been all kinds of holy souvenirs, and charlatans selling supposedly magical relics. But that was the norm for many monasteries. You are quite right to question this, Mr Hunter. And with so much destroyed in the Reformation, it is impossible to establish the truth all these centuries later.’

  ‘Quite. So, have you checked either of the other two coordinates yet?’ Ross asked him.

  ‘I have. But I’m afraid that until I have your absolute commitment to helping me, I cannot reveal them.’

  Whatever his scepticism at this moment, Ross could not dismiss what Cook had told him about Ricky. And there was a sincerity about Cook that he found touching. Clearly, beyond any doubt, Cook believed in what he had been given.

  And yet . . .

  ‘Dr Cook, you said God felt that by having faith in Him reaffirmed, it would help steer the world back from the brink, right?’

  ‘Absolutely, Mr Hunter.’

  ‘But the world never has been on an even keel, has it? Go back over the past thousands of years, and for much of this time almost everyone in the world believed in a god – or gods – of some denomination, and worshipped them. Throughout time people have done the same horrible things they still do around the world today. Even though they believed ardently in their deity.’ He paused for a moment and looked at the old man, who was staring at him attentively.

  ‘Surely, Dr Cook, if he truly is God, and wants to see us all back on an even keel – whatever He means by that – why can’t He just do it?’

  ‘Because God gave us all free will. He sent His Son to save us, and we ridiculed and murdered Him. We’ve been suffering the consequences since. Now we are being given a unique second chance.’

  All Ross’s instincts were telling him this was a hiding to nothing. A simple Google search would have told Cook all he needed to know about him having a twin who died in an accident.

  But Bubble and Squeak?

  He decided to play a bluff. He glanced at his watch. ‘Well, I’m afraid that’s all I have time for – so I don’t really know where we go from here. I suggest you take your manuscript away, make a copy and send it to me, if you’d like any further input from me. Otherwise –’ he stood up – ‘it’s been very nice to meet you.’

  Cook did not move. ‘All right,’ he said, pursing his lips and nodding pensively. ‘I trust you, Mr Hunter. I’ll leave the manuscript with you if you give me your reassurance you will not make a copy of it.’

  Ross nodded.

  ‘If you could read it as quickly as you can, then we can meet again and develop our strategy for saving mankind.’

  ‘It’s a plan,’ Ross said. ‘On one condition.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘You give me all three sets of compass coordinates you have.’

  Cook hesitated, his eyes narrowing with suspicion. ‘Why do you need them?’

  ‘You’re asking me to take on a big commitment of time. I’d like to check them out for myself.’

  ‘I’ll give you the precise coordinates I have for Chalice Well as a token of good faith, Mr Hunter. It’s not, of course, that I don’t trust you, but I cannot risk them falling into the wrong hands.’ He stared intently at Ross again. ‘You do understand there are a lot of people who would want them? In the wrong hands they could be extremely dangerous.’

  ‘What kind of danger?’

  ‘Need I spell it out?’

  Ross could now see the teacher in the man. The impatient lecturer trying not to talk down to an imbecilic student.

  ‘Lucifer, Mr Hunter.’ Cook gave him a reproachful look. ‘Satan. Kicked out of Heaven, he vowed to return and is biding his time.’

  ‘OK,’ Ross said, trying not to look as though he was humouring the man.

  ‘When I feel it is safe, I will let you have the remaining coordinates. And I will also need
your word that you will not attempt to excavate at Chalice Well – or at any of the other locations – without my being present.’

  ‘You have my word.’

  With some reluctance, Cook opened his wallet, took out a tiny square of paper, no bigger than two inches by two inches, and handed it to Ross.

  He could barely see the tiny handwritten numbers and letters. Squinting, he read the coordinates out aloud:

  ‘51°08'40"N 2°41'55"W –’

  Then he read the numbers that followed:

  ‘14 9 14 5 13 5 20 18 5 19 19 20 12.’

  He looked at Cook. ‘What are those numbers? They’re not compass coordinates.’

  ‘No, indeed not.’

  ‘Is it some code?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know. I had a good look around Chalice Well whilst I was there, seeing if I could spot any numbers corresponding, but no dice. But they are clearly there for a reason.’

  A few minutes later they shook hands at the front door.

  ‘You will be careful with the manuscript, won’t you, Mr Hunter?’

  ‘I’ll guard it with my life.’

  Ross stood there, watching Cook climb back into his car, switch on the lights and drive off. It was a few minutes to 6 p.m.

  Then he closed the door, went upstairs to his den and began to read.

  The man in the dark-grey Vauxhall saloon, parked a short distance along the road, lowered his night-vision binoculars, switched off the video record mode and made a few notes on his tablet, before starting the car and pulling away.

  11

  Monday, 20 February

  Everybody was happy, and Pastor Wesley Wenceslas liked that. He liked happiness! And nothing made the forty-six-year-old minister happier than to spread the word of the Lord – well, the word of the Lord interpreted by him. An interpretation that, clearly, resonated with many folk. The happy Word.

  Congregations were growing, week on week, in each branch of the Wesley Wenceslas Ministries. His church in South Kensington had been at capacity – 1,700 – for every service for several years. But when Pastor Wesley himself was preaching, usually on a Sunday evening, there would be hundreds more standing watching on screens outside, in pretty much whatever the weather, all praying and loving together. It was exactly the same in his other three churches in England, in Manchester, Leeds and Leicester. In addition, he now had three firmly established in America and was planning many more there. When you had God behind you, truly the world was your oyster – or, he joked, since he preferred his cooked, Oyster Rockefeller!

  The stats were steadily rising on his YouTube channel. He had currently 5.2 million views on his broadcasts, beating the crap out of many mainstream broadcasters, and that made his sponsors very happy. Which in turn made his bank manager very happy. As well as the proprietors of his favourite jewellery, shoe and dress stores in Westbourne Grove, in London, and on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, where he liked to buy gifts to bring back to England for his wife, Marina, who spent most of her time with their three small children. They were being home-schooled for both religious and security reasons in Gethsemane Park, their country estate in Surrey, which was both their home and the headquarters of Wesley Wenceslas Ministries.

  His English Rolls-Royce dealers, in Sussex, were happy, too. The sporty, two-door golden-sand-coloured Phantom coupé in which he was currently driving himself was just weeks out of the showroom, and he had another five Rollers, all less than two years old, in his ten-car garage. Jesus may have been poor, he reasoned, but that was then – this is now. The world has changed, aspirations have changed, Wesley Wenceslas wrote and preached. Who is better placed to reach out to those most in need of spiritual guidance? Some pious monk in Jesus sandals on a pushbike or someone in a nice suit and with smart wheels?

  Christian churches throughout the Western world were losing their congregations and wondering why. Some figured it was because they didn’t appeal to the younger generation, so they stuck in rocking vicars who played electric guitars, turning the singing of hymns into a poor man’s U2 concert, but they still didn’t get it, did they? They still didn’t pack ’em in. Harry Cohn, that old Hollywood movie mogul, had it right when he said, ‘Give the people what they want and they’ll beat your door down for it.’

  ‘Hey,’ Wenceslas liked to joke. ‘It was the Good Lord Himself who said that a great profit shall come unto the land!’

  People wanted colour, light, laughter, beauty, and they loved drama, sensationalism and miracles, but they needed one thing above all: money. In a hot country you could be poor, and so long as you had something to eat you could wander around barefoot in rags and survive with no roof over your head. But in a cold, wet climate like this country, you needed a lot more. And that cost money. He believed in the Prosperity Gospel: the bigger your bank balance, the more blessed you were.

  He knew. He’d been poor once – and not so long ago. It was a simple equation but just like so many of the traditional churches in the USA, the established churches of England had been missing the point for decades – or rather, centuries. Just looking at the size of his congregations showed that. Packed churches filled with worshippers, spreading the message, the love of God. The true interpretation of His Son’s teachings.

  COMPASSION. TOLERANCE. SUCCESS!

  How many churches over the centuries had made that last word taboo for their flocks – whilst amassing vast wealth themselves? How convenient it was to ignore the simple truth that it was the rich men who were the doers, the achievers. It was the rich men who made medicines that actually worked; who made aeroplanes; cars; food; schools; libraries; hospitals; roads. If it truly was, as the Synoptic Gospels had recorded Jesus saying, easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, then what kind of place was Heaven, in reality? Pastor Wesley Wenceslas had a pretty shrewd idea.

  A Heaven full of nothing but poor people was going to be a pretty crappy place, some kind of massive dumping ground for losers – and who wanted to spend eternity stuck with a bunch of losers?

  Besides, he’d always had a problem with that quote, because he knew from his studies of Jesus that the Lord was a fair man. It was both judgemental and inflammatory to imply all rich people were bad and all poor were good. Because the scriptures were subject to a lot of bad translation, he had delved into this in depth, as it defied so much of what he stood for. And he eventually got to the bottom of it, in George M. Lamsa’s Syriac–Aramaic Peshitta translation. There he found the word rope substituted for camel in the main text, with a footnote on the original in Matthew 19:24, which states that the Aramaic word gamla means both rope and camel.

  It was a eureka moment for Pastor Wesley Wenceslas. What Jesus was really saying was that a rich man needed to focus on the way he lived his life, as hard as he’d have to focus to thread a needle with rope, if he wanted to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

  Of course, it made total sense. The monotheistic religions – those which believed in one God – had achieved their power and status through being control systems. And money was a big part of that. The incalculable wealth of the Vatican had been amassed through just that control – and the guilt it had imbued in the wealthy for nearly two millennia – with that one sentence.

  Based on a mistranslation.

  A deliberate one?

  As he sat cocooned in the comfort of his leather seat, steering with one finger on the wheel, he listened to his own voice booming out of the radio, which was tuned in to his own internet station, Wesley Wenceslas Radio.

  ‘Matthew 5:5 reads, “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.” Well, OK, think about that carefully, everyone. Just what does that actually mean? That if you try to stand up for anything you’re doomed?’

  The wrought-iron entrance gates of Gethsemane Park swung open as the black Range Rover in front of him, carrying two of his security guards, approached in the darkness. As the Rolls followed it in through the gates, a second black Rang
e Rover containing two more of his guards was right on his tail. More cameras clocked the convoy as it made its way up the long, tree-lined avenue.

  Wenceslas smiled at the view to his right, the grounds illuminated by thousands of lamps. A view fit for the Lord. Acres of verdant green grass gently sloping down to the lake, with his own private sanctuary surrounded by fountains in the centre. That was the place where he regularly spent time alone in devotional prayer and meditating on the Holy Scriptures, whilst at the same time looking at his computer and casting an eye over his weekly finances, to check that his flock were still generously supporting his God-given calling.

  The grass was green enough, the colour he liked, and after months of bounteous rainfall, so it should be. But sometimes in the summer months, when the rain dried up and the sprinkler system struggled to prevent it from browning, he would have the grass chemically treated green. Influential and important visitors came to this place and everything had to look perfect for them. And that meant verdant grass. He saw nothing wrong in doing that. All of us needed a little helping hand at times in life, even God Almighty Himself. Perhaps never more so than in these increasingly dark and turbulent years.

  Particularly in view of the troubling news he had heard earlier today.

  12

  Monday, 20 February

  ‘It’s on the table and getting cold!’ Imogen called impatiently.

  ‘Coming!’ Ross replied.

  ‘You said that five minutes ago!’

  ‘Sorry! Coming!’

  He carefully put down the thick stack of loose pages from the manuscript Harry Cook had entrusted to him. The only copy in existence. Luckily, he thought. Because that meant no other poor sod was having to lose hours of his life, which he was never going to get back, attempting to read it.