The Demas Revelation
Page 13
The guard waved an acknowledgment and ran for help.
Dyson felt his balance slipping away. “They’d better … better … hurry …”
He dropped to his knees, wobbled, and fell to the lawn. The world spun madly as everything around him broke into bright orange sparkles. A loud whine flooded his ears.
Then, everything went completely black.
It had been a rough night. When sleep finally came, it hadn’t been without a struggle.
Her mind ensnared in a maelstrom of anxiety and guilt, Anna had fought to shut it all away, to find a haven, however momentary, in denial. She had struggled to convince herself that Mercer had been right, that God was in control and that all things happened for a reason, but she couldn’t escape the one truth that haunted her.
I found the confessions. I shattered the faith.
And worse.
I destroyed Jesus Christ.
For hours she had lain awake, her body and mind weary to the point of exhaustion, her consciousness unwilling to yield.
If only I could go back. If only I could have stopped myself from breaking into that wall.
If only.
Finally, with the nocturnal hours slipping away, she had found sleep. Not a restful one, devoid of nightmares of pursuit, but sleep nonetheless.
An hour. Two.
The sun had risen. Anna tossed, tangling her lithe form in the covers, sometimes rising to partial wakefulness before drifting off again. Constantly, the anguish was there, awaiting its moments, seeking the chinks in her armor, reaching in to torment her.
She was being chased through a city somewhere. Her feet were like lead, her heart pounding as she tried to get away. Her pursuer was unseen but almost upon her, surrounded by a cloud of shadow, a zone of bitter cold.
Music erupted, wedging its way into her dream, jarring her. It came from everywhere. The city melted away. The music grew louder, more distinct.
Her phone.
Lifting her head, she found her hair draped over her face, obscuring her view. She swept it aside, trying to focus on the bedside table and the clock atop it.
Six forty, she read. No—nine forty. Nine forty-one.
Still, the ring tone sounded, the refrain from “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” She reached out with an unsteady hand, fumbled for the phone, and managed to get it open.
Jack’s number was on the screen.
“Hey, Jack,” she began, trying but failing to sound awake. “Did you find them?”
“Dr. Meridian?” came a woman’s voice she didn’t recognize. It carried a mild accent.
“Yes?” a puzzled Anna said, trying to force herself awake. “Speaking.”
“This is Dr. DiRisio at the Rehabilitation Institute in Telese …”
“A hospital …?”
“Dr. Jack Dyson was airlifted here this morning with a gunshot wound to his shoulder,” the doctor said. “You were the emergency contact programmed into his phone.”
The stubborn veil of bleariness began to fall away. “Jack? Is he all right?”
“He is resting comfortably. The bullet was removed, but we’re watching him now for signs of nerve damage. Two of his associates have similar wounds and are also being treated.”
Anna reached for her purse, grabbing a pad and pen from it and knocking the bag to the floor in the process. “Tell me again where you are … where Dr. Dyson is.” She listened, scrawling the address on the paper. “Via Bagni Vecchi … Got it. Does he have a room number?”
“He’s still in ICU, but we’re hoping to move him this afternoon.”
“Okay,” Anna said, sitting up. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Thank you, Doctor.”
She closed her phone, kicked herself free of the tangled covers, and threw them aside. Rising to her feet, she stepped on the spilled contents of her purse, snapping the handle of her brush as she staggered toward the closet.
“Ow!” she moaned, hopping before brushing away her nightgown and checking the bottom of her foot for a cut. None there. Then she reached into the closet for the first neutral blouse and skirt she saw.
Hurriedly she dressed, slipping the wrong shoe onto the wrong foot and scolding herself for that wasted moment.
Shot—he was shot! And I put him in the bullet’s path. Oh, Jack!
She grabbed her phone and took a quick glance in the mirror.
No makeup, not now … later, in the car.
She knelt for her purse, scooped everything back inside, then ran the broken brush through her hair as she made for the door.
The sea was calm, the sky clear.
The cargo ship Arctic Breeze, a small vessel with a deadweight tonnage approaching thirty thousand, broke for open water, having passed through the Suez Canal. Her broad, white superstructure and red-painted side contrasted dramatically with the gentle waves surrounding her, waves easily cast aside by the white churn of her wake. The Mediterranean now lay before her, its calm expanse of blue promising an uneventful journey.
The ship had last docked at the Port of Sudan, where more cargo had been offloaded than taken aboard. She sat high in the water now, carrying a lighter load than most ships making for open sea. She had always been an unimportant vessel in the scheme of international commerce, barely a blip on the sonar of maritime history. She was common, run-of-the-mill, often forgotten.
And yet hers would be a special destiny few ships come to know.
A man in dark, heavy clothing stood at her rail, his eyes not on the sparkling sea all around him but on the wide, rust-flecked cargo hatch near his feet.
He simply stared, squinting slightly against the salty ocean gusts, as if to see through the metal to something beyond.
That something, crated and headed for a distant shore, was known to a very few. Those who knew had sworn their willingness to give their lives in its cause.
And the man at the rail—when the time came—indeed would.
The late-afternoon sun cast long shadows as Anna rushed into the emergency center of the hospital. The room was not as crowded as she had feared it might be, so she went straight to the admissions desk and got the immediate attention of a nurse.
“Mi scusi,” she said, reaching into her purse for her identification.
“Sono la dottoressa Anna Meridian—”
“Ah,” the uniformed woman said in well-practiced English. “Yes, Dr. Meridian. Dr. DiRisio told me you would be arriving this afternoon.”
“Oh,” Anna said, opening her wallet to show the nurse her ID. “I got here as fast as I could. How is Dr. Dyson? How are the others?”
“Your fiancé is doing well,” she said. “The other gentlemen are still in critical condition, in intensive care. Dr. Dyson has been moved upstairs to room”—she checked her computer, then pointed down a corridor—“room 422. It’s private. The lift lobby is right down there, just past the newsstand.”
“Thank you,” Anna said as she slipped her wallet back into her purse, smiling through her puzzlement.
Fiancé?
Upon reaching the fourth floor, she followed a green painted stripe as a sign near the elevator instructed. In moments she found herself standing in front of room 422. She paused to identify herself to the nurse at the nearby station, then went to the door and pushed it open.
Dyson lay in bed, eyes closed. He was shirtless, his right shoulder heavily bandaged. An intravenous drip next to the bed fed the crook of his left elbow, while monitoring equipment silently kept watch over his vital signs. A television mounted high in the corner was set on a news channel, its sound muted.
Anna quietly stepped up to his bedside. For a moment she just stood and looked at him, her hands on the safety rail.
Oh, Jack …
A thousand thoughts ran through her mind in that
instant—the way he had taken to calling her “And the Rest,” insisting she was “the perfect combination of the Professor and Mary Ann, rolled into one.” The way he had once given her his slice of coconut-cream pie—her favorite—in the university cafeteria when she realized too late that they had run out.
The way his hand felt in hers.
She leaned over him, reaching out to push his sandy hair lightly aside.
“Hi,” she said, gently stroking his forehead. “How do you feel?”
He opened his eyes, looked over, and found her.
“Top notch.” He smiled softly, his voice weak and wrought with discomfort. “Just resting my eyes.”
She set her purse in a chair beside the bed.
“They’re determined to immobilize me,” he said. “My shoulder’s wrapped up like Ramses’ cat. Other arm has this needle stuck in it. I can barely work the remote.”
“For a guy,” she teased, “that’s rough.”
“Heaven help me if I get an itch.”
She studied him. “What did the doctors say?”
“Lost some blood,” he said dismissively. “They put it back and plugged the hole. Good as new.”
“Your color’s good.”
“Same as it ever was.”
Her smile was forced and faint.
“You look great,” he said.
“I don’t feel great.”
“Rough night,” he guessed. “Not much sleep.”
“No. Not much.”
He nodded toward the television. “It’s all over the news.”
She recognized the on-screen graphics, all in English. “American TV?”
“Satellite. Little piece of home nestled among the Italian channels. Every fifteen minutes they show your picture. Your find is all they want to talk about.”
“Don’t say that,” she said. “Don’t call it ‘my’ find.”
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “But I think you should know if you don’t already … The Catholic Church has completely censured the scroll. They say there’s no way Saint Peter would have made such an admission.”
“No way it’s true, or no way he’d have admitted it? There’s a difference.”
“They didn’t get that specific. They just—” Dyson tried to shrug, cutting the action short with a wince. “Owww!”
“If it’s the former, I’d agree wholeheartedly,” she said. “Peter wouldn’t have. None of them would have. This whole thing’s a fraud. It has to be.”
“That wasn’t all they said, Anna,” he added reluctantly. “I don’t guess you heard.”
“What else?”
He remained silent.
“Jack, tell me.”
“I know you aren’t Catholic, but they … uh … they denounced you, too. Personally. They branded you a heretic.”
She dropped into the chair. Shaking her head, she stared with wet eyes out the window across the room. Dyson said nothing, letting her work the moment through.
“God must hate me,” she said.
“God doesn’t hate you.”
“How would you know?” Anna said. “You don’t even believe in him.”
“Yeah, well …”
“I wanted nothing to do with any of this.”
“I know.”
“Everyone seems to think I gladly forced these papyri on the world, as if I were set on destroying the faith.”
“Yeah,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s pretty much what they said on the news. Looks like whoever leaked word out of Switzerland made sure to attach your name to the scrolls and told the press you stood behind their authenticity.”
“It’s a lie!”
“I know.”
“Why would anyone say that?” Anna wondered, rising from the chair and beginning to pace. “Why attack me personally?”
“Maybe to make you a scapegoat,” Dyson offered. “Maybe to take the pressure off themselves.”
“I didn’t want these to get out. I understood the consequences of that happening. I told Albert that repeatedly.”
“What did he say?”
“He said we had a duty to the truth.”
Dyson scowled. “Anna, you don’t suppose he—”
“No,” she was quick to say. “Not Albert. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It’s too late. I sat there in that lab and opened Pandora’s box, and somehow it got out and it’s too late.” Her head dropped back. “First I destroy the greatest source of hope in the world, then I send you out and get you shot. I’m a walking disaster.”
“This wasn’t your fault,” he said, indicating his shoulder. “None of it.”
“I wish I could believe that. At least the second box is …”
It dawned on her that she had no idea what he had found at Pompeii. She whirled to find his blue gray eyes, the question written on her face.
After a beat he told her, his tone grave. “I lost it, Anna.”
“What?” A whisper, shallow and desperate.
“The box,” he went on. “I lost it. I had it in my hands, and I lost it. It was right where you said it would be, in Julia’s place. I dug it out of the wall. And then Raphael showed up …”
Anna dropped back into the chair.
“They’re on the market by now,” she said with resignation. “They’ll be made public.”
“He said he had a buyer.”
“How does he do it?” she cried in frustration. “He’s always right there with me, or one step ahead. It was the same with Sam … Raphael was always right there. How?”
“We were armed, but they had numbers. Maybe half a dozen … I don’t know. I ran with the box, but … he cut me off, and …”
“They shot you.” She reached out and took his hand. “I’m so sorry. What kind of horrible person am I? You’re lying in that bed, and I’m sitting here feeling sorry for myself.”
“I’ll be fine,” he insisted. “I promise.”
“There were others, you said. With Raphael.”
“Yeah. They hit Gianni and Stefano first … They’re both here too. Downstairs.”
“I know,” Anna said, her eyes tearing up again. “The nurse told me.”
“Last I heard, they were stable, but none of us will be doing any digging for a while. They say I’ll be out of here in a week, give or take.”
“You just rest. All of you.” She tried to smile. “Get better.”
“You bet.”
“The police … What did you tell them?”
“I said we interrupted some looters in the midst of their dastardly deed,” he told her, a pain-driven grimace crossing his rugged features.
She nodded with an empathetic wince. “I’m sorry. I was wrong to have put you in that position.”
“It was for a good cause, Anna. You were afraid someone else might try to grab the papyri for the wrong reasons, and you were right.”
“I don’t feel very right.”
She was clearly suffering. He saw it and changed the subject. “What about Mercer? When’s he going back? To Oldefield.”
“Monday, I think. They’re going to see Rome first. I told him what happened. That you were here.”
“You told him I’d be a little late getting home?”
“Yeah. They’re giving you whatever leave you need. Paid.”
Dyson cleared his throat. “So, you have a place to stay? A hotel room?”
“I just drove six hours,” she confessed. “I came straight here.”
“You didn’t fly?”
“They didn’t have an open flight until tonight, and I didn’t want to wait.”
“You drove four hundred miles?”
She smiled faintly, wiping under her eyes. “Maybe …”
“I’ve heard the stories …”
She trailed off, her attention seized by the television. He followed her gaze to find a still image of her face, framed in an upper corner as the newscaster spoke.
“There you are again,” he said.
“Turn it up.”
With some reluctance, he pressed a button.
“—in Milan, where Dr. Anna Meridian performed preliminary tests on what we now understand were several manuscripts she unearthed in Rome.”
The picture shifted to video of Anna outside the museum, microphones shoved at her face as she tried to navigate the herd.
“Yes,” Anna was saying in the interview, “the papyri do appear to be first century, but that doesn’t lend them complete veracity. We know only that they aren’t recent forgeries.”
“But Dr. Meridian, how many are there? Is it true you discovered such confessions from all twelve of the apostles?”
“I do not have such as that in my possession, no.”
“Dr. Klein in Switzerland has declared the ‘confession of Peter’ authentic … Did the tests you ran here reach the same conclusion?”
“I told you, we know only that they date correctly for the period indicated by the text written on them.”
“Them?” one reporter caught. “So there are more than one?”
“I’m not going to discuss that at this time.”
Dyson turned to see Anna with her head down, her face in her hands.
“Please, turn it off,” she said softly.
He pressed the button. The screen went black.
Seeing her anguish tore into him like a dull blade. “Hey, you were great. Bunch of vultures … You did a good job there.”
“Hardly,” she said, sinking back into the chair, sliding her purse to one side. She didn’t look at him.
For several minutes no one spoke. Dyson closed his eyes, feigning rest, but he could think of nothing but her.
Anna rose and went to the window. He watched as she traced the birds in their flight, the cars as they passed by, and maintenance personnel as they went about their jobs.