Sign of the Cross paj-2

by Chris Kuzneski

  ‘May I?’ Tamher asked, not wanting to interrupt. ‘I don’t mean to — ’

  ‘No problem. I think better when I’m moving. Something about blood flow to my head.’

  He nodded in understanding. ‘I think better with no shoes… Airflow between my toes.’

  Dial glanced downward and noticed Tamher’s bare feet. ‘Interesting.’

  Tamher laughed as he walked over to Dial’s bulletin board. ‘Whatever works, you know? Take your vertical scrapbook, for example. I could never use that here. Too many prying eyes.’

  ‘Coworkers?’

  He shook his head. ‘Military.’

  Dial didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.

  ‘Will you be staying another day, Nick? If so, you’d be wise to take your materials to your hotel. There’s no telling what will be missing if you leave them overnight.’

  Dial nodded, reading between the lines. His access was guaranteed by Interpol’s agreement with Libya, but that didn’t mean that he was welcome. ‘I appreciate the advice.’

  This time it was Tamher who was silent.

  ‘Out of curiosity, if I were to leave tonight, would you be willing to keep me in the loop?’

  He nodded. ‘As long as you’re willing to return the favor.’

  ‘You got it.’

  Tamher wanted to tell him it wasn’t personal, that this was simply his way of protecting his new friend from the Libyan government. But Dial nodded his head in understanding. No explanation was needed. He was an American, and that made him the most loved/hated mammal in the world, depending on where he went and what day of the week it was.

  That was one of the reasons that he kept his work on a portable bulletin board. It gave him flexibility and allowed him to leave on a moment’s notice. Just like he would later that night.

  30

  Dr Boyd knew Maria would eventually come back to the library. The thing that worried him, though, was her mental status when she arrived. He remembered how he felt when he initially translated the scroll — being the murderer of one’s own religion was not good for the soul — and he knew Maria had to be dealing with worse feelings since she was far more religious than he.

  Yet he realized he didn’t have time to help her through her spiritual crisis, not with the fate of Christianity in his hands. That meant he needed to block Maria out of his mind and focus on the only problem in the world that mattered: What should he do with the scroll?

  Before he had a chance to answer that question, Maria burst into the conference room.

  ‘Professore,’ she blurted, ‘you’ll never believe what I just saw!’

  Confused by her enthusiasm, Boyd motioned for her to take a seat. This wasn’t the Maria he was expecting. He assumed she’d return to the library guilt-ridden, not giddy as a cheerleader. ‘Are you all right? Have you had some sort of breakdown?’

  ‘What? No, I haven’t had a breakdown. Why would you ask me that?’

  ‘It’s just, you’re extremely upbeat, and…’ His voice trailed off.

  ‘And what? That’s not allowed?’

  ‘Of course it’s allowed. But when you left here, you were anything but ecstatic.’

  ‘And for good reason. I left here without hope but came back with my faith restored. I found new evidence that might contradict what we know.’

  ‘New evidence?’ His tone was full of doubt. ‘And where did you get this new evidence?’

  ‘At Il Duomo,’ she answered. ‘I went to the cathedral to do some soul-searching. I figured, if I was going to ponder God, that was probably the best place in Milan to go. Anyway, I was up on the roof, battling the ungodly heat, when I saw him.’

  ‘You saw Him? Just how hot was it up there?’

  ‘Not God! I didn’t see God. I saw the laughing man.’

  ‘Once again, let me ask you how hot was it up there?’

  ‘Not in the flesh. I saw a statue of the laughing man at Il Duomo!’

  ‘Wait a moment. You’re serious?’

  ‘Yes, I’m serious. Our friend from the Catacombs is on the roof of the cathedral.’

  ‘What? But that doesn’t make any sense. The cathedral wasn’t built by the Ancient Romans. In fact, if my memory is correct, it was built some time in the 1300s.’

  ‘Hold on, there’s more.’ Maria smiled, enjoying her chance to teach her teacher. ‘The laughing man had a letter carved into his ring. There’s no guarantee that it’s actually his initial, but I think there’s a good chance that it was.’

  ‘Which letter?’ he demanded. ‘Was it the letter P?’

  She nodded, half disappointed that he was able to figure it out. ‘P as in Paccius, right?’

  He held up his hand to silence her. ‘Maybe, but not definitely. We mustn’t jump to any conclusions. We must find conclusive proof before we move on.’

  ‘Come on, professore, who else could it be? Tiberius ordered Paccius to execute his scheme in Judea, and we have the scroll to prove it. Later, during that same year, Paccius disappeared from the Roman history books altogether. That can’t be a coincidence. I’m telling you, Paccius has to be the laughing man. He has to be.’

  Boyd rubbed his eyes, considering her theory. Everything she said made sense, all but one thing. ‘Maria, I don’t mean to ruin your mood, but this news about Paccius only strengthens the case against Christ. It means Paccius received the scroll, then went to Judea to carry out the plot. It also suggests that his results were so positive that Tiberius felt obliged to honor him by building a shrine underneath Orvieto.’

  ‘True,’ she admitted. ‘But I think you’re the one who’s missing the big picture, not me. I left here lost and depressed, filled with doubts about God, Christ, and everything else that I believe. In order to gather my thoughts, I went to the closest church I could find, looking for solace in God’s house, hoping to find something, anything, that would get me through my personal crisis. And guess what? I was given a huge piece of the puzzle. Talk about working in mysterious ways! Santa Maria! I’ll never doubt God again.’

  She gazed at Boyd and noticed that his eyes were still filled with doubt.

  ‘I know you think I’m crazy and that this was all a coincidence. But I honestly believe that this was God’s way of telling me to keep looking, to keep searching, to never give up on him. And in my heart I know if I keep doing that, then everything will be all right.’

  Several minutes later Maria was still riding high from her discovery at Il Duomo. ‘You know, it’s pretty obvious to me we’re onto something. I mean, the historical evidence alone is mind-boggling. Throw in the assassination attempts, the lies in the newspaper, and the statue at the cathedral, and we’ve got the makings of a first-rate conspiracy.’

  Boyd glanced at her, focusing his icy blue eyes on her face. One minute she was soul-searching, the next she was defiant. ‘Yet you think that this is all a ruse.’

  ‘Not all of it,’ she stressed. ‘I believe we found the Catacombs and the scroll. But I don’t believe that Jesus was a fraud. I’m willing to accept that other stuff with little proof, but when it comes to my religion, I’ll need a lot more evidence to convince me that I’m wrong.’

  ‘Truthfully, I think I would’ve been disappointed if you’d taken any other stance.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course. Keep in mind that two millennia have passed since our scroll was written, and several critical events have occurred since then, things that Tiberius couldn’t have foreseen. In any case, I hope you’ll keep an open mind during our search for evidence. Once we’ve rounded up all the data, we can sit back and hypothesize as to what really happened two thousand years ago. Then we can tackle the consequences together. All right?’

  ‘Deal!’ she said, thrilled that he understood her position. ‘Let’s get started.’

  Using the evidence they had found, Boyd and Maria drew a timeline, trying to figure out how all the pieces of their theory fit together.

  32 AD

  • Tiberius sen
ses uprising

  • Proven by Orvieto scroll

  among the slaves of Judea

  • Tiberius plans to profit

  • Mentioned in Orvieto scroll

  from the promised one

  • Tiberius sends a message to

  • Document found in Bath

  Paccius in the Britains

  • Paccius returns to Rome

  • Paccius = laughing man???

  and participates in plot

  33 AD

  • Paccius goes to Judea to

  • This has not been verified.

  carry out plot

  • Paccius uses his power to

  • In what way? Proof

  manipulate Jesus

  needed.

  • Jesus becomes the

  • How was Paccius involved?

  Messiah in the eyes of the

  masses

  • Tiberius uses Jesus’s

  • How is this possible???

  power to finance the

  Empire

  34–37 AD

  •Paccius disappears; never

  • Historical mystery

  heard from again

  •Tiberius balances the

  • Proven by history books

  Empire’s budget

  •Tiberius becomes

  • Dies in 37 AD (smothered

  mentally unstable; shuns

  by a Roman soldier?)

  Rome for Isle of Capri;

  rumors of foul play

  involved in death

  Boyd said, ‘If my math is correct, Tiberius wrote this scroll approximately eight months before the death of Christ. That would have given Paccius enough time to read it, return to Rome, and get to Judea to start his assignment.’

  ‘Whatever that assignment might’ve been.’

  ‘The thing that makes no sense is why Tiberius felt Judea was so important. Egypt was Italy’s most reliable source of food because of its agriculture, and Greece was a major contributor of culture. But Judea? There was nothing there but sand and an angry populace.’

  Boyd considered her statement. ‘Unless that was his reason. Maybe he chose Judea because it was so darn troublesome? He figured if he could whip the Jews into shape, so to speak, then the rest of the Empire would be a snap.’

  Maria frowned. ‘You mean Judea was a testing ground?’

  He nodded, pleased with his theory. ‘We’ll still need to verify Paccius’s presence in Judea and what he ultimately hoped to accomplish, but I think that sounds reasonable, don’t you? Now all we have to do is fill in some of the voids on our chart.’

  ‘Well, we know some things, don’t we? Look here. “Let us feed their hunger with our choice of food, allowing them to feast on the coming of their savior… for we know he is merely a pawn that we have lifted to the level of Jupiter.” That means Tiberius wanted to create a fake god for Jerusalem. He actually wanted them to believe that the Messiah had surfaced.’

  ‘Yes, my dear, that’s quite obvious. But how does one accomplish that? If you continue to read the text, Tiberius says, “… there must be no doubt among the Jews; they must witness an act of God with their own eyes, a feat so magical, so mystifying, that future generations will sing of its splendor for eternity…” That means he planned to stage something in public, something that would eliminate skepticism from even the toughest of cynics.’

  ‘Like a miracle?’

  ‘Or, at the very least, an impressive magic trick. Keep in mind, the very definition of a miracle is an event that contradicts the laws of nature, something that’s regarded as an act of God. And I have a strange feeling that the Romans didn’t have heaven’s help on this.’

  ‘What do the history books tell us? If Tiberius’s ruse actually worked, there must be a record of this “miracle” somewhere in biblical folklore.’

  ‘I already considered that, my dear, but the accounts of Jesus’s life are so varied it would be impossible to separate fact from fiction. In the Gospels alone, there is talk of thirty-six miracles, everything from turning water into wine at Cana to walking on water at Lake Gennesaret. And in my opinion, none of those events left the kind of impression that Tiberius was hoping for.’ He shook his head in confusion. ‘Furthermore, we must remember what the New Testament is. It’s a piece of propaganda that was intended to turn people on to Christianity, not a book of facts that was written by the hand of God… Even the pope would admit to that.’

  Maria knew what the Bible was and wasn’t, yet there was something about Boyd’s tone that made his explanation sound harsh, no matter how accurate it was. Take the Gospels, for example. She knew the writings of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John detailed the life of Jesus, and most Christians believed these accounts were infallible. However, what most people failed to realize is that John’s Gospel disagreed with the other gospels about several important events in Christ’s life, meaning that large portions of the Gospels had to be wrong since they contradicted each other. Furthermore, she knew that many modern scholars claimed the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke were written by men who’d never met Christ (although some early-Christian scholars would disagree) nearly forty years after his crucifixion. That meant none of their writings were first-person accounts of Jesus’s life. Instead, they were based on rumors, stories, and exaggerations that had been passed through two generations of religious turmoil.

  Maria also realized the fourth Gospel, the one by John, was penned by an unknown writer with unknown credentials, although some fringe scholars have theorized that it was actually written by Lazarus, the man who Christ supposedly raised from the dead. And if that was true, his version of Christ’s life would’ve been more than a little bit biased.

  Wait a second, she thought to herself. Could that be the miracle they were looking for?

  She asked, ‘What about Lazarus? Jesus brought him back four days after he’d been buried.’

  ‘Hmmm, I admit I forgot about that one. I think that’s probably the type of event that Tiberius would’ve had in mind, something that would have been unexplainable. Unfortunately, the Lazarus miracle didn’t occur on the great stage of Jerusalem, the place where Tiberius wanted the Jews to discover their Lord. Therefore, I doubt that was the one.’

  ‘OK, tell me this: Which of Jesus’s miracles actually occurred in Jerusalem?’

  ‘Truthfully, none of his miracles seem to match the criteria. None of them possessed the pizzazz that Tiberius was striving for.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘We must be overlooking something. We need to keep on digging until we find a fact, no matter how large or trivial, that supports our hypothesis.’

  Frustrated, Maria sank back into her chair. ‘That sounds kind of tough, sir. I mean, there are so many places we could look. It would be so much easier if we had some idea where to begin.’

  ‘True, but that is not the reality of things. In this business nothing is ever handed to you, and nothing is sitting out in the open, waiting for you to notice it. That’s just not how it works.’

  But in this case Boyd was wrong, for the answer they were looking for was within their grasp. In fact, it was lying on the table in front of them.

  31

  Opened in the 1930s, the Grand Hotel Reale used to be the most elegant hotel in town. Nowadays the hand-painted frescoes that once enhanced the lobby were tarnished, the result of fingerprints, tobacco stains, and years of neglect. Payne noticed the outside of the hotel was faded, too, as he and Jones scurried alongside the building to reach the back entrance. A few minutes later they were inside Barnes’s room, slipping a pair of his socks over their hands to conceal their fingerprints. After that it didn’t take long to find something of interest.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ Jones said. ‘Look what we have here.’

  Payne turned and saw him kneeling on the floor, holding a 9 mm Beretta in his sock glove. After checking the safety, Jones put the barrel under his nose and took a whiff, trying to determine if it had been r
ecently fired. ‘Found it under the bed,’ he said. ‘Smells clean.’

  ‘The gun or the sock?’

  Ignoring the question, Jones handed him the weapon. ‘I wonder why he had it?’

  Payne took it in his sock-covered hand. Suddenly he looked like a performer in a twisted puppet show who was about to kill Kermit the Frog. ‘Who knows? He was traveling alone in a foreign country. He might’ve brought it for protection.’

  Jones shrugged as he continued looking through the room.

  ‘Speaking of protection, I’m going to borrow the Beretta. Just in case.’

  ‘Fine with me. But I don’t want to see you borrowing his watch or his wallet. We’re here for his film and nothing else.’

  Payne nodded as he dug through Barnes’s suitcase. It was filled with shirts, shorts, and a wide variety of toiletries. ‘And once we find his film, what are we going to do?’

  ‘We’ll leave. For some reason I got a bad feeling about this place.’

  Smiling, Payne held up a Ziploc bag and jiggled it. ‘If that’s the case, then let’s get going.’

  Payne tossed the bag to Jones, who inspected the three canisters of thirty-five-millimeter film. ‘If we’re lucky, one of these will show yesterday’s crash scene.’

  ‘And if we’re unlucky, we might see Donald sunbathing in a thong.’

  ‘Good God, I hope not. I don’t think the CIA will give us hazard pay for that. In fact, I don’t think they’ll… shit!’

  Confusion filled Payne’s face as he tried to determine what the CIA’s bowel movements had to do with anything. ‘What does that mean? You don’t think they’ll — ’