by Robert Ryan
“I know. Faith.”
Unger gave a slight nod and gestured for Zeke to follow. A moment later they were at the altar. Several items were laid out across the top. Nearest were two bejeweled cases, each about the size of a paperback book.
“I have more than one source in Rome,” Unger said, “as you might expect. These came from the Vatican. Their collection of relics is enormous, of course. I was told that a disgruntled clergyman, one of the curators, stole these to compensate himself for being underappreciated.”
He picked up the first one, undid a gold clasp, and handed the case to Zeke. “Look, please, but do not touch the contents.”
Something lay on a sumptuous blue velvet lining. About an inch square, with somewhat ragged edges, Zeke guessed it might be a fragment of cloth, or perhaps of parchment.
“From the Shroud of Turin,” Unger said.
Zeke stared at it for a long moment, then merely nodded and handed the case back. Unger opened the second and gave it to him.
Another fragment of something, maybe an inch wide and a few inches long, lay on the same royal blue velvet that lined the other case. Zeke waited for the explanation.
“A piece of the Cross on which Christ died.”
Zeke was not surprised. He had glanced down the line of artifacts and could see where this was going. He nodded again and followed as they slowly made their way along the altar. Unger made minimal comments at the relics that were self-explanatory.
“The Crown of Thorns. The darkness at the tips of the thorns would have to be blood.”
They moved to the next item.
“Nails from the Crucifixion. Again, the staining would be from blood.”
Next were two stained pieces of cloth. One was fairly large, about four feet wide and six long. The other was much smaller, about three feet square.
“The larger one is Jesus’s burial shroud. Some think the Shroud of Turin was used for that purpose, but tests on the Shroud and my own research have convinced me that this is the one. Which means my piece of the Turin Shroud cannot be from His burial, but I could not pass up the opportunity to have them both.”
He nodded at the smaller cloth.
“The Sudarium. Used to wrap Jesus’s head in the tomb.” Near one edge a line of several dark ragged spots dotted the fabric. “Obviously those stains would have come from the wounds caused by the Crown of Thorns. I have held this and the Crown close together and the stains line up exactly with the tips of the thorns. I know that by itself that proves nothing, so I have gone much further. I contacted one of the foremost experts on evolutionary genetics in the world. This is the field that studies ancient DNA, how it mutated from one race to another, seeking to find the origins and evolution of the human race. One of their projects is to gather samples going back thousands of years from people buried in the Holy Land, to see if they can establish a genealogy for the twelve tribes of Israel.
“I happily paid this man’s expenses to come and see if he could get DNA from my Jesus relics. He came and took samples back to his lab. Of course we have none of Jesus’s DNA for comparison, but at least he could compare the samples to each other, to see if they all came from the same source.
“They did. The blood, microscopic bits of skin—all the DNA was indisputably from the same person. All the samples dated to the time of Christ. The tests also determined that the genetic structure belongs to a particular lineage they had been piecing together. Considered in the context of the totality of their research, they concluded that this person belongs to the tribe of Judah. The tribe from which we get the term Jew, and from which Jesus is descended.”
Zeke took a moment to process what he was hearing. “Based on all that,” he said, “it seems that the odds against these things being from Jesus would be astronomical.”
“Yes. But there’s one more thing. All the samples contain only mitochondrial DNA, which comes only from the mother. There are no Y chromosomes from the father. This lab has studied thousands of samples, going back tens of thousands of years, and this is the only time they’ve seen DNA with no markers from the father.”
“The Immaculate Conception,” Zeke said.
“I have no other explanation. Neither do the scientists.”
They had come to the end of the altar. Ahead lay an opening in the craggy stone wall where the light barely reached. Zeke followed Unger through the opening and into a shadowy cave. Unger pulled matches and a small taper from his pocket. He lit the taper and used it to light several large candles on tall ecclesiastical candlesticks. They created the feel of a chapel.
The cave was about fifteen yards deep and fifteen wide. Halfway between the entrance and the rear wall, a ridge jutting up from the stone floor had been carved into a crude bench. Affixed to the far wall was one of the silver crucifixes Zeke had just seen. Beneath the crucifix a rectangular mirror stood upright, tall and wide enough to see one’s entire reflection. The four small legs on which it stood were part of the ornately carved bronze frame. A thin line or crack zigzagged down the middle of the mirror.
Unger sat on the bench and patted the space beside him. Zeke sat and Unger spread his arms to indicate the entire chamber inside the vault door.
“I consider all of this my Sanctum Sanctorum. I feel Jesus everywhere in here, but most especially in this room. This is my Most Holy Place. Somewhere above us is the Garden of Gethsemane, where the Agony began that led to Jesus’s death. This room is the anti-Gethsemane, if you will. I call it the Grotto of Resurrection, because it is in here that Jesus speaks to me of his return.”
A riot of questions erupted in Zeke’s brain. He quelled them and said, “Why the mirror?”
“That mirror is why I believe. It didn’t come from one of my usual suppliers. I found it myself. It had waited two thousand years to show me the way.” Unger paused for a reverent moment. “Come. Look.”
They went to the mirror. Unger lit the two ecclesiastical candles that stood on either side of it. Crouching, he pointed to something etched into the bronze along the bottom of the frame. Zeke went down beside him. A flowery decorative pattern formed a border around a single word in beautiful italic script: Pilatus.
“As in Pontius Pilate?” Zeke said.
“Yes. Pilate stayed in the Praetorium when he was in Jerusalem, not far from here. We don’t know where exactly, but somewhere in or around or under the Temple. The underground all around here is riddled with tunnels and tombs and caves. I found the mirror in a tunnel that would have been a drainage channel in Pilate’s time, running from the Temple. The passage was constructed from stone slabs, and the sides have stains clearly indicating the presence of water over a long period of time. It is dried up now, completely caved in except for the section I found. The mirror was lying on the ground just above the aqueduct, almost completely covered by rubble. At first I thought it might have gotten there because of some flood in antiquity, but that didn’t make sense. Flooding would have washed other things down there, but I spent a month doing archaeology all around that spot and never found a single other artifact. Nothing to indicate a settlement. This would have come from elsewhere. Since it obviously was something to be used in someone’s home, and since I found absolutely no other artifacts in that area, I concluded it must have been thrown out and gotten washed away.”
They went back and sat on the bench.
“In the time of Christ,” Unger continued, “mirrors were not yet made from glass. They were made from polished metal—in this case, silver. It is truly miraculous that this could have survived, but the same divine power that protected those crucifixes has preserved this. Even so, it took my antiques restorer months to remove two thousand years of tarnish and patina without damaging it.”
“Except for that crack.”
“That is not a crack, because this is not glass. It is a scratch that was already there.”
“It seems incredible that archaeologists never found this,” Zeke said.
“I thought so too, at first. Arc
haeologists have been exploring around Jerusalem for centuries, and I have only been exploring the underground for ten years or so. But archaeologists are perennially short-handed. They will never find everything. I finally came to believe that I was the one meant to find it. Because of what it has shown me.”
“Which is what?”
“There are many superstitions associated with mirrors, of course, but the things I have seen are not superstition. They are real. The Romans are the ones who believed that breaking a mirror would lead to seven years of bad luck. They may also have adopted the Greek belief that the gods could show you the future in a mirror. If the mirror got broken, it meant the future was bleak and the gods did not want you to see. Another superstition is that mirrors can ‘catch’—if not all, then at least some—of a person’s soul. After what I have experienced with this mirror, I believe that is true.
“I believe it was in the room when Jesus was brought to Pilate. It would have caught their images immediately after the betrayal in Gethsemane. In that supercharged atmosphere, with the profoundest decision in the history of the world about to be made, the spiritual energy would have been extremely strong. Souls were on the line. Not just the souls of those in the room, but the souls of millions—billions—to come.
“I believe this mirror caught the soul of Jesus. I cannot prove it, but I believe his image in the mirror haunted Pilate afterward. Perhaps the scratch materialized during one of those visions, a divider between the images of Pilate and Jesus in the mirror. Considering all those superstitions of the time, it is easy to imagine Pilate or one of his minions throwing the mirror into the ditch. I know how far-fetched this sounds, but I am utterly convinced. Because of what I have seen in this mirror.”
“What have you seen?”
“I won’t tell you that. Not yet. If I tell you my visions, they may influence you to imagine things that aren’t there. But if you have truly been chosen, I believe you will see many things that are.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Zeke said.
“Have you ever meditated, Ezekiel?”
“Not meditated, per se. But I’m a reflective person by nature, and I have an excellent ability to focus on a task. That skill was honed to razor sharpness in the military. And in my philosophy studies, I trained my mind to think very deeply.”
“That should help, but those skills fully engage your mind on a particular objective. The goal here is to completely quiet your mind, to completely remove yourself, your ego, until you are left with nothing but your spiritual essence, which is centered in your heart. If you can achieve that, you will be open to receive Him and whatever message He has for you.”
“I can do that.”
“Very well. I am going leave you alone to reach some degree of hesychasm, hopefully enough to see for yourself. There are many steps involved in becoming a true hesychast, but we do not have that kind of time. I can give you only one. Hopefully that, along with the powers of concentration you already possess, will be enough. Wait here. I need to get something from the other side of the room.”
He returned a moment later with a silver St. Peter’s crucifix in each hand.
“All right. Please sit in the center of the bench. That will align you perfectly with the mirror and the crucifix on the wall behind it. Take these, one in each hand. Rest them on each thigh so they are upright and Jesus is reflected in the mirror. That way the Jesus behind the mirror is looking at you, and the two you hold are simultaneously probing into the soul of the mirror while their reflections are probing your soul as well. The three crucifixes create what I call the Jesus Triangle. It increases the Jesus energy exponentially. The crucifixes in your hand are like battery terminals, drawing that energy into you. This divine energy also makes the reflections much brighter and easier to see than images would normally be in a mirror made from polished metal.”
His eyes bore into Zeke with an unwavering stare.
“This is the moment of truth, Ezekiel. I know it requires an enormous leap of faith. Are you ready to make it?”
“As ready as I will ever be.”
“We can ask no more.”
Zeke held the crucifixes as he had been told and waited.
“All right,” Unger said. “Stare directly into your own eyes in the mirror. This connects you to your own soul. Now we enter the realm of hesychasm, to help establish that connection and creating the opening into your being for…whatever you are supposed to receive.
“As you stare at yourself in the mirror, strive to quiet your mind, to remove all thought. To remove your self, as much as you can. At the same time, your chin will gradually lower, seemingly on its own, until it touches your chest. This creates another connection, between your heart and mind. If all goes well, the purified energy from your soul flows upward until it wipes your mind clean for…reprogramming. Ideally, as your spiritual energy becomes stronger, it should pull your chin downward, to this natural position, without you even realizing it. At that point you are fully connected to whatever forces are in the mirror.”
“Then what?”
“You watch. And wait.”
Zeke nodded.
For the first time, Unger smiled. “Very well. I will leave you alone. When you are done, knock on the door and we can take it from there.”
He nodded again and Unger walked away.
When the sound of the door being closed finally died out, Zeke sat quietly on the stone bench, crucifixes in hand, staring into his own eyes in the mirror. In the flickering candlelight, he listened to the whispers of doubt subsiding in his mind.
CHAPTER 43
The Dead Sea
Mordecai’s trained gaze was scanning the bottom of the sea. Having gotten The Wall excavation off to a smooth start, he’d left someone else in charge there and joined Jack Shelby’s team at the site where the coins had been found. They’d been digging for over an hour and found nothing new. The sibilant, almost hypnotic breathing of the divers was the only sound in the preternatural silence.
A ridged outline in the mud, a few feet deeper than where the coins had been discovered, caught Mordecai’s attention. He called for the others to follow, and gently finned over to the anomaly.
One quick look told him it was something buried, not just a salt formation or the shifting of the bottom caused by waves. Shelby and Lev, the Israeli grad student who had turned out to be an excellent excavator, hovered alongside.
“Get a camera on this,” Mordecai said. “We’ve got something here.”
The videographer recorded the in situ location of the anomaly, while the diver with the airlift waited nearby.
The most pronounced part of the shape was a long, thin object, bent at a sharp angle, like a stick that had been snapped in two.
“If you don’t mind,” Mordecai said, “let me uncover this first one. I’ve been waiting a lot of years for this.”
“Have at it,” Shelby said.
After adjusting his buoyancy compensator to stabilize at the new depth, Mordecai very gently fanned away the silt covering the anomaly. Within seconds he knew what it was.
The remains of a human arm.
The more he dug, the more excited he became.
This was more than just bare skeleton. Puckered matter sheathed the arm in places. Unless he missed his guess, it was flesh. Flesh perhaps thousands of years old that had been preserved. Salted. Ancient Egyptians had prized Dead Sea mud for preserving their mummies. Those same preservative qualities had kept the arm in remarkable condition.
Forcing himself to remain calm, Mordecai continued fanning away silt, taking extreme care not to damage the artifact. No surgeon ever operated more delicately on their patient than he now operated on his. When he reached the wrist, yet another discovery met his eyes.
A bracelet.
He leaned close to get a better look. Gently brushing the insignia area with a fingertip, the dirt came away easily. Immediately he recognized the embossed figure of a now-familiar entity.
Baal.
Only more digging would solve the mystery.
“Jack, Lev, help me with this.”
The three divers took up positions around the partially-decomposed skeleton and immediately became absorbed in their digging. Communicating in terse phrases and gestures, they made quick progress.
As more and more of the corpse became visible, the degree of preservation was astounding. Almost all of the shriveled flesh remained intact. Mordecai kept thinking of DNA and what a priceless find this would be for the paleogeneticists.
This was not a skeleton.
This was a mummy. In as good or better condition as any ever found.
Its knees were drawn up toward the chest in a semblance of the fetal position. Incongruously, its hands were outstretched, as though warding something off. As they worked their way along the backside of the mummified body, they exchanged a puzzled look. It was now almost completely excavated, and yet another mass, of more or less the same size, appeared to lay buried beside it.
Mordecai suddenly realized why the anomaly had appeared excessively large. “There must be two bodies.”
He checked his dive computer. They could safely stay down at least fifteen more minutes. “We’ve got enough time. Let’s uncover the rest of it.”
They resumed digging. Mordecai could not keep the speculations out of his mind. Was this a husband and wife? A father and child? Could these be the remains of two citizens of Sodom, huddled together for protection during the last moments of its destruction?
Their suspicions were confirmed when the second mass revealed itself to be another body. They had been digging their way from the outer edges of the anomaly toward the center, where the two bodies lay closest together. It was now clear that both corpses were facing the same way, and the second one’s hands appeared to be holding onto the front one’s waist. The only area that remained to be cleared was what amounted to a few more handfuls in the middle of the scene, where the bodies were so close together that Mordecai guessed they might be touching. At this final stage there was only room enough for him to dig alone. The others hovered and watched intently from a few feet away.