Crucified

by Michael Slade

  "The Judas puzzle," Rommel said. "You asked if I could solve it. The question you posed was: What makes the papyrus map from Tobruk a biblical earthshaker? The answer lies in what is drawn on the map. A treasure map is of no use unless it contains the contemporary features of the landscape.

  So whoever sketched the map of the city of Jerusalem did so before the Romans destroyed both the Second Temple and the Second Wall during the Jewish War in 70 A.D. The map, however, doesn't show the Third Wall, which was built between 41 and 44 A.D., so the sketch predates that decade. That means the map was drawn sometime between the crucifixion of Christ, in 33 A.D., and the raising of the Third Wall, about ten years later. Since the script on the map refers specifically to the confession and the relics found with it, those artifacts must date from that time, too. The most conservative theologians say the gospels of the New Testament were written no earlier than 50 A.D., so the Judas relics precede the Bible by a decade or more. The earlier the record, the closer it is to the truth. So this confession of Judas is the best explanation we have of why Christ was crucified. What's more, since Haceldama is named by both Matthew and Luke as the place where Judas was buried, that independently proves this is the Holy Grail."

  The historian raised his glass.

  "Well put," he replied. "But if I were you, I'd keep the pedigree of the Holy Grail to myself. These are dangerous times.

  With the German army occupying Rome and the Allies storming in fast, now is not the time to mention these relics to the pope.

  But soon the war will be over, Christians will thank God, and I will convince the Vatican to make you a very rich man in exchange for a gift of the Holy Grail."

  + + +

  "Stop," ordered General Burgdorf.

  The SS driver brought the car to a halt. They'd traveled no more than a few hundred yards from Rommel's Herrlingen home, just up the hill and around the bend from sight. The stopped car jerked the field marshal out of his memory and back into the here and now. Burgdorf motioned for General Maisel and the driver to get out and stroll up the road. The car was parked in an open space on the edge of a wood. Rommel caught sight of a few Gestapo men from Berlin, no doubt with orders to shoot him dead and storm the house if he bolted.

  So this was it.

  Burgdorf offered him the poison.

  "Three seconds," he said, "and it will be over."

  Rommel took the vial. He held his own death in his hand.

  For a moment, he envisioned Christ hanging on the cross, the crown of thorns on his head. The U-boat bearing the Judas relics had vanished somewhere between Hamburg and Scotland's Firth of Forth. No doubt, the relics were now at the bottom of the sea, lost wherever the sub had come to rest.

  In the massive purge that followed the failed plot to kill Hitler, all those who knew that the Judas relics were on their way to Britain in the Black Devil died at the end of wire nooses in the torture cells under Gestapo headquarters. To thwart spies and prevent leaks, Rommel had decided that not even Churchill would be made privy to the smuggling route. He'd said nothing about the botched plan for fear the Gestapo would exact revenge on his family.

  Negotiating peace was dead.

  Let sleeping dogs lie.

  So now he crushed the vial between his teeth to release the poison, knowing that with him would die the secret of the Judas relics, and that he was one of a handful of people in all of history to have held the Holy Grail.

  Seconds later, Hitler's Judas was dead.

  NO PARACHUTE

  ENGLAND, NOW

  "Bloody hell!"

  Terror assaulted his mind as Wyatt peered through the Judas window in the door of the clifftop cottage. There was no entrance hall, just a big open space with rooms off it. Beyond the threshold to the bedroom, a woman lay spread-eagled on a four-poster bed. A pool of blood spread fingers across the floor toward the door. This side of the threshold, a man had spilled his guts on the hardwood, in a pile that looked like a nest of purple snakes. Against the grisly backdrop, Wyatt spied a gore-spattered ghost approaching the Judas window.

  "Lenny?" he gasped.

  The dead man's head was no longer caved in by a hammer, nor was his body bloated from the German river. Instead, the phantom was alive and well, and aiming a silencer-equipped gun between Wyatt's wide-eyed pupils.

  On instinct, the target ducked and flung his hands up to protect his face from flying glass. The Judas window shattered as Wyatt's fingers splayed, flipping his calling card away from his grasp.

  There was no time to retrieve it.

  Wyatt turned and ran.

  Never had he been so thankful for his incarceration at that boarding school. "A sound mind in a sound body," the Nose used to say as he ordered the boys to drop to their knees on the soccer field and bow—under threat of the Paddle—in the direction of his outstretched arm.

  "Do you know what you're bowing to, boys?"

  "To Mecca?" Wyatt answered.

  "No. To my house. And don't you forget it."

  That was back in feudal times, before the school did away with corporal punishment. At the start of the year, the Nose laid down the punishment for any infraction of his "No Talking without Permission" rule: four of the best on the backside of every lad in class—the first on entering the gym, the second on going into the showers, the third on coming out with bums wet, and the final one as they exited for the next class.

  After one transgression, yakking ceased, and there was no need for the Nose to re-enforce the rule.

  "Rook?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "What will your sport be?"

  "Track, sir."

  "You'd better run like the wind. And don't you forget it."

  So run he had. Faster, and faster, and faster! Good at long distances for the runner's high. And the best in school at the hundred-yard dash for the adrenaline rush.

  "Rook?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "It's time for hurdling. I want those long legs limbered up for next week's track ribbon. Give me ten straddles off the springboard and over the wooden horse."

  That hurt. It was like doing the splits.

  "Rook?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "This time, knees to chin. I want those long legs tight for the track ribbon. Give me ten through the hoops of your arms, off the board, palms on the horse."

  "Sir?"

  "What?"

  "My legs are too long for that."

  "Nonsense."

  "Show him, sir." Jack came to the rescue.

  "Yes, sir," the rest of the class piped in. "We all need to see how it's done."

  The Nose was not a man to walk away from a challenge.

  Not if his Latin machismo was on the line.

  "Lead from the front, sir," Jack encouraged.

  The Nose was sporting his usual gym attire: sneakers; gray slacks with knife-sharp creases; tight, white T-shirt flaunting his buff pecs; the ever-present whistle around his neck.

  He hit the board, planted his palms, tucked up his knees, and caught his toes on the underside of the wooden horse. In a flail of arms and legs, with change flying out of his pockets, he took the upper half of the horse with him as he crashed to the mat on the other side.

  "Not a word!" he shouted before crawling from the wreckage.

  "Stay in line!" he ordered as he slammed the halves of the wooden horse back together.

  Then he took a running start and hit the springboard as hard as he could, launching himself so high in the air that his palms missed the horse by a mile, and an ambulance had to be called to cart him away with a broken leg.

  Well, thank God for the Nose, for the moment the adrenaline hit Wyatt's heart, he bolted from the cottage door just as he had been trained to do under threat of the Paddle.

  The stone walls along both sides of the yard rose too high for him to hurdle. The stretch beyond was springy turf just waiting to twist an ankle. The odds favored a jerky side-to-side run down the shooting gallery. But at the end, he'd have to choose to
go right or left along the cliff path, and that would make him an easy target for miles in either direction.

  O r . . .

  Wyatt didn't hear the shot, but he saw the effect. A mist of blood spewed forth from his arm.

  No man is an island . . .

  And he couldn't afford to be on this one.

  If a clod be washed away by the sea . . .

  That was his only chance.

  Each man's death diminishes me ...

  Especially if it's your own.

  Send not to know for whom the bell tolls . . .

  A leg shot would cripple him.

  It tolls for thee.

  So that made up his mind.

  Run, Wyatt. Run!

  He made a mad dash for the beckoning edge of the crumbling cliff, then swapped dry land for thin air and an eighty-foot drop to the carnivorous sea.

  "Rook?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "What will your sport be?"

  As he took this leap of empty faith, he wished he'd said,

  "Diving."

  On the way down, he thought of Sweaty's story of the rear gunner who fell eighteen thousand feet without a parachute into the cushioned arms of some fir trees.

  Agnostic though he was, he prayed for deep water.

  TRUE CROSS

  THE VATICAN

  So what became of the True Cross?

  That's the question that plagued the mind of the Secret Cardinal as he stood in the portico of St. Peter's Basilica and contemplated Bernini's sculpture of Constantine awed by the vision of the cross in the sky. According to the legends of the Roman Catholic Church, Empress Helena, Constantine's mother, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 326 A.D., and there, in a cistern near the hill where Christ was crucified, she uncovered the actual cross on which he'd hung.

  The holiest relic in Christendom was the True Cross. The empress had it broken up, and a piece was left in the care of the bishop of Jerusalem. Periodically, pilgrims saw the venerated cruciform. But Jerusalem fell to Muslim invaders in 638 A.D.

  They erected the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, for Islamic tradition says that's where Muhammad ascended to heaven. In the centuries that followed, their empire grew, eventually stretching from India to the kingdom of France.

  By the eleventh century, Christendom was ready to strike back. Christian knights from the fiefdoms of Europe answered Pope Urban II's call for holy war. With crosses stitched on the tunics they wore over their armor, they went off by the thousands to Jerusalem. On July 15, 1099, they stormed the walls with siege machines and took back the city.

  The Secret Cardinal imagined the crusaders rampaging through the streets. The ferocious summer sun radiated off their helmets, chain mail, and double-edged swords. They hacked down anyone in their path as they chased the defilers of Jerusalem up the Temple Mount. Mounds of infidel heads, hands, and feet piled up in the streets and squares, until the crusaders were literally up to their ankles in blood. Loot belonged to whichever knight seized it first, so men laid claim to gold and silver, mosques and houses, horses and mules. Rumor was the Saracens had gulped down coins before the battle, so squires and footmen slit open their bellies to retrieve them.

  The Muslims fell back to the Dome of the Rock, but the crusaders flushed them out. As knights pillaged that sanctuary, the infidels sought refuge in the nearby al-Aqsa Mosque. The crusaders forced their way in and put them all to the sword.

  Then they surrounded the Jews hiding in their synagogue and torched the building in retribution for their crucifixion of Christ.

  The Jews burned alive.

  This was no regular conquest by an invading army. This was a ritual slaughter, a cleansing of the temple. The bodies of the infidels, every pound of flesh, got piled outside the city walls and burned in pyres that Christians would later describe as flaming pyramids.

  The Secret Cardinal saw the First Crusade as an exorcism.

  Expelling the Devil from Eden.

  Cleansing original sin.

  So to offer thanks to God, the crusaders gathered in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, built by Constantine on the crest of Golgotha and over the tomb of Jesus. "Oh day so ardently desired!" they prayed. "Oh time of times the most memorable!

  Oh deed before all other deeds! Let this sacred city, so long contaminated by the superstitions of pagans, be cleansed from their contagion!"

  It was in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher that Arnulf Malecorne of Chocques, chaplain of the crusader army led by Robert of Normandy, William the Conqueror's son, rediscovered the True Cross. Hidden by Christians, it had gone missing in 1009. The discovery was a blessing from God, for an Egyptian army was coming to expel the crusaders.

  Arnulf carried the True Cross at the vanguard of Christ's army when it met and defeated the infidels at the Battle of Ascalon.

  Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, With the cross of Jesus going on before—

  The phone vibrating in his cassock summoned the Secret Cardinal back to the twenty-first century.

  He hoped it would be the Legionary, but it was the Art Historian.

  Only those two had this number.

  "Eminence?"

  "Yes," the cardinal whispered.

  "Have you heard from him?"

  "No."

  "Something's wrong. He should have called me by now."

  "Have you called him?"

  "Yes. No answer. He said he'd phone to confirm as soon as he got the archives."

  "When was that?"

  "Early this morning. From Sussex."

  "Have you reason for concern?" asked the cardinal.

  "I fear he's unstable. I don't think he's psychologically fit for this crusade."

  "How so?"

  "I fear he's too true a believer."

  + + +

  The crusaders held Jerusalem for eighty-eight years. The True Cross led them into battle twenty times. Dead crusaders were buried at Haceldama, just as Judas Iscariot was. A massive sepulcher was raised over natural grottos. Lowered through holes in the roof, bodies were left to rot there until the bones piled up fifteen feet.

  The warrior who united the Muslims for revenge was Saladin, the sultan of Egypt, Syria, Arabia, and Mesopotamia.

  A Kurd from Tikrit, in what is now northern Iraq, he was almost fifty years old when, in March 1187, he called for jihad against the crusaders. "When the forbidden months are past," he read in the Koran, "then fight and slay the infidels wherever ye find them and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem of war."

  Saladin did just that.

  With the Saracens massing on the border of Christendom, the king of Jerusalem, Guy of Lusignan, summoned twelve hundred knights and twenty thousand footmen to the citadel of La Safouri, site of the largest reservoir in the Holy Land. He also had the True Cross sent from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher so his soldiers could march to war behind the sacred relic.

  Saladin, however, prayed to the same God. To bait his trap, the sultan besieged the castle of Count Raymond of Tripoli.

  Chivalry demanded the rescue of the count's wife, so the crusaders departed from their plan, trudging fifteen miles along a dry valley and over a saddle-shaped desert hump called the Horns of Hattin to save their damsel in distress.

  Waiting for them along that route were thirty thousand Muslims flying the apricot banners of Saladin. His archers used charge-and-retreat tactics to harass the crusaders. Like irritating flies that wouldn't be shooed away, they returned again and again. Then, as the hammer of the sun beat down on its anvil, thousands of horsemen swung around behind the Christians to block their retreat.

  The crusaders suffered a sleepless night beside a dry well.

  Archers picked off their horses in the dark, and foot soldiers choked their camp with brush fires to increase their thirst.

  Musicians kept them awake with drums, horns, and cymbals, while scorpions and tarantulas crawled into their armor.

  Come morning, they plodded on toward
the sight of Saladin's men pouring water on the sand to taunt them. The Muslim camp had water tanks replenished by camels circling to Lake Tiberias and back. With the enemy between him and the answer to his thirst, the king pitched his red tent on the crest of the Horns as a rally point. Only when the sun was in the crusaders' eyes and the heat and wind were up did the sultan attack.

  The thundering hoofs of horses threw up a cloud of grit.

  Lances, maces, and crescent blades flashed in the haze. Boxed in on the heights, weary knights grew more dehydrated with every swing of their swords. Men on foot crumpled under a rain of arrows. Whittled down, the Christians crowded around the True Cross. Saladin's son cried, "We have beaten them!"

  "Be silent," his father replied. "We shall not defeat them until the red tent of the king falls." A second later, the tent collapsed. The king of Jerusalem was captured, along with two hundred knights. The True Cross vanished in the dust.

  Three months later, Jerusalem fell. When he heard the news, Pope Urban III died of shock.

  Saladin became the hero of the Muslim world. Allah, Mohammed, Saladin. God, prophet, liberator.

  Muslims view the crucifixion as a sacrilege, a story unworthy of a proud religion. Jesus was human, not divine. Jesus was a prophet, not the son of God. To flaunt their contempt for that ignoble demise, the victors marched the knights'

  Golgotha relic to Damascus stuck upside down on a spear.

  The last time anyone saw it—according to legend—the True Cross was being dragged through the streets of Damascus tied to the tail of Saladin's horse.

  + + +

  It was a long way from the dusty Golgotha of Cutud to the magnificence of the Vatican. From the portico, the Secret Cardinal crept into St. Peter's and marveled at its treasures.

  Lifting his eyes toward the soaring dome, he imagined fragments cracking off and falling to earth. He was gripped by a sickening vision of the Church crashing down around him.

  Help me, Lord, he prayed.