by Jon Land
“This man had been sentenced to die anyway,” the captain said matter-of-factly.
“So I am to be his executioner.”
“It is a better way to die than what we had planned for him: he raped and murdered a child.”
The doctor grimaced.
“Does that make your job any easier?” the captain wondered.
“Not when his greatest crime is the resemblance he bears to—”
“Please get on with it, Doctor.”
“I swore an oath, Captain.”
“So did I. Now hurry.”
The doctor adjusted the nearest lantern slightly before proceeding. He aimed his round-edged instrument directly for the center of the prisoner’s palm, felt a brief tug of resistance as it pierced the top layer of flesh before the impetus carried its razor-sharp tip effortlessly through bone and gristle until it emerged through the back of the prisoner’s hand. Hesitating not at all, the doctor moved to the other side of the table, readjusted the lantern, and repeated the process on the prisoner’s left hand.
“What next?” the doctor asked as twin pools of blood ran down the table from the matching wounds, dripping to the floor.
“His skull,” the captain replied, drawing an imaginary line across his own upper brow.
“The crown of thorns ...”
“And a spear wound in his side. I will show you exactly where when you pull up his shirt.”
“You don’t have to.”
The doctor moved around to the rear of the table to work on the prisoner’s skull as instructed with a different instrument, but found both his hands shaking. He fought to squeeze the blood back into them, trying to remain detached.
“When I was first contacted, I thought ... I thought ...”
“You thought what, Doctor?”
“That you were going to bring Jesus himself here. That you took him down alive from the cross and wanted me to save him.”
The captain laughed. “That would be quite impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because he was dead when we took him down, a day ago now.”
“Then what—”
“His body disappeared from the cave we placed it in.” The captain gestured at the prisoner on the table. “That man is our replacement.”
* * * *
B
ut the Roman guard was too late,” Father Mike continued, looking up at Ben. “According to the scroll, by the time the soldiers brought this nameless prisoner to the cave to replace Jesus, the disappearance of his body had already been discovered.”
Ben felt numb all over, grateful when Father Mike paused so he could collect his thoughts. But his mind was still floundering in the short moments before the priest resumed.
“It was a conspiracy, Ben, one of the oldest of all time. Once Christ’s body was found to have vanished, the Jews concocted the plot and paid the Romans to carry it out. The tale Josephus tells goes into some detail concerning that.”
“What about the resurrection?” Ben managed to ask.
Father Mike held the reconstructed pages in both hands. “The tale these tell ends before that time. It does not prove Jesus rose from the dead, but neither does it disprove it.” Father Mike’s eyes sharpened, seeming to glow in the room’s shadow-draped light. “But He vanished from the tomb, Ben. You have found the clearest, most direct proof of that ever uncovered. Congratulations.”
Ben sat there, struck by the irony. In his obsessive desire to prove Christ had been nothing more than a man, he might well have proven quite the opposite. If there had been any explanation for his body vanishing, other than the long accepted gospel, then why would the Jews and Romans have bothered staging so elaborate a conspiracy? That could only have been concocted out of fear in the wake of their misdeed, misjudgment, and overreaction.
Ben rose from his chair and walked to the kitchen’s single window set over the sink. He gazed out into the darkness in search of answers the light had yet revealed. His journey had brought him to a different end than expected, and he didn’t know what to make of it yet.
“Ben.”
He saw Father Mike’s reflection in the glass next to him.
“Ben.”
Father Mike reached for him and spun Ben around, their positions exchanged, the red dot that would have landed on Ben’s forehead lodging on Father Mike’s instead.
“No!” Ben screamed, barreling into him as glass shattered behind his ear.
Impact took them both into the kitchen table that tipped over, spilling its contents to the floor. Ben landed atop Father Mike and separated himself as more gunfire peppered the room.
“They’re here,” he muttered.
“Who?” the priest asked, his face wide with terror.
“The Knights Templars, the Israelis—I don’t know.” Ben’s mind was whirling. His eyes traced the pages of the manuscript that had scattered across the floor. Then he slid away from Father Mike and began collecting them. Glass popped and crackled the whole time and he felt the slivers raining onto him.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” Father Mike called to him.
“No, you have to get out of here; it’s me they’ve come for.”
Finally satisfied he had gathered all the pages, Ben crawled back to Father Mike and pressed the floppy disc that contained the manuscript and Daws’s original pictures into his hand.
“What am I supposed to do with these?” the priest asked.
“Hold on to them for safekeeping. Can you make your way out through the back?”
Father Mike nodded.
“I’m going to head into the church, hopefully draw them in after me. As soon as you hear voices, get out of here and don’t look back. Okay?”
“I hope you know what you’re doing, my son.”
“Keeping you alive, and that manuscript intact, are good enough. The best I can hope for. Now, just get ready!”
* * * *
CHAPTER 86
B
en shook the glass off his back and crawled into the short hallway connecting the rectory to the church. He stayed on the floor when he reached the church hall, mindful of the large windows lining the walls.
The scent of sawdust mixing awkwardly with that of fresh paint was sharp and pungent. He continued to crawl, drawing even with a fireplace still aglow with fading flames when the faint echo of a gunbolt being drawn back froze him, even before the shadow of a man loomed overhead. Ben looked up.
A face as expressionless as death gazed down. The man gestured with his silenced submachine gun for him to rise. Ben did as he was ordered, clutching the now-wrinkled pages tight to his chest.
The front door burst open and more gunmen entered in single file, fanning out as they surrounded Ben, keeping their weapons poised on him. The last man through the door wore an ill-fitting military uniform that sagged on his frame, the excess cloth billowing slightly.
“Hello, Colonel,” Ben greeted Gianni Lorenzo. “Welcome to Palestine.”
It all seemed so absurd, so ironic. Here he was about to die for a discovery this man and others had killed to protect, unaware that the contents of the scroll actually affirmed, even validated, their beliefs.
“I believe you finally have something for me, Inspector Kamal,” Gianni Lorenzo said, holding his ground.
Ben joined a second hand over the manuscript and began to laugh. The Knights Templars looked at each other and then to their commander for guidance.
Before he could provide any, though, a burst of automatic fire ringed the church, digging divots from the wall nearest Lorenzo. The Knights Templars took cover instinctively. Ben dove behind one of the pews, while the colonel held every inch of his ground.
“Is that you, Chief Inspector Barnea?” Lorenzo called.
“Have your men drop their weapons,” Danielle ordered from the cover of the altar.
“I can’t do that, Chief Inspector.”
“I’m not giving you a choice.”
Ben caught sight of the Knig
hts shifting positions, trying to better their angles toward the altar. What was Danielle doing here? Why had she taken such a risk?
“Can you hear me, Ben?” Danielle called to him.
“Yes,” he said from his covered position behind the pew.
“Listen to me, you were right about the oil, about Lev and why he cared about it so much. Because this isn’t about oil at all; it’s about water,” Danielle explained, stating what she had realized in Hershel Giott’s hospital room. “Lev’s going to use the oil to poison the water coming into the West Bank!”
* * * *
T
he pages felt suddenly heavy in Ben’s hands. His knees shook, then tightened beneath him.
Water . . .
The most precious commodity of any in the West Bank by far. Two underground aquifers alone were responsible for supplying the West Bank with all its water, and the Israelis maintained extremely tight control over both of them. Poisoning the much larger Eastern Aquifer with oil was as simple as it was unthinkable, the results sure to be catastrophic.
To all but Mordecai Lev and Commander Moshe Baruch, that is. Two extremists joined in an unholy alliance by a common goal. Ben should have known when he saw a virtually identical drilling apparatus set upon the land of Lev’s newest settlement; in place to find water, not oil. No settlement, Asher Katz had explained to Ben that day, can survive without water.
Neither can a people.
“Lev and Baruch are going to force the Palestinians off their own land, turn this entire region into a desert, a wasteland!” Danielle resumed as the Knights Templars continued trying to better their positions. “That was their plan all along.”
And there was no time and no way to stop Lev, Ben added in his mind, nothing at all any of them could do. Unless . . .
Ben sucked in a deep breath and bounced up from behind the pew, holding the pages of what had been Josephus’ scroll over his head. “This is what you want, Colonel!” he called to Lorenzo. “This is what you’ve killed to protect for over half a century!”
Lorenzo looked suddenly unsure of what to do. “Give it to me.”
Ben lurched backward until he could feel the dull heat of the dying flames behind him. “You should have listened to me before, Colonel. But you would have killed us in the Villa Borghese, whether I handed over the manuscript or not. I won’t make the same mistake this time.”
With that, Ben hurled all but the first ten pages of the manuscript into the fire. Instantly the flames lifted upward, gratefully swallowing the paper.
Lorenzo surged forward, stopped when he saw the pages had already blackened and shriveled. “What have you done?”
Ben held out the first part of the manuscript toward him. “Don’t worry, I saved you the best part. Here, take it.”
Lorenzo looked at the pages, but didn’t take them.
“Only the scroll doesn’t tell the story either one of us thought it did, Colonel. In fact, it tells pretty much the opposite. Proves Christ wasn’t a man, after all.”
Lorenzo’s eyes bulged and he snatched the pages from Ben’s outstretched hand.
“You won’t find the proof in those, though,” Ben continued. “That comes later, the pages I burned.”
Lorenzo flipped through the pages quickly, growing incensed. “You damn fool.”
“Don’t worry, Colonel, I can get you another copy. But first you have to help me.”
“Help you what?”
“Stop Mordecai Lev. He’s your enemy too and I know where he is. Help me stop him from poisoning the West Bank’s water supply and the rest of the pages are yours.”
“You could be lying. Again.”
Ben gestured toward the pages Lorenzo was holding. “Have those translated, Colonel. Then tell me I’m lying.”
Gianni Lorenzo hesitated. “You’re sure you know where we can find Lev?”
“Yes.” Ben nodded, turning toward the altar and Danielle. “I am.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 87
F
rom the church in Jericho, the strange convoy drove straight to the Judean Desert, stopping near the site where the Americans had been killed ten days before. The convoy parked its cars behind a hillside, and Lorenzo sent a scout team on ahead. Twenty minutes later, he approached Ben and Danielle with what they had found.
“You were right, Inspector: the area around the cave is crawling with armed men—Israelis, according to my scouts.”
“Baruch’s people,” said Ben. “And the trucks I told you about?”
Lorenzo shook his head. “No trucks of any kind in the area.”
Ben nodded. “Because whatever was inside them has already been offloaded, soon to be put to use.” The process of transporting the equipment Lev needed deep underground must have been completed within the last day or so, Ben figured. With Commander Moshe Baruch of Shin Bet in charge of security, fear of being discovered had never entered in. “Can you handle Baruch’s men, Colonel?”
Lorenzo looked from Ben to Danielle. “While the two of you ...”
“Deal with Lev,” Ben completed.
“You believe he’s in that cave?”
Ben recalled Abid Rahman’s mentioning the fact that this particular cave swept deep down into the subterranean layers of the mountainside along a precarious trail. “I’m sure he is.”
Lorenzo frowned. “Very well, then. My men will deal with the guards, creating safe passage for you to reach the cave.”
“Do I have your word, Colonel?”
“You have God’s word, Inspector.”
With that, Lorenzo grouped his Knights Templars together to give them their orders.
“We’d never be able to stop Lev without him,” Ben whispered to Danielle, reading her mind.
“All the same, it’s like making a deal with the devil.”
“Maybe the real devil’s in that cave, Pakad.”
Lorenzo returned to them moments later, his men having already slipped away across the desert to carry out their part of the mission.
“They’ll signal us when their work is finished,” he reported.
Ben checked his watch and found it was just after three a.m., leaving another two hours of darkness. He had just glanced at his watch again thirty minutes later when Lorenzo received a call over a palm-sized walkie-talkie.
“The route into the cave is clear. My men will watch your backs just in case.” Lorenzo grabbed Ben’s arm before he could move away. “Make sure you come out of this alive, Inspector. I want the rest of that manuscript.”
Ben waited for Lorenzo to let go, then turned to Danielle. “Let’s go, Pakad.”
“Go with God, Inspector,” Lorenzo said as they started down the hill for her Jeep, where they had left their weapons and equipment.
Upon reaching the vehicle, Danielle opened the front door and leaned inside the front seat to grab their pack. Just as her hand closed upon it, Ben latched a handcuff onto her wrist and fastened the other end to the steering wheel before she could swing back toward him.
“What the hell are you doing?” she demanded, yanking mightily on the cuffs.
“I’m sorry, Pakad,” Ben said, and reached past her for the pack.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
She groped for him with her free hand as he pulled the pack out. “Let me go!”
Ben shook his head. “I can’t do that.”
“Why, for God’s sake?”
Ben’s voice remained icily calm. “You told me the child would always be mine too, even if I can’t really be a father to him.”
“I know what I said.”
“Then understand that I’m doing this for him. To give him the best chance to survive, no matter how he is raised.”
She tugged on the handcuff and the metal rattled against the steering wheel. “For God’s sake, let me go!”
“I am,” said Ben.
* * * *
CHAPTER 88
T
he last stretch to the cave was across open desert. Ben could sense the presence of Gianni Lorenzo’s Knights Templars about him, lying in wait in case more of Mordecai Lev’s Amudei Ha’aretz, or men from Shin Bet dispatched by Moshe Baruch, showed themselves. The Knights had already hauled away the bodies of those killed in the initial attack. Other Israelis, currently out patrolling the perimeter, could probably be expected, and the Knights would handle those as well. They had come for Winston Daws on a night like this, the American geologists on yet another, and who knew how many others in between. All in the name of God. All toward keeping a secret that did not need to be kept.