More Than a Skeleton

by Paul L Maier

  He passed chalices to the left and right, each, again, communing the next. When everyone had finished, Joshua again raised his arms and said, “My peace be with you always!”

  “AND ALSO WITH YOU,” came the general response.

  “May my body and blood strengthen and preserve you steadfast in the faith unto life everlasting. And now, depart in gladness, and in the peace of Almighty God. Amen!”

  “AMEN!”

  Most now stood up from their tables and left the Sistine Chapel with heads bowed and remarkably little conversation. Shannon lingered on, her spiritual experience tinged with understandable concern. She looked around for Kevin. There he was, at the high table just behind Joshua, waving for her to come up. When most of the dignitaries had left the head table, she and Kevin approached Joshua to ask if he had any idea why Jon was not present in Rome. For all his brilliance, Joshua had not intuited that Shannon and Sullivan might have been in touch, let alone that they even knew each other. His explanation must now satisfy both, and must also build on what he had previously told Shannon. Every cerebral advantage that his parents had bequeathed to him now worked overtime for an answer. Neuron clusters in his mind flashed hundreds of different options to each other until he seized on one of them.

  With perfect serenity, he smiled and said, “Obviously you are both concerned about Jonathan, Shannon and Kevin, and I deeply regret that I didn’t mention this earlier, but we’ve all had a hundred items to attend to, haven’t we? Two days before our flight, I noticed on the list of dignitaries attending Vatican III—the one you e-mailed to me, Kevin—that the Greek Orthodox archbishop of Athens, Christodoulos II, was not planning to come to Rome. This deeply saddened me. So I got through to Jon by phone just after he landed at Fiumicino and asked that he take the next flight to Athens instead and try to convince the archbishop to attend. How could Vatican III be truly ecumenical without him? In any case, I’m sure they’ll both arrive in time for the opening the day after tomorrow. Christodoulos once said that Jon’s book on Jesus was the only one he respected in Western scholarship!”

  “Oh, that explains it,” said Kevin, since the information jibed with his list of names.

  “Oh, thank you, Joshua, thank you!” Shannon added, tears in her eyes. “I was so worried.”

  “Understandably!” he said, giving Shannon a soulful look that threaded its way into her very being. “And now may the peace of God go with you both.”

  That evening, both Kevin and Shannon were a little nettled at Jon. Kevin thought he might at least have had the courtesy to phone him about the change of plans. Then again, if Joshua himself could have overlooked mentioning that change, a mere mortal like his friend Jon might well be excused.

  Shannon, for the same reason, was disappointed that Jon didn’t have the decency at least to phone her from Athens about the shift in arrangements. Then again, the parallel thought: if Joshua himself could have overlooked mentioning that shift in arrangements, a mere mortal like her husband might well be excused also.

  The next morning, she was pleased to find some of the women in Joshua’s entourage asking if she wanted to join them on a daylong excursion through Rome that Joshua had so kindly arranged for his “auxiliary.” In the evening, they would take in the illuminated fountains at Tivoli. She happily agreed.

  High in the papal apartments overlooking the city of Rome, Joshua relished a morning cup of espresso and said to the breezes from the south that ruffled the curtains flanking his window: “Excellent! No more tête-à-têtes between Monsignor Kevin Sullivan and Shannon Weber prior to the opening of Vatican III. Tomorrow will change the world. God grant me success . . . on behalf of His chosen people!”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Early Sunday morning, the phone at Gideon’s bedside started ringing at 4:15 A.M., Jerusalem time. Barely awake, he grabbed the phone and muttered, “Shalom . . . ”

  “Gideon Ben-Yaakov?”

  “Ken. Or, yes, if you speak English . . .”

  “Terribly sorry to bother you at this early hour! This is Kevin Sullivan in Rome. You may remember me from—”

  “Oh, yes, of course, Monsignor!” Gideon replied, now fully awake. “Have you seen Jonathan Weber? He was supposed to call me before he flew to Rome, but I never heard from him.”

  “You didn’t? That’s why I’m calling: we haven’t seen him in Rome either!”

  “What? You mean he hasn’t shown up in Rome at all?”

  Kevin updated Gideon on how Joshua claimed to have sent Jon to Athens. “But I’ve been calling the airlines all evening, and Jon isn’t on any of their manifests in the last forty-eight hours.”

  Gideon emitted a low whistle and then reported the suspicions about Ben-Yosef that had arisen on the trip to Haifa.

  Sullivan gasped at the potentially poisonous tidings. “Do you have any . . . proofs for your suspicions?”

  “Jon and I were going to try to find some after he returned from Rome.”

  “This is simply horrendous!” Kevin exclaimed. “At St. Peter’s this afternoon, a . . . a fraud could be taking place?” Then he added, almost in a tone of despair, “Unless, of course, there is some explanation for all this. I should have checked on Jon much earlier, of course, but I’ve been up to my ears running the ‘greatest show on earth’ here.”

  “Shannon’s there, isn’t she? When was the last time she saw Jon in Israel?”

  “I asked her that, of course. She told me it was when he drove off for a meeting of the men in Joshua’s entourage up at their lodge in Galilee.”

  “Oh? . . . Well, well, well . . . we know where that is. Shin Bet has had the place under surveillance whenever Ben-Yosef is there.” “You’ll be calling Shin Bet, of course?”

  “Immediately!”

  They exchanged cell phone numbers and promised to relay any information either of them uncovered. As he hung up, Kevin heard rumbles of distant thunder west of Vatican City. Seems as if God isn’t very happy about our crisis either, he told himself.

  Gideon quickly briefed Naomi on what was developing, then called Noah Friedmann’s home. Fortunately, Friedmann was an early riser, which diminished the offense only a bit. Yet Friedmann would inflict the same on a SWAT team that he instantly organized, all twenty members of which were at Shin Bet’s Jerusalem headquarters before the sun rose. Gideon was there also, on his own invitation, and asked to don commando gear like the others, though Friedmann declined his request. Ben-Yaakov, however, pouted, pleaded, and finally got his way.

  Two troop transport trucks in camouflage paint now moved out and rattled through the empty streets of Jerusalem. Soon they were on the road down to Jericho, since traveling north from there on the military highway along the Jordan frontier was the fastest way to the Sea of Galilee.

  Ninety minutes later they rumbled through Tiberias and set up a staging area several miles north of the city at the ruins of ancient Magdala on the lakeshore. It was now 7:00 A.M., and a golden yolk of sun was floating upward over the Golan Heights.

  Friedmann spread out a large aerial photograph of Joshua’s compound across the hood of one of the trucks so that all could see the target, and be assigned their respective sectors for assault. Then he had Gideon explain the purpose of their mission.

  “I’m very embarrassed to have to tell you this, gentlemen, but Professor Weber may not even be inside the central lodge here,” Gideon said, pointing. “Or he might be inside, but held under guard. Or he might even be dead—or in Rome. We just don’t know.”

  “What we do know is this,” Friedmann broke in. “While we were driving up here, we phoned Ben-Gurion to do a search for his car in all their airport parking areas. It’s a white Peugeot, license number 53-417-04. But they didn’t find it. So if it’s in the lodge parking area here”—he pointed—“we can assume Weber’s inside. The whole perimeter may be wired, so we’ll advance with extreme caution. Half of you will approach from the high ground on the western hillside, the other half from below, here on the eastern side
. We’re all in wireless contact. Always wait for my orders. Any questions?”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to do an operation like this at night?” asked Ehud Nimron, a veteran sapper who could strategize like a general.

  “Affirmative, of course. But we just can’t wait that long. Oh . . . Gideon, you stay next to me, hear?”

  Gideon nodded, with a big smile.

  A bend on the seacoast and some helpful terrain hid the staging area from anyone in Joshua’s compound who might be on the lookout, and soon the command half of the operation crept along the upper hillside, nicely hidden by the local scrub brush. Field glasses in hand, they searched the parking area behind the lodge. Friedmann shook his head and whispered, “No Peugeot . . . only a blue Mercedes.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Gideon softly. “Unless they’re fools, they would have hidden the car, wouldn’t they?”

  Friedmann nodded, then said, “Let’s look through our field telescope and see if anyone’s home.” He peered through a 75X field scope, focused the lens, and then trained the scope on all the windows. Blinds were drawn in all of them. Then he added a doubler eyepiece to the scope and looked again at the back door. Smiling, he muttered, “Yes, I do think someone’s inside . . .”

  “How do you know?”

  “Look.”

  Gideon peered through the scope—now at 150X magnification— and saw the electric meter next to the back door. It was running at a fairly good clip. Suddenly the back door opened, and a stocky figure took out what appeared to be garbage and dumped it into a brown plastic container. Then he went back inside and closed the door.

  “Any idea who that was?” Friedmann asked Gideon.

  Gideon shook his head.

  “All right then,” said Friedmann, “here comes the fun part. Ehud, you’ve got to sneak down to that large shed or garage and peek through the back window. Watch out for any perimeter alarm wire. If you find any, use our usual procedure to bypass it. Then let us know by phone: we’ll see where you are and pass the word on to the rest.”

  Nimron crept downward toward the shed. Through binoculars, Friedmann’s group watched him crawl to the back of the structure that was not visible from the lodge. Evidently he had not encountered any perimeter wire. Now he cautiously stood up and looked through the rear window for some moments. Then he hunkered down again, flipped on his phone, and reported quietly: “White 1999 Peugeot inside, license number 53-417-04.”

  Inside the lodge, Jon and Schmuel Sikorsky were not getting on very well. Schmuel watched most of the proceedings in Rome on a large-screen television set in the great hall of the lodge, but he would occasionally run to the open basement door and toss some taunt down to Jon in the wine cellar, who was watching on a smaller screen below.

  “Ho, ho, Weber: look at all the fun they’re having at that banquet in Rome,” he had said. “See how Joshua is staring at your wife from the head table? He’s really undressing her with his eyes!”

  “Just shut up, Sikorsky!”

  This morning, he opened his cheerful comments by calling down, “This is the big day, Weber. Everything changes from today on!”

  “Time’s running out for you, Sikorsky!” Jon called back. “It’s your last chance to use your head and do the right thing!”

  “You’re just dead meat, Weber, as you Americans put it. I don’t take advice from a dead man!”

  A shrill buzzing suddenly filled the lodge. A perimeter alarm? Jon wondered. He heard Sikorsky running around upstairs, darting in various directions. Then, to his horror, he came bounding down the basement steps with a malicious scowl on his face. He headed for the table where the bottle of ether stood at the ready.

  Jon breathed in and out vigorously to superoxygenate himself in preparation for the awful ordeal ahead. Sikorsky opened the ether bottle and saturated the cloth lying next to it. When he whipped about to anesthetize Jon, his elbow caught the bottle and it smashed to the floor, filling the wine cellar with the sickeningly sweet smell of ether. Ignoring the fumes, Sikorsky approached him, the cool, dripping cloth in hand. With a swift swing of his arm he tried to clamp it onto Jon’s mouth and nose. Using all available slack between his two confining chains, Jon dodged back and forth in a frenzied struggle with his attacker. Each time he felt the chilly cloth slapped onto his forehead, cheek, or mouth, Jon clenched his jaw and twisted to avoid inhaling the evil fragrance. His eyes were now stinging from the ether and his lips were burning, but still he continued holding his breath doggedly.

  “You’re gonna inhale this stuff if I have to kill you, you swinish goy!” Sikorsky snarled. He finally caught Jon in a headlock. Hands shackled, Jon could not break free and finally had to gasp for air. But what he inhaled was hardly air. A suffocating dose of saccharine-sweet, aerosolized ether now saturated the air and filtered through the cloth clamped like a vise over all his breathing passages. Light-headedness seized him quickly, and his balance was affected. His attempts to break free of Sikorsky seemed much harder now, though he was still rational enough to realize that his next breath of the stuff could be the end of all resistance on his part. Should he make a last great effort to break free? Of course! But his attempt to jerk his head away was so weak, so pathetic, that even in his fading consciousness he was ashamed of it.

  “That’s better . . . much better, Weber,” crooned Schmuel Sikorsky, in the oiliest, ugliest voice Jon had ever heard in what seemed like a remote echo.

  A deafening, explosive clap of sound knocked both of them over, immobilizing them for several moments. A shattering sound of smashing glass followed, and the rumbling tread of what seemed to be a small army upstairs, pouring throughout the lodge. Jon still had enough sense to turn his head away and take two deep breaths as Sikorsky made a run for the rifle he had left standing against the post of the basement staircase.

  With supreme effort, Jon tried to yell out, “Basement!”

  Whether anyone upstairs heard him or not, five of Friedmann’s commandos were already storming down the basement steps, Uzis at the ready. Sikorsky aimed his rifle at Jon to kill the only witness who could defeat their grand plan. One quick blast from Ehud Nimron’s Uzi, however, shattered Schmuel’s right hand, and he collapsed onto the floor, holding his wrist in agony.

  Noah Friedmann and Gideon rushed downstairs and saw that Jon was still alive. Several breaths from a canister of pure oxygen soon revived him, and he held up his shackled wrists to hint at the next step in his deliverance. Friedmann called for a pair of power hacksaws to cut him free of his chains.

  “Sorry about our stun grenade,” said Noah, “though it seems to have done the job.” Then he looked around at the stacked wine bottles, sniffed the air, and asked, “What’s the brand around here, Ether Valley?”

  Jon grinned and replied, “More like Ernest and Julio Gallows.” “Bad, Jon, bad!” said Gideon, a glad twinkle in his eye. Then he shook his head. “You had to go do it again, didn’t you—this solo sleuthing of yours?”

  “Didn’t intend to. Long story, Gideon.” When both his arms were liberated, Jon rubbed his wrists and said to the assault detail, “Toda, gentlemen! Thanks for giving my life back to me!”

  Jon, Gideon, and Noah left the Galilee compound in the Peugeot, since it could return them to Jerusalem faster than the trucks. The time was exactly 9:00 A.M., Sunday, July 15. Vatican III would begin at 3:00 P.M., exactly seven hours later, since Italy was in the next earlier time zone. That should be more than enough time to contact Kevin Sullivan and call off the opening ceremonies, Jon assured his colleagues. They quickly debriefed each other on everything that had happened prior to his deliverance from the Galilee compound. Friedmann called it the most clever, yet most diabolical hoax Shin Bet had ever encountered, although Gideon claimed equal honors for the Rama crisis several years earlier.

  At Tiberias, they decided to take the Mediterranean coastal highway back to Jerusalem, since phone communications would be better there than in the Jordan Valley depression. When they reached the G
alilee plateau west of Tiberias, Jon pulled over to the side of the road and used his cell phone to call Kevin Sullivan in Rome. Despite repeated rings, there was no answer.

  “Strange,” said Jon, “though he’s probably at Sunday morning mass in St. Peter’s. They probably make them turn off their cell phones.”

  Twenty minutes later, he tried again. No answer.

  After climbing through the Megiddo pass, they reached the Mediterranean coast, where Jon again tried to call. Still no answer in Rome.

  An undercurrent of anxiety started swirling inside him. “Maybe it’s my cell phone,” he said. “Here’s Kevin’s number in Rome . . . why don’t one of you try to call?”

  Neither Noah’s nor Gideon’s phone raised anything more than the same endless ringing. By now they were headed southward on the Mediterranean coastal road. Again Jon pulled over, this time dialing the Vatican City operator. “I’ll have him or her put out an APB for Sullivan,” he said. Incredibly, however, he heard only the same endless ringing.

  “Gentlemen, we have a terrible problem developing here,” said Jon, now perspiring. “In less than six hours, Vatican III begins. Why can’t we get through?”

  “You drive, Jonathan,” said Noah Friedmann. “I’ll take care of the communications.” He then called his second-in-command at Shin Bet in Jerusalem, asking him to find out from Israel’s Communications Service Center why they couldn’t raise the Vatican by phone.

  Friedmann’s phone rang six minutes after he had put in the call. “Ken . . . ken . . . ken? . . . Lo! . . . Ken,” Noah responded before hanging up. His face tensed as he said, “Well, friends, we do indeed have a problem: a fierce thunderstorm broke over Rome early this morning, and lightning knocked out two cellular communications towers on Vatican Hill. Somehow, the bolt also charged into the Vatican telecommunications network and must have fried something there. They were supposed to have everything running again by now, but obviously they haven’t.”