by Paul L Maier
Pausing for their laughter, Kevin continued, “But now, of course, I was deadly worried and very suspicious. Whom to call in Israel? You, of course, came immediately to mind, Gideon.”
“Yes, and good thing you did!” he replied. “Your call shocked me into action. Then, of course, I feared the worst. I had warned you to stay out of trouble, Jon, and not to go it alone—”
“Right,” Jon agreed. “It was imbecilic stupidity on my part not to tell you about my going to Galilee. I’ll cheerfully grant you that!” Gideon and then Jon detailed, from their separate vantage points, the harrowing rescue at the Galilee compound. Shannon shivered at the account, while Kevin looked tense and stressed—never mind that they were all enjoying a night on the town. And when, in the retelling, the KLM jet took off from Ben-Gurion without Jon and Gideon aboard, Shannon threw up her hands in dismay.
After taking a long sip of Chianti, Gideon then related how they had phoned the prime minister of Israel in desperation, and how Cohen—to foil so horrendous a plot and “in the name of truth itself”—ordered the Israeli jets.
“None of the fighters have three seats,” Gideon explained, “so two planes had to be used. They were McDonnell-Douglas F-15 E’s—Strike Eagles. Fortunately, their base was nearby.”
“And I’ll tell you true,” Jon broke in, “never in my life have I felt such a sensation. Take all the thrills you’ve ever felt on that first big plunge on roller coasters, add them up, and then you’ll begin to get the feeling. After we cleared the runway at Ben-Gurion and were out over the Mediterranean, our pilots hit the afterburners for a while, and I thought we were headed for the moon! We hit Mach 2—twice the speed of sound—and peaked at sixteen hundred miles an hour before they throttled back to cruising speed of only a thousand!”
Clearly, the air-minded boy was coming out in Jon, Shannon noted. Later she would have to ask him how many model airplanes he had built as a kid.
“Anyway,” he continued, almost breathlessly, “we made the trip in under ninety minutes—half the time it took KLM to fly the same route. And what a great job the Mossad and Shin Bet did for us at the other end in greasing the rails with Italian security!”
“Oh, yes!” Gideon smiled. “That wild ride with the carabinieri and their screaming sirens on the way to the Vatican was almost as scary as the jet flight!”
“Why don’t you pick up the story from there, Kevin?” Jon suggested.
“Well, at long, long last our Vatican repair crews restored communications after the big storm, so Jon was able to get through to me just after he landed. So here we were, all marching across the Piazza San Piètro, when my cell phone starts ringing, and others in the procession give me a very nasty look. I almost turned the thing off, but thank God I didn’t! It was Jon, of course, filling me in on everything and throwing James 1:16 at me as if it were the only verse in the Bible! Obviously, it was too late for me to halt the proceedings—as if I could have done that in any case! All I could do was peel out of the procession and have portable lapel mikes ready the moment you and Gideon graced us with your presence!”
“I’ll never forget the looks on the faces of those papal police when Gideon and I dashed up the steps of St. Peter’s, you slipped on our portable mikes, and then signaled to the police that it was okay—we were not terrorists.”
Kevin laughed and said, “I kid you not: if the captain of the Gendarmeria Pontificia hadn’t recognized me as a . . . a rather reliable sort, we might be the ones sitting in the Vatican City slammer instead of Ben-Yosef and Levine!”
“Then, of course, came our triumphal procession down the center aisle of the Basilica of St. Peter,” said Jon, with mock pomposity.
“And not too bad for a Jewish boy born in a kibbutz down in the Negev!” Gideon said with a wink, as they all chuckled.
The owner of The Secret Apple, a rotund, olive-skinned gourmet who put his pasta where his mouth was, stopped by their table and thanked them for their crucial services to the church in unmasking the false messiah. He had recognized them from the evening television news and now had a “Vesuvio Surprise” wheeled out to their table, with his compliments: brandy-saturated baked Alaska, which he ignited into a flaming volcanic dessert.
“Wow! Where are Nero and his fiddle while Rome burns?” asked Shannon. “I’m really glad we’re sitting on the outside terrace here!” Then she added, “I still have so many questions about how Joshua brought it all off that I’d be sitting here until tomorrow morning if I asked them all. I need so much more detail, because now I feel like a simpering fool for ever thinking that he was Jesus Christ, no less!”
“Well, dear, so did much of the world,” said Jon. “So you’re in good company.”
“All of us thought that, Shannon,” said Kevin, “except maybe Gideon here.”
Gideon smiled and said, “Ah yes, you must forgive this Jewish skeptic. But, then, my head is stuck in the past. In the Israel Antiquities Authority, perhaps I’m the chief antiquity.”
“Anything but!” Jon laughed, clapping him on the shoulder. “And I’m sure the gorgeous sabra you married would agree with me! But, in answer to your . . . very understandable questions, Shannon, I promise to give you a total rundown in the days and weeks to come.”
After the last, delicious portions of the dessert had found a new home in their stomachs, Jon thought of how many other bewildered Shannons there were, even among people he knew. Alitalia’s jet full of cheated and possibly despairing followers of Joshua came to mind, especially the Twelve-minus-one whose faith had been so pathetically misplaced. Before they left the table, Jon turned to Kevin and asked, “What are we going to do about that planeload of believers in Joshua’s entourage? Are they stranded here in Rome?”
“Way ahead of you on that one, sport,” Kevin replied. “Alitalia had promised them a round-trip flight and they’ll keep their word. The return flight goes day after tomorrow.”
“Excellent. Why don’t we get a message to everyone who flew here on that plane that I’d like to meet with them, as a group, tomorrow afternoon? Sure, we gave them all reserved seats at the press conference, but they’re probably still reeling from the news. I’d like to help them, if I can.”
“Good plan, Jon. I’ll see that they’re all contacted.”
That night, nestled together in the huge, Louis XIV bed, Jon and Shannon reviewed the events of that second tumultuous day. At first, she seemed a little cool to his advances. It was nothing he had said or done. It was her own nagging conscience. She turned away from him and let some tears wet her pillow.
“What’s wrong, Shannon?” he asked.
She just shook her head, face turned the other way and buried in the pillows.
“I’m not going to sleep until you tell me, Shannon.”
Turning about, she said, “I feel like such a miserable worm, Jon . . .”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“No, worse than that: what I said was an insult to worms! I’m the lowlife who betrayed you, Jon, who got you into terrible trouble. Just call me Judith—Judith Iscariot.”
“That’s ridiculous, Shannon.”
“Oh no, it’s not! Joshua would have known nothing about the investigation panel and your role in it if I hadn’t blown everything wide open by crying on his shoulder that awful night in Jerusalem. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life!”
“Well, what about me—taking off for Galilee without telling you? I’m just as much to blame.”
“See, Jon: I really thought Joshua was Jesus, and I figured that he knew about everything anyway, and so I merely—”
“Enough, darling! The two of us are textbook examples of what happens when a couple of strong-willed individuals don’t communicate!”
“I . . . guess so.” She brightened and turned to face him. “We could fill a whole chapter in a marriage manual, I’ll bet! Can you . . . really forgive me, then, Jon?”
“Of course,” he replied, brushing her cheek lightly with t
he tips of his fingers. Then he smiled and added, “You know, your so-called betrayal was really about the best thing that could have happened under these wild circumstances.”
“What? Why in the world is that?”
“Because it forced Ben-Yosef to show his hand in luring me up to his lodge. What if I hadn’t gone up there? Joshua would have exploded his bombshell successfully at St. Peter’s, and Christendom would have been reeling. After that, it could have taken months, maybe years, to unmask him and undo the damage—if indeed, we could even have brought that off. And then what would have happened to Christianity across the world?”
Shannon pondered that thought for some moments. Finally, she said, “You know, you have a wonderful way of comforting people, Jon.”
“No, darling.” He chuckled. “I have a much better way than that. C’mon over here: I’m just aching . . . aching to hold you!”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Paul L. Maier is the Russell H. Seibert Professor of Ancient History at Western Michigan University and a much-published author of both scholarly and popular works. His novels include two historical documentaries—Pontius Pilate and The Flames of Rome—as well as A Skeleton in God’s Closet, a theological thriller that became a #1 national bestseller in religious fiction when it first released. A sequel, More Than a Skeleton, followed in 2003, and the third in the series, The Constantine Codex, in 2011.
His nonfiction works include In the Fullness of Time, a book that correlates sacred with secular evidence from the ancient world impinging on Jesus and early Christianity; Josephus: The Essential Works, a new translation/commentary on writings of the first-century Jewish historian; and Eusebius: The Church History, a similar book on the first Christian historian. More than five million of Maier’s books are now in print in twenty languages, as well as over 250 scholarly articles and reviews in professional journals.
Dr. Maier lectures widely, appears frequently on national radio, television, and newspaper interviews, and has received numerous awards. He has also penned seven children’s books and hosted six video seminars dealing with Jesus, St. Paul, the early church, and current Christianity.
Visit his website at www.paulmaier.com