Gil folded his arms and shook his head. If she wanted to treat him like a child, he might as well act like one.
“Look,” Sabbie began, “when I state something unequivocally I have a very good reason for doing so. Anyone who knows anything about current technology knows that no place is safe. Open up your pc and anyone within a couple of hundred feet can access all your records via your wireless connection. Make a call on your cell phone and that info is up for sale within minutes. Even your calling card pin number is fair game at any airport.”
“Well, I would assume you don’t exactly have identity thieves running around one of the most prestigious museums in the world,” Gil said with an intentional smirk.
“Identity theft would be the least of our worries. When you’re in this building, you’re always on, Jack.”
“Gil,” he corrected, broadening the sneer.
“Whatever. Appropriate steps have been taken to protect this office. Let’s get to work.”
Well, this is lovely. By the end of the day, we should be eating each other’s carcasses.
She settled down in the seat facing Gil and handed him several pages of translation. “The translation of the diary was relatively simple. I tried as much as possible to keep to the original word count and order in case that was important.”
Gil nodded his approval. Not bad. That bit of detail could spell the difference between finding a pattern and missing it completely.
She sat forward. “Now, here’s the deal,” Sabbie continued. “These pages appear to be an accounting of the sales and deliveries of tapestries made by the monks at Weymouth Monastery. On the surface, it’s pretty straightforward.”
“But…” Gil prompted.
“But I don’t think that’s what it is at all,” she said, half to herself. “The sentences are logical and correct in their grammar but the words convey little more than medieval gossip. To make matters worse, the ramblings about the people of the town are interspersed with dates and numbers and the whole thing is put into an accounting format. I don’t understand why whoever wrote this would do that.”
“Do what?” Gil asked.
“Why he would put long nonsensical sentences onto accounting pages,” she said with obvious frustration. “It just doesn’t make sense.”
“So what’s the problem?” Gil asked calmly. He was hoping to push her until something snapped, until she could give him the connection she didn’t even know that she knew. He was hoping, as well, to avoid the likelihood of her breaking a chair over his head.
“The problem is,” Sabbie continued, “if we don’t find anything in this section that mentions another scroll, something—anything—about a mate to The Cave 3 Scroll, we might as well just give up.”
“And….” Gil prompted again.
“I really wish you wouldn’t do that, it’s incredibly irritating. Anyway, although I know there’s something in here, I just can’t figure it out.”
“What makes you think there’s something in here?” Gil asked.
“I don’t know, I just do.”
“How do you know?”
“I told you. I don’t know how I know it’s there! I just do!” Sabbie bellowed.
She was clearly at the end of her patience, exactly where Gil wanted her. George always said that if you wanted to get someone’s attention, first you had to shoot them in the leg. Well, finding any hidden message in the diary might well depend on Sabbie’s intuition, and this little control freak wasn’t going to trust her instincts unless she was pushed—hard.
“So, somehow you just know it,” Gil said sarcastically.
She looked like she was going to haul off and slam him.
“Works for me,” he said with a sudden smile. “That’s exactly what forensics depends on. That and some terrific technology. When you get that feeling, when you just know there’s something hidden just beyond where you can see it, you’re almost always right.”
“And when you’re wrong?” she asked.
“Then you’ve screwed up. But, more often than not, you’re right.”
Sabbie didn’t look convinced. Gil knew what she was thinking. A fifty-fifty chance of finding a hidden message in the diary was better than nothing, but not as good as a hundred percent.
Careful, my sweet. That’s what makes gamblers into addicts.
“Okay, show me what you got,” Gil said.
She handed him the printouts. They were fuzzy and too light, barely readable. They looked like second-generation copies of scanned pages that had been posted on the Internet or put through a dishwasher.
“I need something better to work from.”
She reminded him that he already had her translations. Besides, she said, since he didn’t understand Latin anyway, it didn’t seem essential that he work from pristine pages.
“I look for patterns,” he explained. “Even in other languages. So I need the original to look at, too.”
She was immovable. This was all they had. He would have to depend on her.
“Why can’t we work directly from the diary?”
“Not possible,” she answered and indicated that the matter for discussion was closed.
“Okay, we’ll do it your way,” he said with a shrug, “but it’s going to take a lot longer. Let’s try doing it by ear instead. Read it to me.”
At first, the translated sentences made no sense at all. Then, after a few minutes, something seemed to call to him from beyond the words, like a melody he couldn’t quite make out. If he could just…
Gil placed his hands on either side of his head. The ride was about to start. “Read it again,” he said excitedly. “The same first few sentences. Read them over and over. Keep going.”
26th day of January 1097 in the year of our Lord
1–18 1 4 19 I am here with Elias. A poor simple monk living outside Caston within the great city walls of Halcourt near Weymouth Monastery.
27th day of January 1097 in the year of our Lord
5–8 3 1 79 He knows I put lies in this tale and wrongs to ink.
25th day of February 1097 in the year of our Lord
4–12 3 6 9 He angers for I have no fear that one day all shall come to be lost.
3rd day of March 1097 in the year of our Lord
14-2 13 26 7 He rages should I never again fail to try and do so.
For over an hour she reread the same word salad, until they both knew it by heart, backward and forward. She was starting to lose faith, and it showed.
“This is getting us nowhere,” she began. “Why don’t you try decoding it?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know, substitute letters or whatever you do. Come on, I shouldn’t have to tell you!”
“I told you I don’t do codes,” he said simply. “I look for patterns. Or changes in patterns. Look, if you’re married, a change in patterns tells you that your spouse has been cheating on you. If you’re a bank president, it clues you to the fact that your employee has been embezzling money. If you’re a cybersleuth, it alerts you to a predator trying to lure a child into an abusive relationship. Even terrorists are easy to spot if you know what patterns to look for.”
This diary held a hidden pattern. He could hear it. Loud and clear. It was something he couldn’t explain. He wanted to tell her that you don’t find it by telling your brain where to go, you let it take you. That was the thrill of it. You just went along for the ride and you never knew where you were going to end up. And the pattern was here, calling him like sirens used to call to the sailors of old. The same sailors, Gil reminded himself, who ended up crashing to their death against the rocks.
Bad analogy. Get back to work.
Something was clicking. The words echoed in his mind.
“Read it once more. Quick!”
Without protest, she began again.
“Okay, now slowly,” he said, scrambling for a pen and paper.
Sabbie recited the first few entries.
“Again,” he
shouted. “Faster. Faster.”
She read it twice more.
“Son of a bitch. I think we got it!” he announced triumphantly. “Son of a bitch! And it was so damn simple.”
Chapter 14
A few minutes later
Muslims for World Truth (MWT)
Video Production Studios
London
News of Ludlow’s death was shocking but not surprising. It made all the sense in the world. Maluka, himself, with the able assistance of Aijaz, had had similar plans for the Professor. Only the presence of two large and very muscular young men, apparently making their way to Ludlow’s apartment a few steps ahead of him and Aijaz, had deterred Maluka from his immediate objective.
As they left, he and Aijaz had spotted two others, dressed in the same white jeans and sweaters as the first two. The second pair waited at the elevator door.
At the time, Maluka considered that the men might have been hired to protect Ludlow and the diary. As far as he knew, no one had intentions of taking the diary by force. And Maluka had known nothing of McCullum’s Angels of Death. Now he knew better.
They had come, they had killed, but, apparently, they had not obtained what they had sought. From all reports he had accessed, official and otherwise, Maluka found no mention of the oven safe or, as per Peterson’s description, the diary within.
The thought that a team of professional killers had failed to persuade the old Professor and his wife to reveal the diary’s location perplexed Maluka. Another thought, however, concerned him more.
While Ludlow had lived, DeVris had been kept within a modicum of restraint. The DeVris-McCullum connection had blossomed with the Professor’s retirement and move to England. Nevertheless, the threat of Ludlow’s ever-watchful eye and his willingness to report any obvious infraction to the Museum administration, had kept DeVris from doing any real and permanent harm.
Now, with Ludlow completely out of the picture, the fate of the diary and the scroll would lie entirely in DeVris’ hands. If, indeed, the scroll proved to bear witness to the existence of Jesus as nothing more than a mortal man, it would matter little to DeVris. Though the manuscript might contain proof of Islam’s most sacred teachings, DeVris was quite likely to simply sell it off to the highest bidder whether their intention was to disclose the manuscript’s sacred message or keep it hidden forever.
“We cannot wait,” Maluka informed Hassan. “Ludlow’s death is a sign from Allah that the time has come for action. Focus on the girl and the American. There will come a time when they will follow the trail dictated by the contents of the diary. We shall let them lead us to the scroll. Then we shall claim that for which our people have waited far too long.”
“What if the scroll bears false witness?” Hassan asked. “Suppose it claims that Jesus was, indeed, the son of God?”
“Then it shall be melted down and returned back to the earth, where it belongs.”
Chapter 15
A few minutes later
Office of the Translator, Shrine of the Book
“It couldn’t be that simple,” Sabbie said softly.
“That’s the beauty of it,” Gil said. “Look, first disregard all the dates, punctuation, and numbers. They’re meant to misdirect you. Now, read the first two words, skip two words, read two words, and skip the next two. Go ahead.”
26th day of January 1097 in the year of our Lord
1–18 1 4 19 I am here with Elias. A poor simple monk living outside Caston within the great city walls of Halcourt near Weymouth Monastery.
27th day of January 1097 in the year of our Lord
5–8 3 1 79 He knows I put lies in this tale and wrongs to ink.
25th day of February 1097 in the year of our Lord
4–12 3 6 9 He angers for I have no fear that one day all shall come to be lost.
3rd day of March 1097 in the year of our Lord
14-2 13 26 7 He rages should I never again fail to try and do so.
“But it’s so obvious,” she protested. “It could be seen by anybody.”
“That’s what makes it work. The best place to hide a tree is in the forest. Look how long it took us to get it. And we knew it was there,” he added.
“What are you talking about?”
“Elias knew that people see what they expect to see,” Gil explained. “It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book. The ancient Greeks used to tattoo secret communiqués on the shaved heads of slaves. They’d let the hair grow in and send the slave off to the intended recipient. The recipient would shave the slave’s head and read the message. No enemy along the way expected a message to be tattooed on the scalp, so no one ever looked for it. Elias knew the best way to keep his message safe was to be sure that no one to knew it was there.”
“Seems much too risky to me. I don’t think he’d take the chance,” she argued.
“Look,” Gil continued, trying another approach. “You said it yourself. Most people couldn’t read back then and even if they could read and they were looking for a hidden message, chances are they’d be looking for a simple code, a substitution system—letter for letter.”
“Like I was,” Sabbie said thoughtfully.
“Exactly.”
She was up out of her chair, gathering papers, using the two-word pattern to translate and dictate phrases as fast as Gil could write them down. With alternate two-word phrases discarded, sentence after sentence revealed itself, simple and powerful in its honesty and its pain.
The words were those of Brother Elias, monk of Weymouth Monastery in England.
To Elias, there had been given a scroll, made of copper and brought from the Holy Land by William, Lord of Weymouth Shire and knight of the Crusades. Lord William was Elias’ brother though not by birth. The monk and the knight were brothers, the monk explained, by “spirit and upbringing if not by blood.”
Lord William’s story was both heroic and tragic. While serving God and King in the Holy Land, he had been wounded and left among the legions of dead and dying on their battleground near Qumran. A Muslim in soldier’s garb brought the knight to a cave nearby, where he tended William’s injuries and brought him food and drink.
Each morning the Muslim soldier left the cave and joined the fighting legions that William could hear in the distance. Each night, the soldier returned, bringing fresh food and drink. They shared no common language but were able to make themselves understood, one to the other, of their intent and their feelings. As the days passed, William grew strong yet he wondered if his benefactor would ever permit him to leave.
On the morning that William was first able to stand on his own, the soldier brought him to the backmost section of the cave and revealed to him an ancient copper scroll secreted in a wooden casket. William appreciated well the importance of this find and knew, as well, that for some reason the soldier did not wish it to fall into the hands of his Muslim comrades. In words that he hoped the soldier might understand, William pledged his liege to protect that which was so important to one who had been so merciful.
That evening the soldier left and never returned.
William waited for several days, consuming what food and drink remained, then in the dark of night, he left in hopes of making his way home. As he had promised, he took the scroll with him.
After many long months, William returned to his beloved England. Home, however, did not afford him the sanctuary he anticipated. While he had been away, sustaining wounds in the name of the Church, the local Abbot had usurped William’s castle and lands and was now unwilling to return so profitable of an acquisition.
Upon hearing of William’s prize from the Holy Land, which the knight had brought to his brother, Elias, for translation, Father Abbot declared the scroll to be the work of the devil and called for ritual redemption by fire. As was the law, upon the death of the knight, the Church would become the beneficiary of all property, land and otherwise, previously held by the heretic.
William was executed, burned at the stake, though
not before Elias revealed to him the true contents of the scroll. Elias realized William had discovered the writings of one who walked and talked with the messiah, Yeshua, which is what he might very well have been called at that time.
“Jesus!” Gil exclaimed.
“Exactly,” Sabbie replied. “If what this diary says is true, the scroll William took from the cave contained the only firsthand account in existence of the life and the death of Jesus, then called Yeshua.
“Can you imagine what such a find would mean?” she continued with excitement. “To know, with certainty, exactly what happened in Jesus’ life, to see it as if we were there?”
Gil shook his head at the enormity of it.
“There’s more,” she said. “Remember, the last section of The Cave 3 Scroll says that he who finds its mate will discover the key to the locations of the many treasures described in The Cave 3 Scroll. If Elias’ scroll turns out to be the mate to The Cave 3, it could be expected to hold even more than priceless proof of the life of Jesus. At the same time it may very well provide a map to a storehouse of riches beyond measure.”
Before Gil could respond, Sabbie continued, her face far more serious than it had been a moment ago. “It also means that any person or organization that seeks power or wealth, religious vindication or domination, will do anything they can to get hold of this scroll. Anything, including killing anyone who stands in its way. They may have begun already,” she added thoughtfully.
“But we still have no idea where the scroll is.”
“Yes, but they don’t know that,” she said.
“Well, I don’t know who ‘they’ is,” he said, trying to minimize her latest detour into paranoia. “All I know is that this is all that Elias left behind, so there must be a clue to where the scroll is hidden in these.” Gil held up a stack of deciphered pages.
“Or somewhere else,” Sabbie said.
Gil looked up in surprise.
She walked to the safe, opened it, and handed Gil a new stack of papers. These copies were crisp and clear. Each was formatted in the same accounting layout as the muddy copies they had just deciphered but these pages were easily read. Most importantly, these pages contained information he had never seen before.
13th Apostle Page 7