“The pages we just deciphered comprise only half of the diary, the second half,” she explained. “These new pages make up the first half of the diary.”
“So Elias’ story was actually part two?” Gil asked.
“Exactly.”
“Then why didn’t you give me the first section in the beginning?”
“Nobody has a copy of this,” she said.
“Not even DeVris?”
“Especially not DeVris. Ludlow has never trusted him. Said the man has no conscience and…no soul.”
“And what’s your take on DeVris?” Gil asked.
“I think Ludlow was being kind.”
Gil picked up a pencil and began to circle every other two-word combination.
“That’s not going to work,” Sabbie said. “The words in these pages can’t be arranged into sentences. They are simply names and places. They document who bought which tapestry and for how much, just like any other accounting journal.”
“Because that’s exactly what it is,” Gil said simply.
This diary, both parts of it, was almost certainly one of the Church’s Books of Record, Gil explained. Elias was probably the most literate of the monks. It would have been naturally to choose him as the official Keeper of Records for his monastery.
From what Gil could surmise, Elias had used the first section of the diary for the record keeping for which the book was intended and had used the second half of the book as his personal diary. By putting his hidden message into the same format as the accounting pages that filled the front of the diary, then placing it in the back part of the book, all of the pages looked alike from start to finish; especially to those who couldn’t read.
“But what if someone could read?” Sabbie asked.
“Elias must have thought that wasn’t likely or he wouldn’t have done it this way,” Gil said.
He shook his head slowly. There was something else he wasn’t seeing. It kept popping into his thoughts, then disappearing before he could get hold of it.
“But you think it’s in here?”
“The location of the scroll? Yeah, it’s got to be,” Gil concluded. “I’d bet my life on it.”
Gil waited for Sabbie’s usual comeback. She looked up with no trace of a smile. Her silence scared the hell out of him.
Chapter 16
Day Seven, mid-morning
Office of the Translator
Gil had been hard at work since seven in the morning and, with the exception of a raging headache, he had nothing to show for it. Sabbie, on the other hand, strolled in at her own leisure.
“Well, how nice of you to join us,” he said sarcastically.
“I had some things to take care of. I should have told you I’d be late.”
“Among other things,” Gil continued.
Sabbie looked up in surprise.
“You know you might have warned me that the guard last night was going to give me a better feel than I’ve had from anyone in years,” he said.
She smiled at his description.
“Or that almost every piece of paper on my person, including my used Kleenex, would be open to inspection,” he went on. “I expected it on the way in, but why did they do it last night, on the way out? Never did that before,” he mused.
“As of yesterday, you’re considered a Gimmel, the third highest level of security risk. Once you saw the diary, you gave up the right to physical privacy. That’s the trade-off.”
Gil threw her a dirty look.
“You don’t want to know what a Aleph or Bet have to go through,” she laughed.
“Then how come you get to pass by the friendly hands of our Gestapo Museum guard with only the lightest of pat-downs?”
Her smiled faded and a soft sadness crept across her face. “You don’t want to know,” she said quietly.
“Yes, I do. Come on. How come you get special treatment?
She moved closer, her face only inches from his, and smiled impudently. “Because most people, especially men—but women too—feel funny about touching someone who’s been raped. Even if it’s nothing more than a standard security frisk, it makes them uncomfortable. In my case, they would rather risk my smuggling sensitive information out of the Museum than to chance offending me and creating a scene.”
Gil struggled to sort through her comeback. If Sabbie had wanted him to know she had been raped, she had chosen a particularly lousy way to tell him. No accident, he concluded. She wasn’t about to waste the shock value of it. He wasn’t certain what she expected but he wasn’t buying into the game.
“I didn’t know,” he said simply. He stared back unblinkingly.
“About which, the rape or people’s reactions?” she asked haughtily.
“Either.”
“Well, it’s true. Once people know you’ve been raped, they never treat you the same again. Every time they see you, the first thing they think about is the rape. You can see it in their eyes. It affects how they treat you, how they speak to you, certainly, how they touch you.”
Her tone, though it had started out as defiant, had become honest and passionate.
“It’s probably a lot like being fat or being a nun,” she continued. “Few people are able to get past that first big fact. In my case, it works to my advantage. I get to bypass the groping sweaty hands that wait for you every time you leave the building, while you get a free thrill every time,” she added with a mischievous grin.
“Thanks a lot!” he said sarcastically.
“So, how’s it going?” she asked.
“What, the pattern hunting? It’s not,” Gil admitted.
“What would help?”
“A two-by-four applied directly to the back of my head. Look, as far as I can see, Elias’ message says nothing about the scroll. Nada, zilch, zippo,” he concluded with a pop of his lips.
“Come on,” she said warmly. “You need a break.” She took him by the hand and walked toward the door. “I’m going to show you what you’ve been working for.”
The next two hours passed as if they had been minutes. The Museum’s plethora of riches, beauty, ingenuity, and sheer antiquity were overwhelming. He had expected to see Judaica, historical finds of disintegrating paper and rusted metal. He was met with fourteenth-century sculptures of Venus, astounding riches of Turkish Sultans, the works of Pollock, Ernst, Rembrandt, Rodin, and hundreds of other treasures that, each in itself, would have warranted its own place of exhibit.
“It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen before,” Gil said.
“When I first came here I felt like I had found a time capsule that contained the best of mankind. Now, I don’t get to see almost any of it,” she said. “Some of the exhibitions remain but there are always new ones. I promise myself I’ll come more often, but unless I’m taking someone around, I never make the time.”
“What a shame.”
“Yes.”
They stood in the Art Garden surrounded by fig trees and olive bushes. Massive sculptures rose like the rock islands of Japan. She guided him to one of the largest monuments.
“This one’s by Ezra Orion,” she said.
The five-story concrete staircase seemed to lead to heaven.
“Isn’t it amazing?” she asked. “It almost beckons you to ascend, to be something greater than you are. Like a promise that is waiting to be fulfilled.
“The morning after the rape, I came here,” Sabbie continued. “It was dawn. I wasn’t working at the Museum then, I sneaked in through a small break in the front fence near the rosemary bushes. I never told anyone where the opening was, so I could always come back. They say they found me unconscious on the sculpture’s first step. They couldn’t understand why I didn’t go to the hospital first but I needed to come here, to this staircase. I knew I would find what I needed here.”
Gil nodded to tell her that he understood, though clearly he did not.
They stood, side by side, without speaking then continued through the garden. Water flows sprang
from a fountain-sculpture, and the small stones of a Zen Garden crunched under their feet.
“It’s paradise,” he said simply.
She nodded and squeezed his hand.
“There’s more,” she said. “Come on.”
Chapter 17
A few minutes later
Side Entrance Hall, Shrine of the Book
Sabbie led Gil through the cave-like hall that he had navigated on his first day. With one hand softly touching the back of his arm, she guided him into the great exhibition room of the Shrine of the Book. They stood in silence, dwarfed by the great room.
“This building was designed to reflect a sanctuary that seeks to convey sacred messages,” she explained. “The mushroom-shaped white dome with the center peak symbolizes the lids of the jars in which some of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. They say the black wall opposite the building mirrors the tension between the spiritual world of the ‘Sons of Light’ and the ‘Sons of Darkness’ described in the scrolls. Two-thirds of the building remains within the ground, and the building is surrounded by a pool of still water.”
“Who pays for all of this?” he asked.
“That’s the most amazing part. Contributors from around the world keep it alive. Founders, benefactors, sponsors, patrons, members. They give what they can and, in almost all cases, their gifts and monies are used wisely.”
“Almost always?” Gil asked.
“There are always a few bad apples, though a lot fewer here than in most places. More about that later.”
They had moved to a showcase that held nine small white marble rectangular boxes. Within each box lay a green strip of metal, its etchings barely visible through the glass. A large framed copper sheet with clear deep etchings provided background to the nine little caskets.
“There it is. It’s on loan from the Archaeological Museum in Amman, Jordan,” Sabbie began. “We’re going to hate to see it go back.”
“I know,” Gil said, remembering George’s pathetic attempt at replicating an Internet press release.
“Its official title is The 3Q15 Copper Scroll of Qumran. The numbers in its name reflect the archeological section in which it was found. Everybody here just calls it The Cave 3 Scroll or The Copper Scroll.”
She moved to the side to allow Gil full view and continued.
“Supposedly it contains the locations of sixty-four places in Palestine where portions of the treasure of the Jerusalem temple were hidden, but no one has ever been able to find any of the treasure. See that, the last section? That’s where it promises a mate will be found that holds the key to locating the treasures.”
So George did get his facts right.
“When the scroll was discovered,” she continued, “it had been rolled up for so long that it was feared that unrolling it would damage it beyond repair. It was carefully cut into strips so it could be read. That large copper sheet in the background there is a facsimile of what it would have looked like if it had been unrolled intact.”
“Facsimile?” Gil quipped. “I thought you guys went for nothing but the real thing.”
“It’s not always possible,” she retorted. “When we can, we show the original find. When we can’t, we exhibit either a facsimile or faux facsimile.”
“How can you have a fake reproduction? That’s what a reproduction is.”
“Our facsimiles are just what they sound like, copies of the original. A faux facsimile is an approximation of the original. It looks like the real thing but doesn’t contain all of the details. To use your phrasing, people see what they expect to see, so sometimes it’s enough to just make an approximation of the original.”
Gil pointed toward the other exhibition cases. “So some of these may be fake?”
“Not in this museum! If it’s not the original, we say so. There’s been some pressure lately, mostly from DeVris, to put the good stuff away and display facsimiles but so far, the Museum’s Artificer has managed kept DeVris in line.”
“I thought an artificer was a worker of magic,” Gil said thoughtfully. He would have kept any conversation going rather than break the mood and lose the gentle resting of her hand on his shoulder.
Sabbie laughed lightly. “Well, Sarkami is that, too. A worker of magic. But around here we use the term as it was used in the Bible; to refer to someone who is an extraordinary artisan of metals.”
She explained that this Sarkami fellow lived in England and donated his talents and time, crafting metal facsimiles and faux facsimiles whenever the Museum needed them.
“He’s does much more than facsimiles, of course,” she continued. “He’s a brilliant artist.” Her face glowed with admiration. “And an amazing man.”
Gil had listened to enough. He didn’t need to hear her sing the praises of some old guy who spent his life making fake scrolls. Besides, her hand no longer rested on his shoulder—or any other part of him for that matter.
“Let me ask you a question,” he said with a grin. “All of those exhibitions my father dragged me to all through my childhood; are you saying they may have been nothing but faux.”
He didn’t wait for her answer before offering his punch line. “In that case, one might say I was a victim of a ‘faux pa’!”
Gil chuckled at his pun. Sabbie was not amused.
She refused to walk him back to the office after that. He needed some time out, she said. He was running on fumes, and it was affecting his mind.
Gil gave her a few minutes lead time, then caught up with her as she entered her office.
Sabbie closed her door after him. “Yesterday, you said that you wished you could figure out what you were missing.”
Gil nodded.
“I think this is it.”
She slipped on white cotton gloves and, from a small wall safe, removed a plastic zip-lock bag. Gingerly, she withdrew a browned piece of paper and slid it onto another plastic bag that she laid on the desk. “This ought to help but, whatever you do, don’t touch it!” she cautioned.
He had no intention of doing so.
“If you have to turn it, touch only the plastic it sits on. Don’t even breathe on it, okay? I’m serious.”
She reached back into the safe and placed a typed sheet of translation into his hands.
She waited as he read.
Forty-four years ago, in the year of our Lord 1053, they found me, abandoned and near death’s door, still encircled within my dead mother’s arms. It is said that upon returning home, The Lord of Weymouth Castle laid me in William’s arms. Barely out of swaddling clothes himself, William was said to have laughed with joy and would not allow them to remove me from his loving embrace until, late into the night, when he was overcome by sleep. From that first moment, we were brothers, bound tightly as any two might be, by fate and by spirit, if not by parentage.
Yesterday, I took into my arms what remained of William’s tortured body, his face blackened and cracked, his flesh still smoldering. With unrelenting hope for his salvation, I gave him back to the earth. I fear that the very treasure for which William willingly gave his life may likewise meet a fate not unlike his. As may I.
Only this diary, then, may remain.
It is my humble hope that this shall not come to be and that these words may stand as a signpost and a testament to that which has been sacrificed but not lost. Then the heavens shall beckon and the sound of angels shall open the heart of the righteous one, for they sing to him as in the words of those who have come before. May they live forever in the song of renewal and the promise of continuance.
“What is this?” Gil asked. He waited for the answer he hoped she’d provide.
“It’s a piece of the diary that was hidden in the binding, probably put there by Elias himself nearly a thousand years ago.”
Gil’s heart pounded with excitement. This was the last piece of the puzzle. The part he knew was there without ever being told. This was what he had been waiting for.
“No one else knows about it,” she said.
/> “No one?”
“No one.”
“Not even DeVris?” Gil asked.
She shook her head.
“Does Ludlow know about it?”
“He did,” she said softly. Her face tightened.
“What do you mean?” Gil asked.
He waited for her answer, knowing she was about to put into words what he already suspected.
“Ludlow’s dead,” she said simply and turned to slip the browned piece of paper back into its zip-lock bag.
Gil grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her to face him. The fragile piece of antiquity fluttered to the floor. Sabbie gasped.
“What do you mean, he’s dead?” Gil demanded.
“He’s dead, okay? He’s dead. That’s all there is to it.”
“No, it’s not okay and that’s not all there is to it. I have a right to know what happened to him, you know. I mean, after all, I knew the old guy. You can’t just say he’s dead and leave it at that,” Gil retorted.
Sabbie’s heart pounded in her neck but her voice remained steady. Her face betrayed no emotion whatsoever.
“First of all,” she began, “you only met Ludlow once, that’s all. You didn’t know him. If you could even think of him as ‘the old guy,’ you didn’t know him.”
She stooped and carefully retrieved the brown piece of paper from the floor. Still, with gloved hands, she lovingly sealed it in its thin plastic bag.
She continued in the same irritating cool manner. “Second, in your self-indulgent temper tantrum just now, you could have destroyed the very thing ‘the old guy,’ as you put it, gave his life for.”
Gil stared at the ancient paper. He wanted to know all that she wasn’t telling him. Asking her was useless. Worse than useless. Whatever Sabbie knew about Ludlow’s death, she wasn’t about to reveal to him. Whatever she was feeling, she was not about to reveal either. Always in control. Oh, how he’d love to see her break. Just once.
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