The Christos Mosaic

by Vincent Czyz

  “Great. Just one thing.” Jesse raised a sarcastic eyebrow. “Jesus had a fourth brother, Joses. To whom exactly does he correspond?”

  “I’m still working on that. But I have a feeling that Joses is somehow related to Matthew’s flight to Egypt. He might be the last piece of the mosaic.”

  “I don’t think so, Drew. You’ve come up with one or two interesting … details, but the rest is wild speculation. Some revisions of our portrait of Christ are probably in order, but there’s no call for the radical assumption he never walked the Earth.”

  “I don’t think we’re going to settle that right now. So how about we get out of here?”

  “The way we came in?” She slid off the altar.

  Drew grabbed the satchel and gestured toward the back of the cave. “Would you, uh, do the honors?”

  She led the way to the rough chamber they had entered last night and disappeared head-first into the stony throat.

  Going back wasn’t nearly as difficult for Drew. There was more light, and, having done it once, he was more confident. They emerged into daylight as though they’d just been born. A warm breeze fluttered Jesse’s skirt and lifted Drew’s hair off his shoulders.

  Jesse shielded her eyes with a hand. “Wow. The view is even better during the day.”

  “Hey … over this way. I want to show you something.”

  A huge face, its features nearly obliterated by the elements, had been carved into an outcropping of rock. Sphinx-like, it loomed twenty-five or so feet over them although it was only a kind of relief, not a statue, and only from about the chest up. The head was wrapped in a hood or maybe a wimple. Streaks of dark gray running through the ashen-colored stone gave the face a melancholy cast, as though it had been stained by centuries of tears. On one shoulder stood the comparatively tiny figure of a robed man, his outlines all but effaced.

  “It’s beautiful, Drew. I had no idea Mother Mary was carved into a hillside in Antakya. Why didn’t I ever read about this?”

  “You just proved my point, Jess.”

  “What point?”

  “The early Christians thought this was Mary too. But this was sculpted around 200 BC. It’s not even a woman. It’s Charon. Ferrying a soul across the Styx to Hades—the small man on his shoulder.” He could tell Jesse didn’t appreciate his smirk, but he couldn’t help it. “You saw what you were conditioned to see.”

  7: 15

  THREE MORE

  HE KNOCKED ON THE DOOR of the hotel room and, to make sure he didn’t get a palm-heel to the face or a Glock under his chin, shouted, “It’s Drew.”

  Kadir opened the door. “What happened about you? Why you didn’t call?”

  “Battery’s dead. I’m lucky I’m not dead, too. They tried to kill us last night.”

  “Oyle mi?” Zafer’s eyebrow’s went up. He was wearing a button-up shirt with short sleeves and an empty shoulder holster. “Fill me in.”

  After Drew recounted the meeting with Nathan, his failed ruse to get Jesse out of the hotel unseen, the motorcycle chase, and their overnight stay in the grotto church, Zafer shook his head. “If they had wanted you dead, they wouldn’t have tried a drive-by.”

  “What was the point then?”

  “Scare us into selling the scroll to Serafis.”

  “Which reminds me. You didn’t call him yet, did you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Good. Go up to five million. Jesse found something very damaging to the Church.”

  Zafer snickered. His arm shot out unexpectedly, and he hit Drew’s shoulder with a meaty palm. “Not a bad night’s work. You saw some action and probably got us another half million dollars. One thing bothers me—Nathan. He shows up everywhere the Sicarii do.”

  Drew shrugged. “They’re after the same scroll. Which reminds me …” He took out the yellow envelope. “He gave me this.”

  “Nathan gave you that? Lanet olsun!” Damn! Zafer snatched it out of Drew’s hand and ripped it open. Photographs clipped to sheets of paper fell out. Zafer scrutinized the envelope as if he expected to find something written in invisible ink. He went through the photographs and papers one by one. “He’s kurnaz, that one.” Cunning. “I thought he might have bugged the envelope, but he’s too smart for that. He’d have planted it on you while you were wrestling. Strip down.”

  The three of them went over every thread of Drew’s clothes, but turned up nothing. “I still don’t trust him,” Zafer said.

  Drew was relieved. “I thought you were going to kill me after I didn’t make it back last night.”

  “We are not wanting to be at your funeral,” Kadir grinned, “but if it is necessary, we will buy for you a very wonderful tomb with the money from Serafis.”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  Zafer’s eyebrows lowered and his forehead furrowed.” How the hell did you fall asleep on the stone floor of a church?”

  Drew didn’t answer.

  “In the church?” Zafer laughed. “You better leave that little episode out next time you talk to Yasemin.” He glanced down at one of the photographs in his hand. “Three more Sicarii.”

  Drew skimmed the briefs. Jan Miskovicz, Polish national, age 59. Height: 5’ 11” Weight: 175 lbs. Oxford educated, professor of Christianity and Judaism, retired from teaching. Now works for Ecole Biblique as a researcher and contributing editor of Revue Biblique. Three years of military service in Poland, ages 18 to 21.

  Round glasses, eyebrows pointed like gothic windows, curly hair that had once been blond but was now turning wispy and white, Jan had taken on something of the Einstein look.

  Gary Strahan, American national, age 34. Height 6’ 2”. Weight: 225. Ten years with the FBI. Now heading security details for the Vatican.

  Crew-cut black hair, a bull neck like Zafer’s, dark green eyes, a broad face. He looked like a rugby player.

  Kurt Hohenzollern, German national, age 36. Height: 5’ 10’. Weight: 185 lbs. Employed by the Vatican, specializes in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac paleography. Eight years in the German army before attending university. Sniper training.

  His dark hair was practically shaved on the sides but long enough on top to comb—a style more common during World War I. Hohenzollern had the drawn cheeks of someone who never got enough to eat, sharp cheekbones, a mouth like a slot.

  “Quite a crew they got. One former intelligence agent, one former FBI agent, one from the Foreign Legion, three with significant military training.” Zafer looked up. “And all I got for back-up is you two.”

  “I think I could take out the Pole.” Drew tapped his photo. “But Strahan looks like he could chew through barbed wire. And the German, wouldn’t surprise me if he keeps a razor in his shoe.”

  “Razors and knives I don’t mind,” Zafer said. “I’ve got my own. But I don’t want to be a headshot for a sniper. Of all the ways there are to die, I’d hate to be killed from a distance. No honor.”

  Drew glanced at the photographs. “So what’s the plan?”

  “We call Serafis and arrange to sell him the scroll in Istanbul. Then we pick up the car and start driving. Airport’s too risky. It’ll take us a day to get home.”

  Drew nodded. “What about Jesse?”

  “I’m sure the police have traced that shot-up Fiat to her. They’ve probably figured out where she checked in yesterday, too. If I were her, I’d leave town without my toiletries and clean panties.”

  “So she can come with us?”

  “Why not?”

  After breakfast in the hotel dining room, Kadir called Serafis from a public phone. It took about ten minutes of haggling before Serafis finally agreed to a round sum of five million dollars. Serafis would meet them in Istanbul in two days.

  Zafer leaned over to pat Kadir on the back. “Aferin.” Well done.

  He turned to Drew. “You charge your phone, Double-oh-seven?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well don’t use it to call Jesse. Use the hotel phone and tell her we’ll pick her up in about fi
fteen minutes.”

  After Zafer had squared up their bill, and the three of them had left behind the lobby with its Dickensian furniture and red marble tiles, Zafer disappeared. He came back behind the wheel of a black Audi.

  “Where’s the green one?”

  “Right where we left it. I have someone taking care of it.”

  “Where did you get this?”

  Zafer glanced at Kadir. “This isn’t our first trip to Antakya. And Serafis isn’t the only black market dealer we know. Let’s go.”

  Jesse’s hotel was on Ataturk Avenue, which was the show-off street in Antakya. Lined with shops and expensive hotels, it was divided by an island that supported a long row of small palm trees. The contrast with Istiklal Avenue—running more or less parallel on the other side of the Asi River—was startling.

  Jesse was in the hotel lounge still wearing the skirt that looked like a field of ironed-flat flowers and the ivory blouse. She had left off the headscarf and the vest. She stood up and bandoliered herself with the laptop. The strap sank a furrow diagonally across her breasts. She looked like an educated peasant—like she could plant two bare feet in the grass, wrestle him to a draw, then kick his ass at Jeopardy. That was about as sexy as it got as far as Drew was concerned.

  He bent to kiss her and was relieved she didn’t pull away. Her breath was cool with the fading mint of toothpaste. He tipped his head toward the door. “Let’s go.”

  A uniformed hotel employee held the glass door open for them.

  Jesse slid into the back seat of the Audi.

  Kadir and Zafer, both in the front, greeted her with grins and polite hellos. Kadir’s seat was pulled all the way up to give Drew some legroom.

  Pulling out onto Ataturk Avenue, Zafer glanced at Jesse in the rear-view mirror.

  “Thanks for letting me come with you. I feel a lot safer.”

  Safer with us? Drew wanted to ask. Might as well climb an aluminum pole during a thunderstorm.

  At a circle crowned with a statue rising out of a fountain, Drew looked in the direction of the grotto church, a gouge in the stone face of a hillside, a hard nest for faith where prayer had once seeped through the rock and wept down the rough walls. He couldn’t get his mind off the missing stones in the Christ mosaic.

  7: 16

  ISKENDERUN

  ZAFER WOVE THROUGH TRAFFIC, constantly checking the rear-view mirror.

  How the fuck is anyone going to keep pace with you? Drew thought. Zafer rarely let the speedometer’s needle fall below 110 kilometers an hour.

  The coast road took them west, past Iskenderun and its enormous port. Once known as Alexandretta, the city had had a cameo in an Indiana Jones movie. Dug into the slope of a small mountain facing the Mediterranean, it must have been a lovely seaside town when Roman ships were docking in its harbor, but there wasn’t much to see now. The port itself was a tangle of towering derricks and loading cranes like mythical beasts with impossibly long, steel necks; the Old World charm of sails, ropes, and sea-weathered wood was long gone.

  “This is where Serafis makes pick-ups,” Drew muttered.

  “It turns my stomach to think of the scroll going to him,” Jesse said. Drew had to stop himself from clamping a hand over Jesse’s mouth.

  Zafer looked in the rearview mirror and grinned. “I’m workin’ on it.”

  Dark clouds had drifted over the low mountains on their right. A flash of lightning backlit blunt peaks. A few seconds later, there was the distant rumble of thunder.

  “But you’re going ahead with the sale?”

  Back off Jess. Drew glanced over a shoulder, but the port was already lost to view. What had Serafis said? Out of the port in Alexandria, into the port in Iskenderun.

  Zafer kept grinning. “Oh we’re selling it all right—before one of us gets killed.”

  Big drops of rain spattered against the windshield so hard Drew flinched. Scattered at first, the rhythm became increasingly frantic, as though the rain were desperate to get in the car. Water washed down the windshield in sheets turning other cars into blobs of color. They turned into cars again when the wipers swept past. Zafer eased up on the gas, and the speedometer’s needle dropped to eight-five.

  “Alexandria!” Drew shouted loudly enough to make Jesse jump. He looked at her with a hysterical grin on his face. “I have called my son out of Egypt!”

  “What—?”

  “Zafer, stop the car!”

  “What the hell for?”

  Zafer, his eyes locked on Drew in the rear view mirror, frowned. But he slowed the car.

  Lightning x-rayed the road and a boom of thunder vibrated the car’s glass.

  Drew leaned forward between the seats. “Just pull over.”

  “Drew, are you all right?”

  Zafer crossed lanes and guided the car onto the shoulder.

  “Open the trunk. Be back in a minute.” Rain drummed on the roof, drowning out the radio as Drew hopped out of the car. The warm downpour doused him before he had a chance to use the trunk as an awning. Digging through a pocket of the bag in which he kept his clothes, his upper body was sheltered, but his lower legs and feet were taking a shower. He pulled out a sheaf of papers, slammed the trunk closed, and jumped back in the car.

  Drops of water tickled his scalp, and one slid down his face. He shook the pages at Jesse. “This is the missing piece.”

  7: 17

  JESUS PANTHERA

  ZAFER TURNED OFF the air conditioner and hit the defroster; the moisture coming off Drew had started to fog the windshield. “What is that?”

  “The Talmud. Quotes anyway.” Drew picked through the pages he’d downloaded from the web. The paper was spotted where rain had scored hits, making rough circles of print on the other side visible.

  “The Talmud?” Zafer cocked an eyebrow.

  “Please.” Jesse’s voice was pure irritation. “You don’t mean that anti-Christian propaganda about Jesus Panthera?”

  “Hold on a minute, Jesse. Remember what I said this morning? That the original charge against Jesus must have been blasphemy? That he was stoned to death like James? The flight to Egypt in Matthew makes no sense if taken literally—people in Matthew’s day would have known that there had been no slaughter of innocents. Matthew had to be alluding to something else.”

  “Yes, I told you—Moses. Jesus was a second Moses for Matthew.”

  “Right, I got that.” Drew shuffled through the damp pages. “What if there was a flight to Egypt … just no Holy Family?”

  Jesse tilted her head back and raised her hands, exasperated. “What are you talking about?”

  Drew pushed wet hair off his forehead. “King Jannai, the Maccabean who ruled Palestine from … let’s see … 104 to 78 BC.

  The Pharisees accepted his claim to the throne, but they were outraged that the Maccabeans had usurped the office of High Priest, which should have gone to a Zadokite.”

  “Right …” Jesse said cautiously.

  Kadir and Zafer had given up following what was going on in the back seat and were speaking quietly in Turkish.

  “The Pharisees rebelled around 94 BC, but six years later, Jannai won, decisively. He crucified eight hundred Pharisees and forced them to watch as soldiers slashed the throats of their wives and children. Another eight thousand fled Judea—including Jesus ben Perachiah, the most respected Pharisee at that time.” Drew flipped over a water-stained page. “He wound up in Alexandria.”

  Jesse nodded. “So far, so good.”

  “When Perachiah escaped to Alexandria, his favorite pupil, Jesus ben Panthera, went with him. There’s your flight to Egypt—to escape the wrath of Jannai, not Herod.”

  “That’s just not true,” Jesse protested.

  “According to the Talmud, Panthera learned magic in Egypt, became a religious teacher, and attracted five disciples.”

  “Exactly,” Jesse said, “this is where legend kicks in.”

  “Jesus had his twelve apostles, but how many does Jesus actually cal
l?”

  “Drew …” Jesse shook her head. “I’m getting tired of this.”

  “Five. It’s right there in Mark. He called five. The rest show up later.”

  “Fine,” she snorted. “A numerical coincidence.”

  “So … Panthera had his five. Eventually he was accused of sorcery and executed on the Eve of Passover. Christian scholars like to say the Talmud is simply disparaging Christ, but if this is a parody of Jesus, why not give him the recognizable twelve apostles? Why not line up the other details—crucified in the days of Caesar Tiberius, by order of Pontius Pilate, and all the rest? Why locate this all nearly a century earlier? Parody doesn’t work if you don’t recognize what’s being mocked.”

  Jesse sighed. “Here it comes …”

  “Because the Talmud authors were genuinely trying to identify a crucified Jesus in history—the best they could do was Panthera. We both know there weren’t twelve apostles. The Gospel writers chose twelve to line up with the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve signs of the zodiac, and I don’t know what else. Most of them are barely even mentioned in the Gospels. The Gospels don’t even agree on their names.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “What if the so-called magic was simply the practices of the Egyptian Essenes, the Therapeutae, living on the shore of Lake Mariout? Which is right next to Alexandria, where Panthera and Perachiah exiled themselves? The Therapeutae were Essenes who had elements of the Pythagorean Mysteries mixed in with their beliefs. What if it wasn’t sorcery that got Panthera into trouble but following the practices of the Therapeutae?”

  Jesse was about to say something acidic—he could see it—but he raised a hand. “Hold on. After Jesus was born and the Wise Men showed up, Matthew says Herod commanded the slaughter of innocents, hoping to kill the Messiah-to-be. The episode serves two purposes. First, it alludes to the executions under King Jannai, which included children. And let’s not forget, Pharisee initiates were called innocents or infants. This would be recognizable to Greek converts as a stock episode in the life of the divine child—Hera sent snakes to kill Herakles in his crib, the child Dionysus was attacked by the Titans, Attis’s grandfather commanded the baby to be left in the wilderness to die of exposure.”