by Alton Gansky
“I don’t know. No one knows. He just does things like that from time to time.”
Rutherford’s head moved, but Perry couldn’t tell if he was nodding in agreement or had just lost control. “He is worth studying. The secret is locked in him somewhere.”
“No,” Claire said. “I’d rather die first.”
“We agree on that,” Rutherford said coldly. “At least you won’t be alone.”
“We are people of faith; death is not frightening to us.”
“No? We’ll see. Since you’re a person of faith, you can do me a favor. When you see Jesus in heaven, ask, ‘What was Your secret to success?’”
It had all played out so badly, Perry realized. It started with an assault and death and now more were to die, including himself. And when all was said and done, the madman Straight would still possess the artifacts.
Perry shook his head slightly, and although it was barely perceptible, when he turned to Jack, he knew he had seen it. Jack shrugged then nodded, moving his head less than an inch. Perry wished there was more he could do, or a wiser course of action to take, but there was none. Maybe, just maybe, if he and Jack could restrain Alex and Julia long enough, Claire and Joseph could escape. The odds were nearly nonexistent, but a slim chance was still better than none.
Perry took a couple of quick steps toward Rutherford. Immediately he heard a woman’s voice. “Hold it right there.” He turned and saw the gun that had been pointed at Claire now pointed at his head. He also saw Jack’s big hand shoot forward and grab the woman’s wrist. Jack jerked her arm, redirecting the gun’s muzzle away from Perry.
There was a curse, a bang, a pop, a crash, and a scream. Instinctively, Perry ducked and covered his head. The tempered glass exploded behind him, falling in a sheet of tiny cubes. Lifting his head, Perry saw Jack raise his other hand to Julia’s wrist. She was screaming obscenities. Alex, who had been only a step away, threw a vicious right fist into Jack’s rib cage. Perry heard the air forced from his friend’s lungs. Despite the power of the blow, Jack continued to clutch Julia’s wrist.
“No . . . no . . . no . . .” Rutherford bawled, but his weak voice was barely heard over Julia’s screeching.
“You’re breaking my wrist,” she bellowed. Another shot escaped the gun. Perry flinched and charged toward the struggle.
“Let her go,” Alex said. He threw another punch, this time at Jack’s head, but the blow glanced off his shoulder.
Another shot followed by a hissing sound. A second later the room was filled with a loud blast, like an electronic horn. It repeated the same note over and over and over.
Perry lowered his head, aiming it at Alex’s middle. He knew he couldn’t overpower the genetically strengthened thug, but even the strongest man couldn’t fight if he couldn’t breathe. With his head down, he couldn’t see all of Alex, but he did see enough to know the man had turned toward him at the last second.
Perry found his mark, his head plowing into Alex’s torso, just below the sternum. Perry continued to drive forward until his momentum carried both men into the back wall.
The impact jarred every inch of Perry. His teeth clashed together, and it felt as if every disk in his spine compressed. He had hit Alex with every bit of his strength.
“Carmack . . . Carmack . . . get up,” Rutherford ordered. “You’re ruining everything.”
Perry staggered back, surprised to find himself still on his feet. Alex was doubled over, but Perry knew that in seconds the man would be angrier and more motivated than ever to take Perry apart.
“Get out!” Perry ordered Claire. “Take the stairs. Go.” Claire grabbed Joseph by the arm and dragged him through the doorway.
He turned his attention back to Alex just in time to see him slowly straightening, his face covered with a demonic scowl. Perry clenched his jaw and kicked for all he was worth.
He had hoped to catch Alex in the gut again, preventing him from taking another breath and regaining his strength. With a speed Perry thought impossible, Alex caught Perry’s foot by the ankle. In a fluid motion, Alex pulled up, and Perry was on his way down to the floor. It was the last place he wanted to be.
Another motion caught Perry’s eye. Julia was backpedaling for all she was worth. Jack, his viselike grip still clamped on her wrist, was spinning her around toward Alex, using her as a human battering ram. It worked—her unbalanced frame impacted Alex with a discernible thump.
Alex released a chilling scream of rage and pushed Julia away with such force that it loosened Jack’s footing. Still holding her wrist, he kept the gun pointed away from himself and Perry.
Another bang as the gun went off for a fourth time.
Perry scrambled to his feet, readying himself for the next onslaught. Alex started forward and launched himself, hands outstretched, fingers reaching for Perry’s throat.
A heartbeat later, Perry’s feet were off the ground, his legs kicking wildly.
Perry couldn’t breathe.
He gulped for air that wouldn’t come.
He could feel Alex’s thumbs pressing his trachea shut. Perry tried everything. He batted at Alex’s arms, reached for his face, kicked at the man, but nothing prevailed. His abnormal strength was now fueled by uncontrolled fury.
The lights dimmed, or so Perry thought. His lungs burned, and his head felt as if it might explode. Then he dropped to the ground. Air . . . sweet air . . . rushed into his lungs.
Why had Alex released him?
Righting himself, Perry tried to steel himself for what would come next, comforting himself that Claire and Joseph were gone, on their way to the safety of the streets below.
Nothing happened.
Alex stood, his head lowered, his hands raised in front of him. Moist, dark red blood spread out in an ever-growing disk. He had been shot, and the amount of blood made Perry realize that the wound was serious. An artery or maybe the heart itself had been punctured.
Alex looked up at Perry, tilted his head to the side quizzically, dropped to his knees, then to his side. His eyes remained open but saw nothing.
“Rutherford! Rutherford!”
Perry turned to see Julia. She no longer fought with Jack. Her eyes were glued on some sight behind Perry. She went limp and the gun fell from her hand. Racing forward, Perry picked up the gun, took two steps back, turned, and saw what had subdued the woman.
Rutherford Straight sat in his chair, unmoving. His head no longer bobbed. A trickle of blood ran from a hole behind his left ear.
Julia collapsed in a heap. The shock of what had happened floored her. In the struggle, she had killed Alex with a wayward bullet.
And her own brother.
She had shot something else too. Perry now knew what the electronic horn was. It was the fire alarm, sounding because one of the undirected rounds had struck a fire sprinkler head in Carmack’s lab.
Carmack was gone, and so was the chrysalis.
“Oh, no,” Perry said.
He charged from the observation room, through the space where the glass partition had been and into the cascading shower from the sprinkler head. Water flooded the room and immediately soaked Perry. He took no notice.
Rounding the work counter that dominated the room, Perry saw the nightmare he expected but prayed wouldn’t be. Dr. Carmack lay on his back, staring at the ceiling through sightless eyes. Water rained down from above, washing the blood from the bullet hole in his forehead. On his chest lay a white mass of ancient, dissolving linen.
Perry didn’t have to be a homicide detective to know what happened. Julia’s gun had gone off several times. One bullet had broken the window. Another had struck Carmack in the head. It was a small caliber gun without enough power to knock the man from his feet, but with more than enough deadly force to end his life. He must have fallen forward, Perry reasoned, landing on the chrysalis and dragging it to the floor with him.
Over the last two days, Perry had been beaten, kicked, hit on the head with a stone from the falling wall, and
been in battle with a man more powerful than God ever intended a man to be, but all he could feel was the deep ache of sorrow in his soul.
The chrysalis was gone, reduced to a useless, meaningless paste, dissolved by the unrelenting spray. The world’s most valuable treasure was being washed down the drain of the floor, its two-thousand-year-old fiber unable to withstand the onslaught of the moisture from a sprinkler.
“You okay, buddy?” Perry looked up to see a battered Jack.
“The woman?”
“After you picked up the gun, I lost my grip. She ran, and I’m afraid I don’t have it in me to chase her.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I’m sure the alarm is electronically monitored,” Jack said. “The fire department will be here soon.”
“What happened here?” a voice said. Perry turned to the laboratory door and saw two uniformed men: building security.
“You had better call the police,” Perry said softly. Then he set the gun on the counter, lowered himself to the floor, raised his hands to his face, bent over, and wept.
Epilogue
PERRY SACHS STOOD in the inner chamber of the room he and Jack had uncovered two weeks before.
A bank of work lights shone down from metal stands and
lit the underground area. Crowded into the space with him were Jack, Anne, Gleason, Brent, Dr. Curtis, Sergeant Montulli, Claire, and Joseph. Also present were the owners, Hector Trujillo—in a wheelchair—and his wife, Rose. Joseph stood, as he always did, with his head resting on Claire’s shoulder.
The crowded chamber was still off-limits to the rest of the world, but it had been made safer. Modern shoring kept the ground outside from crashing in; a new semi-permanent bridge had been built to replace the makeshift one they’d made before.
“Thank you all for coming,” Perry said. “I wanted to thank you each for your great contribution. I also wanted to make sure everyone had the latest word on things. Dr. Curtis has some information for us.”
Curtis cleared his throat. “As we guessed, the archaeological community is still very skeptical about our preliminary findings. It’s only been two weeks, but we have received Carbon-14 data that puts the uncovered remains to the first century. Specialists in Roman history have verified that the shields, swords, and other items we found associated with the soldiers are genuine. There remains a great deal of testing to be done, but for now we can rule out a hoax. Of course we already knew that.”
“Will the scientific community ever come around?” Jack asked.
Curtis shrugged. “Some will. The evidence is strong, but we must remember we’re asking them to believe the impossible. Having Romans in the New World upsets everything. However, there is enough evidence to suggest that other ancient people made it to our shores. The Vikings on the east and oriental influence in the west indicate that others had crossed the oceans; whether they came intentionally or not is another matter. Things like the Los Lunas inscription in New Mexico may or may not be hoaxes.”
“Los Lunas?” Anne said.
“The Ten Commandments written in ancient Hebrew,” Curtis explained. “Found a few decades ago in New Mexico.”
“Ancient Hebrew in North America,” Gleason said. “Is it real?”
“That’s debatable on several counts. We simply don’t know. It used to be easy for me to dismiss such things. For example, a sculpted terra cotta Roman head was found in Mexico. Some date it to about 200 a.d. In 1963 a construction worker found a small hoard of Roman coins near the Ohio River. A similar thing happened in Kentucky. Did the coins come from Romans, or were they part of someone’s collection that was lost decades before? Who knows? But we have much more here.”
“But how did they get here?” Montulli asked. “We’re a long way from the Roman Empire.”
“That leads us to the second manuscript,” Perry said. “After we sorted things out with the Seattle police—a grueling task, I might add, but with Sergeant Montulli’s help as well as the distinguished mayor’s, we recovered those items that didn’t interest Rutherford Straight. We were able to take custody of Pilate’s seal and the two earthenware jars. The face napkin remains missing. The police continue to look for it. Dr. Curtis opened the jars.”
“Under controlled conditions, I might add,” Curtis said. “One jar held the residue of spices. It appears that when these people took the artifacts from Christ’s tomb after His resurrection, they took everything, including the spices used to treat Jesus’ body. The other jar contained a manuscript.”
“The manuscript was in the jar?” Claire asked.
“That’s right,” Curtis replied. “Just like the Dead Sea Scrolls that were found in 1947. The jar provided a great deal of protection. Still, the document is delicate and takes expert care just to open it. Move too fast or in the wrong environment, and it will crumble to dust. I’ve brought in the best manuscript experts I can find. We’ve succeeded in opening it. Age has damaged it greatly, but I was able to get snippets of information. It was written in Aramaic, the language of first-century Jews. We think Mary wrote it. It’s a brief account of some of her experiences.”
Curtis took a deep breath and stated: “The short version is this. As you know, Roman guards were posted at the grave of Christ. The Gospel of Matthew tells the story in chapter 28. It says that some of the guards returned to the city to report what they had seen and what they had seen had frightened them to the point of unconsciousness. ‘They became as dead men’ is the way the scripture puts it. I’ve always wondered why the Bible says that some of the guards returned to the city and reported to the Jewish elders. Why just some? Why not all? What happened to those who didn’t go back to report?”
“I always assumed that, of the twelve or so guards who would have been present, only a couple would be needed to make a report,” Perry said.
“That’s a reasonable interpretation,” Curtis said. “But the manuscript tells a different story. After the ‘some’ went back to report, Mary—who came to the tomb twice—saw the risen Christ. It appears that the remaining guards witnessed that encounter. You can imagine the shock to the Roman mind. After Mary encountered Jesus, she ran to tell the disciples what had happened. We find that information in the Gospel of John.
“The manuscript is unclear at this point, mostly because of damage,” Curtis continued, “but a few of the guards took it upon themselves to clear out the tomb. You have to remember that you’re not dealing with religious Jews or disciples of Jesus. Instead we have men brought up in a polytheistic world. Their religious training taught them that there were many gods. I imagine they believed that Jesus was one such god. Therefore, anything associated with Him would be valuable, even holy.”
“So they took the linens and other things, but how did they get here and how did Mary hook up with them?”
“That’s one of the many parts that is unclear,” Curtis said. “It appears they had some reason to fear reprisal from their superiors, maybe for failing to guard the tomb or maybe because they removed the artifacts.
“In any case, they fled Palestine on a Roman cargo ship. Romans had a variety of ships that plied the waters of the Great Sea, what we call the Mediterranean Sea. The manuscript has sections of text that have faded over the years, so we’re left to guess about many things. The manuscript experts think that with time they can restore portions of the lost text. Maybe we’ll have more information then. We can hope.
“Anyway, I sent photos of the scroll to experts in ancient Semitic languages. They’ve found references to the boat and to the crewmen, who numbered twenty. How the guards booked passage is unknown, but since we found them buried in their armor they may have used their military influence to get on board. Maybe one of them was related to the captain. We just don’t know. The linguist found references to what we now call China. There’s ample evidence to say that the Roman Empire had some trade connection with China.”
“That would explain how they got to the Pacific,” Perry said, “but saili
ng around Africa had to be tough.”
“Agreed,” Curtis said. “It’s not a trip that any one of us would want to make. From there they continued east. There’s a passage that mentions a storm. It wouldn’t be the first time that a cargo ship was blown out to sea. Currents and wind drove the boat east. As I said, there’s evidence that Chinese explorers made the west coast of America; these men, soldiers and the boat’s crew, apparently did the same, unintentionally.”
“And Mary Magdalene was with them,” Anne said.
“Probably,” Curtis said. “That has yet to be demonstrated. All we have is a woman’s skeleton in what remains of simple clothing and the etched letters inside her coffin.”
“That seems pretty conclusive, Doc,” Jack interjected.
“Agreed, but that’s not proof, at least not in scientific terms.”
“Why this?” Gleason asked, motioning to the chamber.
Perry spoke first. “It’s their way of paying homage. They built two chambers: an anteroom and a sepulcher. Some ancient Jewish tombs have been found that are similar in design. Here they used rocks they could find and timber from the surrounding trees to, at least in a symbolic way, return what they took. Mary must have had a powerful influence on them.”
“Let me add to that,” Curtis said. “I’ve had the wood coffins analyzed and learned that they were made of the same kind of wood as ancient ships. They brought some of the wood from their vessel with them. That would explain how they came to have flat wood like planks. I imagine that their tools were limited to whatever was on the ship.”
“Now there’s another puzzle,” Gleason said. “Why here in these low-lying mountains? We’re more than seventy miles from the coast as the crow flies.”
“More like eighty miles,” Curtis said. “And you’re right. A journey on foot would be much longer, still not beyond reason. Migratory people have been known to travel much further. Time wouldn’t be a factor. If it took them a year to make the journey, so what? Maybe the area reminded them of home.