The Third Day

  Some time past midnight, Lavon shook me awake and announced that my turn to stand watch had arrived. Bryson and I gathered our things and then climbed up to our observation post, where we settled into reasonably comfortable spots, facing opposite directions.

  After an hour had passed, the Professor volunteered to go back down to the shelter and bring up some water. At the time, I thought nothing of it, and when he handed over one of our makeshift cups, I quaffed the whole serving in one gulp.

  The next thing I remember, Sharon and Lavon were shaking me awake. It took me a couple of seconds to get my bearings. Once I did, I saw the orange glow to the east and realized to my horror that I had slept though my watch. Worse, Bryson was nowhere to be found.

  “I screwed up,” was all I could say.

  The others were gracious, or realistic, enough not to press. Naomi and Markowitz climbed up to join us, so we gathered in a small circle to work out what to do next as the first faint sliver of the sun peeked over the horizon.

  “According to the Gospels, the women are at the tomb, right now,” said Lavon.

  The question was: was Bryson?

  Making our situation more complicated, a long line of people and livestock had already begun to fill the road leading to the Damascus Gate.

  “We don’t really need company,” I muttered.

  Naomi, though, told us not to worry.

  “They’re merchants,” she explained. “The first ones into the city after the Sabbath receive much higher prices for their goods. I am certain of this, because afterward, they often visited the house where I worked, and boasted of their earnings.”

  That made perfect sense. More importantly, these traders would be inclined to ignore us unless we appeared to be competitors.

  We paused to ensure that Sharon’s scarf completely covered her blonde hair; then we hustled to the main road and joined the growing file of travelers.

  After we had proceeded nearly a mile, we veered off toward the edge and into a labyrinth of pathways that wound through the twenty-acre complex of quarries and tombs.

  “Now what?” asked Markowitz.

  ***

  I thought back to the previous day and it all started to make sense, beginning with Bryson’s worries about technical malfunctions.

  “The damned fool,” I said, now certain that he had spiked my drink with sedatives from my medical kit so he could slip away and witness the events in person.

  Lavon had reached a similar conclusion.

  “I’ll bet he got caught,” he added. “Since the moon was full, I’m sure he could find his way down the road. But once he got into the quarries, odds are that he got lost and stumbled onto the guards.”

  If indeed he had – and this was the most likely scenario – we didn’t have a second to lose. Once the soldiers hauled the Professor out of the quarries and onto the open ground leading to the city gates, we’d have no chance to get him back.

  “Can you take us to the tomb from this direction?” I asked Sharon.

  She nodded and led us forward without saying a word. After we had gone a hundred yards or so, she held up her hand and peered around the same rocky incline I remembered from the day before.

  “Do you see anyone?” Lavon whispered.

  She didn’t, but she didn’t dare expose herself by venturing out farther.

  Since nothing in the Gospel accounts suggested that a woman native to the area would encounter trouble, Lavon pulled Naomi close and whispered into her ear. I watched a puzzled look cross her face, but after a brief moment’s hesitation, she strode toward the tomb.

  Naomi peeked inside, then turned back to us and shook her head: nothing.

  Lavon then signaled for her to check out the surrounding area. She disappeared, though a minute or two later, she came back and motioned for us to come forward.

  I’m no expert, but I could count at least a dozen sets of fresh prints in front of the grave site, all pointing toward the city to the east.

  “Do you see the camera anywhere?” Markowitz asked.

  Lavon pointed to the spot where Bryson had left it the previous evening.

  “There it is,” he said.

  The pyramid of stones appeared to have remained untouched, so Markowitz started heading in that direction to retrieve it.

  I reached out and pulled him back. “No time,” I said.

  Instead, I unsheathed my gladius and directed Lavon to do the same. The archaeologist agreed that since the guards would take the most direct route back to the city, we could probably swing around them undetected – if we got there fast enough.

  “When we get into position, wait for my signal,” I ordered.

  Lavon nodded.

  “What if I’m wrong about the guards?” he asked, almost as an afterthought. “What if they do turn out to be Romans?”

  I shook my head. In that case, our only chance of survival would be to abandon the Professor and run.

  I tried to make a joke of it, but after the others had turned away, I lifted my sword and held the point to my own throat.

  I stared straight into Lavon’s eyes.

  “Can you do it?” I asked, “if it comes to that.”

  His grim expression showed that he knew what I had in mind.

  “I won’t let them be taken,” he replied.

  Then he scurried off quickly behind the hill to our left, with Sharon and Naomi in tow.

  ***

  I led Markowitz off to the right to form the other arm of our pincer movement. In a few minutes, we reached the edge of the quarry and circled back toward the center, where we crouched behind an oversized boulder lying only a few feet from a heavily traveled path.

  Not long thereafter, I saw Lavon slip out from behind a ridge on the opposite side, along with the two women.

  We listened carefully and to our great relief, neither of us heard the distinctive clanging of metal plates. The Temple police protected themselves with thick leather armor. Bryson’s captors were not Romans.

  As the marching footsteps came closer, we eased back to avoid being spotted.

  Moments later, a dozen black helmeted soldiers strode past us and up the incline that led up to the level ground surrounding Jerusalem’s main walls.

  Though I couldn’t understand what they were saying, the men appeared to be engaged in an animated discussion – no doubt concerning how they would explain the events of the previous night to their superiors.

  We breathed a quick a sigh of relief as they passed. For a brief moment, I worried that they might have first disposed of the Professor, before I realized that a prisoner would serve as a handy prop for whatever story they managed to invent.

  The fact that their captive would be unable to contradict their tale would serve as an added bonus, assuming it came to that.

  A few minutes after the first bunch had passed, we heard another set of footsteps. Lavon gestured toward Naomi, as if encouraging her to try an encore performance, but this time I shook my head.

  Naomi, God bless her, ignored my instructions.

  Rather than exude her natural charms, this time she took pains to disguise them. She pulled her hair back and her shawl up to cover her entire head. Then she hunched forward with her back bent at a painfully awkward angle.

  If I hadn’t known better, I would have guessed that she had aged thirty years, which was the whole idea.

  She shuffled her steps, favoring her left leg, as she trudged slowly up the ramp, with her downcast eyes glued to the ground only a step or two in front of her feet.

  As she had intended, the two men escorting Bryson stopped, just behind where we had been hiding.

  Once again, we achieved total surprise.

  Before they could cry out, Lavon and I held our sword points to their throats. The two guards stared ahead in silence; their eyes reflecting silent terror.

  “Don’t kill them,” said Markowitz.

  I hadn’t planned to unless it proved absolutely necessary, but this intrusion irritate
d me.

  “Be quiet, Ray,” I whispered.

  “They’re Temple police, not Herod’s men. They’re Jews; my brothers. Don’t kill them.”

  I sighed, though in hindsight, we couldn’t have playacted the scene any better.

  The two guards had been careless, but they weren’t stupid. From the tone of our discussion, they developed a clear picture of how to save themselves and meekly submitted to our instructions.

  Sharon handed over strips of cloth she had cut from her robe, and within less than a minute, we had bound and gagged each one.

  We left our prisoners leaning against the side of a hill a few yards apart from each other.

  I was angry enough to leave Bryson in the same condition as well, though I knew that would impede our progress. Reluctantly, I cut his bindings loose.

  He immediately started to babble an explanation for his conduct, but I was in no mood to hear it; nor was anyone else.

  “Shut up, Professor. Let’s get out of here.”

  ***

  As we threaded our way back through the labyrinth heading the other direction, Lavon had the presence of mind to examine Bryson’s chip.

  “Yellow,” he announced.

  “Thirty minutes,” said Sharon. “Maybe even less.”

  How much less, we had no way to know.

  “Keep going,” I said. “It won’t be long before the main body realizes their comrades aren’t following behind.”

  We had advanced to within striking distance of the western end of the quarry when Bryson suddenly jerked away.

  “My camera!” he shouted.

  Before any of us could react, he had already started to rush back to the tomb.

  Had I been thinking clearly, I would have tackled the jackass and sent Naomi, by herself, to retrieve the infernal device. She had shed her old-woman act as quickly as she put it on, and I didn’t think the two we had trussed up would recognize her.

  But I had been out of action too long to fight tunnel vision, and by the time the idea occurred to me, it was already too late.

  Bryson had such a head start that we could do nothing but crouch behind the familiar hill and watch as he strode across the narrow bit of open ground to retrieve his precious camcorder.

  He cautiously moved the rock pile aside, stone by stone, as if the device would crumble under the slightest impact. Once he had uncovered it, he lifted it up and brushed off the dust.

  Then, to our utter dismay, he opened the viewfinder.

  “He’s going to watch it right now!” Sharon whispered. “I can’t believe this!”

  “Get back here, you idiot,” I said, trying my dead level best not to shout.

  He ignored me for a moment, but the sound of approaching footsteps became unmistakable, even to him.

  “Run!” I yelled.

  Chapter 64

  The Professor finally grasped the seriousness of his predicament. He snapped the viewfinder shut and headed toward me at full speed, while I waved to the others, imploring them to go ahead.

  Just as Bryson approached me, two men – neither in uniform and both clearly winded – emerged from behind the rocks and paused in front of the tomb. One started to give chase, but his companion held him back. Neither seemed quite sure what to make of us.

  I could guess who they were, but didn’t dare stick around.

  I grabbed the Professor’s arm and rushed him along for a couple hundred yards before we caught up with the others.

  “Keep moving,” I said.

  By then, though, Bryson was gasping for air, so we finally had to stop.

  As we paused for him to regain his wind, we couldn’t help but reflect on the irony of it all: the confused, angry men from whom we had just fled would lend their names to the largest cathedrals on two continents, one of which they would never know even existed.

  “Who could have thought it?” said Lavon.

  None of us really could, but as much as we wanted to go back and speak to them, we had to keep going.

  We proceeded at the pace of a brisk walk and had nearly made it out of the quarry when we stumbled onto our next surprise: a cluster of rough-looking characters unpacking sacks filled with hammers, picks and chisels.

  Sharon’s scarf had fallen back, exposing her hair, and this crew had noticed its unusual hue. One of them pointed at her and yelled out something in Aramaic.

  Naomi answered straight away. Though her tone sounded abusive, the men laughed heartily, and when one of their party shouted back, they laughed even harder.

  Lavon grinned as Naomi gave him a brief, G-rated translation.

  “Stonemasons,” he said. “We tend to forget that Easter Sunday was the first day of their work week. These guys are just getting started.”

  Sharon rolled her eyes. “I see some things never change.”

  Naomi and the construction workers continued to trade good-natured barbs until we passed behind a final hill and scrambled up toward the main road. From there, we made our way to the northwest, keeping a parallel track to avoid the crowds heading into the city.

  ***

  It wasn’t long before angry shouting from the edge of the quarry told us that the men on our tails weren’t all that far behind, although we did encounter one unexpected bit of good fortune.

  Naomi explained that from the perspective of the masses, the Temple police ranked only slightly above the Romans at the bottom end of the popularity scale. Her new friends – the stonemasons – would do what they could to slow our pursuers down, if only out of spite.

  But she admitted that we’d gain only a momentary delay. We could hold no illusions that the laborers would risk their own necks to save ours.

  “That may be all we need,” I said.

  We all took another look at the Professor’s LED. This time Naomi saw us do it, and asked why.

  As we pressed on, Lavon tried to explain our situation to a now very confused woman, who once again had to be wondering if she had made the right call, and whether instead of producing freedom and wealth, her alliance with us would leave her broken body trampled in the dust.

  The rest of us, though, had no time for such considerations. A couple of minutes later, we glanced back to see the first black helmets rise up to ground level, less than half a mile to our rear.

  “What color, Professor?” asked Lavon, trying without success to conceal his worry.

  “Still yellow,” he replied.

  The others heard this exchange, along with the nervous tones that accompanied it.

  As if by instinct, and without any prompting, we each shed our outer robes and took off at a dead run toward a clump of scrub trees nestled into the top of a narrow ridge about two hundred yards to our west.

  Just beyond the trees, we leapt over a pile of rocks – the remains of a long-decayed stone wall, as it turned out – and fell panting to the ground. Even Sharon seemed a bit winded, while Bryson gasped for his next breath.

  I reached for his tunic.

  Yellow.

  We peered over the rocks without seeing anything, but our respite only lasted a brief moment.

  “Here they come,” said Lavon.

  The black helmets edged slowly toward us once more, although this time, we could see that the guards’ demeanor had changed. They no longer appeared to be a hundred percent confident of success.

  A moment later, we saw why.

  Lavon gestured to our right. “Look over there,” he said.

  As if to confirm Naomi’s description of the gendarmes’ unpopularity, a group of shepherd boys began to pelt our persecutors with stones. Though these served more as an irritant than any serious danger, the guards could no longer be certain that they were chasing only a handful of bedraggled foreigners.

  We watched the activity for a brief moment before I concluded that we should take advantage of the interlude to buy ourselves a few more precious seconds. I hefted Bryson up by the tunic and turned him toward the next ridge, a hundred yards beyond.

  “
Let’s go.”

  ***

  In hindsight, this was a mistake. Our party lost all semblance of order as we dashed up the hill in a mad scramble. Worse, toward the end of our run, Bryson stepped into a hole and twisted his ankle. Lavon and I had to drag him the rest of the way to the top.

  Compounding our predicament, the ruckus caused by the stone-throwing boys had drawn the attention of a Roman patrol, which immediately wheeled around and trotted toward us at a brisk double-time pace.

  The shepherd kids knew trouble when they saw it, and as the legionnaires drew closer, they scattered in all directions, leaving the soldiers’ attention focused squarely upon us.

  I glanced around toward the next hill to the west, but by then, Bryson’s ankle had become painfully tender. He’d never make it, nor would we, if we tried to carry him.

  I reached for the Professor’s pendant and saw that the LED still glowed with the same hideous color. This time, I ripped it from his neck and surprised even myself.

  I handed the chip to Sharon and pointed to our rear.

  “Go. You and Naomi might be able to make it. We’ll stay here and hold them off as long as we can.”

  I knew the time would be short, but every second might count.

  “We still have a chip,” I added. “Go!”

  Sharon hesitated long enough for Lavon to translate what I had said to a now thoroughly bewildered Naomi, who categorically refused to leave the archaeologist’s side.

  By then, Sharon, too, had determined not to budge.

  She handed the chip back to Bryson. “We stay together,” she said, “to the very end.”

  Chapter 65

  And this was good, for by then, the choice was no longer hers to make.

  While we had debated, the Roman commander divided his forty men into three groups. He sent two on a double-time pace to circle around to our left and to our right, to cut off any possibility of escape.

  Then he paused to confer with the Temple guards, to ascertain any details he might have missed.

  Once again, I found myself admiring the Romans’ raw efficiency. This officer knew his business.