by Paul L Maier
It seemed to Jon that he spent an eternity going through almost every page of the codex, again without registering any sort of response. Jon looked helplessly at Shannon, who stood beside him, just as eager for the verdict as he.
Whimpole failed to notice the Markan ending, but his eyes widened when he came to Second Acts. And they seemed to remain wider for the rest of his perusal. When he had finally finished, he stepped back, looked up, pieced his fingers together, and then said to Jon, “I hope you’ll provide more detail on how you discovered this. You gave some information in your phone call.”
“I will indeed. But what’s your impression of the codex thus far, Dr. Whimpole?”
“Well, I would call it an extremely clever fraud…”
Jon froze.
“… were I given to what you colonials call ‘practical jokes.’ But this codex is authentic. Absolutely authentic. Beyond all debate. The orthography-those beautiful uncials-are fully consistent with the Sinaiticus and other manuscripts from the fourth century. I… I must congratulate you, Professor Weber, on the manuscript find of the century-no, of the millennium. And-quite naturally-I’m also fiercely jealous of your success!”
A round of laughter was enough to transform the stiff and stodgy Brit into a fellow human being.
Two weeks later, all the material test results arrived at Jon’s Harvard office. It began with a phone call from Arizona, Duncan Fraser genially announcing, “I guess you want a pair of dates, Jon, right?”
“That would be very helpful, Duncan.”
“How about 1650, plus or minus fifty years-both samples?”
Jon’s heart plummeted. “AD 1650? You mean… you mean the vellum’s less than four centuries old?”
Fraser laughed. “I knew I’d catch you on that one! No, Jon, 1650 BP, and I don’t mean British Petroleum.”
“So, 1,650 years before the present?”
“Yes. Of course.”
Jon quickly calculated, then broke out laughing. “Perfect! Right on target! Early to mid-fourth century AD. You and your TAMS toy do great work, Duncan!”
“Only to keep you amused, Jon. What did you discover this time, the memoirs of Constantine?”
Jon was startled for a moment by the name but then said, “No, a shade more important than that. Tell you what, because you’ve been so kind, I’ll phone you about it just before we make the general announcement.”
“TAMS and I will be honored.”
Sandy McHugh phoned from Washington with similar results. Every test of the adhesive swipes he had taken from the leather cover and vellum pages showed a progression of pollen running up to the present day, yet also strains that went back to the fourth century.
All tests, then, were conclusive: the codex was absolutely authentic. As Jon told Shannon, “Obviously, we didn’t need the tests in the first place, since no one today could have forged 140 pages of perfect, fourth-century Greek.”
“Why did we go to all that bother, then?”
“The public, Shannon. The skeptical public, not to mention an army of critics.”
That evening, Jon put in two calls, the first to the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul, the other to Kevin Sullivan in Rome. Both were for the purpose of establishing a date for the announcement to the world. His All Holiness Bartholomew II would have the honor of making the initial announcement. Pope Benedict XVI would be invited to attend and participate in the presentation or be represented by Monsignor Sullivan. The location should have been the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul, but for obvious security reasons, it would instead be the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in New York.
“Glad I caught you before your flight to Cairo this afternoon, Osman,” Jon said as he chatted with his associate. It was a mild spring morning in early May, warm enough for Jon to open the windows of his office. “Like some coffee?”
“Please.”
As Jon poured two mugs, he continued. “I understand you’re visiting relatives in Cairo?”
Osman nodded. “In the western suburbs. At Giza-near the pyramids.”
“Do look in on our publisher while you’re there, Osman, and try to iron out any remaining problems in the Arabic edition of our book-if there are any.”
“Will do. Soon, maybe, I’ll have to do the Arabic translation of Mark 16 and Second Acts from our magnificent codex there.” It was lying atop Jon’s desk.
“Could well be. By the way, didn’t you once tell me you could face death if you ever returned to a Muslim country after converting to Christianity?”
“True for Islamic theocracies like Iran but not for secular states like Egypt. And you’ll recall that we all got back safely from Turkey.”
“True enough.”
“Of course, if they knew about me, Muslim fanatics in any country would find me fair game.”
“Better watch your back, then. I understand that Osman Mahmoud al-Ghazali’s fame is rising in the world of Islam!” Jon was smiling, but then he grew serious. “Hate to bring this up again, but a couple weeks ago, you’ll recall, we talked about the remaining problem in the disappearance of the codex?”
Osman nodded. “How could the perpetrators in Istanbul have known its dimensions, when the patriarch would fly here, et cetera, right?”
“Exactly. We all agreed that it had to be an inside job by someone in the patriarchate over there. But then I recalled that when we told you and Dick Ferris about the codex at the Istanbul Hilton, it was you who asked me about its size.”
“Right. And your point is…?”
“Well, I told you about the size of its pages, but then you also asked me how thick it was.”
“So? Both Dick and I wanted very badly to see the actual codex. And that was as close as we could come at the time.”
“Fair enough. And it’s just possible that my awful vector of suspicion may be pointed in the wrong direction.”
“At me, Jon? Me? After all we’ve been through together?”
“Hate to say it, but yes, Osman, even though it absolutely tears me apart to admit it.”
“Well, you can spare yourself that kind of personal agony because I’d never ever go back to the other side. Conversion is conversion. A Judas Iscariot I am not!”
Jon clenched his jaw muscles and rolled his knuckles on the desk. “I’d like to believe that. I really would.” He paused, avoided eye contact with Osman, and stared out the window. Then he turned in his chair and faced al-Ghazali directly. “Yesterday evening, Mort Dillingham called me from Washington. He hated to admit it, he said, but yes, the CIA asked the FBI to check all phone records on all of us during the weeks preceding the theft of the codex and the weeks afterward. After we hung up, Dillingham faxed me this record. It’s a long list, but please note the items I’ve underlined in red.”
He handed Osman the faxed pages. “To the left is your home phone number in Watertown, dated a week before Bartholomew’s flight to the U.S., and to the right… do you see that number in Istanbul?”
“Where?”
Jon pointed.
“Oh… there.”
“It belongs to one Tawfik Barakat, who is a member of the Islam Forever religious party, and one of three men on duty at Istanbul’s airport security the day the patriarch flew off.”
Al-Ghazali reddened a bit. “But… how can that be? Obviously there has to be some… some ridiculous mistake here. Besides, how could the perpetrators know when the patriarch would fly off?”
“Osman, Osman, we had all that information here in Cambridge, and you certainly had access to it.”
A long silence followed, tense and embarrassing to both of them. Finally Osman cleared his throat. “All right, Jon. Very well. I have a long, long story to tell you, and I think you’ll like the ending. But first, might I have a bit more coffee?”
Jon walked over to the hot plate and turned his back to prepare a fresh pot. Carafe in hand, he returned and refilled both mugs. Then he said, “Please continue, Osman. I’m listening… listening quit
e carefully, in fact.”
Al-Ghazali began with the story of his descent from the great eleventh-century Muslim mystic, Abu-Hamid al-Ghazali, who despised women and hated science in his concern for rigorist orthodoxy. He went on to the story of his childhood in Cairo, while Jon, his patience wearing thin, let his coffee cool. Details of Osman’s schooling followed, until Jon said, “To the point, man, to the point. This is all interesting, but you have a plane to catch, don’t you?”
“All right, Jon, I’ll give you the short version.”
Jon took a long sip of coffee, noting a slightly off flavor. “Almost tastes like Irish coffee. That’s what I get for not giving the carafe a thorough washing. Is yours okay, Osman?”
“Just a little strong.”
Then he continued with the story of his conversion to Christianity and how his eyes were finally opened to the greater historical reliability of the Bible versus the Qur’an. Despite Jon’s advice to move on with his explanation, Osman seemed to continue dawdling. Jon let him speak on, grasping his mug a little unsteadily as he took another long sip. Soon he looked at Osman with some concern because the man was becoming clouded in some sort of haze. But his office was also suffused in a growing fog, and the whole room seemed to lurch to one side. He quickly set the mug down, lest he drop it, and put both hands on the desk to steady himself. But the desk seemed to be tipping and sliding sideways. Was he having a stroke?
Osman watched the changes coming over Jon with quiet satisfaction. The man was starting to shiver and hyperventilate as Osman continued. “But truth to tell, Jon, for all the evidence you tried to marshal on behalf of Christianity, I found that, in the end, I could never give up Islam. Never! I was convinced that I could best help our cause by intruding into your circle.”
Jon tried to reach for his phone, but Osman swiftly pulled it out of his reach. “You won’t need that,” he said. “Of course, I intentionally made that error in the Arabic translation of your book, hoping a fatwa would quickly settle things. But when that failed and you discovered the codex instead, I had to-wait, here, let me help you.”
Al-Ghazali stood and shoved Jon and his chair deep inside the space under the middle of his desk. “You won’t be able to speak, Jon, so why even try? And don’t even think of standing up because you’d fall on your face.”
Jon tried nevertheless. He squirmed feebly in attempting to use his feet to shove the rolling chair away from the desk while his hands reached up to assist by grabbing the desk’s edge. But his grasp faded, and his arms dropped limply on both sides of his chair.
“Probably you’ll recover, Jon,” Osman said, pulling a small, empty vial from his pocket. “It’s an improved version of the old Mickey Finn, but it acts quicker. With any luck, you should get over it in a day or so. Tell you what: we’ve had some good times together, so I’ll even help you recover.” He scribbled chloral hydrate on a slip of paper and stuffed it into Jon’s shirt pocket. “Be glad I didn’t really poison you, chum,” he added. “Call it a parting gift.”
Just then he heard the long, grinding sound of a huge garbage truck outside the back windows of Jon’s office. “And, oh yes, the codex.” Al-Ghazali picked up the tome, went to the back window of Jon’s office, broke out the screen, and heaved the codex directly into the compacting maw of the garbage truck. “There! Your precious codex is exactly where it belongs, thanks to Waste Management. Live a good life, Jon!”
Al-Ghazali hurried out of the office, relieved that Marylou Kaiser had apparently gone to lunch. He would be over the Atlantic before Jon could even control his tongue. It would also be a one-way trip for Osman since he had planned to flee the U.S. for the past several weeks, suspecting that the discovery of his true role in Jon’s circle was only a matter of time.
Several hours later, he was aboard EgyptAir Flight 986 to Cairo. He gazed out the window, a low smile forming on his lips. Suddenly, though, they formed a pout instead. What utter fools those Turks were, he mused, trying to get a ransom for the codex when I had told them simply to destroy it. Well, he had corrected their wretched mistake. Allah would be more than merciful.
Marylou Kaiser came back from lunch, walked into Jon’s office, and screamed. Jon was sitting at his desk, motionless, glassy-eyed, and unresponsive. In a frenzy, she dialed 911. When the paramedics arrived, they quickly suspected a stroke of some kind-not poisoning: this was Harvard, after all. One of them, however, saw Jon’s half-empty coffee mug and tasted it. Then he spat it out and grumbled, “Irish coffee. Evidently these Harvard sages start drinking early and often.”
They strapped Jon onto a stretcher and carried him downstairs and out into an ambulance that had invaded the sacred turf of the Yard. Although nearly comatose, he started mumbling things like “Kowbage,” “Gowbage,” “Tuck,” and finally “Truck.” But no one understood him. Sirens wailing, the ambulance sped eastward on Massachusetts Avenue, crossed the Charles River bridge, and delivered him to ER at Mass General Hospital.
Marylou had, of course, accompanied Jon in the ambulance, and Shannon soon arrived from Weston, pale and shaken. The only one with some context for Jon’s situation, Marylou finally started interpreting his mumbles. “Police,” she translated from “powice,” “garbage” from “cowbage,” and “poison” from “pawzun.” None of it made sense, except for poison and police, and the latter were summoned immediately.
The ER at Mass General was crowded with patients on the road either to death or to recovery assisted by vast arrays of high-tech equipment. In one of the curtained cubicles surrounding its central core, Jon was starting to fight with his restraints. One of the supervisory nurses saw it and quickly injected a sedative. Marylou had the presence of mind to object. “No,” she said, “I wish you hadn’t done that. He’s trying to regain control. What he needs, I think, is the opposite of a sedative.”
“No, madam,” the nurse sniffed. “We know what we’re doing.”
Still unnerved from Jon’s ordeal-and now a bit peeved by the nurse’s attitude-Shannon happened to notice the slip of paper in Jon’s shirt pocket. Something prompted her to take it out and read it. “Anyone know what chloral hydrate means?” she asked.
“You bet!” said an intern on duty, who sprang into action, asking, “You’re his wife, I understand? Was he taking any sleep medications?”
“No. Jon sleeps like a baby,” Shannon replied.
“I hate to ask this, but… did he seem depressed recently? Did he have any suicidal inclinations?”
Shannon shook her head emphatically. “He’d be the very last person on earth to try anything like that.”
The intern was joined by Jason Hopkins, MD, the chief internist at Massachusetts General Hospital. Apparently, word had traveled quickly regarding a certain Harvard celebrity in the ER. For once, Shannon was grateful for her husband’s celebrity status.
Hopkins read the slip proffered by the intern and checked Jon’s vital signs while dictating to an attending nurse: “Blood pressure low: 80 over 50. Pulse rapid: 120 beats per… Breathing shallow, apparent hypothermia… Pupils pinpointed. Patient comatose…”
And indeed, Jon had lapsed back into deep sleep.
Shannon and Marylou exchanged a glance. At Shannon’s nod, Marylou informed the doctor about the sedative the nurse had administered.
“What?” he bellowed. “How come it’s not on the record? Which nurse? That one?”
Marylou nodded.
“We’ll discuss this later, ma’am!” he said, glaring at the nurse. “Now get me five hundred milligrams of caffeine sodium benzoate for injection- immediately.”
All the excitement was doing little for Shannon’s nerves. “What’s the situation, Doctor?” she asked, blinking back tears.
He removed his stethoscope and asked, “Was he taking medications of any kind, especially barbiturates?”
“Nothing. Other than an occasional vitamin.”
“Well, all the symptoms are quite consistent with chloral hydrate overdosage-or even poisoning. Th
e slip in his pocket seems accurate in that respect. Strange that it should even have been there.”
“But what are his chances?”
Dr. Hopkins seemed to ignore her as he took Jon’s blood pressure again. “Nurse!” he barked. “It’s only 66 over-what? Can’t even tell. We could be losing him.” He called out, “Gastric lavage! Possible Code Blue! And where’s that caffeine? Oh… thank you, nurse.” He now injected the caffeine into Jon’s arm.
Then he turned to Shannon. “Sorry, Mrs. Weber, first things first. I just ordered a stomach pump that will replace the contents of your husband’s stomach with sterile water. That’s to clear out any remaining toxins.”
“But he will… he will pull through, won’t he?” She heard her voice break with apprehension.
“It all depends on how much toxin he ingested. I understand that one of the paramedics thinks it was in his coffee. Does he use cups or mugs?”
“Mugs,” Marylou interjected.
Hopkins frowned as he made the obvious comment, “They hold more.”
A tube was inserted into Jon’s mouth and down his esophagus. The dual procedure began: infusion and evacuation, much as a dentist treats the mouths of his patients. Jon stirred a bit during the process, which all interpreted as a positive sign.
When the procedure was completed, Dr. Hopkins said, “Now it all depends on his blood pressure, Mrs. Weber.” Again they cuffed Jon’s left arm and pumped.
The pressure released in a welcome hiss. “Good,” Hopkins said. “We’re at 92 over 64. Better than the last. If he keeps this up, he should soon be out of the woods.”
Shannon slumped down onto the couch where Marylou was already seated.
The older woman put a comforting arm around her, and Shannon finally surrendered to her tears.
Jon slowly felt himself coming to. He’d been only vaguely aware of being whisked to the hospital, but there was no doubt now that’s exactly where he was. He shook his head and tried hard to focus on those around him. “Shannon, sweetheart,” he said thickly. “I’ll be okay, I think.”