Strong As Steel

by Jon Land

  “As in Caitlin’s father.”

  “My career’s as dead as him,” Jones said, the words sounding like he had to push them past the icicles forming in his mouth. “You can take the car back to the airport. Hope you find a nonstop flight for your trouble.”

  “After what we just learned, you’re dropping this, Jones?”

  “You’re not listening to me. I’m not dropping this; I got dropped. Big bad Washington dropped me. They only recognize two things: assets and liabilities. You get carte blanche to operate as an asset, and you don’t exist anymore as a liability.”

  “What happens to you now?”

  “I survive and live to fight another day. Memories are short in Washington. It’s the city of goldfish, where the world begins again every thirty seconds.”

  “About the same time it would take to kill the whole world, if this stuff ever gets loose, Jones.”

  * * *

  Cort Wesley was in the terminal, waiting for his flight to be called, when his phone buzzed with a call from Dylan.

  “How’s the girlfriend?”

  “Oh, man, I think she might be the one.”

  “Listen, son—”

  “Give it a rest, Dad. I’m kidding. Selina’s off in Los Angeles pushing painkillers or something.”

  “Certain to return sometime soon?”

  “She’s got my number.”

  “And you’ve got hers.”

  “I texted her last night. No response.”

  “What’s that mean in millennial etiquette?”

  “Am I a millennial?”

  “Assume so for now.”

  “I think she’s blowing me off, Dad. I feel used.”

  “Is that you kidding again?”

  “Only a little, actually.”

  “Let me tell you something I’ve learned the hard way. When you feel used, it’s often because you were using somebody else, too.”

  “Depends on your perspective. Do you think Caitlin liked her?”

  “Hard to tell, son. But I’ve seen Caitlin watch people like that before—most of them she’d either made as suspects or were about to draw down on her.”

  “Where does Selina fit into that picture?”

  “I don’t know,” Cort Wesley said. “Probably nowhere. She was probably just being protective. You know Caitlin.”

  “I wonder what they talked about in the ladies’ room.”

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  “Selina ever return your jeans?”

  “The ones you like so much? No.”

  “Good. You call me with more news on that bone box?”

  “I found some … anomalies. You know what that word means?”

  “How about a father who’s got an asshole for a son?” Cort Wesley retorted, thinking back to how Doc had used that same word up in the CDC’s Crypt.

  “I’ll take that as a yes. Anyway, I compared that inscription I translated to others from the period and found a few things that don’t add up.”

  “Like what?”

  “You know what a patina is?” Dylan asked.

  “No.”

  “It’s the residue that collects on the surface of an ossuary, kind of like moss, only not moss.”

  “Okay,” said Cort Wesley.

  “I think the box itself is authentic, dating back all of those couple thousand years. The problem is the Aramaic description I translated. When I enlarged and enhanced the pictures, it was clear the patina inside the letters of the inscription is completely different than on the structure of the ossuary itself.”

  “So you’re telling me the box was made two thousand years ago but the inscription wasn’t.”

  “Even from the pictures, you can tell it’s off by a bunch. A thousand years or more.”

  Cort Wesley tried to make sense of that. “All this for something a college kid can tell was a fake from pictures?”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dad, and you’re missing the point.”

  “Which point is that?”

  “When was the ossuary uncovered, originally?”

  Cort Wesley tried to remember what Caitlin had told him. “Stolen from a Jerusalem cave and brought to Turkey in 1959, I think.”

  “They may not have noticed the difference in patinas that long ago, or maybe they didn’t care. Beyond that, there’s plenty of scholars who’d say what I just told you was bullshit, that patinas age differently in the body of the box as opposed to the lettering. Something to do with variances in structural integrity, from what I was able to learn.”

  Cort Wesley hesitated. “Is there any way somebody could have traced the trail of this learning you did, find you through what you dug up?”

  “I was doing Google searches, Dad, not hacking government websites.”

  “Good thing, because whatever’s going on here is heating up in a hurry. Maybe you should go join your brother in Europe.”

  “He’s coming back Saturday, day before I leave.”

  “Then be careful.”

  “Just don’t send Paz. I can take care of myself. I don’t need him watching my back.”

  “Believe me,” Cort Wesley told his oldest son, thinking of what he’d learned at the CDC, “you need him.”

  87

  ATLANTA, GEORGIA

  “Can we get on with this?” Dylan asked him. “I was all excited. Did I ever tell you what a buzzkill you are?”

  “It’s kind of a father’s job. So, what did you find?” Cort Wesley continued. “And please don’t use the word ‘anomaly.’”

  “You need to pay attention and stop me if I lose you.”

  “You haven’t lost me yet, son.”

  “Good, because I found something else, another anomaly,” Dylan said, stretching the word out, “starting with the fact that whoever carved this inscription into that ossuary was as meticulous as they could be, which wasn’t meticulous enough. If these bones really did belong to Jesus, the inscription would’ve been written strictly in Aramaic. But this, as it turns out, is classical Syriac.”

  Dylan had barely gotten started and Cort Wesley found himself already confused. “I thought the language was Aramaic.”

  “It is. Classical Syriac isn’t a language, it’s a dialect—the most popular Aramaic dialect not during Jesus’ time but between roughly the fifth and eighth centuries. Issues with the syntax, punctuation, and lettering suggest this inscription was done by someone trying to imitate what he thought was the Aramaic of Jesus’ era, but he ended up using characters that didn’t exist until the fifth century at the earliest.”

  “Anomalies,” Cort Wesley made himself repeat.

  “The prefixes or curve of the letters don’t match the language of the time. I could go into more detail but you’d be bored as hell and would need to be in front of a computer to follow the distinctions.”

  “I never heard you talk like this before, son. Always had your brother pegged as the smart one.”

  “I got pretty good grades at Brown, you know.”

  “For some reason, that didn’t register with me. But I’ll tell you what does register: you saying that the inscription on that ossuary is a forgery, which means it doesn’t contain the bones of Christ, after all.”

  “That would be my conclusion, Dad, also because, under further review, the lines aren’t totally straight and the angles of the letters don’t match up. Could be whoever was behind this found a truly ancient ossuary and altered the existing inscription just enough to create the hoax. Way back then, they’d have no reason to suspect anyone would ever notice. Never could imagine the kind of technology we use today—or, really, any technology at all.”

  “You said between the fifth and eighth centuries,” Cort Wesley noted. “Is it possible the bones actually came from much later? Say, the late fourteenth century?” he added casually, not wanting to be more specific or mention the bubonic plague.

  “Of course, maybe even more likely, given that it better explains how the forger could have empl
oyed the wrong dialect of Aramaic. Fourteen hundred years removed, back in those days, how the hell could he have known? That time line would also explain the subtle differences in the patina, something else that wouldn’t have been a consideration for a forger in the fourteenth century. But it makes perfect sense from a historical perspective, too.”

  “How’s that?” Cort Wesley asked, still not believing this was Dylan he was talking to.

  “Well,” the boy said, “there was a thing called the Western Schism that went on from the late fourteenth century through the early fifteenth. I’ll spare you the details, but it was basically an internal war in the Church that led to there being two popes at the same time. It isn’t too much of a stretch to figure that one of the sides came up with this plan as a way of using the bones of Christ as leverage to serve their cause. We’ll never know what happened from that point, but it’s pretty clear the forged bone box went missing for a long time before somebody got their hands on it again.”

  Cort Wesley was left shaking his head, still amazed by the product of his son’s efforts, how he’d managed to fit all the pieces together, this Western Schism happening at roughly the same time the Black Death was running rampant. “I am damn impressed, son. Thank you.”

  “Glad to be of service, Dad. Gotta go, the doorbell’s ringing.”

  “Tell Paz I said hello,” Cort Wesley finished, looking up to see Leroy Epps seated next to him.

  “Believe we could both use a root beer right now, bubba.”

  * * *

  Cort Wesley kept the phone at his ear so nobody would notice him talking to somebody who wasn’t there. “I couldn’t find one before, and our flight’s about to board.”

  “Our flight,” Leroy repeated, flashing a toothy grin. “Don’t want to burst your bubble or anything, but I don’t require an airplane to get me somewhere I want to be. Meanwhile, you’re in one hell of a pickle this time.”

  “Never thought I’d miss Jones, champ.”

  “Man makes his bed, so he can sleep in it. When he falls out, that’s on him, too.”

  “We could’ve used his help on this, big-time, though.”

  “He might still show.”

  “Not in time for it to matter, the way things are headed,” Cort Wesley said, as much to himself as to the ghost. “A little direction here would be appreciated.”

  “As it pertains to the road ahead, is what you’re referring to.”

  Cort Wesley nodded.

  “Road ahead is a pickle too, bubba.”

  “That’s the best you can do?”

  “We all have our limits,” Leroy told him. “Where I be now just imposes different ones. I’ve seen enough of the future in my time here to know it ain’t set, not nearly at all. You see what’s coming, but you can’t be sure until it gets here.”

  “What’s coming? Can you tell me that much?”

  The ghost shrugged his narrow, bony shoulders. “Can’t tell you much more than you already know, aside from this: End’s coming, one way or another.”

  “Thanks for the help, champ,” Cort Wesley chided.

  “Your arm seems better,” Leroy said, looking at it.

  “Not enough. You heard what that walk-in clinic doctor said, that it might never come back all the way.”

  “Just as likely that it will.”

  “Until the next one, champ. Can’t you just heal me or something?”

  “I believe you have me confused for God. But I do have a question for you, too, bubba: What’s an anom-a-ly?”

  Cort Wesley’s phone rang and he saw it was Caitlin, finally calling him back, as he moved to take his place in the proper boarding line.

  “It’s bad, isn’t it?” she said, hearing his voice crack when he answered.

  “No, Ranger, it’s worse.”

  88

  SHAVANO PARK, TEXAS

  It wasn’t Colonel Guillermo Paz at the door at all.

  “I didn’t expect you back so soon,” Dylan said, as Selina Escolante brushed past him through the door.

  “Los Angeles sucked. I might as well have been valeting cars at the restaurants I picked up all the tabs at.” She yanked off a thin, biker-style leather jacket. “What have you got to drink here? I need something hard.”

  “What’s your poison?”

  “The Rémy that costs two hundred and fifty bucks per glass, but I’d settle for bourbon.”

  “Maker’s or Jack?”

  Selina nodded, impressed. “Not such a little boy after all, are you?”

  Dylan smirked. “Whoever said I was little?”

  He went to fetch both bottles and met Selina in the kitchen, where she’d filled three-quarters of a tall glass with crushed ice from the refrigerator’s dispenser.

  “Got any mint leaves?”

  “This isn’t a bar.”

  “Don’t feel bad, boy. Most of them don’t have mint leaves, either.”

  “I wasn’t feeling bad,” Dylan said, handing Selina both of the bourbon bottles.

  She chose the Maker’s Mark and poured it over the ice, which crackled and shrank up under the spill. The glass was full by the time she finished, with the crushed ice reaching all the way to the top.

  “Want to join me?” she asked Dylan, sounding a bit guilty about the oversight. “I could grab another glass.”

  “No, thanks. I’m working on something.”

  Selina sipped at her drink, the ice sloshing up against her lips. “You don’t go back to school until next week.”

  “This isn’t for school. It’s that thing for my dad.”

  Selina frowned. “Based on what you’ve told me about your dad’s ‘work,’ I don’t see how you fit into the picture.”

  Dylan rolled his eyes. “Thanks. A lot.”

  “I meant it as a compliment, boy.”

  “Well, it didn’t come out that way. And I guess I forgot to tell you I’m majoring in archaeology at Brown, which includes knowing my way around ancient languages.”

  “You mean the kind nobody ever speaks? Hey, you really are smarter than you look. And me thinking you were just a pretty face.”

  He drew closer to her. “Have you looked in the mirror lately?”

  She laid her drink down and grabbed him around the waist, hands dipping lower through his jeans. “I forgot to bring your jeans back.”

  “Don’t bother.”

  “Then how I could see you in them?”

  “They look better on you anyway, believe me,” Dylan said, feeling a dam break inside him as she pressed tighter against him.

  “Won’t know that until we do a comparison test, like a double-blind clinical trial.”

  “With jeans?”

  Selina reached back with a single hand, flailing about the counter for her drink. “I’m game if you are.”

  “Game for what?”

  “Can’t find out if you don’t play,” she said, cupping her hands around his neck and easing him closer.

  Dylan could hear the clink of the crushed ice shifting about, felt the glass’s coldness against the back of his neck. “Do you even have another gear?”

  Selina eased away from him and sipped at her drink. “Why don’t you let me make you one of these and we’ll find out?”

  89

  MARBLE FALLS, TEXAS

  Caitlin was standing in the driveway, shrouded by the floating mist and feeling the flutter of drizzle against her clothes and hair, when the headlights poured down the dead end on which D. W. Tepper had lived for as long as she’d known him. She recognized the truck as his because one of the headlight fixtures was cracked and sliced through the darkness in the shape of a spiderweb on that side.

  She stepped to the side to make room for the truck, catching Tepper’s incredulous expression in the spill of the floodlight mounted over the garage that he’d converted into an apartment for one of his grown kids. He stepped out of the truck, not seeming to notice the mist or the drizzle any more than Caitlin did.

  “Why do I think this isn’t a
social call?”

  The log house was simple but sprawling, thanks to a number of additions to make room for his ever-expanding family. The detached garage was off to the side, a world unto itself, and the additions made the log home look absurdly pumped up, like a weight lifter on steroids.

  Caitlin took a deep breath, hearing raindrops patter against her jacket. “You notice that old Spanish mission out a ways from Wyatt Bass’s convenience store?”

  “I caught a glimpse of it, along with the stench drifting from that oil fire.”

  “It’s a gas fire, D.W.”

  “Whatever. You were saying?”

  “The late Mr. Bass steered me to it. Turns out a whole bunch of undocumented people are squatting there, same as they were in 1994. But you know that already, don’t you? You got pissed at me for not telling you something this afternoon I believe you already knew.”

  Tepper didn’t say anything one way or another. Caitlin waited him out, determined to get a response.

  “I hate you sometimes, Ranger,” he relented finally. “I ever tell you that before?”

  “Nope. This is the first time.”

  “Then I guess I never told you why: on account of you remind me so much of your damn father. And when I hate you it’s because I miss him.”

  “You miss him now?”

  “More than ever.”

  “Me too, Captain.”

  Tepper hitched up his jacket. “Let’s go inside.”

  “Out here’s just fine.”

  He looked up at the night sky. “It’s raining.”

  “I met a man at the mission named Daniel Aidman, a lawyer just like the father who preceded him, fighting the never-ending battle for migrants in these parts. He told me about my dad showing up there, but not what followed. He told me those people have been watching over that site in the desert ever since the night my dad shot four men and buried them, along with the shipping crates containing those ossuaries. It’s kind of a mission for them, and it explains what they were doing in Sonora the night the remains of those four men got pulled out of the ground. And they must’ve been there when the now dead principals of Bane Sturgess showed up a while before that, lugging a backhoe.”