13th Apostle (10 page)

Day Eight, mid-afternoon
Office of the Translator, Shrine of the Book
Israel Museum

Sabbie closed the door behind her but held onto the knob to prevent the lock from making any noise. Gil looked up in surprise. The mix of emotions on her face was unreadable. She was pale and her breathing rapid. From under her arms, dark circles of sweat spread onto her pale blue blouse.

“What's wrong?” he asked anxiously.

“How long have you been here?” she whispered.

“Just got here, why?”

“Did you walk through the lobby?”

“No, I flew in the window,” he retorted. “What's going on?”

She was trembling. He suddenly remembered the rape.

“Hey, I was only joking. What happened?”

“Shhh. Keep your voice down.” She opened the safe with one hand and, stretching as far as she could, picked up some papers from the desk with the other. “Here, take these and shred them. Only a few sheets at a time. The last thing we need is for that thing to jam.”

“Hey, these are my notes,” Gil protested.

“I can't believe I didn't see it. Neither of us did,” she continued.

“Neither of us saw what?”

“Not you. Ludlow. He said McCullum was bad news, but it never occurred to him that…Never mind,” she said roughly. “Here do these, too.”

Gil shredded as directed. He didn't need the notes anyway.

“Come here,” she said, still sorting through the safe's contents.

With one movement, she had unbuttoned his slacks and pulled his shirt free.

“Suck in your gut,” she commanded.

“What?”

“Suck it in.” He stood motionless as she thrust a thick wad of paper between his bare skin and his underwear, then spun him around and performed a similar action on his backside. She ordered him to button up.

Only the fear on her face kept him from joking.

“Got any coffee?” she asked.

It was cold, Gil told her. She didn't care. She ordered him to open the shredder and dump the coffee onto the topmost bits of paper. He rolled his eyes and shook his head, then complied.

By the time he turned back, she had pulled off her slacks and was struggling into a pair of pantyhose. Within seconds, she had stowed the remainder of the notes, divided equally next to each thigh. Gently, she withdrew the diary from the safe, carefully removed the hidden page from its plastic bag, placed the sheet between the diary's cover and first page, slid the diary back into the zip-lock, and unceremoniously stuffed the entire book in the crotch of her pantyhose.

The comment slipped out before he knew it was coming. “Attractive,” he said. “But it's going to make you walk a little funny, don't you think?”

She looked up in surprise.

“We don't have much time. Right now McCullum is probably confirming that DeVris was lying to him about having the diary. That's the only thing that would have brought him here. If he figures out that DeVris doesn't have the extra page of the diary, he's going to realize that someone has been playing DeVris while DeVris was playing him. And he's going to be mad as hell.”

The giant from Jack and the Beanstalk crossed Gil's mind. “Fee, fi, fo, fum.” As a kid, the image always terrified Gil. It was not a comforting thought now.

“Who's McCullum?” he asked.

“He's CEO of White Americans to Save Christianity, a far right-wing Evangelical organization that ‘stands alone and controls the many,' as the newspapers describe it. It's an offshoot of the old KKK and, when called to action, can make the old organization look like a bunch of choir girls. It's sanctioned by no one but bigger in finance than you want to know. They are intent on making the U.S. a one-religion one-race country or, better yet, world. McCullum's more like the Grand Wizard than the CEO and to see him, you'd think he was just another mover and shaker from Wall Street, which he is,” she added.

There were at least three balls in play, she explained: DeVris, McCullum, and somebody else. While each would do anything to get hold of the scroll, separately they were limited. McCullum had the power, influence, and money. DeVris had up-to-date info on their progress, or so he thought. It was the third one that troubled her.

“We don't know what he brings to the pot. There could even be others involved for all I know.”

Sabbie continued rearranging the office. She said that, in the beginning, she thought the unknown player was someone on the inside, working within the Museum complex. Her computer terminal had been accessed and her drawers carefully jimmied, but nothing was ever missing. The intruder had never gotten to her safe; at least, not to her knowledge. She realized that the whole thing could be chalked up to one of the workers accessing pornographic websites at night and looking around for some money. When she saw that George's system had been breached, however…

“Wait a minute! George who?” Gil interrupted.

“George. Your George, whatever his last name is.”

“
My
George! How do you know his system has been breached? Which? His work files or his e-mail?

“Both. That's what made me realize he was involved,” she explained.

“Involved in what, getting hold of the scroll? Because he broke into his own systems?”

“No, because he didn't tell you,” she explained.

Gil protested that there could be a thousand reasons why George didn't alert him to a hack-in.

“Name one,” she said.

“Well, for starters, he's the laziest son-of-bitch in the world. Even if he knew there was a breech, unless it was bad for business, he'd just as soon turn the other way.”

“Look, do you have any idea what's at stake here? Can you even conceive of how much the scroll would be worth to someone who wanted to exploit it or, worse, to destroy it?”

“Enough to kill for it,” he said, hoping she would disagree.

“We've had three murders in three months, including the so-called suicide and a mugging, so you tell me. As far as I can see, McCullum's the big player here. If DeVris gets the scroll he'll turn it over to McCullum. The same with George—I know, you think there's no way George is involved—anyway, WATSC has a tremendous stake in this. If the scroll turns out to testify to the fact that Jesus was the son of God, McCullum will hold the proof in the palm of his hand.”

“And if it doesn't?” Gil asked.

“Then the scroll will disappear from the face of the earth.”

“Suppose the scroll is nothing more than the mate to The Cave 3 Scroll?”

“Then it unlocks the locations of great treasures. So much the better,” she said. “For McCullum and his organization, it's win-win-win. God, he's fucking brilliant.

“One thing for sure,” she added, as she turned to leave. “If McCullum's involved, nothing's sacred.”

“Did you say ‘sacred' or ‘safe'?” Gil asked.

“Both,” she answered.

“In that case, don't forget the gun in the upper right-hand drawer,” Gil advised.

A few minutes later

Gil followed the directions Sabbie had written on the back of the yellow index card. She had walked ahead of him and, while she chatted with the guard, he had used the payphone to call the phone number as instructed.

After hitting zero twice to get an operator he carefully, very carefully, pronounced the phonetic representation of a single word. As Sabbie had instructed, Gil hung up the phone, held his coat in front of him, and plastered a smile on his face.

On cue, he walked up to her amid the blaring alarms and scurrying guards, and was given a quick one-handed pat-down, then waved on through.

“They're looking for a stranger with a bomb who just called in the threat. If you weren't with me, you'd be flat on the table with the guard's…”

“Please, I can do without the details,” he said, thoroughly relieved to be out of the building. “Can't they put you in prison for calling in a false bomb threat?” He thought better than to make some reference to her previous involvement with the law.

“I didn't call it in, you did,” she said over her shoulder. She had led him well out of sight of the guard's door and into the bustling campus of the Museum Complex.

They walked quickly toward the gate where taxis waited hungrily for new passengers.

“I just wish I could have taken the diary with us,” she said thoughtfully. “It was a judgment call and I was afraid to risk…”

“You left it behind?” Gil asked in surprise. He had seen her stuff it in her crotch not ten minutes earlier.

“Of course not. I dropped it in the Museum's overnight mail box.”

“Won't they check all the mail?”

“Only the incoming mail. I just wish we had the translation with us, especially the hidden page,” she added thoughtfully. “I have a feeling we're going to need it.”

“Me, too.” Gil said. “So I thought it would be a good idea to bring it along.”

Gil pulled his wallet from his pocket, from the wallet a wad of U.S. currency. The first and last bills in the pile appeared unremarkable, but on every other bill were carefully printed notes; duplicates of the hidden message that Elias had stuck in the binding of the diary and copies of the translations that now lay shredded and soggy with cold coffee.

“They never look at your money,” he announced. “Even without your bomb scare.”

“
Your
bomb scare,” she reminded him flippantly, but her smile was warm and she nodded in silent confirmation of a job well done.

Her mood changed suddenly. “Jesus! If they had searched your wallet, they would have gotten the whole translation, all deciphered, everything, even the hidden page.”

“Yes, but they didn't,” Gil said.

“That was the most stupid-ass thing you could have done.”

“I didn't know you cared,” he said teasingly. He waited for her response.

“You could have blown everything,” she answered with a shake of her head.

“Well, I didn't, did I?” he countered sharply. “Your guards like all security people follow protocols. That's what gives terrorists the edge. So the notes were never in danger. And, by the way, you're very welcome.”

They had arrived at the entrance gate to the complex and a taxi, anticipating their need, had pulled up.

“Airport,” Sabbie instructed the driver.

Gil slid into the back seat next to her.

“By the way, here's your yellow card. Never got to shred it,” he said, handing her the index card from the top drawer of her desk.

“Never saw it before,” she said. “It's not mine.”

One hour earlier
Office of Dr. Anton DeVris

Each of the twin hulks was six-foot-six at least, with blond hair, broad shouldered, and dressed in a white jumpsuit. With faces that bore no trace of an expression. McCullum's identical Power Angels guarded DeVris' door. Inside, the man they would gladly give their life for, questioned the Director of Acquisitions.

McCullum puffed his cigar as he spoke, taking obvious pleasure in the discomfort on DeVris' face.

“I have learned…not from you…but from an altogether other source…that, contrary to your assurances, you are
not
in possession of the Weymouth diary.”

“Yes, that is true, technically speaking,” DeVris began nervously.

WATSC's leader rose to his feet, and reached a beefy hand across the Director's desk. His grip half encircled DeVris' neck.

“No bullshit,” McCullum said. He released his hold, returned to his seat, then picked up a large book from the table next to his chair and browsed through it as DeVris spoke.

The Director chose his words with care. “It is true that, at this moment, I am not in possession of the Weymouth diary. I should not have represented myself as such but…”

McCullum sat forward to indicate his displeasure.

“I should not have misrepresented that fact,” DeVris continued.

“Lied,” McCullum corrected. He continued to casually thumb through the book.

“I should not have lied. May I explain why I did it?”

“If you can do so in two sentences or less.”

DeVris searched frantically for the best defense; an excuse that would take the onus off of him without placing it on McCullum.

Even as the words left his mouth, DeVris knew he had taken a wrong turn.

“I just wanted to spare you…” he began.

The power behind the book coming flat against his head threw the Director against the wall. Blood trickled from his right ear, and the cold terror that swept up from his stomach made him fear he would urinate in his pants. He retained hearing on one side only.

DeVris pulled himself up to his chair. He pushed past the shock and pain and considered his next statement carefully. He might explain that the facsimile he had printed covertly from Ludlow's program would serve McCullum's purposes just as well as the diary itself. He could assure McCullum that within a fortnight he would be able to gain entrance to Ludlow's apartment and open the oven safe in which the diary was hidden. He rejected both statements. Either justification, if spoken, was tantamount to suicide.

DeVris took the only safe path possible. “I was wrong to deceive you,” he said.

McCullum nodded.

“There is no excuse. I will never do it again.”

Another nod.

“Now tell me what I need to know,” McCullum said. And DeVris did; every thought, every belief, every fact he knew to be true about Sabbie and Gil, Ludlow and the diary, and his own plans for securing the mate to The Cave 3 Scroll. Each sentence was presented simply, with no pretense.

“Is there anything else you want to tell me?” McCullum asked.

DeVris considered a repeated apology, then thought better of it. He shook his head.

“One question,” McCullum added as he rose to leave. “Should I be concerned about Sabbie's reliability? Given her history and Ludlow's recent demise, is she likely to convince her new American friend to join her in some foolhardy adventure?”

“She may be up for it,” DeVris confirmed, “but not him. He's a monkey with a coconut.”

As McCullum's guest on a hunting trip to Kenya the previous year, DeVris had witnessed natives trap monkeys by the use of a coconut and an earthen jar. The opening at the top of the jar was slightly larger than the coconut, so there was just enough room for the coconut to slide in. The jars with the coconuts were left tethered to trees at various points around the compound. When a curious monkey reached in and tightened his little fingers around the coconut, he discovered the opening was not large enough to allow him to pull his treasure out.

Throughout their journey, DeVris and McCullum witnessed monkeys, their arms stuck in jars, trapped by their unwillingness to let go. There they remained until they were shipped off on a boat or until they starved to death.

“This American is just another greedy monkey determined to get the prize no matter what the cost,” DeVris affirmed.

“You think so?” McCullum asked. “I was just wondering if this one might just crash the earthen jar to the ground and run off with his prize.”

“No need to worry,” DeVris declared with certainty. “This little monkey's not going anywhere.”