13th Apostle (7 page)

A few minutes later
Muslims for World Truth (MWT)
Video Production Studios
London

News of Ludlow's death was shocking but not surprising. It made all the sense in the world. Maluka, himself, with the able assistance of Aijaz, had had similar plans for the Professor. Only the presence of two large and very muscular young men, apparently making their way to Ludlow's apartment a few steps ahead of him and Aijaz, had deterred Maluka from his immediate objective.

As they left, he and Aijaz had spotted two others, dressed in the same white jeans and sweaters as the first two. The second pair waited at the elevator door.

At the time, Maluka considered that the men might have been hired to protect Ludlow and the diary. As far as he knew, no one had intentions of taking the diary by force. And Maluka had known nothing of McCullum's Angels of Death. Now he knew better.

They had come, they had killed, but, apparently, they had not obtained what they had sought. From all reports he had accessed, official and otherwise, Maluka found no mention of the oven safe or, as per Peterson's description, the diary within.

The thought that a team of professional killers had failed to persuade the old Professor and his wife to reveal the diary's location perplexed Maluka. Another thought, however, concerned him more.

While Ludlow had lived, DeVris had been kept within a modicum of restraint. The DeVris-McCullum connection had blossomed with the Professor's retirement and move to England. Nevertheless, the threat of Ludlow's ever-watchful eye and his willingness to report any obvious infraction to the Museum administration, had kept DeVris from doing any real and permanent harm.

Now, with Ludlow completely out of the picture, the fate of the diary and the scroll would lie entirely in DeVris' hands. If, indeed, the scroll proved to bear witness to the existence of Jesus as nothing more than a mortal man, it would matter little to DeVris. Though the manuscript might contain proof of Islam's most sacred teachings, DeVris was quite likely to simply sell it off to the highest bidder whether their intention was to disclose the manuscript's sacred message or keep it hidden forever.

“We cannot wait,” Maluka informed Hassan. “Ludlow's death is a sign from Allah that the time has come for action. Focus on the girl and the American. There will come a time when they will follow the trail dictated by the contents of the diary. We shall let them lead us to the scroll. Then we shall claim that for which our people have waited far too long.”

“What if the scroll bears false witness?” Hassan asked. “Suppose it claims that Jesus was, indeed, the son of God?”

“Then it shall be melted down and returned back to the earth, where it belongs.”

A few minutes later
Office of the Translator, Shrine of the Book

“It couldn't be that simple,” Sabbie said softly.

“That's the beauty of it,” Gil said. “Look, first disregard all the dates, punctuation, and numbers. They're meant to misdirect you. Now, read the first two words, skip two words, read two words, and skip the next two. Go ahead.”

“But it's so obvious,” she protested. “It could be seen by anybody.”

“That's what makes it work. The best place to hide a tree is in the forest. Look how long it took us to get it. And we knew it was there,” he added.

“What are you talking about?”

“Elias knew that people see what they expect to see,” Gil explained. “It's one of the oldest tricks in the book. The ancient Greeks used to tattoo secret communiqués on the shaved heads of slaves. They'd let the hair grow in and send the slave off to the intended recipient. The recipient would shave the slave's head and read the message. No enemy along the way expected a message to be tattooed on the scalp, so no one ever looked for it. Elias knew the best way to keep his message safe was to be sure that no one to knew it was there.”

“Seems much too risky to me. I don't think he'd take the chance,” she argued.

“Look,” Gil continued, trying another approach. “You said it yourself. Most people couldn't read back then and even if they
could
read and they
were
looking for a hidden message, chances are they'd be looking for a simple code, a substitution system—letter for letter.”

“Like I was,” Sabbie said thoughtfully.

“Exactly.”

She was up out of her chair, gathering papers, using the two-word pattern to translate and dictate phrases as fast as Gil could write them down. With alternate two-word phrases discarded, sentence after sentence revealed itself, simple and powerful in its honesty and its pain.

The words were those of Brother Elias, monk of Weymouth Monastery in England.

To Elias, there had been given a scroll, made of copper and brought from the Holy Land by William, Lord of Weymouth Shire and knight of the Crusades. Lord William was Elias' brother though not by birth. The monk and the knight were brothers, the monk explained, by “spirit and upbringing if not by blood.”

Lord William's story was both heroic and tragic. While serving God and King in the Holy Land, he had been wounded and left among the legions of dead and dying on their battleground near Qumran. A Muslim in soldier's garb brought the knight to a cave nearby, where he tended William's injuries and brought him food and drink.

Each morning the Muslim soldier left the cave and joined the fighting legions that William could hear in the distance. Each night, the soldier returned, bringing fresh food and drink. They shared no common language but were able to make themselves understood, one to the other, of their intent and their feelings. As the days passed, William grew strong yet he wondered if his benefactor would ever permit him to leave.

On the morning that William was first able to stand on his own, the soldier brought him to the backmost section of the cave and revealed to him an ancient copper scroll secreted in a wooden casket. William appreciated well the importance of this find and knew, as well, that for some reason the soldier did not wish it to fall into the hands of his Muslim comrades. In words that he hoped the soldier might understand, William pledged his liege to protect that which was so important to one who had been so merciful.

That evening the soldier left and never returned.

William waited for several days, consuming what food and drink remained, then in the dark of night, he left in hopes of making his way home. As he had promised, he took the scroll with him.

After many long months, William returned to his beloved England. Home, however, did not afford him the sanctuary he anticipated. While he had been away, sustaining wounds in the name of the Church, the local Abbot had usurped William's castle and lands and was now unwilling to return so profitable of an acquisition.

Upon hearing of William's prize from the Holy Land, which the knight had brought to his brother, Elias, for translation, Father Abbot declared the scroll to be the work of the devil and called for ritual redemption by fire. As was the law, upon the death of the knight, the Church would become the beneficiary of all property, land and otherwise, previously held by the heretic.

William was executed, burned at the stake, though not before Elias revealed to him the true contents of the scroll. Elias realized William had discovered the writings of one who walked and talked with the messiah, Yeshua, which is what he might very well have been called at that time.

“Jesus!” Gil exclaimed.

“Exactly,” Sabbie replied. “If what this diary says is true, the scroll William took from the cave contained the only firsthand account in existence of the life and the death of Jesus, then called Yeshua.

“Can you imagine what such a find would mean?” she continued with excitement. “To know, with certainty, exactly what happened in Jesus' life, to see it as if we were there?”

Gil shook his head at the enormity of it.

“There's more,” she said. “Remember, the last section of The Cave 3 Scroll says that he who finds its mate will discover the key to the locations of the many treasures described in The Cave 3 Scroll. If Elias' scroll turns out to be the mate to The Cave 3, it could be expected to hold even more than priceless proof of the life of Jesus. At the same time it may very well provide a map to a storehouse of riches beyond measure.”

Before Gil could respond, Sabbie continued, her face far more serious than it had been a moment ago. “It also means that any person or organization that seeks power or wealth, religious vindication or domination, will do anything they can to get hold of this scroll. Anything, including killing anyone who stands in its way. They may have begun already,” she added thoughtfully.

“But we still have no idea where the scroll is.”

“Yes, but they don't know that,” she said.

“Well, I don't know who ‘they' is,” he said, trying to minimize her latest detour into paranoia. “All I know is that this is all that Elias left behind, so there must be a clue to where the scroll is hidden in these.” Gil held up a stack of deciphered pages.

“Or somewhere else,” Sabbie said.

Gil looked up in surprise.

She walked to the safe, opened it, and handed Gil a new stack of papers. These copies were crisp and clear. Each was formatted in the same accounting layout as the muddy copies they had just deciphered but these pages were easily read. Most importantly, these pages contained information he had never seen before.

“The pages we just deciphered comprise only half of the diary, the second half,” she explained. “These new pages make up the first half of the diary.”

“So Elias' story was actually part two?” Gil asked.

“Exactly.”

“Then why didn't you give me the first section in the beginning?”

“Nobody has a copy of this,” she said.

“Not even DeVris?”

“Especially not DeVris. Ludlow has never trusted him. Said the man has no conscience and…no soul.”

“And what's your take on DeVris?” Gil asked.

“I think Ludlow was being kind.”

Gil picked up a pencil and began to circle every other two-word combination.

“That's not going to work,” Sabbie said. “The words in these pages can't be arranged into sentences. They are simply names and places. They document who bought which tapestry and for how much, just like any other accounting journal.”

“Because that's exactly what it is,” Gil said simply.

This diary, both parts of it, was almost certainly one of the Church's Books of Record, Gil explained. Elias was probably the most literate of the monks. It would have been naturally to choose him as the official Keeper of Records for his monastery.

From what Gil could surmise, Elias had used the first section of the diary for the record keeping for which the book was intended and had used the second half of the book as his personal diary. By putting his hidden message into the same format as the accounting pages that filled the front of the diary, then placing it in the back part of the book, all of the pages looked alike from start to finish; especially to those who couldn't read.

“But what if someone
could
read?” Sabbie asked.

“Elias must have thought that wasn't likely or he wouldn't have done it this way,” Gil said.

He shook his head slowly. There was something else he wasn't seeing. It kept popping into his thoughts, then disappearing before he could get hold of it.

“But you think it's in here?”

“The location of the scroll? Yeah, it's got to be,” Gil concluded. “I'd bet my life on it.”

Gil waited for Sabbie's usual comeback. She looked up with no trace of a smile. Her silence scared the hell out of him.

Day Seven, mid-morning
Office of the Translator

Gil had been hard at work since seven in the morning and, with the exception of a raging headache, he had nothing to show for it. Sabbie, on the other hand, strolled in at her own leisure.

“Well, how nice of you to join us,” he said sarcastically.

“I had some things to take care of. I should have told you I'd be late.”

“Among other things,” Gil continued.

Sabbie looked up in surprise.

“You know you might have warned me that the guard last night was going to give me a better feel than I've had from anyone in years,” he said.

She smiled at his description.

“Or that almost every piece of paper on my person, including my used Kleenex, would be open to inspection,” he went on. “I expected it on the way in, but why did they do it last night, on the way out? Never did that before,” he mused.

“As of yesterday, you're considered a Gimmel, the third highest level of security risk. Once you saw the diary, you gave up the right to physical privacy. That's the trade-off.”

Gil threw her a dirty look.

“You don't want to know what a Aleph or Bet have to go through,” she laughed.

“Then how come you get to pass by the friendly hands of our Gestapo Museum guard with only the lightest of pat-downs?”

Her smiled faded and a soft sadness crept across her face. “You don't want to know,” she said quietly.

“Yes, I do. Come on. How come you get special treatment?

She moved closer, her face only inches from his, and smiled impudently. “Because most people, especially men—but women too—feel funny about touching someone who's been raped. Even if it's nothing more than a standard security frisk, it makes them uncomfortable. In my case, they would rather risk my smuggling sensitive information out of the Museum than to chance offending me and creating a scene.”

Gil struggled to sort through her comeback. If Sabbie had wanted him to know she had been raped, she had chosen a particularly lousy way to tell him. No accident, he concluded. She wasn't about to waste the shock value of it. He wasn't certain what she expected but he wasn't buying into the game.

“I didn't know,” he said simply. He stared back unblinkingly.

“About which, the rape or people's reactions?” she asked haughtily.

“Either.”

“Well, it's true. Once people know you've been raped, they never treat you the same again. Every time they see you, the first thing they think about is the rape. You can see it in their eyes. It affects how they treat you, how they speak to you, certainly, how they touch you.”

Her tone, though it had started out as defiant, had become honest and passionate.

“It's probably a lot like being fat or being a nun,” she continued. “Few people are able to get past that first big fact. In my case, it works to my advantage. I get to bypass the groping sweaty hands that wait for you every time you leave the building, while you get a free thrill every time,” she added with a mischievous grin.

“Thanks a lot!” he said sarcastically.

“So, how's it going?” she asked.

“What, the pattern hunting? It's not,” Gil admitted.

“What would help?”

“A two-by-four applied directly to the back of my head. Look, as far as I can see, Elias' message says nothing about the scroll. Nada, zilch, zippo,” he concluded with a pop of his lips.

“Come on,” she said warmly. “You need a break.” She took him by the hand and walked toward the door. “I'm going to show you what you've been working for.”

The next two hours passed as if they had been minutes. The Museum's plethora of riches, beauty, ingenuity, and sheer antiquity were overwhelming. He had expected to see Judaica, historical finds of disintegrating paper and rusted metal. He was met with fourteenth-century sculptures of Venus, astounding riches of Turkish Sultans, the works of Pollock, Ernst, Rembrandt, Rodin, and hundreds of other treasures that, each in itself, would have warranted its own place of exhibit.

“It's not like anything I've ever seen before,” Gil said.

“When I first came here I felt like I had found a time capsule that contained the best of mankind. Now, I don't get to see almost any of it,” she said. “Some of the exhibitions remain but there are always new ones. I promise myself I'll come more often, but unless I'm taking someone around, I never make the time.”

“What a shame.”

“Yes.”

They stood in the Art Garden surrounded by fig trees and olive bushes. Massive sculptures rose like the rock islands of Japan. She guided him to one of the largest monuments.

“This one's by Ezra Orion,” she said.

The five-story concrete staircase seemed to lead to heaven.

“Isn't it amazing?” she asked. “It almost beckons you to ascend, to be something greater than you are. Like a promise that is waiting to be fulfilled.

“The morning after the rape, I came here,” Sabbie continued. “It was dawn. I wasn't working at the Museum then, I sneaked in through a small break in the front fence near the rosemary bushes. I never told anyone where the opening was, so I could always come back. They say they found me unconscious on the sculpture's first step. They couldn't understand why I didn't go to the hospital first but I needed to come here, to this staircase. I knew I would find what I needed here.”

Gil nodded to tell her that he understood, though clearly he did not.

They stood, side by side, without speaking then continued through the garden. Water flows sprang from a fountain-sculpture, and the small stones of a Zen Garden crunched under their feet.

“It's paradise,” he said simply.

She nodded and squeezed his hand.

“There's more,” she said. “Come on.”