The Tenth Saint (7 page)

“And … it was a warning. It said, ‘Cursed be he who brings these bones to light.’”

Four

T
he bones lay on the laboratory table, mocking Sarah. She’d been unable to leave the lab since the crew had excavated the coffin and delivered it four days prior. She had no appetite. She slept on a chair, in fits and starts, and then only when exhaustion was too much to bear. She was interested in nothing but studying the specimen, making some sense of the facts before her. The pelvis indicated the body was that of a man. By the long, narrow shape of the skull, the high cheek structure, the square mandible, the angular nose, and the length of the arm and leg bones, she deduced he was not African. She looked at the measurements again: six feet two inches from crown to heel. Caucasian. Definitely Caucasian. The bones were intact, save for two areas: a broken right wrist and a break in the lower left rib cage. Sarah ran a gloved finger over the wound. The severed bone was sharp, untempered by time or the forces of nature. He must have died in battle or in a conflict of some sort. She imagined a spear had delivered the deathblow, a violent thrust to the chest just below the heart.

Returning her attention to the skull, she touched the curves: the aristocratic cheekbones, the dark hollows where eyes once were, the chin. The state of the teeth disturbed her most. Straight and impossibly intact, they couldn’t possibly have belonged to a male of ancient vintage. She had no clue as to the age of the specimen—the radiocarbon dating, which could take weeks, would tell her that—but she deduced from the coffin construction that he dated to the early centuries of the Common Era. The facts contradicted themselves, at least for the time being, driving her mad with curiosity.

“My word, what are you doing here so early?” Daniel’s annoyingly chipper voice stirred Sarah from her reverie.

She looked at her watch: four in the morning. “I couldn’t sleep. What’s your excuse?”

“I’m a serial insomniac. Comes with the territory. Is that tea?”

“That makes two of us.” Sarah poured some tea into a mug for him. Her hand trembled, and some of the scalding liquid spilled onto her knuckle. Instinctively, she dropped the mug. She grimaced, more in disapproval of her clumsiness than in reaction to the pain.

“He’s not going anywhere, you know,” Daniel said, nodding toward the coffin. “You ought to get some sleep.”

“I’m quite fine.” She immediately regretted sounding so defensive.

He squatted to pick up the broken pieces. “You’re not fine. You’re exhausted. You couldn’t even pour the tea without shattering my favorite mug.”

She exhaled. “You’re right. It’s just that I’ve been obsessing about our friend. I’ve been chewing on the facts all night and can’t make it rhyme.” She walked to the coffin, eyeing the specimen. “What would a white guy be doing in Ethiopia that long ago?” she asked, not necessarily expecting an answer.

“I’m not convinced it was that long ago. The earliest recorded whites in Abyssinia were Roman missionaries traveling to spread the gospel of Christianity. That was, what, fourth or fifth century? The average height of Romans back then was maybe five feet seven. This guy is pretty tall, too tall to be of that era. Besides, look at the dentition.” He walked to the coffin and pointed out the upper molars. “See this? That’s a filling of some kind. Now, are you willing to tell me a fourth- or fifth-century man had dental work done?”

The observation took Sarah by surprise. The only things she had noticed about the teeth was that they were straight and, quite remarkably, all there. She felt embarrassed and a little annoyed that Daniel had picked up on this detail first.

“Obviously, we won’t know for sure until we get the labs back,” he continued, “but I’d bet the farm we’re looking at a modern man.”

“I don’t know. What about the warning carved into the coffin? Ge’ez is an ancient language.”

“Ah, but it’s used to this day by Ethiopian Orthodox holy men for liturgies and study. That inscription was probably carved by someone in the religious community. You said yourself a monk told you to get the hell out of there. That’s no coincidence.”

“Okay. So the church doesn’t want the tomb excavated or the bones exhumed. Why?”

He rubbed the stubbly growth on his jaw. “It wouldn’t be the first time the church hid something. My guess is that this is no ordinary tomb, that it holds some ancient secret the monks, including your creepy friend from the mountain, are keeping to themselves. We’re the infidels as far as they’re concerned. They don’t want their precious inscriptions to fall into our hands.”

Sarah studied Daniel’s face. His eyes glowed amber in the low lamplight, betraying a fierce intelligence. She recognized in him the same zeal for the business that she herself possessed. It impressed her and made her drop her defenses enough to allow that he might just be on her side.

“Speaking of the inscriptions, did you figure out what language we’re looking at?”

“It’s definitely Semitic, but I can’t place the exact dialect. There were so many Semitic dialects spoken in different parts of Arabia over a time span of a thousand or more years. We could be looking at anything. But here’s the part I don’t get: how did an obscure Semitic language from the other side of the Red Sea end up here? The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced we need Rada Kabede.”

“Who’s that?”

“A linguistics scholar in Addis. I worked with him on a project in Egypt. Sharp guy. I don’t know if he can whip out a speedy translation, but he can at least steer us in the right direction.”

“Do you trust him?”

“Do you trust anyone in Africa?” Daniel winked. “I’ve known Rada for years. My gut says he’s one of the good guys.”

“Your gut.”

“We may be scientists, but there’s no substitute for instinct in this business. You know that as well as I do.”

Sarah nodded. She didn’t disagree; it was just that her instinct told her something else. Still, Daniel’s proposition made sense. Any clue would make the trip to Addis worthwhile. Besides, she needed a break from the scenery. “Okay, I’m in.”

Through her fog of exhaustion, the road to Addis Ababa looked like an endless ribbon of parched red earth. The monotony of the surroundings and the steady vibration of Daniel’s Cruiser had the effect of a sedative. As they drove past the northern shore of Lake Tana, the legendary source of the Blue Nile, she took in the scenery. The mist-cloaked islands floating on lilac-gray waters that stretched toward a liquid infinity reminded her of ethereal watercolor images painted on rice paper. A small fleet of reed boats carried provisions from one shore to another. A dogged fisherman stood on his boat’s bow and cast his net, disturbing the stillness of the lake. The serene scene cradled Sarah in beauty, and she surrendered to the weight of sleep.

She woke when her head hit the passenger side window, apparently when the Cruiser hit a particularly hostile pothole. The sky was steel gray and thick with clouds, and the rain pummeled the ground with fury. The streets were flooded by a good six inches of water, as they often were in Ethiopia, thanks to the questionable drainage systems installed by the Italians during the occupation.

“Welcome to Addis,” Daniel said. “Lovely day out.”

Sarah squinted through the gloom and surveyed the capital. Lining the boulevards were tall concrete buildings of monolithic architecture inspired by the nondescript styles of the Soviet era. Almost all were dirty and begged for repairs, a testament to the local laissez-faire attitude toward possessions. These buildings were there to provide shelter or a place to work for as long as the roof would hold. Maintenance was a waste of precious time that could be used for sipping coffee and gossiping with friends or, better yet, sleeping the boredom away.

The people looked similarly disheveled. Businessmen wore faded navy suits at least one size too big and hanging like a father’s clothes on his skinny adolescent son. Women wearing their infants in slings squatted under umbrellas on the sidewalks with trunkfuls of wares spread across old blankets or plastic mats. They sold a hodgepodge of stuff: oranges stacked in neat pyramids, batteries, prewar-era suitcase locks, filter-less green cigarettes tied in tiny bundles, milk biscuits, French comic books, cheap cotton panties.

Daniel parked on the sidewalk, as everyone else did.

In the rain, the two walked several blocks to the Fasil Ghebbi restaurant, where Rada Kabede was to meet them for a late lunch. The traditional eatery was in a dilapidated prewar building in the city’s market district. Cracks on the facade indicated seismic activity. Bullet holes on the exterior walls, begotten from riots, civil wars, or some combination of the two, hinted at the country’s tumultuous past, some of it not so distant. Sarah felt camaraderie with this building: battered yet solid enough to remain standing, dignified hints at a noble past.

She and Daniel entered an enormous wooden door mounted at an angle at the corner nearest the main road.

“Welcome to Fasil Ghebbi,” said a man dressed in a spotless white
tebeb,
the traditional Ethiopian garb consisting of a tunic, narrow pants, and a scarf tied around the waist. “I believe you are meeting someone, yes?”

“Indeed we are. Lead the way, my friend,” Daniel said.

“Follow me.” The host bowed and walked through an arched opening framed with swagged red velvet curtains.

The dining room was full of smoke and as loud as the bazaars of Cairo or Istanbul. The cacophony of guffaws, chatter, and clinking glasses was profane to Sarah’s ears after the past few hours of relative silence, but the smells of spices and strong tobacco awakened her senses. Exotic places braced her, made her feel alive. Though hers and Daniel’s were the only white faces in the place, she was instantly at home and walked across the dining room with the self-assurance of someone who belonged there in that moment.

Rada stood from his place at the low table and lunged toward his old friend, offering an outstretched hand. His lips parted wide to reveal two beautiful rows of white teeth. Rada was in his late thirties, but his taut skin made him look a good ten years younger. He wore glasses with black square rims and thick lenses that made his eyes look like two tiny obsidian marbles. Though he had the look of a serious academician, his manner was that of an excited schoolboy.

The two men gave each other a loose hug, briskly slapping each other’s back.

“May I introduce my colleague Sarah Weston?” Daniel’s hand rested on her waist as he presented her to Rada.

It felt strange to be touched by him, even if it was an innocent gentlemanly gesture.

“Pleased to meet you, lady. Please”—he waved toward the table—”sit.”

They sat on low stools around an ersatz table, a round, hammered metal tray on a cylindrical basket weave base.

Rada held up three fingers to a waiter and turned to Daniel. “Tell me, my friend, what brings you to Ethiopia?”

Daniel shook his head. “Work, I’m afraid. Nothing more interesting than that.”

“Well, if it’s anything like our last adventure, it ought to be very interesting indeed.”

The waiter returned with three bottles of St. George beer.

Rada rattled off a long order in Amharic and then turned to Sarah. “When we were in Egypt, he took a group of us on a safari to search for the rare Nubian ibex. We were up in the mountains for days, with no sign of the ibex. Suddenly, Daniel here started bellowing—”

“Hey, that was a mating call.” Daniel feigned indignation.

Rada doubled over with laughter. He had a rapid-fire, high-pitched laugh that made him sound like a cartoon character. “Right,” he managed between shrieks. “And what was that crazy dance all about?”

“Did the ibex come or not?”

“It did; it did. It was the strangest thing I’d ever seen.”

“I’ve always had a way with animals.”

The two men laughed and clinked their beer glasses.

“Those were good times,” Rada said, shaking his head.

Sarah smiled nervously. “Mr. Kabede, we are here to get your opinion on something. We have this—”

Daniel grabbed her hand under the table and squeezed.

Reluctantly, she kept her thoughts to herself.

A server girl arrived with a pitcher and basin for them to wash their hands tableside. Rada took the soap and lathered up over the basin, flirting shamelessly with the girl.