Cross Bones (28 page)

Jake nodded silently.

My eyes met Ryan’s. They found not a hint of a smile.

“Have you shared your theory on this tomb with Blotnik?”

“I have. Though obviously not the crucified calcaneus. You just found that. I stil can’t believe it.”

“And?”

“He blew me off. The man’s a pigheaded cretin.”

“Jake?”

“You’l see when you meet him.”

I let that go and switched tacks.

“You snitched specimens from the bones adhered to the smashed ossuaries and from the bones dumped on the tomb floor and sent them for DNA testing. When?”

“I held samples back when I turned the col ection over for analysis and reburial. I sent them off for testing right after our phone conversation. Your comments confirmed what I hoped. mtDNA might show maternal relationships among individuals in the tomb, and aDNA might at least tel gender.”

Again, my eyes went to the bones on the counter. A question formed in my mind. I wasn’t yet ready to pose it.

“Normal y, bodies were left for one year to decay, then the bones were col ected and sealed in ossuaries, right?” Ryan asked. “Then why was the shroud person left in the loculus?”

“According to rabbinic law, a dead man’s bones had to be col ected by his son. Perhaps this man had none. Perhaps it had to do with his manner of death. Perhaps some crisis prevented the family from returning.”

Crisis? Like the execution of a dissident and the suppression of his movement, forcing his family and fol owers underground? Jake’s meaning was clear.

Ryan looked as if he might have something to say, but kept it to himself.

I got up and retrieved the article containing the foot-bone photos. Crossing back to the table, I noticed the header at the top of each page.

N. Haas. Department of Anatomy, Hebrew University–Hadassah Medical School.

My mind jumped on it. Think about Max. Masada. Anything but the heel bone and its disturbing lesion.

“Is this the same Haas that worked at Masada?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I skimmed the article. Age. Sex. Cranial metrics. Trauma and pathology. Diagrams. Tables.

“This is quite detailed.”

“Flawed, but detailed,” Jake agreed.

“Yet Haas never wrote a thing on the Cave 2001 skeletons.”

“Not a word.”

The Masada skeleton was never reported, spirited out of Israel, stolen from a museum, smuggled to Canada. According to Kaplan, Ferris claimed it was that of a person of historic importance, discovered at Masada. Jake had admitted to hearing rumors of such a skeleton. A volunteer excavator had confirmed the discovery of such a skeleton. Kaplan’s photo had sent Jake flying to Montreal, then Paris. Because of Max, I’d been persuaded to come to Israel.

Lerner thought the skeleton was that of Jesus. He was wrong. The age at death didn’t work. Jake was suggesting the real thing lay on the counter behind me.

So why the decades of intrigue over the Masada skeleton? Who was this man we were cal ing Max?

I pictured Max, stolen and probably lost forever.

I pictured my wild ride in Jake’s truck.

I pictured my ransacked room.

Anger flared.

Good. Use it. Focus on Max. Avoid the impossible coincidental y found in a Kidron tomb. The impossible lying in Tupperware on a kitchen counter.

“The Masada skeleton’s gone for good, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Not if I can help it.” Something crossed Jake’s face. I couldn’t say what. “I’l talk to Blotnik today.”

“Blotnik has juice with the Hevrat Kadisha?” Ryan asked.

Jake didn’t answer. Outside, a goat bleated.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

Jake frowned.

“What?” I pressed.

“There’s something bigger at stake.” Jake rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.

I opened my mouth. Ryan snagged my gaze, gave an almost imperceptible head shake. I closed it.

Jake dropped his hands, and his forearms slapped the tabletop.

“This is more than the usual reburial bul shit. The Hevrat Kadisha had to have received a heads-up. They fol owed us to the Kidron because of the Masada bones.” One long finger began worrying crumbs. “I think Yadin knew something about that skeleton that scared the crap out of him.”

“What sort of something?”

“I’m not sure. But sending an emissary al the way from Israel to Canada? Trashing a hotel room? Maybe even kil ing a guy? That’s more than Hevrat Kadisha.”

I watched Jake convert a smal hil of crumbs into a long, thin line. I thought of Yossi Lerner, Avram Ferris, and Sylvain Morissonneau.

I thought of Jamal Hasan Abu-Jarur and Muhammed Hazman Shalaideh, the Palestinians parked outside l’Abbaye Sainte-Marie-des-Neiges.

I didn’t know the players. I didn’t know the field. But my instincts told me Jake was right. The game was deadly, the goal was Max, and the opposition was determined to win.

Always the same question. Who was Max?

“Jake, listen.”

Throwing out his feet, Jake slumped back, crossed his arms, and looked first at Ryan, then at me.

“You’l get your DNA results. You’l get your textile analysis. That’s the tomb. That’s important. But for now, let’s focus on Masada.”

At that moment Ryan’s cel phone sounded. He checked the screen, and strode from the room.

I turned back to Jake.

“Haas never reported on the cave skeletons, right?”

“Right.”

“What about field notes?”

Jake shook his head. “Some excavators kept diaries, but notes as you and I think of them weren’t protocol at Masada.”

I must have looked shocked.

“Yadin met with his senior staff each evening to discuss the day’s developments. The sessions were taped and later transcribed.”

“Where are those transcripts?”

“The Institute of Archaeology at Hebrew University.”

“Are they accessible?”

“I can make a few cal s.”

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Tip-top.”

“How about we swing by the big U and poke through old files.”

“How about we take the shroud to Esther Getz then hit the big U.”

“Where’s Getz’s lab?”

“At the Rockefel er Museum.”

“Isn’t the IAA housed there?”

“Yes.” Dramatic sigh.

“Perfect.” I said. “It’s time I introduced myself to Tovya Blotnik.”

“You’re not going to like him.”

While I cleared the table, Jake placed his cal s. I was screwing the lid on the pickles when Ryan reappeared. His face suggested he hadn’t received the best of al possible news.

“Kaplan’s changed his story,” he said.

I waited.

“Claims someone hired him to cap Ferris.”

29

IBLINKED, SET DOWN THE JAR, RECOVERED ENOUGH TO ASK Aquestion.

“Kaplan was paid to kil Ferris?”

Tight nod.

“By whom?”

“He’s yet to share that little detail.”

“He’s been claiming he’s innocent as Little Bo Peep. Why talk now?”

“Who knows?”

“Friedman believes him?”

“He’s listening.”

“Sounds like a plot straight out ofThe Sopranos. ”

“You could say that.” Ryan glanced at his watch. “I’ve gotta get back there.”

Ryan was gone five minutes when Jake surfaced. Good news. We could access the Masada transcripts. And Getz would see us. He’d told her about the shroud, but not about the bones. While I questioned the wisdom of concealment, this was Israel, his turf, not mine. And Jake assured me he was only buying a few days.

And a few purloined bone samples, I suspected.

As Jake downed two aspirin and I repackaged the shroud, we discussed what to do with the bones. The Hevrat Kadisha were obviously unaware of the bones’ existence, or they’d have been screaming that we hand them over. And since the HK already had Max, they’d no longer have a reason to keep me under surveil ance, or tail me. We decided Jake’s flat was safe.

Locking the bones in the ossuary cabinet, we secured the doors, then the outer gate, and set off. Though the tension in his jaw suggested a headache in progress, Jake insisted on taking the wheel of his rented Honda.

Crossing back through the Nablus Road checkpoint, Jake wormed through traffic to Sultan Suleiman Street in East Jerusalem. Across from the northeast corner of the Old City wal , opposite the Flower Gate, he pul ed into a driveway that led uphil to a pair of metal doors. A battered sign identified the Rockefel er Museum in English and Hebrew.

Jake got out and spoke into a rusted intercom. Minutes later the doors opened and we circled to a beautiful y landscaped front lawn.

Backtracking on foot to a side entrance, I noticed an inscription on the building’s exterior:GOVERNMENT OF PALESTINE. DEPARTMENT OF

ANTIQUITIES .

Times change.

“When was this building constructed?” I asked.

“Place opened in 1938. Mainly houses antiquities unearthed during the time of the British Mandate.”

“Nineteen nineteen to 1948.” I’d read that in Winston’s book. “It’s beautiful.”

It was. White limestone, al turrets, and gardens, and arches.

“There’s some prehistoric material here as wel . And some kick-ass ossuaries.”

Kick-ass or not, the place was deserted.

Jake led me through several exhibit hal s to a flight of stairs, our steps ricocheting hol owly off the stone wal s. The air was heavy with the smel of disinfectant.

Upstairs, we passed through several arched openings and turned right into a recessed alcove. A plaque announced the office of Esther Getz.

Jake knocked softly, then cracked the door.

Across the room I saw a woman of about my age, robust, with a jaw that could have opened the iced-up St. Lawrence in spring. Seeing us, the woman left her scope and swept forward.

Jake made introductions.

I smiled and offered my hand. Getz shook it as though I might be contagious.

“You’ve brought the shroud?”

Jake nodded.

Getz made space on a table. Jake centered the two Tupperware containers on it.

“You’re not going to belie—”

Getz cut him off. “Refresh me on provenance.”

Jake described the tomb, without mentioning its specific location.

“Anything I say today wil be strictly preliminary.”

“Of course,” Jake said.

Getz pried free one lid and studied the shroud, repeated with the second tub. Then she gloved and gently removed each remnant. Fifteen minutes later she’d managed to unrol the smal er swatch.

We spotted it simultaneously. Like kids in chem class, we al leaned in.

“Hair.” Getz wasn’t talking to us, she was thinking out loud.

Another fifteen minutes and she’d tweezed most strands into a vial, placed a half dozen others under a magnifying scope.

“Freshly cut. Some sheen. No signs of lice or casings.”

Getz exchanged the hair for the larger segment of cloth.

“Simple one-to-one plain weave.”

“Typical first century.” Jake pumped an arm.

Getz repositioned the remnant, refocused. “The fibers are degraded, but I don’t see the flatness and variation I would expect with flax.”

“Wool?” Jake asked.

“Based on this, I’d have to say yes.”

Getz moved the remnant back and forth. “No weaving faults. No holes. No mending.” Pause. “Odd.”

“What?” Jake’s arm froze.

“This yarn was spun in the opposite direction from that typical of first-century Israel.”

“Meaning?”

“It was imported.”

“From?”

“My guess would be Italy or Greece.”

Another half hour and Getz was scoping the smal er scrap.

“Linen.” Getz straightened. “Why were the two remnants packaged separately?”

Jake turned to me.

I fielded the question.

“The smal remnant came from the deepest end of the loculus, and was associated with cranial fragments. The larger came from a position closer to the opening, and was associated with postcranial fragments.”

“One wrapping for the head, another for the body,” Jake said. “That’s exactly what Simon Peter describes in John 20:6–7. ‘And seeth the linen clothes lie, and the napkin, that was about His head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.’”

Getz glanced at her watch.

“You realize, of course, that the IAA must take custody. You may leave the specimens with me.” Not subtle.

“Of course. Our find is ful y documented.” Emphasis on the “our.” Jake wasn’t being subtle, either. “I’l be requesting carbon-fourteen dating.” Jake beamed Getz his most winning smile. “In the meantime, I’l be on pins and needles awaiting your report.”

Against al odds, Getz managed to resist Jake’s charm.

“Isn’t everyone,” she said, gesturing toward the door. We were being dismissed.

Trailing Jake into the corridor, I was sure of one thing: Esther Getz had never been dubbed the Getzster. No nicknames for this chick.

Next stop, Tovya Blotnik.

The IAA director’s office was four alcoves down from Getz’s. Blotnik stood when we entered, but didn’t come around his desk.

It’s funny. Telephone voices conjure images. Sometimes those images are dead-on. Sometimes, they’re way off.

The IAA director was a short, wiry man with a gray goatee and hair that tufted around a blue silk yarmulke. I’d pictured Santa. He looked more like a Jewish elf.

Jake introduced me.

Blotnik looked surprised, recovered, and leaned forward to shake hands.

“Shabbat shalom.”Jittery smile. Santa voice. “Please, sit.”

The choices were limited since al but two chairs were stacked with papers and books. Jake and I took them.

Blotnik sat behind his desk. For the first time he seemed to notice my face.

“You’ve been injured?” American English. Maybe New York.

“It’s nothing,” I said.

Blotnik opened his mouth, closed it, unsure what to say. Then, “But you’ve survived your jet lag?”

“Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”

Blotnik bobbed his head and spread both hands on the desktop. Al his movements were sharp and hummingbird quick.