“But not everyone ended up in an ossuary,” I said.
“No.”
“And not every ossuary was inscribed.”
“Astute points, Dr. Brennan. But the mention of a brother is rare. How many Jacobs, sons of Joseph, had a brother, Jesus, who was famous enough for that relationship to be marked on their ossuaries?”
I had no answer so I replied with a question.
“Do other name experts agree with Lemaire’s estimate?”
Jake snorted. “Of course not. Some say it’s high, others say it’s low. But what are the chances of this whole cluster of names in one tomb? The Marys, Joseph, Jesus, Jude, Salome. The probability must become infinitesimal.”
“Is this the same Lemaire to whom Oded Golan first revealed the James ossuary?” I asked.
“Yes.”
My eyes drifted to the heel bone with its peculiar lesion. I thought of Donovan Joyce and his bizarre theory of Jesus living on to fight and die at Masada. I thought of Yossi Lerner and his bizarre theory of Jesus’ bones ending up at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris.
Believing it was Jesus, Lerner had stolen the skeleton we were calling Max. But Max’s age at death had proven Lerner wrong. My skeletal estimate put him at forty to sixty. That estimate also made Max too young to be the octogenarian who had penned Grosset’s Jesus scroll.
Now Jake was suggesting another bizarre theory, and another candidate. Jesus had died by crucifixion, but his body hadn’t risen, it had remained in its tomb. That tomb had become the final resting place of the Jesus family. That tomb was in the Kidron. Looters had found that tomb and stolen the James ossuary from it. Jake had rediscovered that tomb and recovered the remains of ossuaries and individuals the looters had left behind. I had blundered onto a hidden loculus in that tomb, and found a burial no one else had. The shrouded bones of Jesus.
My stomach went from a flutter to a knot.
I lay down my sandwich. One of the toms began a slow ooze toward it.
“Was James well-known in his day?” Ryan asked.
“You better believe it. Let’s back up a bit. Historical evidence suggests Jesus was born to a lineage known as Davidids, direct descendents of David, a tenth-century B.C.E. king of Israel. According to Hebrew prophets, the Messiah, the final king of a restored nation of Israel, was to come from among this royal line. The Davidids, with their radical revolutionary potential, were well-known to the Herod family, who ruled Palestine at the time, and to the Romans, right up to the emperor. These ‘royals’ were watched very closely, and at times, hunted down and killed.
“When Jesus was crucified in thirty C.E. for his claim to messianic kingship, his brother James, next in the Davidid line, became top dog in the Christian movement in Jerusalem.”
“Not Peter?” Ryan asked.
“Not Peter, not Paul. James the Just. That fact is not widely known, and rarely given proper consideration. When James was stoned to death in sixty-two C.E., for basically the same kind of messianic claims as Jesus, brother Simon stepped up to the plate. After a forty-five-year run, Simon was crucified under the emperor Trajan, specifically because of his royal lineage. Guess who came up to bat next?”
Ryan and I shook our heads.
“A third relative, Judas, took over the movement in Jerusalem.”
I thought about that. Jesus and his brother claimants to the messianic title of King of the Jews? Okay. I could buy into a different political perspective. But what else was Jake suggesting? Jesus still in his tomb?
“How can you be certain that the Kidron tomb dates to the right period?” My voice sounded tense. I felt suddenly edgy.
“Ossuaries were only used from about thirty B.C.E. to seventy C.E.”
“One of the inscriptions is in Greek.” I waved a hand at the Tupperware lying on the counter. “Maybe these people weren’t even Jewish.”
“The mixture of Greek and Hebrew is very common in first-century tombs. And ossuaries were used only for Jewish burial.” Jake anticipated my next question. “And almost exclusively in and around Jerusalem.”
“I thought Christ’s tomb was under the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, inside the Old City,” Ryan said, rolling a slice of Muenster around a pickle.
“So do a lot of folks.”
“You don’t.”
“I don’t.”
“Jesus was from Nazareth,” I said. “Why wouldn’t the family plot be there?”
“The New Testament indicates Mary and her children took up residence in Jerusalem following the crucifixion. Tradition has it Mary died and was buried here, not up north in Galilee.”
There was a long silence during which the tom slunk to within inches of my feet.
“Let me understand this.” The cat skittered backward at the sound of my voice. “You’re convinced the James ossuary inscription is real.”
“I am,” Jake said.
“And that the thing was looted from the tomb we visited.”
“Rumors have always placed the ossuary’s origin in that location.”
“And that that tomb was the final resting place of Jesus’ kin.”
“Yes.”
“And that the lesion in this shroud calcaneus suggests one of the tomb’s occupants was crucified.”
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 still can’t believe it.”
“And?”
“He blew me off. The man’s a pigheaded cretin.”
“Jake?”
“You’ll 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 collection 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 tell 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.
“Normally, bodies were left for one year to decay, then the bones were collected 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 collected 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 followers 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 ph
oto 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 calling 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 coincidentally 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’ll 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 bullshit. The Hevrat Kadisha had to have received a heads-up. They followed 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 all the way from Israel to Canada? Trashing a hotel room? Maybe even killing a guy? That’s more than Hevrat Kadisha.”
I watched Jake convert a small hill 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’ll get your DNA results. You’ll get your textile analysis. That’s the tomb. That’s important. But for now, let’s focus on Masada.”
At that moment Ryan’s cell 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 calls.”
“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 Rockefeller 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 calls. I was screwing the lid on the pickles when Ryan reappeared. His face suggested he hadn’t received the best of all possible news.
“Kaplan’s changed his story,” he said.
I waited.
“Claims someone hired him to cap Ferris.”
29
I BLINKED, SET DOWN THE JAR, RECOVERED enough to ask a question.
“Kaplan was paid to kill 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 of The 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 surveillance, 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 wall, opposite the Flower Gate, he pulled into a driveway that led uphill to a pair of metal doors. A battered sign identified the Rockefeller Museum in English and Hebrew.
Jake got out and spoke into a rusted intercom. Minutes later the doors opened and we circled to a beautifully 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, all turrets, and gardens, and arches.
“There’s some prehistoric material here as well. And some kick-ass ossuaries.”
Kick-ass or not, the place was deserted.
Jake led me through several exhibit halls to a flight of stairs, our steps ricocheting hollowly off the stone walls. The air was heavy with the smell 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 will 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 unroll the smaller swatch.
We spotted it simultaneously. Like kids in chem class, we all 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 smaller scrap.
“Linen.” Getz straightened. “Why were the two remnants packaged separately?”
Jake turned to me.
I fielded the question.
“The small 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 fully documented.” Emphasis on the “our.” Jake wasn’t being subtle, either. “I’ll be requesting carbon-fourteen dating.” Jake beamed Getz his most winning smile. “In the meantime, I’ll be on pins and needles awaiting your report.”