She had appealed to her father and mother, but they had given her little support. They had been less happy than Jake to relish the triumphs of modern Israel, and they expressed their opinions in a gentler way; but they too believed that the land, like the Law, was the birthright of the Jewish people.
These arguments had been largely academic until the intifada, when the Palestinian Arabs had started to protest against the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. Then, when every day in the Jerusalem Post there were stories of riots by the Arabs and of rioters shot dead by the IDF; when there were pictures on television of soldiers using rocks to break the bones of their young Palestinian prisoners, and of the razing of houses of those active in the uprising; when the Arab schools and universities were closed, and the refugees in Gaza confined by curfew to their wretched shacks in the burning heat; then their arguments had become less theoretical and so impassioned that the atmosphere in the Dagans’ home became impossible for them all. When Anna had announced that she was going to refuse to serve in the army because of what it was doing to the Palestinians, her father had at once applied for a deferment, and then had called Father Lambert and his sister Miriam to arrange for Anna to go to London.
It was now almost a year since she had seen Jake, but neither the time nor the distance which had separated them had lessened his ability to irritate her. She acknowledged to herself that if, as everyone suspected, he still worked for Mossad or Shin Bet, he had reasons to be secretive about his movements. But why had he had to follow her into Selfridge’s instead of telephoning her at Aunt Miriam’s? Why, now, did he have to walk along Baker Street as if he was on patrol in Gaza or East Jerusalem? She was even annoyed that he knew that there was a kosher sandwich bar on the corner of George Street where he could eat lunch without being defiled.
As they went in, she intercepted the look of a girl at the counter and recognized, reluctantly, that her brother was handsome, almost heroic. Even here in London, wearing beige Chinos, a check shirt and trainers, no one could mistake him for an off-duty accountant from Golders Green. His eyes were too quick and their expression too hard; his body was too fit and its movements too controlled; and there was something indefinable in his bearing which suggested a man who knew neither scruple nor fear.
‘So how did Lambert die?’ he asked Anna as he sat down with a salt-beef sandwich.
‘Officially?’
‘I know. A stroke.’
‘He hanged himself.’
‘He hanged himself?’
She nodded.
‘Who found him?’
‘Andrew.’
‘Was it suicide?’
‘Yes, though for a while Andrew thought he might have been murdered.’
‘Why?’
‘He couldn’t find his notebook.’
‘He might have left it in Israel.’
‘Of course. But he also noticed, or he thought he noticed, that Father Lambert’s things were too tidy.’
‘Did he call the police?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘The Prior wanted to avoid a scandal.’
‘But if Andrew thinks he was murdered …’
‘He doesn’t now.’
‘Why did he change his mind?’
‘Because, well, he discovered that Father Lambert, just before he died, did something which seemed to prove that he had lost his faith.’
‘Did what?’
‘Never mind. But it was more than enough to convince Andrew that he was in a real state of despair.’
Jake put down his sandwich, licked his fingers, then said, nonchalantly: ‘I think it’s quite possible that he was murdered.’
‘Why would anyone want to murder him?’
‘To silence him.’
‘To silence him?’
‘To stop him speaking at the Congress.’
‘Why? What was he going to say?’
‘That Dad’s dug up the body of Jesus.’
She looked at him oddly. ‘Why should he want to say that?’
‘Because he has.’
‘Dug up Jesus?’
He put a finger to his lips. ‘Not so loud.’
‘How can Dad have dug up Jesus?’ she whispered, half giggling as she spoke.
He went on munching. ‘We found him in a cistern under the Temple Mount.’
‘Jesus? Jesus Christ?’
‘Sure.’ He took another bite.
‘You mean the remains of a crucified man?’
‘As described in the Gospels.’
‘There are marks?’
‘Yes. On the wrists, the ribs, the skull. And a long nail through the ankles.’
‘What kind of marks on the skull?’
‘Scratches.’
‘The crown of thorns?’
He shrugged. ‘I guess so.’
‘But this is ridiculous,’ said Anna. ‘Even if you’ve dug up the skeleton of a crucified man, how can you possibly know that it’s Jesus?’
‘Because of the Codex.’
‘What Codex?’
‘Four or five years ago, in Vilnius, they found a fragment of the Slavonic version of Josephus’ Jewish War.’
Anna frowned. ‘I remember Father Lambert telling us something about it.’
‘It contained a passage not found in any of the other editions, to the effect that the Romans might have smuggled the body of Jesus out of the tomb hidden in a storage jar and had built it into a cistern beneath the Temple.’
‘And Dad found the cistern?’
‘We’ve known it was there since they dug along the side of the Western Wall. The wall cuts right through it. What we’ve never dared do until now is go through the wall into the other half of the cistern.’
‘And when you did, you found the jar?’
‘Yes. With the body inside.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand. I thought you were excavating beside the Western Wall, not under the Temple Mount?’
‘Of course. We had to say that because the Muslims would go berserk if they thought we were digging under the Haram. But once the Department of Religious Affairs had dug their passage alongside the Western Wall, and linked up with the cisterns under the Via Dolorosa, Dad had always wanted to go through Herod’s Western Wall and see what there was between that and the retaining wall built by Zerubbabel and Solomon.’
‘But who sanctioned it?’
‘Certainly not the Department of Antiquities.’
‘Religious Affairs?’
He shook his head. ‘No. To them it would be desecrating the Temple. It was authorized on grounds of national security.’
‘And who did that?’
He grinned. ‘Let’s just say there was a common interest between those who wanted to listen to what was being said by the Arabs on the Temple Mount, and those who wanted to know what was on the other side of the Western Wall.’
This irritated Anna, but not enough to smother her curiosity. She was, after all, the daughter of Michal Dagan and an archaeologist in her own right. ‘But isn’t it just bedrock?’
‘In parts, yes. By Warren’s Shaft, bedrock. By Wilson’s Arch, probably infill. By Robinson’s Arch, infill and the stables of Solomon. What had always interested Dad was the northern corner, at the very end of the new tunnel.’
‘Why?’
‘Did you ever go down there?’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Herod built the Antonia fortress overlooking the Temple, right?’
She nodded.
‘He built it on the site of a Maccabean fortress which had stood on bedrock. Some of that had to be cut away for the Western Wall of the Temple.’
‘So what was the point of going through the wall into bedrock?’
‘No point at all. But at the very end there is a break in the bedrock where the wall cuts through the old cistern.’
‘Fed from where?’
‘The same source as the cistern beneath the Via Dolorosa ?
?? the water which ran down from the Damascus Gate to the Antonia and the Temple, until it was blocked off by the Western Wall.’
‘So the other half of the cistern …’
‘Must link up to the entire network of cisterns serving the Temple.’
‘But how did they fill them after the building of the Wall?’
‘We don’t know. Possibly with water collected from the Temple precincts themselves. But those on the higher level – certainly the other half of the cistern cut in half by the wall – would be dry.’
‘And it was there that you found the body?’
‘Yes.’
‘In an ossuary?’
‘In a jar.’
‘What kind of jar?’
‘An ordinary storage jar, for olives or grain.’
‘From what period?’
‘Early first century.’
Anna sat back, her face flushed with excitement. ‘But that’s … that’s fantastic. I mean, if it really is – if it can be shown to be the skeleton of Jesus, it beats the mask of Agamemnon or the tomb of Tutankhamun.’
‘Sure, it’s fantastic,’ said Jake, ‘but it’s also kind of awkward.’
‘Why?’
‘Think about it.’
‘Jesus, of course, Father Lambert. Dad showed it to him and he believed it.’
‘He had to believe it.’
‘So he came back and … of course, now it all makes sense.’
‘It was really very unfortunate for Dad,’ said Jake, ‘because he not only liked Father Lambert, he counted on him to break the news.’
‘He said he would?’
‘Yes. At the Congress at Oxford.’
‘Why can’t Dad announce it himself, now, in Jerusalem?’
‘Because Christians won’t believe a Jew.’
‘They’ll think Dad faked it?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I guess they would.’
‘It’s got to be announced by a Christian, and not just by any Christian either, because half of them don’t believe in the Resurrection anyway. It has to be a hard-line, old-fashioned Catholic like Father Lambert.’
‘And he was definitely going to announce it?’ she asked again.
‘Yes. That’s why we think he might have been killed.’
‘Who could have killed him?’
‘Catholics.’
‘One of their own priests?’
He laughed. ‘They’ve done as much before.’
‘Who?’
‘The Jesuits. The Dominicans. The Franciscans. They’ve always believed that the end justifies the means. Or one of these new groups of fanatics like Opus Dei or the Society of Pius X. If they had got wind of what Lambert was going to do, they could well have decided to stop him.’
She shook her head. ‘If you knew what I knew,’ she said to Jake, delighted to be able to remind him that he did not know everything, ‘I think you’d come to the conclusion that he took his own life.’
‘Perhaps.’ He did not seem irritated to have his opinion contradicted. ‘But it leaves us with a problem.’
‘You’ve got to find someone else?’
‘Precisely. And that’s where you come in.’
‘Me?’
‘We don’t know who to approach.’
‘The Vatican, I guess.’
‘But who in the Vatican?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But Andrew would.’
‘Sure. He’d know. Do you want me to ask him?’
‘Yes. Tell him it’s got to be someone like Lambert who is known to believe in the actual Resurrection of Christ, but has the integrity to accept the implications of what we’ve found.’
‘OK. I’ll see what he says.’
‘Take care …’
‘Why?’
‘We don’t want anyone else found hanging out of a window.’
Ten
She went back to Huntingdon College, hoping to find Andrew in Father Lambert’s office. He was not there, but the secretary said that he had telephoned to say that he was on his way.
To prepare for his arrival, Anna went down into the library of the Department of Archaeology to find the references to the Vilnius Codex. She looked first through the back numbers of the Review of Slavonic Studies, then the Cahiers d’études d’archéologie Biblique and finally the Soviet Archaeological Review. Here she found what she wanted – the translation into English of the original article by N. Vesoulis of the Lithuanian State Archives in Vilnius.
She took it to a desk by the window and went through what she had read the year before for a seminar on the literary verification of archaeological data. She now remembered the whole controversy about the Slavonic additions to Josephus’ Jewish War, those which mention both Christ and John the Baptist and were said by some to be forgeries by Byzantine monks, and by others to be part of the first draft of Josephus’ Jewish War which was later censored at a time of Christian persecution.
Father Lambert had mentioned the later ‘addition to the additions’ only as an instance of how fragments like this, or the Dead Sea Scrolls, could turn up even in our own time. He had accepted, certainly, that the Slavonic additions were genuine, but had not considered that the rumour in the later addition could be true. Nor, when it was discovered, had anyone else, because no one had any reason to envisage finding a jar in a cistern containing the remains of a crucified man.
She photocopied the article so as to be able to show it to Andrew, but, as she stood by the machine in the library, she suddenly wondered how Andrew would react when told of her father’s find. Until that moment, elation had overwhelmed any misgivings. Now, she remembered the effect the news had had on Father Lambert. Andrew might react in an equally dreadful way. Had he not, only the day before on Primrose Hill, told her that the Resurrection was the corner-stone of his religious belief? Had not Henry explained how his brother’s religious convictions had saved him from the consequences of a miserable childhood? She took the pages of the article as they came from the copier and quickly folded them, as if afraid that Andrew might come up behind her and read them over her shoulder. When the copying was complete she quickly put the issue of the Soviet Archaeological Review back onto the shelves and hurried out of the library.
She went up the stairs towards the faculty offices uncertain as to what to do. She had promised Jake to ask Andrew who could replace Father Lambert as the herald of her father’s momentous find; but, if she did so, she risked destroying the illusion upon which Andrew’s peace of mind depended.
Only one man could advise her how to deal with this dilemma, and that was Henry. She did not want him to think that she had seized upon the first pretext she could to see him again, but her anxiety about Andrew overcame her embarrassment, and she went to the public telephone by the notice-board in the passage and rang Henry at his office.
He was not there. She tried his flat. He answered: She told him briefly that she had to see him at once, and added, to reassure him: ‘It’s not about us, it’s about Andrew.’
He was neither friendly nor unfriendly when he opened the door and greeted her, as he always did, with a brief kiss on her cheek. He had been working at home, and his eyes had a glazed expression from focusing for many hours on the screen of his word processor as well as on the papers and reports which, as she came into his living-room, Anna saw laid out over both the desk-and the table in front of the sofa.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I guess you were working.’
‘I needed a break. Would you like some coffee?’
‘Only if you want some.’
‘I do.’
She followed him into his small kitchen, which looked out over Eaton Square, and sat down on one of the high stools at the counter while Henry filled the electric kettle.
‘Jake’s in town,’ she said.
‘When did he arrive?’
‘I don’t know. Yesterday, or the day before.’
‘Have you seen him?’
&
nbsp; ‘Yes. We had lunch.’
‘Did he know about Lambert?’
‘Yes. Dad must have told him.’
‘What did he say?’
‘It’s all kind of unbelievable …’
‘What is?’
‘In a nutshell, Dad’s found the body of Christ.’
For a moment Henry hesitated, his hand holding the packet of Colombian coffee. Then he frowned and said: ‘You mean he has dug up the body of a crucified man?’
‘They know that it’s Jesus.’
His frown deepened. ‘How can they know?’
‘It’s a long story.’
He put three spoonfuls of coffee into the glass jug. ‘Tell me.’
‘Do you know who I mean by Josephus?’ she asked.
‘The historian?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not much. Wasn’t he a Jew who changed sides in the middle of the revolt against the Romans?’
‘Precisely. He was an aristocratic Jew, Joseph ben Matthias, born around forty years after Jesus. During the revolt against the Romans, he was sent to organize the resistance in Galilee. At the battle of Jotapata he changed sides. He surrendered to the Romans and became a big-time collaborator. He helped Vespasian with the siege of Jerusalem, and after its fall, while the Jews were either slaughtered in the arena or led off as slaves, he retired to Rome on a pension to write his histories justifying what the Romans had done.’
‘Did the Romans have doubts?’ asked Henry, pouring boiling water onto the coffee in the glass jug.
‘That’s just the point. The Romans themselves didn’t need convincing, but there were large numbers of Jews who lived under the Parthians in Babylon. So his first draft was not written in Latin or even in Greek, but in Aramaic. Only the version of Josephus’ Jewish War which became known in the West was not this original draft, but a later edition, written in Greek some twenty years later under the Emperor Domitian. It wasn’t until the end of the nineteenth century that some German, working in Latvia, then ruled by Russia, discovered a version of The Jewish War written in old Slavonic which looked like a translation of that first Aramaic edition. It lacked passages from the later version, and was written in a more primitive style. But it had seven passages not found in the later edition which refer to John the Baptist and Jesus Christ.’