The Third Day Page 11

The Temple itself faced to the east and was situated slightly south of center on the broad rectangular Temple Mount, whose flat white surface covered about thirty five acres. From our position, only a few feet below the Temple roof, the setting sun highlighted the gold edging in a spectacularly beautiful way.

  Lavon peered straight down and broke out in quiet mirth.

  One of his old college professors had published a paper asserting that the Antonia was an integral part of the Temple complex, while a colleague had just as emphatically maintained that the fortress was situated about six hundred feet to the north, connected to the Temple only via breezeways.

  In the manner of so many obscure academic quarrels, their dispute had become so bitter that despite having offices in the same building, neither man spoke to the other for more than two years.

  Both of them were wrong.

  Herod’s engineers had been clever, we could see. They had located the south wall of the Antonia about thirty feet from the Temple Mount’s perimeter. A system of gates and bridgeways permitted the easy flow of soldiers and materiel from the fortress to the Temple, but would present an almost insurmountable obstacle to anyone trying to get through the other way.

  “They appear to know what they’re doing,” I said – and not for the last time.

  Lavon nodded; then he looked up and saw that Bryson had eased himself dangerously close to the window’s edge. To make matters worse, we could see the bright red LED on his camera.

  Lavon coughed. “Ahem; Professor, you might not want anyone to see you with that thing.”

  To his credit, Bryson quickly realized his mistake and eased himself back inside.

  “By the way,” I asked. “How much battery life do you have left?”

  Bryson squinted at the small screen. “Three hours; that should be enough.”

  Lavon wasn’t so sure. The Gospels recorded only that the body was gone by the time the women arrived around dawn on Sunday morning. None of them set forth a precise chronology as to when the actual event had occurred.

  “Did you bring any spares?” I asked.

  “Two.”

  “Do you still have them?”

  Bryson smiled as he felt for the small pouch he had tucked into his tunic. His expression, though, quickly changed to one of worry and embarrassment.

  “I must have lost my pouch as I was running this morning,” he finally said.

  I figured as much. I turned to Lavon. “That will make for an interesting find, will it not? A two thousand year old battery from a Handycam.”

  Lavon shook his head as he thought back to the odd discovery that had led him to his current situation.

  “No one will be able to date it,” he finally said.

  ***

  As the western sky faded to dusk, a servant brought in an oil lamp and placed it in the center of the table. After the man departed, I took the wine jar and filled five goblets.

  After handing one to Sharon – the others could fend for themselves – I took the seat facing the door and held up my chip.

  “Speaking of lost pieces of plastic, does everyone still have theirs?”

  The others reached into their pouches and said yes. Bryson, too, pulled his out and laid it on the table, though this one looked a bit different. Instead of being composed of a single uniform wafer, like ours, the center of his glowed red.

  “It’s a low power LED,” he explained. You all have earlier prototypes. Given the unknowns involved in this venture, we realized that it might become essential for me to have some warning that my return could be delayed, so that I could have at least a minimal opportunity to take evasive action.”

  I couldn’t argue with that, though it hadn’t done us much good so far.

  Bryson continued to stare at the chip. Finally, he just shook his head. “I just don’t know what possibly could be wrong?”

  “Well, something is not right,” said Markowitz.

  The others joined in and I let them vent for a few minutes. Finally, though, I held up my hand. We needed solutions, not arguments.

  “The way I see it,” I said, “we need to work out hypotheses as to what the problem might be, though our key concern for the moment is how long we’ll have to stay in the good graces of the Roman army.”

  Bryson held up his wine goblet. “You seem to have done a decent job of that so far. Obviously, we’re not prisoners.”

  “No.”

  “Then why do you think – ”

  Lavon rose, walked over to a window and once again looked down. The drop was over one hundred feet.

  “We’re not prisoners, but we can’t exactly leave,” he said. “I don’t think they know what to do with us. With all the crowds coming in for the Passover, they’re rather busy, so my guess is they’re going to keep us here until the festival is over and sort everything out then.”

  “Keep us here, in this room?” asked Markowitz.

  “Yes, as guests – unless something changes their mind.”

  “Do you think they believe our story?” Sharon asked.

  “It’s plausible,” Lavon replied. “Rome took control of Egypt around 30 BC, or about sixty years before Christ’s ministry. The army brought enormous quantities of loot back to the capital, and wealthy Romans went nuts over the stuff. Owning Egyptian artifacts became the ‘in’ thing for the high society of the time.”

  “I saw Egyptian obelisks in modern Rome,” she said.

  “That’s right,” replied Lavon. “There’s even one at the center of St. Peter’s Square. Medieval popes restored many of the ones that had fallen after the Empire crumbled.”

  “OK, then,” I said. “‘Plausible’ should be good enough, at least for the moment.”

  “Saving that soldier got us some Brownie points, too,” said Markowitz.

  “Yes, but that’s also part of our problem,” replied Lavon. “Word of something so obviously useful …”

  “They’ll want more,” I said.

  “I’m certain of it. How many more of those things do you have?”

  “Three.”

  “I’d be prepared to hand them over, though the more difficult question will be where you got them in the first place. To the Romans, the Germans are uncultured barbarians, and anyone from lands beyond Germany is probably even worse.

  “Let’s face it,” Lavon continued, “Two thousand years ago – or right about now, as strange as it is to say – our ancestors were crawling around the forests of northern Europe wrapped in animal skins. The Industrial Revolution is a long way off.”

  “Mine weren’t,” said Markowitz.

  I gave him an odd glance, but let his comment pass.

  “Couldn’t we have picked up some technology along the way?” asked Bryson.

  “Sure, but where? I had to tell Publius that we came to Judea around the eastern part of the Black Sea. The Romans already occupied the western side – modern Romania and Bulgaria – and I couldn’t run the risk of saying we had traveled though some place this guy might have actually seen in person.”

  “Why is that a problem?”

  “To the east you either have steppes, home to nomadic horsemen, or the Caucasus, the domain of wild mountain tribes. We’re unlikely to have picked up any advanced science from either group.”

  “What about China?” asked Bergfeld. “They had advanced technology for the era, and the Silk Road went – ”

  I had to interrupt. Complex webs of lies eventually spun out of control, a phenomenon that had allowed me to make a nice living over the past few years. The closer we stuck to the truth, the less risk we would run.

  Bryson, though, was no longer paying attention. He stared down at his chip, which still glowed bright red.

  “I think I’ve figured out what happened: Scott must have reprogrammed the machine. I configured the chips with an automated recall feature. We had to have that anyway for the first live animal tests, and Juliet insisted that she retain some way to retrieve me later on, even though we had proven that the tec
hnology operated precisely according to its design parameters.”

  “OK, but how does that impact our situation now?” I asked.

  “You were right in your suspicions earlier today, Mr. Culloden: there’s no way Juliet would have voluntarily permitted him to come back here. Since he undoubtedly knew that, he would have altered the recall feature to keep her from bringing him straight back to Boston as soon as he arrived in this world.”

  “I would imagine he’d want to go back at some point,” said Lavon.

  “True; but he would have wanted to stay through Sunday. The young man was quite a fan of Dawkins, especially his latest work.”

  Several years earlier, Richard Dawkins, an English biologist, had written a book entitled The God Delusion. At last count, it had sold over a million copies.

  “He would have seen this as a golden opportunity,” said Bryson.

  “To do what?” said Sharon, “to show that we Christians are all fools?”

  Bryson nodded. “I cautioned him that a true scientist must keep his mind open to the objective evidence, whichever way it falls, and not try to demonstrate anything, one way or the other.”

  “That’s what all scientists are supposed to do, isn’t it?” asked Markowitz.

  Bryson laughed. “It’s a nice theory,” he replied. “But I believe it was Planck who said that no one is ever converted to a new idea in science. It is only after the generation who clung to the old idea eventually dies off that the concept finds broad acceptance.”

  “He spoke of religion?”

  “No,” said Bryson, “quantum mechanics; which was, as my wife undoubtedly explained, a most outrageous notion at the time.”

  He paused for a moment; then peered into Bergfeld’s eyes.

  “As I said, I cautioned Scott to keep both his eyes and his mind open. I must ask you the same question: are you, Sharon, prepared to act in accordance with the evidence we encounter?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “If we see – if you see – the disciples carting the body out of the tomb, are you prepared to face what follows?”

  “That there is no God?”

  “No, we’d still have no proof of that either way; but we would see that the Jesus of your childhood wasn’t the deity you sang to in Sunday school.”

  Sharon stared down at the table. She didn’t say anything, but in her heart, she had to have recognized his point.

  Though I consider myself a pretty rational person, most of the time at least, I had to consider the same thing. Perhaps some things were better off not known.

  Chapter 24

  While the others continued to debate, I poured myself a second cup of wine and then reached into my bag to extract a small rubberized bud, which I managed to slip into my ear just before two men strode into our room as if they owned the place.

  That was because they did.

  It took me a second to recognize the centurion Publius, since he had stripped off his armor and donned a clean white tunic.

  The other man, a Roman named Volusus, had served as the fort’s commander for past two years. A slave followed in their wake with another jug of wine and two additional goblets, though as soon as he filled them, he scurried out of the room.

  Lavon and I both stood and beckoned the two Romans to take our seats, but they chose to remain standing.

  Publius got straight to the point. “I have explained what your companion did for my man,” he said to Lavon.

  I spoke through Robert to ask Publius how the soldier was doing, and whether his wound had remained free of infection.

  Fortunately for my image as a miracle worker, it had.

  “He is doing remarkably well for a wound of that severity,” replied Publius. “In fact, I have seen no others who have survived such an injury.”

  “We must have more of those bandages,” said Volusus.

  Lavon’s warning had been prescient. I had no choice but to reach into my bag and pull out two. I offered them both to the commander.

  “Tell him these are all we have. I am keeping only the last one for ourselves in case we encounter an emergency.”

  Volusus looked puzzled. “Can you not make more?”

  “Unfortunately, I cannot. I brought these from our country, where we buy them from skilled artisans. I have seen no others since we left, months ago.”

  The two Romans exchanged odd glances. We learned later that both men had served in Germany. As Lavon feared, at no time had they ever heard of advanced civilizations in the unknown territory beyond.

  Hoping to divert their attention, I held up the remaining bandage. “Tell them that they must save these for the most severe cases. And they must never open the package until they are ready to use it.”

  “Why not?” Publius asked.

  “It reacts with the moisture in the wound, or in the air,” I explained. “If it is exposed too early, it will not function properly. Also, tell him that only the white side may have direct contact with the injured body part; only the white side.”

  Publius considered this; then asked me if I was a doctor.

  I thought about saying yes, but decided not to press my luck.

  “No,” I replied. “I received basic training only. Other men worked as physicians, as in your unit.”

  “You are a soldier, then?”

  “Was,” I said; “Many years ago.”

  “How many men did you command?”

  I paused as if having difficulty understanding the translation. An American colonel in the line commanded anywhere from three to five thousand men – nearly a legion’s worth. If they believed my answer, hearing of an army that size would alarm them. Later, as an intelligence officer, I had led a small team of five. The Romans would consider this a joke.

  “Tell him about eighty,” I said.

  Lavon did so.

  Publius smiled; then glanced over toward Volusus. “I told you he had the look of a centurion.”

  ***

  A loud crash interrupted our conversation as a pile of stacked rubble fell to the ground outside. All of us, including the two Romans, hurried over to the windows, where we observed a torch-lit procession of laborers – men we had not seen earlier – hard at work, carrying a mountain of rubbish out the complex’s eastern gate.

  Volusus directed our attention toward a team of workers attacking a similar mound of debris at the other end of the courtyard.

  “As I mentioned earlier,” he said to Publius, “we, too, have had some challenging days.”

  “Did you take casualties?”

  “None so far, thank the gods.”

  “What happened?”

  Volusus shook his head and spat. “Another one of their damned prophets.”

  Publius rolled his eyes. “Again?”

  Volusus pointed to our left. “Late in the afternoon, two days ago, this man came riding into the courtyard on the back of a donkey through the Shushan Gate, right over there. A large crowd followed him, waving palm fronds and shouting all sorts of nonsense.”

  “Where did he come from?”

  “My informants tell me that he started in one of those little villages to the east, though no one could give me a definitive answer. What is undisputed, though, is that a horde of this rabble ran ahead of him the whole way here, scattering their branches along the road – ‘preparing a path’ they said.”

  “For what?”

  “I’m still trying to get a straight answer to that. We’ve heard so many conflicting stories.”

  “What happened next?”

  “Strangely enough, nothing. He stayed only a few minutes before turning around and going back out the same way.”

  “That doesn’t sound like much of a disturbance,” said Publius.

  I glanced over to Lavon. Prophet; palm fronds. I could see that he, too, was struggling to keep an expressionless face.

  “No; but he came back. Yesterday, this same man popped up in the market area with a whip. He overturned the merchants’ tables, opened t
he bird cages, and drove away the animals – shouting at them the whole time.”

  Volusus paused to let the image sink in.

  “You should have seen it; you know how excitable these people are. Everything just fed on itself – men crawling about on the ground, fighting each other for loose coins; panicked animals running every which way, with their owners trying to chase them down through the swarms of pilgrims coming in through the south gates. You can’t imagine the chaos.”

  I watched Publius struggle to keep a straight face. In another set of circumstances, the scene would be almost comical – at least from a safe distance when their own careers didn’t hang in the balance.

  Volusus spat again before he continued. “The whole thing took us by surprise. At least an hour passed before the Temple police could get the crowd back under control. By then the market area was a complete wreck. As you see, they’re still working to haul the debris away.”

  Both men stared at the laborers for a few moments.

  “Did this prophet say why he did this?” asked Publius.

  “Supposedly, he was upset with how much money they’re making. ‘Den of thieves’ was his exact term, or so I hear.”

  “It sounds like he’s called that one right. Our good Roman money is conveniently unclean; the people’s own livestock are blemished and unacceptable for an offering. It’s quite a racket they have, if you ask me.”

  “That may be,” snapped the commander, “but we can’t afford this kind of disorder – not this week.”

  “If this man caused a disturbance at such a sensitive time, why didn’t you arrest him?”

  “On the Temple Mount? All that marching in the hot sun today must have melted your brains. If those people saw a Roman uniform on their holy spot in the middle of their festival, we could have a full scale insurrection on our hands. You know that.”

  “The prefect would be most upset,” said Publius.

  “The prefect would be the least of our worries. Even with your entire century, we’d not have one chance in ten of getting back here alive. That mob would tear us to pieces.”

  “Why didn’t their Temple police arrest him, then?”

  Volusus sighed. “He has sympathizers in their high council. I can scarcely believe it, but he came back to the Temple, once more, this morning – yet they did nothing.”