The Third Day Page 4

  “In our world, demand begets supply,” said Dichter. “Do you remember the James Ossuary from a few years ago?”

  I vaguely recalled the story: something about a box of bones that supposedly belonged to Christ’s brother.

  “It got so much publicity because if authentic, it would have been the first physical reference to Jesus directly traceable to the first century,” said Dichter.

  “But not long afterward, the IAA – the Israel Antiquities Authority – raided a warehouse owned by the ossuary’s discoverer. Inside, they found dozens of so-called artifacts, along with the tools the man and his associates had used to create them. Later investigations revealed that this gang had been running a forgery ring for twenty years.”

  “That crew was in it for the money, but sometimes, people conduct hoaxes for more personal reasons,” Lavon added.

  “When we start out in this business, we all dream of excavating spectacular ruins and recounting our finds to rapt audiences of society’s movers and shakers at the Met. But not everyone’s career turns out the way they expected it to in graduate school. It can be awfully tempting to cross that line, even if it’s just to make somebody you don’t like look like a total fool.”

  I sighed. “Like now, for instance.”

  “Yes,” said Dichter, “though I can’t imagine who could be behind this. None of us have publicized our findings, and the only artifacts found at the site, other than the skeleton and what’s left of the clothing, were a handful of Roman coins.”

  I glanced at Lavon, who walked over to one of the laptops and tapped a few keys before turning the screen toward me.

  “An authentic Roman denarius,” he said. “Ten bucks on eBay.”

  “They’re nothing special,” said Dichter.

  This was news to me, though it would explain how Bryson had obtained them – if these bones truly were his.

  “You mentioned other anomalies?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure I’d call them that,” said Dichter. “It’s just that whoever this man was, he was remarkably healthy for someone in the first century. Obviously he was a member of the upper class, but even for this type of person, I’ve never seen a skeleton so free of any signs of infectious disease.”

  “You can tell that from the bones?”

  Both Lavon and Dichter nodded.

  “Amazing,” I said.

  And it truly was. I had no idea the science had advanced that far.

  “Just out of curiosity, how old was this man when he died?”

  “I’d say late forties, early fifties, thereabouts.” Dichter replied.

  He directed my attention back to the skull.

  “These zig-zag patterns are called ‘sutures.’ The skull of a newborn is flexible, to make birth easier, and the sutures join up and fuse as the person grows older.”

  The assistant adjusted the light so I could see them better.

  “The frontal suture, this one, closes when a child is quite young. Others begin to close between the ages of twenty and thirty, and the last ones, back here, don’t fuse completely until the person reaches seventy.”

  Once again, this was in the ballpark.

  I racked my brain trying to come up with alternative explanations for what I was seeing, but this proved to be a futile exercise. I simply couldn’t think of any.

  Chapter 7

  We tossed ideas around for a little while longer and then I bought Jonathan and his crew lunch, to thank them for their trouble. Afterwards, Lavon and I hopped in the car and headed for Jerusalem, less than forty miles away.

  I didn’t expect to learn anything new at their dig site, but I needed to be able to say I had crossed every “t” and dotted every “i” before writing my final report to Markowitz, assuming I decided to write one after all.

  We didn’t say much to each other along the way, but eventually, Lavon couldn’t resist asking me what I really thought of it all.

  I can’t believe I’m quoting a fictional detective,” I said, “but I think Sherlock Holmes may have pegged it pretty close.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Eliminate the impossible and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

  “The question is,” I continued, “have we eliminated the impossible?”

  “You said the Brysons’ money is real enough,” he answered. “You couldn’t think of any other way they could have acquired so much.”

  I had, and I still couldn’t.

  “Let me ask you another thing,” I said. “How did Juliet react when you first showed up at her door with that story? Did she show any sign of doubt that what you were telling her was true?”

  “That’s what surprised me. It was almost like she had expected the news – or perhaps she just felt a sense of relief, finally knowing what had happened to him.”

  “A sense of closure, then?”

  “Yes.”

  ***

  By then, we had reached the outskirts of Jerusalem and took the exit to the road leading to Lavon’s dig.

  From the highway, about a hundred meters away, the site resembled any one of the dozen nearby building projects. A chain link fence topped with a strand of razor wire surrounded the three-acre property, while a faded yellow Caterpillar backhoe and other well-worn earth moving equipment rested in the corner of a gravel parking lot.

  We got out of the car and made our way to excavation headquarters, a secondhand construction trailer donated by a local builder. Lavon spoke briefly to the graduate student he had left in charge during his absence and then gave me a quick tour of the dig itself.

  Their efforts focused on a half-acre plot at the northeastern corner of the site, with the work organized along the lines of a Wheeler box grid, a common archaeological technique that enabled a small professional staff to supervise a high number of eager but untrained volunteers.

  “Imagine a chess board,” Lavon said, “with each square two meters by two meters. We leave the red squares alone, while we excavate the black ones. That way, we can measure both vertical and horizontal dimensions with precision.”

  “Where did you find Bryson?” I asked.

  He pointed to the far southwest corner, about 150 meters away from the primary excavation area, and we walked over to have a look.

  “A couple of engineering students took our ground penetrating radar to the inactive areas of our site, just for practice. They found the collapsed cave and on an off-day, we decided to take a look.”

  “And the skeleton?”

  “We knew it was old, but without testing, we couldn’t say more, so we bundled it off to Radiometric. You know the rest.”

  ***

  I did, and I also realized that I had asked where they had found Dr. Bryson without using a qualifier to indicate that I had some doubt as to the veracity of the story.

  “Robert, let me ask you something: assuming for the moment that we’re not falling for some elaborate practical joke, what do you think he was doing in this location, in the first century?”

  It didn’t take long for both of us to reach the obvious conclusion: Anno Domini – the Year of our Lord – the reason the first century is the first century, and not the fourth, or the eighteenth, or the 223rd.

  Before I could say anything else, Lavon jumped up and ran back to the main excavation site, where he rushed into the trailer with a couple of graduate students in tow. A few minutes later, he emerged with a thick green binder and began to flip rapidly through the pages as he headed back toward me.

  The file contained a thumbnail photograph and a brief description of every item – ancient or modern – that any worker had uncovered at the site, from the first day of the excavation until that very moment.

  For the sake of scientific precision, and to fend off allegations of potential site contamination, the documents even recorded the details of a volunteer’s lost car keys that a doctoral candidate had found in one of the grids the following day.

  I waited until he was out of ea
rshot of the students to ask my question aloud.

  “Has anyone located a missing video camera – one with some slight wear and tear, perhaps?”

  My attempt at humor escaped him and he continued to flip through the printouts, but eventually he concluded no one had found such a device – at least not yet.

  Finally, he closed the binder and just stared at the sky.

  “Would a DVD or flash memory survive two millennia under the sand?” I asked.

  Neither of us knew; nor did we have any way to determine whether Henry Bryson had met his end coming or going. Any recording device the diggers unearthed could just as easily be blank.

  Chapter 8

  We returned to the Brysons’ lab, both still jet-lagged from our whirlwind trip. Juliet led us into the conference room, where we were surprised to see that Markowitz and Bergfeld had not left Boston after all.

  “I had to hear the rest of the story,” he said. “How was your trip?”

  As Lavon and I explained what we had found in Israel, each of us struggled to come up with an alternative that fit the facts as we knew them. No one succeeded.

  We could see, too, that Juliet had something else on her mind. Her face reflected a strange sense of peace, serenity almost, that didn’t square with her husband’s demise. I made the mistake of commenting on this.

  “I’ve thought of little else since you left,” she said. “I came up with a plan, one that should require only a simple adjustment to the transport apparatus.”

  “What kind of plan?” I asked.

  “We can still save Henry, Mr. Culloden. Now that we have the precise coordinates of his whereabouts, a rescue should be straightforward.”

  “But that means someone else will have to – ” Lavon cut himself short.

  “Yes, Robert, and I am thankful that we have a person in this room so uniquely qualified for the task.”

  I would have expected Lavon to jump at the chance, but to my surprise, his first impulse ran against the idea.

  “He could have died somewhere else,” he protested. “There’s no guarantee anyone would find him alive in that cave.”

  “No,” she replied, “but do you think a perfect stranger would have carried his body very far, in that climate?”

  Lavon shook his head.

  “And you told me yourself that his bones showed no signs of gross physical abuse. Did you mean that, or were you just trying to avoid causing me any more sorrow?”

  “No, I meant it. The lab in Tel Aviv analyzed the skeleton with great care, given the discrepancies we found. I think it’s safe to assume he wasn’t executed, nor was he torn to pieces by a mob, or by wild animals.”

  “Well, then, it should still be possible to save him.”

  “Or leave two skeletons in that cave instead of one,” Lavon grumbled. “Your husband could have died from dozens of other causes that would have left no impact on his bone structure.”

  The rest of us watched without saying a word.

  “Robert, I implore you: you’re the only one who really understands that world. You’re the only one who speaks the language.”

  “I read ancient Greek,” he said. “There’s a difference. Plus, not everyone in that area spoke Greek. If I encountered the wrong people, I’d be more likely to get a knife in my gut than directions to Jerusalem. In fact, that may have been what happened to your husband.”

  “But you know he wasn’t robbed,” she replied. “You found a bag of Roman coins by his bones, did you not?”

  Lavon nodded. The cache amounted to three months pay for a typical unskilled laborer. No brigand would have left that behind.

  “I’m not too proud to get down on my knees and beg if I must.”

  Lavon sat in silence for another minute or so. Finally, he sighed. “There’s no need to beg,” he said.

  “Just think of the knowledge you’ll gain from just a short visit.”

  “I said I’d do it,” he snapped.

  ***

  The rest of us heard the words, but like so much of what we had seen over the last few days, their meaning failed to register immediately.

  “You’re serious about this?” Markowitz finally asked. “Someone else can really go back?”

  “Yes,” said Bryson. “It will involve an element of danger, but the odds of success are high enough to justify the risk.”

  Markowitz pondered this for another moment; then his face lit up.

  “Fantastic!” he said. “I want to go, too.”

  Lavon shook his head, as did Bryson. This was a bad idea.

  “Ray, I’ve never heard you express any interest in the Biblical era,” I said.

  “No.” he admitted. “But what an adventure this could be.”

  “This will be incredibly hazardous,” said Lavon. “I don’t think you have the slightest comprehension of the dangers we’re likely to encounter.”

  “I can handle it,” said Markowitz. “Climbing K2, that was hazardous. Diving the Andrea Doria – people die doing that every year, too. We have to have confidence in ourselves. If we listened to the naysayers, we’d be afraid to walk out the front door.”

  “Ray, that may be true,” I said, “but this enterprise has already lost one man. You’ve seen the photos of the skeleton. You saw Dr. Bryson’s finger sitting right here on this table, in a jar.”

  “Yes, I did. And we’re going to get him. Actually, we have a golden opportunity not only to save Dr. Bryson, but also to complete his original plan. While you were gone, Juliet told us why he was there; the question he sought to answer.”

  I was afraid of that.

  “No, we are not going anywhere,” said Lavon. I am going to retrieve Dr. Bryson and come straight back. The risk is too high to attempt anything else.”

  “You exaggerate,” said Markowitz. “I’m sure he just ran into a freak infection or something. Don’t those stories about the Black Death all say that the victims died within the hour?”

  Lavon sighed.

  “Ray, tell me: would you go to Iraq today, as a tourist? It would be a fascinating trip. Some of the greatest archaeological treasures on the planet are there: Babylon, Nineveh, the seats of ancient empires, most never completely explored.”

  “No,” said Markowitz. “I’d probably get blown up.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Religious fanatics – nut-jobs who think killing an American is God’s will.”

  “I’m going to give it to you straight,” replied Lavon. “By the time of Christ, ancient Judea had suffered through nearly two centuries of very similar religious and political strife. Two hundred years of constant low level guerilla violence – not to mention the regular depredations of ordinary thieves and highway robbers.”

  Markowitz paused for a moment, but then his expression grew firm. “It’s not like we’re planning to stay long. Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it.

  He glanced over to Juliet. “My family’s money made your initial work possible. I don’t mean to be obstinate, but either I go or I’ll shut this place down.”

  Bryson didn’t speak, but she finally nodded her assent. After all, he had the ability to do just that.

  “Then I’m going, too,” said Sharon. “I’ve studied the Bible my entire life. There’s simply no way I can pass up the opportunity to see what it describes for real.”

  “No!” said Lavon.

  Though his forcefulness surprised me, I agreed with Lavon’s thinking. However intelligent and capable she might be, Sharon didn’t strike me as a person who had ever experienced anything going completely and horribly wrong.

  I could imagine many things happening to such a woman in the first century – none of them good.

  “You can’t tell me what to do,” she said. “My family has provided ninety percent of your funding for the last three years.”

  “I’m not saying you can’t go,” said Lavon. “I’m saying you shouldn’t. It’s simply too dangerous.”

  Like my client’s son, though, l
ogic could not dissuade her.

  They bickered for several minutes before the archaeologist shook his head and let out an exasperated sigh.

  He glanced over to me, looking for support, but this time he found none. I’ll admit it; while the others argued, I caught the bug, too. Markowitz was right: Whatever happened, we’d figure out a way to deal with it.

  Finally, Lavon recognized the inevitable and admitted defeat.

  “All right,” he said. “I need to round up some provisions. We’ll meet back here in a few days after you’ve all had a chance to get your affairs in order.”

  Like Markowitz and Bergfeld, I neglected to consider the usual meaning of that phrase.

  Chapter 9

  Three days later, Lavon wheeled in four large boxes and stacked them in an unoccupied corner of the conference room. One of his old colleagues had recently left an Israeli dig to open a Biblical study center in rural Georgia, where he had meticulously recreated a first century Palestinian village. Lavon had gone there to borrow clothing and replica artifacts.

  He could see that none of us had changed our minds, though he did have an unanswered question.

  “Juliet, you never explained how can we signal this, um, device to return?”

  She didn’t immediately respond, which we all found disconcerting.

  “We can signal it to come back, can’t we?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she finally said, “you should be able to initiate a transfer on your end.”

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out four thin plastic wafers that resembled the flash memory cards in digital cameras.

  “The system is programmed to return you to the present time automatically after a pre-set interval, but if you run into a more urgent situation, squeeze this for ten seconds, and you’ll bring back all mammalian life forms within a two meter radius.”

  Unless we got tangled up with rabid dogs, that sounded easy enough; too easy, in fact.

  “What’s the catch?” I asked.