The Resurrection File (19 page)

His Aunt Georgia was crazy about doing picture puzzles. As a young boy, Will would stare at the partially assembled picture and the mess of little oddly shaped pieces spread around it. But before he could understand what it was, he would have to grab the cover of the box and see what the completed picture was supposed to look like.

“Are you following me?” MacCameron asked.

“Sorry. I was just thinking about something,” Will responded.

“May I continue?”

“Sure,” the lawyer replied.

“Now secondly, Reichstad has refused to produce the actual 7QA fragment for anyone else to actually view firsthand. All we have are the indistinct photos in his magazine. Experts need to examine the
texture
of the fragment. And the
edges
—that is critical. No one can arrive at any conclusions about the edges without either much better photos, or better yet, by examining it.”

“How about Reichstad's associates?”

“Do you mean those in-house experts he bankrolls at his supersecret private research facility? Those scientists?”

“They have excellent credentials,” Will noted.

“Sure they do. But they are all on a well-padded payroll. You read Mr. Heftland's investigative report.”

“Where does Reichstad get his funding?”

“I don't know. The man attracts money like a magnet,” MacCameron said, shaking his head. “He is a person of great public-relations talent, most certainly.”

“He gets no tax-deductible donations,” Will noted, “no major foundation grants. His research center deliberately declines to file as a charitable, tax-exempt organization. That means that they don't have to file any public reports.”

“To get back to your point, Mr. Chambers, we really do not know how much access the other experts in his research center have been given to the actual fragment, as opposed to photocopies, or X-ray copies, or scanned telemetries. But even if they did have actual access, the point is that they are not free to contradict their director, Dr. Reichstad. To hold 7QA hostage from the scientific world is an outrage.”

“But isn't this déjà vu?” Will asked.

“How so?”

“I've been reading the archaeology journals you sent to me,” Will explained. “There was a tremendous hue and cry about the Dead Sea scrolls at one time too. Small groups of scholars were accused of hoarding them and not allowing other scientists to evaluate them. As a result some wild conspiracy stories started circulating. Theories about what the scrolls might contain. But when the scrolls were finally released to other experts, the whole thing appeared to be a tempest in a teapot.”

“The difference here is that we have something that is being touted as a contradiction of the whole two thousand years of Christian faith,” MacCameron countered. “The world needs a chance to refute Reichstad's claim by hands-on evaluation of that fragment.”

Will couldn't disagree with that point. In his litigation experience, forensic testing usually required experts to evaluate the material itself—not just reproductions. “Let's assume that you—or some other expert on your behalf—gets a chance to evaluate 7QA,” he suggested to his client. “What would you expect to find?”

“That brings me to point number three. There may be other fragments, or other parts of this fragment.”

Will was thunderstruck. This was the first time he had heard MacCameron suggest the possibility that there might be missing parts to 7QA.

“And exactly why do you say that?” Will asked slowly and deliberately.

“Because of the message.”

“Message!” Will exclaimed. “What message?”

“Why, the message that Dr. Hunter left me the night before he died. The one he left on my answering machine.”

“Where is that answering-machine tape?” Will had bolted up and was leaning over the table toward MacCameron.

“I have it at home.”

“Is it safe?”

“Why yes, I am sure it is.”

“What does it say?”

“I think you had better hear it for yourself, Mr. Chambers.”

Will Chambers looked at his client. The bells from St. Andrew's Church were tolling five o'clock.

“I need to stretch my legs, if I could,” MacCameron said pushing himself away from the conference table. “Walk around and get a bite to eat before I head home. Tonight's my night off. I have someone watching my wife—Helen—for me. So I thought that perhaps I could take in a bit of history about your charming little town.”

“Sure,” Will said. “But why don't you just tell me the gist of what was on that tape-recording first.”

“You know, I'd rather not. I really want you to hear it for yourself. That's essential before I tell you what
I
think is on it. Now if you will excuse me,” MacCameron said as he rose from his chair a little stiffly, “I will get some fresh air.” With that he loosened his necktie slightly. “I understand that St. Andrew's Church across the street has some fascinating history behind it. I may take a gander over there. Is it open to tourists?”

“Almost everything is open season for tourists in this town,” Will replied, still trying to figure out why his client had become so evasive about the message that Hunter had left. And then he added, “I'm sure you can look around in the church. The bell in the steeple is the same one they rang to announce George Washington's first great victory during the Revolutionary War.”

MacCameron grabbed his Bible, gave a wave, and then was out the door.

After his client had left, Will remembered something MacCameron had just said about his wife, Helen. Will realized that he hadn't asked him much about her. He wondered why he needed to have someone watch her.

It was early evening, and Will knew that Betty had gone for the day. So when he heard a noise in the lobby he poked his head around the corner, expecting to see MacCameron there, perhaps returning for something he had left behind.

Instead, Will saw it was Hattie, the elderly black cleaning lady for the building. Hattie was a tiny woman with glasses and white hair. She walked slightly bent over, and had one leg that looked like it had a hard time catching up to the other. Will usually knew that Hattie was coming because the soft sounds of her humming or singing would waft down the hallway ahead of her. She was dressed in her usual attire: a gray work uniform with the words “Hattie's Clean-Up Company” across the back.

“Evening, Mr. Chambers,” she said with her usual glowing smile, tilting her head down so she could peer through the top half of her bifocals.

“Hattie, I thought you were someone else. How are you?”

“As good as good can get, Mr. Chambers. Say, where is that good-looking young woman lawyer that used to work here—Miss Johnson? I haven't seen her around for a while,” she asked, picking up the wastepaper baskets.

“She doesn't work here anymore,” Will explained, hoping that Hattie would not ask for details, which she usually did in her unabashed style.

“Well, now that's a shame. You lost yourself a good lawyer. I always liked her. Seemed like a real sharp one.”

“Yes, she was sharp all right.”

“What happened—didn't pay her enough money?” And with that Hattie chuckled and gave a little stomp on the ground.

“No. That wasn't it, Hattie.”

“Oh, I know. She must have gotten married to that boyfriend of hers—Howard. That must be it.”

Will felt embarrassed that the cleaning lady seemed to have known more about the details of Jacki's life than he had. He couldn't help but think back to his last conversation with Jacki, while she was driving him home in his Corvette the day the law firm had given him the boot.

“Not exactly,” Will replied. “Jacki did get engaged to Howard. But the fact is that I am no longer in the same law firm. Jacki stayed with them, and they moved her up to their D.C. office. I'm in this office by myself now.”

“Well, you say hey to her for me if you see her, won't you? The Lord bless you now, Mr. Chambers.”

Hattie shuffled slowly out of the office. A few seconds later Will could hear her gently humming a hymn, and it was echoing down the stairwell.

Will walked back to his office and looked out the window. He gazed out at the old, cream-colored brick of the church across the street, at its tall, green-tiled spire that rose to the tallest point in Monroeville.

He saw MacCameron down below, opening the front door of the church and stepping in.

As Will glanced over to the church's graveyard and its black wrought-iron fence, his thoughts returned to the lawsuit. He reflected on the wording of the 7QA fragment that seemed to so clearly contradict the resurrection story in the Gospels.

Dead men don't walk out of graves,
Will thought to himself.

And then he asked himself the logical and inevitable question:
So how do I prove that once, two thousand years ago, one man did?

20

A
S REPORTER
J
ACK
H
ORNBY SLIPPED INTO THE BACK
of the pressroom in the federal building he figured that this was going to be just one more government press conference. He struggled to be optimistic, speculating that it might be mildly interesting because it had to do with oil—and the possibility of oil shortages always made great press. There had been no official statement about oil shortages. But the Department of Energy had released a report that questioned the “availability of oil at the current range of prices at the wellheads” and the “ability of oil production to keep apace with the growing demand.” Hornby saw this as bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo for the fact that there might be some real concerns about oil supply/demand ratios.

Hornby knew that oil, like money, was one of the great motivators of human events. It moved nations to war, built empires, and fueled the transportation that reduced the size of the planet down to a cozy global village. But at least at first blush, the veteran reporter could see nothing eventful or even mildly exciting in this particular press conference. Ever since the meltdown he had had with the city editor and then the managing editor over his story on the Reichstad lawsuit, Hornby had been given increasingly insignificant assignments.

He wondered if they would soon have him covering the increase in cab fares, or the traffic problems created by the unpatched potholes in the Washington, D.C., streets.

The Energy Department official at the podium was droning on. He was explaining how the world thus far had burned about 850 billion barrels of oil. Daily consumption of oil was running about 80 million barrels a day.

He went on to describe how the rate of oil use around the world had been increasing by a few percentage points every year. However, oil discovery and production had not kept up with the same rising curve.

Every nation of course maintained oil reserves, he noted. But the oil reserves of almost all of the major oil-consuming nations had been dropping by several percentage points every year. This was also true of the United States. For reasons of oil pricing and availability, America had been dipping into its strategic oil reserves.

All of this would be of little concern, the official pointed out, if the results of oil exploration had reflected the optimistic predictions from the last decades of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, the last major oil field to be discovered—Safaniya in Saudi Arabia—dated all the way back to 1954. There had been great expectations about a deep-water site off the Gulf of Mexico, however that field ended up containing only about one billion barrels—barely enough to supply the needs of America for a mere fifty days.

Hornby was hoping against hope that this fellow at the podium would get to the point.

Meanwhile, the speaker pointed out, OPEC's oil policies and its production reserves were not audited, so the West could only guess about how well OPEC was supplying the oil needs of the rest of the world.

But now, the official was happy to announce, the United States was exploring a new oil initiative with Saudi Arabia.

Because of the recent trend of cultural and international cooperation between the Arab nations—specifically Saudi Arabia—and the United States, talks were underway, he explained, that could be tremendously beneficial to the future industrial needs of our country.

The United States—through the Department of State—and the OPEC nations were now engaged in high-level talks that could open up the OPEC oil monopoly to some Western influence and monitoring.

When the speaker was finished, the hands shot up instantly. The reporters wanted to know the specifics. How would the U.S. benefit? What new arrangement with the OPEC consortium could we expect? What was the motivating factor behind the Arabs' opening up their oil monopoly to the United States?

The official avoided answering any specifics, indicating that he did not have the answers to those questions. Hornby decided not to raise his hand. Instead, he studied the speaker with that combination of intuition and exacting observation that a seasoned reporter develops. Hornby was trying to determine if this fellow, a relatively low-level Energy Department representative,
really
didn't know anything more than he was letting on.