Virgin (10 page)

"Heaven's
not guaranteed for anybody, Hal. Sometimes I wonder if there is such a place."

Hal was looking
at him strangely. "You?"

He didn't want
to get into anything heavy with Hal so he grinned. "Just kidding. But how
about lunch? It's the least I can do." He pointed to Nino's on the corner
of St. Mark's Place. "Slice of Sicilian?"

"I'll take
a raincheck," Hal said, extending his hand. "Got to run. But I want
to get together with you again after you've read the translation. See if you
can make any sense of it."

"I'll do
my best. And thanks again. Thanks a million. Nice to own something this old--and
know it's one of a kind."

"Not one
of a kind, I'm afraid," Hal said, frowning. "Shortly before I left,
an Israeli collector came in with another scroll identical to this one. The
parchment and the writing carbon dated the same as yours--about two thousand
years apart."

Dan shrugged.
"Okay. So it's not one of a kind. It's still a great gift, and I'll
treasure it. But right now I've got to get back to the shelter for the lunch
line."

Hal waved and
started down the sidewalk. "See you next week, okay? For lunch. I should
have my appetite back by then."

Dan waved and
headed back to St. Joe's, wondering how many of these weird scrolls were
floating around the Middle East?

She had been dead for two years and more, yet her body showed no
trace of corruption. The brother had kept her death a secret. He and the others
feared that Ananus or Herod Agrippa or even the Hellenists might make use of
her remains to further their various ends.

from
the Glass scroll

Rockefeller Museum
translation

6

Ramat Gan, Israel

Chaim Kesev
stared westward from the picture window in the living room of Tulla Szobel's
sprawling hilltop home. He could see the lights of Tel Aviv--the IBM tower, the
waterfront hotels--and the darkness of the Mediterranean beyond. The glass
reflected the room behind him.
A pale room, a small pale world--beige rug,
beige walls, beige drapes, pale abstract paintings, low beige furniture that
seemed designed for something other than human comfort, chrome and glass tables
and lamps.

Kesev wrinkled
his nose. With all the money lavished on this room, he thought, the least you'd
think she could do was find a way to remove the cigarette stink. The place
smelled like a tavern at cleanup time.

He had arrived
here unannounced tonight, shown Miss Szobel his Shin Bet identification, and
all but pushed his way in. Now he waited while she procured the scroll from a
room in some other quarter of the house.

The scroll. . .
he'd begun a low-key search for it immediately after its theft four years ago.
A subtle search. Not
I'm looking for a scroll recently stolen from a cave in
the Judean Wilderness. Have you seen or heard of such a thing?
That kind of
search would close doors rather than open them. Instead, Kesev had extended
feelers into the antiquities market--legitimate and underground--saying he was a
collector interested in purchasing first-century manuscripts, and that money
was no object.

Perhaps his
feelers hadn't been subtle enough. Perhaps the seller he sought preferred more
tried-and-true channels of commerce. Whatever the reason, he was offered many
items but none were what he sought.

Then, just last
year, his feelers caught ripples of excitement from the manuscript department
at the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem. A unique first-century scroll had been
brought in for verification. As he homed in on the scent, word came that the
scroll turned out to be a fake. So he'd veered off and continued his search
elsewhere.

And then, just
last month, whispers of another fake, identical to the first--the same
disjointed story, written in the same Aramaic form of Hebrew, on an ancient
parchment.

Something in
those whispers teased Kesev. The scant details he could glean about the fakes
tantalized him. He investigated and learned that the first scroll had been
brought in by an American who had since returned home. But the second . . . a
wealthy woman from a Tel Aviv suburb had brought that in, and taken it home in
a huff when informed that she'd been duped.

Kesev was
standing in her living room now.

He heard her
footsteps behind him.

"Here, Mr.
Kesev," said a throaty voice behind him. Her Ivrit carried a barely
noticeable Eastern European accent. "I believe this is what you
want."

He turned
slowly, hiding his anticipation. Tulla Szobel was in her mid-fifties, blond
hair, reed thin, prematurely wrinkled, and dressed in a beige knit dress the
color of her walls. A cigarette dangled from her lips. She held a Lucite case
between her hands.

Kesev took the
case from her and carried it to the glass-and-chrome coffee table. Without
asking permission, he lifted the lid and removed the scroll.

"Careful!"
she said, hovering over him.

He ignored her.
He uncoiled a foot or so of the scroll and began reading--

Then stopped.
This wasn't the scroll. This looked like the
scroll,
and some of it read like the scroll, but the writing, the penmanship was all
wrong.

"They were
right," he said, nodding slowly. "This is a fake. A clumsy
fake."

Miss Szobel
sniffed. "I don't need you to tell me that. The Rockefeller Museum--"

"Where did
you get this?" Kesev said, rerolling the scroll.

She puffed
furiously on her cigarette. "Why. . . I . . .picked it up in a street
bazaar."

"Really?"
They all said that. Amazing. Israel seemed full of lucky collectors who were
forever happening on priceless--or potentially priceless--artifacts in street
stalls, and purchasing them for next to nothing from vendors who had no idea of
their true worth. "You must take me to him."

"I wish I could," she said. "I've been looking for
him myself, trying to get my money back. But he seems to have vanished into
thin air."

"You are
lying," Kesev said evenly, replacing the Lucite lid and looking up at her.

She stepped
back as if he'd spit at her. "How dare you!" She pointed a shaking
finger toward her front door. "I want you out of--"

"If I
leave without the name that I seek I will return within the hour with a search
warrant and a search team, and we will comb this house inch by inch until we
turn up more forgeries from this mysterious source."

Kesev couldn't
back up a word of that threat, but he knew the specter of a search of the
premises would strike terror into the heart of any serious antiquities
collector. There wasn't one who didn't dip into the black market now and then.
Some bought there almost exclusively. If Miss Szobel followed true to form, a
search might result in the seizure of half her collection; maybe more.

Miss Szobel's
pointing arm faltered and fell to her side.

"Wh-why?
On what grounds? Why does Domestic Intelligence care--?"

"Oh, it's
not just the Shin Bet. The Mossad is involved too."

She paled
further. "The Mossad?"

"Yes. We
have reason to believe that these scrolls are merely the latest in an ongoing
scheme to sell worthless fakes to wealthy collectors and funnel the money to
Hamas and other terrorist organizations."

Amazing how
facile a liar he'd become. It hadn't always been this way. As a younger man
he'd insisted on speaking nothing but the truth. But that youth, like truth,
was long gone, swallowed up by time and tragedy.

He sighed and
rose to his feet. "Please do not leave the house, Miss Szobel. I will
return in--"

"Wait!"
she cried, motioning him back toward the couch. "I had no idea terrorists
were involved. Of course I'll tell you where I bought it."

"Excellent."
Kesev removed a pen and a note pad from his breast pocket. "Go
ahead."

"His name
is Salah Mahmoud. He has a shop in Jerusalem--the old town. In the Moslem
quarter, off Qadasiya."

Kesev nodded.
He knew the area, if not the shop.

"Thank you
for your cooperation." He bent and lifted the scroll and its Lucite box
from the table. "I'll need to take this back to Shin Bet headquarters for
analysis."

"Of
course," she said, following him to the door. "But I will get it
back, won't I?"

"Of
course. As soon as we are finished with it."

He waved
good-bye and headed for his car. Another lie. Miss Tulla Szobel had seen the
last of her forged scroll. He'd take it with him to Jerusalem for his visit to
a certain Salah Mahmoud. The dealer couldn't plead ignorance if Kesev held the
scroll under his nose. Threats probably wouldn't suffice to loosen Mahmoud's
tongue. Kesev might have to get rough. He almost relished the thought.

I asked the brother why he had come to me with this
miracle.

He said to me. Because it had been told to us that you are
to guard her, and protect her as if she were your own mother and still alive.

I told him, Yes. Yes, I will guard her with my life. I
will do anything you ask.

from the Glass scroll

Rockefeller Museum translation

7

Manhattan

The Gothic,
granite-block bulk of St. Joseph's Church sits amid the brick tenements like a
down-on-her-luck dowager who's held on to her finer clothes from the old days
but hasn't the will or the means to keep them in good repair. Her twin spires
are alternately caked black with city grime and streaked white with the
droppings of the pigeons who find perches on the spires' remaining crockets.
The colors of the large central rose window over the double doors are barely
discernible through the grime. She's flanked on her left by the rectory and on
her right by the Convent of the Blessed Virgin.

From his room
in the rectory Father Dan saw the hungry homeless lining up next to the worn
stone steps in front of St. Joe's, waiting to get into the Loaves and Fishes
for lunch. He dearly would have loved to sit here and read the translation of
the scroll Hal had given him, but duty called.

He left the wooden box on his bed and hurried down to the rectory
basement. From there it was a quick trip through the dank, narrow tunnel that
ran beneath the alley between the church and the rectory to the basement of St.
Joe's. As he approached the door at the far end, the smell of fresh bread and
hot soup drew him forward.

The tunnel
ended in the kitchen area of Loaves and Fishes. He stepped inside. Heat
thickened the air. All the ovens were going--donated by a retired baker--heating
loaves of Carrie's special bread: multiple grains mixed with
high-protein flour, enriched with eggs and gluten. A meal
in itself. Add a bowl of Carrie's soup and you had a feast.

Dan sniffed the
air as he headed for the huge stove and the cluster of aproned volunteers
stirring the brimming pots.

"Smells
great. What's the
soup du jour?"

"Split
pea," Augusta said.

"Split
pea?" Dan said. "I ordered
boeuf bourguignon!"

A slim brunette
at the center of the cluster turned and gave him a withering, scornful stare.

"Don't you
be starting that again," she said, pointing a dripping spoon at him.

"Oh,
that's right," he said. "I forgot. This is a
vegetarian
soup
kitchen."

The volunteers
glanced over their shoulders and giggled.

This argument
had become a litany, recited almost daily. "Hush up or we'll be making a
beef stew of
you!"
Now they were laughing aloud. The brunette tried
to hold
her scowl but finally a smile broke
through and its brilliance
lit the room.

"Good
morning, Sister," Dan said.

"Good
morning, Father," she said.

Sister Carolyn
Ferris fixed him a moment with her wide, guileless blue eyes. Her normally pale
cheeks were flushed from the heat of the stove. The rising steam had curled her
straight dark hair, cut in a bob, into loose ringlets around her face. She was
in her late twenties dressed in the shapeless, oversized work shirt and baggy
pants she favored when working at the shelter. Her lips were on the thin side,
and her teeth probably could have done with a little orthodontic work in her
teens, but she'd joined the convent at fourteen so they remained
au naturel.
The way her smile lit up her face erased all memory of those minor
imperfections.