Virgin (18 page)

Dan was struck
by the thought that she might be describing her own feelings as a fourteen-year
old entering the Convent of the Blessed Virgin.

That moment
back on the highway had been kind of spooky. They'd been cruising south on
Route 90 along the Dead Sea shore when Carrie had suddenly clutched his arm and
pointed to a rubble-strewn path, little more than a goat trail, breaking
through the roadside brush and winding up into the hills.

"There!"
she'd cried. "Follow that!"

So Dan had
pressed the
4x4
button on the Explorer's dash and followed the trail
here.

"Which way
does it
seem
we should go now?" he said and knew right away from
her expression that it hadn't come out the way he'd meant it.

"Look,
Dan," she said, eyes flashing. "I know you think I've gone off the
deep end on this, but it's important to me. And if--"

"What's
important to me is
you,
Carrie. That's all. Just you. And I'm worried
about you getting hurt. You've pumped your expectations so high . . ."

Her eyes
softened as she challenged the sun with that smile. "You don't have to
worry about me, Dan, because she
is
up here. And we're going to find
her."

"Carrie--"

"And now
that I think about it, it
seems
we should take
the south fork." She swung back into her seat and
closed her door. "Come on, Driver Dan. Let's go! Time's a-wastin'!"
Dan sighed.
Nothing to do but humor her. And it wasn't so bad, really.
At least they were together.

It was getting
near four o'clock. Dan was thinking about calling it a day and heading back to
the highway while there was still plenty of light left. Wouldn't be easy
finding his way back down in the light. No way in the dark. He was just about
to suggest it when Carrie suddenly lurched
forward in her seat.

"Oh, my
God!" she cried, her eyes darting between the windshield and the sheet of
paper in her lap. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph, could that be
it?"

Dan skidded to
a halt and craned his neck over the steering wheel for a look. As before, the
trailing dust cloud caught up to them and he could see nothing while they were
engulfed. But as it cleared . . .

"I'll
be
damned," Dan muttered.

No, he thought.
It's got to be a mistake. The sun is directly ahead, it's glaring off the dirt
on the windshield. A trick of the light. Got to be.

Hoping, praying
that his eyes were suffering from too much glare, Dan opened the door and
stepped out for a better look. He shielded his eyes against the sun which was
sitting on the flat ledge atop a huge outcropping of stone ahead of them, and
blinked into the light. He still couldn't tell if it--

And then the
sun dipped below the ledge, silhouetting the outcropping in brilliant light.
Suddenly Dan could see that the ledge ran rightward to merge with the wall of
the mountain of which the outcropping was a part, and leftward to a rocky lip
which overhung a sheer precipice that bellied gently outward about halfway down
its fall.

Damned if it
didn't look just like. . . a
tav.

"Do you
see it, Dan?"

He glanced
right and there was Carrie, out of the cab, holding the yellow sheet of paper
at arms length before her
and jumping up and
down like a preschooler who'd just spotted Barney.

He hesitated, unsure of what to say. As much as he wanted to avoid
reinforcing her fantasies, he could not deny the resemblance of the cliff face
to the Hebrew letter he'd drawn for her.

"Well, I see
something that might remotely--"

"Remotely,
shlemotely! That cliff looks exactly like what you drew here, which is exactly
the way it was described in the scroll!"

"The
for
g
ed
scroll, Carrie. Don't forget that the source of all these factoids is a
confirmed hoax."

"How could
I possibly forget when you keep reminding me every ten minutes?"

He hated to
sound like a broken record, but he felt he had to keep the facts before her.
The scroll and everything in it was bogus. And truthfully, right now he needed
a little reminder himself. Because finding the
tav
rock had shaken him
up more than he wished to admit.

"Sorry,
Carrie. I just--"

"I
know," she said. "But you've got to
believe,
Dan. There's
truth in that scroll." She pointed at the
tav
rock looming before
them. "Look. We're not imagining that. It's there."

Dan wanted to
say, Yes, but if you want to perpetrate a hoax, you salt the lies with neutral
truths, and the most easily verifiable neutral truths are simple geological
formations. But he held his tongue. This was Carrie's show.

"What are
we waiting for?" she said.

Dan shrugged
and got back in behind the wheel. The incline ahead was extra steep so he
pressed the
low range
button on
the dashboard.

"Can you
believe it?" Carrie said, bubbling with excitement as they started the
final climb.
"We're traveling the same route as St. James and the
members of the Jerusalem Church when they carried Mary's body here."

"No,
Carrie," he said softly. "I can't believe it. I want to believe it.
I'd give almost anything to have it be true. But I can't believe it."

"You will,
Danny, me boy-o," she said, smiling that smile. "Before the day is
out, you will."

The closer they
got to the rock, the less and less it resembled a
tav . . .
and the more
formidable it looked. Fifty feet high at the very least, with sheer walls that
would have challenged an experienced rock climber even if they were straight;
but the outward bulge and the sharp overhang at the crest made ascent all but
impossible.

As they rounded
the outcropping, Dan realized they'd entered the mouth of a canyon. The deep
passage narrowed and curved off to the left about a quarter of a mile north. He
stopped the Explorer in the middle of the dry wadi running along the eastern
wall. Cooler here. The canyon floor had been resting in the shadow of its
western wall for a while. To his left he spotted a cluster of stunted trees.

"Aren't
those fig trees?" Carrie said.

"Not
sure," Dan said. "Could be. Whatever they are, they don't look too
healthy."

"They look
old. Old fig trees . . . didn't the scroll writer said he was subsisting on
locusts, honey, and wild figs?"

"Yeah, but
those trees don't look wild. Looks like somebody planted them there."

"Exactly!"
Carrie said, grinning.

Dan had to
admit--to himself only--that she had a point. It looked as if someone had moved a
bunch of wild fig trees to this spot and started a makeshift grove . . . out
here ... in the middle of nowhere.

But that only
meant the forger of the scroll had to have been here in order to describe it;
it didn't mean St. James had been here, or that the Virgin Mary was hidden away
atop the
tav
rock.

But a big question still remained: Who had planted those fig
trees?

He turned to
Carrie but her seat was empty. She was walking across the wadi toward the
tav
rock. Dan turned off the motor and ran around to catch up to her.

"Where do
you think you're going?"

"Looking
for a way up," she said, studying the cliff face as she walked. "The
scroll says there's a path."

Dan scanned the
steep wall looming before them.

"Good
luck."

"Well,
this isn't nearly as smooth as the far side. There could be a way up. There has
to be. We simply have to find it."

Dan saw
countless jagged cracks and mini-ledges protruding randomly from the surface,
but nothing that even vaguely resembled a path. This looked hopeless, but the
scroll had been accurate on so many other points already, there just might be a
path to the top.

He veered off
to the left.

"Giving up
so soon?" Carrie said.

"If there
is
a path," he said, "you won't spot it from straight on. It'll only
be visible from a sharp angle. You didn't spot one as we rounded the front of
the cliff, so let's see what things look like from the back end."

She nodded,
smiling. "Smart. I knew I loved you for some reason."

Dan figured
he'd done enough nay-saying. The only way to get this over with was to find a
path to the top--if there was one--and convince Carrie once and for all that
there was no cave up there and that the Virgin Mary was not lying on a bier
inside waiting to be discovered. Then maybe they could get their lives back to
normal--that is, as normal as life could be for a priest and a nun who were
lovers.

He reached the
northern end of the outcropping and wound his way through the brush clustered
around its base. When he was within arm's reach of the base itself, he looked
south along the cliff wall.

"I'll be
damned . . ."

Carrie hurried
to his side. "What? Did you find it? Is it there?"

He guided her
in front of him and pointed ahead. Starting a dozen feet behind them and
running up the face of the cliff at a thirty-degree angle was a narrow, broken,
jagged ledge. It averaged only two feet or so in width.

Carrie whirled
and hugged him. "That's it! You found it! See? All you need is a little
faith!" She grabbed his hand and began dragging him from the brush.
"Let's go!"

He followed her
at a walk as she ran back to where the ledge slanted into the floor of the
canyon floor. By the time he reached it she was already on her way, scrabbling
upward along the narrow ledge like a lithe, graceful cat.

"Slow
down, Carrie."

"Speed up,
slowpoke!" She laughed.

She's going to
kill herself, he thought as he began his own upward course along the ledge. He
glanced down at the jagged rubble on the hard floor of the wadi below and
quickly pulled his gaze away. Maybe we're both going to get killed.

He wasn't good
with heights--not phobic about them, but not the least bit fond of them. He
concentrated on staying on the ledge. Shale, sand, and gravel littered the
narrow, uneven surface before him, tilting toward the cliff wall for half a
dozen feet or so, then a crack or a narrow gap, or a step up or down, then it
continued upward, now sloping away from the wall. These away sections were the
worse. Dan's sneakers tended to slip on the sand and he had visions of himself
sliding off into--

"Dan!"

A high-pitched
squeal of terror from up ahead. He looked up and saw Carrie down on one knee,
her right leg dangling over the edge, her fingers clawing at the cliff wall for
purchase. She'd climbed back into the sunlight and it looked as if her
sharp-edged shadow was trying to push her off.

Oh my God!
"Carrie! Hang on!"

He hurried
toward her as quickly as he dared but she was back on the ledge and on her feet
again by the time he reached her.

"What
happened?"

Pale, panting,
she leaned against the cliff wall, hugging it. "I slipped, but I'm
okay."

Suddenly he was
angry. His heart was pounding, his hands were trembling . . .

"You
almost killed yourself, dammit!"

"Sorry,"
she said softly. "That wasn't my intention, I assure you."

"Just slow
down, will you? I don't want to lose you."

That smile.
"That's nice to hear."

"Here. Let
me slide past you and
I'll
lead the way."

"Not a
chance. I'll take my time from here on up." She held up two fingers.
"Promise."

Carrie kept her
word, taking it slow, watching her footing, with Dan close behind. They reached
the summit without another mishap. He glanced around--no one else here, and no
place to hide.

"Oh,
Lord," Carrie said, wandering across the top of the
tav
toward the
far edge. "Look at this!"