Virgin (21 page)

Damn!

Carrie had
remained in a sort of semidream state. What little conversation she'd initiated
had been whispers of "Can you believe it? Can you believe we've actually
found her?" as they stocked up on twine, blankets, work gloves, a pry bar,
a lantern, and hundreds of feet of rope.

And now, beside him in bed, after a long silence . . .

"I've been
thinking . . ."

"Great,"
Dan said,
dragging himself back from the
borderlands
of sleep. "Does that mean you're giving up this ca-ca idea of bringing
that corpse home?"

"Please
don't refer to her so coarsely. Please?"

"Okay.
Just for your sake. Not because I believe it."

"Thank
you. Now tell me: Who do you think wrote the scroll?"

"A clever,
phony bastard," Dan said.

"All
right," she said with exaggerated patience. "Let's humor Sister
Carrie and assume that the scroll is genuine. Who wrote it?"

"We've
been over this already. A Pharisee. An educated man."

"But what
of the passage where he says 'I do not fear killing. I have killed before,
slipping through the crowds in Jerusalem, stabbing with my knife. And I fear
not damnation. Indeed, I am already thrice-damned.' That doesn't sound like a
Pharisee."

"What'd
you do, memorize that translation?"

"No. But
I've read it a few limes."

More than a
few, Dan bet.

"Some of
the upper-class Israelites, a few Pharisees among them, got involved with the
anti-Roman rebels, some with the zealots. These were a rough bunch of guys,
sort of the Israelite equivalent of the IRA. They mounted guerrilla attacks,
they murdered collaborators and informants and generally did whatever they
could to incite revolt. These were the guys who gathered at Masada after the
fall of Jerusalem. They held out for three years, then all 950 of them chose to
die rather than surrender to the Roman siege. This scroll writer--
fictional
scroll
writer--is patterned after that sort of zealot."

"He was a
pretty tough cookie then."

"Extremely.
Not the kind you'd want to cross."

"I wonder
what happened to him?"

"He's
probably hanging around, laughing up his three-striped sleeve, waiting for
someone to chase the wild goose he created."

He regretted
the words immediately, but he was
tired,
dammit.

Carrie yanked
the sheet angrily and turned onto her side, her back to him. "Good
night,
Dan. Get some sleep. We're out of here at dawn."

"Good
night, Carrie."

But exhausted
as he was, thoughts of the forger kept sleep at bay. And the more Dan thought
about how this slimy bastard had sucked Carrie in, making her believe all this
nonsense, the more he wanted to get back at him.

And removing
that corpse or whatever it was from its cave was the perfect way.

Then it
wouldn't matter who came searching for the secret atop the
tav
rock--
The
New York Times,
the
Star,
or even a mission from the Vatican
itself--all they'd find was an empty cave.
The tomb is empty!
There'd be
no turmoil, no orthodox confusion, no Catechismal chaos. And the forger would
be left scratching his head, wondering where his clever little prop had
disappeared to.

Dan smiled into
the darkness.
Two can play this game, Mr. Forger.

Tomorrow Carrie would have enthusiastic help in her efforts to
smuggle the forger's prop out of Israel.

After that, Dan
would have plenty of time to coax her back to her senses. If he could. He was
more than a little worried about Carrie's mental state. She seemed to be
drifting into some religious fantasy realm. He sensed some strange chemistry
between her and that body that he could not begin to comprehend. A switch had
been thrown inside her, but what circuits had been opened?

Maybe it all
went back to her childhood. Maybe it was all tied up in the abuse by her
father. Little Carrie had been a virgin and no one had protected her; now here
she was with what she believed to be the Virgin Mary and the grown-up Carrie
was going to become the protector.

More parlor psychoanalysis. But perhaps it gave some clue as to
why this artifact was so important to Carrie.

Too important,
perhaps.

And that
frightened him. How would she react when it finally became clear--as it must
eventually--that the body
she thought belonged
to the Blessed Virgin was a hoax? What if she cracked?

Whatever
happened, he'd be there for her.

But what if he
couldn't bring her back?

He stared into
the darkness and wished Hal had brought him another sort of gift from the Holy
Land. Anything but that damned scroll.

Tel Aviv

Kesev watched
the morning news on TV while he sipped his coffee and considered the journey
ahead of him. Oppressed by some nameless sense of urgency, he'd left Devorah's
in the early morning hours, fighting the urge to jump into his car and drive
into the Wilderness.

Instead he'd driven home and attempted to sleep. Wasted hours.
He'd had not a minute of slumber. He should have driven to the Resting Place.
He'd have been there by now and all these vague fears would be allayed.

He'd called
into Shin Bet with an excuse about a family emergency that would keep him from
the office all day, but he wondered if this trip was necessary. He'd be on the
road all day, probably for nothing. Only eighty air miles, but three times that
by car. And for what? To satisfy a nameless uneasiness?

Idly he
wondered if he could get a helicopter and do a quick fly-by, but immediately
discarded the idea. He'd made a spectacle of himself back there in '91 during
the Gulf War when he'd refused to leave the SCUD impact site until all the
investigations had been completed. He'd actually camped out there until the
last missile fragment had been removed and the final investigator had returned
home. There'd been too many questions about his undue interest in that
particular piece of nowhere. If he requested a copter now . . .

He sighed and finished his coffee. Better get moving. He had a
long drive ahead of him, and he'd know no peace until he'd assured himself that
no one had disturbed the Resting Place in his absence.

Absence . . .
guilt twisted inside of him. He wasn't supposed to be away from the Resting
Place. Ever. He'd promised to stay there and guard it.

He shook off
the guilt. How long could you sit around guarding a place that no one even knew
existed?

The Resting
Place was as safe as it ever was, protected by the greatest, most steadfast
guardian of all--the
Midbar Jehuda.

The Judean Wilderness

Carrie held her
breath going through the little passage to the second chamber. But then the
beam flashed against the Blessed Mother and she let it out.

"She's
still here! Oh, thank God, Dan! She's still here!"

"What did you expect?" Dan muttered as he crawled
in behind her with the electric lantern.
"Not as if we left her on a
subway."

She knew Dan
was tired and irritable. Anyone seeing him stumbling around the guesthouse this
morning would have thought he'd been drinking all night. Her own back ached and
her eyes burned, but true to her word, Carrie had awakened him at first light
this morning and had them on the road by the time the sun peeked over the
Jordanian highlands on the far side of the Dead Sea.
It glowed deep
red in the rearview mirror as it crept up the flawless sky, stretching the
Explorer's shadow far before them as they bounced and rolled into the hills.

And now as she
stood in the chamber, staring down once more at the woman she knew--
knew
--was
the Mother of God, she felt as if her heart would burst inside her. She loved
this woman--for all her quiet courage, for all the pain she must have suffered
in silence. But the Virgin didn't look quite like what she'd expected. In her
mind's eye she'd imagined finding a rosy-cheeked teenager, or at the very least
a tall, beautiful woman in her early twenties, because that was the way Carrie
had always seen her pictured. But when she thought about it, the Virgin
probably had been
average height for a
Palestinian woman of two thousand years ago, and must have been pushing seventy
when she died.

Dizziness swept
over Carrie as she was struck again by the full impact of what--
whom
--she
had found. God had touched this woman as He touched no other human being. She'd
carried the incarnation of His Son. And now she lay here, not two feet in front
of Carrie.

This is
really her. This is the Mother of God.

Until
yesterday, the Blessed Virgin had been a statue, a painting, words in books.
Now, looking at her aged face, her glossy, uncorrupted flesh, Carrie
appreciated her as a woman. A human being. All those years, all those countless
Hail Marys, and never once had Carrie realized that this Mary she'd prayed to
as an intercessor had once been a flesh-and-blood human being.
And that made
all the suffering in Mary's life so much more real.

And rising with
the love was a fierce protective urge, almost frightening in its intensity.

No one must
touch her. No one must desecrate or defile her in any way. No one must use her
for anything.
Anything!
The Church itself couldn't be trusted. Who knew
what even the Vatican might do? She'd dreamed during the night of the Blessed
Mother's remains on display in St. Peter's in Rome and it had sickened her.

Mary had given
enough already, and Carrie knew it was up to her to see to it that no one
demanded any more of her.

Dear Mother,
whoever was left to guard you is long since dead and gone. I'll take care of
you. I'll be your protector from now on.

She unfolded
the dark blue flannel blankets she had brought. Dan set the lantern down and
helped her spread them out on the floor. The bright light cast their distorted
shadows against the wall where the Virgin lay in her stony niche.

"All
right," she said when the blankets were right. "Help me move her
out."

She didn't want
anyone else touching the Virgin, not even
Dan,
but she couldn't risk lifting her out of that niche on her own. God forbid she
slipped from her grasp and tumbled to the floor.

As Dan
approached the Virgin's upper torso, Carrie waved him back.

"I'll take
this end. You take her feet."

Her hands shook
as she approached the Virgin. What was this going to be like, touching her? She
hesitated a moment, then wriggled her fingers under the Virgin's cloak and
cowl, slipping her hands under her neck and the small of her back. The fabric
felt so clean, so
new . . .
how could this be two thousand years old?

Unsettled, she
glanced to her right. What did Dan think? But Dan stood there with his hands
under the Virgin's knees and ankles, expressionless, waiting for her signal.

She suddenly realized that things had changed since yesterday
afternoon. Until then, Dan had been in charge. Sure, this trip had been her idea,
but Dan had made all the flight arrangements, decided where to stay, what car
to rent, while she'd done all the research. But here, in this chamber, in the
presence of the Virgin, she was in charge.

"All
right," she said. "Lift."

And as she
lifted, a knifepoint of doubt pierced Carrie for an instant: So light! Almost
as if she were hollow. And so stiff.

She
brushed the misgivings away. The Virgin was small, and God had preserved her
flesh.
That was why she was so light and stiff.

Carefully they
backed up, cradling the Virgin in their arms, then knelt and gently placed her
on the blankets.

"Stiff as
a board," Dan said. "You know, Carrie, I really think--"

Carrie knew
what he was going to say and she didn't want to hear it.

"Please,
Dan. Let's just wrap her up and move her out as we agreed."

He stared at
her a moment, then shrugged. "Okay."