Робин Кук: Intervention

The visit turned out to be quite helpful. At first they couldn’t figure out where it could have been that Shawn and Sana had found the ossuary, and it wasn’t until the resident archaeologist pointed out to them that to get to the tunnel entering Peter’s tomb, one had to raise one of the panels of the glass tourist deck to get down to the lowest level of the most recent excavation.

Although Jack did feel some tenseness and nervousness prior to his and James’s setting out that night after ten with Jack carrying the ossuary and James an enormous ring of keys, it quickly dissipated. Jack had thought they would have to sneak in, but they didn’t. James had actually visited the archpriest, also a cardinal, who currently administered the basilica, and told him flat out he wanted to visit Clementine Chapel and Peter’s tomb that night, and was given the ring of keys and assured the lights would all be left on.

The walk from Casa di Santa Marta to the northwest apse entrance of Saint Peter’s was thankfully short, less than a New York City block. After James unlocked the door, Jack walked into the hushed and darkened basilica through what he later learned was the Porta della Preghiera. To him, entering the basilica was the single most memorable moment of the evening. About a half-hour earlier the clouds outside had parted, at least temporarily, and a gibbous moon had slid into view seemingly for Jack’s benefit, which was now sending shafts of moonlight through the windows at the base of Michelangelo’s dome. The effect was to emphasize the vastness of the interior of the building.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” James questioned, coming up behind Jack.

“It’s enough to make me religious,” Jack responded, only half in jest.

James led the way across the transept, crossing to the column of Saint Andrews, one of the four holding up the enormous dome, where he unlocked another door that led below to the crypt.

It took them another twenty minutes to descend all the way down to the lowest level of the excavation and the exact location in the wall of the tunnel leading into Peter’s tomb where the ossuary was found. The spot was marked by a sharply defined rectangular opening in the wall. Since the dirt was loose, Jack was able to dig it out with ease and quickly discovered all the lights, buckets, and other paraphernalia that Shawn and Sana had used and then buried.

“We’re going to have to haul this stuff away,” Jack said. “But it will be easy. We can use the buckets. But first why don’t you find me some water? I can make a paste and really seal this up.”

“Great idea,” James said. “I saw a water source a ways back.”

While James was off foraging for the water, Jack got the ossuary back into the wall and started packing the rocks, dirt, and gravel around its sides. By the time James came back, he was ready to do the most exterior part, packing now-wet dirt on the end of the ossuary. When he was finished, it was almost impossible to see where the opening had been. As he was packing the last of the dirt, he thought about one unfortunate legacy of what he was doing hiding the ossuary. Mankind would have to forgo the Gospel of Simon. Jack felt bad about that, and although he’d never had much interest in the history of Christianity, he did now, and he would now always wonder what Simon Magus had really been like. Was he the bad boy he’d always been portrayed as, or had he been something else entirely?

As much as Rome was rainy, gray, and dreary, Israel was crystal clear, with a desert-blue sky, and dazzlingly, even luminously, bright. Jack, Laurie, and JJ came into the country on a noontime Rome-Tel Aviv flight, with Jack’s nose pressed against the glass. Once again, JJ surpassed Laurie’s best-case scenario. As soon as the plane had gotten to altitude, he’d dropped off to sleep, and he was still sleeping when the wheels touched down with a thump and squeak on arrival.

Waiting for them at the gate was a representative of a tour company called Mabat, who helped them through passport control and baggage formalities and then seamlessly handed them off to a car and driver scheduled to take them to Jerusalem. Jack had gotten the name of the tour company from a seasoned traveler, because he wanted to maximize the short time they were planning on staying in the country. The driver, for his part, took them directly to the King David Hotel, where he handed them off to an expat, Midwesterner-cum knowledgeable-tour-guide by the name of Hillel Kestler.

“I understand you want to go first to the Palestinian village called Tsur Baher,” Hillel said with a smile. “Now, I’ve gotten lots of different personal requests, but this is the first to Tsur Baher. Can I ask why? There’s not much to see there, I have to warn you about that.”

“I want to meet this woman,” Jack said, handing over the name and address that had come out of the computer uploaded with CODIS 6.0 and attached to the 3130XL genetic analyzer.

“Jamilla Mohammod,” Hillel read. “Do you know her?”

“Not yet,” Jack said. “But I’d like to ask her for a favor, a favor that I’m willing to pay for. Is this something you could help us with? Do you speak Arabic?”

“Not too terribly well,” Hillel admitted, “but probably good enough. When would you like to go?”

“We have only today and tomorrow unless we decide to stay longer,” Jack said. “If you don’t mind, let’s go. I assume you have a vehicle for us.”

“Most definitely. I have a Volkswagen van.”

“Perfect. Let’s go, Laurie.”

“Are you sure about this?” Laurie asked, not sounding convinced. She’d heard the story of the ossuary and the results of the mitochondrial DNA, but still had misgivings.

“We’ve come all this way. How long to the village, Hillel?”

“It will take about twenty minutes to get there,” the guide said.

“Twenty minutes, that’s all,” Jack said. He reached for JJ and took him out of Laurie’s arms. “Let’s give it a whirl. There’s nothing to lose.”

“All right,” Laurie said finally.

Exactly eighteen minutes later, Hillel made a turn into a village with a dirt street and a handful of concrete cube-style houses sprouting rebars for further expansion. There were some shops, including a smoke shop, a small general store, and a spice shop. There was also a school with lots of kids in uniforms.

“The easiest way to do this is to visit the mukhtar,” Hillel said over the voices of the children.

“What’s a mukhtar?” Jack questioned back.

“It means chosen in Arabic,” Hillel said. He closed the vehicle’s windows so as not to need to shout. “It refers to the head of a village. He will know Jamilla Mohammod for sure.”

“Do you know the mukhtar here in Tsur Baher?” Jack asked. He was sitting in the front passenger seat. Laurie was in the back, with JJ in his car-seat carrier.

“No, I don’t. But it doesn’t matter.”

Hillel parked and then ran into the general store. While he was gone, several of the schoolchildren wandered over and stared up at Jack. Jack smiled and waved at them. A few of the children self-consciously waved back. Then a man came out of the store and waved the children away.

A moment later, Hillel reappeared from inside the store. He walked over to Jack’s side of the car. Jack lowered the window.

“There’s a sitting area in the store,” Hillel explained. “It’s the local hangout, and conveniently the mukhtar happens to be here. I asked about Jamilla, and he has sent for her. If you want to meet her, you are invited inside.”

“Terrific,” Jack said. He climbed from the car and opened the sliding door for Laurie and JJ.

The interior of the store was stacked with all manner of goods from floor to ceiling, from groceries to toys, from hardware to computer paper. The sitting area Hillel had mentioned was in the rear, with a single window looking out on a hardscrabble backyard supporting a covey of skinny chickens.