David Epperson - The Third Day

Naomi, God bless her, ignored my instructions.

Rather than exude her natural charms, this time she took pains to disguise them. She pulled her hair back and her shawl up to cover her entire head. Then she hunched forward with her back bent at a painfully awkward angle.

If I hadn’t known better, I would have guessed that she had aged thirty years, which was the whole idea.

She shuffled her steps, favoring her left leg, as she trudged slowly up the ramp, with her downcast eyes glued to the ground only a step or two in front of her feet.

As she had intended, the two men escorting Bryson stopped, just behind where we had been hiding.

Once again, we achieved total surprise.

Before they could cry out, Lavon and I held our sword points to their throats. The two guards stared ahead in silence; their eyes reflecting silent terror.

“Don’t kill them,” said Markowitz.

I hadn’t planned to unless it proved absolutely necessary, but this intrusion irritated me.

“Be quiet, Ray,” I whispered.

“They’re Temple police, not Herod’s men. They’re Jews; my brothers. Don’t kill them.”

I sighed, though in hindsight, we couldn’t have playacted the scene any better.

The two guards had been careless, but they weren’t stupid. From the tone of our discussion, they developed a clear picture of how to save themselves and meekly submitted to our instructions.

Sharon handed over strips of cloth she had cut from her robe, and within less than a minute, we had bound and gagged each one.

We left our prisoners leaning against the side of a hill a few yards apart from each other.

I was angry enough to leave Bryson in the same condition as well, though I knew that would impede our progress. Reluctantly, I cut his bindings loose.

He immediately started to babble an explanation for his conduct, but I was in no mood to hear it; nor was anyone else.

“Shut up, Professor. Let’s get out of here.”

***

As we threaded our way back through the labyrinth heading the other direction, Lavon had the presence of mind to examine Bryson’s chip.

“Yellow,” he announced.

“Thirty minutes,” said Sharon. “Maybe even less.”

How much less, we had no way to know.

“Keep going,” I said. “It won’t be long before the main body realizes their comrades aren’t following behind.”

We had advanced to within striking distance of the western end of the quarry when Bryson suddenly jerked away.

“My camera!” he shouted.

Before any of us could react, he had already started to rush back to the tomb.

Had I been thinking clearly, I would have tackled the jackass and sent Naomi, by herself, to retrieve the infernal device. She had shed her old-woman act as quickly as she put it on, and I didn’t think the two we had trussed up would recognize her.

But I had been out of action too long to fight tunnel vision, and by the time the idea occurred to me, it was already too late.

Bryson had such a head start that we could do nothing but crouch behind the familiar hill and watch as he strode across the narrow bit of open ground to retrieve his precious camcorder.

He cautiously moved the rock pile aside, stone by stone, as if the device would crumble under the slightest impact. Once he had uncovered it, he lifted it up and brushed off the dust.

Then, to our utter dismay, he opened the viewfinder.

“He’s going to watch it right now!” Sharon whispered. “I can’t believe this!”

“Get back here, you idiot,” I said, trying my dead level best not to shout.

He ignored me for a moment, but the sound of approaching footsteps became unmistakable, even to him.

“Run!” I yelled.

The Professor finally grasped the seriousness of his predicament. He snapped the viewfinder shut and headed toward me at full speed, while I waved to the others, imploring them to go ahead.

Just as Bryson approached me, two men — neither in uniform and both clearly winded — emerged from behind the rocks and paused in front of the tomb. One started to give chase, but his companion held him back. Neither seemed quite sure what to make of us.

I could guess who they were, but didn’t dare stick around.

I grabbed the Professor’s arm and rushed him along for a couple hundred yards before we caught up with the others.

“Keep moving,” I said.

By then, though, Bryson was gasping for air, so we finally had to stop.

As we paused for him to regain his wind, we couldn’t help but reflect on the irony of it all: the confused, angry men from whom we had just fled would lend their names to the largest cathedrals on two continents, one of which they would never know even existed.

“Who could have thought it?” said Lavon.

None of us really could, but as much as we wanted to go back and speak to them, we had to keep going.

We proceeded at the pace of a brisk walk and had nearly made it out of the quarry when we stumbled onto our next surprise: a cluster of rough-looking characters unpacking sacks filled with hammers, picks and chisels.

Sharon’s scarf had fallen back, exposing her hair, and this crew had noticed its unusual hue. One of them pointed at her and yelled out something in Aramaic.

Naomi answered straight away. Though her tone sounded abusive, the men laughed heartily, and when one of their party shouted back, they laughed even harder.

Lavon grinned as Naomi gave him a brief, G-rated translation.

“Stonemasons,” he said. “We tend to forget that Easter Sunday was the first day of their work week. These guys are just getting started.”

Sharon rolled her eyes. “I see some things never change.”

Naomi and the construction workers continued to trade good-natured barbs until we passed behind a final hill and scrambled up toward the main road. From there, we made our way to the northwest, keeping a parallel track to avoid the crowds heading into the city.

***

It wasn’t long before angry shouting from the edge of the quarry told us that the men on our tails weren’t all that far behind, although we did encounter one unexpected bit of good fortune.

Naomi explained that from the perspective of the masses, the Temple police ranked only slightly above the Romans at the bottom end of the popularity scale. Her new friends — the stonemasons — would do what they could to slow our pursuers down, if only out of spite.

But she admitted that we’d gain only a momentary delay. We could hold no illusions that the laborers would risk their own necks to save ours.

“That may be all we need,” I said.

We all took another look at the Professor’s LED. This time Naomi saw us do it, and asked why.

As we pressed on, Lavon tried to explain our situation to a now very confused woman, who once again had to be wondering if she had made the right call, and whether instead of producing freedom and wealth, her alliance with us would leave her broken body trampled in the dust.

The rest of us, though, had no time for such considerations. A couple of minutes later, we glanced back to see the first black helmets rise up to ground level, less than half a mile to our rear.

“What color , Professor?” asked Lavon, trying without success to conceal his worry.

“Still yellow,” he replied.

The others heard this exchange, along with the nervous tones that accompanied it.

As if by instinct, and without any prompting, we each shed our outer robes and took off at a dead run toward a clump of scrub trees nestled into the top of a narrow ridge about two hundred yards to our west.

Just beyond the trees, we leapt over a pile of rocks — the remains of a long-decayed stone wall, as it turned out — and fell panting to the ground. Even Sharon seemed a bit winded, while Bryson gasped for his next breath.