Cross Bones

by Kathy Reichs

  Against all odds, Getz managed to resist Jake’s charm.

  “Isn’t everyone,” she said, gesturing toward the door. We were being dismissed.

  Trailing Jake into the corridor, I was sure of one thing: Esther Getz had never been dubbed the Getzster. No nicknames for this chick.

  Next stop, Tovya Blotnik.

  The IAA director’s office was four alcoves down from Getz’s. Blotnik stood when we entered, but didn’t come around his desk.

  It’s funny. Telephone voices conjure images. Sometimes those images are dead-on. Sometimes, they’re way off.

  The IAA director was a short, wiry man with a gray goatee and hair that tufted around a blue silk yarmulke. I’d pictured Santa. He looked more like a Jewish elf.

  Jake introduced me.

  Blotnik looked surprised, recovered, and leaned forward to shake hands.

  “Shabbat shalom.” Jittery smile. Santa voice. “Please, sit.”

  The choices were limited since all but two chairs were stacked with papers and books. Jake and I took them.

  Blotnik sat behind his desk. For the first time he seemed to notice my face.

  “You’ve been injured?” American English. Maybe New York.

  “It’s nothing,” I said.

  Blotnik opened his mouth, closed it, unsure what to say. Then, “But you’ve survived your jet lag?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”

  Blotnik bobbed his head and spread both hands on the desktop. All his movements were sharp and hummingbird quick.

  “This is extraordinarily kind, bringing the skeleton to me. Truly above and beyond.” Full-blown elf smile. “You have it with you?”

  “Not exactly,” Jake said.

  Blotnik looked at him.

  Jake described the incident with the Hevrat Kadisha, omitting all detail concerning the tomb.

  Blotnik’s face sagged. “Such absurdity.”

  “Yes.” Glacial. “You know the Hevrat Kadisha.”

  “Not really.”

  Jake’s brows dipped, but he said nothing.

  “Where is this tomb?” Blotnik steepled his fingers. Two perfect palm prints remained on the blotter.

  “In the Kidron.”

  “This is the source of the textiles Esther mentioned?”

  “Yes.”

  Blotnik asked several more questions about the tomb. Jake replied in vague, icy terms.

  Blotnik stood.

  “I’m sorry, but you caught me on my way out.” Blotnik gave what I’m sure he considered a sheepish grin. “Shabbat. Slipping off early.”

  “Shabbat shalom,” I said.

  “Shabbat shalom,” Blotnik said. “And thank you so much for trying, Dr. Brennan. The IAA is deeply indebted. Such a long trip. Such a loss. Your gesture is truly remarkable.”

  We were in the hall.

  Driving to Hebrew University, Jake and I discussed our encounter with Blotnik.

  “You really don’t like the guy,” I said.

  “He’s a self-promoting, egotistical fraud.”

  “Don’t hold back, Jake.”

  “And I don’t trust him.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s professionally dishonest.”

  “How?”

  “Uses the work of others, publishes, doesn’t give proper credit. Want me to go on?”

  Jake abhorred senior scientists who exploited junior colleagues or students. I’d heard the rant. I let it go.

  “Getz told Blotnik about the shroud.”

  “I figured she would, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take. Esther’s the best there is with ancient textiles, and I need her authentication of the thing. Besides, by going through Getz, it makes it impossible for Blotnik to piggyback onto the find.”

  “But you don’t trust either of them with the bones.”

  “No way anyone sees those bones until I’ve got them fully documented.”

  “Blotnik didn’t seem all that upset about the Masada skeleton,” I said. “And he didn’t seem as surprised to see me as I’d expected.”

  Jake glanced at me.

  “When I called from Montreal, I never mentioned the date I was coming.”

  “No?”

  Jake made a left.

  “And what about the jet lag comment?” I asked.

  “What about it?”

  “It’s as though Blotnik knows exactly how long I’ve been here.”

  Jake started to speak. I cut him off.

  “And wouldn’t anyone in archaeology in Israel know about the Hevrat Kadisha?”

  “Duh!” Jake snorted. “You caught that, too?”

  “Could it be that Blotnik seemed unconcerned because he has the skeleton?”

  “Long shot. The guy’s a wimp.” Jake cut me a look. “But if he does, I’ll kick his ass from here to Tel Aviv.”

  We also discussed Getz’s comments.

  “Not exactly garrulous, is she?”

  “Esther’s direct.”

  Not the descriptor I’d pinned on the Getzster.

  “But you liked what she saw,” I said.

  “Damn right. Clean hair. No vermin. Imported fabric. And wool was a luxury back then. Most shrouds were exclusively linen. Whoever this boy was, he had social standing.” Jake shot me another look. “And a hole in his heel bone. And relatives with names straight out of the Gospels.”

  “Jake, I’ve got to admit, I’m skeptical. First the Masada skeleton, now these shroud bones. Are you talking yourself into something because you desperately want it to be true?”

  “I’ve never believed the Masada skeleton is that of Jesus. That was Lerner’s interpretation, based on the cocked-up thinking of Donovan Joyce. But I do think the bones are those of someone who shouldn’t have been up on that rock. Someone whose presence is going to make the Israelis, and maybe the Vatican, pee their shorts.”

  “A nonzealot.”

  Jake nodded.

  “Who?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

  We rode in silence for a while. Then I went back to the shroud.

  “Is the shroud I found in the tomb similar to the shroud of Turin?” I asked.

  “The Turin cloth is linen, and has a more complicated, three-on-one twill weave. Which makes sense. That shroud dates to the medieval, somewhere between 1260 and 1390 C.E.”

  “Carbon-fourteen dated?”

  Jake nodded. “Confirmed by labs in Tucson, Oxford, and Zurich. And the Turin shroud was a single garment for the whole body. Ours is a two-part deal.”

  “What’s current thinking on the Turin image?” I asked.

  “Probably resulted from oxidation and dehydration of the cellulose fibers of the cloth itself.”

  Another wham-o for the Vatican.

  Getting to the university took less time than finding a spot to park. Jake finally wedged his rented Honda into footage meant for a scooter, and we set off toward the eastern end of campus.

  The sun beamed down from an immaculate blue sky. The air smelled of freshly cut grass.

  We walked through patches of shadow and light, past classrooms, offices, dorms, and labs. Students drank coffee at outdoor tables, or strolled wearing bandannas, backpacks, and Birkenstocks. A kid tossed a Frisbee to his dog.

  We could have been on any campus in any city in the world. High atop its Mount Scopus hilltop, Hebrew University was an island of tranquillity in an urban sea of sentries, barricades, smog, and cement.

  But nothing in this land is immune. As we walked my mind superimposed images on the peaceful tableau. Newsreel footage: July 31, 2001. A day much like this one. Students taking exams or registering for summer courses. A parcel left on a café table. Seven killed, eighty injured. Hamas claimed responsibility, retaliation for Israel’s assassination of Salah Shehadeh in Gaza City. Fourteen Palestinians dead there.

  And the beat goes on.

  The gatekeeper at the Institute of Archaeology was a woman named Irena Porat. A decade older, with a fashion se
nse that ran toward the fuzzy and the floral, Porat was considerably less menacing than Esther Getz.

  Shaloms were exchanged.

  Porat spoke to Jake in Hebrew.

  Jake answered and, I assumed, reminded Porat of his call.

  As Jake explained our purpose, Porat inspected something crumbly she’d found in her ear. I caught the word “Masada,” and Yadin’s name.

  When Jake finished, Porat asked a question.

  Jake answered.

  Porat said something, then tipped her head toward me.

  Jake responded.

  Leaning close, Porat spoke to Jake in a lowered voice.

  Jake nodded, face solemn.

  Porat gave me her best welcoming smile.

  I returned her smile, a trusty co-conspirator.

  Porat led us down two flights of stairs to a grim, windowless room. The walls and floor were gray, the furnishings battered tables, folding chairs, and rows of floor-to-ceiling shelves. Large boxes filled two corners.

  “Please.” Porat pointed the ear-probe finger at me, then at a table.

  I sat.

  Porat and Jake disappeared into the shelving. When they emerged Jake carried three large brown corrugated files. Porat lugged another.

  Dumping her file on the table, Porat gave one final instruction, one final smile, and withdrew.

  “Nice lady,” I said.

  “A bit heavy on the angora,” Jake said.

  Each file was identified in Hebrew in black Magic Marker. Jake lined them up, selected the first, and removed the notebooks it contained.

  Jake selected one, I took another.

  European-size plain paper. Hebrew typing on one side.

  I flipped a few pages.

  I could read nothing.

  Crash course. Jake wrote a list of phrases that would serve as flags: Yoram Tsafrir. Nicu Haas. Cave 2001. Skeleton. Bone. He also showed me how to read Hebrew dates.

  Jake started with the earliest notebook. I took the next in sequence. Using my list, I scouted ahead, Sesame Street–style. What looks the same? What looks different?

  I came up with a lot of false hits. We’d been at it an hour when I got my first real one.

  “What’s this?” I asked, sliding the notebook to Jake.

  Jake skimmed the text, sat forward.

  “It’s the October twentieth, 1963, meeting. They’re talking about Cave 2001.”

  “What’re they saying?”

  “Yoram Tsafrir is reporting on his progress in another cave, 2004. Listen to this.”

  I definitely was.

  “Tsafrir says the finds are ‘. . . much more beautiful than the pieces found in Cave 2001 and 2002.’”

  “So Cave 2001 was explored earlier than October twentieth,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t the dig begin in early October?”

  Jake nodded.

  “So the cave must have been discovered in the first two weeks of excavation.”

  “But I found no mention of it until this entry.” Jake frowned. “Keep going. I’ll go back through the pages I’ve done.”

  The next reference to Cave 2001 was on November 26, 1963, over a month later. Haas had been invited to join the group.

  “Haas is reporting on the three skeletons from Locus 8, that’s the northern palace area, and Locus 2001, that’s the cave bones.” Jake’s finger moved over the text. “He says there are twenty-four to twenty-six persons and a six-month fetus. Fourteen males, six females, four children, and some unknowns.”

  “We know the figures don’t add up,” I said.

  “Right.” Jake looked up. “But more to the point: Where is any previous discussion of the cave and its contents?”

  “Maybe we missed it,” I said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Let’s reread everything prior to October twentieth,” I suggested.

  We did.

  There wasn’t a single mention of the cave’s exploration or excavation.

  But I did learn something.

  The pages were numbered. In Arabic.

  I could read Arabic numbers.

  I went back through the period in question.

  Pages were missing from the early weeks of October.

  With a growing sense of dread, we rechecked every notebook in every file.

  The pages hadn’t been improperly cataloged.

  They were gone.

  30

  “CAN MATERIALS BE CHECKED OUT?” I ASKED.

  “No. And Porat assured me we have everything in the collection.”

  “If the pages were removed, it had to be internal.”

  We considered in silence.

  “Yadin announced the discovery of the palace skeletons at a press conference in November of sixty-three,” I said. “Clearly, he was interested in human remains.”

  “Hell, yeah. How better to validate the Masada suicides?”

  “So Yadin talked about the three people found up top, in the area occupied by the main group. His brave little zealot ‘family.’” I hooked quotes around the word. “But he ignored the Locus 2001 remains, the twenty-whatever people found in the cave below the casement wall, at the southern tip of the summit. No press at all for those folks.”

  “Zip-o.”

  “What did Yadin tell the media?”

  Jake’s fingertips worked his temples. The veins hummed blue through his whitewashed skin.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Might he have had doubts about the age of the bones?”

  “In his first season report Yadin stated that nothing from the cave pointed to anything later than the period of the first revolt. And he was right. Radiocarbon dates reported in the early nineties on bits of fabric found mixed with the bones fell between forty and 115 C.E.”

  Missing pages. Stolen skeletons. A murdered dealer. A dead priest. It was like peering down a hall of tilted mirrors. What was real? What was distortion? What led to what?

  I sensed one thing.

  Some invisible thread tied everything back to the cave bones.

  And to Max.

  I noticed Jake steal a glance at his watch.

  “You’re going to bed,” I said, sliding notebooks into files.

  “I’m fine.” His body language disagreed.

  “You’re eroding right in front of me.”

  “I do have a bastard of a headache. Would you mind dropping me off and taking my car?”

  I stood.

  “No problem.”

  * * *

  Jake provided a map, directions, and the keys to the Honda. He was asleep before I left his flat.

  I’m pretty good with directions. I’m pretty good with maps. I’m lousy with signs in unfamiliar symbols in foreign languages.

  The trip from Beit Hanina to the American Colony should have taken twenty minutes. An hour later I was hopelessly lost. Somehow I’d gotten onto Sderot Yigal Yadin. Then I was on Sha’arei Yerushalaim without making a turn.

  Checking the name of a cross street, I pulled over, spread Jake’s map on the wheel, and tried to pinpoint my location.

  In the rearview, I noticed a car slide to the curb ten yards behind me. My mind did an automatic data log. Sedan. Dark blue. Two occupants.

  A sign indicated I was near the exit to the Tel Aviv road. But which Tel Aviv road? My map showed two.

  I looked for more landmarks.

  Data log. No one emerging from the sedan.

  I saw signs for the central bus station and a Holiday Inn. I could get directions at either.

  I was smokin’. I had a plan.

  I set off, intending to hit whichever institution first crossed my path.

  Data log. Sedan pulling out behind me.

  I felt a prickle of apprehension. It was Friday and moving toward dusk. The streets were Sabbath empty.

  I turned right.

  The sedan turned right.

  I’d been tailed twice in my life. On neither occasion had the intent been to promote my good health
.

  I made a right, then a left one block later.

  The sedan did the same.

  I didn’t like this.

  Gripping the wheel two-handed, I sped up.

  The sedan stayed with me.

  I hung a left.

  The sedan rounded the corner behind me.

  I turned again. I was now lost in a maze of smaller streets. Only one van in sight. The sedan drew closer.

  One shotgun thought: Get away!

  Accelerating quickly, I swerved around the van, scanning ahead, searching for a haven.

  One familiar sign. A red cross. First aid. A clinic? A hospital? No matter, either would do.

  My eyes flicked to the rearview.

  The sedan was closing in.

  I spotted a clinic in the middle of a small strip center. Pulling into the lot, I threw the car into park, and bolted for the door.

  The sedan shot past. Through the rolled-up window I got one snapshot image.

  Angry mouth. Viper eyes. Untrimmed beard of a muj fundamentalist.

  * * *

  I met Ryan in the hotel lobby at seven. By then I wasn’t sure if I’d been tailed or not. My room had been trashed. I’d been threatened by a jackal. Jake and I had been stoned. Max had been nabbed. We’d wrecked the truck. During a long, hot bath I began yielding to the view that my jangled nerves had reconfigured events.

  Maybe the sedan was traveling the same route as mine. Maybe the driver was as lost as I was. Maybe the occupants were an Israeli version of our back-home testosterone-bloated, Friday-night-cruising rednecks.

  “Don’t be naive,” I said to myself, taking a deep breath. That car had specific interest in my car.

  Neither Ryan nor I was in the mood for a heavy meal. The desk clerk gave directions to an Arabic restaurant not far away.

  As the woman spoke her eyes kept flicking to me. When I met them, they danced away. I had the feeling she wanted to tell me something.

  I tried to cast friendly, inviting glances, but she didn’t volunteer whatever was on her mind.

  The restaurant was marked by a sign the size of my face soap. We found it after three stops for directions. An armed doorman checked us through.

  Inside, it was dim and packed. Booths lined two walls and tables filled the center. The clientele was mostly male. The few women present wore hijabs. The owner didn’t believe in smoke-free sections.