by Paul L Maier
“Good Lord!”
“Exactly what I said, after picking myself up off the floor. ‘Good Lord Waddington,’ I said, ‘this is a religious council, not a political one. Only churchmen are invited.’ He then stood loftily erect, all six and a half feet of him, and said, in his marvelously dismissive Oxonian accent, ‘Sir, I should like to remind you that Her gracious Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, is and remains the Supreme Head of the Church of England!’”
“Oh, wow, Kev! Ninety-yard loss for you! What did you do?”
“What could I do? I told him I’d work hard to get the space and would get back to him. And then the other calls came in, once word was out that the queen would be invited. Every head of state wants room on the bandwagon. President Sherwood Bronson asked for sixty-five tickets for himself, the cabinet, and their wives. As the hosting government, the president of Italy demands a whole block of seats, and so it goes.”
“Well, what’s gonna happen? I hate to think that important Christian delegates will have their seats swiped out from under them.” “Me too. And so I think I’ve devised a solution, with the blessing of the Holy Father. We’re going to seat people not only in the nave of St. Peter’s, but also in the narthex, the side aisles with the chapel areas, the transept, and even the apse. We’ll erect tiered seating at all these areas, with huge closed-circuit television screens. Mitsubishi Rome is glad to provide their Diamond Vision screens gratis for this ‘sacred gathering,’ as they put it. That gives us five thousand more seats.”
“You’re a blooming wizard, sport! How does ‘Pope Kevin I’ sound to you?”
“Oh, it has a nice ring to it, Jon. But it’ll be a cold day in the warm place before my name gets Roman numerals. Any interesting data from your investigation panel, by the way?”
“Interesting? Yes. But important? No. We now have minibiogra-phies of the Twelve and they’re quaint, but . . . well, ‘yawnsville’ is the operative term.”
“How’s Peter doing? Is he . . . staying alive?”
“Healthier than ever!”
“Have to run. Carry on, O Papal Emissary!”
Kevin’s mention of the investigation panel tore the scab off of a nasty little sore in Jon’s conscience. Here he was, heavily involved in planning Joshua’s visit to Rome, yet he was also heavily involved in checking up on him. It wasn’t honest. It wasn’t fair to Joshua. Jon had never been a duplicitous sort, and being a spook in any form was not in his genes.
But worse, it suddenly occurred to him that although the Judas figure among Joshua’s associates had mended his ways, another Judas had taken his place who better resembled the original: he himself! What a disgusting, unforeseen role to have to play!
Should he simply inform Joshua of what he was doing and make a clean breast of it? Actually, did he even have to do that, if Joshua was the omniscient Jesus? The first time around, Jesus had had no trouble whatever seeing through Judas. Was the same thing happening now? Or was Joshua being selective in his omniscience— “not always, not fully” probing into everything? Or, the worst scenario of all: what if Joshua was nothing more than a man after all and couldn’t possibly penetrate his mind? In that case, informing Joshua of the investigation would be rank idiocy. Once again, Jon found himself tightly affixed to the horns of a painful, even tormenting, dilemma.
Shannon seemed to be weighing similar thoughts, with the exception of the last: Joshua was Jesus, all right, and her husband was playing with fire in his double role. In fact, she had refused to attend any further meetings of the investigation panel at the Rockefeller Museum. Jon understood perfectly and made no attempt to change her mind. He finally muddled through to a provisional conclusion for himself: for now, at any rate, he felt that he had no choice but to continue his unhappy role as a spiritual schizoid.
The third meeting of the panel convened at 8:30 A.M. on July 8, three days before Joshua and his entourage were to leave for Rome. A depressive mood seemed to saturate the very air inside the IAA conference room at the museum, each member sensing the futility of their entire probe. The raising of Shimon had not only sucked the wind out of their sails, it created something of a reverse vacuum that tugged their precarious craft backward. Anyone who could raise the dead was hardly a target to be investigated!
A further complicating factor, of course, was the imminent convening of Vatican III. Now the panel had a pistol pointed at its collective temple, and the pistol came not from Colt but from vaudeville. You pulled the trigger, and a message scrolled down from the barrel that read: “Put up or shut up!”
To be sure, Gideon Ben-Yaakov tried hard to be a good host and a good chair—coffee was poured, Danish pastry distributed, pleasantries dropped—but the heart seemed to have abandoned the enterprise. Rosenzweig and Falkenburg looked bored, Shin Bet seemed to respond woodenly, and even Jon was a creature with two minds—a lovely collection of participants, all things considered.
Jeff Sheler and his U.S. News team, however, seemed to have a little life left in them. Since the last meeting, they had worked closely with Shin Bet at the University of Haifa and the Technion, where they had dug up additional names of Joshua’s classmates, as well as snippets of further information from members of the faculty and administration there. Further probing at banks, restaurants, archives, and civic records at Haifa yielded nothing.
“You were asking about Joshua’s classmates at the Technion, Jon?” Sheler inquired.
“Yes. What are the new names?”
“Actually, we have them all now—or at least all the members of his graduating class. Here’s a photocopy of their commencement program—Class of 1994—from the university archives.”
Jon flipped through the pages of the copy quickly, and said, “Hmmm. There must be some . . . seven hundred members in that class, all listed on the last pages of the program. And yup, there’s Joshua Ben-Yosef’s name. Nice work, Jeff!”
“No, I’m just amazed that we didn’t find something like that earlier.” At the head of the table, Gideon said, “With your permission, I’ll have more copies made of that, as we have of everything else. Now, what fresh information do we have on Joshua’s twelve associates? Anyone?”
Rosenzweig shifted in his chair, pulled out a file, and said, “Well, let’s see . . . Yohanan (real name, Ari Silbermann) was born in Accho—don’t think we had that before—and studied at Tel Aviv University. Iacov (real name, Ezra Schechter) hailed from Hadera, and studied way down at Beersheba, for some reason. Shimon (real name, Shimon Levine)—nothing new on him. Yudas—that’s the one who’s not a traitor this time, right? Anyway, his real name is Benjamin Krupnik. Came from Ashdod, and never got beyond high school, I understand.”
Rosenzweig continued rattling off mundane bits and pieces of information on the Twelve. After lunch, the lifeless recitation continued, and they were ready to adjourn by midafternoon. In closing, Jon reminded the panel that he had to accompany Joshua to Rome in the following days, and they would probably not return until the last week in July. Their next meeting would be August 7.
At the end, Gideon reminded all panel members, “We’ve not yet agreed to disband, ladies and gentlemen, however pointless our prospects may seem to most Christians. So please continue your work. Until August 7, then?”
When he returned to their apartment that evening, Jon poured himself a generously ginned martini—medicine for my conscience, he told himself. He offered Shannon the same, but she declined.
“Bad day at the office, dear?” she asked. “And doesn’t that sound like a Grade B sitcom?”
“Yes . . . to both.”
“I can’t understand you, Jon. This should be the greatest time in both of our lives: we get to fly to Rome with Jesus Himself! What could be more sublimely exotic than that? Yet here you are, down in the mouth. What in the world is wrong?”
“So? You don’t call him Joshua anymore. Just Jesus?”
“Oh, all right, all right. I’ll call him Joshua if you prefer. And I think I know what’s botherin
g you, Jon: you and that silly panel are still trying to undermine him, aren’t you? What on earth does it take to convince you skeptics? He raises someone from the dead, and you still call him a faker!”
“No, I don’t call him that at all, Shannon. It’s just that—”
“For the first time in my life, I begin to understand how people in Jesus’ day could see His miracles and still not believe in Him. You’re no better than the scribes and Pharisees in the Gospels, Jon! I’m sick and tired of your endless doubts!”
By now, Shannon was almost shouting. He tried to calm her, but to no avail.
“What’s more, I’m totally nauseated at the double role you’re playing! What in the world do you do for a conscience, Jon? Or should I call you Judas? Yes, that’s it: Judas Iscariot Weber, the twenty-first-century edition! Well, you can go hang yourself as he did for all I care!”
She burst into tears, fled downstairs, and drove off in their car, tires screaming.
Jon poured himself another martini and slumped down into his favorite chair. Should he contemplate suicide, too, like Judas of old? No. In the present horrendous series of complications, that would be too easy a solution.
Would Shannon come back? he wondered. Probably. But when? If she chose to stay out overnight, their marriage could well be in danger, he knew. Should he call the police? With world attention focused on Jerusalem, that would be stupidity in the extreme.
The only way to climb out of a nasty situation, he had learned from previous experience, was to continue business as usual—however very unusual he might feel at the time. “Yeah, let’s try that,” he told himself.
He went to his desk, hauled out the new file from the panel findings that day, and read through them again. Once more he glanced through the fresh material Rosenzweig had supplied, then set it down and thought for a moment. Then he reached for a copy of the commencement program from the Technion and flipped through the pages until he reached the list of graduates. Because lists dull any reader, he tried to defeat boredom by paying forced attention to the names.
Alas, the force weakened, and he almost dozed off until he came to an entry that jolted him awake. His eyes widened. Not only was Joshua’s name in the list of graduates, but the name of Shimon Levine was there as well. And there was a third name that started his heart pounding so strongly that he could feel the pulsing in his carotids up to his ears.
It was now eleven o’clock. No matter. Rushing to the phone, he called Gideon Ben-Yaakov.
“Hi, Naomi,” he said when he heard her shalom. “This is Jon Weber. Dreadfully sorry to be bothering you at this hour. Is Gideon in? . . . Oh, good Lord, he’s not? . . . Just went to the convenience store to pick up some bread? How glorious! Listen, please have him call me here at home the moment he returns, okay? . . . Thanks, lovely one!”
Jon paced the floor impatiently. Was he overreacting? Maybe, maybe not. But if he made a mistake now, the world could change. He walked circle after circle in his study.
At last, thank God, came the sweetest sound he had ever heard: his phone ringing. Grabbing it, he said, “Hi, Gideon? . . . I’ve just discovered something so very urgent that I . . . I plead with you to drop everything tomorrow morning and come with me. Is that possible? . . . It is? Fabulous! You and I will have to drive to Haifa. Pick you up around seven, okay? . . . Just great! Better have had breakfast, if you don’t mind. . . . No, I can’t tell you over the phone what I’ve found . . . just too sensitive . . . And thanks, Gideon. Bye!” Jon could hardly sleep that night. When Shannon finally returned at one-thirty in the morning, he acted as if he were in a very deep sleep. He just had no stomach for another argument. Besides, there was much, much to do on the morrow.
TWENTY-ONE
Jon needed no alarm clock the next morning. His needled nerves took care of that. He checked his watch: 6:30 A.M.—perfect! Slipping quietly out of bed, he padded to the bathroom and brushed his teeth almost soundlessly. Getting dressed was also an exercise in silence. Heading for the refrigerator, he quickly drank some orange juice, microwaved a cup of coffee, grabbed a bagel and his attaché case, and slipped out the door. Shannon had not told him where she had gone. He would not tell her where he was going.
Fifteen minutes later, he was at Gideon’s door. With hardly a word, Gideon climbed inside the Peugeot, and they drove across West Jerusalem and took the road to Tel Aviv. About five miles down the highway from Jerusalem, Jon finally opened his mouth.
“Thanks, Gideon. I’m really sorry about this ridiculously short notice, but here: please check the names on that graduation program Jeff Sheler gave us.”
Gideon scanned the list of names. Then he commented, “Okay, Jon. I saw these earlier. There’s Joshua Ben-Yosef, among the other B’s. And your point is . . . ?”
“Look at the list again, Gideon. Try the L’s.”
He did so, then shook his head and said, “I still don’t see what you’re after, Jon.”
“All right, check out the name Shimon Levine.”
“Okay, I see it. Nothing unusual about it.”
“Nothing unusual? Here, open the file on the Twelve and look under Shimon.”
Gideon read for several moments and then his eyes widened. “That’s right; Shimon Bar-Yonah’s real name is Shimon Levine. Guess I haven’t had my morning cup of coffee yet.”
“We’ll stop down the road a bit and take care of that.”
“Still, we have no proof that it’s the same Shimon. Israel has lots of similar names, and this one’s fairly common.”
“Maybe.”
“But even if he is our Shimon, I think we knew that he also attended the Technion, didn’t we?”
“Yet neither Joshua nor Shimon told us they were in the same graduating class. But what else do you see on the list that’s a little unusual?”
He shook his head. “Don’t see it.”
“Look back at Shimon’s name.”
“Hmmm. There’s another graduate on the list with the same last name: Baruch Levine.”
“Exactly.”
“That’s not unusual, Jon. There are almost eight hundred names here, after all, and other duplicate last names. Some threes, too.”
“True. But don’t you think we need a little more information?” “Do you mean: was it worth getting me up so early and canceling my schedule for the day?”
“Yes?” asked Jon, hesitantly.
Gideon was silent for several moments, staring out of his side window. Then he turned back, smiled, and nodded.
At the outskirts of Tel Aviv, they turned northward and took the coastal highway to Haifa. Along the way, they explored all sorts of scenarios involving the fresh information. By 9:45 A.M., the heights of Mount Carmel had loomed up to the right and they were at Haifa. * * * The Technion is Israel’s MIT, its premier university for science and technology, with a handsome campus halfway up the northern slopes of Mount Carmel. As director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Gideon had immediate recognition and entrée at the Technion. He and Jon went to the registrar’s office in the university administration building, where Dr. Michael Grossman, the registrar himself, handled their inquiry.
“We’d like to ask you about several students who graduated from here in 1994, Dr. Grossman,” said Jon, following appropriate introductions. “I hope you still have records of their registrations, identifying information, transcripts of their courses—that sort of thing.”
“I’m sure we do, Professor Weber. But the Technion has a confidentiality policy. Only the student himself may have access to this information—unless, of course, criminality is involved.”
“We can appreciate that,” Gideon commented. “Probably no crime is involved. Still, I’d ask you to make an exception in this case and let us see the information. I can assure you that it’s in the national interest.”
Grossman seemed hesitant. “I enormously respect you, Dr. Ben-Yaakov. And the head of our archaeology department here will be very angry if he learns that I didn’t service you
r request immediately, but—”
“I understand.” Gideon pulled two cards out of his wallet and handed them to Grossman. “If you’ll be so kind, please call Noah Friedmann, the director of Shin Bet in Jerusalem. After that, you may also wish to call the prime minister of Israel. That’s his private number.”
Grossman raised his hands in surrender. “Not necessary, gentlemen. Please forgive my reticence. Now, what are the names of the students in question?”
Jon handed him the copy of the graduation program, with the names of both Levines underlined.
“Oh! Class of 1994—Joshua Ben-Yosef’s class, yes? And I . . . I begin to see how this may indeed be in the national interest.”
And the international, thought Jon, but he said only, “I hope it won’t be too difficult for you to locate the information.”
“We transferred everything to computer some years ago, of course. Let me find our mainframe disk for 1994. Do make yourselves comfortable.”
Jon and Gideon looked at each other, smiled, and sat down to wait.
When Grossman returned, he was wearing a frown. “I find this hard to believe, gentlemen,” he said, “but that disk is missing. I have no idea why, but I’ve authorized an immediate search for it.” Again Jon and Gideon looked at each other, this time darkly.
But Grossman’s frown was fading. “Not to worry, my friends,” he said. “We’ll send to the archives and get a copy disk. We have complete backup records of everything here at the Technion. Won’t you join me for coffee while we wait for the disk?”
Twenty anxious minutes later, a gofer came through the door with a packet under his arm. Grossman opened it, smiled, and said, “Fine. First, of course, we have to make a complete copy of this disk, since the original is missing. Then we can look up the two Levines. While this is being done, perhaps you might join me for an early lunch?”
As if we had a choice, Jon felt like responding, while accepting graciously, of course. He limited himself to a vegetarian falafel, too preoccupied for anything more.
