13th Apostle

by Richard F. Heller

  “Don’t touch it,” she commanded. “Don’t move.”

  She bent closer and took hold of his hand to steady it. Gil assumed she was coming in for a better view. In two swift movements, however, she had bent his hand back to better expose the stick, then with her teeth, quickly and deftly wrested the remaining splinter from his flesh. She spit repeatedly into the dirt.

  “Jesus Christ! What the hell are you doing? You took out a whole chunk of my hand!”

  Slapping the flashlight into his good hand, Sabbie pointed it toward the wound. A wide trickle of blood dripped from his fingers. “Keep the light on it,” she ordered.

  He was too surprised and in too much pain to think of doing anything else.

  Sabbie retrieved something from her pocket. She unwrapped the object and before Gil could get a fix on it, laid it onto his wound. She quickly secured it with duct tape, torn in sections with the powerful incisors Gil was getting to know far too intimately. Only a thin white cord protruded from the lumpy-looking dressing.

  “Is that a tampon, is it?” he asked incredulously.

  She moved behind him, pinching the back of his neck—hard.

  “Are you out of your mind?” he yelled. “That hurts more than my hand.”

  “That’s the idea.” She calmly gathered up the tampon wrapping, turned off the flashlight, and stuffed the blanket back in the backpack. “It’s hard to hurt in more than one place at a time. We’ll need that hand more than your neck, so tell me when it starts to throb and…”

  “Like hell I will. You’ll probably bite it off at the wrist,” he protested.

  The twig looked like it had come from an oleander bush, she explained. Every part of the oleander was poisonous. People had died from using its branches as skewers for roasting hot dogs. The poison worked like digitalis.

  “First, your heart starts pounding, then your pulse gets weak. Eventually your whole cardiovascular system shuts down. You could be dead in a matter of hours. Maybe less. I wasn’t sure if it would still be poisonous once it was dried out, but I thought we should play it safe.”

  “So why didn’t you just suck the poison out of me instead of taking a chunk of me with it?”

  “You’re welcome,” she said, then turned and continued up the path.

  They approached the great doors of the edifice, and she stopped short, staring straight ahead. Gil set his heavy load down and glanced at her profile in the moonlight.

  Her face was set. She was tight and determined. No wonder. For Sabbie, it was a lose-lose situation. If they were unable to find the scroll, she had no place to go. She couldn’t go back to the Museum, not after taking off on a rogue treasure hunt. If DeVris figured out that she had the diary, he’d have the police on her tail. She couldn’t show her face back in Israel, especially with the theft of the diary added to her previous felony. On the other hand, if they were successful and found the scroll, DeVris would be after her for the prize. With McCullum behind him, there was no telling what DeVris might do to her.

  Or to me.

  Gil pushed away the rising panic his thought triggered. He turned to her in the darkness. “We’re going to find it,” he said calmly. The tenderness in his voice rang with unfamiliarity. He repeated his reassurance, adding nothing more.

  “I know,” she said simply. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Chapter 31

  A few minutes later

  Weymouth Monastery Courtyard

  The side door of the Monastery offered no resistance. The blade of her Swiss Army knife slipped easily between the door and the jamb and released the bolt.

  “Army training,” Sabbie said with a smile.

  Their footsteps echoed in the entryway. The sound hadn’t been noticeable during the afternoon tour. Now, the noise echoed and felt large in the darkness.

  “Don’t turn on your flashlight yet,” she said. “Wait until we get to the tapestry room and put up the blanket.” Sabbie hooked her arm around his, and he led her in the direction he had taken earlier that day.

  As Gil worked his way through the dark, she detailed her version of their game plan. “Now, we’ll give each tapestry a quick once-over to see if it looks like it could be Elias’,” she explained. “If we limit ourselves to two and a half minutes for each, at fifty tapestries that’s just over two hours. Hopefully, Elias’ tapestry won’t be the last one we come to. Assuming it gives us pretty clear directions as to where the scroll is hidden, we’ll still have a full hour to…”

  Gil stopped in his tracks. “No,” he said firmly.

  “No, what?”

  “No, we start in the Chapel.”

  He expected her to argue or at least to demand an explanation. But she remained silent.

  “This is where Elias prayed for inspiration,” Gil said. He told her that he needed her to be quiet; to just let him sit and let it happen.

  She murmured an okay, then said nothing as they moved to the Chapel.

  A dozen strategies flashed across his mind. Some of them so intricate Gil could hardly have put them into words. He rejected them all. This was a different kind of puzzle. It required a different kind of thinking.

  For ten minutes they sat in silence in front of the altar. Something in his mind was changing. He had to give it time to work itself through. He could almost grab the thought as it flew by. Almost. But not quite.

  “What are you thinking?” Sabbie interrupted. He could feel her shivering in the cold. “You’re not waiting for one of those mystical experiences the guide talked about, are you? You know, we don’t have all night.”

  “I’m trying to think like Elias. This is where he came to pray. I need to understand what would have been on his mind.”

  “I don’t know about him, but I have one thing on mine. I say let’s go to the tapestry room. While you think, I can start going through each of those tapestries…”

  “That’s it!” Gil cried. He threw the backpack over his shoulder and grabbed Sabbie’s elbow with his good hand. He guided her in long strides down the corridor in the beam of her flashlight.

  “Brother Elias had one goal—to help us find the scroll,” he explained. “We don’t have to look for bits and pieces to help us retrace his actions, we just have to stay sharp and keep an eye out for the clues Elias left behind for us.”

  “I don’t understand the difference,” she said.

  “Look, imagine we’re trying to follow Hansel and Gretel—you know who Hansel and Gretel are, don’t you?” Gil asked.

  “Yes…”

  “Well, imagine that we’re tracking Hansel and Gretel to see where they’ve gone. If they weren’t expecting us to follow, we’d check the bushes to see if any branches were broken by their passing or we’d inspect the ground for evidence of child-sized footprints. That’s what you do when you look for clues. On the other hand, if we knew they expected us to come looking for them, we’d keep an eye out for something they intentionally left behind, something they knew would help us follow their trail. Like bread crumbs they would have scattered on the ground as they walked. Understand?”

  “Not really. In either case, you’re looking at the ground,” she replied.

  “Yes, but you’re looking for two completely different things. We shouldn’t be trying to figure out which tapestry belonged to Elias, we should be looking for the clues he left for us.”

  Sabbie shrugged then pushed ahead of him into the tapestry room. She tried to fix the blanket to the old window frames but found that no tape or clips would support the weight of the blanket.

  He waited, arms crossed.

  Though she turned her flashlight on him, she seemed to take no notice of his resistance. “We’ll just have to hope that no one sees the light,” she continued matter-of-factly.

  Gil waited.

  You’re not going to ignore everything I just said!

  Sabbie walked around him, aimed her flashlight at the first hanging piece, and began to slowly examine it.

  Gil reached for h
er elbow. This time he pulled her around, hard.

  “Look, we do this my way or we don’t do it at all. At least, I don’t. Right now, I’m the expert here and, like it or not, you’re supposed to be helping me.”

  “I don’t have time for this,” Sabbie said. She turned back to the first tapestry.

  “No, we don’t have time for this. You go through each tapestry, one by one, and by the time 6:00 a.m. comes, you aren’t going to be any closer to finding that scroll than you are now. Except you’ll be out of time and out of luck.”

  Panic crept into her voice. “So what do we do?” she asked.

  “First, let go of your logic. Stop thinking. We’re looking for something special, something different. But something that, at first glance, looks like everything else,” Gil explained. He unrolled a particularly large tapestry. “Something Elias wanted us to find.”

  Gil moved to the other side of the room. His flashlight beam moved from tapestry to tapestry.

  “Just be a kid and follow where your eye takes you,” he said as he continued his inspection. “Stand in front of the first few and list all the things they have in common.”

  “Uhhh, they’re all about the same size, they’re all pretty faded, and…”

  “No!” Gil shouted, moving back to shine his flashlight on Sabbie’s tapestries. “No kid would say that. Tell me about the scenes. Remember the game you played as a kid, ‘What’s different in this picture?’ Talk about what’s different.”

  “Well, these two tapestries have two horses and this one has three,” she recited in an impatient voice. “This is stupid, we’re just wasting time.”

  “Look, you’re doing it already. Now just walk around the room and let your eyes wander. Move the tapestries around so you can get a good look at all of them.”

  If she found a tapestry that made her stop and take notice, Gil said, she needed to describe it out loud, even if she didn’t know why it caught her attention. Especially if she didn’t know why.

  Gil went back to his own side of the room.

  “It doesn’t matter whether you’re a forensics specialist, a poker player, or a kid trying to learn to ride a bike,” he continued. “Sometimes you just have to let go of the control and trust that little voice inside you.”

  Sabbie continued her review of the weavings and, in her own inimitable fashion, commented on what she saw.

  “Ladies in long gowns, they never bathed, probably stunk to high heaven,” she said.

  The time passed quickly. Too quickly.

  With each new tapestry, Sabbie’s comments grew more cutting. “And angels, and more angels and cherubs. If you thought Elias’ reference to angels was going to be helpful, think again.”

  Gil talked as he wandered. With his good hand, he pulled hidden weavings from the piles. “Here’s one with palms and cedar trees,” he muttered. “The desk clerk said the cedars in Dorset, nearby, are over two hundred and fifty years…”

  Sabbie was beside him instantly, her flashlight over his shoulder. “What did you just say?” she asked anxiously.

  “I said that the desk clerk recommended a trip to Dorset…”

  “No,” she demanded. “About the palms and cedars.”

  Gil continued to move his light from tapestry to tapestry. “Oh, one of these had cedar trees but they are all full of plant life of some kind or another. That’s a common theme…”

  “And palms? Did you say ‘palms’?” Sabbie interrupted.

  “Yes, here it is. Some palms and cedars and a couple of angels. Why?”

  “Because who in Weymouth ever saw a palm tree? And when have you seen palms and cedars growing side by side?”

  She didn’t wait for an answer. “You don’t,” she continued. “Cedars can only live where there are cold winters and palms need a tropical climate. As you would say, this one sure as hell doesn’t fit the pattern.”

  Sabbie explained that, in Elias’ time, tapestries depicted gardens as they actually existed. Monks wove the pieces from sketches, commissioned by the owners of estates, who would later exhibit the pieces as testimonies to their wealth. While the Abbot had his say on the overall design and the decoration, when it came to the still life, that always portrayed an optimized vision of reality.

  “There would be no reason for a monk to weave a tapestry with palms and cedars together. It would have been a product of his imagination. Unsaleable, essentially worthless,” Sabbie concluded.

  “Maybe that’s exactly what Elias had in mind,” Gil said thoughtfully. “That way it would stay here…”

  “Because no one would want it!” Sabbie finished with a nod of confirmation.

  Within the limitations of his ascetic life, Elias had managed to figure out that, by making the tapestry unmarketable, he could ensure that it would remain at the Monastery. It was brilliant, inspired. Elias had the kind of mind that every cybersleuth would love to spar with. And he lived almost a millennium earlier.

  “We’re going to find it,” Gil said quietly.

  “What? The scroll? What do you see?”

  “Elias thinks like I do, actually like we do. Maybe a little better, but in the same direction. He’ll show us where the scroll is because we all see with the same eyes. And he’s been waiting a long, long time,” Gil added.

  Sabbie turned back to the palm and cedar tapestry.

  “There are only two angels in this tapestry,” she said. “All the others have five or six. I don’t know what that means but it’s different from the rest.

  “Quick, get your wallet,” she continued. “Find the bill with Elias’ hidden message and read me the last few lines. Exactly.”

  Then the heavens shall beckon and the sound of angels shall open the heart of the righteous one, for they sing to him as in the words of those who have come before. May they live forever in the song of renewal and the promise of continuance.

  “These are the only angels that are singing,” she said. “Okay. Let’s see. ‘Then the heavens shall beckon…Then the heavens shall beckon.’”

  Sabbie’s next words came slowly. “It’s there, right there, in the clouds. Oh, my God, it’s right there in the clouds.”

  Gil strained to see. There were no clouds. Nothing but a few faded patches of sky.

  “No, look carefully,” she insisted. “Right there between the angels. See, the thin horizontal threads that run between them. And, in between those lines, are clouds.”

  Gil shook his head.

  “Okay,” she continued. “Just imagine the whole thing vibrant with color, like it would been before it faded. When you look at it that way, the lines form a musical staff, you know, the parallel lines that you write musical notes on.”

  Gil stared at the tapestry, straining to make sense of what she was saying.

  She took his index finger and pushed it into several spots of the tapestry. “Here and here and here. Don’t you see it? The clouds are notes, musical tones that the angels are singing.”

  She might as well have been pointing at a blank wall.

  Sabbie pulled him back a few steps and focused the beam from her flashlight. “Try from back here. Don’t you see?”

  Nothing. She was growing impatient. He was doing his best but it just wouldn’t come.

  “Look,” she insisted, “the clouds are way too small and well defined for the rest of the picture. They should fill up the sky like they do in the other tapestries.”

  He strained, tried to imagine what she was seeing, then, suddenly, they were there; little puffs, resting on soft shadowed lines. “I get it. I think. They’re tiny, almost the size of the flowers on the palms, just not as long, right?” he added.

  Her gasp made him think that someone had found them. He turned his flashlight on the door, hoping to blind any intruder in the beam.

  Sabbie grabbed his flashlight and focused it back onto the tapestry. “No, here, here!” she said.

  “They’re flowering palms,” Sabbie said. She was silent for a moment. “So it’s true,�
�� she added with a sigh.

  There was no time to tell him all she knew, she said, but this much he needed to know.

  “Listen to me.” She put her fingertips gently over his mouth. “This is important.”

  She explained that among the most sacred of texts, it is written that in each generation there are born thirty-six righteous souls who, by their very existence, assure the continuation of the world. Were it not for these tzaddikim, who stand in God’s judgment, mankind’s fate would be in grave and certain peril.

  These souls have no knowledge of each other; neither have they any knowledge of their own singular importance. As innocents, they remain unaware of the critical consequences of their deeds.

  When these righteous souls have completed their task on earth, they are rewarded with the knowledge that upon their death, among those who have loved them, whose lives they have touched, there will emerge new souls who shall rise to take their place.

  “Interesting myth,” Gil said, not certain what the story had to do with finding the scroll and getting the hell out of there.

  “You don’t get it. The tzaddik is described and praised throughout the Bible, from the Proverbs to the Psalms. The Bible says that the tzaddik is ‘the foundation of the world’ and Psalm 92 specifically says that the tzaddik, the righteous one, will flower like a date palm and grow tall like the cedars of Lebanon. That’s why Elias put all of that in the tapestry.”

  “What does that have to do with the scroll?” Gil asked.

  That’s the whole point, she explained. Ludlow spent his lifetime looking for one thing, an ancient message that would point the way to the mate of The Cave 3 Scroll. He believed The Cave 3 Scroll was a trap for the greedy, a detour for those who would see only the promise of riches and disregard its true message. The last entry in The Cave 3 Scroll says simply that there is another copper scroll that holds the key to treasure. The mention of the existence of another scroll comes after the description of dozens of storehouses of riches and their locations.

  “Like the last sentence in the telephone call you talked about, the real message of The Cave 3 Scroll is its last entry that says there is another, more important manuscript, yet to be discovered. Don’t you get it?” she asked excitedly. “Elias is calling out for the tzaddik, the righteous one, to seek out the second scroll and to uncover the true treasure it alone holds.”