A Skeleton in God's Closet

by Paul L Maier

  Jennings was under guard at the back of the room, his turgid face aimed only at the floor. Shannon looked at him wild-eyed and distraught, a corrosive emotional mix swirling inside her—endless gratitude that Jon was alive, worry over his wounds, but horror that her father was somehow implicated in all this.

  Jon poured himself another glass and said, “First off, how can I ever thank all of you for . . . for finding me and saving my life?”

  Applause and cheers filled the room.

  “You look like you saved your own, Jon!” said Cromwell. “Now tell us what happened.”

  Jon told it all in full detail and noticed sadly how Shannon looked at her father from time to time in shock, then in horrified disgust.

  “So Jennings left me with that hideous canister of propane hissing over my head, out of reach,” he continued, “and I started to smell the ghastly stuff. I tried jumping as high as I could, but only teased the bottom of the canister. I took off my shirt and swatted it, but it only dangled around the sides of the shaft and kept hissing.

  “Then—luckily—I recalled how propane is used—for burning in camp stoves. Great! If I could only light the stuff, it would burn off rather than gassing me. At that point, I would have given anything to have had a match on me, but I don’t smoke. I knew I had to hurry, too, or lighting that gas would have blown out a crater where the cistern used to be. All I had with me was a flashlight. If I’d had a coil of wire, I could maybe have used the batteries to create a spark, but I didn’t. I opened the flashlight and dumped the batter-ies, because I thought of another way to generate spark. I took the open edge of the flashlight and scraped it across some rocky outcroppings in the side of the cistern . . . Nothing.” He paused and gulped down another glass of ice water.

  “If you don’t finish this, Jon,” said Cromwell, “we’ll take that pitcher away.”

  “Okay.” Jon smiled. “By now the gas was probably up to my chest, and I started to feel giddy, dizzy, lightheaded. I looked up and prayed. I think I said, ‘God, it’s in Your hands. If I die, there are others out there who should be able to expose this fraud. But they don’t have all the facts, and the faith will be mortally wounded. And so let that dark stone over there be flint, and then let it spark. For Christ’s sake—literally!’”

  “Good Lord!” Gideon exclaimed. “What happened then?”

  “Well, the good Lord came through. I turned myself toward the wall of the cistern, hunkered against it for an explosion, closed my eyes, and started striking that flintlike rock with the open edge of the flashlight. The first strike did nothing. Neither did the second. Nor the third. I very nearly gave up. But then I thought that maybe the gas hadn’t reached that level yet, so I waited a bit, then tried again. Nothing! I tried again. There was a colossal WHOOOMPP! along with blazing light and searing heat. My shirt was on fire. I whipped around and madly rubbed the fire out on the cistern wall. I could smell my singed hair. After that, I almost passed out because the explosion had used up a lot of the oxygen. But thank God we have the heaviest air on earth at the Dead Sea, and soon I could breathe again. Then I looked up and saw this . . . this beautiful, beautiful plume of heavenly blue flame burning out of that canister spigot!”

  Laughter and another round of applause rocked the room.

  “So I had that problem licked,” Jon continued. “My next worry, though, was this: what if Jennings should return and see that flame? He’d have switched to cyanide, I’m sure. Waiting there was pure horror, I’ll tell you. But when the flame finally burned out, it was the most beautiful sight since sunset on the Mediterranean!

  “Then, of course, I had to play dead. I sprawled myself across the floor of the cistern just minutes before Jennings returned. He used an air compressor to suck what he thought was propane out of the cistern, while I, of course, couldn’t move a muscle. Finally he gave me the Church’s blessing. You bloody hypocrite, Austin!” he yelled across the room. “And then he left.”

  “But what about your head wound?” Yorkin inquired.

  “Oh, I almost forgot. Jennings dropped this huge rock on me. Luckily most of it hit the ground next to my head or I’d have been killed then instead.”

  “What about the murder of Clive Brampton?” asked Yorkin.

  While Jon described the gassing and the fake drowning, he saw repugnant horror on the faces of Shannon and Cromwell. They could no longer even look at Jennings for sheer revulsion.

  Finally Gideon asked, “Could you, perhaps, tell us now how Jennings faked everything at Rama?”

  Jon shook his head. “Too long a story. I’m still a little flaky. Tell you tomorrow in Jerusalem, all right?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course!”

  “Ah, one request, if you don’t mind,” said Jon, tiring visibly. “The world has a . . . has a right to know, of course. But please, please let’s communicate the truth in as orderly a fashion as we can. Otherwise, we’ll only be opening a Pandora’s box of rumors across the earth.”

  “Yes, that’s very important,” Gideon agreed. He then stood up and announced, “In the name of the government of Israel, I must demand absolute confidentiality from all of you until formal announcement is made in the very near future. Is that clearly understood?”

  The assent was unanimous.

  As they got up to leave, Jon told Ben-Yaakov, “You’re one heck of a good guy, Gideon. Sorry I had to give you such a rough time.”

  “No, it’s just the reverse, Jon,” he chuckled. “Forgive me for thinking you were a vandal, a smuggler, an outlaw, and a maniac!”

  “What else could you think?”

  Every stratum in Israel seemed to hum with activity over the next two days. While Jon recuperated, the Israel Antiquities Authority alerted the world media to send representatives to “a final press conference regarding the Rama excavations” in Jerusalem four days hence. In custody, meanwhile, Jennings was examined by a panel of psychiatrists and pronounced fit to stand trial, even though afflicted with a compulsive neurosis on religious matters. Cromwell phoned the publishers in Tel Aviv to hold off any printing of the epitome. Shannon was distraught and uncommunicative, so profoundly shocked and dazed by what her father had done that it seemed to bury the joy of Jon’s rescue. Naomi, however, put fresh flowers on Clive Brampton’s grave, promising his spirit that someday she would personally kill Austin Balfour Jennings if she could, since Israel had no death penalty.

  The final press conference that would ever be associated with Rama took place on the last Thursday in November, coincidentally, the American Thanksgiving Day. But, then, Rama had an old habit of desecrating holy days and intruding into holidays. The 3,500-seat National Convention Center in West Jerusalem was filled to capacity. A forest of microphones loomed up in front of the podium, and television cameras commanded most of the aisles. The chief of the Jerusalem Fire Department was apoplectic.

  Three men sat at the green table on the dais—Gideon, Jon, and Austin Balfour Jennings. Behind Jennings stood two uniformed police guards. At 10:05 AM, Gideon opened the conference. “I bid you all wel-come, on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority. This will be the final press conference concerning the Rama excavation, since we are pleased to announce that all controversies regarding it have now been resolved. Let me say in advance that nearly all of the archaeology and the artifacts at Rama are absolutely authentic, and must not be impugned because of what has now proven to be fraud at the cavern area.”

  A tremendous commotion filled the auditorium. Gideon rapped for order, then continued, “What is clearly the greatest hoax in history has been perpetrated by Professor Austin Balfour Jennings at my extreme right. That deception was finally discovered, largely through the dedicated efforts of Professor Jonathan E. Weber, at the center.” He now recounted the crisis that Jon had survived at the Dead Sea, after which he said, “Professor Weber, perhaps you’d be kind enough to tell the world what is fraudulent and what is genuine at the cavern area.”

  Jon leaned toward his microphone and said,
“Shortly we’ll be passing out a complete summary of our findings. But, to put it briefly—” He went on to give a précis of Jennings’s frauds. He concluded, “Finally, he buried the entrance to the cavern with local surface materials, and almost a quarter century of rains settled the area enough to resemble undisturbed ground.”

  Most eyes in the auditorium were fixed on Jennings. He sat before his microphone, chin on the palm of his left hand, registering no detectable emotion. He merely stared blankly toward the rear of the auditorium.

  “You may well wonder,” Jon continued, “why we have Dr. Jennings on the platform here. He is, after all, under indictment for murder in addition to fraud. By his own admission, he put to death our excellent colleague, Dr. Clive Brampton.”

  A thunder of commotion welled up. Again Gideon rapped for order. Jon resumed, “Dr. Jennings told us of his profound regret over what he had done. No ‘plea-bargaining’ of any kind was involved, I can assure you. He has volunteered to supply all remaining details in the fullest possible confession, so that the world may know the truth, once and for all, and we need not be subjected to theories and vagaries for centuries to come. And so, Professor Jennings, you have the floor. What else can you tell us, also about your motives?”

  For some moments, Jennings said nothing. Then he slowly shook his head and said, into the open microphone: “I . . . I can’t bring it off, Jonathan. I . . . I really wanted to, you know. That was a marvelous idea you had—to use Clive’s drowning as part of our plot, and then to stage a ‘murder attempt’ on my part as you hid in that hole near the Dead Sea . . . but especially to give out the story that I forged it all! Look, I’d do anything to cover up the truth about Rama. Like Father Montaigne, I was almost ready to sacrifice my professional reputation for Jesus and claim I did it all. But you get off scotfree in this scenario of yours, while I have to pay the price—life imprisonment for ‘murder,’ so-called! It’s not fair, Jonathan, and I won’t perjure myself any longer.”

  Turning back to the audience, he exclaimed, “Rama is not a fraud, ladies and gentlemen. Everything is authentic there! Jesus’ bones have been discovered, I deeply regret to say. But truth comes before every-thing else!”

  General pandemonium broke out in the auditorium. Some reporters made a dash for telephones.

  “Turn off that maniac’s microphone,” Gideon hissed to a technician.

  “Whoever leaves this auditorium now is a fool! ” Jon announced. “This is only a last, desperate subterfuge on the part of a psychotic liar!We were foolish to believe any regrets on his part. Once again, he’s trying to take us all for idiots!”

  As the auditorium quieted down, Jon took an inventory of the damage done by Jennings’s demonic genius. He quickly realized that the only material link to the truth that existed were Dunstable’s carbon and ceramic particles. He had called to say that the Oxford accelerator found “virtually identical” amounts of C-14 in them . . . always the “virtually.” Because of that adverb, Jon knew, the fanatics who feed on religion or religion-debunking, the marginal minds, and the conspiracy theorists would have a field day for centuries to come. Perhaps even believers, now, could never be sure. They would only be “virtually” sure that the bones were not Jesus’.

  Jon glanced at Jennings, who still stared straight ahead, the trace of a smile tugging back the corners of his ample mouth. The hall had hushed to a vast silence, awaiting Jon’s response. He was preparing to launch into a dissertation on ceramic particles when suddenly he remembered something better—far better. He made a lunge for his attaché case. “I never thought it would come to this, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “and not since my ordeal at the Dead Sea did I think to check. But while I was in the cistern and Jennings was ranting overhead, I did have the sense to turn on the little microcassette recorder I always carry with me for personal memos. I’ve no idea if the batteries were fresh enough, but let me try—”

  He tried to rewind the mechanism, but the cassette wheels barely turned. “O God,” he whispered. “I wonder if I got any of it!”

  Schmuel Sanderson, the AP stringer in Jerusalem, leaped up to the dais. “I owe you one, Professor Weber,” he said. “I’ve got the same brand recorder. Here, try mine. I just put in fresh batteries this morning.”

  Jon thanked him, switched the cassette, and rewound it. Then he pressed the “play” button and held it up to the microphone. “Must check with Linda at the Albright—” filled all speakers in the hall. He pushed the stop button and announced, sheepishly, “That’s a memo—not the right spot.” He pushed “forward” again for some moments, and then “play.”

  Again Jon’s voice came through loud and clear: “And you, of course, had everything to do with Rama, right?” Jennings’s voice now boomed across the entire auditorium: “Right you are, my good friend. From beginning to end, ’twas I, and I alone—”

  Jon had it, and, as he would soon learn, he had it all! For the next fifteen minutes, the hall sat in stunned silence as the awful drama played itself out.

  At the end, Jon extracted the cassette and handed the recorder back to Sanderson. Then he took the dead batteries out of his own recorder and set them on the green table in front of him. “Thanks, fellas,” he said to the two type AA penlight batteries. “You gave your all. But, then, you also saved one huge chunk of civilization. Good old coppertops!”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The auditorium broke into pandemonium. The pages who were passing out the releases were mobbed. Phone lines, e-mail, cable, telex, radio, shortwave, TV satellite transmissions, and the mails out of Israel were jammed with accounts of the Rama exposure, and it commanded the world’s headlines for days afterward.

  “EASTER AT THANKSGIVING!” bannered the Chicago Tribune, and church bells started ringing across the world the moment the news broke. The Sunday following—the first Sunday in Advent—marked the beginning of a new church year, and clergy across the world were quick to note the happy coincidence as they tried to preach to jammed con-gregations, though both shepherd and flock were often so overcome with emotion that they took to hymns and prayers instead. The long, long night-mare of uncertainty was over at last, the resurrection of the Resurrection a cause for global joy.

  While the Christian world celebrated over the next months, however, Jonathan Weber suffered. It was not the closing of the Rama excavations—they were completed in any case—or the dozen manuscript volumes of now nearly useless scholarly tomes attesting to “the virtual authenticity” of Rama that troubled him, but the woman in whom he had not confided his suspicions of her father. In the weeks following her father’s arrest, Shannon seemed shattered by the riptide of horror that had flooded her life so instantaneously. In a single hour she had had to learn the grisly details of her mother’s death; that the father whom she loved and endlessly admired was a record-shattering liar, deceiver, and scoundrel, who had murdered one of her closest friends in behalf of his insane scheme; that her father’s crimes had also affected millions of innocents; and that the man she loved so exuberantly had withheld the truth from her, then died a terrible death, but then returned to life. The human psyche can stand only so much.

  The Israeli court trying Jennings understood as much, and both prosecution and defense tried to spare Shannon as much as legally possible. Jon bore the brunt of it all as chief witness for the prosecution, and the world had not watched an Israeli trial so intensely since that of Adolf Eichmann. The prosecution, in fact, had insisted that the extraordinary law passed by the Knesset, permitting the death penalty for Eichmann, really ought to apply to Austin Balfour Jennings as well, since he also had committed “crimes against humanity.” Although there was considerable support for that view, Jennings came off with life imprisonment. He would spend the rest of his days in his cell, deeply immersed in Semitics studies and writing a dictionary of rural Aramaic, which he dedicated “To the Memory of Clive F. Brampton.” The scholarly world was pleased, deeming it a “compensation for crime,” though some critics won
dered if Jennings were not preparing tools for another forger in the twenty-second century!

  The day after Jennings’s sentencing, Jon returned to Ramallah and found this letter in a sealed envelope slid under his bedroom door:

  Jonathan,

  I’m finally able to see things in better perspective. At last, for example, I can try to see your point of view in withholding the truth about Papa from me. But you were wrong in assuming that it would have been difficult for a daughter to keep such a confidence from the father she loved. Didn’t I keep silent about your absence when my father returned from England—because of the man I loved? And that was not, as you thought, because of the “surprise” you had in store for him. Some “surprise” indeed!

  Not that I condone what Papa did. He has disgraced the name of Jennings for centuries to come. You were loving and chivalrous in offering to “solve that little problem” for me by changing my name in marriage. But when a man and a woman pledge themselves to each other, they should be able to trust each other. You were unable to do that.

  I want to start a new life for myself, Jon. I will have left Israel by the time you read this, and if I never set foot here again, it will be too soon. To me this is strictly the Unholy Land. I am not returning to Oxford, so please don’t try to find me there, or anywhere else. I loved you, Jon . . . more than life itself. I suppose I’ll always remember our love, but I’m no longer in love with you.

  Good-bye,

  Shannon

  The rash of phone calls Jon made to the international airlines at Ben Gurion proved futile. By now, Shannon would be landing . . . where? England?

  The shock was fierce and brutal. He sat at his bedroom desk, reading and rereading Shannon’s let-ter, as if a new reading might somehow change something. Great tears flooded his eyes. Had a jackal outside howled at that moment, he would have strangled the animal with his bare hands.