by Robin Cook
James’s first reaction was to say absolutely, categorically, no. He didn’t want to listen to Shawn bragging about how he was going to shock the world with his revelations. But as James quickly thought about the invitation, the more he began to believe it might be a good idea to bear the burden. He needed to be part of the investigation from the beginning so that he could keep a healthy amount of skepticism alive in the minds of all concerned, if he was to have any hope of ultimately talking Shawn out of publishing anything about the Virgin Mary. Perhaps it was a long shot, but for the moment it was the only strategy James could imagine beyond prayer.
“I’m thinking about picking up some steaks, salad makings, and some terrific red wine on the way home,” Shawn went on when James didn’t respond. “We can grill the steaks on the back porch. What do you say?”
What made James continue to hesitate was the worry of Shawn being insufferable and riding him the whole evening. James doubted he could endure such an evening on so little sleep.
“Instead of staying in we could always go out,” Shawn persisted in the face of James’s silence. “I just thought you don’t like to go out.”
“Only with you,” James said. “We always get into an argument over dinner. I’m not blaming you, I’m just as guilty, and even if I go as a civilian, someone always recognizes me. I don’t need that type of publicity. Let me talk again with Jack!”
“He wants to talk with you,” Shawn said, with frustration.
“What is it?” Jack asked with a tired voice. He had a premonition of what was coming, meaning the refereeing was already beginning.
“Jack, Shawn’s planning a celebration dinner tonight at their home. You’ve got to be there.”
“I haven’t actually been officially asked, and besides, I have to get home to help Laurie with JJ, our son.”
“Jack, I need your help, as I made clear yesterday. If you’ll come to this impromptu dinner party, I’ll do the same, but I’m going to need a buffer with Shawn, especially with the current high he is on. I need to know more about what he’s found and what he’s thinking, but you know it’ll be torture.”
“So I’ll play referee once again,” Jack said grudgingly. He’d never liked the role.
“Jack, please!”
“All right, if it’s not going to be late.”
“It won’t be late. I have to say Mass in the cathedral early in the morning. On top of that I slept poorly last night. Believe me, it is not going to be a late night. Listen, I’ll bring my car, and I’ll drive you home.”
“Okay, I’ll come,” Jack said, “but I have to check with Laurie.”
“Fair enough,” James said. “Put Shawn back on.”
James told Shawn what had been decided and asked what time.
Shawn shrugged. “Let’s say seven. I think I’d be speaking for Sana if I say we’ll want to get an early start in the lab tomorrow. We’ll want to break up on the early side.”
“I couldn’t agree more.”
22
10:40 A.M., SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2008
NEW YORK CITY
Only a little more than ten minutes after the conversation with James, Alex Jaszek, the anthropologist, arrived. During the brief interim Shawn and Sana continued to whisper epithets back and forth. Despite their earlier joy over their discovery, they had begun arguing about the evening’s plans until Sana, in disgust, had disappeared into the laboratory to check out the equipment.
Alex looked young for a seasoned Ph.D., with a skimpy beard on his youthful face. He was built like the quintessential high-school football player, with broad shoulders and a narrow waist. He wore khaki pants and an old-fashioned flannel shirt.
“Is this the way the bones looked when you got the top off?” Alex asked, peering into the ossuary.
“Pretty much,” Jack said. He was looking in as well. “The three scrolls were inside as well. Shawn carefully lifted them out. The thigh bone might have moved a tiny bit when he did so, but we took plenty of photos.”
“It looks like quite a complete skeleton.”
“That was our guess as well,” Shawn said.
“You could have lifted the bones out,” Alex said. “The position is not going to tell us anything, since this was, as I’m sure you know, a reburial. When ossuaries were in use, the body was first left to decompose, then the bones were gathered up and put into the ossuary in no particular order. So let’s go ahead and lift them out one by one and arrange them on the table in their general anatomical position.”
Sana emerged and joined them around the table, and Jack made introductions. Sana made a big show of shaking Alex’s hand while expressing unctuous gratitude that he’d sacrificed part of his Saturday to lend them his extraordinary expertise.
Jack could sense that Sana’s over-the-top performance was to irritate Shawn, which seemed to be working. So, while Sana was helping Alex in the gowning room, Jack leaned over and quietly asked, “Are we still on for tonight, or should we reschedule?”
“You bet your sweet ass we’re still on,” Shawn snapped. “I don’t know what’s come over her sometimes. Whatever it is better stop.”
Sensibly, Jack refrained from further commenting but rather plucked a bone from the ossuary and tried to figure out what it was.
After returning from the gowning room Sana carried on for another five minutes with Alex, who was obviously charmed by her attention. But seeing that Jack and Shawn were having some trouble with determining where the bones belonged anatomically, she and Alex pitched in to help. Then, after several minutes, Alex took over completely since he had begun to comment on each bone as he took it from the ossuary and added it to the expanding skeleton. After a half-hour it was done.
For Sana the most interesting were the skull and lower jaw, because there were some teeth in their original sockets. On the other hand, Shawn was most interested in the bones of the pelvis. While handling each fragment, Alex had commented casually that the woman had had children, most likely multiple children.
“This is a remarkably intact skeleton,” Alex said, examining it in its totality and adjusting the position of a few of the individual bones. “Notice that even the tiny finger bones from both hands are all here. That is remarkable indeed. In all the ossuary cases I’ve had the pleasure of investigating, this has never happened. I’ve never seen all the finger bones together. Whoever did this was remarkably respectful of the deceased.”
“You said it’s a woman,” Shawn pointed out excitedly. “Are you certain this skeleton is that of a woman?”
“Absolutely! Look at the delicate brow ridges,” he said, pointing toward the skull, “and notice the delicate arm bones and long bones of the legs. And if I put the pubic bones together”—Alex lifted the bones and held them together as they would have been in life—“look how wide the pubic arch is! It’s definitely female. No question!”
“Especially since you said she’d had multiple children,” Shawn said, with a self-satisfied giggle.
“That’s an issue I can’t be dogmatic about,” Alex said.
Shawn’s smile faded a degree. “Why not?”
“These are really prominent preauricular sulci,” Jack said, picking up an ilium and showing it to Alex. “I’ve never seen bigger.”
“What are sulci?” Shawn asked.
Jack pointed to grooved areas on the edge of the bone. “The sulci appear after childbirth. These are some of the deepest I’ve ever seen. I’d say she had had close to ten children.”
Alex raised a finger and shook it in disagreement. “The depth of the sulci on the ilia and the dots on the pubic bones at the pubic symphyses are not completely proportional to the number of children a woman has given birth to.”
“But they usually are,” Jack pointed out.
“All right,” Alex said. “They usually are, I’ll admit that.”
“So, this woman’s sulci and dots strongly suggest she had had multiple children. It doesn’t prove it, just strongly suggests it. Would you
agree to that?”
“Yes, Jack, I would. But I’d also say it might be wrong. Do you people have any idea of the identity of this person and how many children she actually had? Is there a name or a date on the ossuary? What about the scrolls? Do they mention children?”
For a second, no one moved. It was silent except for a refrigerator compressor in the background. Sensing a suddenly strained atmosphere, Alex added, “Did I say something wrong?”
“Not at all,” Shawn said hastily. “We’re not sure of this skeleton’s identity, but there is a date on the ossuary’s cover. It’s AD 62, but we don’t know if that’s the date of her death or the date of her reburial. We’re hoping the scrolls may shed some light on her identity, but we have not yet unrolled them and obviously have not read them.”
“What about the woman’s age?” Sana asked. “Can you tell that?”
“Not with much precision,” Alex said. “Unfortunately, bones are not like tree branches, where you can count the rings. In fact, throughout the individual’s life the bone is being constantly replaced, which is why we can accurately carbon-date. You might want to think of going that route with these bones to check on the date on the ossuary. The necessary sample size is extremely small with the newer techniques.”
“We’ll keep that in mind,” Shawn said.
“If you had to guess her age, what would you say?” Sana asked.
“I’d say over fifty to be safe. If I wanted to go out on a limb, I’d say eighty. My sense is this is an old individual, based on the amount of arthritis in the finger bones and feet. What would you say, Jack?”
“I think you are right on the money. The only other thing I note is some mild evidence of tuberculosis on a couple of vertebrae, but otherwise she was in very good shape.”
“Remarkably so,” Alex agreed.
“I’m psyched,” Sana said. “The water seal must have functioned perfectly. I wasn’t completely optimistic about finding DNA, but I am now. With those teeth still in their sockets, and as dry as these bones are, there has to be some intact mitochondrial DNA.”
“Don’t jinx yourself,” Shawn warned.
“Why do you want to find DNA?” Alex asked. “Do you have anything in particular in mind?”
Sana just shrugged. “I think it will be interesting and a challenge. It might be fun to see where she was from, genealogically speaking. The ossuary was found in Rome, but that doesn’t mean she was from Rome, or even Italy. In the first century AD, there was a lot of migration because of the Pax Romana. And it will be an interesting addition to the international mitochondrial database, having a first-century woman.”
“How are you going to do it?” Alex asked. “What procedure are you going to follow?”
“First I’ll try a tooth as a source,” Sana said. “If that doesn’t work, I’ll use bone marrow. Either way, it’s not a complicated process. It will involve a thorough cleaning of the outside of the tooth to remove any DNA contamination. Then I’ll cut into the crown of the tooth, pull out the dried pulp material from the pulp cavity, suspend it with detergent to break open the cells, treat it with proteases to eliminate the proteins, then extract the DNA. Once I have the DNA in solution, I’ll amplify it with a PCR, then quantify it, then sequence it. It’s as simple as that.”
“What’s your time frame?” Alex asked. “I’d be interested in a follow-up, if you wouldn’t mind.”
Sana glanced at Shawn, who gave an almost imperceptible nod of approval. “It depends to a degree on that first rate-limiting step. Whether there is intact mitochondrial DNA available. If there is, I should have it in a few days or up to a week. Some of the steps function best when they are allowed to percolate overnight.”
“Well,” Alex said, getting up from his chair and giving Sana’s back a pat, “I want to thank you all for including me. It’s been a terrific morning.” His eyes happened to catch the three ancient scrolls as he started toward the gowning room to take off the protective gear. He stopped and looked back at Shawn. “I’ve been so engrossed with this skeleton, I forgot to ask about the scrolls. What’s the plan with them?”
“To read them,” Shawn said, with a touch of jealousy at the man’s apparent informality with his wife. “But first I have to unroll them, which is going to be a task. They are, excuse the pun, drier than a bone, and quite fragile.”
“Are they made of papyrus?” Alex asked. He bent over and looked at each closely. He didn’t dare touch them.
“They are papyrus, yes,” Shawn said.
“Will they be easy to unroll?”
“I wish,” Shawn said. “It is going to be a painstaking process that has to be done millimeter by millimeter. They could disintegrate into thousands of tiny pieces, and on top of that, we have to be careful.”
Everyone laughed, even Shawn.
“What a pleasant fellow,” Sana said after Alex left, then to herself she added, “in comparison to my husband.”
“Oh, you noticed,” Shawn said mockingly out loud, then to himself added, “I know exactly what you are doing, and I am going to ignore it—I’m not going to get jealous. It’s not worth getting riled up, and I won’t give you the satisfaction.”
“All right, people!” Jack said suddenly, clapping his hands loudly to get everyone’s attention. “Let’s get to work! Let’s crank out what has to be done so you two can get under way. I’m going nuts about whether you’re going to make a positive identification of these bones. But let me warn you, if you continue to quarrel with each other, I’m out of here, and I’m off your dinner list, and if I’m off, then I believe James is off, meaning party over!”
For a moment Shawn and Sana glared at each other. After several minutes, Sana put her head back and laughed. “God, what a couple of children we are.”
“Speak for yourself!” Shawn snapped. He didn’t like the new Sana.
“I am. I think we are beginning to become too similar, like a dog and its master.”
Now it was Shawn’s turn to laugh. “So, which one is the dog?”
“That’s easy to tell, the way you’ve been barking lately,” Sana teased, still smiling. She turned to Jack. “He knows better than to invite people to dinner without discussing it with me first. If we’ve talked about it once, we’ve talked about it a dozen times.”
“You always have to have the last word,” Shawn snapped.
Jack stepped between the husband and wife and motioned as if he was calling for a time-out in a basketball game. “Stop!” he said. “Stop taunting each other. You guys are pathetic! Loosen up and let’s get to work.”
“I’m going to Home Depot,” Shawn said abruptly. “Jack, can you lend me a hand?”
“I might need a pair of pliers,” Sana said. “Let me see if one of the eye teeth comes out with ease.” She picked up the skull and pulled on the right eye tooth, which was in remarkably good shape. The tooth came out easily with a slight popping sound. “That was easy. Nope! I don’t need any pliers.”
“What do you need from Home Depot?” Jack asked.
“A bunch of plate-glass sheets,” Shawn said. “And a small sonic humidifier that I can jury-rig to direct a tiny puff of water vapor where I want it to go. I already have several pair of tongs like those used by philatelists in my backpack. Unrolling these scrolls is not going to be easy. The papyrus will flake, so I’ll need to protect it immediately under glass. For all I know, as I said to Alex, the papyri may all come apart in pieces and have to be put together like a jigsaw puzzle. I don’t know what to expect, to be completely truthful.”
“While you boys go to the Home Depot, I’m going to go into the laboratory and get going with my end of the project,” Sana said, brandishing the eye tooth. “The quicker I get it into a sonica tor with the detergent, the quicker I can saw off the crown to get at the pulp.”
“What about tonight?” Jack asked. “Are you two going to behave? Is the dinner party still on or what?”
“Of course it is still on,” Sana said. “I hope our te
stiness with each other doesn’t make you feel too uncomfortable or unwelcome. We’ll promise to be good. I just don’t like it when Shawn doesn’t discuss the idea with me before he invites people over. It’s not that I don’t enjoy having people over, I do. I actually like to cook and rarely get the chance, so I’m going to enjoy tonight. In fact, as soon as I get my pulp extraction into the incubator to dry overnight, I’m out of here to shop and have some fun preparing what I hope you two and James will enjoy. It will be fun, provided Shawn and James behave.”
“Okay. You’ve put my mind at ease,” Jack said. “But, as far as my coming is concerned, I do need to check in with my wife to see if she minds. We have a new baby, and she’s doing the lion’s share of caregiving.”
“A new baby, how nice,” Sana said, without the excitement most young women would have expressed. Nor did she invite mother and baby. “Surely she won’t begrudge you an evening with your old college buddies.”
“It’s more complicated than you might think,” Jack explained, not wanting to be more specific.
“Well, we’ll understand if you can’t come,” Shawn said. “But we do hope you can. What we’ve found in the ossuary is incredible, and I’m going to enjoy riding His Excellency James.”
“Please don’t overdo it,” Jack said. “He’s really upset about this whole thing and its potential repercussions.”
“He should be,” Shawn said.
“I wouldn’t be so blithe,” Jack warned. “James is married to the Church. If nothing else, he is fearsomely loyal.”
Their mission to Home Depot accomplished, with what seemed like a ton of glass panes in a taxi’s trunk, Jack again tried to encourage Shawn to go easy on James that evening, reminding him that he had a long way to go before he could prove he’d discovered the bones of the Virgin Mary.
