Sanskrit Cipher: A Marina Alexander Adventure

by C. M. Gleason

  “In eius nomine sanctum,” he replied.

  She knew Latin well enough to get the gist of what he said, but before she could pursue that, the priest said, “And what is that?” He was looking at the stack of old, brittle papers that had come in the package from Paris. They were sitting on the table next to Eli.

  Eli glanced at Marina, but kept his mouth closed. That didn’t deter the man with the gun, however, for he gave a sharp gesture with his free hand. “I’ll take those as well. They appear to be important. Put them on the table there, Dr. Sanchez, and remember that I’ve got your colleague under my bead. And I have perfect aim. Especially at close quarters.”

  Eli did as ordered while the man kept his firearm steadily trained on Marina. “Thank you. Now.” He eased closer to Marina, grasping her by the arm to pull her to her feet. She saw the bracelet-like tattoo on the back of his wrist and the letters lined up there—I E N S—as he directed her to stand. “Now, Dr. Sanchez, in order to keep everyone safe, you’ll want to remain seated. Dr. Aleksandrov, you’ll retrieve those papers there, moving very slowly and carefully as you do so. You’ll put them in that satchel on the floor there.”

  Her heart thudded hard as she did as directed, gathering up the papers with surprisingly steady hands and shoving them into Eli’s bag. From the back of the house, she could hear Boris and Adele barking. Those were not “I see a squirrel” barks…they were agitated and warning barks.

  They knew something was wrong.

  If only Marina had installed a doggie door that would allow them to gain access to the house. But she never had, and it was just as well. The intruder had a gun, and he surely wouldn’t hesitate to use it. She couldn’t bear for anything to happen to her pets.

  “Now hand me the bag. And then we will walk to the front door, Dr. Aleksandrov. Very slowly.”

  She did as instructed, and just as she took her second step out of the living room, she felt a flutter in the air behind her—a swift movement—followed by the sound of a gunshot…and then the sound of something tumbling heavily to the floor.

  Eli.

  “Keep moving,” said the priest in a steely voice.

  “Why are you doing—”

  “In eius nomine sanctum,” he murmured near her ear. It sounded like a soft-breathed prayer.

  “In whose name?” she demanded, turning to look at him—to face the gun bearing down on her. “In whose name are you doing these things?”

  “In Her name,” he replied. His dark eyes were steady and calm, without the slightest bit of frenzy or madness in them.

  Before she could respond, he pulled the trigger. A sharp pain tore through her shoulder and everything went black.

  Thirty-Three

  Eli opened his eyes slowly. His head felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds, while his limbs felt weightless.

  He was aware of an incessant pounding from somewhere distant…and something that sounded like barking.

  Barking.

  His eyes jolted wide, and he realized he was on the floor in Marina’s living room. The barking was coming from the back of the house, and it was frantic.

  “Marina!” he called, dragging himself to his feet even as he took inventory of his body.

  The bastard had shot him—point-blank—but there was no blood. No blood anywhere that he could see. And he was standing up—albeit a little dizzily, and the room spun like he was in a top—but there was no blood.

  But he knew he’d been shot.

  “Marina?” he shouted again, stumbling a little as he felt himself up and down over his torso… Ouch. There was something very painful right in his chest, just above the ribcage.

  “Marin—”

  “Here.” Her voice was weak, and he could hear the sounds of her movements in the foyer. By the time he took the five steps that got him past the sofa and into the front hall, she was upright. “You’re not dead,” she said, moving past him with the help of the wall as she made her way to the back door, where the dogs continued to bark.

  “Neither are you,” he said, still marveling at the fact. “But I think he got me with some sort of dart.” Assured that she was as unharmed as he seemed to be, he took the time to pull up his t-shirt and examine the tender area on his chest.

  It was about the size of a quarter, and in the center was a needle-thin puncture wound. It reminded him, fittingly, of a bee sting, but it was a hell of a lot more painful. And swollen.

  “What the hell,” he muttered, and went back to the living room to look around for the bullet—or whatever had come out of the gun and lodged in the center of one of his pecs. Whatever it was, it had worked almost instantly to knock him out.

  Thank God that was all it had done. Knock him out…

  Just like had been done in Champaign that night when he encountered the same man.

  How the hell did he find me here?

  Eli didn’t understand it; maybe when his brain wasn’t as fogged-over and his head wasn’t as heavy, he’d be able to figure it out.

  He felt around the wound on his chest again and winced. There was something still there…probably the tip of the dart. He was going to have to dig it out. Or ask Marina to do it. Even in the moment, he couldn’t contain a smile. He liked having her hands on him.

  The sounds of wildly happy and relieved whining, along with the excited patter and clatter of dog feet on the tile, indicated that Adele and Boris were not only unharmed but happily reunited with their mistress.

  Convenient that the dogs had gone outside just before the priest had knocked on the front door…

  But Marina had let them out because they were barking at something in the backyard. Eli’s mouth twisted wryly as he made his way into the kitchen—his mouth was parched—and met Marina in there.

  “He said he’d broken his cell phone and wanted me to help him call for a ride. He showed me the phone,” she said as if reading Eli’s mind. “I had no reason to distrust him.”

  “The priest clothes certainly helped,” he said, filling a glass with water from a filtered tap. Even in that moment, he had an instant of appreciation that she didn’t use bottled water. Stepping out of the way so she could fill her own glass, he gulped down half his drink in one long swig. “The dogs started barking pretty hard before you let them out.”

  She was nodding behind her glass. When she pulled it away, she said, “Yes. He drew them into the backyard—probably was right there on the outside of the fence when I let them out—so they’d be confined and not a threat. Then he came around to the front.”

  “He took the bee and the papers,” said Eli with disgust, still fiddling with the painful welt and its tiny needle. “I’ve still got something in my skin. Probably needs to be dug out in case it’s still oozing whatever it was. Do you?”

  Marina nodded. “Yes, I can feel it.”

  She retrieved a pair of tweezers and rubbing alcohol. It took only a few moments to pull out the dart needle. It was about two inches long, and Eli felt a little sick when he thought about it shooting into his body. Nonetheless, the effects of the drug seemed to be waning.

  “Best keep that for evidence,” he said, and she nodded.

  “Eli, he took the bee and the papers, true, but he didn’t get this.” She pushed past him to go back into the living room. “I kicked it under the couch when he made me sit down.”

  He watched from the kitchen on the opposite side of the open counter as she crouched by the sofa. Moments later, she produced the small earthen jar that had been in Nicolas Notovitch’s package.

  The last vestige of his grogginess evaporated as Eli laughed with delight. “Brilliant, Marina! Good thinking.”

  “Better that we have it than him—whoever he was.”

  “He was a real priest. I’d bet my life on it,” said Eli, refilling his glass once more. Whatever had been used to drug them, it felt as if it had sucked every last bit of moisture from his body.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “In eius nomine sanctum. That’s
what he said, right? I translate that as ‘in her holy name.’ Her would be the church—the Catholic Church, of course.”

  She tilted her head, smiling. “You know your Latin.”

  “Eight years of Catholic school,” he replied. “And before you ask, no, the nuns weren’t as bad as you might have heard, yes, it was an all-boys’ school, and no, we didn’t have any pedophile priests there. My school was run by the Jesuits, by the way, which are—if you’ll excuse the expression—the more liberal representation of the church.”

  “I see.” She was looking at him quizzically, and it made Eli feel a little self-conscious. “You’re certain ‘her’ refers to the church and not, say, Gaia? After all, he did refer to me as Dr. Aleksandrov—which only the Skalas would think of me as.”

  He lifted his brows. “Pretty sure. Did you notice the tattoo on his wrist? It had those letters on it, I E N S; in eius nomine sanctum, and the rest of the design—it looked like a bracelet, right? It was actually a decade of the rosary. Ten beads, equidistant, and then another bead further away.”

  “All right, then, I’ll bow to your Catholic expertise—”

  “Besides, it makes sense when you think about it. Those papers from Nicolas Notovitch about The Secret Life of Jesus Christ?”

  “What about them?”

  “That has to be the reason,” Eli said. “I’m not sure of the bee connection, but we’ve got a mercenary priest showing up and making off with those papers. I get the sneaking suspicion that the church is involved in covering up whatever Jesus Christ’s secret life was. And the bee must somehow be related to it.”

  Marina had picked up her laptop, and even as he spoke, she was typing “The Secret Life of Jesus Christ book” into the search bar. It only took her a few moments of skimming to get the information.

  “According to this, a man named Nicolas Notovitch—that’s the guy who sent the letter and package, isn’t it?—wrote a book claiming that Jesus Christ lived in India.” She frowned, clicking on another link, then another. “I don’t see anything about bees, though.”

  “So we’ve got India—where in India?” asked Eli. “And a bee that seems to be from the same general region. We’ve got a priest showing up to relieve us of everything in the box Notovitch sent here to the U.S.—and I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest he sent it for safekeeping.”

  When Marina lifted a sardonic brow, he went on. “Look, there’s no way the church would want there to be any hint about Jesus Christ that doesn’t fit with its—her—narrative. Her being the church, right? If Jesus lived in India—and more importantly, if there was irrefutable proof that he did—that brings a whole bunch of questions to the forefront, and maybe some of those answers don’t fit with Catholicism and even Christianity as a whole. So they want to snuff out anything that might come to light.”

  “It says here that, according to the book, Jesus traveled throughout India, probably on the Silk Road, during the fifteen or so years after he was bar mitzvahed back in Israel until he began his public preaching career at age thirty, back in Jerusalem. Or so the story goes.” Marina was still skimming articles, reviews, debunkings, and counterarguments as she and Eli spoke.

  “That would make sense, as we have no writings about what Jesus did during that time period—at least, no writings officially condoned by the church,” Eli said. “If during his formative years, he traveled through India and Pakistan and maybe even Tibet and China, that would definitely be disturbing to the powers that be of the Catholic Church.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because, and I’m being only a little sarcastic here, if there was anything that didn’t fit with the Judeo-Christian narrative, and was—well, let’s use the word contaminated—by Eastern philosophy or religion, that could upset the Vatican’s applecart, so to speak. And I don’t think the evangelical Christians would be pleased to know that their savior hung out with Buddhists or Hindus or Zoroastrians or whatever. It just doesn’t fit with their belief system…all that yoga and meditation and stuff.” His voice was dry with sarcasm.

  “So apparently in India, Jesus was known by the name Saint Issa,” Marina told him. She was now twelve pages in on the search results, looking for new information instead of the same articles regurgitated on different sites. “According to Notovitch. And apparently he stayed at a monastery in Hemis, which is where he supposedly saw Buddhist writings that talked about Saint Issa and that he was Jesus of Nazareth. Eli, Hemis—that’s in Ladakh,” she said, looking up and meeting his eyes.

  “Boom.” He sat up straight, suddenly excited and animated. “There it is. There’s the connection. Ladakh, India, where Jesus was known to have stayed, is where Patty found this bee—this bee that seems to have been protected and kept secret for centuries. She was in a little place called… I can’t remember. Thick-something. But that’s got to be it. I’ve got to go to Ladakh!”

  “Oh…boy. Oh…wow,” Marina said, staring at a new article that had come up on the screen. “Eli, there’s more. According to this—the source isn’t Notovitch, but some old writings by Buddhist monks… This is a centuries-old document someone’s translated from the Sanskrit…” She frowned, reading the words and looking at the translation. “This is buried way deep in my search results—I only got here because I added ‘Sanskrit’ to the search string because of the little pot there,” she said absently, still looking at the document—which she was able to access via a private online library because of her academic credentials. “Whoa. Okay. Now it makes sense why the church sent someone after you.” She shoved the laptop away a little and looked at Eli. She pursed her lips. “You’re not going to like this, Catholic boy.”

  “What is it?”

  “According to these writings, Saint Issa traveled throughout India during what we would call 15 through 30, Common Era—which used to be called AD, or Anno Domini, for you old-school people,” she said with a wry grin as he rolled his eyes. She knew very well he knew what she was talking about. “Issa was known as a very spiritual man and a healer. But, and here’s the part that I had to dig way down to find…apparently he was traveling in India after 33 CE.”

  It took Eli only a fraction of a second to follow, and then his eyes goggled. “Are you saying…Jesus was seen in India after he resurrected from the dead?”

  “That’s what these Buddhist writings are saying,” Marina replied. She wasn’t attached to the Christian religion at all, but she was well versed in its belief system—as she was with most other world religions. It went part and parcel with her work. “That Saint Issa—who is apparently Jesus of Nazareth—was seen in India at that time. So if there’s proof that Jesus was alive and in India after he was crucified, then that means—”

  “He didn’t ascend to heaven as is taught—”

  “Or that he never actually died and rose from the dead at all.”

  Eli swallowed audibly. “Holy shit…no pun intended.” He gave a pained laugh. “That would do it. There’s no doubt in my mind that the church would do whatever it takes to make sure that information didn’t come out. Whatever it takes.”

  Thirty-Four

  As Eli’s words hung there between them, filled with worry and shock, Marina picked up the small earthenware pot.

  “So how is this connected?” she mused. “I suspect the papers our friendly priest just stole include proof of Notovitch’s allegations, but why did he send this?”

  She turned the small object around in her hands. It was very old, and she knew it had already been around for centuries when Notovitch packed it up in Paris and sent it to Alexina Donovan.

  There was Sanskrit writing on it, which was ostensibly why Eli had brought it to her—so she could look at it and possibly translate. She felt his eyes on her as she picked up a piece of paper and began to write down all of the markings.

  “There’s Aramaic etched on here too,” she said, looking up at him suddenly. “It’s not only Sanskrit.”

  “Jesus,” he said, his eyes wi
dening. “Aramaic was Jesus’s native language.”

  She quirked a smile. “I’m aware of that. My ancient Aramaic isn’t great, but since the Sanskrit looks like it says Issa, I’m going to guess once I get it translated that the Aramaic says—”

  “Jesus of Nazareth.” Eli let out a long breath, his dark eyes so wide she could see the full circles of his irises. “Holy shit, are you saying Jesus made that pot?”

  “I’m not saying anything, but if his name is marked on it in two different languages, it’s not much of a leap to assume he was at least in possession of it.” She shined the flashlight from her phone on it and scrabbled for the small magnifying glass she kept in the drawer next to the sofa. “Hazard of the trade,” she said with a grin when Eli raised his brows at its convenient appearance.

  “All right, Sherlock, what do you see?” he asked as she handed him the phone for its flashlight.

  “There’s a marking on the bottom of the jar. Hard to make it out, but I think it looks like some sort of bird. There are wings. Or maybe it’s an insect. Take a look for yourself, doc.” She handed him the jar and the magnifier.

  “Insect,” he said after only a moment of examination. “I think it’s an insect.”

  “You sure you’re not just prejudiced?” she teased.

  “Can’t guarantee it, but look—it’s got more than two legs. So not a bird. Hard to see because the etching is worn away, but I think I’m making out at least five legs… What if it’s a bee?” He looked up. “What if it’s the bee?”

  “All things considered, that could make a lot of sense,” Marina replied. She reached over absently to pat Boris on the head, then Adele nosed her way in for attention too. “I want to open it, but I don’t know if we—”

  “Yes!” He pulled the little jar close to his chest as if to embrace it, then winced. “Ouch. Still hurts where our friendly priest darted me.” He rubbed the spot just below his clavicle. “I was hoping you’d say that. This sort of thing—artifacts—isn’t my wheelhouse, so I didn’t want to suggest it, but you’d know how to do it safely.”