13th Apostle (8 page)

A few minutes later
Side Entrance Hall, Shrine of the Book

Sabbie led Gil through the cave-like hall that he had navigated on his first day. With one hand softly touching the back of his arm, she guided him into the great exhibition room of the Shrine of the Book. They stood in silence, dwarfed by the great room.

“This building was designed to reflect a sanctuary that seeks to convey sacred messages,” she explained. “The mushroom-shaped white dome with the center peak symbolizes the lids of the jars in which some of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. They say the black wall opposite the building mirrors the tension between the spiritual world of the ‘Sons of Light' and the ‘Sons of Darkness' described in the scrolls. Two-thirds of the building remains within the ground, and the building is surrounded by a pool of still water.”

“Who pays for all of this?” he asked.

“That's the most amazing part. Contributors from around the world keep it alive. Founders, benefactors, sponsors, patrons, members. They give what they can and, in almost all cases, their gifts and monies are used wisely.”

“
Almost
always?” Gil asked.

“There are always a few bad apples, though a lot fewer here than in most places. More about that later.”

They had moved to a showcase that held nine small white marble rectangular boxes. Within each box lay a green strip of metal, its etchings barely visible through the glass. A large framed copper sheet with clear deep etchings provided background to the nine little caskets.

“There it is. It's on loan from the Archaeological Museum in Amman, Jordan,” Sabbie began. “We're going to hate to see it go back.”

“I know,” Gil said, remembering George's pathetic attempt at replicating an Internet press release.

“Its official title is The 3Q15 Copper Scroll of Qumran. The numbers in its name reflect the archeological section in which it was found. Everybody here just calls it The Cave 3 Scroll or The Copper Scroll.”

She moved to the side to allow Gil full view and continued.

“Supposedly it contains the locations of sixty-four places in Palestine where portions of the treasure of the Jerusalem temple were hidden, but no one has ever been able to find any of the treasure. See that, the last section? That's where it promises a mate will be found that holds the key to locating the treasures.”

So George did get his facts right.

“When the scroll was discovered,” she continued, “it had been rolled up for so long that it was feared that unrolling it would damage it beyond repair. It was carefully cut into strips so it could be read. That large copper sheet in the background there is a facsimile of what it would have looked like if it had been unrolled intact.”

“Facsimile?” Gil quipped. “I thought you guys went for nothing but the real thing.”

“It's not always possible,” she retorted. “When we can, we show the original find. When we can't, we exhibit either a facsimile or faux facsimile.”

“How can you have a fake reproduction? That's what a reproduction is.”

“Our facsimiles are just what they sound like, copies of the original. A
faux
facsimile is an approximation of the original. It looks like the real thing but doesn't contain all of the details. To use your phrasing, people see what they expect to see, so sometimes it's enough to just make an approximation of the original.”

Gil pointed toward the other exhibition cases. “So some of these may be fake?”

“Not in this museum! If it's not the original, we say so. There's been some pressure lately, mostly from DeVris, to put the good stuff away and display facsimiles but so far, the Museum's Artificer has managed kept DeVris in line.”

“I thought an artificer was a worker of magic,” Gil said thoughtfully. He would have kept any conversation going rather than break the mood and lose the gentle resting of her hand on his shoulder.

Sabbie laughed lightly. “Well, Sarkami is that, too. A worker of magic. But around here we use the term as it was used in the Bible; to refer to someone who is an extraordinary artisan of metals.”

She explained that this Sarkami fellow lived in England and donated his talents and time, crafting metal facsimiles and faux facsimiles whenever the Museum needed them.

“He's does much more than facsimiles, of course,” she continued. “He's a brilliant artist.” Her face glowed with admiration. “And an amazing man.”

Gil had listened to enough. He didn't need to hear her sing the praises of some old guy who spent his life making fake scrolls. Besides, her hand no longer rested on his shoulder—or any other part of him for that matter.

“Let me ask you a question,” he said with a grin. “All of those exhibitions my father dragged me to all through my childhood; are you saying they may have been nothing but faux.”

He didn't wait for her answer before offering his punch line. “In that case, one might say I was a victim of a ‘faux pa'!”

Gil chuckled at his pun. Sabbie was not amused.

She refused to walk him back to the office after that. He needed some time out, she said. He was running on fumes, and it was affecting his mind.

Gil gave her a few minutes lead time, then caught up with her as she entered her office.

Sabbie closed her door after him. “Yesterday, you said that you wished you could figure out what you were missing.”

Gil nodded.

“I think this is it.”

She slipped on white cotton gloves and, from a small wall safe, removed a plastic zip-lock bag. Gingerly, she withdrew a browned piece of paper and slid it onto another plastic bag that she laid on the desk. “This ought to help but, whatever you do, don't touch it!” she cautioned.

He had no intention of doing so.

“If you have to turn it, touch only the plastic it sits on. Don't even breathe on it, okay? I'm serious.”

She reached back into the safe and placed a typed sheet of translation into his hands.

She waited as he read.

“What is this?” Gil asked. He waited for the answer he hoped she'd provide.

“It's a piece of the diary that was hidden in the binding, probably put there by Elias himself nearly a thousand years ago.”

Gil's heart pounded with excitement. This was the last piece of the puzzle. The part he knew was there without ever being told. This was what he had been waiting for.

“No one else knows about it,” she said.

“No one?”

“No one.”

“Not even DeVris?” Gil asked.

She shook her head.

“Does Ludlow know about it?”

“He did,” she said softly. Her face tightened.

“What do you mean?” Gil asked.

He waited for her answer, knowing she was about to put into words what he already suspected.

“Ludlow's dead,” she said simply and turned to slip the browned piece of paper back into its zip-lock bag.

Gil grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her to face him. The fragile piece of antiquity fluttered to the floor. Sabbie gasped.

“What do you mean, he's dead?” Gil demanded.

“He's dead, okay? He's dead. That's all there is to it.”

“No, it's not okay and that's not all there is to it. I have a right to know what happened to him, you know. I mean, after all, I knew the old guy. You can't just say he's dead and leave it at that,” Gil retorted.

Sabbie's heart pounded in her neck but her voice remained steady. Her face betrayed no emotion whatsoever.

“First of all,” she began, “you only
met
Ludlow once, that's all. You didn't
know
him. If you could even think of him as ‘the old guy,' you didn't know him.”

She stooped and carefully retrieved the brown piece of paper from the floor. Still, with gloved hands, she lovingly sealed it in its thin plastic bag.

She continued in the same irritating cool manner. “Second, in your self-indulgent temper tantrum just now, you could have destroyed the very thing ‘the old guy,' as you put it, gave his life for.”

Gil stared at the ancient paper. He wanted to know all that she wasn't telling him. Asking her was useless. Worse than useless. Whatever Sabbie knew about Ludlow's death, she wasn't about to reveal to him. Whatever she was feeling, she was not about to reveal either. Always in control. Oh, how he'd love to see her break. Just once.

Apparently finished with the conversation, Sabbie turned and walked to the other side of the room to return the ancient paper to the wall safe.

Images of Ludlow lying dead from a dozen causes flashed across Gil's mind. A deep sadness washed over him.
Poor old guy
.

Remembering Sabbie's belittlement of the phrase, Gil raised a third finger in the air toward the back Sabbie had turned toward him. It was a stupid, impotent gesture but, save for smacking her in the head, it was all he had available to him at the moment.

God, what a bitch she was.

Later that morning
Office of the Translator

It only took four steps to cross the tiny office. Gil had been pacing for an hour and, as far as he could figure, he must have covered the same ground several hundred times.

Where the hell is she? She can't keep disappearing like this.

He had found Elias' message! It was right there in the message he had hidden in the binding. Not a number substitution, not a word frequency count. Nothing a code breaker would have looked for. This was a cybersleuth's kind of pattern. It made you work for the pleasure of the discovery and, once you nailed it, it put you to work all over again.

The sound of the door opening stopped Gil mid-pace.

“Where the hell have you…”

“Uh uh uh,” DeVris said as he entered. He shook his index finger in mock rebuke. “Thou shalt not curse within these hallowed halls.”

“Sorry, I didn't expect you.”

“Obviously.”

DeVris sorted through a stack of books on the floor. He opened each volume and riffled through the pages.

“Everything okay?” Gil asked. He had not seen the Director since his first day at the Museum. At the time, he had seemed quite imposing. Now, outside the confines of his richly decorated office, DeVris looked a great deal less impressive.

“Do me a favor,” the Director said, pointing to Sabbie's old oak desk. “Reach into the top right-hand drawer and see if there's a three-by-five yellow index card in there. It should have all the phone extensions of…”

Gil stared at the open drawer. It held a yellow index card, a pair of white cotton gloves, and one more thing; a very small, very shiny revolver.

“Oh, the gun. Don't mind that,” said DeVris with a smile. “She won't use it on you unless you give her a hard time.”

Gil stared at him.

“Hey, I was only joking,” DeVris said with a smile.

Gil nodded, closed the drawer, and stepped away from the desk.

“Look, this is Israel,” DeVris began.

“And do most of your translators carry guns?” Gil asked.

DeVris admitted that it was not common practice but added that Sabbie's personal history made her actions quite understandable.

“It was not a simple homicide,” DeVris began. “The man she killed was one of those who had sexually assaulted her. The others remain free. Who knows, she may still be in danger after all these years, so carrying a gun makes all the sense in the world.”

She killed one of them!

DeVris continued. “If the Military Board of Aleph had not turned their back on her, she…”

“They threw her out of the army?” Gil asked.

“No, Aleph is a Special Police Unit, the crème de la crème of counterterrorism. It started out as a branch of the Yamam but later became an independent SWAT force unto itself. Sabbie was one of Aleph's best.”

She had gotten her training in the Lochamot MaGav, the Women's Border Police, DeVris explained. An excellent sharpshooter and brilliant strategist. Her skills and her drive had “anti-terrorist unit” written all over them. When her first tour of duty with the Border Police was completed, Yamam snatched her up for Aleph, a special elite and highly experimental SWAT team.

“It was the first of its kind, a SWAT team for women, hence the name,” DeVris explained. “When Aleph broke ranks with Yamam, Sabbie chose to go with them. If she's one thing, she's loyal.”

DeVris continued to rummage through the books as he spoke. “It never made sense that, after she was arrested, Aleph turned on her like they did. Not a single one of her fellow officers ever testified for her at her trial. They claimed that when they found out she had gone after the other men as well…”

“
Other
men? She killed more than one?”

“You should really be discussing this with her, you know,” DeVris concluded and took a step toward the door.

“Wait a minute,” Gil interrupted. “I can't just say to her, ‘Oh, by the way, I hear you're a convicted murderer.'”

“You're overreacting,” DeVris said. He made it a point to look Gil in the eye for emphasis.

“Look,” DeVris continued, “she was tried and found guilty, that's true, but she was given a suspended sentence based on an elaborate rehabilitation plan. She went to England, enrolled in graduate school and, essentially, turned her life around. Now, her love of antiquities and her dedication to their translation has become her life. Still, if she's sometimes overzealous, I think we can afford to be a little compassionate.”

“How come she's back in Israel?”

“Ludlow met her at the University of London, where he was doing research and teaching. Actually, Ludlow was introduced to her by one of our off-campus artisans, a man by the name of Sarkami…”

Gil looked up sharply at the sound of the name.

DeVris registered the reaction and continued.

“Anyway, Ludlow and his wife, Sarah, apparently took Sabbie under their wing. So, when he brought her to me a couple of years ago and begged me to give her a real job, how could I refuse?”

Gil shook his head.

So Ludlow's death must have hit her like a ton of bricks. But she didn't mention it for days.

“I have to ask you not to relate any of this to her,” DeVris added. “I'd hate to see any animosity come out of all of this. She wasn't so sure you were right for the job, you know.”

“And why was that?” Gil asked.

“I think we better drop the whole thing. Could you do that, please? I think we can afford to cut her a little slack, don't you?”

“Why? Because of all she's been through?” Gil asked, a little more scornfully than he intended.

DeVris' voice softened. “No, because there's something very special about her, don't you think? Something you can't quite put into words. She draws you to her and, when she pushes you away, she pulls you right back in. I'm not just talking about sex appeal, though that's certainly there, too.”

DeVris waited a moment, then abruptly changed the subject.

“If you like, you can use the computer in the next room. For security reasons, you can't send out any e-mail, but it might help you pass the time until she comes back.”

Gil readily agreed and settled into the pleasantly familiar experience of the keyboard and screen. A few minutes earlier, he couldn't wait for Sabbie to return. Now, he was hoping she would take her time. He needed to know more about her than DeVris could provide; sure as hell, a lot more than she would ever tell him.

DeVris quietly left and closed the door behind him.

The yellow index card remained untouched in the drawer of the desk next door.