2013: Beyond Armageddon (21 page)

“My fiancée and I love Scrabble. Maybe we can play sometime.”

“I’d like that. But I must warn you: an archaeologist is a very patient man. I would try to wait you out and drive you crazy with three-letter words.”

“My fiancée does that all the time. She usually wins while I’m getting greedy and impatient, trying to get my Q onto a triple letter square.”

“Greed and impatience. A deadly combination.”

“Don’t I know it.”

While Rosen turned his attention to the coffee, Zeke looked around. The office was smaller than his at the gym. Not quite cramped, but close. Apparently the Maritime Archaeology Unit didn’t have money to spend on a fancy office for its director. He quickly appraised Mordecai Rosen.

Mid-to-late sixties but sturdy, maybe six two, two-ten. Unkempt black hair speckled with gray, as was his sparse beard. Black slacks and shoes, plain dark gray shirt, untucked, no tie. He looked rumpled and weary. More than weary—sad.

Zeke was anxious to plunge right in, but before leaving D.C. he’d called the congressman Leah worked for. Since he made frequent junkets to Israel, Zeke wanted his advice on the best way to conduct business there. The Israeli bureaucracy could “make you tear your hair out,” the congressman had said, so it was crucial to take a little time to get to know the person who could cut through the red tape, not treat them like a faceless bureaucrat. Noting Rosen’s frazzled appearance, Zeke gave him an opening to unburden himself. “So how are things going for the Director of Maritime Archaeology?”

“For the Director, things are fine. For Mordecai Rosen, not so good.”

“How so?”

Rosen left the coffeemaker to finish brewing and sat behind his desk. He seemed to be struggling with some inner turmoil. “Not to burden you with my problems, but since you asked. My daughter was killed earlier this month.” He pointed to the little girl in the picture. “That’s her. Daddy’s little digger.” He stared at the photo for a long moment as he fought to keep his emotions in check. “October fifth. A suicide bomber.”

The same day as his parents.
“Oh. I’m very sorry.”

Rosen nodded, and Zeke debated mentioning his own tragedy. Shared sorrow might help open this door, but more than that, he felt a genuine connection of the heart.

“We have something in common then,” he said. “My whole family was killed that same day.”

A deeper shade of sadness darkened Rosen’s face. “I’m so sorry. What happened?”

For half an hour over coffee they related their personal tragedies. When they finished, Rosen sat staring out the window, shaking his head. The small movement conveyed an enormous hopelessness. His eyes slowly found Zeke’s.

“Different kinds of madness with the same result,” he said. “After we buried Norah, her boyfriend and I were talking. He was going to ask her to marry him that weekend. We walked away from her grave outraged, of course, vowing to do something to make the killings stop. That is all I have thought about since. But what can anyone do? Prime ministers and presidents and armies and police cannot make it stop. What can we do to stop the evil, Mr. Sloan?”

On the phone yesterday, Zeke had presented his proposition as a dig for Sodom and Gomorrah. He wanted to keep the search for Hell a secret, for fear he’d be dismissed as a religious fanatic, or that word would leak to the media. But now, after this unexpected connection to Mordecai Rosen’s soul, Zeke felt he could confide in him, and that what he had to say might be exactly what the man needed to hear.

“Please—call me Zeke. And I’m very glad you asked that question. It’s the reason I’m here.”

“But on the phone you said you wanted to check on the feasibility of a dig for Sodom and Gomorrah.”

“I do, but it’s more than that. Mr. Rosen, can I tell you something off the record, in the strictest confidence?”

“Of course. And call me Mordecai.”

“The dig I’m proposing is for Sodom and Gomorrah, yes. But that is only the beginning. What I hope to find near there is an opening into Hell.” Uncertainty flickered across Mordecai’s face. “Yes,” Zeke said. “The actual, literal Hell.”

Mordecai started to say something but Zeke held up a hand. “I know. Believe me, I know. But if I find it, I want to go down there to confront and defeat Satan.
That
is what I propose to do to stop the evil.”

Mordecai folded his arms across his large chest. Morning sun came through the window behind him and slanted across the floor. “You’re searching for Hell and Satan.”

“That’s correct.”

“Then why did you tell me Sodom and Gomorrah?”

“Let me show you something that will explain better than I can.”

Zeke opened the padded case. He removed the lid from the terra cotta jar, carefully sliding the rolled-up scrolls onto the desk and positioning Dr. Connolly’s translations and notes alongside them. Mordecai reached for one of the scrolls, then instinctively pulled back his hand.

“I wouldn’t,” Zeke said. “If the information I have is correct, these are somewhere around three to four thousand years old.” Mordecai’s gaze kept being drawn to the translations while Zeke explained. “The translations were done by Dr. James Connolly, a world-class paleographer. I trust his translations completely. He had been studying these since 1947, when a Bedouin brought them to him. You should look this material over before we continue our conversation. It’s the primary evidence I have that Hell and Satan exist. I can go look around the museum while you do that. How much time do you need?”

Eyes that had been dulled by sadness now gleamed. “Give me an hour.”

Zeke looked at his watch. “See you around one-thirty.”

When he returned an hour later, Mordecai had Connolly’s notes in one hand and a page from the scroll translations in the other. Zeke slid back into his chair. “What do you think?”

Mordecai laid the pages on the desk. “Astonishing, if these translations are accurate.”

“I’d bet on it.”

“Proof that there is a God. And a Satan. And a Hell. Answers to questions humanity has been asking since we first began to think.”

“I know,” Zeke said. “They change everything.”

“The biggest challenge is the deadline Enoch gives us for the”—he made quotation marks with his fingers—“‘day of reckoning’.” December 21. Not quite two months. I can rush things through the bureaucracy, but the archaeology itself…Digging is slow, painstaking work. And you can never be sure what you will find—if anything.”

“I know, Mordecai. Believe me, I know.”

“In the best case we might start the actual dig in a few weeks, a month. That leaves a little over a month to find what we’re looking for. Hell, no less. I never like to use the word impossible, but—”

“Me neither. And if the normal rules of archaeology applied, what we’re trying to do would be absurd. But they don’t apply, Mordecai. If we accept what these scrolls tell us, we have to throw common sense and everything life has taught us out the window. Enoch says we will get help from the Messiah. If we decide to do this, we have to believe in divine intervention. We have to believe we have been
chosen
to do this. If it is meant to be, we will succeed. If not, so be it. Still, before we go marching off to Gehenna, a second opinion is probably a good idea. Dr. Connolly had been a priest, so some Catholic bias may have crept into his interpretation. I can leave them with you for your experts to study.”

“A very good idea. Several opinions are wise when dealing with the complexity of ancient language. Especially with something so improbable as scrolls from Lot and Enoch. These would turn the world of archaeology upside down. And please rest assured that we would take excellent care of them. Our people have spent years dealing with the tiniest fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, among other things. For them these would be the Holy Grail.” He drained the rest of his coffee. “So the idea is to find Sodom and Gomorrah first, then search for an opening near there that would lead you to Hell.”

“Correct.”

Mordecai plucked at his earlobe while formulating a response. “I can safely say this is the most unusual proposal to come across my desk in the twelve years I’ve been here.”

“Nothing else comes close, I would imagine.”

“Not remotely. A dig for Sodom and Gomorrah alone would be unprecedented. Finding those two cities has been a Holy Grail of sorts for archaeologists, and people wanting to prove the Bible, for thousands of years. Theories of their location are literally all over the map, but all place them in or around the Dead Sea. Still, no one has been sure enough—and had the resources—to mount a dig specifically to find them.”

“In his notes Dr. Connolly gives his reasons for believing that they are under the shallow southern basin of the Dead Sea.”

“I have not had time to evaluate everything,” Mordecai said. “But even if our people agree with your Dr. Connolly’s conclusions, I think you would have to agree that, to go from that to a search for Hell…and Satan himself…”

“I know. I don’t blame you for being skeptical. I was myself. But this is the only concrete proof I have. I have other proof, but only to myself. Things I have seen. You would only have my word for those.”

“Such as?”

Zeke hesitated but quickly realized he had to tell this man everything if he was going to earn his trust. He related the strange incidents since he’d gotten the scroll—in particular, Jesus Himself asking for help when the Station of the Cross came to life at the Shrine. Mordecai’s response surprised him.

“I too have seen a vision, of sorts.”

“Really? What did you see?”

He told of the weeping olive tree in the Garden of Gethsemane. “From a scientific standpoint, it doesn’t hold up. I wonder if Hassan and I weren’t just caught up in the emotion of the moment.”

“Science doesn’t have all the answers, Mordecai. We both know that. The entire existence of the universe is based on a theory. The Big Bang, which seems to be getting revised every day. Science certainly can’t explain what I saw in the Shrine—but I know I saw it. In the case of your Judas tree, there is an ancient legend that says a person’s soul lives on in a tree that grows over their grave.”

“Hassan and I have talked about that. Mythology often links trees and souls. Wood nymphs from the Greek are the best known. Dryads. Still, it’s a long way from there to a belief in Satan.”

“Can’t argue that,” Zeke said.

Mordecai nodded toward the translations. “Interesting that your friend should place Sodom and Gomorrah in the southern basin.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I have been studying photos from the latest shuttle expedition. Several years ago, shuttle photos showing shadowy underwater anomalies in the northern part of the sea helped to launch the last serious search for Sodom and Gomorrah.”

“I read about it on the Internet the other night. A small submarine went down to the bottom, but they found nothing.”

“Yes. But the photos I’ve been studying are much clearer. The new digital cameras they use are a quantum leap. NASA brags that they can take clear pictures of second base on a baseball diamond. I don’t know about that, but these latest pictures are phenomenal. And I’m seeing something at the southern end of the sea. Part of that, I’m sure, is because the water is so much shallower there.”

“I did some research on the Dead Sea,” Zeke said. “I wondered about the rock-hard salt crust that forms over the bottom. If Sodom and Gomorrah are down there, it seems like that would make archaeology difficult.”

“Very much so. Marine archaeology is ten—some say twenty—times harder than terrestrial. In the Dead Sea, with all the salt and chemicals, the density of the water—multiply that times ten. No dig has ever been attempted there.”

“I haven’t done any diving in a long time, but I was certified in the Army. With the Dead Sea being so hard to sink in, seems to me you’d need to wear an awful lot of lead stay down. I read one story of a diver drowning because he had on so much weight he couldn’t get back up. Is an underwater dig even possible?”

“It would be difficult, but not impossible. There is a small company that takes people on what they call ‘extreme dives’ in the Dead Sea. Before that, they did commercial work in that water for many years. They know more about diving there than anyone. I know the owner. He and I could work something out. Probably I would hire the marine archaeologists, and he or one of his people could train them.”

“Sounds like a good plan.”

“That would be the easy part. Before you could even dig you’d have to break up that salt crust. It’s like concrete. The mining company uses dredges, with huge industrial augurs that constantly grind it up and pump it away. We would have to lease one of those.

“Once the crust was removed, our divers could start looking. If we found clear evidence of Sodom and Gomorrah, we could consider building a cofferdam, but you can’t go to all that trouble and expense until you’re sure you’re digging in the right place. You are familiar with cofferdams?”

“Yes. We built a small one as a training exercise in the Army. Essentially you drop sheets of some sturdy material into the sea bottom to create a walled structure, then you drain the water from inside so you can work on dry land.”

“Exactly. But again, building one of the size we’d need, in the Dead Sea, could easily cost a million or more and take months. Unless you were
sure
you were digging in the right place, it would make no sense. And with our deadline…”

Zeke nodded. “What did you see in the shuttle photos?”

“Shadows under the water of the southern basin. Near the Israeli-Jordanian border, which runs down the middle. Fortunately, the shadows are on our side. Boats have sunk in the sea going back to antiquity, so that could explain some of them. But some have straighter edges, which tends to indicate something more like a building, perhaps. But not necessarily. They could just be chemical deposits. Or ancient trees from when that was dry land. Or nothing. Even with your friend’s interpretation, there is no way to know until you start digging.”

“You have to start somewhere. Assuming your paleographers agree with Dr. Connolly, when you put everything together, that seems like a good place.”