The Breath of God (15 page)

“So,” Kristin said, interrupting his daydreaming, “if this Indian saint is as historically significant as you claim, you're not uncomfortable emailing the entire translation to your professor?” Kristin pulled the memory card out of the portable card reader that she'd used to download the three hundred and fifty pictures into Grant's laptop, clicked it into a small plastic case, and zipped it into her camera bag.

“I trust Professor Billingsly completely, and I'll need him to line up resources the moment I arrive in Atlanta. Seven years ago, I was rejected by the graduate program at Harvard because of an irregularity in my file.” A shiver passed through his body.
“Irregularity” is putting it lightly
, he thought. He pushed the memory of his greatest humiliation out of his head. “I worried that my application to Emory would follow the same path, so I set up a meeting with Billingsly, one of the senior faculty members in my area of study. We bonded immediately. After I explained the circumstances behind the note in my file, Billingsly went to bat for me in front of the admissions committee. I returned the favor last year when the position for one of the college's deans opened up. I organized a petition of recommendation that over one hundred students signed.”

“Did it work?”

“Unfortunately not. Harold is an articulate and open-minded teacher, although our philosophical views often differ.” Grant thought back on the many times he'd debated theology with Billingsly, who always took the more
traditional Christian view, while he himself took the skeptical one. “The job went to someone connected in the fund-raising circles at Emory. Money, more than teaching, drives university politics.”

“Oh no.” She lowered her camera bag to the floor, reached for his laptop, and danced her slim fingers across Grant's illuminated keyboard. “Crashed again.”

The slow and intermittent connection had already been lost twice before. The files were simply too large for the outdated technology. Grant decided instead to send only the Word file he'd transcribed. He would just bring the pictures back with him. With the originals on Kristin's flash memory card and a copy on his laptop, he felt comfortable waiting the few days until his return to Atlanta.

“Isn't it unusual for a professional writer not to travel with a computer?” Grant asked, as he watched her reboot his laptop. He'd been surprised when Kristin had opened her backpack and revealed three spiral-bound notebooks in which she wrote her articles.
Who uses pen and paper these days?
he wondered.

“I just prefer the tactile sense of writing longhand. It's like I'm more connected to my work. The electronics sap my creativity. Besides, once I've done the writing part, all I need is an Internet café or hotel computer where I can type in the story and email my editor. I can travel without worrying about someone stealing my laptop or having to recharge it.”

Grant checked the screen. The translation of the texts had gone through. It would be waiting for Billingsly when he woke up. “I wish I could get Billingsly on the phone. Can't wait to hear his reaction.”

Grant had placed four phone calls already, but the ten-hour time difference had made communicating difficult. He also knew that the professor spent long weekends at his cabin in the mountains of western North Carolina, where he had no cell phone service. Anyway, Grant would be home in three days. Then the real work would begin.

He reviewed the steps that had to occur before he could publicly announce his find. The photos Kristin took would have to be analyzed and the Pali text professionally translated. He would have to write an article on the background of the discovery. Two months' work, he estimated. And then his life would
change. As he evaluated his mental checklist a second time, a voice intruded in his thoughts—Kinley's admonition about his endless ruminations on the future. Grant pushed the voice away. This time was different. He needed to make sure he was prepared to hit the ground running the moment he landed. Kinley's Buddhist mind tricks were useful when he needed to relax, but relaxation was the last thing on Grant's mind.

Then he noticed that Kristin had shifted the intensity of her stare from the computer to him, as if she were trying to read his thoughts. Her fingers absentmindedly toyed with the plaster on his cast. He held her gaze, mesmerized by her blue eyes, so unusual on a face like hers, and yet so captivating. They were the only two Americans in this place, and months had passed since he'd last been with a woman. He thought back to Holly, the brunette business student with the spiky hair and the temper to match, and Michelle, the blond theater major, before her. Dating students was uncomplicated: they didn't want to move in with him or call him every second of the day. His research had to be his priority.

“So what's the dating situation like, traveling from one place to another?” He tried to sound casual.

She moved her hand from his cast as if she'd just been caught touching something she wasn't supposed to touch. “I'm not really looking right now.”

“Oh no, me neither,” he added quickly. “Work, you know.” He watched how her midnight black hair curled around her delicate ear. Hadn't she been flirting with him since they met yesterday? Then he reminded himself that she wasn't his type anyway. He had too much to think about without complicating his life further.

She shifted her gaze from him to the computer. “Look, Grant, I know these texts are important to your research, but what are you holding back? The stories Kinley read to us moved me. Issa's experiences made me question my own spirituality.” She turned to him. “When are you going to tell me the truth about Issa?”

Conflict tugged at his mind. He'd been vague with Kristin on purpose. How could he trust someone he'd just met with this revelation, a journalist, no matter how intelligent or beautiful she was? But she was instrumental in his
bringing back proof of the texts, and for a reason he couldn't put a finger on, he felt a connection to her. He'd promised himself that he wouldn't lie to her if she asked him directly. He took a deep breath and began to tell her about the two-thousand-year-old mystery of the missing eighteen years in the life of Jesus of Nazareth—the period of time from when Jesus appeared in the Temple in Jerusalem at age twelve until his ministry began at age thirty, a period about which the Bible was silent.

As the truth began to dawn on Kristin, her blue eyes widened. “Are you telling me,” she asked, “that Issa is Jesus?”

The Bhagavad Gita,
5th century BC

The Book of Revelation,
AD 1st century

T
IM HUNTLEY SCRUBBED his body with the thin washcloth in the motel room shower. Usually he was careful not to irritate the skin on his arms and face when he showered, lest he aggravate his eczema. This evening his body stung from the soap penetrating the cracks and crevices of his skin. But as hard as he tried, he couldn't wash away the sin. Ever since he'd been a teenager, he'd struggled with his unnatural desires.

When he stepped out of the bath, his arms and face began to itch before he even had a chance to apply the cool lotion. He prayed he was alone so as not to be confronted with the sickness of his actions. Bile rose to his throat when he heard the throaty voice outside the bathroom door.

“You about finished in there, honey? I need to freshen up. Business, you know.”

Tim wrapped the towel around his waist and marched into the bedroom. The prostitute smiled at him from the edge of the bed, the tanned, youthful face glowing like a signpost to hell.

But it wasn't Tim's fault. He'd been unfairly tempted. He'd been tired and distracted. He'd returned home from Atlanta just before seven AM. He'd only had time to take a quick shower before launching into a sixteen-hour workday. Though he hadn't slept in almost two days, the hooker's tight jeans and low-cut shirt were too much. Even Jesus had been tempted by Satan.

But Jesus had resisted.

Usually Tim resisted too. But every so often, maybe once a year, the temptation proved too great. Like that fateful night, late in the latrine in the barracks
in Fallujah, Iraq, when he and another soldier had thought everyone else was sleeping.

“So, sweetie, when do I get to see you again?” the man-boy asked from the bed.

Tim's fist flew out like a serpent striking its prey. The first two knuckles of his right hand connected with the side of prostitute's nose, snapping it as if it were made of balsa wood.

An instant relief washed over him.

“What are you doing?” the man shrieked in pain, as his hands flew to his face.

Tim cocked his fist a second time, but the prostitute grabbed his clothes with bloodied fingers and bolted for the door.
Just as well
, Tim thought.
Who knows what kinds of diseases reside in that man's blood?

As he dressed, he began having second thoughts about punching the man. He should have killed the whore instead. Just as he should have killed the private who'd come on to him and caused him to be discharged from the Army. Both men had unfairly tempted Tim. Suddenly the image of Reverend Brady flashed into his mind.
What would the reverend say if he knew?

Tim knew exactly what the reverend would say because he broke out into a clammy sweat every time he heard the baritone voice quote Leviticus: “If a man lies with a man as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death.”

Tim was strong, and he truly believed, just as the reverend said he should believe. Why then would God allow him to suffer like this? Even the bombing hadn't gone according to plan. There weren't supposed to be any casualties. All the talk in the office that day had been about the bombing in Atlanta. The nonstop news coverage focused more on the story of the death of Professor Martha Simpson than on the effects of the bombing on the CDC. The news reports said that only the exterior of the building was damaged. They hadn't used enough ANFO. Tim knew that the mixture was unpredictable and wished again that he'd had access to a real explosive like C-4. The work at the agency would continue, although with much higher security. Tim and Johnny hadn't spoken a single word about it and had ignored each other all day. Tim
had promised Johnny that there wouldn't be any casualties, and the last thing Tim needed was to have Johnny flip out.

Pulling on his boots, Tim recalled one of Reverend Brady's sermons. Often in the Bible, sinners, like the Prodigal Son, were rewarded twice over for coming back to the flock after having sinned. The prodigal son's father had welcomed him back with open arms, as did God. Tim no longer had a biological father to welcome him back. The memory of the shotgun blast still echoed in his mind. He recalled the smell of gunpowder as he ran down the stairs of the house his family had lived in back then. His father lay in a crumpled heap on the floor of the den, his mother standing behind the body holding a black twelve-gauge. Years before, Tim had learned to block out the nightly arguments his parents had, turning up the volume of his stereo so he wouldn't have to hear their screaming. But nothing was loud enough to block out the sound of the shotgun—then or now. He told the police about the arguments, and he elaborated about the beatings his mother suffered at the hands of his father. The police concluded the shooting was self-defense, and then he and his mother moved to Little Rock.

Tim had always wondered whether he'd done the right thing by lying to the police. As loud as the nightly arguments got, Tim's father never actually laid a hand on his mother. But if he'd told the police that, then he would have lost both his parents that night and been put in some foster home. He knew his father had suspected the truth about his problem as much as Tim had tried to hide it, and he knew that the suspicion disgusted the old man. Every night his father read aloud from the family Bible before they sat down to dinner. In the year before his death, right after Tim turned thirteen, his father would concentrate on passages, like Leviticus, that described the abominations of promiscuity and homosexuality. Tim often had trouble sleeping at night. His father was pious and controlling, and Tim felt no affection for the man who never shared any affection toward him, and yet he wasn't ready to be an orphan. After his father's murder, Tim watched his mother drink to excess and bring random men into their Little Rock home. Maybe foster parents would have been the better choice.

As he stood up from the motel bed, Tim's mind cleared. As if he could hear Reverend Brady's comfortable voice speaking from the pulpit, he understood
the real lesson. The father in the story of the Prodigal Son was metaphorical. It didn't matter that Tim's own father was dead; his destiny would be the same as the son's in the story. God would welcome him back. God had a plan for Tim: a plan much more spectacular than the Emory bombing, a plan of redemption. Tim wasn't sure of the details of this plan, but he knew that he would be given the chance to prove his worthiness, and his sins too would be forgiven.

Feeling better, Tim strode out of the motel room. He would head back to his apartment and spend the rest of the night online. Maybe he would find a clue to God's plan for him there.