The City of Lost Secrets: A Mara Beltane Mystery (19 page)
“Why? What does Paul have to say about resurrection?”
“The term ‘spiritual’ appears many times in the New Testament, but the majority of these occurrences appear in Paul’s writings. In Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, for example, he talks about spiritual blessings, spiritual wisdom, spiritual gifts, spiritual songs…”
“Wow, Paul was quite a spiritual guy,” I joked.
Uri laughed. “Well, it certainly proves that Paul believed humans could be either natural or spiritual—-in other words, they existed in a mortal, physical body, or as an immortal spirit powered by God.”
“But Paul is just one apostle among many,” I countered. “It seems like he was the only apostle willing to accept the spiritual resurrection of Jesus while most others still believed in bodily resurrection.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Uri conceded. “But keep in mind that Paul is the earliest known author to discuss the resurrection of Jesus. Most scholars believe that the gospels were written after Paul had ministered, written his letters, and been martyred.”
“What does that prove?” I asked, uncertain of the point Uri was trying to make.
“It proves that since Paul was one of the first people to discuss resurrection, his views carried a lot of weight and must’ve been influential. Furthermore, there’s no doubt Paul knew the other apostles. So if he did believe in spiritual resurrection, certainly the other apostles knew he was preaching that message, and might’ve even approved his gospel. Meaning, the spiritual resurrection of Jesus might’ve been accepted by the other apostles.”
“So if the other apostles accepted the spiritual resurrection of Jesus, a message that Paul had been preaching all along, then it’s possible that the other gospels written after Paul’s death were heavily influenced by Paul. The gospel writers could very well have modified their own view of resurrection and adopted Paul’s theory of spiritual resurrection.”
“Yes, Mara. That’s it exactly,” Uri said. “Spiritual resurrection would save Christianity, this tomb…and your novel.”
Uri relaxed his shoulders and nodded, seemingly proud that he had found a way to make it all work.
“So the Talpiot tomb could very well be the final resting place of Jesus of Nazareth, after all!” I said, clapping my hands together in joy.
“Yes, my dear Mara. There’s hope for this tomb yet. And hope for--”
Uri stopped mid-sentence and whipped his head toward the tomb entrance.
“What it is, Uri?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
“I thought I heard something,” he whispered.
The tomb was quiet then, and if not for the raspy sound of my lungs struggling for fresh air, I might have been able to hear a spider scurrying across the dirt floor.
Suddenly I heard a sound echoing down from above, what sounded like a voice. Uri must have heard it too because he hurriedly crawled on all fours to the entrance, pulled himself out of the tomb and stood at the bottom of the rope ladder, listening. I rushed after him, grabbing the flashlight he had left behind on my way out. A cloud of dust had followed us out of the tomb, and as it hit my nostrils I sputtered and coughed.
“Shh!” Uri whispered, covering my mouth with his hand to muffle the sound.
A voice made way its way down the hole to us, the same voice as before, this time a higher pitch, more anxious.
“Lev?” Uri called out.
Lev appeared at the entrance to the tomb. Uri took the flashlight from me and shined it up toward him, at the scared, wide-eyed face that betrayed our fate.
“Uri! Mara!” he yelled down to us. “You must get out now! They are coming!”
“Who’s coming?” I yelled up to Lev.
“Lev…?” Uri asked.
Lev need only nod at this one word for Uri to spring into action.
“Up the ladder, now!” Uri said, grabbing my arm and pushing me toward the rope ladder.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“No time for questions,” Uri said, not waiting for me to ascend to the top before climbing up the ladder behind me.
“I don’t understand!” I said, frantically clasping at each rung of the ladder as my feet struggled to carry me to safety.
By the time I reached the top of the rope ladder and white hot floodlights blinded me, I understood. I was not, in fact, climbing to safety. I was ascending to hell.
The bright floodlights burned my eyes as I scurried over the concrete wall and shuffled over to where I thought Lev stood. I blinked repeatedly, unable to find Lev, and unsure if Uri had made it to the top of the rope ladder.
“Lev? Uri?” I called out. “Where are you?”
“Miss Beltane?” I heard a gruff male voice say. He stood just in front of me, so close he could’ve reached out and grabbed me.
“Yes? Who are you?”
“Miss Mara Beltane, you and your friends must come with me.”
And then the man with the gruff voice did indeed grab me. And he pulled me toward the blinding white lights, which turned out to be the headlights of his police car. He threw me in the back of the car next to Lev, who sat smashed up against the passenger-side door, his head lowered, shivering and afraid to move.
My door was slammed shut and then a man climbed behind the wheel. The engine purred to life and our vehicle peeled away into the night. As the car sped away I turned around and through the dust-strewn rear windshield I saw Uri being ushered into the back seat of a second Israeli police car.
That is the last image I saw before finally closing my eyes and wishing it was all a dream.
I was sitting in a prison cell in the District Headquarters of the Israeli Police Force in Jerusalem. I was alone in the cell, and Lev was in his own cell next to mine. There were only bars for walls, so I was able to look over and see him sitting on the concrete floor, his legs pulled to his chest. He hadn’t said a word to me since we first met at the entrance of the tomb, about two hours before. Was he in shock, or just worried about Uri, whom we had not seen for over an hour? Perhaps both. I tried to speak to him.
“Lev, are you alright?”
He looked at me and nodded.
Just then Uri and two police escorts rounded the corner and walked down the hall in our direction, toward the cells that lined the back wall of the station. It was the first time I had seen Uri since witnessing him being pushed into the back of a police car. He looked tired now, his skin paler than normal, a five o’clock shadow spread across his chin and jaw that I hadn’t noticed before.
The cell to my immediate right was empty. One of the escorts unlocked it and Uri stepped inside. The cell was locked again and the two escorts wordlessly walked away. Uri sat on the wooden bench in his cell and eyed me wearily. For perhaps the first time I didn’t have anything to say to him, so I offered a weak smile instead.
“Uri…?” Lev called out to the professor.
“Everything’s fine, Lev. Just as we expected.”
“What do you mean, Uri?” I asked, walking over to the wall of bars that separated us. “Are we going to be arrested?”
“No.”
“Were you interrogated?” I asked.
“I was asked a lot of questions,” Uri said. He looked past me to Lev. “And he was very thorough.”
“Who?” I asked, looking over at Lev.
“My brother-in-law,” Lev said.
“You mean Benjamin Schwarz, the head of the Jerusalem district of the Israel Police?” I asked, and Lev nodded. “He was the person following me!”
“He was following all of us, Mara,” Uri said. “Lev, too.”
I looked over at Lev, who was nodding in confirmation. “Both of you knew he was following all of us and neither of you told me?” I asked.
I looked from Uri to Lev, waiting for one of them to explain.
It was Uri who spoke.
“Mara, we didn’t want to frighten you or derail your plans. We thought if you knew the truth you might call off the whole thing. And then you never would’ve accomplished your goal.”
“And there was no way of knowing that my--” Lev said but then stopped himself, his attention diverted by something he saw down the hallway. Lev jumped to his feet as a man approached our cells.
It was Benjamin Schwarz. He looked different without his sunglasses, friendlier almost. I imagined his eyes would be dark and beady, making him appear evil, but as he approached our cells I saw that they were in fact large and blue and appealing in a trustworthy way.
“Uri,” Benjamin said, nodding to the professor. “Just a few more minutes and we’ll have all of you out of here.”
“Is anyone going to tell me what the hell’s going on?” I asked impatiently, looking for answers from anyone, but eyeing Benjamin accusingly.
“Miss Beltane,” Benjamin said, turning to me and smiling. “I’m very sorry for detaining you and your friends. We just need to finish some paperwork and then we’ll have you out of here in no time.” His voice was soft and soothing, not at all like the vicious bark I had anticipated.
“If we’re not being arrested, then why put us in here?” I asked, motioning to the cells that caged us like actual criminals.
“It was the only way we could ensure that you wouldn’t flee,” Benjamin explained. “Nothing personal, just standard protocol.”
I wanted to hate him.
“You chased me through the streets of Jerusalem!” I yelled at him. “You’ve been following all of us! You crank called me and Uri!”
“But I never threatened any of you,” Benjamin clarified. “I never engaged you or made contact or--”
“How did you even know what we were planning to do?” I interrupted, completely out of patience for the truth. Then I figured it out, the common denominator, the tie that bound the three men that surrounded me.
“Ziva!” I spit her name out of my mouth.
“Mara, please,” Uri said, “Leave her out of this.”
But I continued, eyeing Benjamin. “Ziva told you about our plan, didn’t she? She dimed us out! She put you up to this!”
“Miss Beltane,” Benjamin said calmly, “we received a call tonight about suspicious behavior in the Talpiot area of the city. We were obligated to respond.”
“That only explains tonight. It doesn’t explain why you’ve been following all of us for weeks!” I felt a stabbing pain in my right hand and, looking down, realized that my hands were balled up into fists. My right hand was squeezed shut so tight my fingernails had pierced the flesh of my palm.
“I admit to keeping an eye on you, Miss Beltane,” Benjamin admitted. “But only because of a tip I received about illegal activity that you might be involved in.”
He acted as if Ziva wasn’t the source of the tip, the reason why we were all sitting in jail. If only Uri hadn’t said anything to her, if only they didn’t communicate at all. If only Benjamin and Lev didn’t both love her, then they could admit that Ziva was the reason why our plan fell apart.
“I must admit that my surveillance skills are a little rusty,” Benjamin was saying. “It appears I was hidden within your plain view, Miss Beltane!”
I wanted to hate Benjamin Schwarz. But what he said made sense. He had never threatened me or accused me of anything. And neither Uri nor Lev said they were threatened either. Just that they were being followed. Given their past, their previous break-in of the Talpiot tomb, it’s not surprising that the police would keep a close watch on them. Plus, what Uri, Lev and I had done was illegal; Benjamin could have easily arrested all three of us and he didn’t. He decided to have mercy on us. But why?
I wanted to hate Benjamin Schwarz, but I couldn’t.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some other business to attend to,” Benjamin said.
He nodded at Uri, and then stepped in front of my cell.
“Goodbye, Miss Beltane,” he said. “And good luck. I hope you found what you were looking for.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Benjamin then paused at Lev’s cell. The two men eyed each other.
“Young man,” Benjamin said, reaching through the bars and squeezing Lev’s arm. “Take care. I’ll see you soon.”
“Yes,” Lev said, nodding. “See you, Ben.”
When Benjamin was out of sight, Uri retreated to the bench in his cell and sat down heavily with a sigh.
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I hope you’ll both forgive me.”
“For what?” Lev asked. “Everything went according to plan.”
“Plan?” I said, looking from Uri to Lev. “What plan?”
“None of this is your fault,” Lev continued, ignoring my question. “We both went into this willingly. Right, Mara?”
“Um, right,” I said, distracted by Lev’s mention of a plan that I was obviously unaware about. “And, you know…Ziva squealed on us. There was no way you could’ve known that she would do that, Uri.”
Lev grabbed the bars on his cell, peering through them at Uri. “I hope you realize that I said nothing to my sister, not the first time and not this time,” he said.
“It’s okay,” Uri said. “I believe you. I trusted her…”
“…And she betrayed you,” I said, finishing what I think Uri meant to say but didn’t have the heart to.
Uri closed his eyes, as if blocking my harsh words with his eyelids.
“Ziva tried to warn me,” he said.
“Uri, she broke off your engagement and then turned around and married Benjamin! She broke your heart, and then she ratted you out to police—-twice!”
Neither Uri nor Lev spoke.
“How can both of you so easily defend her! Lev, she betrayed you, too! Her own brother!”
“I don’t agree with a lot of her decisions, Mara. We didn’t speak for a long time after the incident. But she is my sister, so in time I will forgive her.”
“I wish I could be as forgiving,” I mumbled.
“Perhaps if you heard the whole story you might think differently of my sister,” Lev said. “Uri, I think it’s time Mara knows the whole truth.”
“Can someone tell me what’s going on?” I pleaded, sinking to the floor of my cell, tired and confused.
“Ziva used to work for the IAA, at the Bet Shemesh warehouse where the six inscribed Talpiot tomb ossuaries are kept…” Uri began, shifting positions on the bench so that he was facing me.
“Wait,” I said, remembering Lev’s comment about there being a plan. “Does this story involve the plan Lev was talking about?”