The Galilean Secret: A Novel (21 page)
Read The Galilean Secret: A Novel Online
Authors: Evan Howard
When they reached the apartment, the abbot fumbled with his keys before unlocking the door. Karim sensed danger; it was too quiet. When the door was finally opened, Karim slipped inside first and then froze. Books and papers were strewn everywhere. The desk was on its side, and the swivel chair was upside down on the floor, which was splattered with blood. Karim did a quick check of the one-room cinderblock apartment.
No Brother Gregory.
No laptop computer.
Just then a balding, middle-aged man in a brown robe rushed in. “I heard a commotion. When I arrived, I found Brother Gregory unconscious.” The man struggled to catch his breath. “I woke him up. He’s resting in my apartment.”
“Please take us to him,” Karim said.
As they headed up the walkway, Abbot Zeno introduced the man as Brother Theodore. “How did you get into Brother Gregory’s apartment?” the abbot asked.
“The door was open.” Brother Theodore led them back to his apartment. “After Brother Gregory regained consciousness, I called your number, but you didn’t answer, so I brought him here and locked his door and mine. I was afraid the burglar would return.”
Karim saw Brother Gregory lying on the bed and hurried to his side, as did Rachel. The monk was resting his head on ice cubes wrapped in a blood-soaked towel and laid on a pillow. Rachel felt Brother Gregory’s carotid artery for a pulse. “His heartbeat is normal, but I still think we should take him to the hospital.”
“No, you won’t. I’ll be fine.” Brother Gregory tried to sound strong, but his voice was trembling.
“I think you should follow the doctor’s orders,” Karim said. Then, turning sober, he asked, “Who did this to you?”
Brother Gregory grimaced, rolling his head on the pillow. “I don’t know.” He reached up and rubbed his temples. After nearly a minute he said, “The last thing I remember was returning to my apartment and settling down to work. Someone must have hit me from behind. He must have been hiding in the bathroom.”
“How could he have gotten in?” Karim asked.
“I don’t know,” Brother Gregory said. “When I got home, there were no signs of a forced entry.” He paused, his expression darkening. “The intruder must have had a key—or maybe he knew someone with a key. He obviously attacked me from behind so that I couldn’t identify him.”
Abbot Zeno laid a gentle hand on Brother Gregory’s leg. “I can assure you that there will be a thorough investigation. For now, you just need to rest.”
Brother Gregory’s pleasant features twisted into dismay. “The laptop—where is it?”
“Gone. Along with everything on your desktop,” Karim said.
Rachel shook a finger at Brother Gregory. “Let’s just get you to the hospital. You can deal with the missing laptop later.”
Brother Gregory waved dismissively. “I’ll be fine with some aspirin. You’re the only doctor I need.”
“This doctor says you’re going to the hospital. You could have a concussion.” She got up, reaching for her keys. “I’ll back the Jeep up to the door. Karim and these gentlemen will help you into it.”
Brother Gregory propped himself up on an elbow. “No, really, I’ll be fine.”
After Karim heard the Jeep pull up, he took hold of the monk’s arm to help him stand. Brother Gregory protested again and Karim said, “You heard the doctor. You’re going to the hospital—that’s an order.”
Brother Theodore took the other arm, and the two of them supported him to the Jeep, which Rachel had positioned near the door. Karim and Brother Theodore maneuvered him into the front seat. Getting into the back, Karim handed Brother Gregory the ice wrapped in the towel as the abbot closed the doors and backed away with Brother Theodore.
“The closest hospital is in Beit Jala, just west of Bethlehem.” Rachel drove out of the parking lot and turned north on Manger Street. “Keep the ice on your head until we get there.”
Brother Gregory reclined his seat. “If I need stitches, I want you as my doctor.”
“If I had a cut, I would too,” Karim said. “But if I needed someone to protect my home, I wouldn’t choose you.”
Brother Gregory gave a strained laugh. “I don’t blame you. If the thief stole everything on my desk, he has more than my laptop. He also has my copy of the translation, the photographs of the writings and the flash drive on which I save my work.”
Karim leaned forward as the Jeep wound through the outskirts of Bethlehem toward downtown. “That means the thief has everything except the original scroll. When he discovers what the scroll contains, there’s no telling what he will do to get it.” As Karim finished his sentence, he felt the Jeep speed up. The road was nearly abandoned at that hour, but now Karim noticed headlights—high beams—close behind them.
Rachel gave the Jeep more gas. “That car seemed to come out of nowhere. He’s riding my bumper. Whenever I speed up, he does the same.”
“Robert Kenyon may have hid at the monastery and saw us leave,” Karim said. He then explained to Brother Gregory what had happened at the university. At the same time he wondered whether Abdul Fattah might be trailing them. Abdul, who would force him to return to Nablus. Abdul, who could reveal to Rachel who Karim’s brother had been.
Cold terror spread through Karim. He stole a glance out the rear window, but all he could see was a fog of white light, nothing of a black Mercedes or a gray Impala. He finished explaining about Kenyon and then said to Brother Gregory, “The man who attacked me at Qumran is probably the archaeologist who came looking for you at the monastery.”
Tires squealed as Rachel took a curve at high speed, the other car continuing to tailgate. “I’ll try to lose him in Bethlehem,” she said, slowing a bit as they approached the Alexander Hotel on the right. Before they reached it, she executed a hairpin left turn and the Jeep fishtailed up a narrow cobblestone side street.
Karim slammed against the door and jerked himself upright. He looked back as the other car spun into the turn, still unable to identify its make. Then he glanced at Rachel, her sculpted profile silhouetted in the headlights, her gaze riveted on the winding street. She had said she was scared, but he saw only grit and determination in her eyes. As in Bil’in, his life was in her hands, as was Brother Gregory’s.
His back muscles tightened, he gulped in air. She was an Israeli, but, Allah help him, he loved her. Holding and kissing her had brought him home to some lost part of himself. He hoped he had done the same for her, and that together they had begun to reclaim the dreams that terrorists had stolen from them. If only they could make it to the hospital. . .
Brother Gregory threw the ice on the floor. “In case I don’t get out of this, I must tell you what I found in the diary.”
Rachel steered the Jeep up an alley, heading toward Manger Square. Several pedestrians leapt out of the way, pinning themselves against the brick apartment houses that lined each side. Karim pulled himself closer to hear Brother Gregory over the roar of the engines. “Tell us quickly.”
Brother Gregory craned his neck to face Karim and raised his voice above the grinding engine. “Judith of Jerusalem wrote that Judas Iscariot was in love with Mary Magdalene. He felt that he was in a competition with Jesus for her—and losing. According to Judith, Judas betrayed Jesus for reasons not recorded in the Bible.” Brother Gregory’s voice became strained and trembled when the car bumped the Jeep from behind. “Judas didn’t betray Jesus just for money. He didn’t do it just because he was disillusioned with him. He did it out of jealousy.”
The Jeep hit a garbage can, sending it crashing. “Rachel, be careful!” Karim’s heart was racing because of the danger but also because of Brother Gregory’s shocking statement. “How can you be sure that both Jesus and Judas were in love with Mary Magdalene?”
“We can’t prove it from any existing sources,” Brother Gregory said, raising his voice to be heard above Rachel’s honking. “Neither the canonical nor the Gnostic Gospels say anything about Judas’ jealousy. But Judith claims there is a source that does—another ancient text.”
Brother Gregory paused to emphasize each word. “Judas Iscariot left a note for Mary Magdalene explaining why he committed suicide. Mary told Judith that she buried the note in the largest cave in Gethsemane. Mary even revealed the spot—the northeast corner.”
“What did Judas write?” Rachel asked, braking around a corner.
Brother Gregory grabbed the dashboard. “Judith only says that Mary Magdalene spoke of it with wrenching sobs.”
“So in order to learn the truth, we must find Judas’ note to Mary.” Karim raised his voice above the screech of tires. “How ironic. The betrayer now holds the key to whether the Jesus letter and Judith of Jerusalem’s diary are authentic. If we can find Judas’ note, we can solve the mystery.”
Brother Gregory stared straight ahead. “You had better hurry, because whoever stole my laptop will be searching for the note in the Cave of Gethsemane.”
As Rachel turned right at the Church of the Nativity, the car behind them moved up closer and tried to force them off the road. The Jeep spun sideways with a squeal of tires. Karim got a glimpse of the car chasing them—a gray Impala. “That’s Kenyon behind us.” His voice rose above the squeaks and rattles of the Jeep as it straightened and lurched forward.
Then he heard a siren.
Rachel kept going straight as the Impala disappeared down an alley.
“The police must have scared Kenyon off,” Rachel said, slowing down and stopping. Soon the flashing lights of the cruiser approached. “Don’t say a word unless I ask you to.”
With Karim’s limited knowledge of Hebrew, he couldn’t understand what Rachel said to the sturdy Israeli policeman. She gestured frantically toward Brother Gregory and pointed at the cut on his head. For a brief heart-stopping moment the clean-shaven officer stared at Karim. Rachel held up the monk’s blood-stained towel and said something that Karim couldn’t understand—except for the name
Ezra Sharett
. The officer hesitated as though considering what to do about a man who appeared to be a Palestinian. Then he gave Karim one last look, nodded and hurried back to his car.
The officer turned on his lights and siren, and Rachel followed him away from the Church of the Nativity. As the cruiser wound back onto Manger Street and led them to the hospital, Karim could not have been more relieved.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Roman Times
GABRIEL’S ANGUISHED VOICE KEPT ECHOING IN JUDITH’S MIND. As she bathed by torchlight in Zedekiah’s Cave, she was haunted by his conversation with Nicodemus ben Gorion that she had overheard. The murky water in the underground cistern felt like ice. She splashed at its surface, hoping the noise would distract her thoughts, but Gabriel’s voice gnawed at her conscience. After three days in Jerusalem spent with the Zealots in the sprawling cave, she was feeling worse. She longed more and more for home, and home was nearby. . . .
But now she was not only an adulteress but also a thief. If caught, she would be stoned for certain. She had no choice but to stay with Dismas.
She inhaled the cave’s musty air and stared at its blackened limestone walls, struggling to understand how she had ended up in this place. Minutes passed.
No woman could have resisted Dismas,
she told herself. Passion had possessed her and was bent on destroying her.
As she washed, she tried to rinse away both the dirt from her skin and the guilt of having betrayed Gabriel. Her face felt clean but not her conscience. She dipped her head underwater and shook it back and forth, trying to erase the memory of her betrayal. The sloshing in her ears, as loud as the sound of ocean waves, couldn’t drown out her regrets. Lightheaded from being underwater, she pushed to the surface, gasping for air. Someone was shouting.
Dismas.
She hadn’t heard him approach the cistern, but there he stood, torch in hand, calling her name.
“Are you all right?” he asked as she struggled to catch her breath.
Judith turned to face him. “I’m fine, but I would like to be alone.”
“Haven’t you been in there long enough?” Frustration glinted in his eyes. “Barabbas has come to Jerusalem and will eat with us tonight. I want you to join us.”
“All right,” she said, knowing that she had no choice. “Just give me a few minutes.”
Dismas nodded and left. She leaned back in the water and kicked at the rough stone of the cistern.
I would leave if I had somewhere to go.
She climbed out of the water and reached for the tunic that served as a makeshift towel. As she dried herself, memories of how she had become involved with Dismas played in her mind.
Her father had hired him to expand the courtyard of their home. She recalled that her conversations with Dismas had remained casual until she complimented his work and predicted that he would excel in his trade. To her surprise, he threw down a large stone and said, “No Jew can go far as long as the Romans rule Judea.” When she remarked that she also resented the Romans, his demeanor had changed, as if an equilibrium shift had occurred, banishing his inhibitions. That night Judith had tossed and turned for hours, unable to get Dismas out of her mind.
The next day she asked him to meet her at the Herodian gardens at dusk, and she told him how the Romans had murdered Reuben. The story darkened Dismas’ expression. He railed against their unjust taxes, their idolatry and blasphemy, their oppression of the Jews, their arrogance and brutality. Then he took her in his arms, and she went on about how her father had blamed her for Reuben’s death. How he had arranged her marriage quickly after the funeral. How he had turned a deaf ear to her objections.
Judith mused about the intensity of her attraction to Dismas. The more they had talked the more she felt that only he understood her. She had tried to forget him but couldn’t. Now, as she began to dress, she cursed her weakness, her stupidity. She had just put on her sandals when Dismas arrived, ready to take her to dinner with Barabbas and the other Zealots. They began to walk back to camp, the way lit by the torch he carried. “Are we never going to talk about Gabriel?” she asked.
“Never.” He stared straight ahead. “For all the help my family gives our cause, they may as well be Romans. Especially Gabriel, the coward.”
M
ore than thirty Zealots were sitting around a blazing fire. Judith saw that Dismas had set out the treasures they had stolen—the pottery, the Roman glass vessels, the gold and silverware and the jewelry box. He had not opened the box. “I saved this for you,” he said, handing it to her. “After all your help, you deserve the most valuable treasure.”
Judith stared at the wooden box, wracked by guilt. But because everyone was watching, she bit back her discomfort and reluctantly took the box. When she set it on the ground and opened it, she drew back in surprise. The box contained a papyrus scroll. She concealed it behind the lid and unfurled a bit of it. Obviously a long letter, it began, “A message from Jesus of Nazareth to Mary of Magdala, and to all people in every age. . . .” She gasped and unrolled the letter farther. It was written by a steady hand in a distinctive script. This was the letter that Nicodemus ben Gorion had spoken of! She rolled it up quickly, not wanting Dismas to know.
“Is there nothing else in the box?” he asked.
Her hands shaking, she checked the box again. “No, it’s empty.”
When he looked away, she quickly returned the scroll to the box and closed the lid.
I will read the letter but not until I’m alone
, she thought, setting the box among the other stolen items. To divert attention from it, she admired the silverware until Barabbas invited everyone to have lentil stew.