Crucified Page 20

  The art historian donned a pince-nez. He set the papyrus down on a table and turned on a gooseneck lamp. When he looked up, amazement creased his face.

  "The script is Aramaic, the colloquial language of Jews in the time of Jesus. The city is Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period."

  "What's the purpose of the map?"

  "That's intriguing. This document," the art historian said,

  "appears to be a treasure map."

  A blackboard on an easel sloped beside the table. With a piece of chalk, the art historian sketched a rough version of the city drawn on the papyrus:

  "Jerusalem sits in the Hills of Judea, where the Hinnom Valley and the Kidron Valley meet. The city was raised on the crest of the ridge that forms the watershed between those hills and the Judean Desert to the east. The site made Jerusalem easy to defend.

  Rommel nodded. He was an expert at selecting a battle-ground.

  "The number 1 marks the Garden of Gethsemane, at the foot of the Mount of Olives. That's where Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss. The rectangle to the left is the Temple Mount as it was on the day Christ was crucified. The map says the Roman governor condemned him to death at the Praetorium, which I've marked with a 2. The arc to the north is the Second Wall of Jerusalem. It turns south to join the First Wall after it jogs around points 3 and 4. Though it's not on your papyrus, I've dotted in the present-day route of the Via Dolorosa, the path that we believe Jesus followed to his execution on Golgotha, outside the city walls.

  "I've marked Golgotha as number 3, and the nearby tomb of Jesus is number 4."

  "Are they on the papyrus?"

  "Both are described in the script. The quarry outside Jerusalem's walls dates back to the First Temple. The hill on the edge of the gouge in the ground was ideal for executions, and burial caves were bored into the slopes of the pit. Those tombs were sealed with stones rolled across their mouths."

  "Is that the focus of the map? The spots where Jesus was betrayed, crucified, and buried?"

  "No, the map centers on what I've marked as number 5.

  That place is Haceldama, the site where both the Bible and this papyrus say Judas Iscariot died."

  The art expert fetched a leather-bound Bible from his bookshelves and flipped through its pages.

  "We have two versions of how Judas Iscariot died. The Gospel of Matthew says:

  And when morning was come, all the chief priests and ancients of the people took counsel against Jesus, that they might put him to death.

  And they brought him bound and delivered him to Pontius Pilate the governor.

  Then Judas, who betrayed him, seeing that he was condemned, repenting himself, brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and ancients,

  Saying: I have sinned in betraying innocent blood. But they said: What is that to us? Look thou to it.

  And casting down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed and went and hanged himself with a halter.

  But the chief priests having taken the pieces of silver, said: It is not lawful to put them into the corbona—the place in the temple for gifts and offerings—because it is the price of blood.

  And after they had consulted together, they bought with them the potter's field, to be a burying place for strangers.

  For this cause that field was called Haceldama, that is, the field of blood, even to this day.

  Skipping to later pages, the expert said, "The alternate version, Acts of the Apostles—the second book of Luke—says:

  Concerning Judas, who was the leader of them that apprehended Jesus:

  Who was numbered with us, and had obtained part of this ministry.

  And he indeed hath possessed a field of the reward of iniquity, and being hanged, burst asunder in the midst: and all his bowels gushed out.

  And it became known to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem: so that the same field was called in their tongue, Haceldama, that is to say, The field of blood.

  Closing the Bible, the expert returned to his drawing of Jerusalem on the blackboard and tapped the number 5.

  "Haceldama—called the potter's field because a potter had once owned it—sits on a terrace south of Jerusalem, on the south face of the Hinnom Valley, just before it joins the Kidron Valley. Hinnom runs the length of the city's south wall, and Kidron runs down the east wall between the Temple Mount and the Mount of Olives."

  "That's where Judas hanged himself and was buried?"

  "According to both the Bible and the script on your papyrus map."

  "Is Haceldama still there?"

  "Very much so. During the Crusades, it was the burial ground for European knights."

  The art historian ushered Rommel to a corner of the library dedicated to the Holy Land. Maps of Jerusalem in different periods—the First Temple, the Second Temple, the time of Jesus, Aelia Capitolina, the Byzantine, the Early Arab, the Crusader, the Ayyubid, the Mamluk, the Ottoman, the British Mandate—were framed on the wall. Down one side of this map collage ran a chronology.

  "Do you like solving puzzles, Herr Feldmarschall?"

  "Military ones."

  "Then permit me to pose a biblical puzzle with war the key to solving it. The puzzle is, What makes your papyrus map from Tobruk a biblical earthshaker?"

  JUDAS WINDOW

  ENGLAND, NOW

  The Legionary was lashed to Satan by a black umbilical cord.

  His belly heaved as the beast within writhed through his gut and gnawed at his soul. Poison polluted his veins, rotting his body and sickening his mind. The clifftop cottage stank of sulfur and decaying flesh. Thrashing back and forth like a windshield wiper, the priest in him had tried to shake off the Devil's yoke, but Satan had all but conquered any good left in him. Instead of visions of God, the Virgin, and Jesus Christ, his head was stuffed with horrific images of the Inquisition to guide him through what he was doing now.

  With every turn of the screw, the woman shrieked louder.

  Her screams, however, were muffled by the gag.

  Tears ran streaks of makeup down her gin-blotched cheeks.

  "For the love of God!" beseeched the man tied to the plank.

  "You have it all!"

  His begging resulted in another twist of the crank.

  Since God made man in His image, He alone knows how to break him. That's why God inspired the tools of the Inquisition, and taught His Vatican inquisitors how to use them to exorcise Satan's secrets from his disciples.

  Crank.

  The danger wasn't the witch's tit. That was just the sign of women who consorted with the Devil. No, the peril to the souls of mankind was the witch's womb, which would produce the Devil's spawn, the Antichrist!

  Crank.

  To combat that, the Inquisition had created the Pear. The Pear was a bulbous metal invader shaped like the fruit.

  Having tied the daughter of the Ace' s bomb-aimer to the corners of her four-poster bed, the Legionary had inserted the witch-hunting device into her vagina and was now twisting the crank to spread the bulb like a blooming flower.

  Crank.

  The expanding Pear ripped her womb apart.

  "Moses," the Devil inside him sneered, "try holding back this red sea."

  Turning to focus on the man, the Legionary caught his reflection in a mirror. His skin was stretched across the bones of his diabolic face. As toxic fumes roiled from his lips, Satan's guttural growl rumbled deep within his chest. The priest gagged like a vomiting monster, and his fingers crooked into claws. The eyes that fell on the pleading man were intense and piercing.

  "You next," Satan snarled.

  To render the son of the Ace's flight engineer almost unable to speak, the Legionary had wedged a Heretic's Fork under his chin. Held in position by a loose iron collar around his neck, the double-ended fork jabbed his upper chest and the flesh beneath his chin. The husband lay stretched along a bench that rocked on the fulcrum of a kitchen stool. His head was outside the bedroom door, so he could see his wife from the corner of his eye an
d hear what was done to her. He was the one who had given up their fathers' wartime archives, answering every question the home invader put against the background of his wife's mewling.

  Hell, the fool had even offered up his soul.

  Gotcha!

  To lever up the man, the Legionary wedged the foot end of the bench under a heavy armchair. He used a clothespin to plug the man's nose, then the priest yanked his jaw down on the prongs of the Heretic's Fork just enough to be able to jam a funnel between his teeth. It took quart after quart of water poured down the funnel's spout to bloat the husband's stomach to maximum distention. A kick from the Legionary's foot shoved away the chair so the head end of the bench slammed down. Water spewed from the open mouth as the full weight of the stomach pressed against the inverted heart and lungs. The unbearable pain was etched into the man's eyes, as was the fear of suffocation.

  Whap!

  Whap!

  Whap!

  Using a wooden mallet, the Legionary hit the man's bloated belly with harder and harder blows, until he burst open like Judas at Haceldama.

  What a mess!

  All that remained was to leave Satan's signature. As the possessed priest walked the floor of the cottage to smear the number 666 across the walls in the woman's blood and suspend an upside-down crucifix from a ceiling beam, his footsteps sounded like the clomping of cloven hoofs.

  Having cleaned up at the sink and with the archives clutched under one arm, he turned to exit by the door that opened on the yard fronting the cliff-edge path, and that's when he saw the bewildered face of Wyatt Rook peering in through the Judas window.

  His hand went for the gun.

  JUDAS PUZZLE

  GERMANY, 1944

  "What makes your papyrus map from Tobruk a biblical earthshaker, Herr Feldmarschall?"

  Moving to the chronology beside his map collage, the art historian touched the uppermost date.

  "Clue one," he said, "is background to the puzzle."

  Rommel read:

  1000 B.C.: King David captures Jerusalem and makes it the capital of the Israelite kingdom. David's son, King Solomon, erects the First Temple in Jerusalem, on Mount Moriah, at the site of the Foundation Stone, where Abraham almost sacrificed his son, Isaac, to God.

  "From then on," said the historian, "Jerusalem was of religious significance to Jews."

  His finger dropped.

  "Clues two and three," he said.

  586 B.C.: Babylon's King Nebuchadnezzar conquers Jerusalem, destroys the First Temple, and exiles the Jews to Babylon, about fifty miles south of what is now Baghdad, Iraq.

  538 B.C.: King Cyrus of Persia, now Iran, conquers Babylon.

  He allows the Jews to return to Jerusalem and resurrect their temple from the ruins of the first one. The Second Temple is dedicated twenty-two years later.

  "The Second Temple is on the papyrus map," said Rommel.

  His host nodded. "Clue four," he continued.

  63 B.C.: The Roman general Pompey, a third of the triumvi-rate that includes Julius Caesar, conquers Jerusalem.

  Accountable to Rome, King Herod ascends to the Judean throne in 37 B.C. He constructs a manmade Temple Mount on Mount Moriah, surmounted by a refurbished Second Temple.

  He also adds the Second Wall of Jerusalem, to expand the city to the north.

  "That Second Temple and that Second Wall are the ones sketched on the papyrus map," said the historian. "That's how Jerusalem appeared when Christ died."

  His finger touched a wall map titled "The Time of Jesus."

  "Clue five," he said.

  33 A.D.: Tensions rise in Jerusalem because Jews resent the Roman occupiers. Jesus enters the city, confronts the high priests in the Second Temple on the Temple Mount, and by order of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, is crucified on Golgotha.

  "So," said the historian, "from then on, Jerusalem was of religious significance to Christians." He pointed to the same crucifixion sites on "The Time of Jesus" map that he had chalked on the blackboard across the room.

  Gethsemane.

  Golgotha.

  Haceldama.

  "Clue six," he said, returning to the timeline.

  70 A.D.: The Third Wall of Jerusalem—to the north of the Second Wall—is built between 41 and 44 A.D. and later strengthened by the Zealots fighting Rome in the Jewish War.

  That wall brings Golgotha inside the city. In 70 A.D., the Romans sack Jerusalem, demolish its walls, and raze the Second Temple. All that's left is the Temple Mount's western retaining wall (which becomes the Wailing Wall, the holiest site for Jews). All Jews are expelled from Jerusalem.

  "The Third Wall's not on the papyrus map," noted Rommel.

  "Clue seven."

  65 to 100 A.D.: The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—the core of the Bible's New Testament and the Four Pillars of the Church—are written. The probable dates are:

  Mark—around 70 A.D.

  Matthew—after 70 A.D., since it refers to the destruction of Jerusalem.

  Luke—after 70 A.D., since it also refers to the destruction of Jerusalem.

  John—after 70 A.D., most likely in the 90s.

  Conservative theologians suggest earlier dates, pushing Mark back to the early 50s.

  "And finally," concluded the historian, "clue eight."

  135 A.D.: Hadrian crushes the Bar Kokhha Rebellion and expels all Jews from Palestine. Left without a homeland, the Jews are dispersed around the Mediterranean. Jerusalem is renamed Aelia Capitolina, and Hadrian raises a temple to the Roman god Jupiter on the ruins of the Second Temple.

  He fills in the quarry with the tomb of Jesus to construct a Temple of Aphrodite on the summit of Golgotha.

  "Herr Feldmarschall, those are the clues to solving the puzzle. Do you now understand what makes your papyrus map a biblical earthshaker?"

  Rommel knew the answer.

  As a battlefield commander, he could read a map.

  But before the Desert Fox could speak, the art historian asked a follow-up question.

  "The Aramaic script on the map refers to a confession and 'the means of the crime.' The map was drawn to show where these things were buried at Haceldama. Did you also recover those relics from the pot that was cracked open in Tobruk?"

  + + +

  From his waterproof carrying case, Rommel removed a second papyrus sheet he'd pressed under glass. As the art historian translated the document aloud, his brow furrowed more deeply with every line. Another sizzle of lightning invaded the besieged room, and in that flash, the antiquarian seemed to transmogrify into Mephistopheles. Rommel could be Faust, here to sell his soul.

  "If the relics were removed from Judas's grave at Haceldama, how did they get from the outskirts of Jerusalem to Tobruk?" asked the field marshal.

  "Neither document says, but I'll hazard a guess. You fought in the easternmost province of Libya, next to the Egyptian border. The name of that region is Cyrenaica, the same name it had in biblical times. Colonized by the Greeks roughly six hundred years before Christ, it was usurped by Alexander the Great in 331 B.C. Later, about 100 B.C., Cyrenaica became a province of the Roman Empire."

  He produced a map of the Mediterranean Sea.

  "If you traveled west from the Holy Land along the Mediterranean coast of North Africa in biblical times, you would pass through Alexandria, at the mouth of the Nile, then Tobruk, a Roman fortress guarding the empire's frontier, before reaching Cyrene, the capital of Cyrenaica, on the bulge that juts north toward Greece. To escape from persecution in Jerusalem, Christians and Jews fled west along the coastal caravan route."

  "To Tobruk?"

  "The best port. They carried with them anything of value to their religion, or someone else's religion, if it would bring money. Perhaps that's what happened with your Judas relics.

  They would have been of value to both Christians and Jews."

  "How'd they end up in the wall?"

  "The wall probably served as a safe. Perhaps the grave robber hid the relics there
and then was killed, his secret dying with him. The influx of exiled Jews certainly fueled anti-Semitism in Cyrenaica. In 115 A.D., those Jews rebelled under a leader named Lukuas, a self-proclaimed messiah. Tens of thousands of people died when Trajan suppressed the uprising with brutal force."

  "Including the grave robber?"

  "Is that not historically convincing?"

  "It works," said Rommel.

  "And then the relics stayed hidden in the wall until you bombed it," concluded the art historian. "Do you have them?"

  Rommel watched the man's face as he pulled the Judas relics out of his case. There was no need for discussion.

  The artifacts spoke for themselves. The antiquarian shivered as he took them in his outstretched hands.

  "Are you aware that what you have here is the Holy Grail?" he asked. "As one father to another, may I ask a favor? My sick child is dying. The doctors offer no hope. May I take the Holy Grail upstairs and touch my son with it?"

  Rommel agreed, and followed the desperate man up to the room where his doomed boy sat lashed to an armchair.

  The feverish lad mumbled a childish mantra as if the words were all that kept him clinging to life.

  "Itchy and a burny and a sting!"

  The room reeked of vomit.

  The boy's skin was bleeding where his fingernails had once clawed deep into his flesh.

  "Christ, cure my son," his father prayed, then he touched the boy with the Holy Grail.

  Once back downstairs, the art historian offered Rommel a drink. From a sideboard, he poured them glasses of kirsch.

  The schnapps burned on its way down.