2013: Beyond Armageddon (17 page)

The Dead Sea sat on one of the world’s largest fault lines, the Great Rift Valley, a three-thousand mile scar on the face of the earth that ran from the Mideast down into Africa. The western half of the sea lay in Israel, the eastern half in Jordan. Ten times more saline than the ocean, its salt content was second—barely—to only to Lake Assal in Africa. The salt and a stew of other chemicals made the water about twenty-five percent solid, which made it the densest body of water in the world. This extreme density made it very difficult for anything to sink. The most common picture at the tourist sites was a vacationer floating atop the water while leisurely reading a newspaper.

About two-thirds of the way down its length, an east-west peninsula divided the sea into two basins. The northern one was about thirteen hundred feet deep; the shallow southern one had actually dried up. Water was pumped into it from the northern basin to fill solar evaporation ponds, used by mining companies to extract the salt and chemicals. The water in the ponds ranged from about ten to fifteen feet deep.

The Dead Sea was also the lowest point on earth, its surface about thirteen hundred feet below sea level. It struck Zeke that if there was a Hell, this seemed like the best place for the entrance to be. You were halfway there already.

He needed to wrap this up, but he kept getting caught up in the many passages linking the Dead Sea, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Devil, and Hell.

Myths and legends about the strange body of water had begun to spring up long before the Greeks and Romans, reaching their most fertile period during the Middle Ages. Pilgrims, influenced by Biblical accounts and the theological fervor of the time, saw signs of God’s wrath everywhere—especially in the pillars of salt they took to be Lot’s wife. Zeke noted with interest that these sightings most frequently took place at the southwestern corner of the sea.

In more modern times, scientists discounted as nonsense the idea that any particular column of salt could be Lot’s wife, because even when crystallized, no salt formation would be able to withstand thousands of years of erosion. The natural forces of the region continually erased salt pillars and threw up new ones.

Still, geologists and other researchers frequently found chunks of sulfur in and around the sea. Brimstone…

In the thirteenth century, a monk called the sea the mouth of Hell, and the haze rising from it the smoke from Satan’s fire. Another account called the sea the chimney of Hell. In the fifteenth century, friar and respected scholar Felix Fabri said the sea drained into Hell.

Lot’s name popped up often. Arabs to this day called it the Sea of Lot. Through the ages it had also been called the Sea of Sodom, Sea of Death, The Devil’s Sea, the Sea of Hell.

“This is all very fascinating,” Zeke said out loud, almost giddy now from lack of sleep, “but I need to take it all with a grain of salt.” Laughing way too hard at his corny joke, he finally got serious again, concentrating on the ultimate question for mounting an archaeological expedition: where to dig?

He flipped through Dr. Connolly’s notes, to a section headed Where are Sodom and Gomorrah?

Despite the fact that Lot himself said he was in a cave to the west, the professor scrupulously avoided jumping to conclusions. “It is conceivable,” he wrote, “that in the confusion of escaping first Sodom, then Zoar, and the shock of watching his wife turn into a pillar of salt, Lot could have become disoriented and lost track of where he was. Even so, the Bedouin said he found the scroll in a cave along the southwestern shore of the Dead Sea.” Taken together, the professor concluded, this evidence outweighed all other conjecture about the location of Sodom and Gomorrah, and placed them somewhere toward the western side of the shallow southern basin.

The theory seemed arguable to Zeke, based on everything he’d just read, but then again he’d only considered the problem for a few hours. Dr. Connolly had obsessed about it for decades.

Zeke looked at his own notes on the most recent speculation about their location. Many experts favored a site near the southeast corner, but just as many thought it was under the water of the shallow southern basin. The latest expedition, however, had been triggered by a space shuttle photo showing shadowy anomalies in the deep, northern part of the sea. Two men in a small submarine designed for deep sea exploration had inspected the site. One of the men was the world’s foremost geological expert on the Dead Sea.

The anomalies turned out to be mounds of the salt that constantly settled to form a crust covering the bottom of the sea. What, if anything, the mounds might cover could only be guessed at, because no mechanical arm attached to a submarine could dig through the rock-hard formations to find out. Explosives weren’t an option, since they might destroy whatever the archaeologists hoped to uncover. Just like terrestrial archaeology, marine archaeology ultimately required the slow, painstaking digging of trained human hands, and that wasn’t going to happen down there. Divers simply couldn’t survive at thirteen hundred feet.

Eyes burning, Zeke took a last look at his notes. A verse he’d copied from Genesis caught his eye. It was nearly the same as a passage in Lot’s scroll, except that it was Abraham instead of Lot looking down on the destruction:

And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.

Zeke turned off the computer and locked the materials back in the safe. He headed for the bedroom, mentally sifting through centuries of observations about Sodom and Gomorrah and the lowest point on earth. As he trudged up the stairs, all his thoughts had boiled down to one:

Where there’s this much smoke, there has to be fire.

When Zeke reached the bedroom Leah was just waking up. She noticed he was dressed. “What’s up?”

“I couldn’t sleep so I went to the office to do some research on the scrolls and what it might take to put together a dig. Come on downstairs, I can tell you about it while I fix us some breakfast.”

Leah showered while Zeke whipped together bacon, eggs, toast, and coffee. Over breakfast he gave her the highlights of his research.

“I never knew the Dead Sea had such a fascinating history,” she said.

“Me neither. But that’s just preliminary background information. I’ve still got to figure out what it all means. I feel like it’s time to make a decision about this, one way or another, so we can get on with our lives. Are you ready for that?”

She nodded. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. It’s time.”

“Okay. I’ll boil the ton of information I’ve gathered down to the essentials, so we can look it over and decide whether it’s time to seriously consider this or forget the whole thing. That does not mean, however, that we have to stop our film festival. I’m way into it. How about you?”

“Absolutely.”

“I’m going to have make a grocery store run. Among other things, we’re down to our last candy and microwave popcorn. You simply cannot have a film festival without these items.”

“Sounds like we’ve got a full-blown situation on our hands.”

“We do indeed.”

“I’ll hold the fort, then, while you make a supply run.”

“You’re the prettiest fort holder I’ve ever seen.”

“I’m a mess.”

“But you’re my mess and I love you.” He kissed her gently. “Listen, since I’m going to be out, I should swing by Mr. Roth’s office for a few minutes.” He saw that the name didn’t ring a bell. “He’s my family’s lawyer. I think I mentioned him before.”

“Oh yeah. I forgot.”

“He’s handled my father’s business affairs forever. Now he’s handling the estate. I told him I’d stop by when I was up to it. I’m won’t get into a long, drawn-out thing, just see if there’s anything pressing I should know about. We can go over the fine details later.”

She nodded. “I’ll be here.”

He held her face in his hands. “Pick us out a love story to watch tonight. Nothing sad, though.”

They kissed lightly, and Zeke left to take the next step in getting them re-connected to the human race.

Zeke drove away from the lawyer’s office overwhelmed by what he’d just learned about his inheritance. It had the capacity to change everything. Now that he and Leah were ready to start planning the rest of their lives, it had to be factored in. He needed a little time alone to sort out his thoughts, and his house was not conducive to that. Too much sorrow still hung in the air.

He called Leah to tell her he’d be a little while longer, then headed up North Capitol Street to the place where he’d done his best thinking over the years.

The largest Catholic church in the western hemisphere, he remembered as he approached the front steps of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Sunlight reflecting off the golden dome brightened his spirits.

He’d first started coming here in high school. The Metro bus from Archbishop Carroll went right by, and he’d often stop in, wanting to deepen his understanding of what it meant to be Catholic. After quarterbacking Carroll to a championship his senior year, Zeke had given up football to study theology at Catholic University while considering the priesthood. That dream had died when he’d discovered sex and partying. He’d ended up getting a degree in business with the vague idea of one day taking over his father’s growing chain of video stores. Hank Sloan’s love of movies had rubbed off on his son, but when they’d seriously discussed grooming him to run the business, Zeke had to admit his heart wasn’t in it. He wanted to do something to help society, not work in a store. Finally he’d decided to go into the Army—partly as a way of making a contribution, but also to develop some discipline and focus in his life. It was also a way of honoring the commitment and sacrifice his father had made in Vietnam.

Years later, in the aftermath of the horror in the jungle, he’d re-enrolled at Catholic University and gotten master’s degrees in Theology and Philosophy in a futile search to understand what had happened that night. A search for answers to what he came to call The Great Unanswerables: Why is there evil? Is there a God? Is there a Satan? Since CU was next to the Shrine, he’d often come here after class to reflect on the day’s discussions.

Zeke paused at the front of the massive church, opening himself to any influences that might help him make a decision about the dig. Statues of key religious figures stood in niches all around the entrance, their names carved into the stone beneath them. Zeke stood in front of the statue of Ezechiel for a moment. Knowing it was hokey, he nevertheless hoped for something dramatic to happen, something that would help him make up his mind. A sign.

The bearded stone face of Ezechiel did not suddenly look down at him.

No surprise there,
Zeke thought, smiling.
I’m named after a football player, not a prophet.

His gaze traveled to one of numerous inscriptions near the arch over the main entrance:
THOU SHALT BE HIS WITNESS TO ALL MEN
. On the opposite side of the arch was the famous statement Jesus made to Peter:
ON THIS ROCK I WILL BUILD MY CHURCH
. Farther to the right he read
I KNOW THAT THE MESSIAS COMETH
.

Inspirational words, but far from enough.

He went through the tall wooden doors and down the nave of the Upper Church. Critics had called the Shrine a tacky imitation of the much older cathedrals of Europe, but to Zeke it was a blessed retreat, a womb of reverent silence that was an antidote to the spiritual poison outside. He had that feeling now as the sounds of traffic disappeared.

A scattered handful of visitors knelt or sat in pews, absorbed in contemplation. One woman knelt off to herself, dressed in tattered jeans, a large tattoo on the back of her neck. Her hands covered her face as she prayed and quietly wept. In the transept near the front railing, a docent lectured a small group of tourists. A few families and couples wandered around, looking at statues and inscriptions. Clusters of votive candles flickered at various points all around. Zeke went into the front pew and knelt.

He closed his eyes and let the silence wash over him, visualizing storm clouds inside his head dissipating as he summoned all his mental energy to consider a dig for Hell.

Despite all the practical hurdles, he knew a dig could always be launched. The only real question was if the dig would lead to Hell and Satan. No matter how much research anyone did, no one could answer that question. No human, anyway. The belief that they even existed boiled down to faith. Faith in a man-made theological construct to explain evil.

Faith. Whatever fragile faith Zeke possessed had been shattered in the restaurant. Still, to mount this dig meant a belief in Satan. Which meant he had to believe in God.

He opened his eyes and looked heavenward as he folded his hands in prayer.

“Dear God, it’s time for us to talk. I’ll give it to you straight. I’ve lost my faith. You know why. You know about the scrolls and what has happened since I got them. Father Connolly tried to convince me that you’ve chosen me to find Hell and defeat Satan. Something about me being the messenger to pave the way.

“Okay, fine. But before I jeopardize my life, and Leah’s, and who knows how many others, I need to
believe
. I need to
know
that you are up there, and that my effort would mean something. If Dr. Connolly is right about the scrolls, there is a Satan, and you are up there waiting for someone to blaze the trail so you can defeat him. But—I gotta tell ya—I see no signs of it down here. All I see is hate and killing and evil taking over the world. I’m sure you know where I’m going with all this, so I’ll cut to the chase.

“I need something to make me believe, Lord. You don’t have to show up in my living room, but
something
. No disrespect, but your boy Lucifer is doing everything but showing up on the six o’clock news, while all you give us is a stain on an office building window.

“I don’t think so. If you want me to step up to the plate, then you have to, too. You need to make your presence known. And when you do, you also need to make it clear
exactly
what’s supposed to happen. Which—again, please, no disrespect—you have done a colossally bad job of so far.