Cross Bones (12 page)

He leaned forward.

“I am Catholic, but I have studied the Muslim faith. And I have watched closely developments in the Middle East. Even back then, I saw the unrest and knew a crisis was looming. Do you remember the Munich Olympic games?”

“Palestinian terrorists kidnapped part of the Israeli team. Al eleven athletes were kil ed.”

“The kidnappers were members of a PLO faction cal ed Black September. Three were captured. A little over a month later, a Lufthansa jet was hijacked by more terrorists demanding the release of the Munich kil ers. The Germans complied. That was 1972, Dr. Brennan. I watched the news coverage, knowing it was just the beginning. Those events took place one year before Yossi stole the skeleton and gave it to Avram.

“I am a tolerant man. I have nothing but the highest regard for my Islamic brethren. Muslims general y are hardworking, family-centered, peace-loving people who adhere to the same values you and I hold dear. But, among the good, there exists a sinister minority driven by hate and committed to destruction.”

“The jihadists.”

“Are you familiar with Wahhabism, Dr. Brennan?”

I wasn’t.

“Wahhabism is an austere form of Islam that blossomed on the Arabian Peninsula. For over two centuries it’s been Saudi Arabia’s dominant faith.”

“What distinguishes Wahhabism from mainstream Islam?”

“Insistence on a literal interpretation of the Koran.”

“Sounds like good old Christian fundamentalism.”

“In many ways it is. But Wahhabism goes much further, cal ing for the complete rejection and destruction of anything and everything not based on the original teachings of Muhammad. The sect’s explosive growth began in the seventies when Saudi charities started funding Wahhabi mosques and schools, cal ed madrassas, everywhere from Islamabad to Culver City.”

“Is the movement real y that bad?”

“Was Afghanistan that bad under the Taliban? Or Iran under the Ayatol ah Khomeini?”

Morissonneau didn’t pause for an answer.

“Wahhabis aren’t simply interested in minds and souls. The sect has an ambitious political agenda focused on the replacement of secular leadership with a fundamentalist religious governing group or person in every Muslim country on the planet.”

Jingoist paranoia? I kept my doubts to myself.

“Wahhabis are infiltrating governments and the military throughout the Muslim world, positioning themselves in anticipation of ousting or assassinating secular leaders.”

“Do you real y believe that?”

“Look at the destruction of modern Lebanon leading to the Syrian occupation. Look at Egypt and the murder of Anwar Sadat. Look at the attempts on the lives of Mubarak of Egypt, Hussein of Jordan, Musharraf of Pakistan. Look at the repression of secular leaders in Iran.”

Again, Morissonneau raised a hand and pointed a finger at me. It now trembled.

“Osama bin Laden is Wahhabi, as were the members of his nine-eleven teams. These fanatics are engaged in what they cal the Third Great Jihad, or holy war, and anything,anything is fair game if it advances their cause.”

Morissonneau’s hand dropped to the crate. I saw where he was going.

“Including the bones of Jesus Christ,” I said.

“Even thepurported bones of Jesus Christ. These madmen would use their power to manipulate the press, twisting and distorting the issue to suit their purposes. A media circus over the authentication of Jesus’ bones would maim the faith of mil ions, and hand these jihadists the means to erode the foundation of the Church that is my life. If I could prevent such a travesty I felt obliged to do so.

“My primary reason for taking these bones was to protect my beloved Church. Fear of Islamic extremism was secondary back then. But as the years passed, that fear grew.”

Morissonneau drew air through his nose and leaned back.

“It became the reason I kept them.”

“Where?”

“The monastery has a crypt. Christianity has no prohibition against burial among the living.”

“You felt no obligation to notify the museum?”

“Don’t misunderstand me, Dr. Brennan. I am a man of God. Ethics mean a lot to me. This was not easy. I struggled with the decision. I have struggled with it every day.”

“But you agreed to hide the skeleton.”

“I was young when this began. God forgive me. I saw it as one of the necessary deceits of our time. Then, as time passed and no one, including the museum, seemed to be interested in the bones, I thought it best to let them lie.”

Morissonneau stood.

“But now it is enough. A man is dead. A decent man. A friend. Perhaps over nothing more than a box of old bones and a lunatic theory in a crazy book.”

I stood.

“I trust you wil do everything in your power to keep this affair confidential,” Morissonneau said.

“I’m not known for my warmth toward the press.”

“So I’ve heard.”

I must have looked surprised.

“I placed a cal .”

So Morissonneau’s life wasn’t al that cloistered.

“I’l contact the Israeli authorities,” I said. “It’s likely the bones wil return to them, and it’s doubtful they’l be cal ing a press conference, either.”

“What happens now is in God’s hands.”

I lifted the box. The contents shifted with a soft clunking sound.

“Please keep me informed,” Morissonneau said.

“I wil .”

“Thank you.”

“I’l attempt to keep your name out of this, Father. But I can’t guarantee that wil be possible.”

Morissonneau started to speak. Then his mouth closed and he quit trying to explain or excuse.

12

IDIDN’T COME CLOSE TO KEEPING WITHIN TEN MILES OF THElimit, but luck was with me. Johnny Law was pointing his radar at some other road.

Arriving at Wilfrid Derome, I parked in the lot reserved for cops. Screw it. It was Saturday and I might have God in my Mazda.

The temperature had surged upward into the low forties, and the predicted snowfal had begun as drizzle. Dirty mounds were melting into cracks and puddling pavements and curbs.

Opening the trunk, I retrieved Morissonneau’s crate and hurried inside. Except for guards, the lobby was deserted.

So was the twelfth floor.

Setting the crate on my worktable, I stripped off my jacket and cal ed Ryan.

No answer.

Cal Jake?

Bones first.

My heart was thumping as I slipped on a lab coat.

Why? Did I real y believe I had the skeleton of Jesus?

Of course not.

So who was in the box?

Someone had wanted these bones out of Israel. Lerner had stolen them. Ferris had transported and hidden them. Morissonneau had lied about them, against his conscience.

Had Ferris died because of them?

Religious fervor breeds obsessive actions. Whether these actions are rational or irrational depends on your perspective. I knew that. But why al the intrigue? Why the obsession to hide them but not destroy them?

Was Morissonneau right? Would jihadists kil to obtain these bones? Or was the good father lashing out against religious and political philosophies he viewed as threatening to his own?

No clue. But I intended to pursue answers to these questions as vigorously as I knew how.

I got a hammer from the storage closet.

The wood was dry. The nails were old. Splinters flew as each popped free.

Eventual y, sixteen nails rested by the crate. Laying aside my hammer, I lifted the lid.

Dust. Dry bone. Smel s as old as the first fossil vertebrate.

The long bones lay on the bottom, paral el, with kneecaps and hand and foot bones jumbled among them. The rest formed a middle layer. The skul was on top, jaw detached, empty orbits staring skyward. The skeleton looked like hundreds of others I’d seen, spoils of a farmer’s field, a shal ow grave, a dozer cut at a demolition site.

Transferring the skul to a cork stabilizer ring, I positioned the jaw and stared at the fleshless face.

What had it looked like in life? Whose had it been?

Nope. No speculation.

One by one, I articulated every element.

Forty minutes later, an anatomical y correct skeleton lay on my table. Nothing was missing save a tiny throat bone cal ed the hyoid and a few finger and toe phalanges.

I was sliding a case form onto a clipboard when my phone rang. It was Ryan.

I told him about my morning.

“Holy shit.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Ferris and Lerner were believers.”

“Morissonneau wasn’t so sure.”

“What do you think?” Ryan asked.

“I’m just starting my analysis.”

“And?”

“I’m just starting my analysis.”

“My ass ain’t mine until this stakeout’s done. But I got a cal this morning. I may have caught a break on the Ferris homicide.”

“No kidding,” I said.

“When I’m cut loose here I’l fol ow up,” Ryan said.

“What’s the lead?”

“When I’m cut loose here I’l fol ow up.”

“Touché.”

“Damn, we’re professional,” Ryan said.

“No reckless speculation for us,” I agreed.

“Not a hasty conclusion in sight.”

When we’d disconnected I dashed to the first-floor cafeteria, devoured a tuna sandwich and Diet Coke, and raced back to the lab.

I wanted to torpedo straight to the key questions. I forced myself to stick to protocol.

Gloves.

Light.

Case form.

Deep breath.

I started with gender.

Pelvis: narrow sciatic notch, narrow pelvic inlet, chunky pubic bones bridging an inverted V in front.

Skul : bulging brow ridges, blunt orbital borders, large crests, muscle attachments, and mastoid processes.

There was no wiggle room. This skeleton was al boy.

I turned to age.

Angling my light, I observed the left pelvic half where it would have joined hands with the right pelvic half in life. The surface was pitted and slightly depressed relative to the height of an oval rim circling its perimeter. Spiny growths protruded from the rim’s upper and lower edges.

The right pubic symphysis looked the same.

I got up and walked to the watercooler.

I took a drink.

I took a breath.

Calmer, I returned to the skeleton and selected ribs three through five from both sides of the chest. Only two retained undamaged sternal ends. Laying the other ribs aside, I observed this pair closely.

Both ribs ended in deep, U-shaped indentations surrounded by thin wal s terminating in sharp-edged rims. Bony spicules projected from the superior and inferior borders of each rim.

I leaned back and laid down my pencil.

Feeling what? Relief? Disappointment? I wasn’t sure.

The pubic symphyses scored as phase six on the Suchey-Brooks age-determination system, a set of standards derived from the analysis of the pelves of hundreds of adults of documented age at death. For males, phase six suggests a mean age of sixty-one.

The ribs scored as phase six on the Iscan-Loth age-determination system, a set of standards based on the quantification of morphological changes in ribs col ected from adults at autopsy. For males, this suggests an age range of forty-three to fifty-five.

Granted, Y-chromosomers are tremendously variable. Granted, I’d yet to observe the long bones and the molar roots radiological y. Nevertheless, I was certain my preliminary conclusion would hold. I jotted it on the case form.

Age at death: forty to sixty years.

There was no way this guy died in his thirties.

Like Jesus of Nazareth.

IfJesus of Nazareth died in his thirties. Joyce’s theory had him living until eighty.

This guy fit neither profile.

There was also no way this man had lived into his seventies.

So he also failed to fit the profile of the old male from Cave 2001. But had the isolated skeleton described by Jake’s volunteer-informant actual y been the old male? Maybe not. Maybe Yadin’s septuagenarian was jumbled with the commingled bones, and the isolated skeleton was another individual altogether. An individual of forty to sixty.

Like this guy.

I flipped to the next page.

Ancestry.

Right.

Most systems for racial assessment rely on variations in skul shape, facial architecture, dental form, and cranial metrics. Though I often rely on the latter, there was a problem.

If I took measurements and ran them through Fordisc 2.0, the program would compare my unknown to whites, blacks, American Indians, Hispanics, Japanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese.

Big help if crate-man lived in Israel two thousand years back.

I went through the trait list on my form. Prominent nasal bones. Narrow nasal opening. Flat facial profile when viewed from the side. Cheekbones hugging the face. On and on.

Everything suggested Caucasoid, or at least European-like ancestry. Not Negroid. Not Mongoloid.

I took measurements and ran them. Every comparison placed the skul squarely with the whites.

Okay. Computer and eyebal s were in agreement.

What then? Was the man Middle Eastern? Southern European? Jewish? Gentile? I knew of no way to sort that out. Nor did DNA testing offer any help.

I moved on to stature.

Selecting the leg bones, I eliminated those with eroded or damaged ends, and measured the rest on an osteometric board. Then I plugged the measurements into Fordisc 2.0, and asked for a calculation using al males in the database, with race unknown.

Height: sixty-four to sixty-eight inches.

I spent the next several hours scrutinizing every knob and crest and hole and notch, every facet and joint, every mil imeter of cortical surface under magnification. I found nothing. No genetic variations. No lesions or indicators of il ness. No trauma, healed or otherwise.

No penetrating wounds in the hands or feet.

Kil ing the fiber-optic light on the scope, I arched backward and stretched, my shoulders and neck feeling like someone had set them on fire.

Could it be I was getting older?