Indisputable Proof (19 page)

“Not a clue,” she turned her eyes to him as she spoke. She held his gaze for a moment, but said nothing more.

“Let’s pull the lid back further,” Tolen said, anxious to know more about the man in the stone box.

“Why?” Diaz contested. “We’re looking for a jar, no?”

Surprising Diaz, Jade nudged the man aside and gripped the end of the heavy lid. Together, she and Tolen slid it further, angling one end off the stone box so they would have unimpeded access to the upper section of the remains where they could view the head and chest.

Tolen leaned in. Although the skeleton was disjointed—the tendons and ligaments having decayed long ago—the bones had settled in place approximately where they had been during life. This meant the vertebrae, including the bones of the neck, lay in a nearly perfect line, but at the base of the skull, at least four vertebrae were missing.

“Help me push it back,” Tolen said.

This time, it was Jade who objected. “Already?”

“Come on,” was all Tolen said in response.

Diaz seemed relieved to cover the remains. It only took a few seconds to slide the stone lid back in place.

Tolen quickly led the other two back to the doorway and left the room, stepping up to the passageway and producing the familiar crack of branches and twigs. With his flashlight beam knifing the darkness ahead, Tolen found the next doorway on the right. As he had expected, it led into a room identical to the first enclosure: same tall threshold of stone, which held the branches and debris out of the room, same barren floor, another unmarked stone coffin. Again, there were the skeletal remains of a man inside. This time, examination showed the man’s frontal skull bone had been caved in, cracked numerous times. Again, Tolen made no comment. He knew he was frustrating both Jade and Diaz, but he had to be sure.

The third, fourth, and fifth rooms revealed identical situations. The enclosures and coffins were carbon copies. The only difference in each room was the male remains and their condition.

CHAPTER 33

September 13. Thursday – 12:56 a.m. Isle of Patmos, Greece

Jade had had enough. “Stop, Tolen. No more until you explain what’s going on.”

To both Jade’s and Diaz’s mounting frustration, Tolen did not answer. Instead he stepped up into the crunchy corridor and shined his flashlight to one side of the long passageway and then the other, pausing on each doorway ahead.

“What are you searching for?” Diaz asked.

“One more, then I promise I’ll explain,” Tolen said, looking Jade squarely in the eyes. Unexpectedly, she saw a profound reverence there. She nodded her agreement almost involuntarily.

“We’re wasting time, Tolen,” Diaz growled. “We should be looking for the second jar.”

“How do you know the jar isn’t in one of the coffins?” Jade rebutted.

Diaz said nothing.

Tolen led them into the sixth room. When Diaz and Tolen moved the coffin lid aside, again they saw the remains of a man. Tolen leaned in with the flashlight and looked over the bones, eventually gliding the length of the stone coffin to examine the remains. At one point, he fanned his hand over the skeleton, causing a puff of dust to arise.

Jade could tell Tolen knew something. Even in the dim light, the knowledge brought a reflective gaze to the man’s blue eyes.

She momentarily allowed the facts to stack up in her mind: a dozen or so rooms, each with a coffin containing the skeletal remains of a man, each seemed to have suffered varied afflictions…and then it struck her: of course!

Tolen must have seen the recognition in her eyes. He nodded in agreement. “I believe we’ve found the bodies of the Apostles.”

Jade looked at the skeleton in the coffin and then up at Tolen.

“How can you be sure?” Diaz asked.

“There are twelve rooms; catacombs, if you will. And although we haven’t examined all of them, we have looked at half. The types of wounds inflicted on the six bodies—or should I say, five—are consistent with the manner in which the Apostles are thought to have died. Only one Apostle’s death is specifically cited in the Bible. The death of James, son of Zebedee, is recorded in Acts 12:2. The Bible states he was, ‘put to death with the sword.’ The common belief now is that he was beheaded. The first skeleton was missing vertebrae, which is the result of being decapitated.”

The words struck a morbid chord with Jade. The memory of Dr. Phillip Cherrigan’s brutal death by decapitation brought a lingering ache.

Tolen continued. “The rest of the Apostles’ deaths are speculation based on church tradition and, in fact, vary widely.

“The second body we examined had the skull crushed in; a style of death linked to several of the Apostles. One, the other Apostle named James, was said to have been thrown from a temple steeple and survived, only to be beaten to death with a club. The third, fourth, and fifth crypts also have injuries consistent with Apostles’ deaths.”

Diaz’s face tightened. “You said five of the bodies had wounds indicative of the Apostles. What about the sixth one?”

“This body,” Tolen said, pointing downward. He directed the light to the lumbar vertebral section of the spinal bones, which lay in a perfect line at the base of the stone box.

Tolen looked to Jade. “Notice anything different about these bones compared to the other five bodies we looked at?”

Jade was struggling to understand what Tolen wanted her to see. None of the bones were missing as far as she could tell.

“Everything’s in place,” she said with a confused expression.

“Look again.”

Jade re-examined the remains. Suddenly, she understood. Rather than what might be missing, he wanted her to notice the
condition
of the lumbar bones.

“This man had osteoporosis!” she blurted out. “It’s degenerative. The loss of bone substance is substantial. By the severity, I’d say he lived a very long life.”

Tolen nodded. “There are no other visible injuries. I believe this is the Apostle John, the only Apostle to die of old age. Someone, most likely Joseph of Arimathea, took great care to assemble the twelve Apostles post-mortem here in these catacombs where they could be protected without reprisal from authorities who may have opposed Jesus’ teachings.”

Diaz shook his head to the side as if he were choking on the information. “You’re saying this is the Apostle John…and the other eleven Apostles who served Jesus Christ? It can’t be. I know for a fact Peter is entombed in the crypts underneath the Vatican.”

“There is no incontrovertible historical evidence to suggest Peter was
ever
in Rome,” Tolen said. “Also, there are supposedly tombs for other Apostles: John in Turkey; Thomas in India; James, son of Zebedee, in your home country of Spain. In each case, there is no conclusive archaeological evidence to confirm the bodies are there. Consider St. Philip Martyrium of Hierapolis, Turkey. He is claimed to be buried in the center of the building. Despite extensive efforts to find it, no grave has ever been discovered.”

The three stood motionless gazing down at the remains of the man.

This is the Apostle John!
Jade thought.
All twelve apostles are here!
She could barely absorb the discovery. Of all the things they had come across in the last 48 hours, this was the most titillating and mind-boggling.

“Let’s keep looking,” Tolen’s words drew Jade back to reality. He led them out of the room, stepping back up to the crinkling corridor of branches. Their flashlights danced over the gray walls and, as they came to each entryway, they momentarily peered inside the musty-smelling rooms. As expected, they found elevated stone coffins in the last six rooms identical to the previous rooms. Then the procession of rooms cut into the stone corridor ended. As Tolen had said, there were exactly twelve:
twelve rooms for twelve apostles
.

The hallway continued into the distance. As lengthy as the underground corridor had been in Costa Rica, this passageway was even longer, with no end in sight. They moved cautiously, walking on the branches that littered the floor. Jade wondered for the umpteenth time why it was here. Equally as puzzling was why none of the debris from the hallway was inside the twelve rooms of the Apostles where low restraints had been fashioned at the entryways to hold it out.

The musky smell Jade had first noticed in the circular room was still prevalent. Jade’s light skirted off the walls, probing ahead, yet could not reach the passageway’s end. “This is a long tunnel. Maybe we should go back and check the other six coffins to make sure the stone jar is not in one of them?”

Tolen merely responded, “I don’t think it’ll be with any of the bodies.”

They proceeded through the darkness, pressing farther and farther up the corridor. The ground debris was ever-present and crunched and cracked loudly with each step. They finally arrived at an intersection. A second corridor cut perpendicular to the main one, shooting off to the right and left. It, too, was flooded with a layer of the same detritus.

“This is also laid out as a cruciform,” Diaz remarked, referring to the similarity to the Costa Rica catacomb.

Jade extended her arm, shining her flashlight ahead up the main shaft. The beam struck a distant wall. “It’s a dead end. We need to search this intersecting corridor. Which way?”

Tolen pointed, indicating the tunnel to the left.

Jade took the lead. After a short distance, they reached a curve where the passageway leisurely banked right until it completed a ninety-degree angle. They were now paralleling the main passageway.

“So much for the cruciform shape,” Jade said.

In the distance, her light found a doorway. “Look!” she said excitedly, tromping ahead on the thick padding. She found herself jogging, her flashlight beam swaying across the floor and walls as she went. She could hear Tolen and Diaz crunching quickly behind her, keeping pace. There had been a flash of light, a reflection of some sort coming from inside the opening which had caught her attention. She dashed ahead and reached the opening, breathing heavily. Jade quickly guided her light about the interior of a room approximately the size of a master bedroom. Natural debris also covered the ground in this room, but it was otherwise empty. The ceiling was somewhere high overhead, lost in the murky darkness.

Just as Tolen and Diaz joined her, their collective attention was immediately drawn to the back wall. A large flat area of yellowish hue shimmered back at them. It was approximately four feet tall and seven feet wide, shaped in a perfect rectangle. Jade rushed toward it, her heart pounding.

She reached her hand out. Even as her fingers met the cold surface, she struggled to believe it. It was a thin sheet of lustrous metal, like a giant placard, embedded into the wall. Hebrew writing was etched into it, scribed in typical right to left fashion. Sentences were composed in a series of columns covering almost the entire surface area.

She turned to Tolen and Diaz standing nearby, her mouth agape. “It’s the duplicate of the Copper Scroll! The one mentioned in line sixty-four. Except this time...it’s been etched on a sheet of gold!”

CHAPTER 34

September 13. Thursday – 1:18 a.m. Isle of Patmos, Greece

Jade was so enthralled with the glimmering display that she failed to notice Diaz until he was standing in the left corner. His flashlight beam fell on a small object propped on a tiny shelf. He lifted it and turned back to Jade and Tolen, presenting the jar with a smile. “The wall is nice, but I believe this is what we came after.”

Jade nodded. She was pleased they had found the stone jar, but at the moment, she continued to focus on the columns of text. “This is...not…right...,” she said in a confused voice as she slowly translated it in her mind.

“What do you mean?” Tolen asked.

Jade turned toward him. “This is supposed to be a duplicate of the Copper Scroll, but it’s… not. Yet…it is.”

“Time to leave. We have what we came for,” Diaz said.

“Wait. No, not yet,” she said, still eyeing the Hebrew text. “I’m...struggling to understand.” Her voice drifted off as she continued to scrutinize the writing.

“There is no reason to
understand
,” Diaz said tersely. He opened the lid with the minute carving of a man’s head and revealed the tiny roll. “We have the jar with the next clue, now let’s go. This place is a crypt for the Apostles, and we should not be here.”

“Wait!” Jade yelled. Her voice echoed beyond the room down the corridor. “I need to read this,” she said, giving Diaz a cold stare.

Tolen seemed oblivious to their querulous exchange of words.

Jade suddenly felt something solid land on her shoulder, and slink down her right arm. She screamed, shaking her arm frantically. The object fell to the stick-covered floor. All three shined their flashlight down but saw nothing beyond the natural debris. Acting as one mind, they swung their flashlights up to the ceiling to look for the source of whatever had landed on Jade.

A dozen feet above, a sloped overhang started at the back wall and angled down toward the center of the room. There appeared to be a gutter where more small sticks, branches, and leaves were clustered. The ceiling above it was substantially higher and ashen.

“It was just a stick that fell on me,” Jade said. She turned her attention back to the curious text. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Tolen continued to examine the strange section of overhanging roof.

“
Let’s go
,” Diaz demanded, this time more urgently, as he slipped the jar inside his jacket.

Jade turned to him with steely eyes. “I only need a few minutes to translate this. Then, and only then, will we leave,” she growled back. Jade once again turned to the wall.

Tolen was still looking to the ceiling.

Jade watched as Diaz abruptly stepped to one end of the gold scroll and took out his pocket knife. “You want to read this? Then we’ll take it with us.” He wedged the knife underneath the edge of the gold plating and began to pry it away from the wall.

Jade heard a scraping noise emanate from above. Tolen was still staring upward. There were several thumps as something fell from the ceiling and struck the matting of sticks. Jade shined her flashlight down to see two light-colored stones that had settled on the ground. Tolen reached down and picked one up.

Diaz paused briefly then returned to working the blade in between the wall and the edge of the gold scroll.

Another object struck the floor, cracking a branch with a brief flash.

“What the bloody hell
is
that?” Jade asked.

Tolen’s eyes revealed a sudden understanding. “It’s flint. Diaz, please stop what you’re doing.”

Diaz had already jabbed the tip of the blade behind the gold scroll yet again and had pried the thin sheet slightly away from the wall. “See? I can get this off, and we’ll take it with us.”

His words had no sooner died than a barrage of flint began falling from the high roof. The three were forced to retreat flush against the wall with the scroll. Flint rocks rained down after skipping across the partial ledge above. Sparks ignited, bursting and falling in a cascade of flickering light. With utter horror, Jade realized the angled ledge with the sticks and twigs was being set ablaze as the flint fell from high above and ignited the fertile debris. Fire now dripped onto the dry, stick-covered floor.

In an instant, the floor erupted in flames.

They had no choice. They ran ahead, scampering over the burning area before it completely blocked their way. They spilled out into the corridor. The back of Diaz’s jacket caught fire, and Tolen patted it quickly using his own shirt over his hands to extinguish the flame.

Jade looked back into the room and saw it was being swallowed in vaulting yellow flames. Smoke was already pouring out into the passageway. It had taken mere seconds for the falling flint to spark the dry, brittle debris, catch fire, and completely destroy the room.

“It’s a trap!” Tolen yelled as the fire crackled harshly. “That scroll was never supposed to be removed from the wall!”

Jade stared at Diaz sternly.

“How was I to know?!” he said, spreading his empty hands apart in appeasement and shrugging his shoulders defensively.

The heat pushed from the room and pressed against them. Jade looked to the ground and was aghast to see the floor from the room streaking outward on fire, coming toward them at a frenetic pace. Not only was the room a deadly snare, it was now horribly obvious, with the corridors filled with highly flammable tinder, the entire complex was part of the elaborate trap.

“Move!” Tolen ordered. He led them back down the corridor at a run. Jade followed, nearly stumbling on the jagged sticks. Diaz passed her, reaching back as he did to assist. When they reached the curved portion of the corridor, Jade stole a look back. The fire was racing toward them like a carnivore pursuing its prey. Oddly, it was running along the wall in a perfect line following the right side of the corridor. Her heart raced, and Jade turned forward, not wanting to see, feeling as if she was being chased by some primitive creature.

Tolen shouted to them as they ran. “That sweet smell I noticed earlier is some kind of accelerant. It’s probably underneath the branches. We’ve got to get out of here. This whole place will be consumed in fire in a matter of minutes.”

“What about the rooms with the coffins? They have no debris. We can go into one of them to avoid the fire,” Diaz offered.

“We’ll die of smoke inhalation,” Tolen said flatly.

They reached the intersection where the tunnel offshoot met the main corridor. Jade could feel the flames licking at their heels. She looked back briefly. “It’s following a pattern, staying to the right side,” Jade stated in a loud voice. There was no response from either Tolen or Diaz.

The threesome dashed ahead, snapping sticks as they went. One by one, they raced past the crypt rooms where the Apostles were housed, laboring to run on the pad of natural detritus. They soon passed through the fissure and found themselves in the main room where the corkscrew tunnel had originally brought them. Jade turned. The fire shot inside the circular room and darted along the right wall. As it streaked around the perimeter, the main cavern floor, in turn, also caught fire, and smoke began billowing toward the ceiling. Tolen led them toward the wall on the far side where the spiraling tunnel exited upward. The end of the dangling rope was barely visible inside the wormhole, but before they could reach it, the fire had wrapped around the room and blocked their escape. The flames grew intense, snaking upward into the curved tunnel. Tolen took a step forward as if he might try and barge through the fire. Jade put a restraining hand on his arm. “No!” she shouted, as they watched the rope catch fire and the blaze escalate. The heat intensified exponentially.

Their only avenue of escape was gone.

Smoke quickly clogged the enclosure, and all three began to cough. Jade turned to see the chain of fire continue to encircle the room. It would seal their fate within seconds. She felt a flush of panic. Tolen grabbed her hand and bolted back toward the crevice where they re-entered the corridor. Diaz trailed close behind. An instant later, the circular cave was completely engulfed in fire.

A short distance into the corridor, Jade turned back. The heat rapped her in the face with an almost physical force. Amid the blaze, the carved faces on the pilasters behind resembled a macabre scene of sinners being eradicated within a fiery pit. Diaz’s haunting comment earlier about hell seemed eerily prophetic now. As she watched, the smoldering trail of flame emerged from the circular room and streamed along on the unburned side of the corridor toward them, attacking in a straight line. It was absolutely relentless. Jade was sure its aggression was driven by some demonic intelligence.

Tolen pulled Jade along the passageway, gliding over the branches and staying to the side of the tunnel which had yet to catch fire. It was odd to see one side of the passageway burning ahead, while the other half remained unlit. Whoever had planned this had done a remarkably demented job of ensuring the victims would be corralled by the fire and allowed only certain avenues of escape. The purpose for it, though, was not clear.

The smoke was hovering at chest level in the tunnel, restricting their view. Jade coughed and hacked as Tolen pulled her along. The heavy-footed Diaz was close behind. The fire to their side flicked at them with gnarled fingers, crackling and popping loudly, trying to snatch them as they raced past. Jade felt the heat lapping at her skin, and an acrid smell filled her lungs.

She had no idea where Tolen was leading them, and she wondered if it really mattered. There had only been one point of ingress and egress, and that was now blocked. They were trapped. Their bodies would be consumed by fire within minutes. The thought of burning alive terrified her.

“We’ve got to go in one of these rooms!” Diaz barked.

Against Diaz’s protests, Tolen pushed the group up the corridor. Even in her panicky state, Jade knew taking refuge in one of the Apostles’ crypts would mean certain death. Smoke in the rooms on the other side of the corridor was growing thicker by the second. As soon as the fire arrowed back up the tunnel and ignited the full breadth of flammable debris, all twelve rooms would be consumed in smoke.

They had to keep moving and try to outrun the pursuing fire. Sheer desperation kept Jade going, even though her pragmatic side told her they were only forestalling the inevitable.

Tolen suddenly made a drastic change in direction, cutting hard to his right where there was no fire. For a moment, Jade thought that he had relented to Diaz and entered one of the crypt rooms, but there was no stone coffin here, only a corridor. They navigated a curve to the left that straightened. Only then did she realize where they were. At the juncture of the main corridor where they had originally turned left, eventually discovering the room with the gold scroll, Tolen had now turned down the opposite corridor to the right. It was the only passageway they had not investigated.

The inferno had yet to reach this tunnel, although there was no doubt in Jade’s mind the flames zipping up the main corridor would soon change that. This passageway, too, was laden with dried sticks and branches. The fuel would send the raging fire chasing after them. Although the tunnel was stuffy with smoke, at the moment it seemed less coarse, and Jade’s coughing abated somewhat. “Where are we going?” she managed to choke out.

“Away from the fire,” Tolen responded.

“And into certain death,” Diaz added morosely. The man was chugging behind with deep, raspy gasps.

Ahead, the smoke thinned further, and Tolen’s flashlight cut into a dead-end room similar to the Gold Scroll room but with two differences: there was no scroll mounted into the wall, and the ceiling was a mere seven feet high. They had no sooner entered the room when the scorching line of fire arrived at the doorway. Jade turned when she heard the sound of the conflagration chewing up the branches. The flames rose up in the corridor, licking six feet into the air. Her chest tightened into an agonizing knot. They were moments away from being burned to death.

At some point—Jade was not sure when—Tolen had released her hand. She now found herself cowering into Diaz’s chest. She could feel the man’s pounding heartbeat. Smoke poured into the small room, and both she and Diaz began to cough harshly as dark ash drifted down on them. Somewhere behind, she was faintly aware of Tolen crowded against the back wall. Jade watched as a line of fire entered the room, zipping around the walls from both sides, destined to meet at exactly where Tolen stood. Her eyes burned, and tears blurred her vision.

Jade heard Tolen yell over the sizzling and popping of the flames. “Down!”

Jade felt a weight land hard upon her and Diaz, sending them both to the debris-covered floor. In the next instant, a deafening blast sent rock fragments raining down upon them. Before she could comprehend what was happening, a noise like a freight train bearing down on her was followed by a surge of water which pummeled her into something solid. There was intense pain, and her scalp tingled. Almost as quickly, it passed.

Jade’s world faded to black.