Irrefutable Proof: Mars Origin "I" Series Book II (19 page)

Chapter
Thirty-Eight

Tuscany
, Italy

1962

Alphonse
Realini sat on the side of his bed in his country home in the sun-soaked hills of
Tuscany where he had lived for the past twenty-five years. He had long since
left the priesthood, and the Villa Mondragone in Frascati.

 He
had given up so much to live a life as a brother in the Society of Jesus. The
twelve years he had spent in formation for priesthood. The long years of study
he needed to take his vows.

His
vows . . .

That’s
what was bothering him today.

H
is First Vows, Simple vows of
poverty, chastity and obedience.

Obedience . . .

He tried even now to keep them. He looked down and studied his
hands - wrinkled, withered hands - nervously wringing them one over the other.

Had he been obedient? Obedient in what he had done. Perhaps
not to the Jesuits. But to what mattered.

His eyes were sad, as the task set before him today reminded him
of what he had done. But he wasn’t the first to lie about that book, and he
wouldn’t be the last.

Obedience wasn’t the only vow he had taken. As a Jesuit, he
had taken a fourth vow - special obedience to the pope in matters regarding a mission.

Yes, he knew. It wasn’t the Church’s mission.

No. It had nothing to do with it. It wasn’t of the Church. And
it had only been placed there because the Church had withstood the test of time.
The book needed to be able to stay in one place. To be kept safe. Catholicism
had been around for a long time, as had the
Villa Mondragone. It had stood in Frascati
since 1573.

Although he respected both, the vow that was bothering him
today was not his Jesuit vows, but the one that he’d taken long before he
donned priestly robes. It was the one to keep the knowledge of man’s origins
alive. To keep the knowledge until it was time for the secret to be revealed.

No one knew when that time would be. But he was sure there
would be a sign. Something. Not from the heavens, this was not of his God. It
had happened because they had gone against God. But a reckoning. When
everything would come together. The stars, perhaps, would align . . .

He took a deep sigh. Resting his elbow on the surface of the
night table next to him, he clasped his hands together and put them under his
chin. A tear ran down his crinkled face.

“Father, forgive thy servant,” he said. Taking another breath,
he stood up and held onto the table.

It took a moment to steady himself. Nearly ninety, simple
things, such as standing, or even having a restful night, were no longer easy.

He walked over to the window where a blue and white-flowered ceramic
pitcher and bowl sat atop a small stand. Pouring water over his hand, and
letting the bowl fill, he set the pitcher down. He doused his hands in the
coolness, then splashed water over his face and dried off with a towel he
pulled from the shelf next to the stand.

His days were short, he knew it. He also knew it was time. He needed
to pass on what he knew. So that it wouldn’t be lost to the world. Until there
came a time when someone would find what they needed to tell the history of the
world. There were only a few left that knew the secret, but the proof had long
been misplaced. Now it was a waiting game. They must wait until all the pieces
were brought together, again. Because they all knew that no one would believe them
without proof.

At first it would have been impossible to tell, he thought. So
many people had gone their own way once they got here to their new home. People
in different places had started to believe in their own gods. Made up gods.
They began to tell their own rendition of our past with those made up gods
inserted. Their one language had evolved into many, and it had become
impossible to speak to all collectively.

He went through the history, turning it over in his mind as he
dressed and made ready for the day.

So it was written down. By those that knew. In a book, on
parchment, in scrolls. Kept at the temple in Turkey, now long buried. After it
left the temple, it was then hidden in the plains of Sumer. The scrolls protected
by families from one generation to the next until their descendants built the
Biblotheca
Alexandrina
– the Library at Alexandria. There, the proof was kept safe.
There at a place that
promoted
rationality, tolerance and understanding. It was a place where universal
knowledge was organized and disseminated, the perfect place for the words of
our ancestors, he thought.

Looking
in the mirror and combing over the strands of what hair he had left, he
remembered the story of the library. He knew that the hope then was that the
Library would be
the
place the manuscripts could stay until someone came to search for the truth,
and to learn the knowledge.

But that was not to be.

After the burning of the Library at Alexandria, the knowledge
went back underground. The same as it had been in the last days on the fourth
planet, before the migration. Into the Mithraea, until they too ceased to
exist.

But then the Church turned out to do what the
Biblotheca
and
the Mithraeum couldn’t do. It kept the secrets over the years.

By being assigned as the Librarian at the church, Realini had
been able to be close to part of that history. He was able to protect what
those that had escaped hoped all would one day know.

Yes. Yes, it was time, he knew. Time to pass on this knowledge
he had, so that one day that person could stand up, when it was revealed, and
say that they knew it to be true. He had to pass it on so that person could say
that it had been passed down to him, and to others, and that they were
witnesses. Someone to come forth and concur that it is our history and it had
been kept secret for thousands of years. That t
heir lot had become dispersed, but on that day all would come
together.

He
had called for his good friend, Omja.

Omja
had been young, only fourteen when he left the church with Alphonse. He had
been sent to the Villa by others that knew. He had been chosen, Father Realini
had been told, to be the one who’d be the keeper of the knowledge after he was
gone. To know the whereabouts of the others, and to learn what had been left
behind. Even Rector Bershoni had given his blessing on the boy. Before he died,
Realini was to pass on what he knew to Omja.

Father
Realini finished his breakfast of dry toast and hot tea. He left out of his
cool, stone house and went out back to sit in the sun in his garden. He sat on
the bench underneath an old Lebanon cedar tree. He had long ago buried under
that tree what he wanted to pass on to Omja, and today it just needed to be dug
up.

Alphonse
smiled when he saw Omja and his young son come around the house into the backyard.
It was a happy day for him. He would share his burden, and more importantly,
keep the secret alive.

He
and Omja sat under the tree while the boy played and he told Omja of their
history. For hours they talked, and Father Realini gave no thought to Omja not seeming
surprised or resistant as he learned of what happened and what he was to do.

 After
a long while, Omja got up and went to the shed on the side of the property. Coming
back with a shovel, he dug a hole where Alphonse directed. He gave the box he
found a few feet down to Father Realini, who took it with shaky hands, placed
it in his lap and started to cry. Omja called out to his boy, and they went
into the house to prepare food for the Father, and to leave him alone with his
thoughts.

After
Alphonse had his meal, he told Omja to go home. To take the box and not to ever
tell anyone unless the time came, assuring him that he would know when that
time would be. And if it didn’t come before it was his time to die, for Omja to
pass it on just as he had to him.

“But,
if it is alright with you,” Realini said to Omja, “I’d like to keep the boy
here with me for a while.”

“Yes,
but of course, Father.”

Father
Realini and the boy walked around about the trees in the back and talked of
this and that.

“You
know that I don’t have much longer here on this earth with you, don’t you?”

“Yes,
Father.”

“And
do you know how much I love you?”

“Not
more than I love you, Father. Of that I am sure.”

“You
are quite clever with words. Yes, quite clever.” He delighted in talking with
the child. “Are you sure you are only ten years old?”

“Yes,
Father. Well actually, ten and a half.”

“Wise
beyond your years. That is why I have picked you.”

“Yes,
Father. I know.”

“You
are to learn it and keep it, close to your heart.”

“Yes,
Father until it is time.”

“And
- ”

“I
will know when it is time,” the boy finished the Father’s sentence. “But you
forgot Father, to say that I should never tell anyone of what you have told me,
not even my father. But, in everything else, I am always to trust my father,
and do as he says.”

“That’s
my boy.” Father Realini laughed. “And I would have said all of those things if
you had given me the chance.” The Father slid his hand into the boy’s. “Now
come, use that great imagination of yours, and tell me of the wonderful things
that are in this world, and how one day you will go to see them all.”

•≈•≈•≈•≈•≈•≈•≈•

Omja
knew this day would come. He had been instructed and prepared for it from the
day he had come to the Villa. Yes, he loved Alphonse Realini, but he had been
told that his mind was sick. That he had delusions, and that he was to watch the
Father and take care of him. It could not be known that a priest suffered such delusions,
they told him. It would not be good for the Church.

But
Omja had never witnessed any odd behavior by the Father. He had been kind to
him, and his family. More than kind. And Father Realini acted and said nothing
different from any other priest Omja had known, until today.

Omja,
too, felt like weeping. He sat at the window of his small red brick house, and
looked out toward the barn, where he had placed the box. He thought better of
bringing it into the house, not wanting his wife or young son to question him
about it. He would have to hide it until the day he would destroy it, and
whatever it contained.

The
house was filled with the sweet smell of onions, and the licorice of fennel. A
comforting warmth came from the fire on the stove where the sausage for the
bean soup his wife was cooking sizzled. Yet, the smell of home and love that
filled in around him could not take away his feelings of anguish.

Father
Realini’s mind was gone. There was no doubt about that now. But he would take
care of him, and that box that had been buried under the old cedar tree. He
would care for Father Realini while he lived out his last days, assuring him
that what was in the old box was safe with him. And then he would destroy the
box and all of its contents, once the father was dead. Just as he had promised
Rector Bershoni more than twenty years ago, and then nothing else would be
known of it. And it would never be spoken of again.

 He
saw his boy returning from Father Realini’s.
No wonder the Father got such
joy from spending time with him
, he thought, the Father’s mind, Omja had
learned today, was not much more than a child’s.

The
boy didn’t come straight in the house, but stayed out in the yard kicking his
ball down the dirt road that ran in front of the barn.

“Don’t
you stray too far,” he yelled out to his young son, “Supper will be ready soon.
And don’t get dirty!” The boy ran over to the barn and sat near the box,
seemingly unaware of his father’s instruction. “Do you hear me?” Omja muttered
under his breath, getting up and going to the door. “Sometimes I think that boy
is deaf. Or he’s lost in those day dreams of his again.” He yelled again,
“Nikhil Chandra, do you hear me talking to you?”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

New Haven
, Connecticut

I put the television on mute, sat
up in bed, pulling the covers over me, and stared at the wall. Lying in bed in
a hotel room in New Haven, Connecticut, I thought about the last night I had
spent in Jerusalem. It seemed so much longer than just yesterday.

The day after we dug up the box,
I had just moped. Claire and Addie had gone out to eat with Jack and Greg. They
stayed out late, Greg going to the casino in the hotel, and the other three going
sightseeing, and shopping. I didn’t want to move. After they left I had went
into the master bedroom me and Claire shared, pulled the Japanese-style sliding
doors shut, and called Mase. I started crying as soon as he picked up the phone,
and sobbed practically through the entire conversation.

Under
two feet of dirt, tangled in cypress roots, was a black, metal box that
contained a copy of the Book of Enoch in Ge’ez. A copy of the fragmented
manuscripts of the Book of Enoch found with the Dead Sea Scrolls in a notebook,
handwritten just like he had done with the AHM manuscripts. And a notebook that
Dr. Sabir used for note taking. And, the
p
ièce de résistance
– there in the box,
in perfect condition, were the
original
AHM manuscripts.

I swear, I never saw so many archaeologists just taking stuff.
First, it was Dr. Yeoman, now Dr. Sabir. So, yeah, I took a clay pot back in
’97 when I was there. But I put it back in the cave. I used it to store the
fragmented remains to try to preserve them, not that that mattered now because
they weren’t the real ones. And, the clay pot was not part of history. Although,
I’ve dug up a lot of them, delighted over them, and called them just that – a
valuable part of history.

But that aside . . .

Dr. Sabir, in those months before he had presented Dr. Yeoman
with what he knew, had meticulously copied the AHM manuscripts and hid the originals
underneath that tree.  Then he presented Dr. Yeoman with fake documents.

No wonder they had been in such bad shape. They weren’t the
same material. Looking at the real ones now, they were in perfect condition. Just
like Dr. Yeoman had written in his journal.

After opening up that box and being so disappointed, I just
wanted to be by myself. After I practically pushed everyone out, I looked down
again into box, held my hands up in disbelief and disgust, and had plopped down
on the bed. And that’s where I would have stayed until it was time to go to the
airport to leave Israel even it hadn’t been for Mase’s phone call.

The things in that box were not proof of anything.

There was no piece of paper, book, or note that explained, or
showed me, how to decipher the clues in the Book of Enoch. I found mention that
the Book of Enoch described the story of the migration. But there were no
instructions on how, or where, to find the technology of the Ancients. I knew I
hadn’t mistranslated or misunderstood the Latin in the back of Dr. Sabir’s
notebook. He had written, “ . . . the knowledge of the people from the fourth
planet is hidden in the text of Enoch. I have found the key.” I could see his
words.

I, despite those words, was now 99.9999% sure that there
wasn’t a clue in the Book of Enoch. Yes, he was right, the Book of Enoch seemed
to tell the story I had learned of the migration depicted in the AHM
manuscripts. It was really like Enoch had seen with his own eyes the history of
the Ancients. But that book didn’t tell me how to build a spaceship, or to cure
cancer. Heck, I didn’t even know if they had cancer.

The only good thing about the stuff in that box was that now I
had the original AHM manuscripts as proof of what I wrote in my book.

 It was a big letdown, to say the least.

Everything around me seemed to darken, and was closing in on
me. I was feeling like my insides were shriveling up.

Greg paid no attention to how bad I felt, and questioned me
incessantly about the contents of that box.

“How do you know that
these
are real?” he had asked.

“We should probably have them tested,” Claire offered.

“Why didn’t you have the other ones tested?” Greg had started
to really irritate me.

“I wasn’t even supposed to have those manuscripts. I could have
gotten in a lot of trouble,” I had said. “What was I supposed to do, wrap them
up and mail them off to the University of Chicago, and say, ‘Hey, can you
validate these scrolls I stole’?”

“And now it’s okay for you to have them?”

Okay, so he had me there. Should’ve known better than to argue
with “Super Lawyer.”

“I’ll just get Simon to get them tested for me. He has a
research lab at MIT.”

“I don’t trust that guy,” Greg said.

“You didn’t even talk to him. How can you say you don’t trust
him?” I asked, thoroughly aggravated.

Boy was I glad when Claire had suggested they all go to
dinner. I couldn’t think while Greg was under foot.

And, sitting here in New Haven, Connecticut reflecting back
over the last couple of days, what my thinking got me was that maybe I should
start worrying about Simon. He had acted so strangely on the phone that night he
found out I was going to Jerusalem. Then he just showed up at my hotel. And
then, Jack got shot.

I shook my head and took in a breath. That couldn’t have been
Simon.

I flew from Jerusalem to Connecticut by myself. The others had
gone back home on their scheduled flight.
Of course, Claire wanted to come with me. But I felt so bad about Jack that I
didn’t want him flying home with that wound and Claire not being there to tend
to him if something happened.

Picking
up the Room Service menu, I surveyed it for something I could order to eat.
Laying it back on the nightstand, without finding anything that I wanted, I
thought about what I was going to do.

I
found out more than what I had bargained for from my trip to Jerusalem. I
discovered that Ghazi had been murdered. That Dr. Sabir’s journal was missing
from the Hebrew University, and that someone was definitely after me. And, it
was possibly Simon, a person that had been my friend for years. I also found
out that that little petite, rose-scented Hannah Abelson might just be a
murderer.

I
glanced out the window of my room on the 12
^th
floor of the Omni in New
Haven. I thought about the moment that I realized that I was going to have to
find the proof myself.

I
had been crying to Mase for half an hour. He had asked me if I wanted him to
come to Israel. To come right then and get me. Because, he had said, he knew
when I got depressed I didn’t want to move. So, he said, he would come, pack my
stuff up, and carry me home if I needed him to do that.

He
said, “I know you’re strong. And I know you can do anything you set your mind
to. And babe, you don’t have to prove that, or anything else, to anybody. Ever.”

I
knew right then, once I hung up from my husband, what I had to do it. I
shouldn’t care what other people thought, or whether or not Dr. Sabir had left
me the answers. The answers were out there, and I was going to find them. I
wasn’t going to care that people might ridicule me. I wasn’t going to worry
that now without Dr. Sabir providing me proof, I was going to have to do it all
myself starting from square one. Or, how hard, - extremely hard, it would be to
do. I was going to find the technology of the Ancients. I had always known that
I wanted to do it. I was just nervous about ruining my career, and my family’s
lives. Not anymore. I
wanted
to find it. I wanted to do it for me, and
because it would help save the world.

God,
I sounded like a Miss Universe contestant. I want world peace . . .

Didn’t
matter, I was ready to do this.

Without
a second thought I had picked up the phone, called the airlines and changed my
flight home. I was going to the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscript Library at Yale
University. I had remembered from that night me, Claire and Addie had googled
the Voynich Manuscript that that was where it was kept. I had decided I was
going to take a look at it.

I
had flown into Connecticut, rented a car and drove right over to Yale. But that
didn’t work out too well.

I
just thought, I guess, that I could just waltz in there and they’d pull the
Voynich Manuscript right out of the vault and hand it over to me. You would
think that with the rigorous treatment I used to put people through to see the
small pieces I had when I worked as curator of a museum, I’d have known better.
I got so caught up in the moment. That’s how badly I wanted to see the Voynich
Manuscript.

After
getting nothing out of Dr. Sabir’s box, my mind had drifted to them. I don’t
know why. Because certainly, if they held the answers, I would never be able to
find out what those answers were. No way could I decipher it. Maybe I thought
of them because their existence had kept popping up right in front of my face.
First with crazy Professor Abelson and her apparent attempts to translate them,
and then with the mysterious “I’m a Jesuit priest,” Nikhil Chandra. So, I had
thought,
why not look at it?

Let no stone go unturned.

The
only good thing about the trip, it turned out, was the Mithraeum I saw. Of
course it had nothing to do with anything I was working on. But it was
interesting, satisfying the “sciency” part of me and helping to keep my
depression at bay.

Yale
had taken a Mithraeum from Syria and removed it piece by piece and rebuilt in
their Art Gallery. My kind of stuff.

The
display in the gallery was of one of the many Mithraea that had been built in
underground caves in Europe and Asia. No one knew, or still knows, what Mithraism
was. A religion? Don’t know. No one has been able to determine who they
worshipped, or what they believed in. All knowledge of Mithra, their religion, and
their religious abode, the Mithraeum, had been gleaned from outside sources. No
one ever got a clue to the goings on inside from one solitary soul privy to it.
And they hadn’t left anything behind to help people figure out what they were
all about. They had been just that secretive. So no one really knew, and a slew
of folks just speculated as to various reasons of their existence. Probably
none of it true.

I got ready for my flight back
home. And on the plane thought about what I was going to do.

Even after my realization of
getting nada from Dr. Sabir, I couldn’t stop reading over the things in that
box.
Keeping the manuscripts and notebook in my satchel, close to me, I
hadn’t given up on the idea that something, perhaps by divine intervention,
would spring forth from Enoch’s mouth and, (cue the organ music), the clouds
would clear, the sun rays would beam down and I would be enlightened.

I
had to be diligent because I knew I had to do this for Ghazi, too. If Ghazi got
killed because of the AHM Manuscripts, then that meant someone didn’t want that
information out. Someone wanted to hold us back, hold me back. Really, maybe
stop me for good. I couldn’t let that happen. I had been so wishy-washy. Write
the book, not write the book. No more. I had pulled myself up by my bootstraps,
as my mother would say, and decided to fight back. Not worry if someone was
trying to kill me. I was going to confront Hannah. And Simon. I wanted to know
what they had to say for themselves. Simon for maybe being the one who shot at
me, and Hannah for killing Ghazi. (In my mind there was no maybe about that one,
she killed him.) And I was going to see that Hannah went to jail for what she
had done.

Yes, I was planning on Professor Abelson going to jail, (“if,
in fact, she
did
kill him,” Greg kept reminding me). And, I was going to
use her and make her, if I had to, help me decipher the Voynich Manuscript. She
did say she could decode anything.

Addie, of course, was of a different mind. She not only didn’t
trust Professor Abelson, she thought she was too dangerous. But most of all,
she said she couldn’t believe anything Professor Abelson had deciphered and didn’t
want me to use whatever she had. Addie believed that probably the only thing Professor
Abelson had written in her translation notebook was
redrum, redrum, redrum,
redrum, redrum . . .