Rabbi Gabrielle Ignites a Tempest (36 page)

That concerned the future, but she faced a
more immediate decision, what to do with this treasure in the next
few hours. And to make this decision she needed a quiet place to
calm her nerves and, even more importantly, seek inspiration. Her
favorite spot in the Hebrew Union College library would work for
quiet and privacy, but not for inspiration. For the latter, she
felt drawn not to a Jewish location, but somewhere closer to the
roots of Christianity, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the
Christian sector of Jerusalem's Old City, the traditional site of
Jesus' crucifixion, his burial, and resurrection, as close to the
Preacher's presence on earth as it was possible to get.

She returned the fragment to the Isaiah
passage of her Kittel Bible where it had already safely rested for
weeks. But upon second thought, she worried that Itamar might
stumble into it. Or far worse, Father Benoit's henchmen—who by then
must have known she was now living in Itamar's home—might break in
to find it. After a short conversation with herself, she saw
clearly that, until she found a safe home for this treasure of
treasures, the Jesus fragment must remain in her possession at all
times.

Before leaving the house, she found a vinyl
folder used for notes at academic conferences and tucked Tim's
airtight envelope with the Jesus fragment between its hard covers,
then stripped off her blouse and ran a roll of Dermaskin tape
around her torso to secure the folder to the small of her back. A
thought that Tim might have employed a similar stratagem when
fleeing the Monastery of St. George coursed through her mind and
then, in the rush of emotion, was lost. Her bra strap snapped into
place above the Derma tape.

She avoided a city bus running from the
Katamon District to the Old City in favor of walking. The plan was
sound, but ghosts from her abduction in Independence Park
immediately returned with images of suspicious men following her.
She didn't like the looks of a man and woman in European leather
jackets on the sidewalk, moving behind her, the woman with her hair
pulled back tightly behind her head, the man with a slight limp. In
her judgment, they didn't walk close enough to be a couple or
friends in conversation. The female pressed a cell phone to her
ear, her hands animating her speech. Gabby's feet almost skipped
over the pavement, far too fast, she felt, to imitate a normal
pedestrian. Her lips repeated a mantra her emotions didn't believe:
that at the moment, nobody could possibly know what she carried
taped to her flesh. Still, she was aware that by taking possession
of this invaluable fragment, she had entered a dangerous realm in
which Tim had already surrendered his life. A tiny patch of
parchment from the distant past, wholly unknown until this moment,
had cast her into a world governed by dark, perhaps mystic powers,
a world populated by passionate defenders of religious
doctrine.

She approached the Old City walls, originally
constructed by the Hasmonean kings a century and a half before
Jesus' birth. Her path led through the southernmost Zion Gate where
wide boulevards narrowed into a warren of alleys bordered by small
souvenir shops bristling with silver and brass menorahs and
crosses. Small meat, bakery, and produce stalls packed the crowded
pathway of what was once a Roman
cardoinis
, the ancient axis point now dividing this
modern Oriental bazaar into sectors. Above the confusion of buyers
and vendors maneuvering for commercial advantage, the
140-meter-tall spire of the Redeemer's Church provided Gabby a
recognizable landmark to locate the subdued, but far more
historically important, Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

From the inauspicious courtyard fronting the
Sepulcher Church, her passage led through a small portal to the
eastern atrium and the adjacent
martyrion
,
now filled with clusters of pilgrims and tourists consulting their
guidebooks and framing flash photographs. Feeling a measure of
security in their numbers, she marched among them to the
anastasis
directly above the holy spot
where Christian tradition sites the sepulcher of Jesus. Three
olive-skinned, bewhiskered Orthodox priests in full-length black
robes stood guard at the Angel's Chapel, aggressively monitoring
foot traffic as visitors formed a single line to pass the holiest
of holy sites in Christendom. When it was her turn to approach the
Sepulture in air laced with incense, she squeezed into the burial
chamber beside a granite tombstone, purported to be the Savior's
last presence on earth before resurrection. A combination of
pilgrims and tourists pressed, but did not shove, from behind,
forcing her to shorten her petition seeking spiritual guidance to
the god of the Christians. By the time she might have expected a
flash of inspiration, she was already through the exit portal to
the Angel's Chapel and looking up into an elaborately decorated
dome above. The viewing, which she had thought might be long enough
for a meaningful conversation with God, lasted no more than a few
minutes.

Once outside the burial chamber, she
mollified her frustration by moving through the historic Crusader
basilica in pursuit of a quiet place to confront her thoughts.
Nothing worked until, by chance, she discovered an empty grotto
where an informational plank in English, French, and Hebrew told
how, in this place, Jewish ossuaries from the first century of the
Common Era had been found embedded in niches cleaved from the
sandstone walls. The nearly dark space, free of pilgrims and
tourists, presented to Gabby a proper place to complete what she
had left undone at the Sepulture itself.

She randomly selected one of the vacant
burial niches and, recalling how Jesus lived and died a Jew,
summarily designated it as Jesus' final sepulture, not the
traditional site recognized by the Orthodox and Latin churches.
After dropping to her knees on the granite floor and reaching
behind her back to touch the vinyl folder taped to her flesh, she
addressed a prayer first to the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
who she knew, then to the Father of Jesus, who she didn't. When
words stopped flowing, she contracted into herself and listened to
the silence.

In that moment, she understood how the
excitement of discovery had temporarily eclipsed her judgment as,
she surmised, it had twisted Tim's. Such rapture had led her to
overlook how the Jesus fragment, now taped to the small of her
back, had the same standing as the other Dead Sea fragments Itamar
believed illegally held by the Vatican. She knew then, without
hesitation, that this treasure from the past didn't belong to her
just because Tim had placed it in her Kittel Bible. Why he had not
immediately relinquished this priceless document to the Israeli
authorities she did not know, but she had absolutely no doubt it
was never intended for her enrichment. Equally significant, she
also understood that to keep this Jesus fragment was guaranteed to
end her friendship with Itamar, a friendship she had come to regard
as far more valuable than a scrap of parchment, no matter how it
linked Christianity with its past and no matter what riches it
might command on the antiquities market.

By now, her initial shock of discovery
morphed into terror. Billions of believers throughout the world
anchored their faiths upon God revealing His will to mankind. They
structured their lives, planned their futures, and trained their
children in the certain knowledge of what the Lord wanted them to
do. Until this moment, their faiths were rooted in the gospels of
Jesus' disciples who knew of the Preacher only from testimony
provided by a subsequent generation of observers. But the Jesus
fragment changed all that. Solid documentary proof of his earthly
existence suddenly removed him from the realm of hearsay testimony
and placed him in the realm of historic fact. The Gospels taught
their practitioners of their Savior's birth, but failed to tell
them of his youth or his education. They then continued chronicling
his biography during a brief ministry, some three decades later,
just prior to his death. Now suddenly, something definitive was
known about his life during the intervening years.

She heard someone say from the shadows behind
her, "You never came to lunch with me. A shame because we might
have become better friends." There was a slight echo in the
chamber, but she knew she had heard the voice before. Pivoting on
her knees, she rotated about to observe the silhouette of an
Orthodox monk towering above her, his black habit blending into the
darkness beyond. The form was that of an Orthodox priest but the
voice was unquestionably that of Father Benoit Matteau.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she
snapped, struggling to rise to her feet. "I thought you were in
Rome."

He stepped closer as she found footing to
face him directly. "I was, but I now have urgent business here in
Jerusalem."

"How did you get into the country? There's a
warrant for your arrest."

"Of course there is, but Israel is bordered
by desert. I have friends for whom smuggling is a sacred
occupation. For them, borders are mere lines some cartographer drew
on a map many years ago."

"You'll be arrested."

"Possibly. The prospect of imprisonment now
isn't as threatening as it was when I was younger."

"You followed me here," she said, exposing
her uneasiness. 
"No, not me. My friends Irena and Alexander.
They're nasty refugees from Russia, but when you need them and are
prepared to pay, they can be quite useful. They took you on a ride
to Hebron but, of course, you're not expected to recognize
them."

"Why did you have them follow me here?" she
said, looking for pockets to hide an expected tremor in her
hands.

"Until this moment, I wasn't certain Tim had
transferred the Jesus fragment to you. But once I learned you were
headed to this holy sanctuary, all doubt disappeared."

"Ridiculous."

"Whoever sees the fragment becomes touched by
the sacred history of our Savior. You're no exception."

"You forget, Father, I'm a rabbi, not a
Christian believer."

"That's just the point, my dear. Why would a
rabbi come to this Christian holy place unless she were smitten by
the fragment? You must have been, otherwise you wouldn't be here.
I've come to Israel under considerable danger to offer a very large
sum of money for what does not belong to you."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

He wheezed an artificial sigh of
exasperation. "That sounds like a cliché in a bad detective movie.
You know very well what I'm talking about. My sponsors have put a
large sum into a Swiss bank account. All you need is the code to
retrieve it. This need not be a complicated exchange. I can give
you the code the minute I've verified the fragment. No legal
documents. No abominable middlemen sucking off their commissions.
No government oversight. Just a quick verification and you'll be a
very rich woman."

Several long seconds elapsed before she
eventually asked, "How much?"
"Twelve million US."

"And if I don't accept?"

"My friend Irena has an EpiPen, you know what
that is, don't you? It's an injector for penetrating clothing.
Irena's EpiPen is filled with a nasty concoction of viruses from
the KGB in Moscow. If she sticks you, you'll probably make it to
Hadassah Hospital, but the doctors there will be helpless to stop
the degeneration of your immune system. I'm told it's a terribly
painful way to end a life."

The terror she experience localized in her
fingers. Thank God, Father Benoit could not see them buried deep in
the hip pockets of her slacks. She had never questioned how
possession of the Jesus fragment would put her in harm's way, but
she had expected a longer honeymoon before it did. Two people were
now silhouetted at the entrance to the grotto, no doubt Benoit's
Russian lackeys. What were their names, Irena and Alexander?

A wave of Benoit's arm signaled for the
Russians to approach. The moment they were beside Gabby, she
smelled garlic, identifying the male as the one who had adducted
her in Independence Park. Irena must have been the female driver.
Their presence convinced Gabby to take Father Benoit's threat
seriously. She grasped for a way of holding on to the fragment in
the vinyl folder taped to her spine and seized the first thought
that came to mind, saying to the priest, "Before I accept money, I
must seek God's approval at the 12th Station, the Chapel of the
Crucifixion."

Her response caught him off guard, but he
rallied, "If you're serious, that can be arranged. My friends will
escort you there, but remember that Irena is authorized to use her
EpiPen."

"Fifteen million," she blurted, knowing that
she still needed a bold plan to escape from Benoit's henchmen.
Negotiating for more money might lull them into thinking she was
serious about the sale.

"I'm authorized only for twelve," Benoit
replied, "not a penny more. Don't be greedy. You can't spend that
much in a lifetime. Show Rabbi Lewyn your needle," he commanded
Irena who retrieved the cylindrical EpiPen and displayed it before
Gabby.

"Kill me and you'll never get the fragment.
Would you let it slip through your fingers for three million? You
know its worth far more than fifteen."

Benoit mopped a double chin with short, plump
fingers, saying, "If we can't make a deal, I'm certainly not going
to let you enjoy this treasure. Before offering fifteen I must
contact my people. In the meantime, Irena and Alexander will take
you to the Chapel of the Crucifixion. Alex, take a firm hold on
her. If we're lucky, I'll have an answer for you in a few
minutes."

Biblical scholars locate the cross of Jesus'
crucifixion on a sandstone outcropping in a modest Greek Orthodox
chapel not far from the Sepulcher. Gabby moved immediately in that
direction with Irena pressing against her from the rear and
Alexander on her right arm, his fingers forcefully squeezing her
bicep. Once inside the chapel, she steered the trio between
tourists edging forward to the sacred death place of Jesus.
Alexander jerked at her arm, a painful warning that, despite the
crowd of onlookers, he would not release her to advance forward. An
elaborate golden cross marked the holiest of holy spots ahead, but
moving within range to touch it required patience.