Skeleton 03 - The Constantine Codex (41 page)

It seemed to Jon that he spent an eternity going through almost every page of the codex, again without registering any sort of response. Jon looked helplessly at Shannon, who stood beside him, just as eager for the verdict as he.

Whimpole failed to notice the Markan ending, but his eyes widened when he came to Second Acts. And they seemed to remain wider for the rest of his perusal. When he had finally finished, he stepped back, looked up, pieced his fingers together, and then said to Jon, “I hope you’ll provide more detail on how you discovered this. You gave some information in your phone call.”

“I will indeed. But what’s your impression of the codex thus far, Dr. Whimpole?”

“Well, I would call it an
extremely
clever fraud . . .”

Jon froze.

“. . . were I given to what you colonials call ‘practical jokes.’ But this codex is authentic. Absolutely authentic. Beyond all debate. The orthography—those beautiful uncials—are fully consistent with the
Sinaiticus
and other manuscripts from the fourth century. I . . . I must congratulate you, Professor Weber, on the manuscript find of the century—no, of the millennium. And—quite naturally—I’m also fiercely jealous of your success!”

A round of laughter was enough to transform the stiff and stodgy Brit into a fellow human being.

Two weeks later, all the material test results arrived at Jon’s Harvard office. It began with a phone call from Arizona, Duncan Fraser genially announcing, “I guess you want a pair of dates, Jon, right?”

“That would be very helpful, Duncan.”

“How about 1650, plus or minus fifty years—both samples?”

Jon’s heart plummeted. “AD 1650? You mean . . . you mean the vellum’s less than four centuries old?”

Fraser laughed. “I knew I’d catch you on that one! No, Jon, 1650 BP, and I don’t mean British Petroleum.”

“So, 1,650 years before the present?”

“Yes. Of course.”

Jon quickly calculated, then broke out laughing. “Perfect! Right on target! Early to mid-fourth century AD. You and your TAMS toy do great work, Duncan!”

“Only to keep you amused, Jon. What did you discover this time, the memoirs of Constantine?”

Jon was startled for a moment by the name but then said, “No, a shade more important than that. Tell you what, because you’ve been so kind, I’ll phone you about it just before we make the general announcement.”

“TAMS and I will be honored.”

Sandy McHugh phoned from Washington with similar results. Every test of the adhesive swipes he had taken from the leather cover and vellum pages showed a progression of pollen running up to the present day, yet also strains that went back to the fourth century.

All tests, then, were conclusive: the codex was absolutely authentic. As Jon told Shannon, “Obviously, we didn’t need the tests in the first place, since no one today could have forged 140 pages of perfect, fourth-century Greek.”

“Why did we go to all that bother, then?”

“The public, Shannon. The skeptical public, not to mention an army of critics.”

That evening, Jon put in two calls, the first to the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul, the other to Kevin Sullivan in Rome. Both were for the purpose of establishing a date for the announcement to the world. His All Holiness Bartholomew II would have the honor of making the initial announcement. Pope Benedict XVI would be invited to attend and participate in the presentation or be represented by Monsignor Sullivan. The location should have been the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul, but for obvious security reasons, it would instead be the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in New York.

“Glad I caught you before your flight to Cairo this afternoon, Osman,” Jon said as he chatted with his associate. It was a mild spring morning in early May, warm enough for Jon to open the windows of his office. “Like some coffee?”

“Please.”

As Jon poured two mugs, he continued. “I understand you’re visiting relatives in Cairo?”

Osman nodded. “In the western suburbs. At Giza—near the pyramids.”

“Do look in on our publisher while you’re there, Osman, and try to iron out any remaining problems in the Arabic edition of our book—if there are any.”

“Will do. Soon, maybe, I’ll have to do the Arabic translation of Mark 16 and Second Acts from our magnificent codex there.” It was lying atop Jon’s desk.

“Could well be. By the way, didn’t you once tell me you could face death if you ever returned to a Muslim country after converting to Christianity?”

“True for Islamic theocracies like Iran but not for secular states like Egypt. And you’ll recall that we all got back safely from Turkey.”

“True enough.”

“Of course, if they knew about me, Muslim fanatics in any country would find me fair game.”

“Better watch your back, then. I understand that Osman Mahmoud al-Ghazali’s fame is rising in the world of Islam!” Jon was smiling, but then he grew serious. “Hate to bring this up again, but a couple weeks ago, you’ll recall, we talked about the remaining problem in the disappearance of the codex?”

Osman nodded. “How could the perpetrators in Istanbul have known its dimensions, when the patriarch would fly here, et cetera, right?”

“Exactly. We all agreed that it had to be an inside job by someone in the patriarchate over there. But then I recalled that when we told you and Dick Ferris about the codex at the Istanbul Hilton, it was
you
who asked me about its size.”

“Right. And your point is . . . ?”

“Well, I told you about the size of its pages, but then you also asked me how thick it was.”

“So? Both Dick and I wanted very badly to see the actual codex. And that was as close as we could come at the time.”

“Fair enough. And it’s just possible that my awful vector of suspicion may be pointed in the wrong direction.”

“At me, Jon?
Me?
After all we’ve been through together?”

“Hate to say it, but yes, Osman, even though it absolutely tears me apart to admit it.”

“Well, you can spare yourself that kind of personal agony because I’d never ever go back to the other side. Conversion is conversion. A Judas Iscariot I am not!”

Jon clenched his jaw muscles and rolled his knuckles on the desk. “I’d like to believe that. I really would.” He paused, avoided eye contact with Osman, and stared out the window. Then he turned in his chair and faced al-Ghazali directly. “Yesterday evening, Mort Dillingham called me from Washington. He hated to admit it, he said, but yes, the CIA asked the FBI to check all phone records on all of us during the weeks preceding the theft of the codex and the weeks afterward. After we hung up, Dillingham faxed me this record. It’s a long list, but please note the items I’ve underlined in red.”

He handed Osman the faxed pages. “To the left is your home phone number in Watertown, dated a week before Bartholomew’s flight to the U.S., and to the right . . . do you see that number in Istanbul?”

“Where?”

Jon pointed.

“Oh . . . there.”

“It belongs to one Tawfik Barakat, who is a member of the Islam Forever religious party,
and one of three men on duty at Istanbul’s airport security
the day the patriarch flew off.”

Al-Ghazali reddened a bit. “But . . . how can that be? Obviously there has to be some . . . some ridiculous mistake here. Besides, how could the perpetrators know
when
the patriarch would fly off?”

“Osman, Osman, we had all that information here in Cambridge, and you certainly had access to it.”

A long silence followed, tense and embarrassing to both of them. Finally Osman cleared his throat. “All right, Jon. Very well. I have a long,
long
story to tell you, and I think you’ll like the ending. But first, might I have a bit more coffee?”

Jon walked over to the hot plate and turned his back to prepare a fresh pot. Carafe in hand, he returned and refilled both mugs. Then he said, “Please continue, Osman. I’m listening . . . listening quite carefully, in fact.”

Al-Ghazali began with the story of his descent from the great eleventh-century Muslim mystic, Abu-Hamid al-Ghazali, who despised women and hated science in his concern for rigorist orthodoxy. He went on to the story of his childhood in Cairo, while Jon, his patience wearing thin, let his coffee cool. Details of Osman’s schooling followed, until Jon said, “To the point, man, to the point. This is all interesting, but you have a plane to catch, don’t you?”

“All right, Jon, I’ll give you the short version.”

Jon took a long sip of coffee, noting a slightly off flavor. “Almost tastes like Irish coffee. That’s what I get for not giving the carafe a thorough washing. Is yours okay, Osman?”

“Just a little strong.”

Then he continued with the story of his conversion to Christianity and how his eyes were finally opened to the greater historical reliability of the Bible versus the Qur’an. Despite Jon’s advice to move on with his explanation, Osman seemed to continue dawdling. Jon let him speak on, grasping his mug a little unsteadily as he took another long sip. Soon he looked at Osman with some concern because the man was becoming clouded in some sort of haze. But his office was also suffused in a growing fog, and the whole room seemed to lurch to one side. He quickly set the mug down, lest he drop it, and put both hands on the desk to steady himself. But the desk seemed to be tipping and sliding sideways. Was he having a stroke?

Osman watched the changes coming over Jon with quiet satisfaction. The man was starting to shiver and hyperventilate as Osman continued. “But truth to tell, Jon, for all the evidence you tried to marshal on behalf of Christianity, I found that, in the end, I could never give up Islam.
Never!
I was convinced that I could best help our cause by intruding into your circle.”

Jon tried to reach for his phone, but Osman swiftly pulled it out of his reach. “You won’t need that,” he said. “Of course, I
intentionally
made that error in the Arabic translation of your book, hoping a fatwa would quickly settle things. But when that failed and you discovered the codex instead, I had to—wait, here, let me help you.”

Al-Ghazali stood and shoved Jon and his chair deep inside the space under the middle of his desk. “You won’t be able to speak, Jon, so why even try? And don’t even
think
of standing up because you’d fall on your face.”

Jon tried nevertheless. He squirmed feebly in attempting to use his feet to shove the rolling chair away from the desk while his hands reached up to assist by grabbing the desk’s edge. But his grasp faded, and his arms dropped limply on both sides of his chair.

“Probably you’ll recover, Jon,” Osman said, pulling a small, empty vial from his pocket. “It’s an improved version of the old Mickey Finn, but it acts quicker. With any luck, you should get over it in a day or so. Tell you what: we’ve had some good times together, so I’ll even help you recover.” He scribbled
chloral hydrate
on a slip of paper and stuffed it into Jon’s shirt pocket. “Be glad I didn’t
really
poison you, chum,” he added. “Call it a parting gift.”