The Breath of God (52 page)

“Yes.” The old monk reached out a hand and rested it on Kristin's shoulder, seeming to sense her troubled thoughts. “If I have a pebble in my sandal, I remove it. But I do so without becoming frustrated at the pebble itself or angry at the person who forgot to rake the ground. Sometimes turning the other cheek should happen here”—he thumped his chest—“and not necessarily here,” he concluded, patting his face.

Kristin smiled at the Je Khenpo. “I see now the source of Kinley's wisdom.”

Talking about the events of that night a day and a half ago reminded Grant of their narrow escape. He shuddered. Tim Huntley would never torture or kill again. After a blur of interviews with local police and the U.S. consulate, Grant and Kristin had returned to their hotel, drained. Jigme kept the Issa texts at the dzong.

The Je Khenpo's voice interrupted his replaying of events. “I have a long drive to Punakha. I wish you both the best. Jigme will see to it that you leave with everything you came here for.”

The meaning of the Je Khenpo's words hit Grant. “You're allowing us to take the Issa books to America?”

The monk shrugged. “They have sat unused in my country for too long. It is time for the scholars in your esteemed universities to decide if these books are the treasures you think they are.”

Grant inclined his head. “Thank you.”

“Kinley said you were a quick, if hard-headed student, much like young Issa himself.”

“What about your country's laws against removing artifacts?” Kristin asked.

“Hmm.” The monk brought his fingertips to his chin. “Technically those books never belonged to my country; they were sent here for safekeeping.” He winked at them. “An interpretation of the law, and a privilege of my position.”

“How will the other monks feel about this?” Kristin asked. Grant glanced at Lama Dorji, who glared at them, as if to accuse them of bringing the very trouble to his country that he'd feared.

“I make the decisions I believe to be in the best interest of the
dratshang
and then let the others take care of their own happiness.”

“Ummon, before you leave. One question has perplexed me,” Grant said. “In Sarnath, we were told that your country made a generous donation to the temple, allowing them to add to the mural that led us here. We know that Kinley was behind it, but how did he arrange to fund the painting?”

“Ah yes, we had been in discussions with the temple there for several years about helping to pay for an expansion of the mural. Kinley offered to travel there himself, with the funds we had already promised, to speed the process along.”

“So Kinley took advantage of the opportunity to send us to the site of the Buddha's first lectures and to give us the final clue to the location of the texts?” Grant asked.

The Je Khenpo smiled, a familiar twinkle in his eyes. “The more we open our eyes around us, the more we see how everything is interconnected.”

The Je Khenpo nodded to his assistant, who held his arm as they ascended the dirt bank. He then gathered his saffron robes, climbed into the SUV, and sped off.

“A
RE WE CLOSE?” Kristin rubbed her face with her hands.

Grant squinted to see through the fog on the road winding through Cashiers, a cozy mountain community in western North Carolina. “It's been a year since I was last here, but I think so.”

He flicked his blinker, slowed, and turned left just past a farmer's vegetable stand. The three-hour drive into the Smoky Mountains should have been a pleasant one, but they had already traveled for two days without a break. After planes from Paro to New Delhi, then to Paris and finally to Atlanta, where they endured an hour-long customs line at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, they'd located Grant's six-year-old Audi in the economy parking lot and begun their drive north.

The anticipation of finally showing the Issa texts to Professor Billingsly kept Grant alert despite the jet lag. His mentor had been shocked when Grant called from Bhutan with the texts in hand. Issa's story—the missing years in the life of Jesus—was now complete: his journey as a teen, the teachings that affected him, and his spiritual awakening. Grant's excitement was tempered, though, not just by his exhaustion but by the knowledge of the price of obtaining the texts: Kinley, Deepraj, Razi, and the others who died.

After listening to Grant recount the story, Billingsly had said that the department chair would have no choice but to reinstate Grant's status immediately. When Grant mentioned his desire not to repeat the fiasco of the
premature initial release of the Issa find, Billingsly offered to arrange a private meeting between Grant and Professor Singh of the department of Near Eastern studies in the privacy of his cabin in the mountains right away. Grant had visited his mentor's cabin several times before; each October when the turning leaves were at their most colorful, Billingsly hosted a weekend retreat for his grad students. Today, however, the golden fall hues were a month past their prime, exposing branches that were mostly bare.

They planned to spend two days in the mountains, and then they had to return to Atlanta to the FBI district office downtown. Although they had been debriefed by the U.S. consulate in Bhutan, the FBI wanted to interview them in person about Tim Huntley. Before they left Paro, Grant had learned from the consulate that Tim Huntley was in fact the man's real name. He lived in Birmingham, and he'd traveled to Bhutan on a chartered jet, but that was all the information they had. At least he and Kristin were out of danger. Grant took solace in the realization that the man would never hurt anyone else.

“How well do you know the professor coming with Billingsly?” Kristin asked.

“Professor Singh? I met with him a couple of times before I left for India. Sharp, no BS.”

“Can he really validate the texts?”

“Complete authentication will take at least a year, requiring carbon dating, analysis of the ink, and study of the language, but he can give us a gut check on their age and authorship.” Grant glanced in the rearview mirror at the black duffel bag on the rear seat. Inside the bag rested a plain pine box wrapped in airtight plastic wrap. “As an expert in Pali, he can also provide a more complete translation.”

“So if the texts check out, you take them to Emory with the credibility of both professors standing behind you.”

“And likewise, if Professor Singh believes them to be obvious fakes, we save ourselves a new round of humiliation. But my instinct tells me they're the real deal.”

After another twenty minutes navigating up and then down a serpentine mountain road, they passed a chocolate brown sign with yellow lettering indicating
they'd entered the Nantahala National Forest. A few miles later, Grant turned onto a dirt road. The road paralleled a noisy stream that flowed through the dense trees. After passing a lone log cabin, the road began to climb. A short distance later, a manicured gravel driveway peeled off to the right.

“That's Billingsly's.” He pointed.

“Where does the dirt road go?”

“U.S. Forest Service property. Harold's parents were fortunate enough to snag one of the few lots completely surrounded by national forest.”

Rounding a bend in the drive, they approached the professor's cabin, perched on a grassy clearing. Constructed of native stacked stone and large timbers with a steep-pitched shingle roof, the house looked more like a ski lodge one might find in the Rockies than a cabin in the woods.

“Wait till you see the inside,” Grant said in answer to the astonishment on Kristin's face.

“On a professor's salary?”

“Family money.”

“That his car too?” She pointed to a shiny black sedan.

“Must belong to Professor Singh.”

Grant lifted the bag from the back seat. They'd carried the texts from Paro to this remote mountain getaway with the same care they would've given a newborn baby. Now they would see what the experts thought. Grant experienced a slight queasiness in his stomach. In his heart he believed the documents were authentic, but there were no guarantees.

Kinley. Deepraj. Razi
. Grant caught himself heading down the now familiar path of playing over the events that led him to this moment. He practiced a meditation technique he'd come to rely on to get him through these mental movies: noting the memories as they arose and the resulting emotions they caused. Then he inhaled deeply, released the breath, and refocused his attention. In this case, his focus was on the reverberating pitch of the iron knocker that Kristin banged on the tall mahogany door. He relaxed.

“Grant, Kristin!” Billingsly exclaimed upon opening the door. “We're so excited you made it back safely.” Then he frowned. “I'm still horrified by your story.”

“You haven't heard the half of it.” Grant gave his mentor a warm hug. “We'll fill you in over dinner.” He nodded to the car. “Professor Singh?”

“We're waiting for you in the keeping room.”

Billingsly led them down a hallway of wide-planked heart-of-pine floors, past a kitchen of old-world cabinets and modern stainless-steel appliances, and into a room that took Grant's breath away every time he saw it. Soaring above the pine floors, heavy cypress beams supported a twenty-five-foot vaulted ceiling. To Grant's left, a stone fireplace large enough for him to stand in took up the entire end of the room, but it was the view from the floor-toceiling glass windows along the length of the wall in front of him that left him speechless each time he saw it. The unobstructed vista of the multiple peaks and layers of the Smoky Mountains reminded him of the Himalayas surrounding the valleys of Bhutan. Taking in the wisps of fog swirling around the distant mountains, he thought of Kinley.

So engrossed was he in the juxtaposition of the memory of his teacher with the mist-covered ridges before him now that he didn't notice the silver-haired man rising from a worn leather club chair on the right side of the room. Kristin's sharp intake of breath returned his attention to the room. The sight of the man in the tailored suit caused Grant to gasp as well.

“Reverend Brady?” Kristin sputtered.

“T
AKE A SEAT. ”Reverend Brady waved a hand to the coffee-colored, upholstered sofa.

“Harold! How could you?” Grant's face flushed a deep crimson. “You brought
him
here?”

“I ... it's very complicated. I think if we can explain to you the problems with these texts, you will come to agree with us.”

“Explain!” Grant shouted. “You know the Issa texts are one of the most important biblical finds ever.” The calm anticipation of seeing his mentor had vanished. He felt the anger boiling inside him. He didn't even try to cool it.

“Look”—the professor's voice quivered—“why don't we sit here and discuss this, before we draw any conclusions.”

Watching Billingsly lick his lips and fidget with his hands, Grant replayed the events of the past month in his mind, starting from their first visit with the professor in his Emory office. The extent to which he'd been betrayed by his mentor struck him like a blow to the gut. He placed the bag on the coffee table and collapsed onto the sofa.

Kristin must have made the same connection. She sat next to Grant and said, “You betrayed us from the beginning. Didn't you,
Professor
Billingsly?” The word
professor
came out of her mouth more as an anathema than as a professional title. “The premature release of the Issa texts Grant emailed to you was no accident.” She jabbed a finger in his direction. “And how else in the debate could Brady have known about Grant's academic past?”

“How could I have been so naïve?” Grant ran his fingers through his hair.

Casting his eyes to the floor, Billingsly mumbled, “I'm so sorry.”

“Oh come on, Harold.” Brady settled his frame into the armchair across the coffee table from the sofa where Grant and Kristin sat. “You understood the dangers of these texts, the damage they could do to the faith of millions of people around the world. We can't have the Savior of the world, the one true path to God, fumbling around in India, finding himself through other inferior religions. Believing such a thing devalues Jesus, removes his unique divinity. It destroys our religion. When you and Jennings first spoke about this heresy, you agreed that the documents were not authentic and should be left alone.” A Cheshire cat grin spread across his face. “I wouldn't have expected anything different from my ghostwriter.”

“Ghostwriter?” Grant's jaw dropped. “You wrote
Why Is God So Angry?
”

“And he's working on the sequel as we speak,” Brady said, while Billingsly studied the floor. “He's becoming a very wealthy man. After all, the costs of keeping up this lifestyle”—Brady gestured to the room around them—“are quite high, especially since the money he inherited ran out.”

Grant glared at his mentor. “You sold me out for money?”

“It's not like that,” Billingsly pleaded. “I wrote the book before you even left on your first trip to India. You, better than anyone, know how I was screwed over for the dean's position at Emory. After all the years of hard work, all the papers I published in obscure academic journals, all the departmental politics I endured, I deserved that job!”

“But you wrote a book playing on the fears of the country by misinterpreting the Book of Revelation—a book written in reaction to the Roman destruction of the Temple in seventy AD and the harsh suppression of the Jewish revolt. You know that Revelation was never meant to be a prediction of events two thousand years later.”