Crucified (29 page)

Rommel knew the answer.

As a battlefield commander, he could read a map.

But before the Desert Fox could speak, the art historian asked a follow-up question.

"The Aramaic script on the map refers to a confession and 'the means of the crime.' The map was drawn to show where these things were buried at Haceldama. Did you also recover those relics from the pot that was cracked open in Tobruk?"

+ + +

From his waterproof carrying case, Rommel removed a second papyrus sheet he'd pressed under glass. As the art historian translated the document aloud, his brow furrowed more deeply with every line. Another sizzle of lightning invaded the besieged room, and in that flash, the antiquarian seemed to transmogrify into Mephistopheles. Rommel could be Faust, here to sell his soul.

"If the relics were removed from Judas's grave at Haceldama, how did they get from the outskirts of Jerusalem to Tobruk?" asked the field marshal.

"Neither document says, but I'll hazard a guess. You fought in the easternmost province of Libya, next to the Egyptian border. The name of that region is Cyrenaica, the same name it had in biblical times. Colonized by the Greeks roughly six hundred years before Christ, it was usurped by Alexander the Great in 331 B.C. Later, about 100 B.C., Cyrenaica became a province of the Roman Empire."

He produced a map of the Mediterranean Sea.

"If you traveled west from the Holy Land along the Mediterranean coast of North Africa in biblical times, you would pass through Alexandria, at the mouth of the Nile, then Tobruk, a Roman fortress guarding the empire's frontier, before reaching Cyrene, the capital of Cyrenaica, on the bulge that juts north toward Greece. To escape from persecution in Jerusalem, Christians and Jews fled west along the coastal caravan route."

"To Tobruk?"

"The best port. They carried with them anything of value to their religion, or someone else's religion, if it would bring money. Perhaps that's what happened with your Judas relics.

They would have been of value to both Christians and Jews."

"How'd they end up in the wall?"

"The wall probably served as a safe. Perhaps the grave robber hid the relics there and then was killed, his secret dying with him. The influx of exiled Jews certainly fueled anti-Semitism in Cyrenaica. In 115 A.D., those Jews rebelled under a leader named Lukuas, a self-proclaimed messiah. Tens of thousands of people died when Trajan suppressed the uprising with brutal force."

"Including the grave robber?"

"Is that not historically convincing?"

"It works," said Rommel.

"And then the relics stayed hidden in the wall until you bombed it," concluded the art historian. "Do you have them?"

Rommel watched the man's face as he pulled the Judas relics out of his case. There was no need for discussion.

The artifacts spoke for themselves. The antiquarian shivered as he took them in his outstretched hands.

"Are you aware that what you have here is the Holy Grail?" he asked. "As one father to another, may I ask a favor? My sick child is dying. The doctors offer no hope. May I take the Holy Grail upstairs and touch my son with it?"

Rommel agreed, and followed the desperate man up to the room where his doomed boy sat lashed to an armchair.

The feverish lad mumbled a childish mantra as if the words were all that kept him clinging to life.

"Itchy and a burny and a sting!"

The room reeked of vomit.

The boy's skin was bleeding where his fingernails had once clawed deep into his flesh.

"Christ, cure my son," his father prayed, then he touched the boy with the Holy Grail.

Once back downstairs, the art historian offered Rommel a drink. From a sideboard, he poured them glasses of kirsch.

The schnapps burned on its way down.

"The Judas puzzle," Rommel said. "You asked if I could solve it. The question you posed was: What makes the papyrus map from Tobruk a biblical earthshaker? The answer lies in what is drawn on the map. A treasure map is of no use unless it contains the
contemporary
features of the landscape.

So whoever sketched the map of the city of Jerusalem did so
before
the Romans destroyed both the Second Temple and the Second Wall during the Jewish War in 70 A.D. The map, however, doesn't show the Third Wall, which was built between 41 and 44 A.D., so the sketch
predates
that decade. That means the map was drawn sometime between the crucifixion of Christ, in 33 A.D., and the raising of the Third Wall, about ten years later. Since the script on the map refers
specifically
to the confession and the relics found with it, those artifacts must date from that time, too. The most conservative theologians say the gospels of the New Testament were written no earlier than 50 A.D., so the Judas relics
precede
the Bible by a decade or more. The earlier the record, the closer it is to the truth. So this confession of Judas is the best explanation we have of
why
Christ was crucified. What's more, since Haceldama is named by both Matthew and Luke as the place where Judas was buried, that
independently
proves this is the Holy Grail."

The historian raised his glass.

"Well put," he replied. "But if I were you, I'd keep the pedigree of the Holy Grail to myself. These are dangerous times.

With the German army occupying Rome and the Allies storming in fast, now is not the time to mention these relics to the pope.

But soon the war will be over, Christians will thank God, and I will convince the Vatican to make you a very rich man in exchange for a gift of the Holy Grail."

+ + +

"Stop," ordered General Burgdorf.

The SS driver brought the car to a halt. They'd traveled no more than a few hundred yards from Rommel's Herrlingen home, just up the hill and around the bend from sight. The stopped car jerked the field marshal out of his memory and back into the here and now. Burgdorf motioned for General Maisel and the driver to get out and stroll up the road. The car was parked in an open space on the edge of a wood. Rommel caught sight of a few Gestapo men from Berlin, no doubt with orders to shoot him dead and storm the house if he bolted.

So this was it.

Burgdorf offered him the poison.

"Three seconds," he said, "and it will be over."

Rommel took the vial. He held his own death in his hand.

For a moment, he envisioned Christ hanging on the cross, the crown of thorns on his head. The U-boat bearing the Judas relics had vanished somewhere between Hamburg and Scotland's Firth of Forth. No doubt, the relics were now at the bottom of the sea, lost wherever the sub had come to rest.

In the massive purge that followed the failed plot to kill Hitler, all those who knew that the Judas relics were on their way to Britain in the
Black Devil
died at the end of wire nooses in the torture cells under Gestapo headquarters. To thwart spies and prevent leaks, Rommel had decided that not even Churchill would be made privy to the smuggling route. He'd said nothing about the botched plan for fear the Gestapo would exact revenge on his family.

Negotiating peace was dead.

Let sleeping dogs l
ie
.

So now he crushed the vial between his teeth to release the poison, knowing that with him would die the secret of the Judas relics, and that he was one of a handful of people in all of history to have held the Holy Grail.

Seconds later, Hitler's Judas was dead.

ENGLAND, NOW

"Bloody hell!"

Terror assaulted his mind as Wyatt peered through the Judas window in the door of the clifftop cottage. There was no entrance hall, just a big open space with rooms off it. Beyond the threshold to the bedroom, a woman lay spread-eagled on a four-poster bed. A pool of blood spread fingers across the floor toward the door. This side of the threshold, a man had spilled his guts on the hardwood, in a pile that looked like a nest of purple snakes. Against the grisly backdrop, Wyatt spied a gore-spattered ghost approaching the Judas window.

"Lenny?" he gasped.

The dead man's head was no longer caved in by a hammer, nor was his body bloated from the German river. Instead, the phantom was alive and well, and aiming a silencer-equipped gun between Wyatt's wide-eyed pupils.

On instinct, the target ducked and flung his hands up to protect his face from flying glass. The Judas window shattered as Wyatt's fingers splayed, flipping his calling card away from his grasp.

There was no time to retrieve it.

Wyatt turned and ran.

Never had he been so thankful for his incarceration at that boarding school. "A sound mind in a sound body," the Nose used to say as he ordered the boys to drop to their knees on the soccer field and bow—under threat of the Paddle—in the direction of his outstretched arm.

"Do you know what you're bowing to, boys?"

"To Mecca?" Wyatt answered.

"No. To
my
house. And don't you forget it."

That was back in feudal times, before the school did away with corporal punishment. At the start of the year, the Nose laid down the punishment for any infraction of his "No Talking without Permission" rule: four of the best on the backside of every lad in class—the first on entering the gym, the second on going into the showers, the third on coming out with bums wet, and the final one as they exited for the next class.

After one transgression, yakking ceased, and there was no need for the Nose to re-enforce the rule.

"Rook?"

"Yes, sir."

"What will your sport be?"

"Track, sir."

"You'd better run like the wind. And don't you forget it."

So run he had. Faster, and faster, and
faster!
Good at long distances for the runner's high. And the best in school at the hundred-yard dash for the adrenaline rush.

"Rook?"

"Yes, sir."

"It's time for hurdling. I want those long legs limbered up for next week's track ribbon. Give me ten straddles off the springboard and over the wooden horse."

That hurt. It was like doing the splits.

"Rook?"

"Yes, sir."

"This time, knees to chin. I want those long legs tight for the track ribbon. Give me ten through the hoops of your arms, off the board, palms on the horse."

"Sir?"

"What?"

"My legs are too long for that."

"Nonsense."

"Show him, sir." Jack came to the rescue.

"Yes, sir," the rest of the class piped in. "We all need to see how it's done."

The Nose was not a man to walk away from a challenge.

Not if his Latin machismo was on the line.

"Lead from the front, sir," Jack encouraged.

The Nose was sporting his usual gym attire: sneakers; gray slacks with knife-sharp creases; tight, white T-shirt flaunting his buff pecs; the ever-present whistle around his neck.

He hit the board, planted his palms, tucked up his knees, and caught his toes on the underside of the wooden horse. In a flail of arms and legs, with change flying out of his pockets, he took the upper half of the horse with him as he crashed to the mat on the other side.

"Not a word!" he shouted before crawling from the wreckage.

"Stay in line!" he ordered as he slammed the halves of the wooden horse back together.

Then he took a running start and hit the springboard as hard as he could, launching himself so high in the air that his palms missed the horse by a mile, and an ambulance had to be called to cart him away with a broken l
eg.

Well, thank God for the Nose, for the moment the adrenaline hit Wyatt's heart, he bolted from the cottage door just as he had been trained to do under threat of the Paddle.

The stone walls along both sides of the yard rose too high for him to hurdle. The stretch beyond was springy turf just waiting to twist an ankle. The odds favored a jerky side-to-side run down the shooting gallery. But at the end, he'd have to choose to go right or left along the cliff path, and that would make him an easy target for miles in either direction.

O r . . .

Wyatt didn't hear the shot, but he saw the effect. A mist of blood spewed forth from his arm.

No man is an island . . .

And he couldn't afford to be on this one.

If a clod be washed away by the sea . . .

That was his only chance.

Each man's death diminishes me ...

Especially if it's your own.

Send not to know for whom the bell tolls . . .

A leg shot would cripple him.

It tolls for thee.

So that made up his mind.

Run, Wyatt.
Run!

He made a mad dash for the beckoning edge of the crumbling cliff, then swapped dry land for thin air and an eighty-foot drop to the carnivorous sea.

"Rook?"

"Yes, sir."

"What will your sport be?"

As he took this leap of empty faith, he wished he'd said,

"Diving."

On the way down, he thought of Sweaty's story of the rear gunner who fell eighteen thousand feet without a parachute into the cushioned arms of some fir trees.