F Paul Wilson - Novel 03 (17 page)

           
 
Dan squatted behind her and gently patted her
buttocks. "Right behind you."

           
 
Carrie began to crawl through, then stopped,
freezing like a deer who's heard a twig break, then quickly scrambled the rest
of the way through.

           
 
"Oh, Dan," he heard her say in a
hoarse, quavering voice just above a whisper. "Oh-Dan-oh-Dan-oh-Dan-oh-
Dan!"

           
 
He belly-crawled through as fast as his elbows
and knees could propel him and bumped his head on the ceiling as he regained
his feet on the other side.

           
 
But he instantly forgot the pain when he saw
what lay in the wavering beam of Carrie's flashlight.

           
 
A woman.

           
 
An elderly woman lying supine in an oblong
niche in the wall of the chamber.

           
 
"It's . . ." Carrie's voice choked
off and she cleared her throat. "It's her, Dan. It's really her."

           
 
"Well, it's somebody."

           
 
A jumble of emotions tumbled through Dan. He
was numb, he was exhausted, and he was angry. He'd been preparing himself to
comfort Carrie when she discovered she'd been played for a fool. Entering the
cave was supposed to be the last step in this trek. Now he had one more thing
to explain.

           
 
The scroll, the careful and clever
descriptions of this area of the Wilderness were one thing, but this was going
too far. This was . . .
ghoulish
was
the most appropriate word that came to mind.

           
 
"Look at her, Dan," Carrie said.
"It's
her."

           
 
Dan was doing just that. The woman's robe was
blue, its cowl up and around her head; short, medium build, with thick strands
of gray hair poking out from under the cowl. Her wrinkled skin had a sallow,
almost waxy look to it. Her eyes and lips were closed, her cheeks slightly
sunken, her nose generous without being large. Even in the wavering light of
the flash beams, she appeared to be a handsome, elderly woman who might have
been beautiful in her youth. She looked so peaceful lying there. He noticed her
hands were folded between her breasts. Something about those hands . . .

           
 
"Look at her fingernails," Carrie
said, her voice hushed like someone whispering during Benediction. Obviously
she shared his feeling that they were trespassing. 'They're so long."

           
 
"I hear they continue to grow . . . the
nails and the hair . . . after you're dead."

           
 
Carrie stepped closer but Dan gripped her arm
and held her back.

           
 
"Don't. It might be booby-trapped."

           
 
Carrie shook off his hand and whirled to face
him. He couldn't see her face but the anger in her whisper told him all he
needed to know about her expression.

           
 
"Stop it, Dan! Haven't you gone far
enough with this Doubting Thomas act?"

           
 
"It's not an act, and I wish there was
more light."

           
 
"So do it, but there isn't. I wish we'd
brought some sort of lantern but we didn't. This is all we've got."

           
 
"All right," he said. "But be
careful."

           
 
Dan fought a sick, anxious dread that coiled
through his gut as he watched her approach the body. And it
was
a body. Had to be. Too much detail
for it to be anything other than the real thing.

           
 
But whose body? What sort of mind would go to
such elaborate extremes to pull off a hoax. A sicko mind like that would be
capable of anything, even a booby trap.

           
 
Of course, there was the possibility that
these actually were the earthly remains of the mother of Jesus Christ.

           
 
Dan wanted to believe that. He dearly would
have loved to believe that. And probably would be fervently believing that
right now if not for the fact that the scroll that had led them here had been
proven beyond a doubt to have been written two years ago.

           
 
So if this wasn't the Virgin Mary, who was
she? And who had hidden her here?

           
 
Carrie was standing over her now, staring down
at the woman's lifeless face.

           
 
"Dan?" she said. "Do you notice
something strange about her?"

           
 
"Besides her fingernails?"

           
 
"There's no dust on her. There's dust
layered everywhere, but not a speck of it on her."

           
 
Dan stepped closer and sniffed. No odor. And
Carrie was right about the dust: not a speck. He smiled. The forger had finally
made a mistake.

           
 
"Doesn't that indicate to you that she
was placed here recently?"

           
 
"No. It indicates to me that dirt—and
dust is dirt—has no place on the Mother of God."

           
 
As he watched, Carrie sank to her knees, made
the sign of the cross, and bowed her head in prayer with the flashlight clasped
between her hands.

           
 
This isn't real, Dan thought. All we need is a
ray of light from the ceiling and a hallelujah chorus from the Mormon
Tabernacle Choir to make this a Cecil B. DeMille epic. This can't be happening.
Not to me. Not to Carrie. We're two sane people.

           
 
Impulsively, gingerly, he reached out and
touched the woman's cheek. The wrinkled flesh didn't give. Not hard like stone
or wood or plastic. More like wax. Cool and smooth . . . like wax. But it wasn't
wax, at least not like any wax Dan had ever seen.

           
 
He heard a sob and snatched his hand away. . .
but the sound had come from Carrie. He flashed his beam toward her face. Tears
glistened on her cheeks. He crouched beside her.

           
"Carrie, what's wrong?"

           
 
"I don't know. I feel so strange. All
this time I thought I believed, and I prayed to her, and I asked her to help
me, to intercede for me, but now I get the feeling that all that time I didn't
believe. Not really. And now here she is in front of me, not two feet away, and
1 don't know what I feel or what I think." She looked up at him. "I
don't have to believe anymore, do I, Dan? I
know.
I don't have to believe, and that feels so strange."

           
 
One thing Dan knew was that he didn't believe
this was the Virgin Mary. But it was somebody. He played his flashlight beam
over her body.

           
 
Lady,
who are you?

           
 
Another thing he knew was that Carrie was
heading for some sort of breakdown. She was teetering on the edge now. He had
to get her out of here before she went over. But how?

           
 
"What do we do now?" he said,
straightening up.

           
 
He felt her grip his arm as she rose to her
feet beside him.

           
 
"What do you mean?"

           
 
"I mean we've found her . . .or someone .
. .or something. Now what do we do?"

           
 
"We protect her, Dan."

           
 
"And how do we do that?"

           
 
Carrie's voice was very calm, almost matter of
fact. "We take her back with us."

           
Tel Aviv

           
 
"What's the matter, baby?" Devorah
said from behind him, casually raking her sharp nails down the center of his
back.

           
 
Kesev sat on the edge of the bed in Devorah's
apartment. They always wound up at Devorah's place, never his. They both
preferred it that way. Kesev because he never allowed anyone in his apartment,
and Devorah because when she was home she had access to her . . . props.

           
He'd met her last year. An El Al
stewardess. She could have been Irish with her billowing red hair, pale
freckled skin, and blue eyes, but she was pure Israeli. Young—
mid-twenties—with such an innocent, girlish face, almost childlike. But Devorah
was a cruel, mischievous child who liked to play rough. And when it came to
rough she preferred to give rather than receive. Which was fine with Kesev.

           
 
Their little arrangement had lasted longer
than any other in recent memory. Probably because her job took her away so
much, she'd yet to grow tired of his black moods and long silences. And
probably because Devorah had been unable to find a way to really hurt him.
Kesev absorbed whatever she could dish out. She considered him a challenge, her
perfect whipping boy.

           
 
So Devorah seemed happy with him, while he was
. . . what? Happy? Satisfied? Content?

           
Hardly. He couldn't remember the
last time he'd felt something approaching any of those.

           
The situation was . . . tolerable.
Just barely tolerable. Which was more than he'd learned to hope for.

           
 
"You weren't really into it
tonight," she said.

           
 
"Sorry. I . . . I'm distracted."

           
 
"You're always distracted. Tonight you're
barely here."

           
 
Probably true. A vague uneasiness had stalked
him all day, disturbing his concentration at the Shin Bet office, stealing his
appetite, and finally settling on him like a shroud late this afternoon.

           
More than uneasiness now. A feeling
of impending doom.

           
 
Could it have something to do with the
Resting Place
? He followed the wire services meticulously
and there'd been no word of a new
Dead Sea
scroll or startling revelations regarding the Mother of Christ. Not even a
ripple.

           
 
But that was hardly proof that all was well,
that all was safe and secure.

           
 
"I'm afraid I'm going to have to cancel
our date for tomorrow," he said, turning to face her.

           
 
She lay sprawled among the sheets, her
generous breasts and their pink nipples exposed. Even her breasts were
freckled. But she didn't lay still long. She levered up and slapped him across the
face.

           
 
"I don't like broken promises!" she
hissed between clenched teeth.

           
 
The blow stung but Kesev didn't flinch. Nor
was he angry. One deserved whatever one got when a promise was betrayed.

           
 
"There is a hierarchy of promises,"
he said softly. "Some promises take precedence over others."

           
 
"And this promise," she said.
"Is this what distracts you?"

           
 
"Yes."

           
 
"Does it involve another woman?"

           
 
"Not at all."
At least not in the sense you mean.

           
 
"Good." She smiled as she clicked a
handcuff over his right wrist. "Come. Let Devorah see if she can make you
forget all your mysterious distractions."

The Judean Wilderness

           
 
It had taken some heavy persuasion, but Dan
managed to convince Carrie to leave the cave so they could talk outside. . . in
the light . . . in the air . . . away from that . . . thing.

           
 
He felt instantly better outside. It had
seemed like night in there. Even though the entire
tav
rock was in shadow now, he squinted in the relative brightness.

           
 
And he was still staggering from Carrie's
words. He'd never thought they'd find anything on this trip, so he'd never even
dreamed that Carrie might want to ...

           
 
"Take her back? To the
U.S.
? Are you serious?"

           
 
"We have to," she said. "If we
don't, other people might decipher that other scroll you mentioned and find
her. The wrong kind of people. People who'd . . . misuse her."

           
 
"Then why don't we just move her from
here and bury her where no one will find her?"

           
 
She wheeled on him. "This is the Mother
of
God,
Dan! You don't just stick her
in the dirt!"

           
 
"All right, all right." He could see
she wasn't rational on this. "But even if we could get her back home—and
believe me, that's a big
if
—what'll
we do with her? Give her to a museum? To the
Vatican
?"

           
 
"Oh, no. Oh, Lord, no," she said,
vigorously shaking her head. "We've got to keep her secret. She was hidden
away for a reason. We have to respect that. Imagine if the wrong religion got
hold of her, or some sort of satanic cult. Think how they might desecrate her.
Now that we've found her, we have a very clear duty: We have to take her back
with us and hide her where no one else can find her."

           
 
"You're not thinking, Carrie. We'll never
get her past customs."

           
 
"There's got to be a way. Your friend Hal
says people are smuggling archeological artifacts out of the
Mideast
all the time. Call him. He can tell you
how."

           
 
"Call Hal? Sure. Hand me the phone."

           
 
"This is not a joking matter, Dan."

           
 
He saw her tight features and the look in her
eyes and realized how serious she was. But she wasn't thinking straight.
Finding that strange body in there, whoever it was, had jumbled up her rational
processes. He had to get her away from here, get her calmed down so she could
get some perspective on this whole situation. . . .

           
 
And calling Hal might be just the excuse he
needed.

           
 
"All right. We'll call Hal and see what
he says."

           
 
Her expression relaxed. "You mean
that?"

           
 
"Of course. We'll drive back to the
highway, maybe go to En Gedi . . ." He glanced at his watch. "It's
seven hours earlier in
New York
so we can still catch him in his office. And we'll ask his
advice."

           
 
"You go," she said. "I'm
staying here."

           
 
"No way, Carrie," he said. "No
way I'm leaving you sitting up here at night in the middle of nowhere."

           
 
"I'll be all right. Now that I've found
her, you can't expect me to leave her."

           
 
"If she is who you think she is, she's
been fine here for two thousand years. One more night isn't going to
matter."

           
 
"I'm staying," she said.

           
 
Dan had humored her as far as he could. He
wasn't backing down on this point.

           
 
"Here's the deal, Carrie," he said,
fighting to keep from shouting. "Either we go down to En Gedi together or
we stay up here and starve together. But under no circumstances am I leaving
you alone. So it's up to you. You decide. And make it quick. Because when night
falls, we're stuck here—I won't be able to find my way back to the highway in
the dark."

           
 
They went round and round until she finally
agreed to accompany him to En Gedi in return for a promise to come straight
back to the
tav
at first light.

           
 
The downhill trip going was shorter by hours
than the uphill trip coming, but it seemed much longer. Carrie hardly spoke a
word the whole way.

           
En Gedi

           
 
They lay side by side in their double bed in
the local guesthouse. Dan's arms and legs were leaden with fatigue as he
floated in a fog of exhaustion. Here they were, in bed together in one of the
world's most ancient resorts, a green oasis of grasses, vineyards, palm trees,
and even a waterfall in the midst of the barren wastelands. A beauty spot, a
lowers' rendezvous, mentioned even in the ancient
Song of Solomon,
and all he could think of was sleep.

           
 
Not that Carrie would have been receptive to
any romantic advances anyway. She'd seemed more than a bit aloof since they'd
left the
tav.

           
 
That and the knowledge that they'd be
returning to the Wilderness tomorrow only heightened Dan's fatigue.

           
 
Hal had been no help. As soon as they had
arrived in En Gedi, Dan called him and explained that they needed a way to get
a five-foot-high artifact out of the country.

           
 
"Quietly, if you know what I mean."

           
 
Hal had known exactly what he meant and gave
him a name and a telephone number in Tel Aviv. He'd said he was very interested
and wanted to see this artifact when it reached the states. Dan had thanked him
and hung up.

           
 
Yeah. Thanks a lot, Hal.

           
 
Nothing was working out the way he'd hoped.
He'd expected Hal to tell him to forget it—no way to get something that size
past the inspectors. Instead of no way, it was no problem.

           
 
Damn!

           
 
Carrie had remained in a sort of semidream
state. What little conversation she'd initiated had been whispers of "Can
you believe it? Can you believe we've actually found her?" as they stocked
up on twine, blankets, work gloves, a pry bar, a lantern, and hundreds of feet
of rope.

           
And now, beside him in bed, after a
long silence . . .

           
 
"I've been thinking . . ."

           
 
"Great," Dan said, dragging himself
back from the borderlands of sleep. "Does that mean you're giving up this
ca-ca idea of bringing that corpse home?"

           
 
"Please don't refer to her so coarsely.
Please?"

           
 
"Okay. Just for your sake. Not because I
believe it."

           
 
"Thank you. Now tell me: Who do you think
wrote the scroll?"

           
 
"A clever, phony bastard," Dan said.

           
 
"All right," she said with
exaggerated patience. "Let's humor Sister Carrie and assume that the
scroll is genuine. Who wrote it?"

           
 
"We've been over this already. A
Pharisee. An educated man."