The Resurrection File (57 page)

“Just like a jigsaw puzzle on Aunt Georgia's card table!” Will exclaimed.

But Will suddenly realized that he had absolutely no idea what the two lines of Greek writing on this new fragment actually said.

He whirled around to Angus MacCameron.

Will felt as if the wind had been knocked out of his stomach.

MacCameron had slumped over to one side of the chair. His face, which was drained of all color, was grimaced in pain, and his right hand was balled up in a fist, held tight against his chest. Will rushed over.

MacCameron was drenched in sweat, and his skin was cold and clammy. Will heard him groaning—a low, quiet groan of intense suffering.

Will dashed to the door. He saw the security guard strolling down the hall toward him. “Get an ambulance! Now!” Will screamed out. “I think he's having a heart attack!”

67

I
N THE HOSPITAL
, W
ILL STOOD AT THE TELEPHONE
with the receiver at his ear. He dreaded making this phone call to Fiona.

She answered on the second ring. Will started explaining everything. He shared with her that her father had suffered a serious heart attack. He blamed himself—Angus had not been looking good the whole trip. He'd seemed tired and sick. Short of breath. Will knew the symptoms. His own father had died of a heart attack. Why in the world hadn't he been able to figure it out before it was too late for Angus MacCameron?

Will gave Fiona the name and location of the hospital, the necessary telephone numbers, and the name of the attending cardiologist. The doctor had found a blockage in one of the left coronary arteries. They had to stabilize his condition, and then would administer drugs in an attempt to dissolve the clot. If that didn't work, Angus would have to undergo surgery.

Fiona listened quietly, intensely, then quickly asked a series of questions. Was he expected to survive? She would immediately fly over to London and be with him. Was he conscious? Was he in great pain? Fiona said that she knew someone from her church who could stay in the house with her mother while she attended her father in England.

“You said that the heart attack happened just as you found the 7QC fragment?”

“Yes. Your father was right about finding it—he's been right about a lot of things. I didn't think we could locate it.”

“Be careful with that little piece of papyrus. You have to continue the case next week—even though you will have to do it without him.”

“I don't know how I can defend his case without his being there—without his testimony.”

“You have to,” Fiona pleaded. “Da knew what was at stake in this case. He believed in the cause he was fighting for. And he believed in you.”

“Fiona, I'll do whatever I can,” Will said.

“There is one more thing I know he would want you to do.”

“Anything.”

“You must still go to Jerusalem tomorrow. To be an eyewitness to whatever Reichstad finds in his excavation.”

“I can't do that—I can't leave him alone,” Will said, feeling torn.

“Please. Do this for my da. This is what he wants. Please do this. This is what he lived for—to vindicate the truth. You have to be his eyes and his ears at that wall in Jerusalem while Reichstad is digging. The Lord will take care of my father…”

There was a pause as Fiona's voice cracked and she began crying.

“The Lord will take care of him until I get there. I'm going to leave right now. I may be able to catch a plane out of D.C. within a few hours. But you
have
to be in Jerusalem for my father tomorrow. Now please tell my da I love him. Tell him I love him so very much. And that I will see him as soon as I can—within twenty-four hours. And Will…”

“Yes?”

“Please take care of yourself. I don't want anything to happen to you…” Fiona's voice cracked again, as they said goodbye to each other.

When Will was finally allowed into his room, Angus had IV tubes in both arms, as well as tubes in both nostrils. A heart monitor beeped next to him. The nurse told Will he could only have five minutes.

Will took Angus MacCameron's hand and squeezed it slightly to let him know that he was not alone.

MacCameron's eyelids fluttered, and he opened his eyes. After he had focused, the corner of his mouth rose slightly in a smile. Then he parted his lips to say something.

“Don't try to talk, Angus. Just listen. I spoke to Fiona. She's flying over to London immediately. She says to tell you she loves you very much.”

“You…found…it,” MacCameron said in a voice that was barely audible.

Will pulled the baggie with 7QC out of his pocket and held it up.

“No.
You
found it. You found it, Angus, with your stubborn faith.”

MacCameron blinked a few times. Then he said something that Will could not hear. Will bent down close to listen.

“Bible…”

“Bible?” Will asked. Then he noticed the little pocket New Testament on the nightstand next to him. He picked it up and opened it to the place where the ribbon bookmark was placed. It was at chapter eight of the book of Romans.

“Read…thirty-eight…”

Will ran his finger down the page until it rested on verse thirty-eight. Then he read it out loud:

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus the Lord.

Then Angus MacCameron whispered something barely perceptible. But Will understood it perfectly.

“I'm ready for the Lord…are you?”

Will was still struggling for a response when the nurse came in and ushered him out of the room.

He grabbed a cup of coffee from the hospital cafeteria, and then found a phone. After dialing Tiny Heftland's number at his hotel in Jerusalem, Will got the hotel voice mail. He left a message for Tiny's room. He told him about Angus MacCameron, and their amazing discovery of what he decided, on the spur of the moment, to code-name the “laundry ticket.” Will ended the message by explaining his plans to fly to Jerusalem the next day.

Rather than go directly to his hotel room, Will decided to wait for a while in the hospital lobby, just in case there was any change with Angus. He put his coffee down beside his chair and started to leaf through a magazine. It occurred to him that he ought to somehow copy the fragment.

Will's head jerked suddenly, and he realized he had been falling asleep. He rubbed his eyes. A few family members of patients were at the other side of the lobby. A man operating a floor-polishing machine was working down the hallway.

Deciding to try Tiny again, Will went over to the pay phone. This time Tiny answered.

“Hey—Will, my man! Wow. This is really bad news about MacCameron. Is he going to make it?”

“I hope so. You know that I'm flying into Israel tomorrow.”

“Yeah. I'm sorry I'm going to miss you. We've got one last lead—some guy in Bethlehem who says that if we're willing to play a couple rounds of ‘pitch the American greenback,' he will locate our Bedouin friend for us. I'm leaving for Bethlehem right away.

“Look, I'm glad you're coming here to Jerusalem. There's some unbelievably heavy stuff coming down.”

“Like what? Reichstad?”

“Bingo. Reichstad's put up this huge astrodome tent thing around the whole site. Guys wearing spacesuit-looking things are going in and out of the tent with all kinds of high-tech equipment. They've already done some excavation. And the local folks are really starting to rock and roll. I mean rock-throwing. Gun battles by the wall. Israeli troops and Palestinian police shooting at each other. This is a major war zone here, buddy. The Mayor of Jerusalem is talking about shutting down the whole city—complete curfew—martial law. This is really getting berserk. I hope you can get into the city.”

“Reichstad has already excavated?”

“Oh yeah. And man, do I have some news for you. Not good for your client's case, I guess.”

“What did they find?”

“A tomb.”

“Say again? I couldn't quite hear you. Did you say a tomb?”

“A tomb. Big time. The Israeli government, for some reason, is feeding me all this information about what Reichstad is doing over at the site. And the government folks are real anxious for you to get here. How they knew you were coming I can't tell you.”

“So they've located a tomb…”

“Yeah,” Tiny explained. “They locate the tomb with their gadgets. They start digging. They stop. They start again—I'm telling you, this whole thing is like Bible-times Mystery Theater—then they punch through with little remote cameras—you know the kind of really thin optical wires with a lighted video camera on the end? And they use their locator gadgets again. They detect something…”

“And what did they detect?” Will queried.

“Okay, right there, chief—right there you got a problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, they scan into the tomb…”

“Yeah? And what? What?”

“Will buddy, let me just say it this way…the tomb doesn't look empty.”

68

T
HERE WAS VERY LITTLE CHANCE OF
W
ILL
'
S
catching much sleep on the 747 jet as he flew to Israel. Not that he couldn't use it. Between the trip from the U.S. to England, and the time changes, and his vigil at the hospital, followed by a dash to the airport for another flight to the Middle East, he hadn't had a solid hour of sleep for almost two days. But he had his homework to do—a little “light reading” before stepping into the midst of a battle zone in the most geopolitically explosive, religiously charged hot spot on the planet.

Before heading to the London airport, he had dashed over to a large, all-night bookstore near Picadilly Circus to pick up a couple of books about the history of Jerusalem. He wanted to take in as much information as he could about the St. Stephen's Gate area along the wall of the Old City part of Jerusalem. He wasn't sure what he was going to do once he landed. And of course, there was always the possibility that, because of the riots and unrest caused by Reichstad's excavation, he wouldn't be able to get anywhere near that portion of the city.

On the other hand, if Will
could
get close to the dig, he wanted to know something about the area he would be looking at. He had pledged to be Angus MacCameron's “eyes and ears.” He was not going to break that promise.

In the waiting area of the airport in London Will had made a frantic call to Dr. Giovanni. It had suddenly dawned on him that he would need his main expert witness there in Jerusalem—right next to him—while he tried to monitor what Reichstad was doing. He left a message on her voice mail, but he had no idea whether she could—or would—drop everything to fly directly over to Israel, just to turn around and fly back less than two days later in order to be in court for the continuation of trial on Monday.

And then there was another reason he wanted Giovanni with him. Will was still carrying the little plastic bag containing 7QC in the pocket of his coat. MacCameron had been stricken with his heart attack before being able to interpret it. Despite schooling himself in the rudiments of Koine Greek for the trial, Will couldn't read it. Giovanni was his only hope. While in Jerusalem he wanted to transfer the fragment to her and get her evaluation.

As Will searched through the books he had picked up, he learned a great deal about the historical development of the Old City of Jerusalem, but only a few sketchy facts about the area at St. Stephen's Gate.

As Will had learned from MacCameron in one of their first meetings, the gate was the place where, just outside of the city proper, a Christian disciple named Stephen had been stoned to death for his bold proclamation of the gospel, not long after the crucifixion of Jesus.

But, as he read on, Will was bewildered at the maze of contradictions about this gate. He discovered that most historians had actually ascribed the place of Stephen's stoning not to St. Stephen's Gate, but to the
opposite
side of the Old City walls at a gate known in the modern era as the “Damascus Gate.”

However it seemed to Will that, because 7QB specifically referred to the “East Gate of Stephen,” then at least the mystery of which gate was the site of Stephen's stoning appeared to have been solved. After all, the writer of the fragment would certainly have been knowledgeable about a major event of his own time. So the gate at which Reichstad was digging, then, was
Stephen's Gate.

But that didn't solve the question of
whose
tomb it was that Reichstad had unearthed by following the clue in the 7QB fragment. Reichstad was undoubtedly still pursuing his mission to prove that the tomb was the burial site of Jesus.