The Resurrection File (60 page)

Will had looked again at the visage on the coin. He had been able to see the long, bearded face, and the eyes, but the features had been rubbed down to what was now only a trace, a faint shadow of a likeness.

“It's been worn down, of course, over a millennium-and-a-half. So, you'll have to fill in the rest of the features, imagine how Jesus appeared, on your own.”

After Will had reached back through the window to shake his hand again, Nathan had said, “Shalom,” and sped off.

Will's mind snapped back to the present as the door of Judge Kaye's chambers suddenly opened and Judge Kaye entered with his clerk.

Everyone in the room stood up. The judge placed the thick court file on the judicial bench in front of him.

“Any preliminaries before I call the jury back in for this morning's testimony?”

Will glanced over at the empty seat next to him, where Angus MacCameron should have been sitting. When he had arrived back to his apartment from Jerusalem, he had called Fiona at the hospital in London. But MacCameron had not gotten better. In fact, he had suffered a stroke in the hospital and was in and out of consciousness.

Judge Kaye noticed the absence of Will's client.

“Mr. Chambers, is your client going to be joining us?”

“Your honor, Reverend MacCameron is seriously ill.”

The judge paused for a second. Will was hoping that he would not press for any more information. If he did, Will would be required to disclose it.

“Well,” the judge said, “give him our best, and we hope he can join us as soon as possible. Any objections, Mr. Sherman, to the defendant not being in the courtroom?”

Sherman was more than pleased for the defense case to proceed in the absence of the defendant himself. Dr. Reichstad sat expressionless next to him.

Will stood up and addressed one more preliminary matter. “Your Honor, I have a matter of great importance. I wish to give notice of the discovery of the missing fragment—7QC—just a few days ago in the British Museum.”

Sherman leaped to his feet. Reichstad was standing next to him, trying to argue something in Sherman's ear.

“This is absolutely incredible, Your Honor!” Sherman exclaimed. “How can we possibly rebut this evidence after we have already rested our case?”

“Would you explain, Mr. Chambers, exactly how you came upon this 7QC fragment in the last few days?”

Will proceeded to explain in detail the search that he and MacCameron had conducted at the British Museum.

“What do you contend that this 7QC says? How does it affect the credibility of Dr. Reichstad's interpretation of 7QA?” Judge Kaye asked.

“It proves, conclusively, that what Reverend MacCameron said in his article about Dr. Reichstad was the truth, Your Honor. 7QC completely changes the meaning of the sentences in 7QA. I have a diagram here of what all three fragments say together, now that we have all the pieces.”

Sherman howled out an objection that the court should not even
see
, let alone
consider
admitting such prejudicial evidence.

Judge Kaye quickly dispatched Sherman's objection and told Will to put up the chart.

Will placed on the easel the blow-up of all three pieces joined together. He also put up his translation diagram, which read this way:

“Your Honor, we are prepared to show that all three fragments, when taken together, clearly refer, not to the burial of Jesus, but in fact to the burial of
Joseph of Arimathea,
a member of the religious ruling body called the Sanhedrin, and a secret follower of Jesus.”

Dr. Reichstad stood up and in a commanding voice declared, “This interpretation is clearly a hoax. Besides, Your Honor, I can clearly think of a way that this is really describing Jesus as the ‘honorable counselor' who was buried. So this changes nothing.”

“Oh, there may be a hoax, Your Honor,” Will countered, “but it does not lie with us. Dr. Giovanni is here to testify that the only reference in the Bible to an ‘honorable counselor,' is a reference to Joseph of Arimathea in the
Gospel of Mark, chapter fifteen, verse forty-three. Another translation of the two Greek words in 7QC for ‘honorable counselor' would be ‘prominent member of the council.' It would be an utter absurdity to contend that Jesus was a member of the same religious council that condemned him to death!”

Sherman again rose to his feet, arguing that if this evidence of 7QC was going to come into the case, then Dr. Reichstad should be able to introduce the evidence of the discovery of the corpse of Jesus in the tomb at Stephen's Gate over the weekend, exactly where 7QB said it was.

But Will was unflustered.

“Your Honor, Dr. Giovanni and I were present at that excavation. She was a witness to an inscription on a stone ossuary. That is a bone box the Jewish people would use a year or more after the initial burial. They would return and deposit the bones in that box for permanent burial.

“There was an ossuary in that tomb. And this is the inscription that was clearly written on its front, in both Aramaic and Greek:

Joseph of Arimathea

honorable counselor

and

disciple of the risen Lord Jesus

“Your Honor, this tomb by Stephen's Gate that Dr. Reichstad has excavated is the
second tomb
of Joseph of Arimathea, and clearly contains
his
corpse. The bone box proves that. And all the fragments, when read logically and together, show that. The
first tomb
of Joseph was the one that was used for the burial of Jesus, and it is empty.”

“We found proof of the crown of thorns next to the corpse!” Reichstad shot out.

“Of course,” Will replied. “Joseph of Arimathea took possession of the body of Jesus after the crucifixion and made all the burial arrangements. It is logical that he also came into possession of the crown of thorns. And his friends obviously buried it with Joseph when he died, in honor of his loyalty to Jesus.”

“This is exactly what I didn't want to happen,” the judge shot out. “I am not going to turn this courtroom into a theological or archaeological discussion of last week's news. By the way,” and with that the judge pulled out three newspapers and fanned them out for all to see, “three national newspapers all reported yesterday, on page one, the ‘discovery of the corpse of Jesus of Nazareth.' Now we are going to have to deal with the issue of that publicity possibly tainting the jury. But before I rule, I think I am going to
have to listen to Dr. Giovanni's testimony on all of these issues, in the exclusion of the jury.”

As Will looked out into the courtroom to summon Dr. Giovanni to the witness stand, he noticed Jack Hornby sitting attentively.

But now, Jack had moved forward to the front row of benches, right behind Will Chambers' defense table.

72

A
FTER
D
R
. G
IOVANNI'S TESTIMONY
, Judge Kaye took a ten-minute break to consider his rulings. Giovanni had conducted herself brilliantly. The judge had been impressed with her credentials and her candor. She had described her evaluation of Dr. Reichstad's faulty methodology in making conclusive findings on 7QA under circumstances where it was, or should have been, clear to him that crucial parts of the fragment had recently been torn away. She also had showed how the configuration of the sentences in 7QA alone, while it made grammatical sense, was nevertheless questionable. She had reasoned that the obvious missing fragment had the potential of radically altering the complete meaning of those sentences.

Then Giovanni had described her observations at the excavation at Stephen's Gate. But Judge Kaye had asked one question that bothered Will.

The judge had asked, “Can you, Dr. Giovanni, still give us your opinions as they stood
prior
to seeing the 7QC fragment, and
prior
to seeing the burial site at Jerusalem? Are you able to do that?”

After a moment of reflection, Dr. Giovanni had indicated that she could still give her opinions as they had stood a week ago—if the Court were to instruct her to disregard and not mention the more recent developments.

After ten minutes exactly, Judge Kaye stepped back into the courtroom.

“Here is my ruling. No one is more keenly aware than I am of the importance of getting to the truth in any case—it is essential to the pursuit of justice.

“However, in this case I believe that Dr. Reichstad would be unfairly prejudiced for the defense if, at this late hour of the case, evidence of 7QC or evidence relating to the inscription on the ossuary box in that tomb were presented.

“But I also am ruling that Dr. Reichstad may
not
introduce evidence of his discovery of the corpse in that tomb in Jerusalem over the weekend. And
the jury will be questioned on whether they were exposed to any prejudicial publicity or news reports about that discovery.”

Will was stunned. Without Angus MacCameron to testify, and without being able to present all of the recent facts they had uncovered, it appeared that he had almost no chance of winning the lawsuit.

“Are you ready, Mr. Chambers,” the judge asked, “to present Dr. Giovanni's testimony to the jury, consistent with the ruling that I have just made?”

But before Will could answer, he noticed that the judge's attention had been diverted by something going on at the back of the room. Will turned around.

There was Tiny Heftland, grinning as if he had just won the lottery. He was holding the door open with one hand and making a flourish with the other, like an impresario introducing the next act at a variety show.

Entering behind Tiny was an elderly man who looked like an Arab, dressed in a flowing white robe and carrying a tall, carved staff. A young boy was holding his hand and looking around wide-eyed as they walked into the courtroom.

“This trial is quickly becoming a three-ring circus,” the judge remarked. “Mr. Chambers, can you explain this?”

“Your Honor, I will need a few minutes to confer with my investigator.”

“Granted. I will be right here waiting for you.”

Will walked up to Tiny and the elderly man.

“I struck gold, chief,” Tiny said. “Will, meet Mr. Muhammad el Juma and his son Ahmed. The reason we couldn't locate him? Turns out that when he discovered that Tony Azid had been killed for the fragment—well, he took the money that Azid had paid him for it, and bought a little place in Bethlehem, and changed his name.

“Now, you might ask, how did Muhammad the desert king find out that Azid was murdered? Because
he is the one who found the body!
He had delivered the whole fragment, complete, to Azid, and Azid paid him like six or seven thousand dollars for it and says, if he resells it to a guy he is thinking about, he will give Muhammad a percentage. Azid confides that he is going to tear the piece into two or three parts in an effort to bump the price up.”

“Did Azid say who he had in mind?”

“Yep, chief,” Tiny replied excitedly. “Our own Dr. Hunter. So Muhammad packs up his tent and slips away into the night. But a week later, he decides to return to cousin Tony's shop to see how things are going with their mutual investment, and to see if Hunter is going to get the British Museum to pay out a bundle. As Muhammad is walking up to the shop, he
sees this big blond dude walk out of the shop in a hurry, I mean the guy is leaving there in a sweat. Muhammad goes in and discovers that poor Azid had been done in. He gets the police. But the Palestinian police have jurisdiction, and they blow the investigation and call it a suicide.”

“How about the blond guy?” Will asked.

“Oh, that's just perfect,” Tiny continued. “Get this. When the Israeli police and I locate Muhammad they have him do a photo identification of some suspects. Guess who he ID's as the guy leaving the shop? A guy named Bruda Weilder. He was suspected of an arson and murder in Tel Aviv a few years back. Unfortunately they couldn't make it stick. He is also listed by Interpol as a suspect in crimes in Austria and West Germany. But the best thing is this: Weilder was—at the time of Azid's death—the personal bodyguard for Warren Mullburn. The Israelis tell me that now with Muhammad's testimony, they are going to reopen the Azid and the Hunter matters and charge this thug with double murder. They've already started to look for him.”