“They’re church elders, and donors,” Abdulkerim explained. “These church were expensive to carve and decorate. The paint alone cost a small fortune back then. By paying for this church, these people bought themselves a ticket to Heaven. And a burial spot in here.”
Tess surveyed the names and stopped at one of the graves. She recognized the Greek letters. “This is it,” she said.
Zahed and Abdulkerim joined her.
“‘The one true hand,’” she read.
She looked over at the Iranian, guessing what was in store. Sure enough, he was already unloading the pick-shovel combo, which he handed to her.
“Let’s get to work.”
Chapter 40
This one was harder to dig out, but at least it was just one grave. The narrow space felt suffocating, what with the weakening light of the flashlight and the dust that the digging was kicking up. It made Tess work even harder. She just wanted to be out of there as quickly as possible.
The body they found was wrapped in two-foot-wide strips of white linen, like a mummy, and covered with seeds that had long since petrified. Tess and Abdulkerim got down close and carefully peeled back the stiff fabric. The bones within were loose and jumbled up, but one thing soon became clear. There were only enough of them for one hand.
There was something else in there, too.
A prosthetic hand, made out of copper. It was corroded and oxidized, tarnished to a dark brown patina with greenish-blue patches all over it. It was startlingly elaborate and well crafted for something that was seven hundred years old.
She held it up to the Iranian. “It’s Conrad,” she said, then gave him a “what now?” look.
He mulled it over for a beat, then said, “If he had it with him, it’s got to be around here somewhere. Maybe even buried with him.” He thought about it for a further moment, then said, “Take him out. Let’s see if there’s anything else down there.”
Tess and the Byzantinist lifted the linen cocoon out and set it down in the middle aisle. Tess then stepped back into the shallow pit, got down on her knees, and started digging some more. After only a few strokes, the pick struck something hard, sending a recoil of adrenaline through her. With renewed focus, she started clearing the earth around the hard object with her hands.
“Give me some more light,” she told Abdulkerim.
He shone the flashlight at her hands as she scraped the earth back to expose what appeared to be a dark round shape. She cleared more soil from around it to reveal a plain earthenware cooking pot, low and wide, about a foot and a half in diameter and under a foot tall. Her breath caught. She studied it for a beat, then lifted it out carefully and settled it on the flat part of the grave.
She examined it closely. It was plain and unremarkable, lacking any external decoration, and it had some kind of a bowl for a lid that was sealed into place with bitumen.
Abdulkerim’s eyes bounced around from the pot to Tess and to the Iranian and back. “What do you think is in it?”
“Only one way to find out,” Zahed said.
He snatched the pick from Tess and, before she could stop him, slammed it into the top of the pot. The plate that was sealing it shattered. Zahed then pried off the pieces that were still hanging in place.
He took the flashlight from the Byzantinist and aimed it inside the pot, then turned to Tess, making an inviting gesture with his hand.
“Be my guest,” he told her. “After all your hard work, you deserve it.”
She looked at him askance, then leaned in for a look. The sight made her heart bolt. She reached in and pulled out the pot’s contents: two codices—small, ancient leather-bound books, each roughly the size of a hardcover novel.
She held them with quivering fingers, carefully, as if they were made of the most fragile porcelain, marveling at them. For a blissful instant, all the horrors she’d been through, the Iranian monster standing inches from her—it all faded away. Then she set one down in her lap and examined the other.
“What are they?” Abdulkerim said, his tone a whisper.
Tess gently unfurled the thin, leather strap that was rolled around the first codex. The back cover extended into a triangular flap that folded over the front one. She peeled that back, then, slowly, opened the codex.
The golden-brown papyrus leaves inside were clearly brittle, their edges crumbled in places. She didn’t dare turn a single page, so as not to damage the manuscript, but the lettering on the first page was enough to announce what she was looking at.
“Alexandrian text-type letters,” she said. “It’s written in Greek.”
“What does it say?” the Iranian asked.
Tess read it, then looked up at Abdulkerim and showed it to him. Even in the faint light in the cavern, the astonishment on her face was evident.
The Byzantinist was clearly familiar with Greek writing, his area of expertise. “The Gospel of Perfection.” He looked at Tess. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“Me neither. But it’s in Greek. Koine Greek,” Tess said to the Byzantinist, emphasizing the point.
The Byzantinist’s expression morphed to mimic Tess’s surprise as her point sank in—something the Iranian caught too.
“What about it being in Greek? Why’s that such a surprise?” he asked.
“Koine Greek was the lingua franca—the working language—of the Near East during Roman times. It’s what any gospels that would have been written around the time of Jesus’s life would have been written in. But we don’t have any original copies of gospels from back then. The oldest Bibles we have are in Greek, but they’re from the fourth or fifth centuries. The older texts we have aren’t from the Bible. They’re non-canonical, gnostic gospels, like the Gospel of Thomas that was found in Egypt in 1945—and they’re Coptic translations of earlier Greek texts.” She held up the codex. “This isn’t Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. But it’s in Koine Greek, which means it’s an original. Not a translation. It might be the oldest full gospel ever found.”
The Byzantinist looked baffled. “Why is it here? How did you know about this?”
“What about the other one?” the Iranian interjected, ignoring Abdulkerim.
Tess set the first codex down and picked up the second book. Again, taking great care, she opened it. Although the two codices were very similar outwardly, this one was different in that it consisted of bound parchment leaves, not papyrus, indicating that it was likely to be more recent than the first. The lettering was the same, though. It was also written in Koine Greek.
“The Gospel of the Hebrews,” she read. This was a title she recognized. She looked up from it. “This is one of the ‘lost’ gospels. Some of the founders of the Church talked about it in their writings, but it’s never been found.” Her fingers brushed the open leaf with profound reverence. “Until now.”
Her heart pounding, she was leafing through its first few pages slowly, her eyes roaming the tiny letters, trying to grasp what they said, when she saw something else. A folded sheet of parchment, inserted between the pages of the book.
She pulled it out and realized it wasn’t just one sheet, but four, all folded onto one another. It had to be an official document of some kind, as it was sealed with a dark reddish-brown wax seal that had left its impression on the pages of the codex it had been sitting against. She pulled Abdulkerim’s light closer for a better look and bent a corner of the top sheet back slightly, but she couldn’t see much beyond some of the letters on it. They were different from those in the codices.
“I think it’s Latin, but I can’t see what’s inside without breaking the seal,” Tess told Zahed.