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 I 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.”
TWELVE
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 her 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 child-like. 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. Is this what distracts you?”
“Yes.”
“Does it involve another woman?”
“Not at all.” At least not in the sense she meant.
“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 US? 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 some crazy Muslims 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 Mid East 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. I’m staying here.”
“No way, Carrie. 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.”
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.”