Book of Nathan (13 page)

“Each time I spend money on an opportunity, I look for—make
that expect
—
a
return on that investment. My financial involvement with Benjamin was no
different from other commitments I’ve made. His untimely death meant I ended up
with less of a payoff than I anticipated. That displeases me.”

“Uh-huh.” I didn’t get the connection between laying
millions of bucks down on a stock and dumping a like amount on an evangelist.
But what I did
get
was an unmistakable message that this was a short man who got piqued when he
was shortchanged.

“You see, Mr. Bullock, I believed in Benjamin Kurios.”

“But he was a Christian evangelist. And you’re a Jew.” I
couldn’t help myself. It just came out.

“As was Christ.”

“Well, then, you’re—you’re a Jew for Jesus.”

“Not in the way you might think. I believe that Jesus of
Nazareth was as mortal as you are,” Silverstein explained. “He was a Jew who
was extraordinarily charismatic and perhaps a little on the egocentric side.
Benjamin Kurios had the same qualities.”

We had made a long, winding trip through the innards of the
Silverstein castle and were now back in Arthur’s library.
 

“So you invested money in Kurios—”

“I did and for good reason. You see, Benjamin had a unique
ability to influence the masses. So much so that he could change their beliefs
and even their behavior. I believe you were once in the advertising business?”

I wasn’t surprised that Silverstein had done his homework. I
guessed that somewhere in his office there was a dossier marked
Rick Bullock
put together by Silverstein’s security
personnel.

“I left the ad world a long time ago.”

“Still, I think you know what I’m talking about. It’s quite
a challenge, is it not, to get adults to change the way they think to the
extent that they change their behavior?”

Just when I thought I was in Silverstein’s intellectual wind
stream, he veered off. “Are you familiar with the
Book of Nathan?
”

The question rattled me. Before the jailhouse interview with
Zeus, the only connection I had with a Nathan was a Coney Island hotdog stand
and an ex-con I once hired to clean the Gateway gutters. Now Nathan was coming
at me from two directions—Zeusenoerdorf’s mysterious Father Nathan and
Silverstein’s book
.
Could
there be a link between the two? That didn’t seem probable, but it wasn’t
something I was about to rule out.

I answered Silverstein’s question. “No.”
  

“Really?” Silverstein looked at me square in the face. “I
find that rather surprising.”

“I don’t get to read a lot.”

“It’s one of the so-called missing books of the Bible.”

I told Silverstein that the Bible—like fine art—was not one
of my strong suits. I couldn’t begin to tell him which books were in
the Bible, never mind those that were
missing. Silverstein gave me another suspicious glance and opened a drawer in
his desk. “I think this might interest you.” He slid a typewritten page across
the desk. The heading read:
Missing
Books of the Bible
.

MISSING
BOOKS OF THE BIBLE

           
Missing Book
                         
Biblical Reference

       
Acts of Abijah
                             
2 Chronicles 13:22

       
Prophecy of Ahijah
                     
2 Chronicles 9:29

       
Epistle to Ephesians
                 
Ephesians 3:3

       
Book of the Covenant
               
Exodus 24:7

       
Prophecies of Enoch
                  
Jude 1:14

       
Book of Gad
                                
1 Chronicles 29:29

       
Book of Jasher
                           
Joshua 10:13; Samuel 1:18

       
Book of Jehu
                              
2 Chronicles 20:34

       
Epistle to Laodiceans
                
Colossians 4:16

       
Visions of Iddo
                            
2 Chronicles 9:29

       
Manner of the Kingdom
             
1 Samuel 10:25

       
Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians
     
1 Corinthians 5:9

   
Book
of Nathan
                       
1
Chronicles 9:29

       
Book of Shemaiah
                     
2 Chronicles 12:15

       
Book of Samuel
                         
1 Chronicles 29:29

       
Saying of the Seers
                   
2 Chronicles 33:19

       
Book of the Acts of Solomon
     
1 Kings 11:41

       
Acts of Uzziah
                             
2 Chronicles 26:22

       
Book of the Wars of the Lord
    
Numbers 21:14

“We know from the books that are in
the Bible that there are many others
that were excluded,” Silverstein said. “Check the Biblical references on the
right side of the page.”

“What does this have to do with Miklos Zeusenoerdorf?” I
asked.

He ignored the question. “What’s fascinating to me is that
many of the books some think were misplaced or lost were intentionally left
out. The Hebrew Bible was an especially fluid document that changed from one
generation to the next. Not only were there translation errors along the way,
but it seems certain editorial prerogatives
were
taken.”

I gave up trying to figure out where Silverstein was leading
me and went with the flow. “So the
Book
of Nathan
ended up on the cutting room floor because some rabbi,
priest, or monk decided the Bible was too long?”

“Or too controversial, provocative, or dangerous. Of course,
the omission of a few books seems quite justified. The apocryphal books such as
Tobit, Judith, and the Maccabbees, for example. They’re so religiously
insignificant that they’ve been removed from the list.”

Silverstein was so far over my head that I could do nothing
but sound stupid. “So the Bible is really God’s
Reader’s Digest.
A lot got left out when the final condensed edition got published.”

Surprisingly, he seemed to like the analogy. “You’re not far
off. There are a few credible scholars who think the Bible is actually only
thirty-five percent complete.”

I tried again to bring the conversation back to the main
point. “Why all this interest in the
Book
of Nathan
? Why not—” I ran down the left-hand side of Silverstein’s
sheet “—the
Book of Jasher
or the
Book of Jehu
?”

“Some of the missing books such as Jasher for instance, have
been located and translated. But a small number of the books on the list I gave
you have eluded us.”

“
Nathan
being one of them?”

“Yes.”

I took another stab. “And Benjamin Kurios had a connection
to the
Book of Nathan
?”

Silverstein gave me a wary look. “Quite right. Benjamin was
going to use his revival meeting in Orlando to talk about the book.”

It was the same Citrus Bowl spectacular that had lured
Miklos Zeusenoerdorf to Orlando. “Kurios would have had an audience
of—what—seventy thousand people?” I asked.
 

“Actually, a far larger audience than those sitting in the
bleachers. Benjamin had negotiated a live TV broadcast on the FOX network. In
fact, all the media seemed ready to give the event extensive coverage.”

“Why?”
 

“Because Benjamin was going to read excerpts from the
Book of Nathan.
”

“Kurios told you that?”

Silverstein settled into a high-back leather chair behind
his desk. “Since I was among Benjamin’s most generous financial supporters, he
and I were quite close. Shortly before he died, he confirmed something I had
suspected for a long time—that he had been given a translated edition of the
Book of Nathan
.”

The connection between Kurios’s last words and a recently
discovered book of the Bible was getting a lot tighter. “How’d he get it?”

Silverstein’s steely eyes dissected me. I felt like I was
plugged into a human lie detector. “Benjamin was smart. He worked hard to bring
the right people into his fold. Henri Le Campion, for instance. Ever hear of
him?”

“No.”

“He was one of our great modern archaeologists and
linguists,” Silverstein said. “Also happened to be a genius when it came to
computers. Died of a heart attack just after his sixty-fifth birthday—only a
couple of weeks before Benjamin was killed.”

Strange how the Grim Reaper was never too far behind the
Book of Nathan,
I
thought. Kurios, maybe even the driver of the blue sedan—both dead. And Zeus
might be next if I didn’t beat him to the finish line.

Silverstein propped up his short body. “Several years ago,
Henri found the
Nathan
scrolls in a cave not far from Jerusalem. It should have made more news than
the Dead Sea Scrolls discovery in 1947. But that didn’t happen.”

“Why not?”

“Because for reasons we’ll never know, Henri was fanatically
attached to Benjamin. He carbon dated the scrolls to validate their
authenticity, and then spent years translating the
Book of Nathan
.
At every turn, he kept Benjamin informed of his progress.”

“And when he finished the translation—”

“He converted an English version to an encrypted computer
disk. Well, partly encrypted, to be more accurate. The actual translated text
requires a translation code or key. But Le Campion’s preamble doesn’t. It’s
mostly Henri’s own discourse that he uses to blow his own horn—he was a
notorious chest beater.”

“An old man’s ego trip,” I mused, momentarily forgetting I
was in the company of an old man whose ego was bigger than his house.

“Benjamin let me read a few verses that Le Campion had
folded into his preamble. They were Henri’s way of teasing one into wanting
access to the full text.”

“How teased were you?”

“Considerably. I was taken by what I read. As mentioned, the
second part of the disk is the coded translation of the full
Book of Nathan
.
Very sophisticated work, according to Benjamin. Try to download or decipher
part two without a computer conversion key and the entire text is scrambled
into an omelet of meaningless words and phrases.”

“What about the original scrolls?”

“Hidden,” Silverstein replied.

“Hidden?”

“Henri was an eccentric. More than likely, he found a safe
place for the scrolls somewhere near Jerusalem. But it’s doubtful we’ll find
much of anything until we locate the disk.”