Centurion's Rise (38 page)

Disappointed grumblings and confused looks were shared among the crowd until the Vestal spoke once more.  “This is the conclusion I reached after hearing all the facts.  It is now your turn to hear the evidence and render your own judgments on the matter.”

The Vestalis Maxima stepped back from the crest of the temple stairs and receded into the background.  Assuming her position of prominence was Octavian Caesar, the man who led the trespass.  Cold silence hung over the audience that was only rivaled by the winter morning air.

“Countrymen, there have been rumors floating about that the Roman territory of Egypt is being carved out as a private kingdom for that witch of the Nile, Cleopatra.
  I do not have to remind you of the danger such an uprising presents to our Republic.  After all, half our grain originates from that territory.  Nor do I have to remind you how exhausted we all have become of war.  We have peace now, and we seek to keep it, do we not?”

The
stoic silence of the crowd was not broken by the question so Octavian continued.  “Evidence to confirm or disprove these rumors was kept in the vault of wills our noble vestals so diligently administer and protect.  Rather than make ready for a war that would once again pull hundreds of thousands of you away from your families, I chose a path that could maintain the peace if the rumors were disproven.

“My fellow Romans, I now read from the will of Mark Antony, who now resides in Egypt and counts Cleopatra as his mistress.  Actually, I shall paraphrase since the
buffoon is apparently incapable of stringing together a coherent sentence.”

Albus
and certainly everyone else in the crowd knew of the rumors.  The thought of a former Consul of Rome going native angered him almost as much as the thought of the Temple of Vesta being violated.  His rage, it seemed, was now equally split.

“
As if it were Mark Antony’s right to do so, he declares Cleopatra to be the Queen of Queens and her son Cesarion the King of Kings.”  Octavian read aloud.  “He bequeaths to the desert witch and her bastard child the Roman territories of: Jerusalem, Parthia, Armenia, Media, Libya, Syria, Cilicia, and Egypt.”

An unsettled murmur rose from the crowd, but Octavian put it down as he raised his voice and continued.  “And if there were still any doubts if Antony had truly forsaken his Roman heritage and gone native, let Antony’s own declarations brush them aside once and for all.  Mark Antony declares that upon his death a tomb be constructed to inter his body, and that of his
Egyptian Queen.  My fellow citizens, he instructs this tomb to be built in Alexandria, Egypt.”

Albus instinctively spat on the ground and cursed the name Mark Antony.  The man was a vile betrayer
, and he felt a wave of gratitude towards Octavian for risking everything he had to bring the treachery to light.  He listened even more intently as Octavian said more.

“
We have been betrayed, sold out to the desert witch.  Let no one count Antony as a Roman, but rather an Egyptian.  Let no one think he was ever Consul or Imperator, but only a gymnasiarch since all he ever did was plan festivals and games.”

“Yes,” the mob responded.

Octavian then stepped back from the temple steps and returned carrying a wooden spear.  “The desert witch of Egypt has torn down her Roman banners and declared open rebellion.  Will we stand for this?”

“No,” the mob fired back.

“Then to arms once more my dear Romans,” Octavian declared and then threw the spear he carried at the Columna Bellica, a marble column which stood halfway up the temple steps to represent foreign territory.  The spear struck the column head on and broke off a small piece which members of the crowd tossed around and used to declare their enthusiasm for the coming conflict.

Simon stepped out
of the temple on Friday morning in a state of inner turmoil.  The Passover festival was coming to a close and the customary release of a prisoner by Governor Pontius Pilate was soon to follow.  Most years the prisoner release was just a bit of theater.  Release this petty crook or that one, and then cheer like you actually cared.  This Passover was different.

This year the Temple priests were making sure every Jew in the city knew what was at stake this morning.  A man arrested and convicted under charges of sedition would stand next to a man convicted of rape and murder.  Contrary to all the holy teachings of the commandments, the priests made a compelling case to release the murderer. 

All they really needed to do was remind the people of Jerusalem that Governor Pilate was cruel and anti-Semitic.  On more than one occasion he flagrantly incited insurrection in order to ruthlessly purge it with his soldiers to set an example.  If a man charged with provoking an insurrection were chosen for release, it would only serve to give the Governor another excuse for his soldiers to unsheathe their swords and stain the city walls red once more.

It made perfect sense, yet the man charged with leading an insurrection was the same person Simon admired just days before for chasing the crooks out of the temple bazaar  at the end of
his whip.  Any man with an ounce of common sense knew this was the true reason the priests lobbied so heavily for the man’s condemnation.  The man publically insulted them and now they wanted payback.  Simon despised playing into their shallow scheme, but what choice did he have.  One man, even if he was innocent, needed to be sacrificed for the greater good of avoiding another massacre at the hands of Governor Pontius Pilot.

Simon held his two boys by the hand as the crowd swept them towards the governor’s palace for the releasing ceremony.  On a stone balcony ten feet above the crowd Pontius Pilot presided between two men who stood bound to their respective pedestals.  The man on the governor’s right stood without a mark on him, while the one on his left had been beaten, flogged,
and forced to wear a crown of thorns that provoked dozens of blood flow lines to crisscross his face.

Pontius Pilate posed the question, “Who shall I set free, Jesus the insurrectionist, or Barabbas the raping murderer?”

Without even making the conscious choice, Simon heard the word, “Barabbas” escape his lips.  He screamed it at the top of his lungs over and over, along with the crowd, until the Governor gave in and released the vile man who bore the name.

Simon breathed a sigh of relief knowing a massacre in the following days was avoided, but then his eyes fell upon the man the crowd chose to die and he hung his head in shame.

The crowd soon dispersed and flocked to the path leading outside the city walls and ended at the top of a hill affectionately known as Golgotha - place of the skulls.  They all wanted a premium spot to watch the condemned man carry his cross to the top of that hill so the soldiers could nail him to it. 

Simon however had no desire to witness the spectacle.  It was one thing to vote for the man’s death in order to save many, it was quite another to take morbid pleasure in watching the innocent man get tortured.  Instead, he took his two boys by the hand and set a course back to his aunt’s apartment.  The most direct path home was blocked by the crowds and was hopelessly impassable.  He went around the next corner only to run into
a similar wall of bodies.  He moved on to the next alley, and the next, and the one after that, but all were blocked.  Soon he did not even recognize where they were in the maze of back streets and alleys that made up the city of Jerusalem. 

He heard the morbid cries of the crowd intensify, which gave good evidence
that the condemned man was on his way to Golgotha.  Every piece of his moral fiber did not want to be there, just the sound of the crowd taunting the man brought him to the verge of tears. 

Finally he saw a landmark he recognized; the city gate.  He was amazed his wanderings had taken them
this far out of the way, nevertheless, he spotted a gap in the crowd that Simon and his boys could squeeze through. The people standing along the road became animated as Simon reached the gap.  He dashed through the wall of rejoicing people and came face to face with a Roman soldier.

The armed Roman
lurched backward a step which sent the condemned man laboring to carry his cross crashing to the ground.  The guard abandoned the notion to throw Simon aside, and instead labored to get the convict to his feet and on his way once more.  It was no use, the man was spent.

Realizing the fact for himself, the guard spun around and grabbed Simon by the arm and wrenched him away from his two children.  “You will carry it for him.”

“I can’t leave my boys,” Simon protested.

A sharp slap to the face and a quick draw of the sword let Simon know the guard was not making a request.  Resigned to the situation, Simon picked up the two hundred pound cross and draped it over his shoulder.  He allowed most of the weight to remain on the ground as he dragged it along, but the quarter mile journey up a steep hill was going to take every ounce of strength he had.

Simon paused in front of his two boys, who were so frozen in shock they looked to be etched out of stone.  “Stay right here until I return.”  Then Simon walked on, dragging his burden with him.  All the way up the hillside until he was allowed to lay the cross flat on the ground.

The guard tossed Simon aside and threw the convict down on top of the cross.  Any normal man with a sense of self-preservation would have fought against what
they were trying to do to him, but this man didn’t move a muscle.  Either from exhaustion or shock, the man just laid there staring at Simon.

Simon wanted to look away.  He didn’t want to watch the man die, but he owed it to him.  He voted for his death and now it was his duty to see it done.

Please look away from me
Simon tried to convey with his eyes, but the man ignored the message.  When the nails were driven into his hands and feet the man’s body cried out in pain, but the soul behind those eyes never wavered.  He was completely at peace.  The man accepted his fate as a sacrifice so that many could be saved. 

When the soldiers lifted up the cross with the condemned man upon it and planted it in the ground, Simon finally summoned the will to look away and walk back to his boys.  As he moved along the path he noted the journey was much easier with the oppressive weight of his burden lifted off his shoulders by the man dying on the cross for his benefit.

**********

Tonwen sat hunched against a large rock in view of the place of the skull and the three crosses holding three dying men aloft.  He took a long drink from the skin of wine he purchased for the occasion.  Perhaps the meaning of his existence or possibly redemption was at the bottom of the alcohol filled pouch.

The noon sun was high in the sky and beating down on him without mercy.  He might have complained about the discomfort of leaning against a hot rock on a scorching hot day, but he only need look up at his friend on the cross to see the true definition of suffering. 

The cowardice he showed at the high priest’s palace when asked if he knew Jesus haunted Tonwen.  He did it to remain free and available to release Jesus from his imprisonment when the opportunity presented itself, but it never did.  Tonwen dishonored himself for nothing.  That was the emotional side of his turmoil.

Possibly even more vexing was Jesus’ prediction of the events.  Tonwen was a man of science.  He didn’t believe in divine knowledge of the future.  He believed in the laws of probability.  What was the probability Tonwen would have occasion to deny knowing Jesus three times in one evening?  What was the probability a rooster would crow just after the third occurrence?  Come to think of it, how did Jesus heal that man’s severed ear without the assistance of Tonwen’s medical gels or coax the food replicator to feed thousands rather than dozens?

All his pondering abruptly ended as he heard a voice cry out from the top of that dreadful hill.

“It … is … finished,” a haggard voice cried out with the last ounce of strength the owner possessed, and then fell silent.

The silence muted the world around it: Bugs chirping, birds singing, the wind blowing, people talking, it all observed as moment of silence.  Tonwen about jumped out of his skin when even the sunlight ceased to shine.  He looked up and saw the sun’s rays doused from the sky by the moon passing in front of it.

As the moon crossed the solar body it turned blood red, as though a painter spilled a canister of crimson upon it.  Tonwen knew the discoloration resulted from the sun’s rays being refracted by the earth’s atmosphere and reflecting onto the moon.  The phenomena was a common occurrence during a lunar eclipse but what were the odds of this rare celestial event happening right when Jesus cried out with his last breath Tonwen thought?

Mark’s head felt
like a heavyweight champion used it for speed bag practice.  The impulse to fall over and pass out on the floor nearly overtook him.  Fighting through the mental fog he managed to pull his head out from between his legs and open his eyes.  He saw nothing but a blinding array of white; even through his closed eyelids and legs, his optical nerves were still overloaded by the flashbang grenade.

Every instinct insisted he not move until his vision returned, but the clock was ticking.  Though Mark was in rough shape, his unprepared captors were now completely incapacitated, but that advantage was diminishing by the second. 

Mark struggled to his feet and tried shuffling forward, but his world spun out of control.  Any sense of direction and spatial awareness left the instant his hand let go of the chair’s backrest.  He needed something to provide a stable frame of reference: a chair, a wall, anything except the floor.  Mark lurched in the direction he thought was left and after two steps crashed head first into a row of storage lockers.  Were these the ones on the left or right side of the room he mentally asked himself?  Left equaled freedom, right meant game over.

His vision was returning and he knew his captor’s sight was only seconds behind his own in the recovery process.  Mark fumbled to his left along the row of lockers his head so expertly discovered.  His hand reached the end and Mark hastily counted door
s as he moved back to his right side. One . . . two . . . three . . . four, four was the magic number.

Mark’s eyes tried to focus on a blurry chrome object he knew to be the locker’s
opening handle.  He slid the lever up with his left hand, opened the door and frantically felt around the top shelf with his right hand.  His stomach grew sickeningly tight as the probing hand felt nothing but cold metal shelving.  If this was indeed the same locker Alfred retrieved his hand gun from, there should have been others.  Then it happened – his hand brushed against a warm handle.  He instinctively closed his grip and slipped his finger comfortably into the trigger housing.

He brought the object down in front of his face and confirmed with his now fully functioning
eyes what he already knew; freedom was his.  Mark turned to face the room and leveled the weapon at Alfred who lay across the table of his work station with his hand hovering just above the data entry pad.

“If you shoot, my dead hand will land on this pad and execute the command to bring the moon down on us all,” Alfred cried out in distress.

Mark adjusted his aim to bring the vibrant blue orb of the Nexus device into his crosshairs.  “If you move your hand even an inch I incinerate your precious machine.”

Alfred remained frozen for a set of anxious heartbeats and then casually reached back with his free leg to pull his chair back underneath him and carefully took a seat.  All the while keeping his steady right han
d held inches above Earth’s Armageddon trigger.  “Hmm, can you feel that?  The power we both command at this moment.  You hold the lives of twenty million in your hand, and I control the fate of the entire world in mine.  It’s enough to make lesser men feel a bit nervous don’t you think?”

“Indeed.  This is where people usually panic and make careless mistakes like not searching a body for hidden weapons.” Mark noted.  “As far as mistakes go, that’s as
amateur hour as they come Alfred.  Admit it; you’re completely out of your league here.”

“This isn’t the first time I have held complete control over mankind’s fate,” Alfred countered.  He tilted his head slightly toward his absolutely unmoving hand held over the data pad.   “Tell me, do I look like the pressure is getting to me?”

Out of the corner of his eye Mark spotted Alfred’s partner silently sneaking along the room’s perimeter toward the weapons locker.  “Not even close old man.  Why don’t you keep on moving to the cage door and release my friends?”

The man did nothing as he looked to his partner for instruction.  “Right now,” Mark commanded, “My trigger finger is getting a little nervous here.”

A subtle nod from Alfred gave the man leave to comply.  A few moments later Frank and the two archeologists were free from the cage and ready to tear their captors to shreds.

Frank grabbed the old man on both sides of his shirt collar and tossed him into the imprisonment cell.  “Now let’s see how you like being cooped up in a cage.”

“Don’t press your luck,” Alfred declared.  “You three may leave as long as you take the weapon currently pointed at the Nexus away with you.  Final resolution of our standoff will have to wait for another day.”

Mark didn’t even bother giving the matter any thought.  No one would win this current game. “Agreed.  Open the outer door so my men outside can leave, those three will follow, and I will be the last one out.”

The sound of the outer door opening let Mark know the bargain had been struck.  As planned, the soldiers made their way back to the tunnel followed by Frank and the pair of archeologists.  On his way backing out of the chamber Mark kept careful aim on the Nexus.  When he began descending down the ramp he saw the Sphinx chamber door start to close and Alfred hollered through the opening.  “You fought me to a draw this time Agent Mark.  Your job performance is definitely improving.”

“It is certainly a favorable trend.  Now would it be cliché for me to promise that I’ll be back,” Mark asked rhetorically before the chamber door
sealed shut once more.