Cross Bones (33 page)

I entered a long, low rectangle withJERUSALEM POST chiseled on one side. Architectural y, the place had al the charm of an airplane hangar.

After much security, and manyshalom s, I was directed to the basement. The keeper of the archives was a woman of about forty, with a pale mustache, and dried makeup around the corners of her mouth. Her hair was fried blonde and dark for an inch out from her scalp.

“Shalom.”

“Shalom.”

“I’m told you keep old articles on file by topic.”

“Yes.”

“Is there a Masada dossier?”

“There is.”

“I’d like to view it, please.”

“Today?” Her tone suggested she’d rather release files to kindergarteners with finger paints.

“Yes, please.”

“My staff is primarily here to get the archives online.”

“That is such overwhelming work.” My shoulders sagged in sympathy. “But so valuable.”

“We’ve got materials going back to the days when the paper was thePalestinian Post. ”

“I understand.” I smiled my warmest greeter-at-the-Wal-Mart smile. “And I’m in no hurry.”

“You can’t check it out.”

“Of course not.” I looked appropriately horrified.

“Do you have two pieces of identification?”

I showed my passport and my UNCC faculty ID. She looked at both.

“Are you researching a book?”

“Mm.”

She pointed to one of several long wooden tables. “Wait there.”

Rounding her counter, Madam Archivist crossed to a bank of gray metal filing cabinets, opened one drawer, and removed a bulky file folder. Placing the file on my table, she almost smiled.

“Take your time, dear.”

The clippings had been glued onto blank pages. Scores of them. A date had been written to the side of each article, and, on many, the word “Masada”

had been circled within the headline or the text.

By noon, I’d learned three important things.

First, Jake was not exaggerating. Save for brief mention at a press conference fol owing the second season’s excavation, the cave finds were never reported by the media. TheJerusalem Post even ran a special “Masada Section” in November of ’64. In it Yadin described al the sensational finds from the first season, mosaics, scrol s, the synagogue, themikvehs, the palace skeletons. Not a word on the cave bones.

Second, Yadin knew about the pig bones. A March ’69 article quoted him as saying that animal bones, including those of pigs, were found among the various human remains at Masada.

Elsewhere, Yadin stated that officials from the Religious Affairs Ministry had suggested pigs might have been brought up to Masada to help with garbage disposal. Apparently, that was done in the Warsaw ghetto in the forties.

I couldn’t see it. If the zealots had a garbage problem, they’d have chucked it over the side and let the Romans deal.

And Yadin didn’t back off from the statement he made in ’69. In an ’81 interview he told aPost reporter that he’d advised Chief Rabbi Yehuda Unterman in ’69 that he couldn’t vouch for the Cave 2001 remains being Jewish, since they were commingled with pig bones.

Third, Yadin asserted that radiocarbon tests were never done on the cave remains. In the same ’81 interview in which he’d discussed the pig bones, he stated that carbon-fourteen dating wasn’t requested, and that it was not his business to do so. An anthropologist put it off to high cost. That was the interview Jake had remembered.

I sat back, considering.

Obviously, Yadin doubted the cave folks were Jewish zealots. Yet he never sent samples for radiocarbon dating.

Why not? The test wasn’t that expensive. What did Yadin suspect? Or know? Did he or one of his staff figure out the identity of the cave burials? Of Max?

I began sliding pages back into the file.

Ordid Yadin or one of his staff send samples for radiocarbon testing? Could someone have used a request for radiocarbon testing or some other type of analysis as a cover to get troublesome evidence out of the country?

Troublesome evidence like Max?

Could someone have sent Max to Paris to hide him? To make him disappear?

I knew my next stop.

As on my first visit, I was struck by how similar Mount Scopus is to other university campuses. On Sunday afternoon, the grounds were deader than Kokomo.

But legal parking was stil as likely as an audience with the pope.

Leaving the Tempo in the same spot in which Jake had wedged the Honda, I hurried straight to the library. After passing security, I asked for the periodical section, located the journalRadiocarbon, and pul ed every volume published in the early sixties.

Exiting the stacks, I found a carrel, and began searching, issue by issue.

It took less than an hour.

I sat back, staring at my notes, a star pupil with a breakthrough, and not a clue what it meant.

Reshelving the journals, I bolted.

It took Jake an eternity to open his gate. His eyes were at half-mast, and creases made a road map of his left cheek.

I trailed Jake to his flat, tingling with the excitement of discovery. He went straight to the kitchen. I was bursting as he fil ed a kettle and set it to boil.

“Tea?”

“Yes, yes. You’re familiar with the journalRadiocarbon ?”

Jake nodded.

“I did a quick check at the university library. Between sixty-one and sixty-three Yadin sent materials from his excavation of the Bar Kochba site here in Israel to the lab at Cambridge.”

“Which site?”

“The Bar Kochba caves near the Dead Sea? Failed Jewish rebel ion against the Romans? Second centuryC.E. ? But the specific site isn’t important.”

“Uh-huh.” Jake dropped tea bags into mugs.

“My point is Yadin sent materials from his dig at Bar Kochba for radiocarbon dating.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you listening to me?”

“I’m riveted.”

“I’ve also been through the Masada folder in theJerusalem Post archives.”

“Busy, busy.”

“In an eighty-one interview, Yadin told aPost reporter that it was not his business to initiate radiocarbon testing.”

“So?”

“Yadin contradicted himself.”

Jake raised a hand to cover a belch.

“Yadin always insisted that nothing from Masada had been sent for carbon-fourteen dating, right?”

“Far as I know.”

“But Yadindid send materials off from other sites. And it wasn’t just Yadin at Bar Kochba. During that same period other Israeli archaeologists were using other labs. The U.S. Geological Survey lab in Washington, D.C., for example.”

“Cream or sugar?”

“Cream.” I was fighting the urge to shake Jake into consciousness. “You said that back in the sixties some member of the Knesset insisted skeletons from Masada had been sent abroad.”

“Shlomo Lorinez.”

“Don’t you see? Lorinez may have been right. Some of the Cave 2001 bones may very wel have been shipped out of Israel.”

Jake fil ed both mugs and handed me one.

“The articulated skeleton?”

“Exactly.”

“But it’s just speculation.”

“In his memo Haas reported a total of two hundred and twenty bones, right?”

Jake nodded.

“A normal adult human skeleton has two hundred and six bones. So Haas’s count couldn’t have included Max.”

“Who’s Max?”

“Masada Max. The articulated skeleton.”

“Why Max?”

“Ryan likes al iteration.”

Jake flicked a bushy brow, but made no comment.

“Obviously Haas never saw that skeleton,” I said. “Why not?”

Jake stopped dipping his tea bag. “Because it was sent to the Musée de l’Homme in Paris?”

“Welcome to the land of the living, Jake.”

“Nice al iteration.”

“But why keep it secret?” I asked.

I didn’t wait for an answer.

“And why the Musée de l’Homme? They don’t do radiocarbon testing. And why a complete skeleton? You need only a smal bone sample. And why single out that one skeleton? Yadin never talked about it. Haas never saw it.”

“I’ve said from the get-go, there’s more to that skeleton than anyone’s letting on.”

“You told me you were going to ask the Hevrat Kadisha straight out if they’d taken Max. Did you phone them?”

“Twice.”

“And?”

“I’m waiting for a cal back.” Sarcastic.

Wrapping the string, I squeezed my tea bag against the bowl of my spoon.

“That’l make your tea bitter,” Jake said.

“I like it strong.”

“You’l get it bitter.” Jake was ful y awake and his argumentative self.

“I think I prefer you sleepy.”

We both added cream and stirred.

“What’s happening with the DNA?” Jake asked.

“I haven’t checked my e-mail in days. Getting online at the hotel is a nightmare.” True, but I real y didn’t expect results this soon. And to be honest, with nothing for comparison, I suspected any DNA data on Max or his odd tooth would be of limited use.

“When I submitted my samples from the Kidron tomb after talking to you by phone in Montreal, I asked both labs to e-mail the reports to you. Figured I’d need an interpreter.”

Jake’s paranoia again? I didn’t comment.

“Why not give it a go. Use my computer.” Jake chin-cocked the file room. “I’l grab a quick shower.”

Why not? Taking my mug to his laptop, I logged on.

E-mails were in my box from both DNA labs.

I opened the reports on Jake’s Kidron bones first. There was some information, but it meant little to me. I assumed each sample number corresponded to an ossuary or to a bone dump on the tomb floor.

Next, I opened the ancient and mitochondrial DNA reports on Max and his tooth.

At first I was surprised. Then confused.

I read the final section again and again. I couldn’t imagine what it meant. But I knew one thing.

I’d been dead right about Max.

And dead wrong about the relevance of the DNA.

34

IMUST HAVE HAD THAT DOE-IN-THE-HEADLIGHTS LOOK.

“What are you staring at?”

The creases were gone and Jake’s face was wet. Instead of sweats, he now wore jeans and a red luau shirt.

“DNA results.”

“Oh, yeah?”

Jake clicked on the printer and I made a hard copy.

Jake scanned each report, face neutral. Then, “Very nice.” He dragged a chair beside mine and dropped into it. “Now. What does it mean?”

“The mitochondrial DNA—”

“Slowly.”

I took a breath.

“And from the top.”

“The top?” I was hardly in the mood for a biology lesson.

“The penthouse.”

Deep breath. Calm. Go.

“You’re familiar with nuclear DNA?”

“That’s the double-helix kind found in the nucleus of a cel .”

“Yes. Researchers have been working for years to map the DNA molecule. Much of that mapping has focused on an area that codes for specific proteins we share as a species.”

“Sounds like Atkins. No carbs, no fats.”

“Do you want to hear this?”

Jake held up both hands.

I tried to think of a simpler way to put it.

“Some researchers are working to map the area of DNA that makes us al alike, the genes that give us two ears, scarce body hair, a pelvis designed for walking. Medical researchers are working to identify genes that can mutate and cause il nesses, like cystic fibrosis or Huntington’s.”

“So mappers look at genes that make us al the same. Medical researchers look at genes that make things go wrong.”

“That’s not a bad way to look at it. Forensic scientists, on the other hand, look at the parts of the DNA molecule that make people genetical y different.

The junk, or fil er, DNA they study contains polymorphisms, variations that distinguish one person from another. But these differences are not physical y obvious.

“Al that said, there are those in forensic science who have crossed over from junk DNA and its variations to the genes that control physical characteristics, the differences we notice when looking at a person. These researchers are investigating what might be used to predict, from the genes, individual traits like skin or eye color.”

Jake looked confused. And rightly so. I was so excited I was botching the explanation.

“Say police col ect a sample left by an unknown perpetrator. Blood or semen at a crime scene, maybe. Without a suspect in mind, they have no one to whom to compare that sample. It exists in a vacuum. But if that sample can be used to limit the population of potential suspects, that’s a very useful investigative tool.”

Jake saw where I was going. “Predict sex, and you’ve cut your suspect pool by half.”

“Exactly. Programs already exist that can predict biogeographical ancestry. When you phoned me in Montreal we discussed a case in which that was done.”

“So the advantage is that you’re not limited to comparison of an unknown sample to a known, you can actual y predict what a guy might look like.”

“Or girl.”

“Yowza. A guy like Max or the people in my tomb?”

“Exactly. So far I’ve been talking about nuclear DNA. Are you familiar with mitochondrial DNA?”

“Refresh me.”

“Mitochondrial DNA isn’t located in the nucleus, it’s located out in the cel .”

“What does it do?”

“Think of it as an energy source.”

“I could use a fil -up. What’s its role in a forensic context?”

“The coding region of mitochondrial DNA is smal , maybe eleven thousand base pairs, and shows little variation. But, like nuclear DNA, there’s a part of the genome that doesn’t seem to do much, but has lots of polymorphism sites.”

“What’s the advantage over nuclear DNA?”

“There are only two copies of nuclear DNA, but hundreds to thousands of copies of mitochondrial DNA in each of our cel s. So the likelihood of recovering mitochondrial DNA from smal or degraded samples is much greater.”

“Smal and degraded like my Kidron bone. Or two-thousand-year-old Max.”

“Yes. The older the bone, the lower the likelihood of extracting a testable sample of nuclear DNA. Another advantage of mitochondrial DNA is that it’s inherited only through female lines, so the genes aren’t scrambled and recombined every time conception takes place. That means that if an individual isn’t available for direct comparison, any maternal y related family member can provide a reference sample. Your mitochondrial DNA is identical to that of your mother, your sisters, your grandmother.”