Elisha’s Bones (33 page)
I smile at Esperanza, who accompanies me with eagerness equal to my own. I reach into my pocket and pull out a ring, the one Manheim instructed me to remove from his finger. I hold it up to the light and it glints in the yellowish glow: the Manheim crest emblazoned in opal. I fumble for a moment until I can slip the ring’s gem into the hole, which accepts it as if it had been machined to the proper size.
I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it was more than the nothing that follows.
“So you’re going to be difficult,” I mutter, releasing the ring, allowing it to remain seated in the hole.
“What’s wrong?” Espy asks.
Hands on hips, I look around the room, searching for anything that might make this easier. “Nothing. Nothing’s the matter.”
Except that the room is clean. There’s not even a piece of wood lying around that I can jam into the seam—provided I can locate the seam. I move to the right and start to run my hand over the bedrock. Although likely hidden, there remains a seam somewhere along this length of wall, probably within eight inches of the shelving. That would have been common to any work done during the time period in which the cellar was built. The problem is that master craftsmen were hired for this job, and they hid the seam well. I close my eyes, relying on the sensitivity of my fingertips. I feel every stone, every rising and sinking of the surface, though nothing with the constancy of a seam. I open my eyes and step back.
“Come here,” I say over my shoulder. I scan the hundred or so bottles set into their nooks and select the dozen that, according to my limited knowledge, are the rarest, the most expensive. I pull these from the shelves and begin handing them to Espy.
“What are you doing?” she asks as she accepts two bottles.
“We’re not animals, are we?”
“I suppose not.”
There is still an element of time that dictates our actions, even if I buy in to George’s insistence that we’re alone here. Who knows what the younger Manheim has orchestrated. It’s this uncertainty that makes me willing to sacrifice. Once the dozen bottles are safe, I go to the left of the shelving unit, wrap my fingers around the column board, and pull. At first, nothing happens. I tug hard and can detect no give, nothing to indicate any movement. I let go, rub my hands together, take hold of the wood again, and pull.
Passages like this one, even though constructed with weighty materials such as stone, would have been designed so a single person could manipulate them—the magic of hinges and rollers. I’m not sure, then, what’s making this so difficult, especially considering that Manheim could not have left the bones unobserved for decades. I wonder if there’s another entrance that he didn’t have time to make known to me. Sweat is beading on my forehead, and I’m about to release, when I hear a cracking noise and watch as a thousand-pound slab of rock detaches from the wall and swings open. At least half of the remaining wine bottles are upset by the motion and tumble from their perches in a deafening cacophony. But the commingling of expensive wine into a pool does not mar my excitement as the dim electric lighting reveals the first few feet of a roughhewn passage, one that disappears into darkness.
This moment is the personal crucible for any archaeologist worth his or her salt. It’s the point at which the thrill of discovery—the desire to jump in—is tempered by the sobering knowledge that one false move could destroy months of work. While this is an unusual case—a well-preserved passage, new in archaeological terms, and cared for by acolytes—there is still the unknown that’s encountered at any dig, where you can never know what lies down a corridor, what sort of condition any artifacts might be in, or if one ill-conceived step could upset some weight-bearing balance and bring a ton of solid rock down on what you’ve come to discover.
And for the first time in my professional life, I find that I don’t care.
I turn on a flashlight we borrowed from the electrical room on the first floor—after securing Victor, who is still unconscious. I shine the beam of light into the passage. It curves slightly for about twenty feet and slopes downward until I can see nothing but rock and dust, then darkness.
“Ready?”
Espy nods and we step in. It’s an entirely different atmosphere than when we entered Quetzl-Quezo. There’s a heightened energy, a sense of expectation, and a healthy dose of respect for the unknown. If I were back in South America, or even Egypt, and this was a standard tomb, thousands of years old and filled with debris and rubble, I would feel less concerned about our safety than I do right now. Despite what one sees in movies, ancient tombs were not places in which ingenious priests devised complex defense mechanisms to deal with intruders. Those that do hold wards—beyond the standard curse carved above the main entryway or outside the burial chamber—seldom include anything beyond concealed pits or garroting wires. What concerns me here is that this is not an ancient tomb, but a relatively modern one, built in a time when people harbored fantasies about the ancients of the pyramid age. It’s possible the builders might have included traps based on popular fiction—amateurs attempting something that the masters would not have tried.
We proceed slowly, taking short steps, allowing the flashlight to illuminate every inch of a corridor that looks to have been carved from the rock by heavy machinery. I lead the way, following the curve and the downward slope, and stopping when I see that the passage transitions to a brick-lined hallway less than a dozen feet ahead. I aim the light along the border, looking for potential threats, traps, anything hinting of danger. It looks clean so I move forward, trailing my hand along the old brick. Up ahead, the light disperses, indicating the hall opening up to something larger.
When Espy and I reach the end of the hall, we look out over a chamber of shapes and shadows. It’s too large for me to get a true feel for it; the flashlight reveals a box here, a display case there, a wall hanging opposite us, but too far away to identify. The beam of light refuses to remain on anything and I realize that I’m shaking. My arm is shaking with the rush of discovery, the defining moment when the heart quickens, when the chest knots in some strangled emotion that’s impossible to identify, except to know that it’s good.
“We need more light,” Espy says, stepping down into the chamber.
“Stop.” I croak the word, transfixed somewhere between elation and fright. If there are any traps built into this place, there’s a good chance they would manifest themselves here. I shine the light in her direction and find that she’s taken a single step down to the chamber floor, which I see is cement, but she has gone no farther. I play the beam in small circles away from her position. More of the same. I step down and take her elbow in my hand.
“Don’t go anywhere or touch anything unless I say so, got it?” I don’t expect an answer, and she doesn’t provide one other than to disengage her arm from my grasp.
I turn around and start to search along the entry wall, because Espy has a point about us needing more light. And there should be a source of artificial light for this room. I see that the wall itself is brick, giving the place a bunker feel rather than a tomb. Since there’s nothing to the right of the entrance, I go to checking the left side. It’s there, almost within arm’s reach, and it seems an incongruous thing when I’m thinking of this event as another Tutankhamen discovery. Somehow a light switch doesn’t fit. With a chuckle I step over and flood the chamber with light.
Almost before the deed is done, I see the small hole below the switch, just the right size to accept the ring’s gem, but I can’t stop the switch from completing its arc. There’s a rumbling beneath our feet, like a subway car racing under a pedestrian walkway. I hear the grind of old gears and register movement at the entrance. I grab Esperanza and pull her down, stretching myself to cover her as a mixture of dust and stone and pieces of brick rains down on us. When it’s over, Espy and I are coughing from the debris that wants to nest in our lungs. Finally the dust clears enough to see again, and all I can do is purse my lips and silently curse my own idiocy. Our exit is gone, blocked by a massive stone plug. What irritates me is that this is one of the traps the Egyptians used.
Esperanza, after taking in what has just happened, fixes me with a withering look.
“At least we have light,” I try. And we do. Half a dozen three-bulb fixtures hang from the ceiling, bringing the room to life, and the repository of secret knowledge they reveal forces our dilemma from my mind.
The room is all bricks and concrete, a few sparse wall hangings, a long bookshelf lining one of the walls, and four display cases staggered in the center. Maybe it’s because my experience is in crumbling structures, layers of sediment, and treasures teased from hiding, but I find it all a bit odd.
I stand and help Esperanza to her feet. I begin searching again, propelled toward the nearest display—a hardwood box unit, shallow, with a two-paneled glass top secured with a lever lock. Inside is a tattered scroll, unrolled and tacked on to chemically neutral hard plastic. The writing is faded, virtually gone in some places, but I can read enough to understand that it’s a portion of an early copy of the Bible story that Reese quoted to me. There’s no way to tell for certain its age, but if I had to guess I’d date it back to the fourth century b.c. I run my hand along the case, wishing I could touch the fragile parchment. It takes a moment before I realize that Esperanza is not with me. I spot her over by the bookshelf, paging through one of its wares.
I step over to the next display and what I find makes little sense to me. It’s a collection of symbols on different mediums: cloth, wood, metal, clay. From what I can see, they bear no resemblance to the family crests at Quetzl-Quezo. If I were conducting a typical dig, this is something I would photograph, catalog, and later spend several happy months investigating. Today, however, I can only sigh before moving on.
“Jack, you’ve got to see this.”
What she places in front of me is not a book but a series of hand-bound pages. I take it from her and flip through the pages, noting there are perhaps eight photos, individuals of historical importance, and a few pages of text for each one. The text is written in German.
“Since I don’t speak German, you’ll have to tell me what I’m looking at.” I stop at a picture of Albert Einstein, the most recognizable of the subjects.
“Wait a minute . . .” Espy reaches across and points a finger at what’s printed below Einstein’s photo:
1879–1936
.
“Dates of birth and death,” I say. “So?”
“Einstein died in 1955.”
I feel a numbness run up my legs as I realize I don’t need to be able to read German to understand what the pages say.
“How did he die the first time?”
Espy scans the page. “Car accident.”
Two deaths, only one of them official. For all of his caution about using them, it seems those of Manheim’s ilk have not been above drawing on the power of the items in their charge. I shake my head. Stalin’s picture was also among the pages.
With new eyes, I look out over the treasure trove of antiquities; of things I could spend the rest of my life researching. And none of it matters. Only one thing is important, and I won’t find it in this room.
I walk away from Espy, past the display case with the odd symbols, and around a trio of crates that look as if they hold the contents of an empty display. At least the elder Manheim was honest about one thing: this circus is soon to travel. I suppose I’m the caretaker now—at least until the brokers come to collect.
I saw the door when the lights came on, but like a person who enjoys the anticipation of Christmas more than the day itself, I ignored it. I wanted to soak in the atmosphere, prepare myself before facing this portal. That silliness is gone now, stripped away by a feeling of disgust that I’m not even certain I could name a cause for. All of a sudden, I just want this to end.
I stop a few feet away and study it. It’s a nondescript metal door with a simple handle. There is not even a visible lock. I suppose that Manheim’s forefathers, the ones who would have accepted the bones into their care, assumed that if someone made it this far, they belonged here.
I don’t belong here. But I open the door anyway.
I
stand in the threshold and let my eyes take in everything before I allow my other senses to muddle the experience. Esperanza has joined me but I register her presence in some peripheral way, as if she were a phantom. There is something about the smallness of the room, the lack of anything ornate, that I find appropriate. After all I’ve gone through to find them, it seems fitting they should be as stripped of accoutrements as I am.
The room is less than ten feet square, and the ossuary is the only thing in it. I suppose I thought the bones would be housed in some grand display, a lavish container for items of divine power. Instead, the ossuary is plain, and I’d date the period as first century a.d. In fact, with the exception of the lack of carvings on the exterior, it looks like the Ossuary of Caiaphas unearthed in Jerusalem in the early 1990s.
I walk in and place my hand on the box. It’s cold. I begin to feel along the lid, searching for a handhold, and when I find my grip I push the old stone with all my strength. In a rush, Espy is there, adding her strength to mine until the lid moves, scraping stone on stone until we’ve produced a gap sufficient to peer inside. Esperanza backs away a half step, as if she is granting me dibs to the experience.
They are gathered and wrapped in purple cloth. I reach in and lift away a corner until I see them, yellow and white and brown. I release the cloth and, after a pause as my hand hangs in the air above, I touch them with the tips of my fingers. And while there’s no static, no transfer of divine power from them to me, I am still satisfied. I wish I had a cigar with which to mark the moment, but the last Cuban went to ash in Lalibela.
Replacing the cloth, I pull the bones out of their nest. I turn to Esperanza. “Do you have any tape left?” She shakes her head, so I secure the bones as well as I can in their own fabric.
