Gospel (78 page)

“If I may continue,” said O'Hanrahan. “I was worried the police wanted me, so I had Stavros ask the hotelman for the names of the guys you left with. Stavros and I made our getaway and he drove me to the consulate in Thessaloniki, where Mr. Underwood heroically intervened between me and the Greek authorities.”

Colonel Westin snapped, “You're not even with the Athens office, are you? You're in the goddam consulate in Salonika, man. You must be Code 2, if that—”

Underwood: “I am
not
Code 2, Colonel. We'll make a xerox of the note for both of our files.”

O'Hanrahan went on, “As I was telling Mr. Underwood here…” That silenced the colonel, who became all ears. “The men who were trying to get you on a plane to Amman, Lucy, and later to Iraq, were from the Ba'ath Islamic Seminary in Baghdad and belong to something called the New Mu'tazilahs.”

Underwood, arranging his hair, burst in. “An intellectual extremist group with some very shady friends and supporters.”

Colonel Westin: “Terrorists and contraversion units.”

O'Hanrahan: “Not themselves so much, but they probably have no philosophical problem with bringing down planes, blowing up airports, that sort of thing. The original Mu'tazilah movement began in the 700s as a reaction to Moslems who preferred concentrating on the many attributes of God, which the Mu'tazilahs took as degraded Christian influence. Wasil ibn-Ataah was the founder and, like many great thinkers, he broke off from the school of Hasan al-Basri. You know, there's a story about al-Basri, that when he came to—”

The colonel, making notes on his file folder, cleared his throat. “Could we fast-forward this a bit, Mr. O'Hanrahan?”

“Yes, of course. They are fiercely anti-Christian purists, who feel—well, some do—that specific actions are not punished, and that the intent of one's heart to good or evil is all that matters to Allah, hence making terrorism an attractive option.”

A Greek policeman appeared at the door to this little room and said something that warranted Underwood's attention.

“What is it?” asked the colonel.

“Oh, just some papers I have to sign to get our learned friend off the old hook here,” said Underwood, trying to slap O'Hanrahan on the shoulder.

“I would appreciate, Clem, to be fully participated in this procedure.”

Underwood and the colonel went to talk to the Greek authorities, with the colonel saying sternly, “You two stay here.”

Lucy and O'Hanrahan waited a secure moment.

O'Hanrahan spoke quickly under his breath: “Have you told them about the Matthias scroll?”

“No.”

“Good. Don't. I don't want these embassy hacks to interfere. Those Arab guys you went off with from Ouranopolis—”

“But they told me—”

“Let me finish. The plan, I think, was to steal the scroll—which they thought I was carrying—and frame me for the ikon desecrations. When they saw I didn't have it, they opted for what must have been the backup plan. Those guys were kidnapping you to hold for ransom.”

“Ransom?”

“Yes, and the
Gospel of Matthias
was what they were gonna ask for in return.”

Lucy sipped the metaxa. “I suppose you'd let them keep me, if it were me or the scroll.”

“Baghdad's nice this time of year.” O'Hanrahan hushed as he noticed a Greek bureaucrat and Underwood milling outside the door, talking seriously and looking through a series of papers, the colonel between them furtively looking over their shoulders. A Greek police officer was trying to be understood in broken English.

“Why would a Moslem group want a Christian gospel?” Lucy whispered as O'Hanrahan refilled her glass.

O'Hanrahan arched an eyebrow. “A First-Century account concerning the forerunner of Mohammed? An accurate record from the time of the Prophet Jesus, the
Isa Mesih,
fifth great prophet of Islam?”

Lucy nodded, beginning to understand.

“It is the Moslem contention,” said O'Hanrahan, pouring himself some of the metaxa, “that Jesus never died on the cross, never rose from the dead and all that. The New Mu'tazilahs, I suspect, have no doubt this spectacular ecclesiastic find will bear out what the Quran says, but they don't trust the Christian world not to tamper with such a document—”

“What if the scroll really does?”

“Does what?”

“What if the
Gospel of Matthias
proves Mohammed right? What if at the end of Matthias's gospel he decides that Jesus was merely a man and not the Son of God?”

“We don't exactly have the last chapter anyway, do we?”

Colonel Westin and Mr. Underwood reentered the room, and the colonel cleared his throat for attention. “Well now. It seems we've explained to INTERPOL what an innocent you are, Miss Dantan. And our Arab friends are in custody. Illegal passports, terrorist ties, you name it, they're gonna pay, you betcha.”

Lucy asked, “Will it be possible to go soon?”

“Soon?” asked the colonel.

O'Hanrahan could tell Lucy was acting. “Yes,” she said, “I'm a bit shaken up and would like to go back to the hotel. I feel faint now and then.”

“Yes,” said Colonel Westin slowly, unhappily, “I'll see about it. It won't be more than another hour, I'm sure, though we will need to know where you're going to be staying. And you, Mr. O'Hanrahan, have to fill out some reports for the Greek police. You may be here for a few days.”

O'Hanrahan needed the rest, but that also meant wasted time without copies of the photos, time better spent in Jerusalem. The Greek policeman was back with more questions, so the colonel excused himself and Underwood shlepped out the door behind him. “You heard that Chicago reported me missing?” Lucy then asked O'Hanrahan quietly.

O'Hanrahan's eyes sparkled. “How very remarkable. You've been faxing
someone
reports every other day.”

“It was a Chicago area code 312 number. Remember the telegram that came with the credit card…”

Lucy bent down to pick through her handbag. Why shouldn't she have that too? She hadn't thrown one thing away yet … It was folded with a number of other papers and scraps in her Oxford guidebook.

O'Hanrahan: “Tell me
exactly
what you remember about receiving this telegram.”

Lucy thought back. “I was at David McCall's house. He drove me to Dublin and to the airport, and we said good-bye. Then he ran up and said, Oh I forgot to give you this, it came for Dr. O'Hanrahan, at the house. I opened it and it was a telegram for you and the VISA card. And that's right, there was no postmark on the envelope, see?”

“As if it was delivered by hand,” O'Hanrahan suggested, taking the telegram. He read over it again, this time paying attention:

DR. O'HANRAHAN:

ENCLOSED PLEASE FIND CARD FOR YOUR RESEARCH. WE DO REQUIRE WEEKLY SUMMARY AND REPORT PLEASE. FAX:
312-555-2937

J
OHN SMITH, TREASURER

“Uh,” he hummed, considering. “This isn't a Hyde Park prefix. When we get to a hotel we'll trace where this fax number really is. I
knew
those cheapskates at Chicago wouldn't have sent me a credit card.”

“My God,” Lucy cried in a delayed revelation, “No wonder Dr. Shaughnesy called INTERPOL. They must think I'm dead back home.”

O'Hanrahan was distracted. “What mystery person in Chicago would want to pay for an expensive, possibly fruitless expedition after an obscure scroll?” he asked. He read the name from the telegram: “John Smith, treasurer. Should have known that was phony.” He changed subjects: “Luce, the one thing I can't figure out to save my life is why you didn't call the Matsoukises? I was holed up there, and I left a message for you in the event you called. The second things got weird you should have called Eleni.”

“Uh, I forgot about them, I guess…” Anything to avoid Stavros—what an idiot she was! “I mean, I forgot their last name and you try finding a needle in a haystack in a Greek phonebook.”

“We stayed with them for a week and you forgot their last name?” He brushed this aside, however, and reached into his sportscoat's inner pocket. “I took the liberty of…” He seemed distracted.

“What?”

“Borrowing from the Matsoukises, I was able to purchase a ticket back to Chicago. For tomorrow.”

Lucy faltered. “We're going home?”

“You are.” And before she could object, O'Hanrahan put a hand on her arm. “No. No more bravada. It's getting dangerous for both of us. And I'm going to Jerusalem where things will probably be even more dangerous. This Islamic group will try something again, I suspect. So I think it's time for you to go home.”

“May I see the ticket?”

Dr. O'Hanrahan pulled out her Olympic Airway ticket, the details and gate numbers freshly marked in handwritten ballpoint pen. “Here, Luce. And I'll be back in Chicago before you know it and we'll still work together, I promise—”

Lucy tore the ticket in half.

O'Hanrahan jumped up: “
What
did you just do?”

Lucy said, “I'm not going home until I'm ready to go home, for the hundredth time. I've come this far and I'm not letting the find of the century slip through my fingers either.” She added, “Sir.”

“You're going home, baby, if I have to pack you in a suitcase myself!”

J
ULY
29
TH

It was a warm night with a faint Saronic breeze. Lucy walked along the deck of their ship after settling in her private cabin. A cabin boy, fifteen or so, with an open, sweet face, showed her to her cabin, flirting brazenly. He demonstrated the mysteries of working the sink faucets and the air-conditioning and showed Lucy how to call him if she needed the least little thing.

Better watch it, my
kouros,
she thought, I might just call.

Both she and O'Hanrahan felt liberated to be on the road again after six days of bureaucracy and U.S. Embassy red tape. Lucy walked the deck and stared at the neighboring boats this evening in Piraeus Harbor as her ship slowly began the three-day voyage to Haifa, Israel, via Rhodes and Lakasia, Cyprus. Nearby was the hammer-and-sickle of the Soviet Black Sea luxury liner, the reward once for party officials, but surely, poor as Russia was, it dispensed few privileges this summer. Lucy stared out at the calm Aegean, satin and dull violet, the fading pink sky above the Sounion Peninsula now bedizened with evening lights from homes and streetlamps. At the end of the peninsula stood the Temple of Poseidon, but it would be dark by the time they rounded the tip, so it would have to wait for another visit. And there would be, she knew, another visit.

She heard from the deck above the distinct sound of O'Hanrahan clearing his throat. He seemed in one of his sour moods, brought on by too much inactivity induced by the afternoons at the embassy and with Greek authorities. He stood like a masthead looking out at the Saronic Gulf, no less Xerxes surveying the Hellespont, a bottle of ouzo, duty-free, in one hand, a Styrofoam cup in the other.

(Another night with the bottle, Patrick?)

Ah, the voices again. I don't care, he thought; annoy me as You will, goad me with my own past. I will be free of Greece soon and I will hear you no more.

(People hear My voice in Jerusalem all the time, so don't be so sure.)

This is my farewell to Greece, O'Hanrahan thought, filling the cup again. My last communion with
Ellas
—it is like losing a limb.
All strangest things the multitudinous years bring forth and shadow from us all we know.
And as the great tragedians knew so well, I am how Man ends, old and perplexed and alone, ennobled, if at all, by grief.
The long days hoard many things nearer to grief than joy.
And also
Not to be born is past all prizing best.

(But you don't really feel that way.)

No, I have loved my life, You know that. And I have fooled myself while on Grecian soil, thinking of what could have been with Eleni. I wouldn't have been able to live up to her, to make her happy. I needed just what I got: a woman for whom I could be something spectacular, pitiful though that is to admit. Beatrice, even at her worst, kept at me about things. I mean, not just the usual nagging, the drinking, the ass I would make of myself at faculty parties, but my work, my writing. “I don't care how you treat me,” she would say, “but for Christ's sake don't pour all of your God-given gift down the drain.”

(And she spoke truly.)

Beatrice harped on lots of things but that she remained true to. That I had great talent—she never stooped to comparing me with those morons in the department; she never ridiculed my mind. She always was pushing me to write down my thoughts, in a paper, a magazine article, a book of essays one day. “Let me be proud of you again,” she'd say. That's the problem, she told me in a lighter moment, “It's that you talked like a book that I fell in love with you, you know.” And I did talk a lot of blarney, talked her into twenty years of misery with an old drunk, good-for-nothing unregenerate mick who might have been something if he'd just counted his blessings!

(So many blessings.)

How often I turned my step from the golden path—no sooner was it good than I fouled it up by outthinking myself, and I tell you, Beatrice, if only you, sweetheart, could have given me absolution before you left, then I could have done what I had promised you. I was to keep faith with Homer and Virgil, I was to tend the pantheon in which the lost worlds would speak anew! And now I'm a wash-out, honey. I make jokes about women with big tits, spin tales I've told a hundred times, I'm a vulgarian, a cocktail-party blasphemer. Oh, but Beatrice, if you could just return and let me look you in the face one more time I would rise up! You would lead me to tread among my high places, I would take my stand upon the Western Slopes.