Irrefutable Proof: Mars Origin "I" Series Book II (16 page)

Chapter Thirty

The
plans had been finalized right before Simon’s last call. We all had bought our
tickets online for the trip to Israel, except for Rennie, before our first “meeting”
of our little alternative history detective club had ended. Addie, Jack and
Rennie left my house about ten o’clock that night. They were staying at the Marriott
in Beachwood, leaving out for home the next afternoon. Claire was going to show
them a little of Cleveland before they left. The next time I would see them
would be when they flew into New York and met me and Claire at JFK to take the
flight over to Tel-Aviv.

Yes,
I was going back to Jerusalem. I got goose bumps just thinking about it. And this
time with a whole different mindset. Not the frantic, crazy, crying person I
was when I went back to find the AHM manuscripts. I didn’t want the new people
to see how loony I really could be.

Everyone
had been gone more than an hour and I still hadn’t gotten up from the kitchen
table. I had so much to think about.

In
one week I was going to Israel to find Dr. Sabir’s proof he’d left, and two
complete strangers were going with me. I cradled my chin in the palm of my
hand, and grinned about the day’s activities.

First,
all those crazy phone calls from Simon. What was up with that? Then there had
been people coming in and out of my house all day. A mysterious priest, who was
trying to push me to go to Italy. And three “fans” of my work from a book club
in Baltimore.

Jack
was a different story. What his story was exactly, I wasn’t quite sure. Addie
was feisty, evidently like her little Maltese dog she talked about constantly
in between gulps of coffee. She said next time she’d bring Zeus, that was the
dog, with her. I told her don’t bother. I don’t do dogs. Especially if they run
in a caffeine induced high gear like she does.

Addie
seemed to have the answer on where to find the clues, and confidence in me
deducing them. And that the Voynich Manuscript had something to do with it.

While
I believed that Dr. Sabir had all the proof laid out for me in his buried
cache, I wasn’t so sure that I could do anything with the Voynich Manuscript.
If
it even was a part of it. Dr. Sabir certainly hadn’t mentioned it.

And,
even if I could decipher it, that didn’t mean I could figure out what it had to
do with anything. Heck, I’d learned Ge’ez and gone over the Book of Enoch fifty
times since first talking to Simon, and I didn’t see it yielding any facts on
how to build a spaceship that could travel the galaxy. Being able to read
something and finding the clues in it apparently were two different things. I
eventually had stopped trying to understand the clues in Enoch myself because I
was spinning my wheels for nothing. I knew the clues in Enoch would all be
clear once I got the stuff Dr. Sabir had left.

Before
she left, Addie told me to find out what happened to Dr. Sabir’s notebook that
I had sent to Ghazi. She’d thought we would need it. I tried to tell her that I
had a photographic memory and we didn’t. I didn’t tell her, though, that I had
a complete copy of it on floppy disks because I didn’t have a computer that
could read them and I knew she would have bugged me about seeing them.

But
she insisted that I should be curious about it, and about what happened to
Ghazi. Why he never called to confirm he got the notebook or that he had
donated it to the library. I couldn’t argue with that.

I
stroked my fingers on the keyboard of one of the two laptops still opened on
the table. And while I was at it, I started thinking, maybe I should check up
on this group of scholars going to Italy, and Father Nikhil Chandra.

But
before I could get to it, I saw my brother, Greg’s name pop up on my Caller ID.

“Heard
you were going back to Jerusalem,” he said, first thing after I picked up.

“Who
told you that?”

“What?
You think I don’t know what you’re up to?”

I
sucked my tongue. “What are you talking about, Greg?” I got up from the kitchen
table and walked toward the front of the house.

“Looks
like to me you would have had enough of those things.”

I
could feel the knot tying up in my stomach. I didn’t say anything.

“So
now I gotta go babysit you and make sure you don’t go over to Jerusalem acting
like Indiana Jones. And keep you from having a nervous breakdown on Holy Ground.
Again.”

“I
don’t know what you’re talking about, Greg. And no one asked you to go anywhere
with me. I’m going for work.”

“Liar.”

“I
am not lying.”

“I
read your book.”

My
heart stopped. I needed to sit down.

“
In
the Beginning
,” he said, as if I didn’t know the name of it.

I
walked into the living room and sat on the couch. My hand was trembling. I
almost dropped the phone.

I
knew he was going to choke me. I put him in that thing, used his real name, and
then wrote all about man coming from another planet. Oh brother, I could just
see his reputation as Mr. SuperLawyer going up in flames.

“Catchy
title,” he said, and then started laughing. “You ain’t got nothing to say,
girl?”

I
swallowed hard. “Uhmm.” I really didn’t have anything to say, even if I could
talk, which I couldn’t. And, what could I say?

“I
liked your book.”

 I
did drop the phone.

“What
did you say? I asked after picking it back up.

“I
said, I liked your book. Glad you decided to set the record straight in the new
one. Makes me think you’re kind of toughening up.”

The
new one? How does he find out all this stuff?

“Uhm,
yeah, but telling the world. I’m not so sure about that.”

“Why
wouldn’t people want to know?”

“What
did you say? Why
would
people wanna know?”

“No.
I said ‘wouldn’t.’ Why would people
not
want to know about their origins?
To coin a phrase, Author Justin, about ‘in the beginning’?”

“But
can’t you just see it? Government people chasing after me to permanently
silence me.” I was repeating Addie’s rendition of how it would go. “Scholars would
be accusing me of trying to perpetrate a hoax. Fanatics lying in wait to kill
me.”

“Justin.
There you go with those conspiracy theories again. No one tried to do anything
to you last time you went on your quest to unravel true historical mysteries.
You wrote a book, what? Thirteen years ago, and you’re still alive.”

“What
about our reputations? Your reputation?”

“I’m
retired. I still do a case here and there, and my name is on that firm, but I’m
not trying to have the coroner come and pick up my body from a courtroom. With
nothing to do, I’d probably take to drinking or fishing. And, I’m not keen on
doing either one of those things. I may as well hang out with you.” 

“Hahaha.”

When
did he get to be so faithful and loyal to me and my doings?
I thought.

“Okay,
Mr. Martyr,” I said. “But this time I’m not hiding behind fiction. This time
I’m going to present proof.”

“Good
for you. When we leaving for Jerusalem?”

 “Uhm.
Next week. Just booked my flight about an hour ago.”

“The
saga continues,” he said, and chuckled. “Check the flight you’re on and see if
they got a first class ticket available for me. And let me know. Michael going?”

“Uhm,
no. I hadn’t asked him. Claire’s going, though.”

“Good.
The more the merrier.”

I
probably should have told him about Addie and Jack. I’m sure he would have had
something to say about it. But he did say, “The more the merrier,” and didn’t
even grumble when I told him Claire was going. I’m going to just have to hold
him to being “merry” when he finds out about the Baltimore book gang.

After
I hung up from Greg, I remembered I was supposed to call Professor Abelson and
let her know when I was leaving, just in case her “husband” wasn’t going to be
home. Whoever heard of a seventy or eighty year old man going on business
trips? I knew it was late and hoped because of it she wouldn’t pick up the
phone. I’d rather leave a message. I scrolled through my contacts where I had
put her number when I picked her up at the hospital.

I
had saved it under the name “Scary Lady.”

Chapter Thirty-One

After hanging up from Greg and leaving the message for Professor
Abelson, I walked back in the kitchen to retrieve the laptops and put them away.
The house was dark, my big chef’s kitchen devoid now of all the laughs and
people. I had had fun.

I walked quickly across the room to the kitchen table, the
terracotta stone floor cool to my bare feet. Mase’s laptop was dead. I shut the
top and walked back through the hallway to his office and plugged it in.

I headed back to the kitchen to get mine but remembered Addie
telling me to find out about Ghazi. I may as well do it now, I thought. I slid
my fingers over the mouse pad, and the screen lit up. Good, I had a little
battery power left.

I pulled out one of the chairs and sat down. I clicked on a
new tab and googled Ghazi’s name. I got nothing. I looked through several
pages. No mention of him. So then I googled a couple of people who I remembered
worked with Dr. Margulies. After twelve years, thinking of the names of people
he worked with was no easy feat. Finally, I came across a few, but only two
that had an email address. One was an archaeologist; the other was a professor
at Hebrew University.

By the light of the computer screen I composed a quick email
to the archaeologist. I asked if he knew how to get in touch with Ghazi, and if
he did, could he either send me Ghazi’s information, or please pass on mine to
him. I read it over and thought I should make it sound more urgent. So I added
that it was very important that I speak with Ghazi as soon as possible. I read
it again, highlighted it and copied the message to the clipboard. Then I
clicked send, opened up another email and pasted the message in. I typed the
professor’s email address in, and sent it on its way as well. Sending two, I
thought, was better than copying both of them in the same email.

Then I opened up a new tab on google and searched for the
information on the trip to Italy for scholars to help decipher the Voynich
Manuscript. I found an announcement that read, “
An international Voynich conference has been organized for 11
May 2012. Booking for attendees starts 1 February 2012.”

Seemed
funny that John Carroll would write a date like that, with the day first, then
the month. And why didn’t their website come up? So I googled John
Carroll University and clicked on their website. I couldn’t find anything
about the conference. Not under their “About” tab, or under their “News” or
“Events” listings.

Hmmm
. . .

I
typed Father Nikhil Chandra into John Carroll’s faculty search box. Nothing. I
took the word ‘Father’ off. Still nothing. I knew I was spelling it correctly.
I could see the card he gave me in my head. So I checked under their “Alumni”
tab. Again, nothing.

I
had starting typing his name in a general google search box, when I got a ding
from AOL that I had a new email. It was one from the professor at Hebrew
University. I got excited.

“Good,”
I said aloud, one step closer to finding Ghazi. I’d been such a terrible
friend. Not looking him up before now. I’ll just finish checking on Father
Chandra later.”

I
clicked on the email and opened it up. Sure enough he had information on Ghazi.
It wasn’t exactly the information I expected to get, though.

Chapter Thirty-Two

John
F. Kennedy International Airport

November 7,
2011

“When
we get to Israel, I want to look up Ghazi’s death certificate.”

We
were all sitting at JFK, waiting to board our flight to Jerusalem. Addie, all
of sudden, turned, put her face in mine, and blurted out her request. It
startled me. I had told her about Ghazi’s death soon after I got the email.

She
hadn’t really said anything since we all had met up in the boarding area. When
I first saw her and Jack waiting for us at our gate, she ran to me, hugged me
and Claire, and was all smiles, babbling how happy she was. But then I
introduced her to Greg, once he returned from the restroom, and she turned red,
started blushing and flubbing her words. I stood back and watched.
How cute
,
I thought. She likes Greg. I tapped Claire on her arm, and we giggled.

Greg
was a good fifteen years older than her I guessed, but my brother was very
good-looking. He had dark, smooth skin, low cut hair that was sprinkled, like
his neatly trimmed goatee, with just a touch of gray. And he and the gym had an
up-close, personal, and intimate relationship, and it showed. He was dressed in
a white, French cut shirt, first three buttons undone, shiny gold cufflinks, a
pair of black slacks, and black leather huaraches shoes.

After
Addie got herself together from the initial shock of seeing Greg, she didn’t
say much of anything else, other than whispering, at a barely audible level,
that I should have told her about my brother. Told her what, I wondered. The
next thing she said, more than a half hour later, was her abrupt question.

 “Why?”
I laughed. “Why do you want to see his death certificate? Don’t you think
that’s kind of morbid?” Was that the only thing she could think of to say?

“Don’t
you care about him?” she asked me.

“What
kind of question is that? He was a friend. Unfortunately, no one thought he was
good enough of a friend to notify me of his death. And, of course I care.”

“I
just think it’s suspicious.”

There
she was being suspicious again.

“What’s
suspicious?” I asked.

“He
gets the journal and he dies. Maybe he was murdered.” Addie drew her words out
to make it seem conspiratorial. Her eyes were big, and she held her hands up
like she was trying to get me to understand.

That
made Greg and Claire laugh. Deep down belly kind of laugh. I even breathed out
a little chuckle. We all remembered how I said Dr. Sabir had been murdered,
actually how I went on and on about how he was murdered when I first found out
about his death. Only to find later he’d been struck by lightning while trying
to fix a flat on his car. She sounded just like me. Always making more of
things then what they really were.

Now
it was my turn to tell someone how they were blowing things out of proportion.
But before I could speak, she turned and looked at me.

“I
really am not
asking
you, you know.” She sounded defiant. “I’ll go by
myself.”

“I’m
sure you would,” I said. But I knew I wasn’t staying in while she went around Jerusalem on her little adventure. I’d just wait until Greg wasn’t in earshot, so he
couldn’t comment, ‘That’s not what we came to do.” I would let her know once we
got to Israel that I’d go with her.

•≈•≈•≈•≈•≈•≈•≈•

Jack
Hughes excused himself from his travel partners about twenty minutes before
boarding time, saying he needed to use the restroom. He walked past the
restroom right around the corner from his gate, and headed down Delta’s
Concourse B in the opposite direction of the next closest lavatory.

He
found a boarding area two gates down from his own, and tucked himself into a
corner of the room. The waiting area was nearly empty and the desk was dark and
unoccupied. He stood leaning up against the wall in his corner and stared out
of the glass window overlooking several 747s refueling and being cleaned. He
was very familiar with the operations of readying a plane for its next
destination.

He
surveyed the tarmac and saw flight workers hustling about and the motorized
carts scurrying across the gray tarmac. It was a clear day, tufts of whitish
clouds banded across the sky. He shook his head slowly from side to side and
sighed. He was about to board one of those planes going off with a scientist to
look for proof that man came from Mars. How absolutely absurd. And it was
probably dangerous, too. Not for him, but possibly for the world.

His
mind swirled with questions. How does that woman think she’s going to do this?
She hasn’t involved the academic community. She has to know that the only way
to establish credibility is to assemble a team of archaeologists, geologists,
and what have you, who will corroborate her findings. Why would she try to do
this with a retired lawyer and a research doctor? She hadn’t told the federal
government, or Israel, for that matter, she was coming over there to dig.
Granted a small hole, still, it was foreign soil. Just a lone wolf and her band
of siblings out on a crusade to disrupt the flow of human existence. And now
she’s pulled
my
sister into the mix, a laid-off telephone company worker
who reads too many books and drinks too much coffee.

He
walked over to one of the blue bucket upholstered chairs and sat. He spread his
legs, placed his elbows on his knee and cupped his hands together propping them
under his chin. Staring out of the window, Jack sat for a while, oblivious to
the other sounds and people around him, grimacing the whole time.

Tightening
the muscles in his jaw, he leaned back against the seat, lifted himself
slightly off the chair and dug in his front jean pocket for his phone.
Scrolling through his contact list, he touched the screen next to Robert
Kevron’s number and put the phone up to his ear.