Cross bones

33

I CAN’T SAYIWAS UP WITH THE MUEZZIN. BUT IT WAS CLOSE.

The sun was rising. The birds were singing. The headache was gone.

The demons were gone.

After clearing papers from my bathroom floor, I showered, then went the extra mile with blush and mascara. At seven, I called Ryan.

“Sorry about yesterday.”

“Maybe we can get you into a ballet class.”

“I don’t mean the Coke spill. I mean me.”

“You are a gentle flower, a winsome sprite, a creature of loveliness and-”

“Why do you put up with me?”

“Am I not the most gallant and wonderful being in your world?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“And sexy.”

“I can be a pain in the ass.”

“Yeah. But you’re my pain in the ass.”

“I’ll make up for it.”

“Tap pants?”

You have to admire the guy. He never gives up.

Friedman called during breakfast. Kaplan wanted to talk about Ferris. Friedman offered to pick Ryan up and leave me the Tempo. I accepted.

Back upstairs, I rang Jake, but got no answer. I assumed he was still asleep.

Wait? No way. I’d been waiting two days.

The Jerusalem Post is headquartered off Yirmeyahu Street, a main artery that begins at the Tel Aviv highway then loops toward the religious neighborhoods of North Jerusalem and joins up with Rabbi Meir Bar Ilan Street, famous for its full-contact Sabbath rock throwers. Jewish motorist or not, these guys didn’t want you driving on their holy day. Ironically, in my stumblings on Friday, I’d passed within a block of the Post ’s doors.

I parked and walked to the building, checking my back for cruisers and jihadists. From Friedman’s sketch map, I knew I was in the Romema neighborhood on the far western edge of West Jerusalem. Thequartier was definitely not a tourist destination. Actually, that’s being generous. Thequartier was ugly as hell, all garages and fenced lots stacked with tires and rusting auto parts.

I entered a long, low rectangle with JERUSALEM POST chiseled on one side. Architecturally, the place had all 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 the Palestinian 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 following the second season’s excavation, the cave finds were never reported by the media. The Jerusalem Post even ran a special “Masada Section” in November of ’64. In it Yadin described all the sensational finds from the first season, mosaics, scrolls, 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 still 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 pulled 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 filled 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 rebellion 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 well have been shipped out of Israel.”

Jake filled 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 alliteration.”

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 alliteration.”

“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 small 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 callback.” Sarcastic.

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

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

“I like it strong.”

“You’ll get it bitter.” Jake was fully 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 really 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’ll 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.