Intervention

6

5:05 P.M., MONDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2008

CAIRO, EGYPT

(10:05 A.M., NEW YORK CITY)

So there you have it,” Shawn said. “Sorry it’s taken so bloody long. Greek was obviously not Saturninus’s forte. As I mentioned after the first reading, the letter is signed simply Saturninus, with the date of the sixth of April, AD 121.”

For a few beats Shawn studied his wife. She didn’t move or even blink. She had a dazed expression on her face; she didn’t even seem to be breathing.

“Hello,” Shawn called, to get Sana’s attention. “Say something! Anything! What are you thinking?” Shawn stood up and stepped back to the desk, where he gently deposited the papyri sheets for their protection, using the assorted weights to hold them flat. He slipped off the white gloves, placed them on the desk, and then returned to the straight-backed chair. Sana had followed him with her eyes, but it was clear her thoughts were on what she’d been hearing over the last few hours. When Shawn had laboriously finished reading the letter the first time, she’d seemed equally shell-shocked, managing to say only that she’d needed to hear it again.

“I know I didn’t do a good job at translating it,” Shawn confessed, “especially that first time. Again, I’m sorry it took so long, but the grammar and the syntax are both so convoluted. It’s obvious that Greek was not Saturninus’s first language, and because of the sensitive nature of the subject matter, he did not want to entrust the writing of the letter to a secretary. His mother tongue would have been Aramaic, as he was from Samaria.”

“What are the chances it is a fake? Perhaps a second-century fake, but a fake nonetheless.”

“That’s a good question, and if the letter had been addressed to one of the early Orthodox Church fathers, the idea it was a fake might be something I’d question, if only to discredit the Gnostic heretics by making a direct association with them and the archvillain Simon Magus. But it was sent to an early Gnostic teacher, from someone who had theological inclinations in that direction. This was kind of an ‘inside communication’ sent to someone with answers to specific questions. There’s almost zero chance it’s a fake, especially where it ended up. It wasn’t as if someone ever expected it to be found.”

“When do you believe the codex was put together? I mean, when was this letter presumably sandwiched into the leather cover?”

“Let’s say it had to be before approximately AD 367.”

Sana smiled. “Approximately AD 367! That’s a pretty specific date.”

“Well, something specific happened in AD 367.”

“So the letter was saved for several hundred years. It was important, but then it became less so?”

“Yes,” Shawn agreed. “But it’s something I cannot explain.”

“What happened in AD 367, and what’s the theory of why these codices ended up being sealed in a jar and buried in the sand?”

“In AD 367 the Gnosticism movement had peaked and was on the decline, as ordered by the Orthodox Church. In compliance, the influential bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, ordered the monasteries under his jurisdiction to dispose of all heretical writing, including the monastery that existed close to modern-day Nag Hammadi. It’s supposed that some of the monks rebelled at that monastery and instead of destroying the texts, hid them, with the intention of eventually retrieving them. Unfortunately for them, it didn’t happen, and their loss turned out to be our gain.”

“And you think this letter is a response to a letter that Basilides wrote to Saturninus.”

“There is no question in my mind, considering Saturninus’s syntax. He surely didn’t pull any punches in his description of his former boss and teacher, Simon the Magician. It is clear to me that Basilides had specifically asked if Saturninus thought Simon was divine, a true Christ in the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth, and whether or not Simon possessed the Great Power as he claimed. Although Saturninus suggests that Simon himself thought he was either divine or was possessed of a spark of the divine, Saturninus surely didn’t. Saturninus clearly states that Simon’s magic was trickery, for which Saturninus and Simon’s other assistant, Menander, were largely responsible. Saturninus also says Simon was extremely jealous of the supposed curative power of the Apostles, especially Peter. This is a canonical fact. It appears in the Bible’s Acts of the Apostles, where it specifically states that Simon tried to buy Peter’s power.” Shawn paused to catch his breath but then added with a contemptuous chuckle, “Thanks to Saturninus and this letter, we know now that Simon didn’t give up after that initial rebuff.”

“What I find ironic is that we have this extraordinary historical information because of one person’s venality.”

“True,” Shawn agreed with a more open laugh. “But what I find ironic is that the same venality is quite likely going to vault me into the archaeological stratosphere. Belzoni, Schliemann, and Carter will have nothing on me.”

Sana couldn’t help but roll her eyes. Although Shawn’s seeming self-confidence had impressed her at the beginning of their relationship, she now found it puerile and self-absorbed, again suggesting Shawn harbored insecurity that she had not initially suspected.

Catching her reaction and misinterpreting it, Shawn added, “You don’t think this is going to be a big event? You’re wrong! This is going to be huge. And you know who I’m going to have the most fun breaking the news to?”

“I can’t imagine,” Sana said. She was more interested in continuing the discussion of the contents of the shocking letter, rather than its potential effect on Shawn’s career.

“His Eminence!” Shawn said with a touch of mock disdain. “James Cardinal O’Rourke, bishop of the Archdiocese of New York.” Shawn laughed, savoring the anticipation. “I can’t wait to drop in on my old Amherst College drinking buddy, now the most elevated member of the ecclesiastical establishment that I know and the one who’s forever lecturing me to mend my ways. I’m going to have a lot of fun rubbing his nose in this letter, proving to him that one of his uppity-up popes, believing he was infallible, was dead wrong. Mark my words!”

“Oh, please!” Sana scoffed. Too often, she’d witnessed her husband and the archbishop arguing uselessly into the wee hours of the morning, particularly about papal infallibility, after a dinner at the cardinal’s residence. “You two are never going to agree on anything.”

“This time, thanks to Saturninus, I’ll have proof.”

“Well, I hope I’m not there,” Sana remarked. She’d never enjoyed those evenings and lately had stopped participating. She’d asked if they could go out to a restaurant instead, which Sana thought would calm their behavior. But neither Shawn nor James were willing. They enjoyed their endless, seemingly acrimonious debates too much and didn’t want to be restrained.

Back at the beginning of their relationship, when Shawn had first told her about his long-standing friendship with the archbishop, she didn’t entirely believe him. The archbishop was the most powerful prelate in the country, if not the hemisphere. The man was a true celebrity. There was even talk that he might be destined for the Vatican.

Yet it wasn’t just their respective positions that made their friendship seem so unlikely. It was their personalities — Shawn the sophisticated extrovert, constantly seeking opportunities for real or imagined self-aggrandizement, James the ever-modest parish priest who had been waylaid by fate to assume more and more responsibilities for which he was ill prepared. What never ceased to amuse Sana was that these opposite personality styles were denied by the old friends themselves. Shawn would have none of James’s expressed modesty, accusing him of unbridled ambition fortified by exceptional pragmatism, shrewdness, and his ability to flatter. James considered Shawn’s bravado equally suspect, convinced Shawn was a deeply insecure person, a belief Sana was beginning to share. James never tired of constantly reminding Shawn that God and the Church were there to help him.

From Sana’s perspective, even the two men’s outward appearances argued against the chances that they would be friends. Shawn was a natural athlete who participated in varsity sports at Amherst. At six-foot-three and two hundred pounds, he was physically imposing and still fit from competitive tennis. James was short and plump, and now, often swathed head to toe in his scarlet robes of office, appeared decidedly elfin. On top of that, Shawn was black Irish, with thick, dark hair and strong angular features. James, on the other hand, had red hair and creamy, freckled, almost translucent skin.

What had drawn the two men together and had cemented their relationship, Sana was later to learn, was first circumstance and later a love of debate. It had started their freshman year when they had been made roommates. Joining them was another student who lived directly across the hallway. His name was Jack Stapleton, and as chance would have it, he too ended up living in New York City. So the Three Musketeers, as they were known in college, miraculously ended up in the same city even if they were worlds apart in their careers.

In contrast to James, Sana had met Jack Stapleton just twice. He seemed such a remarkably private person, she wondered how he’d gotten along with the others. Maybe his seemingly thoughtful, retiring nature and lack of self-reference had made him the glue that had held the group of friends together back in college.

“James is going to come unhinged,” Shawn continued, still chuckling to himself at the prospect. “And I’m going to love it. This is going to be my opportunity to put him on the hot seat, and is he going to squirm. I can’t wait to revisit the infallibility issue. In light of all the papal shenanigans during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, it’s an issue we’ve argued about hundreds of times.”

“What makes you so certain this is going to rank up with Carter’s discovery of King Tut’s tomb?” Sana questioned to refocus the discussion.

She wasn’t certain what the other two archaeologists Shawn had mentioned had discovered, although the name Schliemann was familiar.

“King Tut was an insignificant child ruler whose life was a mere blip in the sands of time,” Shawn snapped, “whereas the Virgin Mary was arguably the most important human to have lived, second only to her firstborn son. In fact, maybe they were equally important. She was the Mother of God, for chrissake.”

“No need to get yourself riled up,” Sana said soothingly. Of late Shawn often expressed irritation when he thought she was disagreeing with him in his area of expertise. The irony was that in no way did she question the historical importance of the Virgin Mary, especially in relation to the puny, teenage Tutankhamen, but Carter had unearthed a huge cache of treasure. So far, all Shawn had was three sheets of papyrus of unconfirmed authenticity that talked about the Virgin Mary’s remains. Yet Sana could see Shawn’s point from her own reaction. When Shawn had gotten to the section in Saturninus’s letter that involved the bones of the Virgin Mary, she had reacted as if Shawn had slapped her across the face.

“I’m not upset! I’m just surprised you don’t see the unbelievable importance of this letter.”

“I do! I do!” Sana insisted.

“What I think happened was Basilides asked Saturninus not just his opinion on Simon’s divinity but also whether Simon had written anything of substance and, if he had, where it might be. Maybe Basilides had his suspicions. That’s why I believe Saturninus described the Gospel of Simon along with the fact that he and Menander put it in the ossuary. I don’t believe Basilides had any idea about the Virgin Mary’s remains having been brought to Rome by Simon, nor did he care. He was interested in Simon’s theology.”

“What’s the actual definition of the word gospel?”

“It’s any message concerning Christ, which most people associate with the first four canonical books of the New Testament covering the teachings of Jesus Christ. More broadly, a gospel is any message of a religious teacher. That’s why it’s going to be both thrilling and instructive to learn if the Gospel of Simon is about Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ and Simon Christ together, or Simon Christ alone. I say it that way because most people think Christ was Jesus’ last name. It wasn’t. Christ was from the Greek kristos, meaning messiah, and it is where the word Christian was derived. If Simon considered himself a messiah, he could have very well referred to himself as Christ. Of course, we already know one thing: There was no resurrection associated with Simon. He stayed dead after he toppled off a tower in the Roman Forum at Nero’s behest, trying to prove his divinity, or at least his close association with divinity.”

Sana glanced in Shawn’s eyes. She could read his mind. Obviously, he thought his chances of finding the Gospel of Simon were good, and she knew exactly why. Five years ago Shawn had prevailed upon James to use his influence with Pope John Paul II to obtain access to the necropolis under Saint Peter’s Basilica to carry out the definitive analysis of Saint Peter’s tomb. Over a period of six months, Shawn, along with a team of architects and engineers, had studied both the site and two thousand years of available papal records to write the definitive history of the tomb, including the 1968 discovery of a headless first-century male skeleton, heralded by Paul VI as the apostle’s remains. The result was that Shawn had become an expert on the gravesite, and if Saturninus and Menander had buried the Virgin Mary’s ossuary containing the Gospel of Simon in AD 65 where Saturninus claimed in the letter, Shawn would know where to look.

“I’ve heard of the Sadducees and the Pharisees, but never the Essenes or the Zealots,” Sana said, going back to the letter. “Who were these people Saturninus is talking about?”

“They were all separate Jewish sects, of which the Sadducees and Pharisees were far and away the most important because of their numbers. The Essenes were a small militant, ascetic, communal group who felt the Temple in Jerusalem had been defiled. Although there were Essene cells in most Palestinian cities, their strictest leaders and brethren moved out into the desert along the shores of the Dead Sea at Qumran. They were the transcribers of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as the people who hid them to keep them out of the hands of the Romans.

“The Zealots were more politically defined. Their primary goal was to rid Jewish lands of Roman oppressors, and the most fanatical members were called the Sicarii. To understand what was going on in the first century, you have to remember that most everyone wanted the Romans out of Palestine, except, of course, the Romans, and to a large degree that was what a lot of the contemporary messianic prophecy was all about. The Jews expected a messiah to get rid of the Romans, which was one reason why a lot of Jews weren’t satisfied with Jesus being the Messiah. Not only did he not get rid of the Romans, he got himself crucified in the bargain.”

“Okay,” Sana said. “But why would the Zealots and the Essenes plot to steal the body of the Virgin Mary? That doesn’t make sense to me.”

“Saturninus doesn’t say specifically, but here’s what I think he is implying. When the Virgin Mary died in AD 62 as he says and was entombed in a cave on the Mount of Olives, perhaps even where her tomb is supposed to be today, some Zealots, probably the Sicarii, saw an opportunity to fan the fires of hatred of the Romans toward the Jews. What they were trying to do was start a revolt, and they didn’t care which side was the instigator. Prior to that, the Sicarii had mostly concentrated on intensifying the hatred of the Jews toward the Romans, which is why they spent most of their time and energy assassinating those Jews who they thought were collaborating with or even just soft on the Romans. The rationale was to get the Jews to start the fight.

“Then the death of Mary offered something else. It offered an opportunity to put Roman frustration with the problem of religious strife over the top. You see, at that time in the mid-first century, Jews who had become followers of Jesus of Nazareth were considered Jews and not yet a new religion. Yet they didn’t get along with traditional Jews. In fact, they were constantly at each others’ throats over what the Romans considered ridiculously petty issues. On top of that, there was infighting among the Jewish Christians. It was pure religious anarchy, and the Romans were fit to be tied.”

“I still cannot understand the Virgin Mary’s role in all this.”

“Think of the Romans’ frustration. Saturninus mentions that the Romans thought they had taken care of the Jesus of Nazareth problem by crucifying Jesus. But they were wrong, because Jesus didn’t stay dead like all the other crucified supposed messiahs of the time, of which there were a number. Jesus came back in three days, which ended up, in retrospect, magnifying the problem rather than ending it. Saturninus implies that the Zealots counted on Mary’s disappearance in three days after her death to suggest that she too had defied death and had joined her son, reconfirming Jesus’ mission. The Zealots and the Sicarii stole the body of the Virgin, specifically on the third day, in the hope of terrifying the Romans into believing that there was possibly going to be another serious flare-up of religious fervor as followed Jesus’ resurrection, forcing them to crack down to prevent it. The idea was that a crackdown in such a tense environment would cause a cycle of violence, which would cause a harsher crackdown, and so on. As Saturninus mentions, he didn’t know if it was the disappearance of Mary’s body that did the trick, but soon after its theft, a cycle of violence did occur that grew progressively month by month. Within just a few years the tinderbox that was Palestine exploded into the climactic Great Revolt, with all the Jews uniting together to seize both Jerusalem and Masada from the Romans.”

“Do you think it would have been easy to steal the body of the Virgin?”

“Actually, I think it would have been. There seems to have been a surprising lack of interest in the Virgin Mary after the crucifixion, so that her death, according to Saturninus, in AD 62, drew little or no attention. None of the four Evangelists mentions much about her after Jesus’ death and resurrection, and Paul gives no indication whatsoever of a special place for her in the early Church. In fact, he mentions her only once in Galatians, and that was fleetingly, without even using her name. It wasn’t until toward the end of the first century that Mary began getting more recognition. Today there is no question of her importance, which is why I believe this letter is so significant.”

“I didn’t get the impression from Saturninus’s letter that Simon Magus had any connection with the initial theft of Mary’s remains.”

“Nor did I. My sense is that his interest was driven by his desire to secure for himself the curative power related to Jesus of Nazareth, and he didn’t share the political interests of the Zealots. Saturninus doesn’t mention how Simon learned that the Essenes had hidden the body in one of the Qumran caves, nor does he say how he managed to gain control of the bones. Perhaps by then no one cared. Simon was disappointed the remains didn’t have the power to heal, which was obviously his reason to gain possession of them, and it was only after the fact that he got the idea to follow Peter, first to Antioch, and then Rome, with the plan to trade them for Peter’s curative power.”

“But Peter rebuffed him again.”

“Apparently so, and according to Saturninus, with equal passion as when he had offered silver.”

“Why do you think Saturninus and Menander decided to bury Mary’s bones with Peter?”

“I believe for the reason he states in the letter. They were both impressed with Peter’s ability to cure by laying on of hands. We know they were impressed, since ultimately both became Christians, and Saturninus became a bishop of a major Roman city.”

“I wonder what happened to Simon’s remains. It would have been ironic if they ended up with Peter as well.”

“Indeed,” Shawn said with a smile. “But I doubt it sincerely. Saturninus surely would have said if he and Menander had done it.”

“So, what are your plans?” Sana questioned. “Let me guess. You want to go to Rome and see if this ossuary Saturninus described is where he said he and Menander put it?”

“Exactly,” Shawn said eagerly. “Apparently, just around the time Simon died during his attempt to rise up to heaven, Peter must have been martyred. With Peter’s followers building him an underground tomb, Saturninus and Menander would have had a convenient opportunity to join Mary’s ossuary with one of her son’s closest apostles. Frankly, I think it was a very respectful gesture on their part, and it certainly suggests that they at least held Mary in high regard.”

“I didn’t understand the part of the letter describing where they put it,” Sana said. “Do you?”

“I do. The tomb was a barrel vault, comprised of two parallel foundation walls holding up a vault. To build such a tomb, a rather large hole has to be excavated so that the walls can be put up. Saturninus says that they placed the ossuary at the base of the north wall outside of the tomb, approximately in the middle, and covered it with dirt. That is consistent with the facts, because the foundation walls of Peter’s tomb run east-west.

“Why did they put the ossuary outside the tomb, rather than inside with Peter?”

“Obviously, they had to hide the damn thing outside,” Shawn said impatiently, as if he thought Sana’s question was inane. “They were doing this sub rosa, so to speak, without anyone else’s knowledge.”

“Don’t be condescending!” Sana snapped. “I’m doing my best trying to understand it all.”

“Sorry,” Shawn said, realizing that if he wanted her to come, he had to be patient. “Getting back to the ossuary’s placement, I have to tell you that it is unbelievably serendipitous for us for two reasons: First, I don’t think that area of the tomb has ever been touched; second, the last time the tomb was excavated, which was in the nineteen-fifties, the archaeological team actually tunneled under the area, probably passing beneath Mary’s ossuary, to reach the inside of the tomb. What that means is that all we will have to do, at most, is remove maybe a few inches of packed debris and the ossuary will drop down into our waiting hands.”

“You make it sound so easy.”

“I think it will be. Just before you got here I was on the phone with my assistant, Claire Dupree, back at the Metropolitan. I’m having her overnight my file on Saint Peter’s tomb to the Hassler in Rome. I still have the access permit to the necropolis under Saint Peter’s Basilica from the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology, which James arranged directly through Pope John Paul II. The file also contains my Vatican ID card, and most important, the key for the Scavi, or excavation office, which is the same as to the site itself.”

“That was five years ago.”

“True, but I’d be astounded if anything has changed. It’s one of the frustrations as well as joys of Italy that rarely does anything change, at least in the bureaucratic arena.”

“What if the keys don’t fit or the permit has been revoked?”

“I cannot imagine that happening, but if it does, we’ll have to cross that bridge at that time. If worse comes to worst, I’ll call James. He can arrange for us to get in there. It just might mean an extra day.”

“You think James would do that if he gets to read Saturninus’s letter, which I assume he’d demand to do. I don’t think so. Also, let’s say we do get in there for argument’s sake, and we do find the ossuary. What in heaven’s name do you plan to do with it?”

“Bring it secretly to New York. I don’t want to jump the gun with this windfall project. When I announce it, I want to have studied the bones and fully translated any and all writings, most specifically, the Gospel of Simon.”

“It’s against the law to take antiquities out of Italy.”

Shawn regarded his wife with a touch of irritation. Over the previous year she had developed an independent streak, as well as an aggravating tendency toward negative thinking, and this was a good example. At the same time he reminded himself that in his enthusiasm over the previous hour, he was guilty of glossing over a few pesky details, like how the hell he was going to get his find back to New York. He, more than anyone, knew that Italy had become very protective about its historical treasures being pirated out of the country.

“I’ll send the damn thing from the Vatican, not Italy,” Shawn decided abruptly.

“What makes you think sending it from the Vatican is going to be any different? It will have to clear customs one way or the other.”

“I’ll send it to James and label it his personal property. Of course, that will mean I’ll have to call him beforehand and tell him it is a surprise, which it certainly will be, and tell him not to open it until I get there.”

Sana nodded. She’d not thought of that. She supposed it might work.

“Hell, I’ll be giving it back after the fact,” Shawn said, in partial justification.

“Wouldn’t they let you work on it at the Vatican? Why take it back to New York at all?”

“I can’t be sure of it,” Shawn said without hesitation. “Besides, a number of people would demand to be involved and share the spotlight. Frankly, I don’t want to do that. I’ll take some flak for removing it from the Vatican necropolis and sending it to New York, but the positive will overwhelm the negative, I’m certain. To sweeten the deal, I’ll even give the Vatican the codex and Saturninus’s letter, and they can keep them or send them back to Egypt. It will be their call.”

“My sense is that the Catholic Church is not going to like anything about this affair.”

“They’ll have to adjust,” Shawn agreed with a snide smile.

“Adjusting is not easy for an institution like the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church believes the Virgin Mary was assumed bodily into heaven like her son, bones and all, since hers was a virgin birth without original sin.” Sana had been raised a Catholic until her father’s death when she was eight. From then on she’d been raised an Anglican, her mother’s religion.

“Well, as the expression goes, the ball will be in their court to deal with that issue,” Shawn added, with his smile lingering on his lips.

“I wouldn’t make light of it,” Sana said.

“I won’t,” Shawn said categorically but then added with gathering emotion, “I’m going to enjoy it. You’re right about Mary’s bones not being here on earth, but that dogma is relatively new for the Catholic Church. For centuries the Catholic Church just avoided the issue, letting people believe what they wanted to believe. It wasn’t until 1950 that Pope Pius the Twelfth made the determination ex cathedra and invoking papal infallibility, which for me, as you know, is pure nonsense. I’ve had this argument with James a thousand times: The Catholic Church wants it both ways. They evoke a divine basis for papal infallibility regarding Church matters and their interpretation of morality based on a direct apostolic lineage to Saint Peter and ultimately to Christ. Then, in the same breath, they dismiss some of the Church’s medieval popes as being only human.”

“Calm down!” Sana ordered. Shawn’s voice had been steadily rising as he spoke. “You and I are having a discussion here, not a debate.”

“Sorry. I’ve been wound up from the moment Rahul placed the codex in my hot little hands.”

“Apology accepted,” Sana said. “Let me ask you another question about Saturninus’s letter. He used the word sealed when referring to Mary’s ossuary. What do you think they meant by ‘sealed’?”

“Offhand, I’d guess wax. Burial practices at that time involved putting a corpse in a cave tomb for a year or so, then collecting the bones and putting them in a limestone box, which they called an ossuary. If the decay wasn’t complete, the box could have stunk to high heaven unless sealed. To do that, they would have had to use something like wax.”

“Saturninus said that Mary’s body was put in a cave in Qumran. How dry is it there?”

“Very.”

“And how dry is it in the necropolis beneath Saint Peter’s?”

“It varies, but there are times when it’s relatively humid. What are you thinking?”

“I’m wondering what kind of condition the bones might be in if the ossuary stayed sealed. If dampness has been excluded, I might be able to harvest a bit of DNA.”

Shawn chuckled with delight. “I’d never even considered that. Getting some DNA could add another dimension to this story. Maybe the Vatican could make some money by creating Bible Land, something akin to Jurassic Park, by bringing back some of the original characters, starting with Mary.”

“I’m being serious,” Sana said, mildly offended, thinking Shawn was making fun of her. “I’m not talking about nuclear DNA, I’m only talking of my area of expertise: mitochondrial DNA.”

Shawn held up his hands, again pretending to surrender. “Now, I know you’ve told me in the past, but I don’t totally remember the difference between the two types of DNA.”

“Nuclear DNA is in the cell’s nucleus, and it contains all the information to make a cell, to allow it to differentiate into, say, a heart cell, and to cause it to function. Every cell has a full complement of nuclear DNA except red blood cells, which have no nucleus. But every cell has only one set. Mitochondria are microscopic energy organelles that in the very distant past when life was just beginning were engulfed by primitive single-cell organisms. Once those single cells had mitochondria, they were able over millions or even billions of years to develop through evolution into multicellular organisms up to and including humans. Since the mitochondria had been freely living organisms, they have their own DNA, which exists in a circular, relatively stable form. And since individual cells have up to a hundred or so mitochondria, the cell has up to a hundred sets of mitochondrial DNA. All that leads to a higher possibility that DNA can be retrievable, even from ancient bones.”

“I’m going to pretend I understood all that. Do you really think you might be able to isolate some of this circular DNA? That would be fascinating.”

“It all depends on how dry the bones were initially and how dry they have remained. If the ossuary is still sealed, it’s a possibility, and if it is possible to retrieve some of Mary’s DNA, then it’s too bad she had only a divine son and not a divine daughter.”

A crooked smile spread across Shawn’s face. “What a strange comment! Why a daughter and not a son?”

“Because mitochondrial DNA is passed on from generation to generation matrilineally. Males are genetic dead ends, mitochondrially speaking. Sperm don’t have much mitochondria, and what they do have dies off after conception, whereas ova are loaded with them. If Mary had a daughter who had a daughter, et cetera, until current day, there might be someone alive today with the same mitochondrial sequence. By coincidence, the mitochondrial DNA has a two-thousand-year mutational half-life, meaning that after two thousand years, statistically speaking, there’d be a fifty percent chance the DNA sequence would be unchanged.”

“Actually, there’s a very good chance Mary had a daughter — in fact, not one but three of them.”

“Truly?” Sana questioned. “I recall she had only one child, Jesus. That’s what I learned in Sunday school.”

“One son is Catholic dogma, Eastern Orthodox creed, and even the belief of some Protestant denominations, but there are many people who think otherwise. Even the New Testament in the Bible suggests she at least had other sons, although some people think the term ‘brother of Jesus’ means another close relative, like a cousin, a debate that arose during translation from Aramaic and Hebrew to Greek and Latin. But I, for one, think a brother is a brother. Besides, it makes sense to me that she had more children. She was a married woman, and having a bunch of kids the normal way certainly wouldn’t have taken away from having the first one mystically, if that’s what happened. And I’m not making this up. There’s an awful lot of early Christian apocrypha, which didn’t get chosen to be canonical by being included in the New Testament but which state she had up to eleven children, including Jesus, three of whom were daughters. So there might be someone out there with the same DNA.”

“Now, that would put my field of mitochondrial DNA on the map,” Sana said, while imagining writing the paper for Nature or Science with such a suggestion. In the next instant, she was mocking herself. She was getting as bad as Shawn by jumping the gun and entertaining far-fetched delusions of grandeur. Maybe she was even worse, since Shawn was already much more famous in his field than she was in hers.

“Getting back to reality,” Shawn said, “our Egyptair flight leaves Cairo at ten a.m. tomorrow and arrives in Rome at half past twelve. We’re staying at the Hassler. Why not celebrate this coup in style. So, what do you think? Are you coming with me? If all goes well, it’s just an extra day, and the payoff will be immense. I’m truly excited about it. As my last hurrah at fieldwork it will seriously aid my fund-raising.”

“Do you really need me or am I window dressing to prop you up and keep you company?” Sana asked for reassurance but then inwardly winced the moment the unguarded words spilled from her mouth. It was the first time she’d actually voiced the idea, which she had lately been questioning due to his general behavior plus his lagging interest in intimacy, that Shawn had married her more as a young trophy wife than a true partner. It was an issue that had been progressively bothering her over the previous year and which seemed to be worsening with her own modest professional successes. Although she was planning on bringing the subject up at some point, the last thing she wanted to do was get into a serious row there in Egypt.

“I need you!” Shawn said definitively. If he’d actually heard what she had said, he didn’t let on. “I won’t be able to do this myself. I imagine the ossuary will weigh ten to fifteen kilograms, depending on its size and thickness, and I’m not going to want it to literally drop out of the ceiling. I suppose I could hire someone, but I’d much prefer not to. I don’t want to be beholden to someone for their silence until I publish.”

Relieved that her verbal slip had gone over his head, Sana fired off another question: “What are the chances that we could get into serious trouble by sneaking into the crypt under Saint Peter’s?”

“We won’t be sneaking in! We’ll have to get past the Swiss Guards before we even get into the Vatican, and I’ll need to show my all-hours-access permit from the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology. So we’ll be perfectly legal.”

“So, you can look me in the eye and promise me we’re not going to be forced to spend the night in an Italian jail?”

Shawn made a point of leaning over and with his cerulean eyes stared unblinkingly into the depths of Sana’s brown ones. “You will not have to spend an evening in an Italian jail, guaranteed! In fact, when we’re done, we’ll have a late supper with a bottle of the best Prosecco the Hassler can produce.”

“All right, I’ll come!” Sana said with resolve. She was suddenly enamored with the idea that they were embarking on an adventurous quest together. Maybe it would have a positive effect on their relationship. “But now I want to go down to the pool and get the last bit of sun before we head back to winter.”

“I’m with you,” Shawn said eagerly. He was pleased. He’d worried she’d turn him down. Although he’d suggested he could hire someone to help get the ossuary from beneath Saint Peter’s, he knew he couldn’t. The risk of the news getting out would be too great. After all, what he was planning to do was, despite what he’d just said to Sana, totally illegal. At the same time he was convinced it was to be his most brilliant coup.