Cross Bones Part 38

I felt, what? Relief? Grat.i.tude? Embarra.s.sment?

Drawing close, Ryan slid the aviators onto his head.

"You good, soldier?" The electric blues were filled with concern.

"Dandy."

"Offense run scrimmages on your face?"

"I slipped in a tomb."

"I hate it when that happens." Ryan's mouth did that twitchy thing it does when I'm looking like h.e.l.l.

"Don't say it," I warned.

My hair was sweaty from climbing in and out of the Kidron. My face was sc.r.a.ped and swollen from my tunnel dive. My jacket was smeared with paw prints. I was dirt-speckled, bramble-scratched, and my jeans and fingernails were caked with enough crypt mud to plaster a hut.

Ryan dropped into the chair beside me.

"What went down out there?"

I told him about the tomb and the jackal, and about the incoming rounds from the Hevrat Kadisha.

"Jake lost consciousness?"

"Briefly." I left out details of the runaway truck.

"Probably a mild concussion."

"Probably."

"Where's Max?"

I told him.

"Better hope these guys follow their own dictates and let the dead lie."

I explained Jake's theory that the James ossuary had been looted from this tomb, making the place the Jesus family crypt.

"This hypothesis is based on carvings on old boxes?"

"Jake claims to have more proof at his lab. Says it's dynamite."

A woman arrived with an infant. The infant was crying. The woman eyed me, kept walking, and took a seat in the farthest bank of chairs.

"I saw something, Ryan." With one thumbnail, I dug mud from under the other. "When I was in the lower chamber."

"Something?"

I described what I'd spotted through the hole created when the rock fell out.

"You're sure?"

I nodded.

Across the room the baby was picking up steam. The mother rose and began pacing the floor.

I thought of Katy. I remembered the night she spiked a temperature of 105, and the emergency-room run with Pete. Suddenly, I missed my daughter very much.

"How did you know we were here?" I asked, dragging my thoughts back to the present.

"Schenck's major crimes. He knew Friedman was working Kaplan, and that I'd come to Israel with some female American anthropologist. Schenck put two and two together and dimed Friedman."

"Any news on that front?"

"Kaplan's denying he copped the necklace."

"That's it?"

"Not quite."

24.

"TURNS OUT THE ACCUSED, THAT WOULD BE K KAPLAN, AND THE AND THE wronged, that would be Litvak, go way back." wronged, that would be Litvak, go way back."

"Kaplan is a friend of the shopkeeper he robbed?"

"Distant cousin and sometime supplier. Kaplan provides Litvak with the occasional, how did Litvak phrase it? Item of curiosity."

"Litvak deals in antiquities?"

Ryan nodded.

"Illegal?"

"Of course not."

"Of course not."

"Litvak and Kaplan had had words just prior to the disappearance of the necklace."

"Words over what?"

"Kaplan promised something and failed to deliver. Litvak was p.i.s.sed. Things got heated. Kaplan stormed out."

"Palming the necklace on his way."

Ryan nodded. "Litvak was so peeved he called the cops."

"You're kidding."

"Litvak's not the sharpest knife in the set. And a bit of a hothead."

The infant was cranking up for a personal best. The woman walked by, patting its back.

Ryan and I smiled them past.

"What was Kaplan supposed to have delivered to Litvak?" I asked when mother and child had moved off.

"An item of curiosity."

I rolled my eyes. It hurt.

Ryan folded his shades and slid them into his s.h.i.+rt pocket. Leaning back, he stretched his legs and laced his fingers on top of his stomach.

"A gen-oo-ine Masada relic."

I was about to say something clever like, "No s.h.i.+t!" when the triage nurse entered the waiting area and strode our way. Ryan and I stood.

"Mr. Drum has suffered a mild concussion. Dr. Epstein has decided to keep him overnight."

"You're admitting him?"

"For observation. It's standard. Other than a headache and possibly some irritability, Mr. Drum should be fine in a day or two."

"When can I see him?"

"It'll be an hour or two until he's transferred upstairs."

When the nurse had gone, Ryan turned in his chair.

"How about lunch?"

"Sounds good."

"How about lunch with strong liquor, then s.e.x?"

"You are one silver-tongued devil."

Ryan's face lit up.

"But, no."

Ryan's face fell.

"I need to tell Jake what I saw in that tomb."

Two hours later, Ryan and I were in Jake's room. The patient was wearing one of those tie-at-the-nape gowns that had seen way too much bleach. Tubing ran from his right arm. His left was thrown over his forehead, palm out.

"It wasn't the tomb," Jake snapped, voice thick, face paler than the gown.

"Then why the demonstration?"

"The Hevrat Kadisha were targeting you!"

The nurse hadn't been kidding about irritability.

"Me?"

"They know why you're in Israel."

"How could they?"

"You called the IAA."

"Not since I've been here."

"You contacted Tovya Blotnik from Montreal." Barked like one who might eat his own young.

"Yes, but-"

"The phones at the IAA are bugged."

"By whom?" I wasn't believing this.

"The ultra-Orthodox."

"Who think you are a child of the devil," Ryan inserted.

I threw him a look that said I wasn't amused.

Jake ignored the exchange.

"These people are lunatics," he went on. "They throw rocks so people can't drive on the Sabbath. They put up posters d.a.m.ning archaeologists by name. I get calls over and over in the middle of the night, recorded messages, cursing me to die of cancer, hoping that terrible things happen to my family."

Jake's eyes closed against the fluorescents burning overhead.

"It wasn't the tomb," he repeated. "They know that tomb's empty. And they haven't a clue about its true importance."

"Then what did they want?" I asked, confused.