Leaning her head against the wall, ignoring its flaking paint, she tried to shut off her own internal RAM, but every time she closed her eyes, images of blood and explosions filled her vision. The look of desperation on Brandt's face as she left him in Paris. That was the last memory she had of the man who had saved her life.
Squeezing her lids shut, Rebecca started counting off the sequence-specific Haplo genes of the First Migration Eurasian population. Science, as always, was her solace. She felt better already.
Rebecca wasn't sure how much time passed, but her limp hand slid off the laptop and hit something hard. Even after she realized that she was touching John the Baptist's relic, Rebecca did not move her fingers.
Yesterday, she would have been worried that the oils from her skin would damage the delicate bone structure, but now she just let her hand lie there. Besides, the bone had a nice, cool feel to it.
Despite the smooth look, its surface was an interlacing of small protuberances and grooves. Areas where tendon attached or blood vessels entered the bone marrow created a patchwork of tiny defects in the surface. Her finger ran along the shaft of the femur, feeling all the little bumps and furrows. It was almost like Braille, or how gypsies feel a person's skull and tell a life's history from bumps on the head.
Yes, it was much like that. The bone's surface told a story of its own.
She stopped abruptly. Her musings had given off a spark. Much more carefully, Rebecca picked up the bone. Using Lochum's magnifying glass, she studied the inscriptions. Especially those three the professor had given her.
Breath caught in her throat. If she used a nearly microscopic pockmark as a period, would that passage make more sense?
Rebecca opened her laptop. The program was fifteen minutes into its work, but wasn't even a single percent finished. Quickly, she aborted the translation, then reentered the letters from the first passage, only now giving them grammatical delineation based on the bone's intrinsic markings.
Rebecca hit
Lochum entered with fresh coffee and a bag of pastries in hand. "You would not believe the service at-"
There must have been something in her eyes, because he dropped the bag and rushed to her side. "What have you discovered?"
His gaze ran over the same amazing data. The professor sat down hard next to her on the bed. Even he was speechless.
Rebecca climbed out from beneath the covers. "I'll jump in the shower. We'll be out of here in ten minutes."
"Can't you go any faster?" Brandt asked, even though everyone was clinging to the Beamer's handgrips and Lopez had to rely on the emergency brake as they skidded around the ninety-degree corners, laying down rubber.
"I could if there weren't so many fucking pedestrians."
They had made good time. Actually, excellent time. Paris to Budapest in under seven hours, but each minute was too long. Rebecca was in the wind, and that was simply unacceptable.
Davidson sounded slightly nauseated. "Do we even know where we are going?"
At the last gas stop, Brandt had bought a tourist guide of Budapest. After studying it, he had found Rebecca's most logical move-St. Matthias Church. As the most ancient church in the area with an underground chapel that dated back to the first few centuries AD, Brandt had singled it out.
At the very least, they could recon the church, speak with the clergy, and get a better feel for the doctor's destination. At best, Rebecca would be down in the crypt digging away for her precious bones, and he could round the doctors up and get the hell out of Europe.
Brandt had settled on St. Matthias fairly quickly, but he had not shared this information with his men. Even though they had served together for over a year and Svengurd for over two, the multiple ambushes had triggered his suspicion radar. None of his men could ever be disloyal to him or their country, yet Brandt compartmentalized their destination. What was not spoken could not be betrayed.
To that end, at the last rest stop they had smashed all of their communication equipment. For good measure they burned the devices, and then just to be extra certain he had them bury the charred remains alongside a deserted stretch of highway. And not just their radios and earpieces, but any electronic devices that might be used for passive or active communications.
Even poor Lopez's iPod. Brandt didn't think he had ever seen the husky man cry before, but the corporal had come damn close back at the metal pyre.
Unfortunately, the sergeant knew that even if they maintained absolute radio silence, they had a narrow window to extract Rebecca. It would only take their adversaries another short five to six hours to realize his team was not on that London-bound plane. After that, the dragnet would be doubled by his enemies as well as his allies. They were probably wondering where in the hell he was by now.
As they drew nearer to the heart of Budapest and St. Matthias, Brandt ticked off his team's assets for the hundredth time, but they never got any better. They were well armed, but woefully low on ammo. Even with Davidson's sidearm, a barely used Beretta, they had less than ten rounds each. The sniper rifle was nearly full, but had limited usefulness in close combat.
Not only were they going to have to be quiet, but precise as well.
There could be no more surprises.
"Which way?" Lopez asked as they rushed headlong toward a T-intersection.
Brandt glanced at his map. "Hang a left, then a pretty hard right."
The corporal nodded, jerked the parking brake all the way up, skidding them into a left turn. Then he released it as he gunned the car back up to full speed.
"Right! Right here!"
The parking brake squealed as they sailed around the sharp turn. Lopez had to slam on all the brakes, throwing everyone forward in their restraints, but no one complained.
Despite their urgency, the sight silenced them all.
Davidson was the first one to find his voice. "Um, is it just me or are there a bunch of ancient Romans walking around?"
Damned if there wasn't an entire legion of centurions marching past.
Guess he hadn't planned for this.
Rebecca followed Lochum down the hotel's steps, two at a time. He was eager to get moving, not even letting her stop to eat the breakfast he had brought. The professor hadn't even wanted to talk about the bone's translation before leaving the room, but she had so many questions.
Like she said, ancient Greek was a bitch, and her program could only take into account so many variables. The translation was still up for grabs, but Lochum's grip seemed fueled by certainty, and she just didn't have the energy to resist.
So they hit the street at a brisk pace, but Rebecca pulled to a stop when she saw the crowd before her. "What the-?"
Lochum coolly looked at the multitude of people wearing authentic Roman costumes. "Ah, do you not recognize the celebration?"
She was too taken aback by the sheer number of people in the streets and their elaborate attire to respond to his poorly veiled criticism. A veritable parade flowed past the hotel. Burgundy-crested centurions marched with an assembly-sized group of Senators following close behind. It was as if they had stepped into distant ages.
"I don't-"
The professor picked up her hand and headed down the street. He spoke as if describing the origin of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. "They celebrate the naming of Anquincum as the capital of Lower Pannonia."
"Of course," she replied as her mind worked out the rest of the puzzle.
Anquincum was the Roman name for Buda.
Now the ancient Celts in the crowd with their faces painted in bright blue war paint and their almost dreadlocked hair streaked with thick red clay made sense. The legions' conquering of these Celts had been the reason Anquincum was chosen as the region's capital.
She had little time to think as dozens of horse-drawn chariots groaned under the weight of full-sized statues from the Roman pantheon. Athena with her characteristic helm and owl rolled past.
"First century AD?" she asked.
"106 AD to be exact."
They turned the corner onto a decidedly less crowded street. Lochum tried to flag down a cab, but still had little luck. "I do wish you would invest more energy in detail, 'Becca. We have no room for sophomoric generalizations."
As he moved them farther up the road, Rebecca found that not only were the parade participants costumed, but the vast bulk of the cheering crowd was similarly dressed. The entire city had transformed into the very past she and Lochum now sought.
"I've heard of the festival, but I thought it was a Renaissance Fair wannabe. Not this..."
A young Roman page ran past. Everything down to the hand-cut leather ties on his sandals appeared completely authentic. In addition to the costumes, the Hungarians with their dark hair and complexion bore a striking resemblance to the civilization they meant to honor.
"I must admit I felt compelled to carbon-date a few of the uniforms," Lochum stated as he tugged her toward a cab, but what the professor thought a car could do for them, Rebecca wasn't certain. The streets were packed with revelers. Nobody was driving anywhere today.
Once inside the cab, Lochum berated the driver in Hungarian as Rebecca pulled out her laptop. The air of antiquity heightened her already-piqued interest in the translation from John's bone. She read it carefully.
"For he who bore James sought the center of Pest. There he would find those who revered both Moses and Jesus. Those who knew Isaiah and John to be one and the same. The dualist would protect forever the most favored brother."
Lochum finally stopped haranguing the driver and looked at the screen. "Which proves my two linchpin theories. It is James we seek, and he lies in Pest." His eyebrow arched. "Two for two. Not bad, eh?"
Rebecca rolled her eyes. His arrogance was barely tolerable on a normal day, but vindicated? He was insufferable. And now they were out to prove him three for three.
"Now if only this idiot could get us across the river to the Great Synagogue!" Lochum took this moment to smack the poor driver over the head with his newspaper.
The massive Jewish Temple that the professor referred to seemed built to the passage's specifications. Quickly, she surfed the Web and brought up a picture of the large temple. Only the Central Synagogue in New York rivaled its size. It was a behemoth of a sanctuary, yet it garnered very little press in Jewish literature, because for all its grandeur, it looked like no other synagogue in the world.
With two huge spires rising on either side of the dome, it looked like someone had fused a temple and Catholic church together without much care as to how the Jews might have felt about it. This strange merging went so far as to even provide a huge seventeen-foot-tall pipe organ, just like one you might find in the finest cathedrals.
Lochum and she had visited the synagogue several times, not so much as scientists but as tourists, to witness the strange dichotomy for themselves.
But now?
Now they had this incredible passage written into the very bones of John the Baptist stating that James' resting place in Pest was defined by the very nature of this dualism. That was why neither Lochum nor she had to discuss their next stop. It had to be the Great Synagogue.
And the best thing about the temple was that no one had ever looked there for James' burial site. Since the information was hidden away in Paris, no one had thought to question the temple's unusual style as anything more than the Jewish architect's attempt to assimilate into a more and more Christian Hungary.
"My, it is a sight for sore eyes," Lochum said.
Rebecca looked up to find that they had made enough headway for them to see Heroes' Square. As the cab approached the monolithic tourist attraction, she was reminded of Hungary's unique ability to blend the past with the present. The nearly thirty-six-meter pedestal supported an imposing statue of the archangel Gabriel. Encircling the base of the column were the Hungarians' ancestors, the Magyar chieftains. Each was seated upon a snorting stallion. The sculptor's skill made it appear that the ancient warriors barely had their charges in rein, as the horses warned off any foes from messing with Budapest.
Behind the pedestal were two huge semicircular colonnades holding statues of the great rulers throughout Hungary's lengthy history. Like no other nation, Hungary honored all those who had fallen to protect the country from invaders. They had a sense of fierce nationalism that seemed nearly manic to most foreigners.
Just another of Hungary's dichotomies. Like the extremely Christian influences apparent in all of the city's monuments, regardless of the fact that Budapest had the largest Jewish population outside of New York.
Which brought Rebecca to another of the city's historical oddities.
"What's the current theory on why the Jews were banished from Pest?" She hated asking, but her computer was using too much processing power on the next translation to surf the Internet effectively.
The professor turned from Heroes' Square. "Really, Rebecca, I thought you more prepared when you went into the field."
Rebecca bit her tongue. She had come completely prepared. Prepared for the Ecuadorian jungle, not the wilds of Eastern Europe. Besides, she knew him well enough to recognize a feint when she heard one.
"You don't know, do you?"
Lochum snorted. "No one does...." His voice faded as he spotted a pretty Grecian princess, then strengthened as the slim girl vanished into the crowd. "The Romans were capricious at best, and the governors downright hostile at times. They needed no sane reason."
For so long the archaeological community was convinced that Buda held James' resting place that they never questioned the Pest exile. Why worry about Jews when there were so many early Christians to worry about?
But now? The exile mystery took on a whole new dimension. Did the Roman Governor somehow know of James' crypt? Was he secretly a Christian protecting the remains, or was he a polytheist punishing the Jews?
"Didn't you ever wonder why the Jews rushed back over the river to Pest when the exile was lifted? I mean, they were prospering in Buda. Right?"
Lochum must have realized where her inquiries were going. "Are you suggesting that the leaders of the Jewish community knew of James?"
She shrugged, not yet ready to voice her suspicions. "Think about it. If the knowledge survived, it does put the massive migration to Pest and the strange Jewish-Christian hybrid Synagogue into perspective."
"But... But a secret of this magnitude..."
"I seriously doubt anybody knew the full truth, but doesn't it seem reasonable that the Jewish leaders knew they had something precious to protect?"
"The dualists had fulfilled their word," Lochum said.
Rebecca could feel the rush of discovery. Not so much for Lochum to prove that Jesus had survived the cross. No, she was excited for herself. Because Rebecca had never shared her true intent with the professor. It seemed enough that they both sought Christ. Only she knew her motivation.
Her mind worked overtime, imagining a sample from Jesus' bone proving the Messiah held the "smart" gene. After that day, no one could refute her "good" radiation theory. Everyone would have to accept the fact that it wasn't the hand of God who created civilization, but science.
And wasn't that better? What if man no longer needed to pray to a fickle, unresponsive God, but instead could take a dose of beneficial radiation? And with an average of seventeen armed conflicts around the globe, genocide, civil war, or a combination thereof tore apart entire continents. What if the next generation of Congolese, Sudanese, Croatians, or Serbs acquired the gene that dialed down aggression and dialed up creativity?
Nobody would be laughing at her then.
Think of the world not turning to God for peace, but themselves.
A ping from her computer broke her reverie. She had forgotten she was running the second passage from John's bone.
Rebecca rapidly scanned the text, assuming it would expound upon the first passage referring to the Synagogue, but after a single line, she stopped and read the entire text thoroughly.
Once finished, Rebecca leaned back against the cab seat, pictures of a harmonious world fading with each new sentence.
In paleoarchaeology, things seldom went the way you planned.
CHAPTER 12.
Budapest, Hungary Brandt had to stop himself from reflexively making the sign of the cross as they waited. Lopez had somehow crammed the Beamer into a parking spot far too small, but they had a clear view of their target's front door.