“It’s her.  Look at her.”

Dan was doing just that.  The woman’s robe was blue, its cowl up and around her head; short, medium build, with thick strands of gray hair poking out from under the cowl.  Her wrinkled skin had a sallow, almost waxy look to it.  Her eyes and lips were closed, her cheeks slightly sunken, her nose generous without being large.  Even in the wavering light of the flash beams, she appeared to be a handsome, elderly woman who might have been beautiful in her youth.  She looked so peaceful lying there.  He noticed her hands were folded between her breasts.  Something about those hands...

“Look at her fingernails,” Carrie said, her voice hushed like someone whispering during Benediction.  Obviously she shared his feeling that they were trespassing.  “They’re so long.”

“I hear they continue to grow...the nails and the hair... after you’re dead.”

Carrie stepped closer but Dan gripped her arm and held her back.

“Don’t.  It might be booby-trapped.”

Carrie shook off his hand and whirled to face him.  He couldn’t see her face but the anger in her whisper told him all he needed to know about her expression.

“Stop it, Dan!  Haven’t you gone far enough with this Doubting Thomas act?”

“It’s not an act, and I wish there was more light.”

“So do I, but there isn’t.  I wish we’d brought some sort of lantern but we didn’t.  This is all we’ve got.”

“All right.  But be careful.”

Dan fought a sick, anxious dread that coiled through his gut as he watched her approach the body.  And it was a body.  Had to be.  Too much detail for it to be anything other than the real thing.

But whose body?  What sort of mind would go to such elaborate extremes to pull off a hoax.  A sicko like that would be capable of anything, even a booby trap.

Of course, there was the possibility that these actually were the earthly remains of the mother of Jesus Christ.

Dan wanted to believe that.  He dearly would have loved to believe that.  And probably would be fervently believing that right now if not for the fact that the scroll that had led them here had been proven beyond a doubt to have been written less than a dozen years ago.

So if this wasn’t the Virgin Mary, who was she?  And who had hidden her here?

Carrie was standing over her now, staring down at the woman’s lifeless face.

“Dan?  Do you notice something strange about her?”

“Besides her fingernails?”

“There’s no dust on her.  There’s dust layered everywhere, but not a speck of it on her.”

Dan stepped closer and sniffed.  No odor.  And Carrie was right about the dust: not a speck.  He smiled.  The forger had finally made a mistake.

“Doesn’t that indicate to you that she was placed here recently?”

“No.  It indicates to me that dirt—and dust is dirt—has no place on the Mother of God.”

As he watched, Carrie sank to her knees, made the sign of the cross, and bowed her head in prayer with the flashlight clasped between her hands.

This isn’t real, Dan thought.  All we need is a ray of light from the ceiling and a hallelujah chorus from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to make this a Cecil B. DeMille epic.  This can’t be happening.  Not to me.  Not to Carrie.  We’re two sane people.

Impulsively, gingerly, he reached out and touched the woman’s cheek.  The wrinkled flesh didn’t give.  Not hard like stone or wood or plastic.  More like wax.  Cool and smooth...like wax.  But it wasn’t wax, at least not like any wax Dan had ever seen.

He heard a sob and snatched his hand away...but the sound had come from Carrie.  He flashed his beam toward her face.  Tears glistened on her cheeks.  He crouched beside her.

“Carrie, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.  I feel so strange.  All this time I thought I believed, and I prayed to her, and I asked her to help me, to intercede for me, but now I get the feeling that all that time I didn’t believe.  Not really.  And now here she is in front of me, not two feet away, and I don’t know what I feel or what I think.”  She looked up at him.  “I don’t have to believe anymore, do I, Dan?  I know.  I don’t have to believe, and that feels so strange.”

One thing Dan knew was that he didn’t believe this was the Virgin Mary.  But it was somebody.  He played his flashlight beam over her body.

Lady, who are you?

Another thing he knew was that Carrie was heading for some sort of breakdown.  She was teetering on the edge now.  He had to get her out of here before she went over.  But how?

“What do we do now?” he said, straightening up.

He felt her grip his arm as she rose to her feet beside him.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we’ve found her...or someone...or something.  Now what do we do?”

“We protect her, Dan.”

“And how do we do that?”

Carrie’s voice was very calm, almost matter of fact.  “We take her back with us.”

TWELVE

Tel Aviv

“What’s the matter, baby?” Devorah said from behind him, casually raking her sharp nails down the center of his back.

Kesev sat on the edge of the bed in her apartment.  They always wound up at Devorah’s place, never his.  They both preferred it that way.  Kesev because he never allowed anyone in his apartment, and Devorah because when she was home she had access to her...props.

He’d met her last year.  An El Al stewardess.  She could have been Irish with her billowing red hair, pale freckled skin, and blue eyes, but she was pure Israeli.  Young—mid-twenties—with such an innocent, girlish face, almost child-like.  But Devorah was a cruel, mischievous child who liked to play rough.  And when it came to rough she preferred to give rather than receive.  Which was fine with Kesev.

Their little arrangement had lasted longer than any other in recent memory.  Probably because her job took her away so much, she’d yet to grow tired of his black moods and long silences.  And probably because Devorah had been unable to find a way to really hurt him.  Kesev absorbed whatever she could dish out.  She considered him a challenge, her perfect whipping boy.

So Devorah seemed happy with him, while he was...what?  Happy?  Satisfied?  Content?

Hardly.  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt something approaching any of those.

The situation was...tolerable.  Just barely tolerable.  Which was more than he’d learned to hope for.

“You weren’t really into it tonight,” she said.

“Sorry.  I...I’m distracted.”

“You’re always distracted.  Tonight you’re barely here.”

Probably true.  A vague uneasiness had stalked him all day, disturbing his concentration at the Shin Bet office, stealing his appetite, and finally settling on him like a shroud late this afternoon.

More than uneasiness now.  A feeling of impending doom.

Could it have something to do with the Resting Place?  He followed the wire services meticulously and there’d been no word of a new Dead Sea scroll or startling revelations regarding the mother of Christ.  Not even a ripple.

But that was hardly proof that all was well, that all was safe and secure.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to cancel our date for tomorrow,” he said, turning to face her.

She lay sprawled among the sheets, her generous breasts and their pink nipples exposed.  Even her breasts were freckled.  But she didn’t lay still long.  She levered up and slapped him across the face.

“I don’t like broken promises!” she hissed between clenched teeth.

The blow stung but Kesev didn’t flinch.  Nor was he angry.  One deserved whatever one got when a promise was betrayed.

“There is a hierarchy of promises,” he said softly.  “Some promises take precedence over others.”

“And this promise.  Is this what distracts you?”

“Yes.”

“Does it involve another woman?”

“Not at all.”  At least not in the sense she meant.