The Second Messiah

“But something bad happened in Israel, didn’t it? Franz never wanted to talk about your time together there. I could only guess that something happened to sour your friendship.”

“Yes, Anna, something bad happened.”

“When I came across the article the other day about the newly discovered scroll and the professor’s murder, I thought Franz might be interested, so I read it to him. The effect was alarming.”

“In what way?”

“He became distressed and agitated. I never saw him in such a state. That was when he wrote you the note. He asked me to send it to you, along with the clipping from the newspaper. Then I found him searching through his old papers. He found a photograph. He kept praying as he held it.”

“What photograph?”

Anna slipped open a drawer, withdrew a newspaper clipping, and handed it to Becket. “This photograph.”

Becket saw that it was an old newspaper photograph of a couple and recognized Robert and Margaret Cane. “May I keep this?” he asked.

“If you wish. Franz told me he had to see you before he died. But he refused to say why. Do you know why, Holy Father?”

Becket slipped the photograph of the Canes into his gown. “Yes, Anna, I know why. It’s because of a terrible secret your brother and I share.”

“Secret?”

At that precise moment Franz Kubel’s eyes flickered awake. It was as if he had been jolted out of his coma. His watery eyes tried to focus. His face looked tortured as he sucked a breath of air into his cancer-riddled lungs.

Becket spoke gently and rubbed the priest’s scrawny hand. “Franz, it’s good to see you again, old friend. I have given you the last rites. Soon you will be in God’s loving embrace. Do you understand me, Franz? Nod if you do.”

Franz Kubel seemed to make a supreme effort. He nodded and grasped at John Becket’s hand.

The pope whispered, “Good, you understand. You are absolved now from all your sins, my dear friend.”

Tears welled up in Franz Kubel’s eyes.

The pope said quietly, “Franz, the time has come. We must share with Anna the secret we have both kept all these years. You must do the right thing for both our sakes, and above all for the sake of the church. Anna is ready to bear witness, to hear the confession of our crime.”

A puzzled Anna Kubel stared at her brother, then at Becket. “Crime? What—whatever are you talking about?”

“Anna, I will explain everything later. For now, please, just listen—”

The pope fell silent as Franz Kubel’s bony fingers grasped his sister’s hand, his wheezing voice as dry as sandpaper. “Anna, I. . . I need you to listen to what I have to tell you. And then dear sister, you must do exactly as the Holy Father instructs you. . .”

99

“Okay, here we go, guys,” Fonzi said.

A blinding whiteness lit up the whiteboard projector screen. Jack and Lela blinked, their eyes stung by the powerful light explosion as they sat together on a couple of plastic chairs in a dimly lit basement room.

Fonzi operated the projector screen using a laptop computer he’d hooked up. He flicked on a study lamp, stuck a pair of half-moon glasses on the end of his nose, and consulted a sheaf of handwritten notes. “I transferred the digital images from my cell into the computer. I then had my software program decode and interpret the data three consecutive times to be certain I’d got it right. I’ve used this program before to translate Dead Sea documents and it’s pretty reliable.”

“What about decoding the text?”

“The program to decode Atbash text is very simple. Atbash is a basic substitution code that merely reverses the Aramaic alphabet. Are you with me so far?”

“Sure, I’m with you,” Jack said.

Lela nodded.

“Good.” Fonzi tapped the laptop keypad and the projector screen burst into life with scrolling Aramaic symbols. Seconds later the images blanked, a scroll segment appeared, then another, until finally eight segments filled the screen.

Fonzi’s voice had an excited edge. “Okay, Jack, here’s the complete scroll you sent me via eight photographs. Now I’m going to merge them into a single translated text, including the uncoded first few lines, in clear. This is where things get very interesting.”

Fonzi hit the keyboard and a chunk of English text replaced the eight segments on screen. Then he flicked on a laser pointer. With a circling motion of its red dot he indicated the entire body of text.

“What you see here is about half the scroll contents. First I decoded and translated the text myself, then I ran it through the translation software and compared the two. What you see on the screen is as close to a literal translation of the original as I can give. Peruse at your leisure, and then we’ll move on to the rest.”

Jack and Lela looked up at the screen and read: