Part 38 (1/2)
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.”