The Resurrection File Read online

  “The next voice you hear will be Richard Hunter’s,” MacCameron said solemnly.

  And then they listened, mesmerized, as they heard Richard Hunter leave this message:

  Sorry to change plans on you chap, but strange things…dangerous things…I was followed again from our lunch meeting. I had to take two different cabs. I think I’ve lost them. Can’t meet you as we planned. I’m taking an earlier flight to London, back to the British Museum.

  Hunter’s voice was hushed and out of breath. He continued:

  I’m sending the fragmentseparately…in case something happens to me…

  Will grabbed the tape player and hit the pause button. Then he said, “I need to hear that again.”

  “Yes!” MacCameron shouted, his arms outstretched. “By God’s everlasting grace you caught it. You did hear that, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know what I heard.”

  “Yes, you do. You heard it. Tell me, what did you hear?”

  Will’s finger was on the pause button. He looked the Scot in the eye and said, “I don’t know what I heard.”

  “Well then, play it again by all means. Play it twice. Play it three times,” MacCameron said, as he bounced in his chair with glee.

  The lawyer rewound the tape and played it again. But this time he moved the little side switch to slow play. This is what he heard, as he listened to Hunter’s voice in slow motion, basso profundo:

  I-m…s-e-n-d-i-n-g…t-h-e…f-r-a-g-m-e-n-t-s…s-e-p-a-r-a-t-e-l-y…i-n…c-a-s-e…s-o-m-e-t-h-i-n-g…h-a-p-p-e-n-s…t-o…m-e…

  “There it is,” MacCameron cried out. “Now look at me and tell me, Mr. Chambers, what did you just hear?”

  Chambers had a little smile in the corner of his mouth. “What I heard. What I think I heard was Hunter saying that he would be sending the fragments separately.”

  “Fragments!” MacCameron exclaimed.

  “Yes. Fragments. As in plural.”

  “More than one!” MacCameron cried out.

  “Yes. Which is what plural means, I guess,” Will noted with a touch of sarcasm.

  “More than one fragment. So obviously,” MacCameron said, his enthusiasm growing, “7QA is only one part of a whole. Thus there are other missing pieces to the puzzle. Which is exactly what I had in mind when I wrote that article in my magazine accusing Reichstad of fraudulent scholarship. He had to have known that 7QA is just one piece, and that there are adjacent pieces to that papyrus writing that could completely change the meaning of 7QA once we see them all put together.”

  “On the other hand,” Will continued, trying to bring his client back to reality, “we don’t even know for sure whether Hunter’s fragment—whatever it was—was the same fragment as Reichstad’s 7QA.”

  “Here is what we know,” MacCameron said, taking a handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe the heavy perspiration from his brow. “We know that Hunter said he got his fragment from Azid. Reichstad claims that he bought 7QA from Azid for fifty thousand dollars. That’s point number one. Point number two. Hunter said that his fragment came from cave 7 in the Qumran area. Reichstad has admitted 7QA came from cave 7. Point number three. Hunter said his fragment would erase two thousand years of Christian history. Reichstad’s interpretation of 7QA, if it’s true, would do exactly that.”

  With that MacCameron leaned back in his chair, as if he were an English barrister who had just presented a smashing closing argument for the Queen’s Bench.

  “All of that is circumstantial evidence,” Will responded. “It may make your case. It may not. But I don’t trust my ears—or yours for that matter. I know a guy who is a freelance voice analyzer. He used to work for the FBI. I want to send this tape over to him to see if he can substantiate what the two of us think we are hearing.”

  “Be my guest,” MacCameron replied.

  “This also concerns you, because you are going to be paying for this analysis. And this guy doesn’t come cheap.”

  MacCameron nodded knowingly.

  Will continued. “I also plan on making a demand for access to the original 7QA fragment. I am preparing a Demand for Documents right now. That fragment is on the top of the list of the physical objects Reichstad is going to have to produce to us.”

  “Did he know he would have to give us access to the original 7QA fragment?”

  “I’m sure his lawyer warned him about that.”

  “Strange,” MacCameron commented, shaking his head in disbelief. “He has fought off the rest of the world from getting their hands on that piece of papyrus. And now he is going to hand it over to us.”

  “Not that strange,” Will responded. “They will probably get a protective order from the judge requiring us not to divulge anything, to anyone else in the world, what we learn about that fragment in our evaluation of it.”

  “Can’t we divulge what we learn about 7QA during the trial?” MacCameron asked.

  “Yes. Assuming this case goes to trial,” Will said. The lawyer gazed off in the distance for a second or two. Then he added, “And when I get access to 7QA I know what I’m going to do.”

  “You mean, when we get access to it,” MacCameron clarified.

  “Yes. We are going to hire a materials engineer to examine the edges of 7QA under a microscope.”

  “Exactly!” MacCameron shot back. “To see if it has been cut. You know, Azid would do this monkey business with written antiquities. If he thought that an ancient writing was really valuable, he was known to slice it into a few pieces and then sell off the pieces one at a time—just to bump up the price.”

  “Do you have proof of that?”

  “It was common knowledge. So who would you get to do this examination?”

  “I’ve got somebody in mind,” Will said. “I used him in another case involving a piece of paper that had been torn out of a calendar. We had to match that piece of paper with the calendar it came from—the calendar belonged to a guy who ran a trucking company we were suing. A guy who had a real problem with Jewish folks.”

  “You do have a heart for justice, Mr. Chambers,” MacCameron said to his lawyer. “I know that. The same God who saved me from my sins blesses those who seek justice for the downtrodden. It’s my prayer that you will come to know him—the Lord who is the source of all justice.”

  MacCameron was smiling at Will as he said that. Will felt a little embarrassed and glanced back at the tape player on the conference room table.

  “Is there more on the tape?” Will asked.

  “Oh, yes,” MacCameron assured him.

  Will took the tape off pause and moved the switch to normal speed. Hunter’s message finished:

  If they get to me, I just want you to know that I have always felt you were a true friend. Give my love to your dear Helen.

  There was a sadness to Hunter’s voice. And then he concluded,

  So if you ever have to put the picture together, just remember this the next time you come to the halls of the British Museum. Remember your Bible. That won’t be hard for you, old friend. And most important of all, remember the resurrection order.

  And then there was the sound of the telephone hanging up.

  “What is the ‘resurrection order’?” Will quickly asked.

  “I’m not sure what he meant. I can only guess that he meant the order that Jesus gave for Lazarus to ‘come forth.’”

  “Was Hunter giving some kind of clue to you?”

  “No doubt it was a clue. But what he meant by it, I simply do not know,” MacCameron admitted reluctantly.

  Will rubbed his eyes. He felt a migraine starting to squeeze his head in a vise. They had been coming on ever since he had gotten off the booze. Now the MacCameron case was another reason for a headache. He was tired of the mysteries in a case that seemed to lead nowhere. He wanted answers. Time was running out. His client’s deposition was just a few days away. Will knew that as they were speaking, J-Fox Sherman and his cadre of lawyers and paralegals up in the sleek glass-and-mahogany world of K Street in
Washington were plotting his ultimate legal humiliation. Chambers the trial lawyer felt helpless, like a boxer who was going to enter the ring—but with all the lights out—where he would be punched by an opponent who could see in the dark.

  An opponent who would be wearing brass knuckles instead of gloves.

  22

  INSIDE THE STATELY VILLA THAT WAS TUCKED within the thick woods outside of Vienna, Austria, a messenger was walking quickly through the great hall. His footsteps made echoing click-clack sounds on the marble floor. Two armed guards in flowing robes and turbans followed behind him. The messenger and the guards walked up to Warren Mullburn, who had been sitting impatiently on the velvet couch situated under the mammoth oil portrait of Empress Elizabeth for nearly an hour. Sitting near him were his two interpreters and his three personal bodyguards. Mullburn was dressed in a black suit with a white, tieless, buttoned-up shirt that gave him the look of a modern Islamic cleric.

  “The Council of Islam extends its apologies, Mr. Mullburn, for the delay. Please follow me.”

  Mullburn and his entourage were led down the great hall and through an arched entrance that led into a smaller room with a receptionist in a gray suit and horn-rimmed glasses. She was sitting at an antique desk in the middle of the room. She picked up the phone, whispered something, and hung it up. She nodded to the messenger, who led Warren Mullburn and his group into an inner room while the two armed guards posted themselves on either side of the door.

  The adjacent room was a spacious library of dark oak paneling with floor-to-ceiling leatherbound books. In the middle there was a huge, dark walnut table that filled the room. A ring of robed, bearded Muslim leaders were seated around the table. Across the table from Mullburn, one official in a gray-and-white robe and white turban, with a long salt-and-pepper beard, lifted his hand in greeting.

  “In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate, we greet you, Mr. Mullburn.”

  Mullburn smiled broadly, and clasped his hands together and bowed his head slightly to the assembly.

  The leader continued. “Let me say first of all that we all speak very fluent English. So there is no need for your interpreters. Secondly, we have very good security here, so there is no need for your personal security forces.”

  With a little wave of his index finger Mullburn directed Bruda Weilder, his chief bodyguard, to lead the rest of his group out into the waiting room. When the door was closed behind them, the moderator proceeded to the heart of the matter.

  “Time is precious, so allow me to address some concerns we have, Mr. Mullburn. First of all, you have confessed a belief in Allah. Is that correct?”

  “Most certainly. I believe that Allah is God, he is the one God, and Muhammad, blessed be his name, is his prophet,” Mullburn affirmed with a smile.

  “And yet,” one of the clerics blurted out, “we have read your writings. You have been influenced by the ideas of the German philosopher Hegel. Such ideas are the ramblings of an infidel. Do you renounce them?”

  Several of the other clerics were nodding athletically.

  “It is true that I find some of the ideas of Hegel to be intriguing,” Mullburn calmly responded. “And I know that you are learned men. You too are probably familiar with Hegel’s dialectic. He concluded that all of history, and all of man’s ideas, shows how one great idea, the ‘thesis,’ is soon opposed by another, contrary idea, the ‘antithesis.’ And that this leads to conflict between the two. But in the end, regardless of which idea prevails, there is ultimately a ‘synthesis’ between the two. So the two formerly opposing ideas are eventually synthesized, melded, and coalesced into a new combination. And that process continues over and over, throughout history.”

  Another cleric jumped in. “But Allah is forever. And he is unchanging! This Hegel of yours speculates on an endless process of changing and ever-evolving ideas about truth and God. This is totally opposed to the Qur’an.”

  “Does not the Qur’an itself say,” Mullburn countered, “in Sura 30:30 that God has created man with a religious nature? This means that man searches from a religious soul. In the process of seeking, and rethinking, and searching for Allah, man sometimes synthesizes different philosophies—differing ideas—and I would propose to you that the end product of that synthesis could be the vindication of Islam itself.”

  Mullburn surveyed the skeptical and unsmiling faces around the table. “Let us speak plainly,” he said. “I have concluded that the ultimate synthesis—the great melding together of religious ideas—is now at hand. After this last great synthesis there is no further process—no further need for evolution to take place in man’s religious ideas.”

  “Yes,” the moderator noted. “We understand that you believe that Islam and Christianity can be—in your words—synthesized?”

  There was laughter around the table. Then the moderator continued. “We all know that for many years there have been dozens of meetings between many organizations that seek to reconcile Islam and Christianity. But so far, they have only produced cordial handshaking and meaningless platitudes. And still, the West continues in the ways of the infidel.”

  “Let me be very clear on this,” Mullburn stated. He raised his hands confidently, beginning to paint a picture with his words and gestures.

  “Imagine, for a moment, that a man is riding on a camel across the burning sands of the desert. The two of them, man and camel, have been synthesized into one thing—combined into one image as they travel along under the deadly heat of the sun. Yet in truth, which of the two is more important? Is it the camel that needs the rider on its back to survive? No! It is the man who needs to ride on the camel’s back to survive in his trek across the hot desert. The camel is the important thing. The rider is simply something that is carried along.”

  Then Mullburn smiled and folded his hands in respectful summation. “As a follower of Allah, it is my belief that in the grand synthesis, Islam is the camel—Christianity shall merely be the baggage that goes along for the ride.”

  The chuckling around the table had stopped. Now several of the Muslim teachers were looking intently at Mullburn, with thoughtful, wrinkled brows.

  The moderator spoke. “Is it the wisdom of Allah that we are hearing? Or simply an American billionaire’s clever use of Arab symbolism? We don’t ride camels anymore, Mr. Mullburn. Personally, I prefer a Mercedes-Benz.”

  Another Muslim cleric followed up. “How is this synthesis going to happen in a way that does not compromise Islam?”

  “What is the greatest dividing point between Islam and Christianity?” Mullburn asked. “Certainly it is the misguided belief that Christians have in the ‘Trinity.’ We Muslims believe that God is one. Christians apparently believe he is three persons, and have persisted in that mistaken notion for two thousand years. Now, let us ask ourselves this: What is it that lies at the heart of this false idea of the Trinity?”

  “As we all know, it is the Christian idea that Jesus was truly God incarnate,” one of the teachers responded.

  “Exactly,” Mullburn agreed. “If you take Jesus out of the Trinity, it collapses like a house of cards at a Las Vegas table.”

  “Interesting concept, Mr. Mullburn,” the moderator noted, “but true Muslims do not play games of chance. And they do not gamble. By the way—you own several casinos in Las Vegas, do you not?”

  “In light of my conversion to Islam, I am in the process of transferring all of my interests in those casinos.”

  “Of course you are,” the moderator replied quietly.

  “We know how you have spoken out about your ideas to large, public audiences,” another of the Islamic teachers commented. “At a rock-and-roll concert in a coliseum near Los Angeles you said, and I quote: ‘You have got to be open. Be open in order to catch the wave of this evolution that’s going on.’ End of quote. Now Mr. Mullburn, is it evolution or is it Islam that you are promoting?”

  “Evolution is the train. Islam is the freight. Allah is the destination,” Mullburn
replied. “With the discovery of the 7QA fragment, we are witnessing the inevitable disintegration of the theological concept of the resurrection. Jesus is quickly becoming an admired prophet rather than a Christian savior. And, of course, a Christianity that considers Jesus to be a prophet—rather than a savior—comes very close to the teachings of Islam.”

  “Your idea that more people are now abandoning the belief that Jesus was God—what do you base that on?” the moderator asked.

  “I own my own public opinion survey center,” Mullburn replied. “Since the first public announcements of the 7QA discovery, attendance in mainline Protestant churches has dropped by almost 30 percent. Even more significant, 52 percent of Americans now believe that there is no substantial difference between the God of Islam and the God of Christianity.

  “And you have probably read about the revolution that is taking place within the Vatican. As a result of the Pope’s refusal to allow Catholic scholars to take a public position, either way, on the 7QA fragment, dozens of prominent Jesuit scholars have left the Church in protest. There has been a drastic dropoff in the number of Catholic seminarians. When you couple this with the continued rise of Islam around the world, there is no question that this is a historic opportunity for the triumph of Islam.”

  The moderator nodded and thanked Warren Mullburn for coming. Then he added, “There is also a lingering question—how can I put this delicately—about your motives, Mr. Mullburn. What is it that causes you to expend such energy—and such investment—to pursue this idea of leading Christians into the arms of Allah?”

  “My concern for humanity—and my reverence for Islam,” Mullburn said warmly.

  “Yes, of course. Those would be fine ideals. Admirable motives,” the moderator responded.

  Mullburn stood up and shook the hands of each of the leaders. The moderator escorted him to the door.

  “There are, of course, some of our more fervent leaders who would not agree with your approach,” the moderator added as the two stopped outside the door of the library, and he gazed at Mullburn with an ironic look. “For instance, Abdul el Alibahd probably would not accept your position of trying to compromise with the Christian culture of the West.”