The Resurrection File Read online

  Up in the cheap seats a man with a T-shirt that simply said “Jesus” on the front yelled out, “You’re a false prophet! Tell the truth. Tell them that Jesus is the Messiah!”

  Then two of the musclemen in the black T-shirts quickly approached and whisked him out of his seat and down one of the corridors that led out of the stadium.

  Smiling, Mullburn continued in his powerful and emphatic voice.

  “But here is what is true. Jesus was just like you and me. He was just like one of us. So that means that he had learned the secret of his own evolution. He was able to do miracles and wonders and rock the world with love because he had mastered his own evolution.

  “BEHOLD, THIS IS THE NEW CENTURY. It is time to put the old ideas away. I want you to join me in being the master of your own powerful evolution. Being smarter—being better—being richer—being more successful—being on top and not on the bottom. And all it takes is for you to reach out and have the guts to grab it. Grab it now. It’s there for the taking.

  “Face it. Realize it. You always wanted to be part of a real revolution. Now it is here. When they sang about the Age of Aquarius back in the ’60s they knew something was coming. The real revolution now is spiritual. Be prepared for a real mind-melding experience—a real coming-together of the old religions of the world. Can you imagine it? The mystical secrets of Eastern Islam magically melding together with the Christian ideas of justice and love—coming together and creating something entirely new, and awesome, and powerful, in this new century.

  “You have got to be open. Be open in order to catch the wave of this evolution that’s going on.

  “I love you people, every one of you. I love you all! Rock on!”

  The lights dimmed except for a single spotlight on Warren Mullburn. He then wheeled around and strode off the stage, his back to the audience, as a symphony of percussion filled the cavernous arena.

  Then for the next two hours, under the bluish white iridescence of the stadium lights, forty thousand young people screamed and cheered and leaped and danced to the rock music that had brought them together, that had made them one under the warm California night sky.

  A chauffeur drove Mullburn and his bodyguards to the private jet that was waiting for them. The billionaire was quickly airborne, making phone calls around the world—to his contacts in the Asian markets, to the geologists in his several oil companies, to the executives in his multinational computer networking company. Soon he would be circling his modern-day castle in the Nevada desert preparing for landing.

  Mullburn clicked off the telephone and eased back in his chair. He turned to the men in the seat across from him and said, “I think those kids loved me tonight. I felt really good out there. I do think that we are just about at critical mass. And I don’t think there’s anything—or anyone—who is going to be able to stop this now. Not now.” And then he smiled confidently and looked at the biggest of the men. “Don’t you agree, Bruda?”

  Bruda Weilder, his big, blond bodyguard, smiled a big smile in return, nodded his head, and then said, “You are so right, Mr. Mullburn.”

  12

  WILL CHAMBERS HAD A LOT ON HIS MIND while driving back from the main office of his former law firm in Richmond. His meeting with Hadley Bates and the other partners had gone about as badly as he had expected. There were accusations, name-calling, and threats. But worst of all was the white envelope that Hadley had pushed across the conference table to Will at the end of the meeting.

  “By our calculations, using the formula we just described to you, this is what we have determined that you are entitled to,” Hadley Bates said calmly in his monotone.

  When Will opened the envelope and looked at the check, he thought at first this was some kind of sick joke. But then, after reminding himself that Bates was incapable of humor, he decided that this was for real.

  The check was for $9,756.22. Will had expected at least twenty times that as his portion upon the partition of his partnership share. But Hadley had talked the other partners into debiting Will for all of his uncollected billings. Even further, Bates and the partners were charging Will for office expenses the firm had paid to him over several years without protest but which now, in retrospect, they were vaguely claiming to have been “exorbitant, unreasonable, or otherwise unjustified.”

  They tried to calm Will’s angry response by telling him that they would pay him a portion of his client receivables as they collected them in the future, but only after, of course, the firm had deducted a “fair” sum for their costs of recovery.

  But Will was not sure whether it was the paltry check that offended him the most, or whether it was the envelope that contained it. In the upper-left-hand corner of the envelope was the new name of the firm. It read, “Bates, Burke & Meadows.” Hadley had not wasted any time. He had already taken his deceased father’s name off the letterhead, and now he had removed Will Chambers’ name and put his own name first.

  When Will rose from the table at the end of the meeting, the other partners extended their hands and tried, a little awkwardly, to wish him well. But Will Chambers did not shake their hands. He just looked at them, and then looked at Hadley Bates, who was still sitting, his head cocked just slightly to the side, smiling a razor-thin smile.

  “Is there anything further, Will?” Hadley asked.

  “Yes there is,” Will said through clenched teeth. “May I express my fond hope, Hadley, that you die—after a prolonged and painful illness—and then rot in hell.”

  Going eighty miles an hour on the interstate about thirty minutes out of Richmond, Will started feeling some regret about his comment to Hadley Bates. He felt certain that his rage had not come from hate, or any emotion even similar to that. Instead, it had exploded out of the depths of some other very dark and very lonely place. And now he was feeling as if that abyss—whatever its origin, and whatever it was—was beginning to swallow him up whole.

  Prior to his meeting with the firm Will had made some financial calculations, and the results had been dismal. His investments and retirement account were substantially less than he had recalled. When Audra and he were together they had poured huge amounts of money into restoring Generals’ Hill. It was going to be their dream house. But now, the remodeling was still unfinished, and it had tapped much of Will’s financial reserves.

  Further, during his separation from Audra, Will had let the premiums on their life insurance slide. When she died there was no insurance on her life. He had always tried to push that thought out of his mind. The guilt over her death was so enormous that he had tried to just dismiss the whole insurance issue.

  As his financial worries swirled around his head Will kept thinking back to his meeting with Angus MacCameron. It had been three days since their first conference, and his only potential client had not been in touch with him about whether he could pay Will’s fees.

  Will had quoted him a substantial figure that he would need as his retainer fee. Estimating the huge numbers of hours the case would take, and taking into consideration the extra gymnastics that J-Fox Sherman would put him through, Will had thought the figure was reasonable. But MacCameron had looked at him with a troubled expression and simply told him that such a figure would tap out the remaining budget for the magazine for the year.

  MacCameron had also made it clear in their meeting, after Fiona had stepped outside, that he would not permit his daughter to contribute a single penny to his legal defense.

  Through his experience with the ACLU and the Law Project for the South, Will knew the realities and opportunities of public fund-raising. But when he asked whether there might be other religious groups—those that shared his beliefs—that would contribute toward his defense, MacCameron just shook his head and laughed.

  As Will spotted the exit sign for Monroeville he was beginning to think that the case had left his office for good. He tried to reassure himself that this would have been a crazy case, a strange client, and Sherman, of course, a vicious legal opponent.
He had every reason to be happy that the case had not worked out.

  But Will’s mind also kept drifting to Fiona. After the meeting Will had gotten on the Internet and done some research on her. Last year she had won a recording industry award called the “Dove Award.” She had cut several successful albums, all of them in the gospel, contemporary Christian music vein. She was thirty-five years old, single, and had never been married. This was intriguing to Will. Here was this beautiful woman, talented and charming. Why wouldn’t she be married? He speculated that perhaps her music career had preoccupied her. Or maybe there was a secret she was keeping, some great hurt that kept romantic relationships off-limits for her. Yet somehow, none of that seemed to fit.

  Will had to remind himself that he had only met her once, and then only very briefly. He really knew almost nothing about her. You can know someone for years, he thought, and really not know them at all. Why should he think he knew anything about Fiona based only on a short meeting in a law office and a quick Web-site search on his computer?

  Besides, why was he still thinking about Fiona at all? She could not be further from his world—and he from hers. By all appearances she was one of these “I’m in love with Jesus” types. Perhaps there was an explanation there, Will thought. Maybe she was the Protestant equivalent of a nun. As Will saw it, perhaps her heart was already pledged to the cold, airy regions of spiritual fulfillment, where romance, love, and earthly intimacy would have no place.

  In fact, the more he thought about it, the only thing that he and Fiona had in common was her father’s lawsuit. Now it looked as if Will was not going to represent MacCameron in the case.

  As Will pulled his car up in front of his office he felt angry at himself. His life seemed to be quickly unraveling. It was ridiculous for him to burn so much energy thinking about a woman that he would never see again, and who lived in such a different world.

  Will turned off the ignition but didn’t get out of the car. As he sat there he felt the flood tide of betrayal wash over him. Betrayal, certainly, but of who? Audra? After two years of grief he was still not ready to let go. Yet he wasn’t sure what he was really trying to hang onto. It wasn’t her memory that he was clinging to anymore, not exactly. One of the infuriating things was the fact that with every passing day it was becoming more difficult for him to recall the details of her pretty face, and her expressive, welcoming smile. So he would keep glancing at pictures of her to try to sweep away the cobwebs and dust and breathe life into his indistinct recollections of her—memories that were becoming like the vanished lines of some poem about love by a forgotten author, something that you had read once in school but could no longer remember.

  The memories were blurred and faded. Now, only the pain and the absence remained. Somehow those things had survived intact, and were clear and distinct. “Just remember,” he would tell himself. “Try to remember her.”

  As he sat in his parked car he fiercely told himself to get a grip. He had to try to rescue himself. Not just economically, but professionally. And emotionally. He really had to change the direction of his life. Will felt as if he had to climb out of a hearse that had been carrying him away—driving him silently out of the light and toward the great gaping and shadowy nothingness, to a place where there are no memories, no laughter, no embracing, no connection.

  Will was not sure how long he had been sitting just staring ahead. He slowly got out of his car and went up to his office.

  When he walked in, Betty was on the telephone. She motioned to the top of her desk. There were two envelopes, a small white one and a large brown one. The white envelope was thin, and the brown one was stuffed to bursting.

  Will took them both into his office. He opened the white one first, wondering momentarily whether it was Betty’s resignation. He had no reason to think she would quit so quickly. Yet he also knew that she had stayed on with a lot of reservations.

  But he was surprised when he sliced the envelope open and a check fell out. The check was drawn on the checking account of Digging for Truth magazine and was signed by Angus MacCameron. It was made out for the sum that Will had demanded as his retainer fee.

  In the big brown envelope Will found a collection of materials that MacCameron had sent for his review.

  Betty poked her head in.

  “Did you see what your client dropped off?”

  Will nodded.

  “Tomorrow’s payday.”

  “Thanks, Betty. I won’t forget.” Then Will added, “By the way, you and I need to talk about a raise sometime.”

  Betty’s eyes brightened. “Do you want to talk now? I’ve got some time.”

  “How about in a couple of weeks?”

  “How about in two weeks—by my next paycheck?”

  Will nodded in agreement. But Betty could see that she had lost him to the case. He was half-turned, already looking through MacCameron’s papers.

  As he reviewed the materials he saw that his client had rubber-banded them into three groups.

  The first group was a stack of magazines—issues from a publication called the Journal of the Center for Biblical Archaeo-Anthropology. Albert Reichstad was the editor-in-chief of the journal and had authored a number of the cover articles. There were half-a-dozen other scholars, each with PhDs, who had written the other pieces. Several of the lead articles written by Reichstad dealt with what he referred to as the “7QA papyrus fragment.” This apparently was the ancient fragment containing writing purportedly about the burial of Jesus, the document that lay at the core of Reichstad’s lawsuit against Angus MacCameron.

  Then there was a pile of articles from other recent archaeology journals and scholarly magazines. As Will glanced at their titles it became clear that these were articles by other experts, who were critical of the manner in which Reichstad and his team had been handling the 7QA fragment discovery. These critics felt that Reichstad and his small band of associates had been too secretive. In fact, the Reichstad group had refused to release any copies or photographs of the fragment to other scholars, and had declined to permit other experts to examine it firsthand.

  Yet Will was disappointed to see that the only criticisms in these articles were of the secretive nature of Reichstad’s methodology. The articles critical of Reichstad were also careful to recognize his impeccable credentials. Furthermore, these critics appeared to admit that, based on all of the evidence thus far, Reichstad’s findings, which interpreted the fragment as first-century Jerusalem in origin and as a contemporaneous description of the burial of Jesus of Nazareth, were probably accurate.

  What these other scholars wanted, they argued, was simply the chance to verify and corroborate Reichstad’s findings for themselves. This was essential, they pointed out, due to the electrifying and catastrophic implications that this small fragment of ancient paper would hold for the entire Christian world.

  There were seven archaeologists who had authored articles critical of the secretive nature of Reichstad’s work. Will wrote down all of their names and the identity of their academic institutions on his legal pad. He thought these critics might be a good starting point in locating expert witnesses who would testify in favor of MacCameron and against Reichstad.

  The third and last bundle of papers was a mix of newspaper articles and Internet research. It also included a narrative report from the East Coast Investigative Services, which was the official name of Tiny Heftland’s private detective business. Will guessed that this bundle was all from Tiny’s investigation.

  One newspaper article described the groundbreaking for a fifteen-million-dollar building in Maryland to house Reichstad’s Center for Biblical Archaeo-Anthropology. Another article from the business section, six months later, showed the completed building for the Center.

  The Internet research contained a listing of several small scientific conferences that had been hosted by Reichstad’s research center. The names of Reichstad’s six full-time scholars and researchers were listed in the various programs and t
heir names were circled. There were also snapshots of each of the scientists, along with one of Dr. Reichstad, and pictures of the license plates of their cars, and printouts of their driver’s license information from the Department of Motor Vehicles.

  What Will found most intriguing of all was Tiny’s narrative report. The first few pages recounted his surveillance of Dr. Reichstad and each of his six experts.

  There was a record of Reichstad’s comings and goings during a one-week period of time, including a description of his rambling two-hundred-acre Maryland horse farm and mansion.

  A surveillance summary about his associates was also included. Each of them had expensive dwellings, several with exclusive brownstones in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, and some on the other side of the Potomac in the high-rent district. A few of them had yachts that they sailed on the weekends in Chesapeake Bay. All of them had very nice vacation homes, and they drove new cars—BMWs, Mercedes-Benzes, Lincoln Navigators, and Ferraris. All of their children attended expensive private schools.

  There was also a curriculum vitae and professional backgrounder for each of the six scientists. They all had teaching experience at Ivy League colleges. Collectively, before being employed as researchers at the Center, they had done substantial work on-site in Israel—on the Dead Sea scrolls, and in important archaeological digs at Megiddo, Jericho, Capernaum, and Beersheba—and at Petra in Jordan, and in Egypt, Iraq, and Iran as well.

  Tiny’s report ended with some notes about the Center itself. There was no public record of its having filed as a charitable foundation, as most scientific centers do, or as a nonprofit scientific enterprise. It was Tiny’s conclusion that this was a private, for-profit research facility.