Elisha's Bones - Don Hoesel [114]
I step over to the next display and what I find makes little sense to me. It’s a collection of symbols on different mediums: cloth, wood, metal, clay. From what I can see, they bear no resemblance to the family crests at Quetzl-Quezo. If I were conducting a typical dig, this is something I would photograph, catalog, and later spend several happy months investigating. Today, however, I can only sigh before moving on.
“Jack, you’ve got to see this.”
What she places in front of me is not a book but a series of hand-bound pages. I take it from her and flip through the pages, noting there are perhaps eight photos, individuals of historical importance, and a few pages of text for each one. The text is written in German.
“Since I don’t speak German, you’ll have to tell me what I’m looking at.” I stop at a picture of Albert Einstein, the most recognizable of the subjects.
“Wait a minute . . .” Espy reaches across and points a finger at what’s printed below Einstein’s photo: 1879–1936.
“Dates of birth and death,” I say. “So?”
“Einstein died in 1955.”
I feel a numbness run up my legs as I realize I don’t need to be able to read German to understand what the pages say.
“How did he die the first time?”
Espy scans the page. “Car accident.”
Two deaths, only one of them official. For all of his caution about using them, it seems those of Manheim’s ilk have not been above drawing on the power of the items in their charge. I shake my head. Stalin’s picture was also among the pages.
With new eyes, I look out over the treasure trove of antiquities; of things I could spend the rest of my life researching. And none of it matters. Only one thing is important, and I won’t find it in this room.
I walk away from Espy, past the display case with the odd symbols, and around a trio of crates that look as if they hold the contents of an empty display. At least the elder Manheim was honest about one thing: this circus is soon to travel. I suppose I’m the caretaker now—at least until the brokers come to collect.
I saw the door when the lights came on, but like a person who enjoys the anticipation of Christmas more than the day itself, I ignored it. I wanted to soak in the atmosphere, prepare myself before facing this portal. That silliness is gone now, stripped away by a feeling of disgust that I’m not even certain I could name a cause for. All of a sudden, I just want this to end.
I stop a few feet away and study it. It’s a nondescript metal door with a simple handle. There is not even a visible lock. I suppose that Manheim’s forefathers, the ones who would have accepted the bones into their care, assumed that if someone made it this far, they belonged here.
I don’t belong here. But I open the door anyway.
CHAPTER 25
I stand in the threshold and let my eyes take in everything before I allow my other senses to muddle the experience. Esperanza has joined me but I register her presence in some peripheral way, as if she were a phantom. There is something about the smallness of the room, the lack of anything ornate, that I find appropriate. After all I’ve gone through to find them, it seems fitting they should be as stripped of accoutrements as I am.
The room is less than ten feet square, and the ossuary is the only thing in it. I suppose I thought the bones would be housed in some grand display, a lavish container for items of divine power. Instead, the ossuary is plain, and I’d date the period as first century a.d. In fact, with the exception of the lack of carvings on the exterior, it looks like the Ossuary of Caiaphas unearthed in Jerusalem in the early 1990s.
I walk in and place my hand on the box. It’s cold. I begin to feel along the lid, searching for a handhold, and when I find my grip I push the old stone with all my strength. In a rush, Espy is there, adding her strength to mine until the lid moves, scraping stone