"Who'd you talk to?"

"Tovya Blotnik and Ruth Anne Bloom."

"Bloom's the bone lady?"

I hid a smile. I'd been given the same tag.

"Yes."

"They mention that bone box?" Friedman asked.

"The James ossuary?"

Friedman nodded.

"Blotnik mentioned it. Why?"

Friedman ignored my question. "This Drum suggest you keep a low profile once you got here?"

"Jake advised me not to contact anyone in Israel before meeting with him."

Friedman drained his beer. When he spoke again his voice sounded flat, as though he was sealing his real thoughts from it.

"Your friend's advice is solid."

Solid. But, as things turned out, futile.

19.

FIVE-TWENTY A.M. O OUTSIDE MY WINDOW THE TREETOPS WERE black, the mosque's minaret just a hard shadow across the street. I'd been jarred awake by its loudspeaker sounding the call to black, the mosque's minaret just a hard shadow across the street. I'd been jarred awake by its loudspeaker sounding the call to fajr, fajr, morning prayer. morning prayer.

G.o.d is great, the muezzin coaxed in Arabic. Prayer is better than sleep.

I wasn't so sure. I felt sluggish and disconnected, like a patient clawing out of anesthesia.

The mechanical wailing ended. Birdsong filled the void. A barking dog. The thunk of a car door.

I lay in bed, gripped by a shapeless sense that tragedy loomed not far off. What? When?

I watched my room ooze from silver to pink as I listened to traffic sounds merge and strengthen. I prodded my unconscious. Why the uneasiness?

Jet lag? Fear for my safety? Guilt over Morissonneau?

Whoa. There was a burrow I hadn't poked. I'd visited the monastery, four days later Morissonneau was a body on a path. Had my actions triggered the priest's death? Should I have known I was placing him in danger?

Had I placed Morissonneau in danger? I placed Morissonneau in danger?

What the h.e.l.l was was this skeleton? this skeleton?

In part, my anxiety grew from the fact that others seemed to know what I did not.

Blotnik. Friedman. Even Jake appeared to be holding back.

Especially Jake? Did my friend have an agenda he wasn't sharing? I didn't really believe that.

And holding back on what?

The James ossuary for one thing. Everyone was skittering around the subject. I vowed to crack that mystery today.

I felt better. I was taking action. Or at least planning to take action.

At six I rose, showered, and descended to the restaurant, hoping Ryan had also awakened early. I also hoped he'd reconciled to the fact that I was in 304 and he was down the hall in 307.

We'd discussed sleeping arrangements before leaving Montreal. I'd insisted on separate rooms, arguing that we were traveling to Israel on official business. Ryan had objected, saying no one would know. I'd suggested it would be fun to sneak back and forth. Ryan had disagreed. I'd prevailed.

Ryan was seated at a table, scowling at something on his plate.

"Why would anyone serve olives for breakfast?" Ryan's tone suggested he was more jet-lagged than I.

"You don't like olives?"

"After five P.M. P.M." Ryan sidelined the offending fruit and dug into a mound of eggs the size of Mount Rushmore. "In gin."

Deducing that congenial conversation would not be forthcoming, I focused on my hummus and cheese.

"You and Friedman are off to see Kaplan?" I asked when Rushmore had been reduced to a hummock.

Ryan nodded then checked his watch.

"Masada Max is going to Blotnik?" he asked.

"Yes. But I promised Jake I'd meet with him before contacting anyone else. He'll be here any minute, then we'll head over to the IAA."

Knocking back his coffee, Ryan stood and aimed a finger at me. "Be careful out there, soldier."

I snapped two fingers to my forehead. "Roger that."

Ryan returned salute and strode from the room.

Jake arrived at seven wearing jeans, a sleeveless camouflage jacket, and a blue Hawaiian shirt open over a white T. Quite a fashion statement on a shave-headed, six-foot-sixer with hedgerow brows.

"You brought boots?" Jake asked, dropping into the chair Ryan had vacated.

"To meet with Blotnik?"

"I want you to see something."

"I'm here to deliver a skeleton, Jake."

"First I need for you to see this."

"First I need for you to tell me what the h.e.l.l's going on."

Jake nodded.

"Today." It came out louder than I intended. Or not.

"I'll explain on the way."

"Starting with this ossuary?"

Two men pa.s.sed speaking Arabic. Jake watched until they disappeared through the low stone arch leading from the restaurant.

"Can you lock the bones in your room safe?" Jake's voice was barely above a whisper.

I shook my head. "Too small."

"Bring them."

"This better be good," I said, tossing my napkin onto my plate.

Jake pointed at my feet.

"Boots."

Driving across the city, Jake told me the strange story of the James ossuary.

"No one disputes the authenticity of the box. It's the inscription that's in question. The IAA declared it a fake. Others say the 'brother of Jesus' part is legit, but claim the words 'James, son of Joseph' were added later. Others believe the opposite, that the Jesus phrase was added later. Still others think the Jesus phrase was forged."

"Why?"

"To goose the ossuary's value on the antiquities market."

"Didn't an IAA committee dissect every aspect of the thing?"

"Yeah. Right. First of all, there were two subcommittees. One looked at writing and content. The other looked at materials. The writing and content subcommittee contained one expert on ancient Hebrew writing, but other equally qualified epigraphers dispute her conclusions."

"An epigrapher is a specialist in a.n.a.lyzing and dating script?"

"Correct. Get this. One genius on the committee pointed to variations in handwriting and in thickness and depth of the lettering as proof of forgery. I won't bore you with detail, but variation is exactly what you'd expect on a nonmechanically incised inscription. Uniform lettering would be a dead giveaway of a fake. And the mixing of formal and cursive script is a well-known phenomenon in ancient engraving.

"Another issue was misspelling. Joseph was spelled YWSP, YWSP, and James was spelled and James was spelled Y'OB. Y'OB. One committee member said Joseph should have been One committee member said Joseph should have been YHWSP, YHWSP, and that the and that the Y'OB Y'OB spelling of James had never been found on any Second Temple period ossuary." spelling of James had never been found on any Second Temple period ossuary."

"The Second Temple period is the time of Jesus."

Jake nodded. "I did my own survey. The James ossuary's spelling appeared in more than ten percent of the Joseph inscriptions I located. I found five occurrences of the name James. Three, a majority, had the same spelling as that on the James ossuary."

"Was the committee unaware of the existence of these other inscriptions?"

"You tell me."

Jake's eyes kept shifting to the traffic around us.

"Incidentally, the committee included not a single New Testament scholar or historian of early Christianity."

"What about the oxygen isotope a.n.a.lysis?" I asked.

Jake's eyes cut to me. "You've done some homework."

"Just some Web surfing."

"The oxygen isotope a.n.a.lysis was ordered by the materials subcommittee. It showed no patina deep down in the letters, but picked up a grayish chalk-and-water paste that shouldn't have been there. The committee concluded that the paste had been applied intentionally to imitate weathering. But it's not that simple."

Jake readjusted the rear and side-view mirrors.

"Turns out the patina on the 'Jesus' part of the inscription is identical to the overall patina on the box. In ancient Aramaic, Jesus would have been the last word inscribed. So if that word's legit, and even some members of the IAA now agree that it is, then I think the whole inscription must be legit. Think about it. Why would an ossuary be inscribed with just the words 'brother of someone'? It doesn't make sense."

"How do you explain the paste?"

"Scrubbing could have removed the patina down in the letters. And it could have altered the chemical composition of the patina by creating carbonate particles. The ossuary's owner said the thing had been cleaned repeatedly over the years."

"Who's the owner?"

"An Israeli antiquities collector named Oded Golan. Golan says he was told at the time of his purchase that the ossuary came from a tomb in Silwan." Jake jabbed a thumb at my window. "We're on the outskirts of Silwan now."

Again, Jake scanned the cars ahead and behind. His nervousness was making me edgy.

"Problem is the ossuary's not recorded as an archaeologically excavated artifact from Silwan or from anywhere else in Israel."

"You think it was looted."

"Gee. You think?" Jake's voice dripped sarcasm. "Golan claims he's had the ossuary more than thirty years, making it legal, since antiquities acquired before 1978 are fair game."

"You don't believe him?"

"Golan's reported to have floated a price tag of two million U.S. for the thing." Jake snorted. "What do you think?"

I thought it was a lot of money.

Jake pointed through the windshield at a hill rising steeply off the shoulder of the road.