"Curiouser and curiouser," I said.

31.

"ALLAHUU-UUU-AKBAAAAR-"

Recorded prayer exploded outside my window.

I opened one eye.

Dawn was seeping around the things in my room. One of them was Ryan.

"You awake?"

"Hamdulillah." Ryan's voice was thick and fuzzy. Ryan's voice was thick and fuzzy.

"Um hmm," I said.

"Praise the Lord." Mumbled translation.

"Whose?" I asked.

"Too deep for five A.M. A.M."

It was was a deep question. One I'd considered long after Ryan fell asleep. a deep question. One I'd considered long after Ryan fell asleep.

"I'm convinced it's Max."

"The muezzin?"

I hit Ryan with a pillow. He rolled over.

"Someone wanted Max so badly they were willing to kill for him."

"Ferris?"

"For one."

"I'm listening." Ryan's eyes were blue and sleepy.

"Jake's right. This goes beyond the Hevrat Kadisha."

"I thought the HK boys wanted everyone."

I shook my head. "This isn't about the generic Jewish dead, Ryan. It's about Max."

"So who is he?"

"Who was was he." My voice was taut with self-recrimination. he." My voice was taut with self-recrimination.

"It's not your fault."

"I lost him."

"What could you have done?"

"Delivered him directly to the IAA. Not hauled him with me to the Kidron. Or, at least taken steps to keep him secure."

"Shouldn't have left the Uzi behind in the Bradley."

I clocked Ryan again. He confiscated the pillow, scooted up, and propped it behind his head. I nestled beside him.

"Facts, ma'am," Ryan said.

It was a game we played when stumped. I started the time line.

"In the first century C.E. C.E., people died and were buried in a cave at Masada, probably during the seven-year occupation of the summit by Jewish zealots. In 1963, Yigael Yadin and his team excavated that cave but failed to report on bones found there. Nicu Haas, the physical anthropologist detailed with a.n.a.lyzing those bones, stated verbally to Yadin and his staff that the remains represented twenty-four to twenty-six commingled individuals. Haas made no mention of one isolated, articulated, and complete skeleton, later described to Jake Drum by a volunteer excavator who'd helped clear the cave."

Ryan picked up the thread.

"That isolated, articulated, and complete skeleton, hereinafter to be referred to as Max, ended up at the Musee de l'Homme in Paris. Sender, unknown."

"In 1973, Yossi Lerner stole Max from the museum and gave him to Avram Ferris," I said.

"Ferris spirited Max to Canada, later entrusted him to Father Sylvain Morissonneau at l'Abbaye Sainte-Marie-des-Neiges," Ryan said.

"On February twenty-sixth, Morissonneau gave Max to Brennan. Days later Morissonneau turned up dead."

"You're jumping ahead," Ryan said.

"True." I thought about dates. "On February fifteenth, Avram Ferris was found shot to death in Montreal."

"On February sixteenth, a man named Kessler handed Brennan a photo of a skeleton that turned out to be Max." Ryan.

"Hirsch Kessler turned out to be Hershel Kaplan, a small-time hustler and dealer in illegal antiquities."

"Kaplan fled Canada and was arrested in Israel." Ryan. "Said flight took place just days before Father Morissonneau's death on March second."

"On March ninth, Ryan and Brennan arrived in Israel. The next day Drum took Brennan on a tomb crawl, and Max was stolen by the Hevrat Kadisha. Presumably. Also that same day, Brennan's room was ransacked," I added.

"The next day, March eleventh, under skilled interrogation"-Ryan grinned his humblest of grins-"Kaplan admitted that Ferris had asked him to sell Max. Kaplan claimed he floated word of the skeleton's availability in early to mid January."

"That same day, Brennan was followed by men who appeared to be Muslim. Oh, and we forgot about Jamal Hasan Abu-Jarur and Muhammed Hazman Shalaideh." Ryan.

"The men parked outside l'Abbaye Sainte-Marie-des-Neiges," I said.

"'Tourists.'" Ryan hooked quote marks around the word.

"Chronologically, that occurred about two weeks after Ferris's murder."

"Noted," Ryan agreed. "Under even more skilled interrogation, on that same day Kaplan admitted that a woman hired him to kill Ferris, but denied knowing the woman, and denied being the shooter."

"That deal was struck in early January, weeks before Ferris was shot." I thought for a moment. "Anything else?"

"Those are the facts, ma'am. Unless you want to get into the shroud bones. But they are seemingly unrelated to Max or Ferris."

"True." I moved the game to phase two. "Main players?"

Ryan began. "Yossi Lerner, Orthodox Jew and liberator of Masada Max."

"Avram Ferris, murder victim and onetime possessor of Max," I added.

"Hershel Kaplan, aka Hirsch Kessler, murder suspect and would-be seller of Max." Ryan.

"Miriam Ferris, grieving widow with ties to Hershel Kaplan," I said.

"And recipient of four million in insurance money."

"Yes."

"Sylvain Morissonneau, possible murder victim and onetime possessor of Max."

"Kaplan's mystery woman."

"Good one," Ryan said.

"Minor characters?"

Ryan considered.

"Mr. Litvak, Israeli a.s.sociate and accuser of Kaplan."

"How does Litvak fit in?" I asked.

"Another party with an interest in Max," Ryan said.

"All right, then Tovya Blotnik," I said.

"The IAA director?"

"Same reasoning," I said.

"Jake Drum," Ryan said.

"No way," I said.

Ryan shrugged.

"Peripherals?" I asked.

"Dora Ferris, victim's mother."

"Courtney Purviance, victim's employee."

"We're getting goofy."

"True," I agreed. "But one thing is clear. Somehow it all comes back to Max."

"Hypotheses?" Ryan opened phase three.

I started.

"Proposition one. A group of ultra-Orthodox Jews has discovered Max's ident.i.ty and fear his presence at Masada will taint the image of Judaism's sacred site."

"But we know Max is not J.C. So who is he?"

"A Nazarene. Suppose this ultra-Orthodox group has learned that those living in the cave weren't with the main group of Jewish zealots. They were, in fact, Jewish followers of Jesus, maybe even members of his own extended family."

"Yadin knew this? The IAA?"

"That would explain Yadin's reluctance to discuss the cave remains, and the government's refusal to do further testing."

"Tell me again. Why are Jesus followers on Masada a bad thing?"

"The Israelis have made Masada a symbol of Jewish freedom and resistance against external forces. It turns out there were Christians living up there, Jewish or not? They think they've reinterred the bones of the last defenders of Masada, but they've got early Christians buried under their monument? It would be enormously disturbing, especially for Israeli Jews."

"Proposition one suggests some fringe group of black hats is willing to do what it takes to keep all this quiet?"

"I'm just throwing it out there."

I remembered Donovan Joyce's strange theory, and Lerner's reaction to it.

"Remember that book I read called The Jesus Scroll The Jesus Scroll?"

"The one about Jesus going geriatric?"

"Yes." I held up two fingers. "Proposition two. A group of militant, right-wing Christians has learned of Max's existence and believes he is Jesus. They fear the skeleton could be used to invalidate scripture."

"Yossi Lerner believed that," Ryan said.

"Yes." I said. "And perhaps Ferris. And at one time, Morissonneau."

"But Max isn't J.C."