The Third Day

windows opened to the west, giving the room a red glow from the late afternoon sun.

The furniture was sparse, but functional, as I would have expected in a military establishment. A large bed, wider than king-sized by half, sat in the northeast corner of the room, away from the windows. A wooden table, surrounded by six crude-looking chairs rested in the center.

“What’s that?” Sharon asked, referring to a bucket on the floor in the far corner, opposite the bed.

I couldn’t help but laugh. “Piss pot,” I replied.

She blushed. “Oh.”

“Go, if you have to. We’ll all turn the other way.”

She was about to speak when the young man said something to Lavon.

It must have been about food, because after hearing the archaeologist’s response, the man shouted down the stairs. A few minutes later, two slaves appeared carrying warm bread and a jug of wine, followed by two more servants holding five metal goblets and a stack of blankets. The men deposited their cargo without speaking and immediately turned for the door.

After the kid left, I motioned for everyone to gather around the table for a de-brief but quickly realized that it was hopeless. Each of the others raced for a window, where they stood mesmerized by the activity in the Temple courtyard below.

From our vantage point near the top of the southeastern battlement, we could see white-robed priests — drawn by lottery earlier that day — as they completed the evening offering and prepared the Temple for the night.

Each man was dressed identically in a white linen tunic, with a red belt and white linen, turban-like headgear. To our surprise, the priests went about their tasks barefoot.

Bryson edged himself out and around the sill of the far left window in an effort to get a better view.

“Fascinating,” he muttered to himself. “Utterly fascinating.”

It most assuredly was.

The Temple itself faced to the east and was situated slightly south of center on the broad rectangular Temple Mount, whose flat white surface covered about thirty five acres. From our position, only a few feet below the Temple roof, the setting sun highlighted the gold edging in a spectacularly beautiful way.

Lavon peered straight down and broke out in quiet mirth.

One of his old college professors had published a paper asserting that the Antonia was an integral part of the Temple complex, while a colleague had just as emphatically maintained that the fortress was situated about six hundred feet to the north, connected to the Temple only via breezeways.

In the manner of so many obscure academic quarrels, their dispute had become so bitter that despite having offices in the same building, neither man spoke to the other for more than two years.

Both of them were wrong.

Herod’s engineers had been clever, we could see. They had located the south wall of the Antonia about thirty feet from the Temple Mount’s perimeter. A system of gates and bridgeways permitted the easy flow of soldiers and materiel from the fortress to the Temple, but would present an almost insurmountable obstacle to anyone trying to get through the other way.

“They appear to know what they’re doing,” I said — and not for the last time.

Lavon nodded; then he looked up and saw that Bryson had eased himself dangerously close to the window’s edge. To make matters worse, we could see the bright red LED on his camera.

Lavon coughed. “Ahem; Professor, you might not want anyone to see you with that thing.”

To his credit, Bryson quickly realized his mistake and eased himself back inside.

“By the way,” I asked. “How much battery life do you have left?”

Bryson squinted at the small screen. “Three hours; that should be enough.”

Lavon wasn’t so sure. The Gospels recorded only that the body was gone by the time the women arrived around dawn on Sunday morning. None of them set forth a precise chronology as to when the actual event had occurred.

“Did you bring any spares?” I asked.

“Two.”

“Do you still have them?”

Bryson smiled as he felt for the small pouch he had tucked into his tunic. His expression, though, quickly changed to one of worry and embarrassment.

“I must have lost my pouch as I was running this morning,” he finally said.

I figured as much. I turned to Lavon. “That will make for an interesting find, will it not? A two thousand year old battery from a Handycam.”

Lavon shook his head as he thought back to the odd discovery that had led him to his current situation.

“No one will be able to date it,” he finally said.

***

As the western sky faded to dusk, a servant brought in an oil lamp and placed it in the center of the table. After the man departed, I took the wine jar and filled five goblets.

After handing one to Sharon — the others could fend for themselves — I took the seat facing the door and held up my chip.

“Speaking of lost pieces of plastic, does everyone still have theirs?”

The others reached into their pouches and said yes. Bryson, too, pulled his out and laid it on the table, though this one looked a bit different. Instead of being composed of a single uniform wafer, like ours, the center of his glowed red.

“It’s a low power LED,” he explained. You all have earlier prototypes. Given the unknowns involved in this venture, we realized that it might become essential for me to have some warning that my return could be delayed, so that I could have at least a minimal opportunity to take evasive action.”

I couldn’t argue with that, though it hadn’t done us much good so far.

Bryson continued to stare at the chip. Finally, he just shook his head. “I just don’t know what possibly could be wrong?”

“Well, something is not right,” said Markowitz.

The others joined in and I let them vent for a few minutes. Finally, though, I held up my hand. We needed solutions, not arguments.

“The way I see it,” I said, “we need to work out hypotheses as to what the problem might be, though our key concern for the moment is how long we’ll have to stay in the good graces of the Roman army.”

Bryson held up his wine goblet. “You seem to have done a decent job of that so far. Obviously, we’re not prisoners.”

“No.”

“Then why do you think — ”

Lavon rose, walked over to a window and once again looked down. The drop was over one hundred feet.

“We’re not prisoners, but we can’t exactly leave,” he said. “I don’t think they know what to do with us. With all the crowds coming in for the Passover, they’re rather busy, so my guess is they’re going to keep us here until the festival is over and sort everything out then.”

“Keep us here, in this room?” asked Markowitz.

“Yes, as guests — unless something changes their mind.”

“Do you think they believe our story?” Sharon asked.

“It’s plausible,” Lavon replied. “Rome took control of Egypt around 30 BC, or about sixty years before Christ’s ministry. The army brought enormous quantities of loot back to the capital, and wealthy Romans went nuts over the stuff. Owning Egyptian artifacts became the ‘in’ thing for the high society of the time.”

“I saw Egyptian obelisks in modern Rome,” she said.

“That’s right,” replied Lavon. “There’s even one at the center of St. Peter’s Square. Medieval popes restored many of the ones that had fallen after the Empire crumbled.”

“OK, then,” I said. “‘Plausible’ should be good enough, at least for the moment.”

“Saving that soldier got us some Brownie points, too,” said Markowitz.

“Yes, but that’s also part of our problem,” replied Lavon. “Word of something so obviously useful …”

“They’ll want more,” I said.