and your TAMS toy do great work, Duncan!”
“Only to keep you amused, Jon. What did you discover this time, the memoirs of Constantine?”
Jon was startled for a moment by the name but then said, “No, a shade more important than that. Tell you what, because you’ve been so kind, I’ll phone you about it just before we make the general announcement.”
“TAMS and I will be honored.”
Sandy McHugh phoned from Washington with similar results. Every test of the adhesive swipes he had taken from the leather cover and vellum pages showed a progression of pollen running up to the present day, yet also strains that went back to the fourth century.
All tests, then, were conclusive: the codex was absolutely authentic. As Jon told Shannon, “Obviously, we didn’t need the tests in the first place, since no one today could have forged 140 pages of perfect, fourth-century Greek.”
“Why did we go to all that bother, then?”
“The public, Shannon. The skeptical public, not to mention an army of critics.”
That evening, Jon put in two calls, the first to the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul, the other to Kevin Sullivan in Rome. Both were for the purpose of establishing a date for the announcement to the world. His All Holiness Bartholomew II would have the honor of making the initial announcement. Pope Benedict XVI would be invited to attend and participate in the presentation or be represented by Monsignor Sullivan. The location should have been the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Istanbul, but for obvious security reasons, it would instead be the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in New York.
“Glad I caught you before your flight to Cairo this afternoon, Osman,” Jon said as he chatted with his associate. It was a mild spring morning in early May, warm enough for Jon to open the windows of his office. “Like some coffee?”
“Please.”
As Jon poured two mugs, he continued. “I understand you’re visiting relatives in Cairo?”
Osman nodded. “In the western suburbs. At Giza-near the pyramids.”
“Do look in on our publisher while you’re there, Osman, and try to iron out any remaining problems in the Arabic edition of our book-if there are any.”
“Will do. Soon, maybe, I’ll have to do the Arabic translation of Mark 16 and Second Acts from our magnificent codex there.” It was lying atop Jon’s desk.
“Could well be. By the way, didn’t you once tell me you could face death if you ever returned to a Muslim country after converting to Christianity?”
“True for Islamic theocracies like Iran but not for secular states like Egypt. And you’ll recall that we all got back safely from Turkey.”
“True enough.”
“Of course, if they knew about me, Muslim fanatics in any country would find me fair game.”
“Better watch your back, then. I understand that Osman Mahmoud al-Ghazali’s fame is rising in the world of Islam!” Jon was smiling, but then he grew serious. “Hate to bring this up again, but a couple weeks ago, you’ll recall, we talked about the remaining problem in the disappearance of the codex?”
Osman nodded. “How could the perpetrators in Istanbul have known its dimensions, when the patriarch would fly here, et cetera, right?”
“Exactly. We all agreed that it had to be an inside job by someone in the patriarchate over there. But then I recalled that when we told you and Dick Ferris about the codex at the Istanbul Hilton, it was you who asked me about its size.”
“Right. And your point is…?”
“Well, I told you about the size of its pages, but then you also asked me how thick it was.”
“So? Both Dick and I wanted very badly to see the actual codex. And that was as close as we could come at the time.”
“Fair enough. And it’s just possible that my awful vector of suspicion may be pointed in the wrong direction.”
“At me, Jon? Me? After all we’ve been through together?”
“Hate to say it, but yes, Osman, even though it absolutely tears me apart to admit it.”
“Well, you can spare yourself that kind of personal agony because I’d never ever go back to the other side. Conversion is conversion. A Judas Iscariot I am not!”
Jon clenched his jaw muscles and rolled his knuckles on the desk. “I’d like to believe that. I really would.” He paused, avoided eye contact with Osman, and stared out the window. Then he turned in his chair and faced al- Ghazali directly. “Yesterday evening, Mort Dillingham called me from Washington. He hated to admit it, he said, but yes, the CIA asked the FBI to check all phone records on all of us during the weeks preceding the theft of the codex and the weeks afterward. After we hung up, Dillingham faxed me this record. It’s a long list, but please note the items I’ve underlined in red.”
He handed Osman the faxed pages. “To the left is your home phone number in Watertown, dated a week before Bartholomew’s flight to the U.S., and to the right… do you see that number in Istanbul?”
“Where?”
Jon pointed.
“Oh… there.”
“It belongs to one Tawfik Barakat, who is a member of the Islam Forever religious party, and one of three men on duty at Istanbul’s airport security the day the patriarch flew off.”
Al-Ghazali reddened a bit. “But… how can that be? Obviously there has to be some… some ridiculous mistake here. Besides, how could the perpetrators know when the patriarch would fly off?”
“Osman, Osman, we had all that information here in Cambridge, and you certainly had access to it.”
A long silence followed, tense and embarrassing to both of them. Finally Osman cleared his throat. “All right, Jon. Very well. I have a long, long story to tell you, and I think you’ll like the ending. But first, might I have a bit more coffee?”
Jon walked over to the hot plate and turned his back to prepare a fresh pot. Carafe in hand, he returned and refilled both mugs. Then he said, “Please continue, Osman. I’m listening… listening quite carefully, in fact.”
Al-Ghazali began with the story of his descent from the great eleventh-century Muslim mystic, Abu-Hamid al-Ghazali, who despised women and hated science in his concern for rigorist orthodoxy. He went on to the story of his childhood in Cairo, while Jon, his patience wearing thin, let his coffee cool. Details of Osman’s schooling followed, until Jon said, “To the point, man, to the point. This is all interesting, but you have a plane to catch, don’t you?”
“All right, Jon, I’ll give you the short version.”
Jon took a long sip of coffee, noting a slightly off flavor. “Almost tastes like Irish coffee. That’s what I get for not giving the carafe a thorough washing. Is yours okay, Osman?”
“Just a little strong.”
Then he continued with the story of his conversion to Christianity and how his eyes were finally opened to the greater historical reliability of the Bible versus the Qur’an. Despite Jon’s advice to move on with his explanation, Osman seemed to continue dawdling. Jon let him speak on, grasping his mug a little unsteadily as he took another long sip. Soon he looked at Osman with some concern because the man was becoming clouded in some sort of haze. But his office was also suffused in a growing fog, and the whole room seemed to lurch to one side. He quickly set the mug down, lest he drop it, and put both hands on the desk to steady himself. But the desk seemed to be tipping and sliding sideways. Was he having a stroke?
Osman watched the changes coming over Jon with quiet satisfaction. The man was starting to shiver and hyperventilate as Osman continued. “But truth to tell, Jon, for all the evidence you tried to marshal on behalf of Christianity, I found that, in the end, I could never give up Islam. Never! I was convinced that I could best help our cause by intruding into your circle.”
Jon tried to reach for his phone, but Osman swiftly pulled it out of his reach. “You won’t need that,” he said. “Of course, I intentionally made that error in the Arabic translation of your book, hoping a fatwa would quickly settle things. But when that failed and you discovered the codex instead, I had to-wait, here, let me help you.”
Al-Ghazali stood and shoved Jon and his chair deep inside the space under the middle of his desk. “You
