The Judas Line

“That silver thing of yours?”

“Yes, the Silver. One of the most powerful magical artifacts in the world, second only to the Grail and the Arc of the Covenant.”

The explosion of incredulity I half expected didn’t come. When I spared a glance from the road, it was to see Mike staring at me with eyes colder and more pitiless than the spaces between the stars.

“What?”

“The Arc of the Covenant? The Grail? Like the real ones, the ones Indiana Jones found?” The arctic tundra was warmer than his voice.

“When I left the Family, I liquidated my assets and I’ve used a lot of that to find something that would help me destroy the Silver.”

“What about throwing it in the Laurentian Abyss?”

The vanishing point met my eyes as I answered. “You could stuff the Silver in a lead-lined box with a nuclear warhead set to detonate when it hit the ocean floor and you wouldn’t even scratch it. It would reappear where someone in the Family would find it. No, the only way to destroy the Silver is to use a more powerful artifact.”

Mike stayed quiet for quite some time, so long, in fact, that I began to worry. Finally he said, “So you’re trying to destroy this silver thing by using an artifact that people have been trying to locate for centuries? Perhaps millennia?”

“Yes, Mike, I have to because the Silver is the biggest threat to mankind next to global thermonuclear war. It needs to go away and I should have investigated more thoroughly and taken action sooner.” Regret tasted bitter in my throat. “Because I twigged onto the Grail six months ago.”

A long pause. “Why didn’t you?”

I exploded in a rush of verbal self-recrimination. “Damn me, Mike … I was too comfortable, man.” When he didn’t reply, I continued. “And maybe a little scared, too. Nebraska isn’t the center of the universe, but it’s a good place to be.” Better, I felt much better. Maybe confession was good for the soul.

Mike stroked his moustache “So that’s where we’re going? To get the Grail?” I nodded and he blew a sigh through his lips. “The Archbishop will never believe this.”

“I really wouldn’t tell him if I were you.”

Once again that cold stare. “Why?”

“The Family has … people in the Vatican.”

I reckon that all the shocks to Mike’s system must have aged him about five years, but he held strong, much stronger than most. What really touched me was his belief, not just in God, but also in me. He believed me and in me with no ulterior motives. I could see it in his honest features. Maybe God had put Mike in my way that day all those years ago at St. Stephen’s and if He had, I owed Him big time.

Mike sat there in the passenger seat, idly rubbing his moustache and sucking absently on his front teeth, making a ssssk sssskk sound that would normally have driven me nuts, but for some reason didn’t bother me at all in the moment. Then he pulled a rosary out of his pocket and began to pray.

Not big on prayer, myself. I always reckoned that God knew what I was up to, and he was busy enough without having to listen to my jibber-jabber. But, in the spirit of respect and fellowship, I kept my trap shut until Mike was done and had put the rosary back in his pocket.

“Listen,” I began, reaching into the cup holder next to the hand brake for the open packet of peanut M amp;Ms I’d placed there earlier-my favorite munchies. Only the strict discipline I’d learned over the years kept me from gaining two hundred pounds. “In 1998 I’d traced a valuable artifact to Chicago, to a private collector named Mori Munakata, a wealthy real-estate investor who made serious money during the wild speculation of that time. Seems it was lumped together with other items of perceived greater value and he acquired the lot by rather dubious means.

“Without going into specifics that could be used against me in a court of law, I managed to liberate the artifact from his private vault and bring it to Omaha.”

“I remember!” Mike interjected. “You said you went to Disney World. You lied to me, Jude.”

“Well, just a little white lie. For your own protection, man.”

Again he rolled his eyes, clearly unhappy.

“What I got was called the First Tablet. Ever heard of it?”

“I wasn’t in school the day they taught ‘Arcane Archeology.’ ”

“Just shows that you’re a slacker. How about the history of writing, its invention?”

“Mesopotamia, right?”

Not bad. Mike was better read than I thought. “Until 1998 that was the conventional wisdom, however writing at the tomb King Scorpion of Abydos near Luxor was found dating back to 3400 B.C.E., four hundred years before Mesopotamian writing.”

“Sounds like a bad movie starring The Rock.”

I laughed. “In Pakistan, 1999, at the ancient site of Harappa, archeologists discovered writing that dated back to 3500 B.C.E. and that’s generally considered to be the earliest known instance.”

“How come I have a feeling that’s not the case?”

M and Ms crunched between my teeth and I savored the peanut/chocolate flavor before I answered. “Because your instincts are sharp, man. The very first example of the written word was a stone tablet, about three-foot tall, that dated back to 5500 B.C.E., created by an unsavory character who invented writing so he could record his confession to God.”

“What? Are you saying that there’s written proof of writing that’s over seven thousand years old? And proof that man worshipped God so long ago? Do you understand the significance of that?” he blurted, expression eager. Despite what he’d learned on this trip, this news seemed to shake him the most. Not surprising, though. Most people equate the formal worship of God to the Hebrews a little over three thousand years ago. Adding four thousand years to the mix would be a serious blow to the Agnostics and Atheists and would stand the religious community on its head.

“Sorry, but no one can read it. The language is unique and unknown. No Rosetta Stone to help translate, man.”

“Then how do you know what it says?”

“Good question. Shows you’re paying attention.” Crunch, crunch, crunch. Whoever invented peanut M amp;Ms should be canonized. “The holder of Tablet understands all languages written and spoken.”

“Sounds useful.”

“More than useful. Imagine touching the Tablet and looking at a line of computer code. You’d understand it all. It’s the Holy Grail for hackers, pardon the pun, and Munakata was using it to suss out his competition by hacking into their systems. Doubled his holdings in one year.”

Mike snagged the green M amp;M I held between my fingertips and I felt a twinge of irritation … green ones are my favorite. “That is quite powerful, especially in this day and age where everything is computerized.” He popped the M amp;M into his mouth and chewed. “So you said it was a recording of a confession to God. What did that person confess and who was it?”

And the hits just keep on coming. “Cain.”

“Cain?”

“Yes.”

“As in Cain and Abel?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Cain?”

“You said that already.”

“I know … it’s still not digesting.”

So I gave him a few minutes to absorb while I finished off the M amp;Ms. Thankfully there were still several green ones left. Crunch, crunch, crunch.

“Where is this revelatory Tablet then, Jude?’

I sighed. “Gone, Mike, gone. The reason I liberated it was because there might have been a slight chance