“Right.”
Jon’s hand was actually trembling as he turned on his laptop. Why did the booting up take so long? Finally his screen came alive with all its icons. He double-clicked on his favorite photo-imaging program, clicked the Import button for camera #1 at the one-foot level, and waited for the images to appear. They arrived, one by one, with excruciating slowness, yet all were-well, not blank, but showing only the gray marble interior of the sarcophagus. After the eight 45-degree-angle photographs had made a complete circuit, Jon slapped his hand on the table and muttered, “Nothing! Just the same drab interior walls of the tomb. Either there’s nothing inside or my lens angles were wrong.”
“Well, try camera two, for goodness’ sake!” Kevin advised.
“Camera two? Oh yes, of course.”
Jon shook off his disappointment and returned to his laptop. The uploads from the second camera started appearing on the screen, but with the same disappointing results: nothing but shots of the interior wall. Jon clapped both hands over his eyes in dejection.
“Jon, look!” Kevin yelled. Photo number four from the second camera was coming onto the screen. It showed the top of something that was difficult to make out, but it was most definitely not part of the walls.
“Yessss!” Jon exploded. “The hole was near the eastern edge of the sarcophagus, and I aimed the wand there first. Now we’re getting the views across to the other side. And just look at seven o’clock!”
“Wow!” Kevin enthused, looking over Jon’s shoulder. “Nine o’clock is even better!” Both angles showed bones at the base of each view.
Then there were indrawn breaths: Eleven o’clock showed the top half of a human skull.
Both were silent for some time, savoring the moment. Finally Jon said, “The next series, which was taken nine inches lower, should be even better.”
Indeed, this became the series that Jon knew could make history. Both cameras clearly showed the image of a skeletal figure, ranging in height-they estimated-between five-foot-five and five-foot-eight. A shock of what looked to be salt-and-pepper-shaded hair-much on the sides, little on top-was still attached to the skull. And unless this was wishful viewing, there seemed to be a break in the neck vertebrae five and six beneath the skull.
“What do you think, Jon? Do we have a gap there or not?”
“It’s tough to tell at this point. We’ve got to avoid letting any bias color our results. In any case, we won’t be able to determine that until we enlarge the photos. Then again, if the people who buried this person pushed the head back into position, we may never know, short of a real autopsy.”
Suddenly Kevin said, “No, Jon. You’re wrong. This… this is St. Paul.” He knelt down, crossed himself, and took several trembling breaths, clearly overcome.
“Easy, man. How can you be so sure?”
He wiped his eyes. “Look at those pieces of purple fabric still attached to one of the ribs!”
“What?”
“And remember how Second Acts closes? ‘On his breast we placed a small cross of wood, the emblem of what has become the center of everything he preached and taught.’” Kevin stood and pointed at the latest image on Jon’s laptop. “Look closely. Look at that rib cage…”
Jon squinted. There it lay, on the sternum: the image of an ancient cross made of darker material that contrasted with the gray of the ribs.
Jon slumped down on Kevin’s sofa, moving his head in a slow arc from side to side as the full ramifications ran together in his mind. Then he looked up. “Well, there’s our material evidence. And the evidence is actually a keystone, bracing up both sides of our mutual interests: Second Acts and the remains of St. Paul. How incredibly, wondrously, fabulous! Both authentic! ”
Kevin agreed-enthusiastically. “And of course, you can guess my next question.”
“I can. ‘When may I tell the Holy Father?’”
“You’ve got it.”
“Well, if you tell him now, he might not take too kindly to what we’ve-I’m sorry-what I’ve done.”
“I doubt that. He’ll be overjoyed that both Second Acts and St. Paul are authentic.”
“Maybe, but that cardinal with the five names will be furious.”
“True. Done without his sacred permission.”
“So why don’t we do this? Let’s have St. Paul’s remains ‘discovered’ several weeks after we announce the codex to the world. Benedict could persuade Cardinal Many Names to have archaeologists examine the interior of the sarcophagus. We know what they’ll find, and it will be a delightful corroboration to silence all the naysayers-”
“Of which there’ll be a whole chorus, I’m sure.” Sullivan nodded, then added, “Yeah, I think that would be the best way to handle it. And I trust you’ll keep me abreast of how the scholarship is moving on Mark and Second Acts.”
After Jon landed at Logan and hurried into Shannon’s waiting arms, he jabbered almost incessantly on the drive back to Weston about his adventure at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, though without mentioning his culminating discovery. Never one to mince words, Shannon let him know exactly what she thought of his escapade. It was beyond risky, she said, and more in the nature of foolhardy, rash, juvenile, and even reckless. Jon winced at each of those adjectives but kept his peace until they were home. Then, on the kitchen table, he booted up his laptop and paraded the views of no less than the skeleton of St. Paul. Now Shannon was mute, the back of her right hand covering a mouth that had sprung open in awesome surprise.
While the photographs had exonerated him so far as his wife was concerned, Jon realized that much of her comment was absolutely on-target, and-but for good fortune-things might have turned out very differently, with a massive negative impact on his own good name and reputation. It was a near thing.
The next morning, Jon turned the crypt photographs over to techie friends at MIT for enhancement. He did not, of course, disclose the provenance of the pictures or the probable identity of the skeletal remains in them. When they were returned-enlarged and printed in color-his friends had a little fun at Jon’s expense with comments like “Aha, so you’re professor by day, ghoul by night!” “Dr. Frankenstein, I presume?” and “When do you unveil your new pet monster?”
More significantly, Jon took the prints to a colleague Dr. Theophil Samuel, dean of radiology at Harvard Medical School, who resembled an aging Sigmund Freud. “First off, Ted,” Jon asked, “do we have a man or woman here?”
Samuel looked quickly through the photographs, sometimes squinting. “Male. Unquestionably, a male. Not a big person, but male nevertheless.”
“How do you know? What do you look for to determine that?”
“Relative bone size. Narrow pelvis-couldn’t deliver a baby.”
“Okay. Now, perhaps you can’t tell from the photographs, but do you have any guess as to his age at death?”
“Hmmm. Oh, I think I can… come reasonably close. See those extraphytic accretions at the edge of the bones? They develop over age. So I’d say… hmm… someone in his sixties-maybe a shade younger. If I had the remains, I could also check the teeth for wear from grinding and therefore age.”
“That’s quite impressive. All right, please also check out these enlargements of the neck area.”
Dr. Samuel studied the new photographs, then hauled out a large magnifying glass to zoom in further. “Strange,” he said, “there’s definite disarticulation, a definite gap between vertebrae five and six in the cervical plexus. Hmmm, and also a… a very consistent, flat abrasion of some kind along the top edges of vertebra five.”
“Any idea of what could have caused that?” Jon asked.
“Some very poor neck surgery, perhaps,” he trifled. “Where did you get these photos-from Yale Medical School?”
Both chuckled; then Samuel commented, “Well, if someone were, say, beheaded, he’d look very much like this… if his relatives wanted to make the departed look more natural by trying to piece the bones together again. This isn’t King Louis XVI of France, is it-he of guillotine fame?”