“It’s all right,” Natasha said. “I know what it’s like to worry about someone you love.”
“Your grandfather?” Erin asked.
“Actually,” said Natasha, “I was thinking about my husband.”
Erin was startled, to say the least. “Your husband?”
“Binyamin,” Natasha said softly. “He was in the navy — a SEAL, you’d call him. Anyway, he went out on a mission off the coast of Beirut and he never came back.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Erin. “I had no idea.”
“It was a long time ago,” said Natasha. “Almost ten years.”
Still, to Erin, the pain in her new friend’s eyes looked fresh. “First your parents, and then your husband?”
“All the luck, huh?” said Natasha, her bottom lip beginning to quiver.
Just a little farther, Bennett decided.
It was foolish, he knew. He was now at least three miles into the mountain. He must be nearing its core, he thought. But he couldn’t go back without knowing for sure. He took a gulp of water and squeezed around a tight corner and through a narrow crevice, dripping with water. A minute went by, then two, then five. All of a sudden the tunnel opened up into a large cavern. He could finally stand again, and when he did, he found himself at a dead end.
And then he noticed something odd.
Scattered about the floor of the cavern were six large piles of rocks. Where had they come from? They were obviously not natural formations, but who had put them there? And why?
Bennett’s heart rate began to rise. He set down his backpack, pulled out a digital camera, and snapped a few pictures. Then he stuffed the camera back in its bag and got started.
It was excruciating, backbreaking work. But after fifteen minutes, Bennett had cleared most of the rocks off the first pile. He pulled a spade from his pack and was preparing to dig when he realized he had already hit solid granite. There was nothing buried under the stones. Absolutely nothing.
Bennett repeated the process with the second pile, and the third, but each time he found nothing, and what little hope he had left quickly began to fade. It was now three-thirty in the morning. By the time he got back to the cave entrance, it would be at least five, and then he’d have to climb his way out. There would be no time left to explore another cave. At that point, they’d barely have enough time to get home before sunrise. But the thought of turning back with nothing to show for it made him physically ill, and he pled with God to show him favor.
“Why are you here, Erin?” Natasha asked.
The question came without warning, and Erin wasn’t sure what she meant.
“Why are you doing this — you and Jon?” Natasha pressed. “Why risk your life for something that means nothing to you? I mean, this is my life. And it was my grandfather’s. But you’ve got no stake in this thing. Sure, it was important to Uncle Eli, and maybe you’ll track down his killers. But maybe not. Maybe they’ll get you first.”
Erin looked in Natasha’s eyes. She was serious, and she was waiting for an answer Erin didn’t feel comfortable giving. But it was the truth, and she was too tired to come up with anything different.
“Have you ever heard the expression ‘The safest place to be is in the center of God’s will’?”
“No,” said Natasha.
“It just means if God wants you to do something, you’d better do it, even if it sounds a little crazy. Jesus said, ‘If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.’ And I love Him more than I can possibly explain. So I try to be faithful to whatever He asks of me.”
“And if He told you to jump off a bridge… ”
“No, no, it’s not like that,” said Erin. “But it is a little hard to explain if you’ve never—” She paused abruptly, then shifted gears. “How many languages do you speak, Natasha?”
“Speak or read?”
“Whatever.”
“Seven,” said Natasha.
“Wow, that’s amazing.”
“How about you?” Natasha demurred.
“Three,” said Erin. “English, Arabic, and Russian. A little Farsi, I guess, but not much. But my point is that regardless of how many languages I could speak, if you were talking to me in Hebrew right now, I’d have absolutely no idea what you were saying. You could be telling me exactly where the treasure is, and I wouldn’t know it. You could be telling me how you met your husband and fell in love, but I’d have no idea. Why? Because I don’t know Hebrew. I haven’t studied it, much less become fluent. It would mean nothing to me, and I’d miss everything you were trying to say to me.
“And you know, the same is true with God. He says He loves us ‘with an everlasting love.’ He has plans to give us ‘a hope and a future.’ He says He wants to adopt us into His family and have a personal relationship with us, to walk with us and talk to us and tell us great and mighty things we do not know. But unless we become true followers of His and learn to speak His language, we’ll completely miss what He’s trying to say. How did King Solomon put it? ‘He is intimate with the upright.’ And Jesus said, ‘My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them.’
“For most of my life I didn’t get that. I wasn’t an atheist, mind you. Intellectually, I believed God existed, of course. But I just didn’t care. He seemed irrelevant to me — distant, removed, far away, and unconcerned with my life and my problems. And I think that was partly because I had no idea what I was missing.”
“And you think God wants you to be out here,” asked Natasha, “in the heart of the West Bank, in the deep of the night, in bitter cold and whipping winds, hoping your husband finds some ancient Jewish treasure, or at least comes out alive?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t,” said Erin. “And besides, what if God has more than one reason for me to be out here?”
“Like what?” asked Natasha.
“Like giving you the chance to know the Messiah and hear His voice as well.”
59
It wouldn’t be long until daylight.
Erin and Natasha were growing increasingly worried about Jon Bennett. He wasn’t back. He hadn’t checked in for hours, and there was no way for them to contact him unless they went in after him. But if he didn’t get back soon — with or without good news — they would have to drive back in daylight, and that meant the chances of getting caught or killed would rise dramatically.
“I’m going in,” Erin said at last. She began fishing through one of the backpacks to find the gear she’d need.
“Oh no you’re not,” insisted Natasha. “Not in your condition.”
“I can’t leave him in there by himself,” Erin replied. “What if something terrible has happened to him?”
“You’re not well enough, Erin. Not yet. And you’ve been up all night.”
“I’ll be fine,” Erin insisted.
But Natasha obviously wasn’t convinced. “Maybe we need to think about turning ourselves in. Didn’t your friend — that Costello guy — say he could talk to the prime minister for you? I’m sure they’d send out a team to help us.”
“We’re not turning ourselves in to Doron.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know who I can trust in that office, and neither do you,” said Erin. “You know as well as I do that the only chance we have of finding the people who killed Mordechai and your grandfather is finding the treasure. And we can’t do that if we’re in prison or dead.”
But Natasha wouldn’t let it go. “What about your friend at CIA — Rajiv somebody?”