Pressing his fingers against the transparent wall as if it helped him speed-read, Porter hummed the growl of a faraway muscle car.
“I pulled it off the Internet. Peterson reminds his associates that many scholars have made the same mistake with past archaeological finds. He even cites a stela which members of the LDS church reportedly associate with the Book of Mormon. Here, on this page.”
“I see it,” said Porter with a heavy weight in the back of his throat, but he didn’t need to focus on the image and writing, for he knew it well. “Stela number five from Izapa.” He looked sharply into Alred’s green eyes. “That ‘tree of life’ stone has more than one hundred and fifteen arbitrary connections to an extremely detailed scene described in the first and second parts of the Book of Mormon. Peterson can’t use that as proof of-”
“Nevertheless, he has,” said Alred with a sigh. “My point is Dr. Peterson refuses to note any more correlations with the Middle East. He has completely changed his testimony on the subject.”
Porter slapped the tabletop, looked to his right, then back at her. He felt the pressure in his veins but tried to relax, fearing his excitement would draw the officer who’d led him into the room.
“Peterson even suggests that he’d been fooled by Professors Ulman and Albright into thinking the site in Guatemala to be much more than it actually was.”
Shaking his head, Porter laughed without humor.
With her eyebrows high, Alred put the papers back into her portfolio. “Think now,” she said with a voice as controlled as it had been on the day they’d first met. “We know Albright died of a heart attack.”
Porter opened his mouth.
But Alred raised her voice. “The authorities are unified with that decision. We know Dr. Wilkinson was murdered, but there is no direct evidence to link him to Ulman’s find. And Ulman…only recently-”
“I know,” Porter said, covering the microphone as if it stopped his thoughts.
Staring at him in silence while he banged the logical facts against his predisposed brain, Alred pushed her lips into the tight red ball she often made. “They want the codex all right,” she said, relaxed. “But they are little more than modern-day grave robbers.”
With a grin, but still no light in his eyes, Porter said, “You’ve seen too much Indiana Jones. Nobody steals ancient artifacts anymore.”
Alred squinted at him. They both knew he was wrong and only lying to himself…and the microphone.
Porter rubbed his forehead. “Did you know St. Basil pointed out long ago that with all the importance of the sacraments, the exact instruction and liturgy were never recorded by the original apostles?”
Folding her arms, Alred said, “Never thought about it.” Her face shouted, Who even cares?!?
“Why do you suppose that is? While the word for word blessing of the bread and wine are given in the Book of Mormon?” said Porter.
Alred clenched her teeth together. What was this? Another desperate attempt by Porter to claim reason for this semester’s insanity? He’d made the greatest mistakes of his life, to her knowledge. He’d never attain the positions for which he had worked so hard and so well. He had nothing left but his religion, that which has throughout history been sought by poor souls when hope was feared to be lost. She had to listen. To humor him. To give him this last moment before the blade met the chopping block, publicly ending his existence forever.
“There’s only one other place I know of where the words of the bread and wine sacrament have been written down, and that’s on an ancient Egyptian Coptic Christian manuscript called the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles discovered in 1904. Funny thing: it’s exactly the same prayer. That means archaeological evidence suggests Joseph Smith had an English copy of a sacred invocation, which he then placed in the Book of Mormon, a hundred years before the rest of the modern world possessed it.
“I never said it before, but the Popol Vuh tells some specific stories that are found only in the Book of Mormon. Nowhere else that I know of can you find those stories. But the Popol Vuh wasn’t converted from Mayan into Spanish and published in a common tongue until 1857, about thirty years after the Book of Mormon was translated into English. Now anyone can pick up a copy of the Popol Vuh in English for under twenty bucks.”
“I’m sorry Porter,” said Alred, attempting to be as sincere and open as possible. “I won’t fill your head with delusions. I have to be honest. You’re just not convincing me of anything. I need proof that what you are talking about is real. Why aren’t there any more solid, undeniable texts? If the Book of Mormon really is an account of some of the ancient inhabitants of the Americas, why are there no more books confirming the idea? What happened to them all?”
“Alred,” Porter whispered, “you know better than I do. All the Spaniards-Father Diego de Landa was a Franciscan friar who tore down Mayan temples, destroyed sacred shrines, and tortured the natives when he caught them worshipping in the fashion of their ancient ways. When he found in the village of Muna some who were able to translate the old writings in their possession, de Landa had their cache of twenty-four books, bound in jaguar skins, all burned! After tormenting thousands of Mayans, de Landa returned to Spain, then came back to the same people in the New World to rule as their bishop. There is also a strong tradition describing what are often called the Golden Books of the Mayas, fifty-two gold plates with engravings which relate the entire history of the Mayan people. Now, what would soldiers do if they found a book made of gold? You ask me what happened to the records of the Americas? White man happened. It’s an old story.”
“I know about Diego de Landa,” she said, nodding.
“Then why are you here, Alred?! Tell me the truth,” said Porter, knowing her words would be painful to hear, but utterly necessary.
Staring at him for half-a-minute without speaking, Alred considered her options.
This had gone on long enough.
“You know I hated the project from the beginning,” she said.
He nodded.
“I stayed with you…because I had to find out what happened to Ulman.”
“That’s it?” said Porter.
“It’s all over now, Porter. And you know I won’t sacrifice my standards about our judicial system when we come to court.”
“At least you have some standards,” Porter said, his face sagging. He eyed her, a mask of solemn thought changing his features to look like some ancient prophet contemplating the end of the world as seen in a vision. “Alred…you have…held the proof…in your hands.”
“But I’ve had so little time to study the codex.”
“A religion is something we analyze for a lifetime. You may figure it all out, Alred… But will it be too late?”
“Can your faith get you out of jail?” said Alred with eyes on the base of the microphone. She ached for him, sitting alone and trapped behind the bullet-proof glass. He had nothing. There was no one to feel for him. No one who would dare care. Didn’t he realize his words were pushing her out to the room? He needed her! Whoever hunted him would surely use Porter’s family if he pulled them into the picture. Who’s to say they haven’t already? She looked into his gray eyes. “You’re gonna be tried for illegally possessing the archaeological treasures of a foreign country. And they’ll use me to testify against you. You’re a Mormon, so I’m sure you’ll understand my honesty when I tell them…that everything they suspect…is true.”
“Truth only hurts when it ought to,” Porter told himself with a sting, a twisted smile, and a pale face.
CHAPTER TWENTY — SIX
May 4
2:35 p.m. PST
“Porter,” said Clusser, drumming his fingers together and leaning forward, “What’s going on?” The weight of the situation drew his dark walnut-colored face into a mass of ridged sobriety.
“Where have you been?!?” Porter said, adjusting himself in his seat and looking around the tight room with no cameras, no microphones, and no glass walls.