Irrefutable Proof: Mars Origin I Series Book II Read online

  I stood up and brushed the dirt off my bottom and knees and slapped my hands together. I followed behind Mase back in through the French doors, into my study.

  Chapter Eight

  The letter from the publishers sat front and center on my desk. Mase wanted to be sure that I didn’t miss it. How could I have? Even if I didn’t get the letter, they would be calling me soon enough. Kate Gianopoulos didn’t seem to give up on me. Maybe she was eager to let the world know the truth. I couldn’t understand why. They couldn’t have made “one red cent” (my mother’s saying) off of the last book.

  I stood behind the desk, grabbed the letter opener, and ripped open the envelope. I sat down holding the letter in my hand.

  I had left out so much stuff that was in the manuscripts in that first book, I thought as I sat there holding the letter, not even looking down to see what was written.

  The Dead Sea Fish. It was going to be more honest. More academic. The thought of putting it out really scared me. But it was only part of it.

  One step at a time, I thought. Peel away that stinking onion layer by layer. Maybe then people would be more receptive. It needed to be known, though. So, I went back and forth between having the guts to tell the story, or not putting myself out there. Or not only putting myself out there, but getting the proof I needed and dropping it all on the world. Getting the proof had won out.

  Deep down (way down), I knew after I read the Latin in the back of Dr. Sabir’s notebook that just giving out the information from the manuscripts wouldn’t be enough. I would write the book, since the publishers were waiting. I would get the ball rolling, while I worked on getting the proof.

  I looked down at the letter and saw the encircled feather logo. Meredith-Wilcox Publishing, known mostly nowadays as just Wilcox Books, was a family run publishing house in Cincinnati. It was in Lincoln Heights, a neighborhood that wasn’t what it once was. But that change hadn’t affected Wilcox Books. It was an old business, small but self-contained. Housed in a bungalow-styled brick house, on a corner lot, it once served as the Meredith’s personal residence. Now the basement had been converted into a fully functional printing shop that produced all the company’s books. The warehouse was the attached garage and the rest of the house served as the offices.

  I thought about that little publishing house. Sitting stalwart, overcoming all the challenges it had gone through. Standing through the test of time, bending with the winds of change that blew in a new wave of self-publishing and Indie authors, those not seeking or needing traditional publishing, Wilcox Books was still a vibrant company.

  I read the letter. It was pleasant enough even though what it really was saying was, “What the heck are you doing? Send us the darn book already.”

  I leaned my body forward, rested my elbows on the desk. Hands holding up head, I started to chew on my nail. My eyes wandered over to my bookshelf. There on the shelf was even more of a shocker than what the manuscripts had revealed.

  Dr. Sabir’s little secret at the back of his notebook. Those four seemingly innocuous pages in Latin. I remembered how I didn’t bother translating them when I did the rest of the notebook. Thought they couldn’t mean much, and I didn’t know Latin. It would have been a chore to translate it. But, scrawled out in fountain pen, barely legible, written on the last pages was a revelation, was an eye opener. Concealed in the open, Just the few pages that separated it from the words that I knew belonged to the original manuscripts, made me not give it a second thought.

  At first.

  I laughed out loud. Maybe I shouldn’t have ever taken the time to learn Latin. I really only did it to fashion some kind of relief from my brothers’ taunts.

  Greg found out that I didn’t know Latin when we originally went to Jerusalem looking for the AHM manuscripts. And at the time he really didn’t make a big deal about it. Practically didn’t say a word about it. (Probably with all the crying and pouting I was doing about the useless manuscripts, he just didn’t have the opportunity). But once he got back home, he told two of my other brothers and the proverbial you-know-what hit the fan. They couldn’t get enough of teasing me about it.

  My brother Doobie’s face twisted all up, he pointed his finger at me, held his stomach and covered his mouth like something was going to jump up out of his throat. He finally choked out some words. “How can you speak six - ”

  “Seven.” I corrected, closing my eyes and bracing myself for the onslaught.

  “How can you speak seven languages and not speak Latin!”

  They just couldn’t seem to understand. Yeah, I spoke seven languages. And yeah, Latin was an ancient language that was spoken by the Romans that crucified Christ, and I am a Biblical archaeologist (emphasis all on ‘Biblical’). And I know there was a sign posted at the site of Jesus’ crucifixion with one line in Latin. And, (yes, another ‘and’ to make it seem even more implausible that I didn’t know the language) Latin had spawned the romance languages - French, Italian, and Spanish. But I didn’t speak any of the romance languages. And I didn’t know Latin.

  I had taken German in high school. And I could speak German. And I could speak Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, the languages of the Bible. I knew Egyptian hieroglyphics and Sumerian cuneiform, but you don’t “speak” ancient symbols. I could read Sanskrit, but too few people nowadays speak a true form of that, so I didn’t count those. But, I could speak Arabic, Turkish, and of course English. That made up my seven languages.

  I had spent a lot of time in the Middle East. Digging. Finding artifacts. Pleading with government officials, in their native languages, to give me permits to dig some more and allow me to send artifacts I found out of their country for examination. I didn’t study the languages in school. I picked them up from the people who spoke them. No one spoke Latin. I didn’t dig in a Latin speaking country. There is no such thing as a Latin speaking country. I had no need to learn Latin. Plus, I had Dr. Margulies back then. He knew the language and I never gave one thought that he might not always be around.

  But he died. My mentor and my friend couldn’t help me anymore. And my brothers thought me lacking, which made me feel that way, so I learned it. And then, twelve years after first translating the AHM manuscripts, I decided to give a try at translating what was in the back of Dr. Sabir’s notebook. And what a revelation that was. It opened up a whole new can of worms.

  Chapter Nine

  Back in 1997, Dr. Margulies had invited me to the Jubilee anniversary of the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Partly because he wanted to help me get over the depression that was overtaking me. And, partly because he had planned a tour of ancient artifacts so he needed my help. I couldn’t say no to him.

  But then I discovered what would soon consume me for the next year. During the Jubilee, I had found that a Dr. Samuel Yeoman the original Editor-in-Chief of the Translation Committee had alluded in one of his journals that he had destroyed manuscripts from the find. Later, I discovered that he had not destroyed them, but put them back in the cave from which they hailed. And that put me on track to find out what happened and what was in those manuscripts.

  So, I recruited my siblings, Greg, Michael and Claire, and we went to find them. It turned out, though, to be a useless endeavor. At that time access to the caves had been easy to get. It wasn’t a national park. There were still excavations going on, and even at dusk no one would think anything of people walking in and around the caves. But it would have been fine with me if someone had caught us and shot us, because it couldn’t have been any more painful than what I found. The manuscripts were in pieces. Dr. Yeoman had written that the manuscripts were an extant copy, in perfect shape. It was, he said, nothing like the other documents found.

  Not.

  So much for deciphering a mystery so compelling that someone of Dr. Yeoman’s stature would commit an act that went against the grain of what every archaeologist held dear - preservation of history.

  But soon I found that notebook. Tucked away by Dr. Amos Sabir. It wa
s a mix of text in Latin, Aramaic and Hebrew infused within each line. It had taken me three months to translate.

  Finding that notebook seemed too coincidental to be true I know. But instead of coincidence, I thought it providence. God intervened.

  Dr. Yeoman had tried to hide it. But Dr. Sabir, Dr. Margulies’ father had preserved it. And then I had it.

  I translated what was inside and sent the notebook to the Hebrew University via Ghazi, Dr. Margulies’ friend and employee. I thought it was a good idea. A sneaky one as well. Perhaps someone else would get it and translate its contents, then I wouldn’t have to. But I had no idea if Ghazi ever got it to Hebrew University because I hadn’t heard from him since. That was in 1998.

  I guess I could have called him.

  And there on that bookshelf, the one I couldn’t seem to keep my eyes off of, was a copy of the entire untranslated manuscripts on a set of floppy disks. Including those last four pages in Latin I’d translated just last year. On one of those pages was the directions to a box Dr. Sabir had buried under a tree in Israel. And on the other pages, he professed to know how to get the secrets of the Ancients.

  I had hid the floppy disks in the leaves of a book. The Genius of the Few by Christian and Barbara Joy O’Brien.

  How apropos, I had thought.

  It was a book by two people that had the courage to write a book that admitted that there was an advanced civilization that lived 100,000 years ago.

  I walked over and pulled the book down from the shelf. Sitting down at my desk, I held it by its covers, fanned out the pages and watched as the four black square disks fell out. They clanked, hitting the desk, turning on their sides, bouncing around before settling scattered across the desktop. I laid the book to the side and stared at them.

  Taking in a deep breath and letting it out through my nose, I took one and slid it over in front of me. Spinning it around from its center with my finger, I thought about what I needed to do. I picked it up, fanned it back and forth, creating a little breeze on my face.

  I looked at the computer and back at the disk.

  “Well, nowhere to stick this big ole’ thing,” I said as I as I surveyed the USB port and CD drive.

  “But, it doesn’t matter.” I threw the disk across my desk. “I remember exactly what’s on them. Each and every word of it.”

  It was something that I couldn’t cover up in a book of fiction. It was something that would help mankind. It was something that would save us from ourselves.

  And it was waiting for me to come and get it.

  Dr. Sabir had buried the proof I needed under a tree in the Jerusalem Forest more than fifty years ago. And all I had to do was dig it up.

  Being an archeologist, I was good at doing that.

  Chapter Ten

  Villa Mondragone, Jesuit Community

  Frascati, Italy, 1912

  “Someone is coming to look at books today.” Father Realini sat on his cot in the sleeping room of the community house. “To purchase part of our collection,” Father Realini continued, bending down tying his shoe.

  “Purchase books? Which books?”

  “Any that he sees that he likes.” Father Realini gave Father Marquette a jeering look. “At least that would be my guess.”

  “Sarcasm, I am finally realizing, does suit you.” Father Marquette said, shaking his head. He held up a small mirror, combing his sandy-colored hair and giving his face a once over. “What I meant, I guess,” he took a deep sigh and eyed Father Realini through his mirror. “Why is he purchasing books from us? Who is he?” He turned and looked at him.

  “He is a book collector,” Father Realini said.

  “And he will buy our books?”

  “Yes. Yes. Are you going deaf? And we,” he said smugly, “are going to insure that he will purchase the book.”

  “Oh, Father, how can you know the will of a man? We can’t be sure that he will purchase that book.”

  “We can, and he will. I have come up with an idea.”

  “Tell me.”

  “We will compose a letter,” Father Realini said, standing up and knotting his cincture. “It will tell of the manuscript’s illustrious history. We’ll tell a story that will fill any man with intrigue and wonder, and certainly the desire to make the book his own.”

  “We are going to lie?” Father Marquette asked.

  “Lie? Father, don’t be so obtuse. We don’t lie. We are priests.” He swung his ferraiolo around his shoulders and looked in the mirror to place it.

  “Then we will tell the true history of the manuscript in this letter?”

  “Of course not. We’ll write that perhaps it once belonged to a King or an Emperor.”

  “Did it?”

  “Don’t be foolish, Father Marquette. Of course it did not. You know of its history.”

  “Yes, but I thought, perhaps . . .”

  “Come. Come. Let us write.” Father Realini went over to his cot and kneeled down and reached for something underneath. He pulled out a small box that was lined in cloth, and inside was parchment paper that looked very old.

  He sat down on the four-legged stool at the wooden desk and gently took the paper out of the box.

  “What is it?” Father Marquette asked, almost whispering.

  “Paper from one of the old books in the library. A blank page. This document must not just appear old. It must be old. Father Marquette nodded as Father Realini took a fountain pen from the center desk drawer.

  “I must be honest with you, Father Marquette. This is not my first attempt. I had previously written another name in the book as if he had been the owner. I had put in his signature. But I thought better of it and removed it. No one will ever be able to see that it had been there.”

  “We shall do it right this time,” Father Marquette assured him. “So, now, what shall we say?” He leaned over Father Realini’s shoulder.

  “First,” he turned sideways and looked at Father Marquette. “We should explain how it came to us. And I know exactly how that should go. We shall say it came from Athanasius Kircher. A famous and illustrious member of the Society of Jesus that worked with geology and deciphering hieroglyphics.”

  “Is that what the language is in the manuscripts? Hieroglyphics?”

  “No. No. Don’t be absurd, Father Marquette. I don’t think that hieroglyphics is a ‘language.’” He started to put pen to paper. “Wait. Perhaps we should pray.”

  “Pray?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can we pray for such deceit?”

  “Aggh. Father Marquette. Don’t call it deceit. It is not deceit. And certainly, we can pray for anything.” He raised his eyebrows and turned and gave Father Marquette a questioning look. “Perhaps I should stand.” Realini pushed back the stool and stood, turning to face Father Marquette he said, “Bow your head.”

  They both raised their arms chest height, each pressing their palms together, and titled their heads forward. Father Realini began to pray.

  “O gracious God, pour out in abundance Thy spirit upon Thy priests as they perform their duty. Each of us in a common purpose, to perfect Your Glory, and provide passage to You in all things through the knowledge we have kept secret. Amen.”

  “That’s better, eh, Father?” Father Realini patted Father Marquette on his shoulder and took his seat back at the desk. “Now let’s get to this matter.”

  “I believe the prayer did help. Scoot over. I will write this.”

  Father Realini, with a smile showing he enjoyed their shared secret, relinquished his seat and waved his hand across it, welcoming Father Marquette.

  Father Marquette sat, scooted the stool under the desk, and without hesitation began to write. Father Realini turned and began to pace the floor, one arm across his body, the other arm’s elbow resting on it with a finger touching his lip in thought.

  “Not only did our esteemed brother, Athanasius Kircher possess it,” Father Marquette talked as he wrote. “But according to this letter, sent with the ma
nuscript a note, penned by none other than Johannes Marcus Marci, the - ”

  “Johannes Marcus Marci? Brilliant!” Father Realini took a skip and landed back over to the stool. “Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant!”

  “Yes, Marci, the official physician to the Holy Roman Emperors, Ferdinand III, and Leopold I.”

  “A man with clout!” Father Realini proclaimed.

  “And . . .” Father Marquette emphasized the word by making his voice an octave higher. With a sly grin crawling across his face, he said, “He was a scientist.”

  “So of course he would have such a book!”

  “Esattamenta!”

  “So we say Marci had it first?” asked Father Realini.

  “No, of course not.” This time it was Father Marquette that gave the mocking eye. “The book is much older than that,” he said, relishing in his storytelling.

  “Yes. Yes it is.” Father Realini may not have thought of that, but he knew much more about the manuscript than his counterpart.

  “We shall write that the manuscript was once owned by Emperor Rudolf II of Bohemia, the Holy Roman Emperor.”

  “Ah. You do know that it is even older than that?” Father Realini said, taking back the upper hand. “But, no matter. How did the Emperor obtain it?”

  “You are right. It is much older than that. Who can we say it originated with?”

  “They would have to be at least from the thirteenth or fourteenth century.”

  Father Marquette ran his fingers and thumb down opposite sides of his chin, stroking it as he contemplated.

  “I have it!” Father Realini stood over Father Marquette, his eyes beaming.

  “Are you to tell me?” Father Marquette asked.

  “Roger Bacon.”

  “Now it is my turn to cry, ‘Brilliant!’” Father Marquette bent over the letter and started writing furiously.

  “His ownership of the book is the perfect way to prove that it has stayed within the purview of the Church, making our contrived history so much more authentic. And certainly his time in history is consistent with the age of the manuscript.”