In the Beginning: Mars Origin I Series Book I Page 6

While Ghazi searched through the other drawers of the file cabinet, I flipped through the pages of a journal written by a Dr. Samuel Yeoman. I vaguely recalled the name. I think he was the first Editor-in-Chief on the Scroll translations. This was as much fun as excavating a site, but less dirty. These journals were fifty years old.

  I was so engrossed in reading the diary that the small grunt coming from the doorway made me jump. Dr. Margulies stood there with his hand on the doorknob.

  “Hello Dr. Margulies,” I said. Ghazi immediately stopped going through the cabinets and stood at attention.

  “Oh, I see you two are getting along better,” he said, smiling as he walked over to the desk where I sat.

  “Why aren’t you on the tour with the other attendees? Didn’t you want to see the caves?” Dr. Margulies questioned me as he looked around the room.

  “I could ask you the same question.”

  “I was walking down the hall and I noticed the door opened to this office, which was unusual.” Dr. Margulies looked from Ghazi to me, to the journals sitting on the desk in front of me, then back over to me. “What are you two doing?”

  “We didn’t expect anyone to be around. We thought we had hid ourselves pretty well,” I said skirting the question.

  “Nothing is hidden from the trained eye,” he said, his mantra for all of his students on being adequately prepared to work in the field.

  He studied us suspiciously. I figured I should explain.

  “These are very interesting, Dr. Margulies, have a look at them.” I slid the journal I had been reading across the desk for him to see.

  “What is it, Dr. Dickerson?” I knew he was being formal because he was scolding me for snooping. But finding these journals made me forget all about my illegal activities.

  “These appear to be the original diaries of some of the first interpreters of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” I explained.

  “Really?” That seemed to pique his interest. “Let me have a look at that.” He reached in his inside jacket pocket and retrieved a pair of reading glasses, turned the journal around to face him and leafed through the pages, stopping intermittently to read an entry on a page. He went through a few of the journals.

  “This is very interesting.” The exact words I had said earlier. “Perhaps I could have a chance to look at these at length,” he said, closing the journal and patting it with his fingertips. He looked at the two of us over the rim of his glasses, “With the proper permission of course.” On his way out of the room, he paused at the door, put his glasses back in his pocket, and turned the knob on the door. He glanced back over at us.

  “I thought these doors were locked? How did you get in here?” Ghazi and I looked at each other and then we both looked at Dr. Margulies. With the guilt on our faces obvious, he shook his head, and pulled the door closed as he walked out.

  “Do you think he is angry with us?” Ghazi asked

  “Don’t worry, Dr. Margulies wasn’t angry with us. It’ll be fine.” It was my turn to reassure him.

  I guess we should have left after Dr. Margulies found us but I was too intrigued with our find. I knew that Dr. Margulies wouldn’t tell anyone that we were here, and I figured I could justify my felonious acts as in the interest of science.

  All this history right here in my hands. How could I put it down? The elite group of scholars that translated the Scrolls had been so secretive, and here were their secrets, or at least one person’s, all written down for me to see. I decided that we should stay to look over more of the journals and books. It was the scientific thing to do. So, I sat quietly and continued to peruse the journals as Ghazi went through the remaining drawers and brought out more journals and put up the ones I had finished.

  “So, Dr. Dickerson, you find these things interesting?” Ghazi asked as he brought over a few journals from the last drawer in the cabinet. He didn’t seem nervous any longer.

  “Yes, I do Ghazi.” I smiled at him. “And, thank you for bringing me here.”

  “And have you had a good day today?”

  “Yes. I had a great day. Thanks.” He was quite pleased with himself. He smiled that smile that showed all his teeth as he returned some of the journals I had finished reading to the cabinet.

  “I see the tour bus is returning,” he said suddenly. He was looking out of the large window that was adjacent to the desk. “Perhaps we should leave now.” He moved quickly, trying to get things back in order and us out so as not to get caught.

  He picked up the other journals that were on the desk. I started to close the one that I was reading and something caught my eye. It was an entry dated October 22, 1949. October 22, that’s my mother’s birthday, she would have been about nineteen years old. Then my eye caught the word ‘destroy.’ I read the entire entry. I couldn’t believe what I read.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Israel 1997

  “I have something to show you,” I leaned over Dr. Margulies’ shoulder and whispered in his ear. I spotted him right after he finished dinner, seated with the present Editor-in-Chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls and a few other visiting scholars. He looked up at me and nodded. Excusing himself he followed me out of the banquet room. Ghazi waited for us right outside the dining room area and the three of us went back up to Room 204.

  “What is it, Lizzy?” he asked as Ghazi unlocked the door and we entered the room. I went over to the desk and turned on the lamp.

  “I’m not sure. It appears to be a cover-up.” I said. I went over and unlocked the file cabinet and motioning for Dr. Margulies to sit, I handed him Dr. Yeoman’s journal.

  “A cover-up for what?” he questioned, sitting in the chair behind the desk.

  “I don’t know. I think one of the original interpreters of the Scrolls may have found some information damaging to our belief in God and destroyed the manuscripts.” A look of incredulity came over his face. I took the journal from him and turned to the October 22 entry.

  Pointing to the page, I said, “Read this.”

  Recognizing the urgency in my voice, he didn’t stop to put on his glasses. He read over the entry quickly. When he finished, he looked up at me and then looked back down at the notebook. His face showed the same disbelief I had felt when I discovered it. He reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out his glasses and reread the entry. Removing them, he tapped his glasses on the journal, his impassive face masking the concern that slipped out in his voice.

  “Lizzy, I don’t suppose we should be in here, and now that we are, I don’t suppose we should be reading these journals.” Still opened to the page of Dr. Yeoman’s entry, he tossed the journal onto the desk. “We’re here to see first hand the Dead Sea Scrolls. These personal documents are none of our concern.”

  There was no way I was going to ignore this. I knew he understood the ramifications of this, someone destroying four of the manuscripts that had been found. And, with how well he knew me, he knew I wasn’t going to let go of this easily.

  “Perhaps,” my words rushed out, “but I think all aspects of the interpretation of the Scrolls are important. You know how much controversy and secrecy there was surrounding the Scrolls. Maybe these journals will help understand why. Just this one entry tells a bad tale.”

  He stood up and walked over to the large window adjacent to the desk. Raindrops began beating against the glass. Staring out of the window, Dr. Margulies seemed to drift away.

  Unable to be still, I paced the floor. My shadow, created by the refracted light from the lamp, followed me around the room.

  I knew it was troubling to Dr. Margulies knowing that some of the Scrolls had been destroyed, but it seemed his concern didn’t match mine. Recalling the entry in my mind, I went through every word. I got to the last sentence.

  “What’s this?” I picked up the journal by its edge, not wanting to lose the page, when a paper, folded and sealed with wax, fell out of the leaves of the journal. I picked it up and stuck it between some pages near the back and showed Dr. Margulies what
I meant.

  “This last sentence, Deus adiuva nos, isn’t that Latin?”

  Dr. Margulies took the book and looked at the entry. “Yes. It is Latin.” He paused, “I cannot understand this. How could he have . . . Why would he . . .” He seemed unable to finish his thought. Closing the journal, he handed it back to me. He pushed his hands down into his pants pockets and stared back out of the window.

  “I met this man once,” he said without turning toward me. “I thought very highly of him.” He sighed heavily, “This is disturbing. Very disturbing.”

  “What does the Latin read?”

  “God help us.”

  “God help us,” I repeated quietly, thoughtfully. “Why would he write that? Why would he write it in Latin?”

  “Perhaps it is a plea for forgiveness of what he has apparently done, if he did actually destroy any manuscripts.” His voice trailed off. Turning to me, a thin smile emerged, “I don’t know why he would write it in Latin. It is not significant of anything that I am aware of.”

  Straining to stay calm, I held onto the journal tightly. Inside I just wanted to explode.

  “The only reason he gives for destroying the four manuscripts,” I said, “is that he didn’t agree with what it said. That’s ridiculous.” Anger tumbled out with my words. “How could he have possibly taken this into his own hands and made such a decision?” I walked over to the file cabinet where Ghazi had been standing quietly and placed the journal on top of the cabinet.

  “Maybe we could find the answer in some of the other journals.” I said, speaking more to myself than anyone else. “No wonder there was so much controversy over the release of the Dead Sea Scrolls, this imbecile was destroying documents,” I took another journal from the drawer.

  “We can’t let anyone find us here.” Dr. Margulies released his gaze that he had fixed to the drizzling rain barely visible through the enveloping darkness. He walked over, took the book from the top of the cabinet and attempted to take the one from my hand.

  “No,” I pulled back, not wanting to let go. How could I leave this knowledge locked up in a drawer? I needed to know what other secrets lay in the pages of these journals. He gently patted my hand and pulled the journal away. He placed both in the drawer, closed and locked it and handed the keys to Ghazi.

  “But we have to do something.” I said, sick at the thought of leaving this behind.

  “What can we do, Justin?” He seemed just as unhappy. “Do you suggest we tell someone about this? What evidence do you have? Surely not this journal with a fifty-year old entry? There has never been any mention of any missing manuscripts. We cannot open up this can of worms without knowing all the facts.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do. I felt like I should do something. Dr. Margulies was right, no one was going to believe this, but that shouldn’t stop us from doing something. Anything.

  “Come along, Justin, Ghazi will take you back to the hotel.”

  Dr. Margulies put his hand on my back and guided me out of the room. Ghazi turned off the lamp and locked the door behind us. We walked down the stairs and out of the building. It was pouring when we got outside. I refused Ghazi’s offer of an umbrella and was soaking wet by the time I got into the car. The night air brushed against me and gave me a chill. Climbing into the back seat, shivering, my hair in clumps of wet curls, the water from it dripping down my nose, onto my eyelashes, and into my mouth, I was driven back to the hotel in silence. Neither Ghazi nor I spoke a word about the journal or the destruction of the ancient artifacts. I felt as if I were being punished for being naughty.

  I spent the rest of that week and part of the next trying to forget about what happened. But I couldn’t. I did a little shopping in the Jewish Quarter for souvenirs and worried about those journals. I attended lectures and went to meetings with the museum directors thinking of nothing but those journals. An insidious worry had seeped in through my pores and coiled itself inside of me like a snake. Holding me tight, those manuscripts had become a part of me. Then, that worry gave birth to nervousness and paranoia.

  I nagged Ghazi to get me back in that room. He promised he would, but suddenly, he was called to go to Jaffa. No reason, no notice, he just left. Without him, there was no way to get back in that room. It was locked and I didn’t have a key. Plus, I knew that I couldn’t do it by myself. I’d be too nervous. Too scared of getting caught. But, I felt for sure that Ghazi being pulled away was just not a coincidence. That meant someone was on to us.

  While my deep, dark conspiracy theory formulated in my head, Dr. Margulies cheerily attended meetings and visited every museum he could find. He seemed to have forgotten about my discovery. He was so happy to show me the little items he procured for the tour back home. I didn’t do much to help him and offered only a feigned excitement each time he told me about a new piece.

  All I cared about was getting back into that room to see what else I could find. But since that was not to happen, I waited, resigning myself to finding something in those remaining manuscripts, the ones still needing to be translated. The ones we had come to see.

  Dr. Yeoman had written that he would, “ascertain if they are any other documents of this nature so they can be dealt with . . .” But maybe, just maybe, he hadn’t found them all.

  Maybe one was still there waiting for me to discover.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Everything was being called off.

  I had just got in from dinner and souvenir shopping and picked up my messages from the front desk. The seminar was ending. The Dead Sea Scrolls’ Translation Committee was “sorry to inform,” blah, blah, blah. I wanted to cry. I was sure that at any moment I would be crying. I couldn’t even make it up to my room. I just sat on a chair in the lobby.

  What happened? We hadn’t even started any translations. Now I was sure it was a cover-up. I knew Ghazi had been sent to Jaffa for no reason. It was just to get rid of him so I couldn’t get back in that room. Something definitely was going on. And I was going to get to the bottom of it, by hook or by crook. I gathered up my packages and practically ran up to my room. I had to talk to Dr. Margulies.

  I called Dr. Margulies and he came over, saying he needed to tell me about another piece he had gotten for the tour. But my whining took over that conversation.

  “I can’t leave. Not now. I have to work on those translations.”

  “Don’t be upset about that, Lizzy. Maybe you’ll have another opportunity to do that.”

  “They are keeping us from them on purpose. They are hiding something.”

  “It’s not what you think, Lizzy.” He said. “There were some scholars that were invited to stay. More people showed up than they expected. It’s really no big deal.”

  “No big deal!” I clamored.

  How could he say that? Maybe he was a part of the cover-up. I started to pace the floor. Was he going to keep up this denial, or was he going to tell me the truth? How much did he know? I started pacing faster. What was he keeping from me? I looked over at him, and I could see the concern in his face.

  I went and sat in a chair. It was idiotic thinking Dr. Margulies was being deceptive. I had known him forever. He was like a second father to me. I was just being foolish. I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. My heart started racing and I could hear its beat thumping in my ears.

  “Lizzy, what is wrong with you? Why is this bothering you so much? You shouldn’t have had your hopes up that you would make some big discovery. Honestly, I hope you weren’t thinking that the Q was among the remaining manuscripts.”

  “That’s not it.” He couldn’t really think I cared about that stupid Q anymore.

  “Then what is wrong with you? It couldn’t be the missing manuscripts, Lizzy. The journal entry said the manuscripts were destroyed. Although I told you that I would help you,” I looked at him questioningly, “and I am still going to help you, but I am sure that it won’t turn out to be anything significant.”

  “How c
an you be sure?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Look at what the entry said was in the manuscript. For instance, ‘one people - ’”

  “The Jews,” I offered before he could finish his sentence.

  “Create the perfect world.”

  “The Millennium,” I again answered quickly.

  “Lizzy, it said that ‘the god within us would create the perfect world.’” He misquoted the entry. But he needn’t try to tell me what it said. I could clearly see each and every world written in that madman’s journal just as if the page was right in front of me.

  “I don’t know,” he continued. “Perhaps this is the ramblings of a man, tired, probably exhausted, and worn from being in charge of such a large undertaking. It doesn’t even sound real. He’s describing some sort of single-race utopia. His writings echo Nazi Germany, which is quite odd with him being Jewish and his writings so close to the holocaust. It doesn’t even make sense. He was under a lot of pressure from the public.” He shook his head, “I don’t know.”

  “The term ‘god within us’ is expressed in the Bible, Dr. Margulies, you know that. ‘I and my Father are one,’ . . . ‘The Holy Spirit dwells within us.’” I quoted.

  “He wrote god with a small ‘g’, not a capital ‘G,’ Lizzy. As a Bible scholar I’m sure he knew the distinction. It didn’t mean a uniting of the Supreme God’s spirit with ours, it meant us being gods. And you know that, too.” He grunted, then paused, as if he was thinking what to say next. “You and I can ponder over this until doomsday. It wouldn’t change their minds because that’s not why they cancelled the seminar. They don’t even know what you found. It’s just that they have enough interpreters and they don’t need a million other eyes and hands. I’m disappointed as well. But please, Lizzy, don’t be so upset. You worry me when you’re like this. Once we get this tour going, I promise, we will look into this more thoroughly. In fact, I just may be able to get my hands on those journals as part of the tour and then you can read until your heart’s content.”