Manhattan
Simple and unread as Detective Wojciechowski liked to come off, Nicole found him street-smart and a quick study of people. Either this was his way of indicating to her, without saying it in so many words, that she was no longer a suspect, or he was trying to take her mind off her fear of the threatening letter.
But she had quit worrying about being cleared of anything related to her mother. She believed truth and time walk hand in hand, so both she and her father would be revealed as innocent as they were. And while she was certainly alarmed that someone seemed to specifically target her in the fake letter from the Saudis, she had to admit she had no idea how scared she should be. She was frankly relieved she could still anticipate a genuine response from Riyadh, even if it likely required more work. It was unlikely to constitute a flat rejection of her application.
Her overriding emotions remained anger and frustration that someone had attacked her mother, and she was desperate to know who. Primarily Nicole wanted her mother safe and healthy, but she also wanted justice. Whoever had done this would not get away with it.
In rehearsing her story for Wojciechowski, Nicole was reminded again how she had been shaped by her parents. Sure, her father taking her all over the world and involving her in significant Holy Land archaeological digs planted in her what she believed to her core was her reason for being. But her mother had been every bit as instrumental to Nicole’s spiritual life as she had been to her husband’s. Her mother had led her father to faith in Christ, and despite not being Jewish herself, had urged him to become a Messianic Jew and always liked to say she had “married into the faith.”
Jewish ethnicity is most often connected with a mother’s genetics, but Nicole’s parents raised her as a Messianic Jew as well. She could not remember knowing anything but that Jesus was the fulfillment of the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, which also made her fully expect that He would also fulfill all the prophecies about Him in the New Testament.
To Nicole’s surprise, when she expressed that to Wojciechowski, Detective Chakrabarti chimed in from behind the wheel. “So you believe Jesus will return and rule the world for a thousand years at the end of time.”
“I do,” she said.
“As do I.”
“No kiddin’,” Wojciechowski said. “Didn’t know that, Pranav.”
“To my shame,” the Indian said. “But the occasion never arose to tell you.”
“Yeah, that’s not the kinda stuff we usually talk about on the job.”
“You might be surprised, George, how many officers are men of faith.”
“That would be a surprise,” Wojciechowski said. “We can be a pretty earthy bunch. I still remember a lotta the stuff I learned in church as a kid, but I’ll never be good enough to be a religious guy.”
“Neither will I,” Chakrabarti said.
“Nor I,” Nicole said, touching Pranav’s shoulder and catching his eye in the rearview mirror.
“What?” Wojciechowski said. “But you both just said—”
“We’ll have to talk,” Chakrabarti said. “But I’m most interested in Dr. Berman’s story right now. Aren’t you?”
“Yeah, Nicole,” Wojciechowski said. “But lemme ask you this: You seem like your own woman, makin’ your own way and all that, but you give as much credit to your dad as you do your mom for who you turned out to be. That’s not the way it’s supposed to go these days, is it? Don’t women stick together now and kinda downplay always seein’ themselves … I don’t know, only how they relate to men?”
“I get that,” Nicole said. “I do resent many of the roles society would like to relegate me to. And, yes, as the daughter of a foundation owner, I have benefited from privileges few others enjoy. But if you don’t mind my saying this, Dad didn’t get me into Yale or Princeton or Columbia.”
“But gettin’ to go on all those digs had to look good on your résumé.”
“Granted. But they didn’t do my schoolwork for me or achieve my grades or degrees. I don’t want to brag, but if that doesn’t make me an independent woman, I don’t know what does. And while I’d love to someday meet the right man, so far I’ve done this on my own.”
“Awright,” Wojciechowski said. “Touching stories about all the time you’ve spent with your mom, how close you are, how you bonded with your dad over digs and all that. But what made the difference for you? What settled it for you?”
“You’re looking for my Uncle Henryk and Aunt Lucyna moment?”
“Exactly.”
“Nothing quite so dramatic or sad, I’m afraid. For me it was two things: the Dead Sea and the Middle East.”
“I love the Dead Sea!” Chakrabarti said. “My parents took me there as a child, before we moved to this country. How I would love to return someday!”
“Huh,” Wojciechowski said. “Heard about that place but can’t imagine why anyone would wanna go. Hot, dry, full a salt, and somehow below sea level—which I’ve never been able to figure out.”
“Oh, I can just see you there,” Chakrabarti chortled. “Can’t you, Doctor?”
Nicole laughed. “In his suit!”
“And below sea level is right,” Chakrabarti said. “More than fourteen hundred feet! The land around it is the lowest in the world. And the sea is almost ten times as salty as the ocean. Even as a boy, I walked out to where my feet could not reach the bottom and the water was up to my chest, and I was just standing there! It’s impossible to sink!”
“You actually went in?” Wojciechowski said.
“I wouldn’t have missed it! People come from all over the world to do that. My father laid on his back and read a book.”
“But it’s called the Dead Sea ’cause all that salt kills everything, right?”
“That’s why I find it so fascinating,” Nicole said. “The Jordan River is all that feeds it, but every day the sea evaporates millions of tons of water. The minerals left behind are in demand all over the world.”
“Okay, I still don’t get it,” Wojciechowski said. “Sounds like some kinda ecological miracle, but it’s stuck in that god-forsaken desert and—”
“That’s just it,” Nicole said. “My dad told me the first time he took me there that it’s not forsaken by God. In fact, he showed me the Bible prophecies that the Dead Sea—”
“Hold on! There’s prophecy about this too?”
“You’re going to make me show off, Detective, because I’ve memorized it.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“I’ll make this fast. That whole area was once as lush as the Garden of Eden. But you know the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, right?”
“Yeah, fire and brimstone and all that, and some guy’s wife turned to stone.”
“She turned into a pillar of salt.”
“That makes sense,” Wojciechowski said.
“Well, we believe God’s judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah turned that fertile area into what we find there today. But even after thousands of years, the Dead Sea will rise again.”
“So what’s the prophecy?”
“Like Pranav said, we believe Jesus will return someday and rule the earth for a thousand years. During that time, the Bible says, water will flow from Jerusalem—in fact from the Temple Mount—and the Dead Sea will be full of fish.”
“And you memorized what it says. Let’s hear it.”
“Okay, this is from Ezekiel in the Old Testament. I can show you the exact reference—”
“How ’bout I just take your word for it?”
“All right, this is what it says: ‘This water flows toward the eastern region, goes down into the valley, and enters the sea. When it reaches the sea, its waters are healed. And it shall be that every living thing that moves, wherever the rivers go, will live. There will be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters go there; for they will be healed, and everything will live wherever the river goes.’”
“That’s thrilling, isn’t it?” Chakrabarti said.
“If you say so,” Wojciechowski said. “But I’ll say this: if that happens in my lifetime, I’ll sign up for whatever Sunday school class you’re teachin’.”
“If it happens during your lifetime,” Chakrabarti said, “that’ll mean you became a believer and made it into the millennial kingdom.”
“That would surprise more than a few people,” Wojciechowski said. “Me included. Okay, interesting place and all that—musta been really somethin’ when you first saw it. How old were you?”
“I was eleven,” Chakrabarti said.
“I think that’s about how old I was when I went too,” Nicole said. “But that would have been a lot of years after Pranav was eleven.”
“Hey!”
“So you can’t spend your whole life studying the Dead Sea, even if that’s your thing, so—”
“Actually, some do,” Nicole said, “but you’re right. That was just one of the catalysts for me. Digs in that whole area woke me up to all kinds of discoveries that just mesmerized me, and I’ve never lost that wonder.”
“Like what?”
“Well, I can’t get into the specifics, but here’s what happened. From when I was a young teen in the mid-’90s until after I got my PhD, I got to be a volunteer on eight digs in Israel, then was trench supervisor on digs in Syria, Israel, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. I was then assistant archaeologist in both Iraq and Saudi Arabia, was licensed in four countries, and I’ve applied to be lead archaeologist for a dig in Mada’in, Saudi Arabia. It’s a long shot. I mean, Saudi women have only recently been allowed to drive. So the idea of a woman—an American Christian no less—being approved as a lead is some stretch.
“The last time I dug at Mada’in, I wasn’t really assistant archaeologist. I was a little further down the pecking order from the lead, Dr. Mustafa bin-Alawi, and his assistant, Dr. Moshe Greenblatt of Hebrew University in Israel. Dr. bin-Alawi was killed in a plane crash after the dig and before he could begin writing all the follow-up documentation. Greenblatt moved up into his role for that and asked me to take his assistant spot and contribute to the writing.
“So even though I hadn’t really been assistant archaeologist, I was credited that way. The Saudis will study my writing and hopefully overlook that technicality and allow me to leapfrog into a lead role next time.
“But here’s why I have to get this: My team uncovered—well, I’m being falsely modest—I uncovered a rare find that could be historically pivotal. Without boring you with the details or saying more than I’m allowed to, it’s a fragment that—if I can find its other piece—could change the face of the Mideast conflict as we know it.”
“You serious?” Wojciechowski said. “I’ve never understood what’s goin’ on over there, but it’s all you see on the news.”
“Let’s just say my dream, my goal, is to prove that the centuries-old divide between Muslims and Jews, and ultimately Christians, is based on faulty history.”