Read Online Tartarus: Kingdom Wars II by Jack Cavanaugh - Free Book Online Page B

scholars in the act of authenticating the bones of Jesus. The bones of Jesus were confiscated and crushed to dust and scattered over—take your pick: Texas, Wall Street, Las Vegas, or Elvis’s grave. One man in Houston claimed to have a NASA memo to the effect that Jesus’ ashes would be launched into space aboard the next space shuttle.
    Why would the president of the United States order the destruction of Jesus’ bones? To keep the Christians in America from turning into godless hordes and endangering civil order and the world economy.
    A different rumor claimed that the text of the third manuscript revealed that Jesus was a super-intelligent alien from the same race that built the pyramids in Egypt.
    Still another report held that Dan Brown was an alien who discovered a copy of the manuscript text and plagiarized it, publishing it as The Da Vinci Code.
    Then there was the National Enquirer story reporting that Jesus faked his own death in order to escape the Temple money-changers who had put out a contract on him.
    While in the airport waiting to board I watched an Entertainment Tonight segment that reported the manuscript was being hushed up because it gave a detailed and disturbing physical description of Jesus. That instead of an attractive man with long hair Jesus was in reality fat and bald.
    The consensus seemed to be that whatever the text of the third manuscript revealed when it was released, there would be a radical revision of the historical Jesus.
    Reaction among churches was mixed. Liberal denominations welcomed a fresh interpretation of the historical Jesus, while conservatives insisted that no matter what the Alexandrian text revealed, they would not alter their teaching of Jesus since it was not part of the inspired canon of Scripture.
    The next thing I knew I got an elbow in the ribs as a short, bony young man pushed me aside. He was wearing a T-shirt that said: T HE A LEXANDRIA M ANUSCRIPT —O PRAH’S B OOK OF THE M ONTH . He pulled his girlfriend with him to the front of the line.
    My cell phone rang. “Hail to the Chief.” I kept meaning to change the ring tone.
    “It’s Christina,” I told Sue just as her cell phone rang.
    “The professor,” she said.
    We turned away from each other and took the calls. My conversation ended before hers.
    “Christina wants me to call her as soon as we have anything new, day or night,” I told Sue when she was finished.
    “Are you and Christina back together?”
    “I’m a source, nothing more. Didn’t I tell you? She’s on Senator Vogler’s staff.”
    “Rebecca Vogler? Impressive.”
    “Christina’s her chief of staff.”
    “Now I’m really impressed.”
    “What about the professor? What time is it in San Diego?”
    “Four A.M .” She appeared troubled. “He said he just wanted to make sure we’d arrived safely.” She mulled a moment, then added, “I shouldn’t have left him alone.”
    I glanced at the long line ahead of us. “I don’t think the Israelites had this much trouble getting into the land when Moses led them.”
    Behind me were two Orthodox Jews. They didn’t think my joke was funny.

    Choni Serrafe put the airport behind us as he swerved in and out of traffic like a New York cabbie on steroids.
    “Is this your first trip to Israel?” he asked with a toothy grin.
    We both replied that it was. Sue sat in the backseat with the luggage. She was actually enjoying the ride. Then I remembered her fascination with death and roller coasters.
    Choni was the genial sort, thin and sinewy with short, black, curly hair and a five-o’clock shadow.
    “Has your father made progress since speaking to the professor?” Sue asked from the backseat.
    His father was a professor of antiquities at the university and one of the team of translators.
    Choni looked at her in the rearview mirror. “He’ll want to report to you himself. I’ll take you to the university after you check into the hotel.”
    “He must be excited,” Sue said.
    “It