5.
“I’m gonna come clean,” I say, straightening out the shoulder strap on my black, Tough Traveler writing satchel. “I know your husband. Or, used to know him. I worked as a sandhog for him eight years ago in the Giza Plateau.”
“I had no idea,” she says, shooting me a look of suspicion. But I’m listening to my insides and they are telling me she could be putting on an act. “Why did you wait until now to tell me?”
“I didn’t want you to think I’m some opportunist who wants to find your husband only to ultimately find the treasure he’s no doubt seeking.”
She works up a grin that makes me want to press my lips against hers. But not yet.
“Seems strange your not knowing about my past relationship with your husband,” I say recalling my conversation with Cipriani. “You just happen to call on the one man in all of Florence to try and find your husband and it turns out I’m very familiar with him.”
“Stranger things have happened, Renaissance Man,” she says, brushing back her lush hair with her hands. “Do you still want the job?”
“Give me the rest of the truth,” I say, shifting the weight of my satchel over my shoulder. “Straight, no bullshit.”
The apartment has grown too cramped, too tense. What I want is for Anya to tell me everything about her husband … everything I don’t already know, that is … and do so over a drink at a nice quiet bar down the road in the less touristy Via Guelfa, American University area not far from where Manion was supposed to be teaching. It’s precisely why I’ve put Lu back outside on the terrace and locked up the apartment.
Now walking side by side on the cobbled Via Guelfa, Anya goes on with her story: “My husband has been researching the remains of Jesus and his family for years. Most people, including scholars thought him crazy. Because even if the remains somehow exist, it’s likely they would never be found. The desert, even around the Giza plateau, is just too massive. Or perhaps they’ve already been found and now reside in a secret chamber in the Vatican. Or perhaps they have turned to dust like so many ancient bones. But then Andre found the Joseph remains, and the world took notice. So did the church. From there on in, the greater possibility that Christ’s bones could be found, took on a greater reality.”
I’m aware of most of this. It was what attracted me to Andre in the first place in the early years of the new century. Not only his knowledge about the possible resting place of the Jesus remains, but his utter belief in their existence.
Up ahead is the DaVinci Bar. The exposed brick building is mostly frequented by art students and professors drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. It’s also quiet, dark and cavernous enough that we can talk in privacy while fading into the far shadows.
We enter and take a table in back. Setting my satchel onto the table, I go to the bar, retrieve us both a glass of vino rosso a piece. I bring the wine back with me to the table, set it down and sit across from her.
“But I thought the Joseph bones were found to be frauds,” I say, continuing where we left off. “You telling me the Joseph bones were real?”
“The Vatican did it’s best to debunk them,” she says. “And the media sided with the Pope. But Andre knew different. He knew he was on the trail of finding Jesus now that he had Joseph’s bones and evidence of a Jesus family crypt outside the Jerusalem walls. He was also gathering the attention of some pretty serious investors, which made him nervous, of course.”
“Such as?”
“One man in particular. A wealthy Egyptian from Cairo and a friend of their new, rather radical President.”
