How is this any different?
Vigor’s conversation became more heated—then he promptly hung up.
Rachel noted the dark circles under her uncle’s eyes. “What’s the news from the lab?” she asked.
“They’ve confirmed my estimates of the age of the skull and the book.”
He gestured to the copy of the Gospel of Thomas bound in human skin. For the hundredth time, she wondered why anyone would do that. Yes, the book was considered heretical during its time. It dismissed religious orthodoxy as the only way to salvation, claiming instead that the path to God lay inside anyone, if they’d only open their eyes and follow it.
Seek and you shall find.
Still, heresy or not, why bind such a copy in human skin?
“So how old are the book and skull?” she asked.
“The lab has dated them to the thirteenth century.”
“So not the third century as the Aramaic writing suggested? That means it can’t be an authentic Jewish magical talisman, like those found by archaeologists in the past.”
“No. It’s just as I surmised. It’s likely a copy of an original. In fact, the skull itself is not even Jewish.”
“How do you know that?”
He motioned for her to join him. “While you were napping, I was studying the cranial structures and conformational anatomy. First of all, this skull is mesocranic.”
“Which means?”
“That the skull is broad and of intermediate height. Additionally note how these cheekbones are thick, the eye sockets rounded, and the nasal bones are flat and wide.” He picked up the skull and flipped it over. “And look at the teeth. The incisors are shovel shaped, very different from Mediterranean stock.”
“Then where did this skull come from?”
He turned to her, tapping his measuring compass on his notepad. “From my calculations of the various cranial dimensions—eye width, the depth of the prenasal fossa, the degree of prognathism—I’d say this skull is East Asian in origin, what used to be called Mongoloid.”
A measure of respect flashed through her as she was reminded yet again that her uncle was far more than a man of the cloth. “So the skull came from somewhere out in the Far East?”
“As did the book,” he added.
“The book?”
He looked over the edge of his reading glasses at her. “I thought you heard, when I was speaking to Dr. Conti.”
She shook her head.
He hovered a palm over the wrinkled leather binding with the macabre eye sewn on the cover. “According to Dr. Conti’s analysis, the skin of the book and the skull share identical DNA. They’re from the same source.”
As the implication struck her, Rachel swallowed back bile.
Whoever had made these talismans, they’d crafted them from a single body. They used some man’s skin to bind the book, then his skull to make this relic.
Vigor continued, “I’m having the lab continue to build a racial profile using both autosomal and mitochondrial DNA to see if we can narrow down the origin of these relics. When Father Josip sent them to me, he must have done so for a reason. Time was running out. He knew I could help and that I had access to resources he didn’t.”
“Like the DNA lab.”
He nodded.
“So why didn’t Father Josip simply write you a note?”
Vigor offered a coy wink. “Who says he didn’t?”
Rachel scowled at this revelation. “Then why didn’t you tell—?”
“I only discovered it a quarter hour ago. While I was examining the skull. I wanted to finish my measurements, and you needed your sleep. Then the phone rang, and I got distracted with the news from the DNA lab.”
Rachel stared at the skull. “Show me.”
Vigor flipped the relic over and pointed to the hole where the spinal cord enters the skull. He lifted a penlight and shone it inside. “Where else would someone hide secret knowledge?”
Rachel leaned closer and peered into the cranium’s interior. A dollop of crimson wax had been affixed to the inner surface of the skull, like the seal on a papal letter. Tiny letters, written in Latin, had been meticulously carved into the wax. She pictured Josip inscribing each letter with some sharp, long-handled instrument through the skull’s narrow fossa.
Why such a degree of secrecy? How paranoid was this man?
She stared at the message.
She translated the Latin aloud. “Help. Come to the Aral Sea.”
She frowned. The Aral Sea straddled the border between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in Central Asia. It was a desolate area. She also remembered her uncle’s morphological determination of the skull’s origin as East Asian. Had Father Josip determined the same? Had the racial heritage of the relic drawn him from Hungary out east to continue his search? But if so, what was he searching for and why such secrecy?
Squinting, she also made out a faint series of Arabic numbers inscribed under the Latin inscription.
Vigor guessed what had drawn her attention. “Longitude and latitude markings.”
“To a key specific location.” Rachel could not hold back the distrust in her voice. “That’s where Father Josip wants you to meet him?”
“So it would appear.”
Rachel frowned. She didn’t want her uncle traipsing to parts unknown based on some cryptic note of an errant priest who had vanished nearly a decade ago.
Vigor set the skull back down. “I’m going to set out at daybreak. Catch the earliest flight out to Kazakhstan.”
Rachel balked at this, but she knew from long experience that she’d never convince him otherwise. She settled on a compromise. “Not without me, you’re not. And I’ve got plenty of vacation time accrued. So you have no excuse.”
He smiled. “I had hoped you’d say that. In fact, I wonder if we shouldn’t contact Director Crowe to see if he could offer us additional field support.”
“You want to involve Sigma Force? All because of something written on a skull back in the thirteenth century, some ancient prophecy of doom.”
She rolled her eyes at such a thought. She and her uncle had dealings in the past with Sigma, and she certainly would not object to an excuse to see Commander Gray Pierce again. The two had an off-again, on-again relationship over the years that had settled into a mutual friendship. Sometimes with benefits. But both knew such a long-distance relationship would never last. Still . . . she gave it a moment’s more thought, then dismissed it. Sigma’s team of scientific and military experts didn’t need to be bothered with a minor matter such as this.