Absolute Proof Read online

  In one of the clearer passages of Cook’s literary ramblings Ross had found, it said Joseph subsequently, for reasons unclear, had to make a fast exit from his country. He’d grabbed some souvenirs, one being the chalice, fled and arrived in England, where he founded the first Christian church – here at Glastonbury, according to some.

  Ross stood still, thinking. OK, so I’m Joseph. I’ve had to flee my homeland after putting the Son of God in the tomb I had prepared for myself. I’ve fetched up in this aggressive, pagan land, in this weird place, with its very strange hill and a deep well. I have a souvenir from my great nephew – the Son of God. It is the only evidence I carry that He ever existed. Not much. Just a cup He drank from or had His blood poured into. But it’s a link. I need to protect and keep it safe for future generations to discover.

  So, I need to hide it in case the pagans discover it and destroy it.

  Where?

  Ross looked around him. If it was me, would I dig a hole in this bit of hillside? I don’t think so. I’d be a lot smarter than that.

  Cook might have detected something under the spot where he was standing at this moment. But it could be anything. There was no evidence that the vessel Christ drank from at the Last Supper, and into which some of His blood had been poured while He was on the cross, was metal at all. It might have been. Or it could have been wood. Less ornate and showy than metal for such a humble man. In which case it would not have been picked up by Cook’s metal detector.

  He looked down towards the well, the shrubbery making it invisible from here, thinking hard. Then around. At the trees, bushes. Pondering.

  He tried to wind the clock back two thousand years. What was here then? What would have been the most obvious place?

  18

  Tuesday, 21 February

  Ross walked back down through the gardens and went into the gift shop to see if he could get something for the baby’s room. He glanced along the shelves of healing essences, replica chalices and candles but couldn’t see anything that might appeal to a baby.

  Disappointed, he bought a guide book and headed for the street. When he got there he walked the short distance to the lane that ran on the far side of the fence, and walked up it. He passed a very New Age-looking house with a huge floral mural painted on it. Then a stone temple, built over a spring. A short distance further up the hill, on his left, was the wooden fence he had seen from the other side, running up by the well. He must be about opposite the well itself now, he calculated. The fence was constructed on top of a stone wall, clearly to deter anyone from trying to enter without paying.

  He saw a footpath sign a short way ahead to his right, to the tor, and a narrow lay-by where a few cars could pull in. He walked up the footpath towards the tor until it came into view after a few minutes. And took his breath away.

  With its seven symmetrical ridges, Glastonbury Tor had mythological links to King Arthur and Avalon, and Ross could feel that sense of history, standing here now. It was a weird landscape, reminding him of hills he had seen some years back when he and Imogen had travelled around New Zealand.

  He looked at the remains of St Michael’s Tower, and then trudged up towards it. When he reached the summit, he walked around the ruin, then stared back down and across at the higgledy-piggledy buildings of Glastonbury town, and at the fields around. Some distance away he could see the sheep he had heard bleating. The sun was very low in the sky now, and the light was fading. He glanced at his watch. 5.10 p.m. He had a long drive home in his little rental car, a good three and a half hours. He’d seen enough and he was even more sure now.

  There was a path that led straight down the front of the hill. Ross took it, and when he reached the bottom paused for a moment to text Imogen, to say he should be home before 9 p.m.

  From the top of Glastonbury Tor, from far enough back in the darkness of the entrance to the ruin of St Michael’s Tower so that there would be no tell-tale glint from the glass catching the late-afternoon sun, a pair of binoculars remained trained on him.

  19

  Thursday, 23 February

  Ross Hunter had first met the Reverend Benedict Carmichael when the clergyman had held the post of Vicar of St Peter’s, Brighton. With Carmichael’s help, he had exposed a satanic coven involved in ritual child abuse in the countryside close to the city. It had given Ross one of his first national newspaper front-page splashes, and it had also resulted in an enduring friendship between himself and Carmichael. And he had been surprised to learn this seemingly devout man had doubts.

  Over an off-the-record lunch with him one day in Lewes, during the trial of the principal members of the coven, Carmichael had opened up to him, telling him that he had a problem with the literalist interpretations of the Bible. He had strong faith, but at the same time was deeply uncertain about many of the teachings – and the literalist approach to the Scriptures.

  Ross had been delighted for the clergyman when, just a few months later, Benedict Carmichael had been given the post of Bishop of Reading. And equally delighted when Carmichael, who was fluent in Welsh, had written to him a year ago telling him he had now been appointed Bishop of Monmouth.

  As soon as he returned home from visiting Chalice Well, he phoned Carmichael, whom he had not seen for some years, asking if he could come and talk to him, quite urgently.

  Two days later he drove his dark-grey Audi A4 into the cobbled car-parking space in front of an elegant stone mansion in the heart of Monmouth. He climbed out into bright sunshine, stretched after the long drive and entered the building. After only a few moments’ wait, Carmichael’s smiling middle-aged secretary led him upstairs, along a narrow corridor and into the Bishop’s cosy, cluttered office.

  Carmichael was wearing an open black jacket, revealing his purple dog-collared shirt; hanging from his neck on a golden chain was a huge, ornate cross. He had put on weight since Ross had last seen him, and his hair had thinned and greyed, but his face still looked youthful and his eyes sparkled with zeal.

  They sat down in a pair of armchairs and chatted, catching up on each other’s lives, until the secretary came in with a tray of coffee and biscuits.

  ‘So, Ross, you said there was something urgent?’ Carmichael said. He had a rich, friendly voice, the kind of voice that could engage an entire cathedral full of worshippers as easily as holding its own against a fierce Radio 4 Today programme interrogator.

  Ross opened his rucksack and lifted out the pages of Cook’s manuscript.

  ‘You’ve written a book, Ross?’

  ‘No – it seems that God has.’ Ross smiled.

  Carmichael gave him a quizzical look.

  Ross told him the entire story, starting with Cook’s phone call and ending with his lunch with Sally Hughes and his visit to Chalice Well.

  When he had finished, the Bishop dunked a digestive biscuit reflectively into his coffee. ‘Hmm,’ he said after some moments. ‘Knowing you, you’ve done some due diligence on Dr Cook?’

  ‘I have, and he checks out. Ex-RAF, then lectured in art history at the University of Birmingham. His late wife, Doreen, was also an academic at the same uni. One child, a son in the army who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan. He has no criminal record – seems a pretty ordinary guy. Played amateur chess to a reasonable standard in his youth. He was quite a polymath, with an interest in anthropology and biology. Published a couple of academic papers some years back challenging established Darwinian theories and supporting Lamarck.’

  ‘Lamarck? Jean-Baptiste Lamarck?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Carmichael looked down with a flash of irritation as the soggy part of the biscuit fell away and landed in his coffee. He dipped his spoon in to retrieve it, then laid the bits in his saucer.

  ‘Interesting. Lamarck has always intrigued me. You probably know this, but whereas Darwin proposed that organisms evolved through natural selection, Lamarck believed they evolved through necessity. If you took a frog out of water, within a couple of generations it would
lose its webbed feet and develop pads instead.’

  ‘But that didn’t make him any less of a deist than Darwin, did it, Benedict?’

  ‘Well, I would argue that point. If Lamarck had known about genes, he might have said the frog’s brain informed its genes to produce pads instead of webbed feet. What exactly informed the frog’s brain? Or who? But that’s not why you’re here, is it?’ He reached out, patted the manuscript pages and said, a little dubiously, ‘Is this what you want me to read?’

  Ross shook his head. And instantly saw the relief in the bishop’s face. ‘No. I want to know what you think about what I’ve told you – about what Dr Cook told me.’

  ‘Truthfully?’

  ‘Of course, that’s why I’m here.’

  ‘Well, this man is telling you God believes that if humankind could have proof of His existance reaffirmed, it would help steer the world back from the brink. So, he’s offering three sets of compass coordinates as proof of God. The location of the Holy Grail, a significant object relating to Jesus Christ, and the real location of the Second Coming?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK, well that is contradicting the argument that proof is the enemy of faith. Or perhaps puts a different slant on it.’

  ‘How do you mean, Benedict?’

  The Bishop’s eyes closed for some moments and then opened again. ‘The thing is, I’d want more than three sets of compass coordinates to have proof of God. And frankly, if I were God wanting to give someone proof of My existence, I’d do better than just giving sets of compass coordinates. I’d personally want to see something far more convincing.’

  ‘It’s interesting,’ Ross replied. ‘I posted the question on social media a few days ago – what it would take for someone to have absolute proof of God’s existence.’

  ‘I imagine you got some interesting answers?’ Benedict smiled, quizzically.

  ‘I had a fair few replies telling me I faced eternal damnation for even asking the question. But I did get some responses I thought were quite smart.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘One said finding the DNA double helix engraved at the rear of Christ’s tomb.’ He looked at Carmichael, who seemed unimpressed.

  ‘That could too easily be dismissed as a fake, Ross.’

  ‘I suppose. Another which I quite like was the solving of one of the world’s unsolved mathematical problems. The Yang–Mills Existence and Mass Gap problem, for example. Or perhaps all seven of them.’

  ‘It’s a nice idea, but sceptics would put it down to advanced computer algorithms.’

  Ross smiled. ‘OK, so what would convince you, Benedict? If you were God wanting to convince the world you really existed, what would you do?’

  Ross ate his biscuit, the silence broken by the crunching sound.

  The Bishop leaned back, interlocking his fingers. ‘I’d need something that would convince a diehard atheist – something they could not just reject out of hand or explain away. Something that defies the laws of physics of the universe. In other words, a miracle. And a very big one.’

  Ross reflected on this. ‘You mean like the parting of an ocean?’

  ‘We live in a much more sceptical world than in Jesus’s time,’ Carmichael said. ‘Most of us have seen David Blaine, Dynamo, Derren Brown – and countless other magicians and illusionists. I think we’d need something pretty spectacular – something the whole world could see – and quite simply could not dismiss or explain away with science.’

  ‘Like the sun rising from the east instead of the west?’

  ‘It would need to be on that scale.’

  ‘OK,’ Ross said. ‘And if someone could deliver that miracle – what then?’

  Carmichael gave him a wry, sad smile. ‘Do you know what I really, truthfully think, if someone credible claimed to have absolute proof of God’s existence, Ross? I think that person would be killed.’

  20

  Thursday, 23 February

  It might have been Ross’s imagination, but it felt that the sky outside had darkened. The window was behind him and he didn’t want to turn round. ‘Killed?’ he echoed. ‘You mean assassinated? What makes you think that, Benedict?’

  The Bishop raised his hands. ‘I’m not at all convinced that absolute proof of God, if such a thing could be established, would put the world back onto an even keel. I think it would have the reverse effect to what your Dr Cook believes. Think of the ramifications. The upset it would cause among so many of the world’s religions. It would throw them into chaos. Desperation. Everyone who for centuries has tried to lay claim to their own religion being the exclusive path to God. Fuel for the fanatics of every denomination. Panic to everyone with a vested commercial interest in a belief system. Where would all the Abrahamic religions stand? Is it the Catholic God? The Anglican God? The Judaic? Islamic? What about Hindus? Sikhs? There’d be fundamentalists who would be outraged, calling it blasphemy. It wouldn’t make the Scientologists look too clever either, would it?’

  Ross stared at him. Carmichael continued with a wry smile.

  ‘There would be a lot of people extremely unhappy, Ross, because they’d be out of business.’

  ‘Starting with the Vatican?’

  ‘The Vatican would be extremely uncomfortable, yes. They consider themselves to be the one true Christian church – so they’d have to find ways urgently to reassert their primacy. But proving God’s existence could legitimize the Jews’ claim to the Promised Land – which would have huge implications for Palestine and Israel. For Putin, even though there is a grudging acceptance of religion in Russia, he would see it as a huge threat to his power if a degree of authority was given to the Church. Even more so in China. China is in a period of vying for world supremacy. Treading a fine balance between opening up to capitalism whilst wanting to keep autonomy. There is a significant underground church in China, although China is primarily an atheistic country. If God were shown to be true, it would undermine authority in China if people owed allegiance to a superior being.’

  Ross was silent. He tried to keep calm, but inside he was boiling with excitement at the potential reach of this story, if there was any substance to what Cook claimed.

  Or perhaps even if there was not.

  ‘None of this occurred to me, Benedict. But it’s making sense.’

  Carmichael gave him an unreadable smile. Then his face became serious again. ‘Many of the world’s religions are as much about business as they are a belief system, Ross. I can see absolute proof putting them all out of business. A lot of people are not going to want that. And there’s something else to consider. Something very important indeed.’ Looking troubled, he paused.

  Ross waited patiently.

  ‘It worries me that some of this information has come via a spiritualist – a medium. These are dangerous people. What if this is the work of the Antichrist? The Bible talks about the Devil being cunning, a master of disguise. I think you’d find a lot of people taking that view – and in a very dangerous way.’

  ‘Dangerous?’ Ross stared at him, trying to absorb all of this. ‘So what you are saying, Benedict, is that Cook is wrong? His message is not from God but from the Antichrist?’

  ‘Well, of course, there is an incident in Scripture where God does seem to have allowed, in exceptional circumstances, a dead person to speak to a living one. It was when King Saul consulted a medium at Endor. The prophet Samuel turned up, and told Saul he was about to die. Such a dramatic situation as you say we are facing might have meant that God has made another exception.’ He smiled, then went on.

  ‘I’m trying to steer you through all the different perspectives on this, and the ramifications. The kind of proof of God’s existence you are talking about would not unite the world. It wouldn’t save mankind, in my opinion. It would cause even bigger divisions around the globe than there are already. My advice to you as an old friend is to take this manuscript back to your Mr Cook and tell him you’re sorry, but you are not his man.’

&nb
sp; ‘Is that what God’s telling you? What about everything in the New Testament about the Second Coming?’

  ‘In the Gospels, Jesus says that before His Second Coming there will be false prophets, catastrophic events, wars, famines, earthquakes and disasters and fierce persecution. The apostle John goes even further and writes about an Antichrist appearing before Jesus’s return.’

  ‘I don’t remember the Bible that well. I thought the Second Coming was meant to be a momentous occasion when Jesus would return to judge the living and the dead, to save the world from extinction and to establish a new heaven and a new earth?’

  ‘Yes, that is what most Christians believe. A Second Coming of varying sorts is what all the Christian and Islamic faiths believe.’

  ‘But not the Jews?’

  ‘The Orthodox Jews believe in the coming of the Messiah.’

  ‘He’s not Jesus?’

  ‘No, they believe Jesus is a false Messiah. But the Second Coming is not just going to happen out of the blue. There are a lot of references in the Bible to there being a forerunner, as John the Baptist was. The Jews believe Elijah will appear before the Messiah to announce the Kingdom. Jesus certainly suggested there would be a future appearance of Elijah on earth.’

  Ross frowned. ‘It’s all very complicated – and convoluted.’

  ‘It is – but it would also be a pretty significant event.’

  ‘So what’s your own personal view on the Second Coming, Benedict?’

  Carmichael answered with another smile that Ross found impossible to read. After a pause he said, ‘Ross, this is me speaking to you as a friend who cares about you. You’re treading on very dangerous terrain and you’re out of your depth. Not just you – anyone in your position would be. It’s not only the complexities of the world’s belief systems or about fanatics laying claim to different faiths or factions of these faiths, there’s a ruthless commercial world out there, both within and outside the religious embrace, with enormous vested interests that could be seriously harmed. For example, how do you think a snake oil salesman would feel about the possibility of a miracle cure that was a lot better than his potions – and which he couldn’t own?’