Caiaphas shrugged again. “I do not know. One of my priests suggested that after seven weeks the body would be so corrupted that even if it was found it could not be identified, so that by Pentecost perhaps Peter felt safe in making his false announcement.”

“What did you do when you heard about Peter’s claim?”

“I had notices posted throughout the city and inside the Temple courtyard, offering a reward of ten thousand silver shekels for information leading to the location of the body and the apprehension of those culprits who had removed it from the tomb.”

I made some hasty calculations. As I remembered, one silver shekel was worth approximately sixty-five cents. Six thousand five hundred dollars, in A.D. 36, would have been enough to tempt the holiest of angels. “No one claimed the reward?” I asked.

“No one.” He sighed.

“Would you like to know where the body is hidden?” I heard myself asking.

Caiaphas leaped from the bench. He seized both my arms and clutched them to his frail chest. “You know, Matthias? You know where it is? Tell me, I beg of you, and I shall double the reward! Twenty thousand silver shekels! Think of it! Enough to live all your days in more luxury than you ever dreamed, in the finest villa in Rome. Tell me!”

And now I knew I could scratch the high priest from my list. Caiaphas had definitely not removed the body from the tomb of Joseph in order to prevent that place from becoming the scene of embarrassing demonstrations against him and the Sanhedrin. “I’m sorry, sir, but I do not know where the body is hidden as yet. But I hope to find it before I’m finished here.”

“Thirty thousand—thirty thousand silver shekels when you tell me!”

I turned away so that he could not see the disgust on my face. How ironic, I thought, as he led me downstairs to the lobby. Six years ago Caiaphas had paid Judas thirty silver shekels for the living body of Jesus. Now he was willing to pay a thousand times that amount for the dead one!

Joseph and I were both silent during the short ride back to his mansion, until the old man said softly, “I believe it would be wise if you plan to see Pilate early in the morning. It will not be difficult for me to arrange.”

“Why?” I asked absentmindedly, still reviewing all I had learned from Caiaphas.

When he didn’t reply I turned to face him. He tilted his head backward several times before I understood and looked out through our rear carriage window.

Not far behind, on a gray stallion, was the black-hooded rider I thought we had lost on the road to Bethany.

ten

TWO SENTINELS, high atop flagstone walls, stared down at us suspiciously as we emerged from the carriage and approached the gates to Rome’s military headquarters in Jerusalem. Shields, body armor, and even their long supple spears glinted menacingly in the early morning sun.