Adam Palmer

The Boudicca Parchments

Prologue

“Give me the dagger and I will spare you from the gravest of sins.”

A handful of cubits from where they stood, she could hear the heavy thud of the Roman battering ram pounding on the solid wooden inner wall, its destructive force aided by the all-consuming power of the fire. It was only a matter of time before the wood gave way to the invader. No fortress is impregnable and she knew that this one too would fall to the might of Rome, just as her mother’s kingdom had fallen a decade earlier.

Eleazer Ben Yair, proud in his warrior bearing, stood tall over this woman, who was almost young enough to be his daughter. There was strength in his stature and posture, the look in his eyes was one of hurt, as if she were in some way responsible for this debacle that had befallen his people. He had warned Simon to divorce the daughter of the stranger. But Simon had disregarded his counsel, as he disregarded the counsel of others on all matters, be they affairs of state or affairs of the heart.

The young woman herself had not gloated at her victory. Rather, she had been conciliatory, pledging allegiance to their God. And Simon himself had been the descendent of proselytes. But standing before Ben Yair now, sharing this final moment of vulnerability, she knew that he felt at best ambivalent towards her. He had kept his promise to Simon and protected her when the mob of Sicarii had wanted to lynch her. But on the other hand, he had stood idly by when they cut off her long flaming red braids in an act of defilement, branding her not just a foreign woman, but a prisoner.

Simon would not have stood idly by while they did that. Simon would have drawn his sword and fallen upon them, cutting them to shreds — or died trying. On one occasion, when his rivals for power had kidnapped her, he had threatened to kill every man, woman and child in Jerusalem unless she was released unharmed. And those were his own brothers and sisters.

Simon had been a zealot for love. But Ben Yair was a zealot for his faith. So when she stood before him now, she knew that there was an element of hostility between them, despite all that she had done for them. She suspected that he even blamed her for the change in the direction of the wind that was now blowing the fire towards the wooden walls of the fortress.

For all that they had been through together, she was still an outsider, the proselyte, the stranger who was within their gate. And she was also a woman — a woman who had stood up to men and fought against them on behalf of her husband’s people — a people who marginalized women every bit as much as the Romans did, despite their pious protestations to the contrary. But she had no regrets about standing up for herself. She had learned from her mother that even a woman — especially a woman — must stand up for herself.

She was leaner than their local women, though not thin. Indeed some of the men — the younger ones especially — mocked her for her physique, comparing her musculature to that of a man or at least a male youth. But she had always answered their mockery by pointing out that their own women could carry heavy loads too.

When their taunting aroused her ire and pride beyond her powers of self-restraint, she retaliated by challenging them to unarmed combat, a challenge to which none had risen but which humiliated them by its mere utterance. However, that merely made them change the form of their goading. In the face of these humiliations, that they had brought on themselves, they accused her of sorcery. They said that witchcraft was the source of her strength.

At one point it had nearly cost her life, had Ben Yair not interfered. He had saved her from the mob but also chided her for her recklessness and immodesty.

“You cannot fight your enemies if your time is consumed by fighting your friends.”

How ironic that it had taken his own people so long to learn that lesson. But she realized that he was right. So she bowed her head and apologized. But she would not bend her knee. Just as her mother — or indeed these people so akin to her mother in their proud, stiff-necked spirit — would not bend the knee before might of Rome.

But now the battle was over and they were the last ones here in this mountain fortress. She could have escaped through the sewers with the others, but she elected to stay with Ben Yair, reciprocating Simon’s loyalty and courage. And now there was no possibility of escape. Now all they could do was wait for slavery… or elect for death.

As the sound of the battering ram grew more intense and the flaming heavy wooden walls began to give way, Ben Yair made his decision.

He elected for death.

Chapter 1

Perhaps if Martin Ignatius Costa had been afraid of the dark, he would have been a little more cautious. But he wasn’t afraid of the dark and consequently didn’t know that he was being followed.

The darkness was just something he had to contend with. It wouldn’t even have made any difference if the dig had taken place in spring or autumn instead of summer. The problem would have been the same. They stop digging towards sunset, but he had to wait till well after dark to avoid detection.

There were no guards around the dig site and no houses by the surrounding corn fields with a clear line of sight. But to get here, he had to walk through the heavily overhung bramble, path past several houses. And that might have aroused the suspicion of the locals. It was bad enough that a dog had barked loudly and aggressively as he walked stealthily, across an open stretch of pathway, towards the last sheltered stretch of the path before the right turn to the open field. Fortunately the dog was secured behind a high fence and closed gate. Even if the owner had peered out to determine what was agitating his canine friend, all he would have seen was a man of average height and build, with seventies style long hair, walking along with what looked like a workman’s piece of equipment.

Now, at eleven o’clock at night, he was inside the perimeter fence, on the grassy dig site, armed with an Grad601 Single Axis Magnetic Field Gradiometer System. This was essentially a one-metre square, white-painted metal frame in the shape of a rugby goal, with small box packed with electronic gadgetry attached to the cross bar. He “wore” the apparatus in front of him, using a strap slung over his neck, the vertical bar in front of his waste and the horizontal bars — the gradiometry sensors — pointing down towards the ground surveying the site as he walked and stepped across it by the moonlight.

Amateur archaeologists and casual treasure hunters almost invariably use metal detectors, which rely on electrical conductivity, to detect many different types of metal beneath the surface, but not to any great depth. Magnetometers, gradiometers and magnetic susceptibility systems, in contrast, measure magnetic flux. They can only detect iron or its alloys, but are highly sensitive and can detect large concentrations to much greater depth, or alternatively find minute quantities nearer the surface.

This did not mean that such methods were only good for detecting swords and spears however. Because iron is to be found in soil, and because the equipment is so sensitive, it can be used to discover and locate disturbed soil, compact soil, ditches, bricks and stones and even traces of fire. It can even be used to detect and identify different types of soil, liquids and powder. That was why both magnetic susceptibility systems and gradiometers were used for archaeological surveys.

Such a survey had already been done here at Arbury Banks, originally a late bronze age English site that was now being considered as the possible location of a major iron age battle — with the Romans. The archaeologists had also gone over it with metal detectors, hoping to find another horde of gold and silver, and also with ground penetrating radar, in search of large bones that might indicate a burial site. They had found neither. But as they were operating on the premise that this was the site of a great Roman military victory, any treasure would have been carted away as war booty, whilst bodies would have been put to the torch. Mass burial was not practical and cremation was an expedient alternative for the victors.

Martin Costa wasn’t officially working on the dig. A man with his reputation wouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near a site like this. However, word of the dig and the preliminary survey had got back to him. And it had aroused his venal interest. He knew that he wasn’t going to find any gold or silver here. But gold and silver were for amateurs. The real money was to be made from historic artefacts that didn’t qualify as treasure trove and belong to the “Crown” under silly archaic laws. Artefacts of bronze, wood and leather wouldn’t attract as much attention from law enforcement as precious metal and he knew plenty of private collectors who would pay good money for them. Indeed non-metallic artefacts of wood and leather were a lot more interesting to collectors. The fact that they were biodegradable meant that they were unlikely — a priori — to survive the ravages of time and therefore all the more rare and valuable when they did survive.

So now, an hour before midnight, Costa proceeded up and down the site, with this strange looking contraption, in the hope of finding something — anything — of value that might add to his fleeting fortunes. Fleeting, because Martin Costa was the kind of man who couldn’t hold onto money for long.

His job was all the harder, because the site had already been partitioned into one metre squares by a grid of string, held in place by long iron nails. These nails disrupted the readings from the gradiometer. However, he persevered and when he found something interesting he took out his shovel and attacked the topsoil ruthlessly, regardless of the risk of his activities being found out later. He had no intention of returning the topsoil or indeed the clay or peat underneath. If he found something of value, he would be long gone by then.

And now he had found something. It was buried quite deep — nearly two metres — but he had been determined to get at it. The reading showed that it was small, but not all that small. About a foot or so in length. He dug more carefully now, with a small spade, and when the spade finally hit something hard and he heard that feint quasi-metallic “clink,” his heart leapt. But it fell again when he dug away the last of the dirt with his bare hands to discover a clay jar sealed with a large cork. The cork had been pushed in hard and was wedged deep. When he tried to pull it out, it held firm and he feared that if he pulled any harder, the jar would shatter.

But the find looked tantalizingly interesting. One might often find ostraca, shards of pottery, sometimes with writing on them. These were believed to have been used in ancient times for ballots or the allocation of food. Others were just broken pieces of vases, jugs and jars. But in this case it was an entire large jar, in one unbroken piece, and that was an extraordinary find. Completely unbroken pottery vessels were rare: there was nearly always some small piece broken off. And the ones that survived substantially intact were usually the large ones because they were also thicker and thus less likely to break.

This one was quite tall — slightly less than the twelve inches he had estimated from the readings. And not only was it in one piece, but it was actually sealed by that cork lid — about three inches across — that was wedged in so tight, he was finding it hard to open. In a moment of childish fantasy, he idly wondered if there was a genie inside. It was an amusing thought, but one that the hard-headed Martin Costa quickly dismissed. Still, it was funny — and humour was always a good relief from stress. Here he was in the moonlight, struggling to prise a cork out of a clay jar, wondering what, if anything, was inside.

If there was anything inside it wasn’t very heavy. The jar weighed pretty much what Costa expected it to weigh if empty. And the chances were that it probably was. When he shook it gently, he heard nothing. He did wonder why an empty jar would be sealed at all, let alone as tightly as this. But he doubted that he would ever find out. Probably, the lid had simply been placed there lightly and had become wedged tighter over the course of time through pressure and movement of the ground. This was a late bronze age site after all. And even if it had also been the site of Romano-Britain’s most famous battle — as some of the archaeologists on the team from Cambridge believed — that still allowed almost two thousand years for the ravages of time to take its toll on the vase, the cork lid and indeed the contents — if there were any.

But still he wanted it open. He had to know.

Prizing it out was not an option, because he didn’t have long nails. Then he remembered reading somewhere that sustained force operates cumulatively. If you try to open a tightly-closed jar by starting and stopping, you get nowhere. But if you apply constant pressure it eventually gives, even if nothing appears to be happening. However, that applied chiefly to a modern type jar with a thread.

In this case, the problem was that it was very hard to get any proper grip on the cork because it was not just wide and shallow, but also damp. He wondered just how damp. He knew that Great Britain was slowly tilting — the north and west rising, the south east sinking. So when this jar was buried — if it was buried rather than merely discarded — it was above the water table. Even when he found it, there had been no groundwater present at that depth. But the water table varies with the spring and neap tides and that — combined with the geological sinking — might have put this jar beneath the water table, at least part of the time. Even if not, the descent of rain might account for the dampness. If this jar had been an iron object it would surely have rusted badly. As it was, he wondered if water had permeated the cork or the clay itself.

Unable to get any sort of sustained manual purchase on the cork lid, he resorted to the expedient of twisting it in short bursts, first one way and then the other. It didn’t appear to be moving, but he reasoned that firm pressure, applied repeatedly, might eventually take its toll.

And finally it did.

With growing excitement, he felt the cork giving way and loosening slightly and finally turning. Then, with a final effort, he turned it, prised carefully and lifted. The cork came off in his hand to reveal the open jar. But with little more than moonlight to guide him, he could barely see the contents. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small “flashlight” as he sometimes called it.

Torch, his mind corrected. I’ve been hanging out with Americans too long!

And then he saw something that amazed him. Inside the jar was what looked like some sort of jute fabric. Realizing that he needed a solid surface to work on, he sprinted with the jar to the hut that served as the office or the dig. It was locked with a heavy padlock, but the metal plates screwed to the wooden wall and door were so flimsy that the door yielded to his foot.

Inside the hut, he carefully removed the jute fabric, by pulling it very gently. It became clear to him that this was a bag, or at least the disintegrating remnants of one. But what was of more interest was what was inside that. It appeared to be some more fabric, but this time leather. And this was somewhat better preserved. He placed it on the desk and switched on the desk lamp. Then he carefully and gingerly unrolled the leather, using two pairs of tweezers to minimize his direct contact with it. And at that point he got a surprise.

For what seemed to be rolled up with it, was a piece of old thick paper.

Is that it? Some old rolled up pieces of paper from modern times?

They certainly didn’t have paper in the days of Roman Britain!

But why would something modern be at that depth? And in a clearly antiquated jar? Rolled with leather and inside a decaying jute bag?

There was only one way to find out. Very carefully, he leaned closer to get a better look at the paper. Except that it wasn’t paper.

Papyrus?

It certainly didn’t look like papyrus. He tilted the angle of the torch, to shine at it from different angles. No, it definitely didn’t look like papyrus either. And then suddenly he realized what it was.

Parchment!

But parchment didn’t usually last this long, especially in the cold humid conditions of Britain. But then again, this was a very thick, heavy parchment, and it had been protected from humidity both by the jute and by the leather, as well as the sealed jar. He shone the torch into the jar and saw moist salt at the bottom. Had it been put there deliberately or left there by accident. Either way, the sale had also helped to absorb the humidity.

He realized what it was now that he had on this desk. He had found an old Roman manuscript. It must have been Roman because the iron age Celts didn’t write, except the educated ones who wrote Latin. But they didn’t have a writing system of their own. They did, at some point, develop writing systems — Runes in Germany and Ogham in Ireland — but the earliest inscriptions in these languages were dated to well-after the first century. When the more educated among them did write in the first century, it was in Latin, using the Roman alphabet. Accordingly, this manuscript might have been written by a Celt, but it would still be in Latin.

But as Costa tried to read the manuscript, what he saw shocked him. This was not Latin. It was not even the Roman alphabet. Nor, on the other hand, was it the Runic alphabet or Ogham. He starred at it for a long time trying to recall why this strange alphabet looked so familiar. And then suddenly it struck him.

But that’s impossible!

Using a couple of heavy objects on the table to hold the scroll open, he pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket and took a picture. Then he selected a number and was just about to send the picture when he heard a noise. He looked up just in time to see the door fly open.

Chapter 2

“Okay… now get ready… one… two… three!”

Daniel Klein whipped away the scarf to reveal… nothing. The twins stared wide-eyed first at the empty coffee table and then at Daniel.

“Where did it go?” asked eight-year-old May.

“I don’t know,” Daniel replied with an innocent shrug.

The glass that seconds earlier had been on the table under the scarf had vanished.

“How did you do it, Uncle Danny?” asked Shir, May’s twin, giving Daniel a hug in the hope of bribing the answer out of him.

“I don’t know,” he said in that tone of wonderment that they loved almost as much as the tricks themselves. “It must be magic.”

Daniel Klein was in California for a conference. He had been staying at a hotel in Berkeley, but he had flown down to the basin this weekend to visit his sister and brother-in-law and nieces. They lived in London, in the affluent Jewish area of Golders Green. But this summer holiday they were here in Anaheim, visiting Disneyland and their paternal grandparents. The twins had “invited” Uncle Danny down to see them. He had actually tried to get out of it, explaining that the Bay area was a long way away from where they were staying, even if it was also in California. But try explaining California distances to a pair of enthusiastic eight-year-olds from London!

So now, here he was, entertaining his nieces with some of the magic tricks he had learned as a teenager more years ago than he cared to remember. It was a skill that he had acquired in another phase of his life, and it seemed almost a world away now. But he still had the old sleight-of-hand to draw upon when he needed it.

“Do it again! Do it again!” said Romy, excitedly. Romy was the little one, the five year old who had to compete with her older siblings to get the attention she craved.

“Ah no, a magician never repeats a trick in the same show.”

Daniel had started developing an interest in magic thirty two years ago, shortly after his tenth birthday. At the time, he had not yet put on his adolescent growth spurt and was not the tallish, blue-eyed, dark haired, smooth-looking, confident young man that he was to become in his student years. In primary school, he had been a spotty, nerdy boy and although not exactly the one to get picked on, he was the boy most likely to be ignored. Neither fat nor awkward, he was nevertheless not particularly good at sport, at least not until he discovered a talent for cross-country running. Neither for that matter was he tremendously academically gifted. That too came later. He was intelligent, but a chronic underachiever.

But he was good at chess: good enough to get into his school’s first team. And it was around that time that he had also developed an interest in magic after watching another boy, a few years older than himself, amaze a group of his peers with a series of card tricks, exhibiting feats of legerdemain that astounded him.

For a while, Daniel wanted to be a professional magician when he grew up. So he borrowed books about magic from the library and spent long hours practicing and developing his sleight-of-hand skills. At some point he got to be good enough to have the confidence to show off his skill to his peers and not just his parents. And sure enough, they were impressed.

For the first time in his life, it gave him a sense of power. He could actually hold others in his thrall. He had never really got that from chess. True, he could win about ninety percent of his games, but it never gave him quite the same sense of satisfaction. When he scored a victory at the chessboard, he was beating other people like himself and there was no particular joy in that.

But when he impressed his classmates with sleight-of-hand, using anything from cards to coins to pencils, he felt a sense of victory over the indifference of others that had made him such a loner.

Daniel’s trip down memory lane was brought to an abrupt and unceremonious end by the childish, innocent nagging of his nieces.

“Show us another trick,” said Shir. “Do the one with the coin!”

“What, you mean this one,” said Daniel, pulling a coin out of Shir’s ear.

“What about me?”

“Oh, you also want a coin?” he said, duplicating the trick with May, before she could catch a glance of the concealed coin in his left hand.

Both girls giggled. Little Romy just smiled and whispered in Danny’s ear.

“I saw how you did it.”

Wise beyond her years, thought Daniel.

“Come on now girls,” said Julia, their mother. “The cake is ready.”

“Cake!” all three girls screamed in unison and ran off to the table where orange juice and chocolate cream cake were waiting.

Daniel and his sister exchanged a smile. It was her quiet way of thanking him for keeping the little ones entertained, while she had a chat with her American father-in-law.

They were about to exchange a few words, when Daniel’s mobile phone alerted him to an incoming message. He noticed that the number displayed was unrecognisable. It appeared to be from abroad. But he saw that it was a picture not a text message. He tried to open it, but it was so large that he could only see part of it on the screen unless he shrunk it. When he did so, he noticed that it looked like some kind of a manuscript. He enlarged it again and scrolled around it, but saw that even though the image was large, it was not really in focus.

But the thing that was most puzzling was the fact that there was no covering message — no explanatory text. It was as if the sender had expected him to understand it, without offering him any explanation or summary. The problem was that he didn’t. Because the blurred image — though obviously containing some form of writing — was unreadable.

Perhaps the sender doesn’t know that the image is out of focus.

That was the other problem. He didn’t know who the sender was. The sender’s number had shown up on his system but it wasn’t some one in his address book — at least not with this number — because no name showed up with it.

He pressed the key to return the call. It went straight to voice mail.

“Hallo, I am unable to take your call at the moment. Please leave a message and I will get back to you.”

But Daniel decided not to leave a message, for two reasons. First of all, he was responding to something that had been sent to him. It was for the sender to explain his reasons and tell him what this was all about. He didn’t have to leap through hoops for the anonymous sender. Secondly, the sender was no longer anonymous. It had taken him a few seconds, but as the voice mail announcement played out, he recognized a voice from the past.

It was some one whom he had no particular desire to talk to.

Chapter 3

In the hut at the edge of the dig site, the man was standing over the body and agonizing with indecision. The mobile phone showed that the message had gone through. Whether the recipient had seen it was another matter. He looked at the image and saw that it was blurred.

Will he be able to read it?

The man realized that even if the recipient couldn’t read the text, it was clear enough to arouse his curiosity. And that meant that he would follow it up. So the question was, what to do next?

Right now he found himself with a body and this presented him with both a problem and an opportunity.

From his pocket, he removed another phone and selected a name from an address book. He pressed the button and his phone called a number in Israel.

“Hallo?” said an old man at the other end of the line.

“It’s Morgan… Sam Morgan.”

“I know. Why are you calling me at this time?”

Irascible as ever. That was the only adjective to describe the man. And “foreign” of course. Even from the few words that he had spoken, the thick accent stood out.

“We’ve got a problem. I’m at the dig site. One of the digging team found a scroll.”

“Why did you wait till this unearthly hour to call me?”

“Because he only just found it.”

“What, now? What time is it there?”

“Nearly midnight. He was digging after hours. I think he wasn’t part of the official team. But I know him. He’s a sleazy little man called Martin Costa.”

“And where is he now?”

“I’ve dealt with him.”

“How?”

“Permanently.”

“Then why did you call me?”

“Because he took a picture of it with his mobile phone and sent it to some one else?”

“Do we know who?”

Morgan hesitated for a moment. This was it — the crossing of the Rubicon moment.

“Yes. A man called Daniel Klein.”

“And who is this Daniel Klein?”

“He’s a professor or Semitic languages at University College London.”

“And you think he’ll be able to interpret the scroll?”

“The image was too blurred. He probably won’t be able to read the writing.”

“Then I return to my earlier question. Why did you call?”

“Because if he can read even part of it, then it’ll arouse his curiosity and he might start snooping around.”

“Well then I suggest you deal with this Mr. Klein.”

Chapter 4

Martin I Costa.

Daniel Klein remembered the name all too well. But it was a name that he would rather forget. He had crossed paths with Costa more than once. And every time, his opinion of Costa had diminished a little more.

Martin Ignatius Costa had started out legitimate enough. He had been an Associate Professor of Theology at Cambridge, with a strong interest in archaeology. But he also had a gambling habit that had proved something of a drain on his academician’s salary. So he had taken the expedient solution of augmenting that income by doing a little business on the side, forging historical artefacts and “discovering” them at dig sites. He didn’t, at this stage, try to sell them privately. He confined himself to cashing in on the prestige of their discovery and writing paid articles in the popular press.

Unfortunately this line of business could only carry him so far and at a certain point he over-reached himself and committed the cardinal sin of getting found out. That pretty much put the kibosh on his academic career. Sacked in disgrace, he was, quite naturally, blacklisted by the rest of the academic community, and found himself with no income but with a mountain of debt that was growing by the day.

A lucky win at the racetrack enabled him to clear the decks regarding his debt and for a while he was able to supported himself as a lowly tour guide, giving guided tours of famous historical sites. But the lure of the nags and the roulette wheel proved too much for him and he found himself once again lapsing into debt, this time supporting it by a lucrative trade in stolen artefacts and Romano-British treasure found on other people’s land and removed without the landowners knowledge or consent.

He steered clear of forgery, because if he got caught — even once — it would destroy his reputation amongst the clients of stolen artefacts. It was enough that he had to convince them to ignore his unceremonious dismissal from academia. At least on that occasion he had avoided a criminal conviction. If he now got busted for forgery, he would never again be trusted when he tried to sell stolen items to rich corrupt collectors, or to claim insurance reward money.

There might be no honour among thieves, but there was certainly a keen sense of self-preservation.

Over the years, Daniel had had various brushes with Martin I Costa. A couple of times, Costa had come into possession of items stolen from digs that Daniel was working on. On one occasion, Daniel had even been implicated as an accomplice. In the end, Daniel had managed to clear his name. But the bitter after-taste of the experience had left him wary of coming into any sort of contact with Costa. He wasn’t afraid of Costa, except in the sense that a man might be afraid of fleas. But as fleas go, Costa was particularly irritating.

So why had Costa contacted him now? And what was this picture that he had sent him?

Daniel had been ready to ask Costa straight out if the call had got through. But he wasn’t prepared to talk to a machine. If Costa wanted to talk, it was up to him to make himself available. Daniel wasn’t going to chase him.

But something about this image fascinated him. And he did not know why.

It was not clear enough for him to make out the content. But there was something about it that suggested that he shouldn’t ignore it. So he uploaded it to his Cloud account, to make sure that it was properly and adequately backed up and also to ensure that he could access it from anywhere in the world.

But at the back of his mind, he was wondering why Costa had sent it to him. He was still wondering when he got a text from Costa.

“Low on credit and juice. Did you get the picture?”

That was no doubt why he hadn’t answered the phone. Daniel felt like telling Costa to get lost. But it was hard to do that when his curiosity was aroused. So instead, he replied:

“Yes Costa. What is it?”

The reply came two minutes later.

“Need to meet you. Will tell you then.”

Daniel wasn’t going to be pressured into any meetings. He was not going to play the role of Martin Costa’s puppet — dancing to his tune. But the fact that Costa was anxious, gave Daniel at least the opportunity to probe a little further. He texted back.

“Is it a manuscript?”

This time the reply came even more quickly.

“Yes. Can you come to Ashwell tomorrow morning.”

The guy was a complete pain in the ass.

But then again, Costa had no way of knowing how far away Daniel was. He probably assumed that Daniel was in London. Not that Daniel was inclined to come running just because Costa wanted to meet him, even if he had been in London. Again Daniel texted back quickly.

“Am in America. What is the manuscript and why is it so important for you to meet me?”

An eternity seemed to go by, leading Daniel to believe that he succeeded in giving Costa the brush off. He didn’t know whether to feel regretful or relieved. On the one hand, Costa was a source of trouble and irritation to more or less everyone he came into contact with. On the other hand, there was still that enigmatic, blurred picture of a manuscript. And Daniel wanted to know more.

Just when he had convinced himself that it would be all for the best if Costa took the hint and dropped the matter, another text message came through.

“The manuscript is from a site in England. But look at the writing!”

Of course Daniel couldn’t look at the writing. It was too blurred. He debated asking Costa to send it again. But that would show weakness. On the other hand, how did he know that there was anything in the writing worth seeing? At the moment he only had Costa’s word for that. And Costa’s word didn’t count for much in Daniel’s books.

No, the way Daniel saw it, if Martin Costa wanted to meet him, then it was up to Costa to persuade him. And so far, all he had offered was a blurred manuscript. Daniel decided to lay his cards on the table.

“Picture too blurred couldn’t read a thing.”

He expected Costa to resend the picture. Instead all that came through was a message that chilled Alex to the bone.

“Why would a Romano-British site have a Hebrew manuscript?”

A Hebrew manuscript? In a Romano-British site?

Of course it all depended from what part of the Romano-British period. The period extended from the first to the fifth centuries. And in that time, Christianity had come to England from the Roman province of Judea. Most of the early Church writings were in Latin or Greek. But given the provenance of Christianity, it was not unreasonable that some of the very early writings were in Hebrew or Aramaic. And both languages were written with the Hebrew alphabet!

Could Costa have found an early Anglo-Christian manuscript written in Hebrew or Aramaic?

If he had, it would be something of a coup. For years scholars had speculated about the so-called Q Gospel — the hypothesized original gospel that supposedly supplied the material for Matthew and Luke that was missing from Mark. If such an early gospel existed, it would presumably have been written in one of the local languages of Judea — either Hebrew, the language in which they prayed and studied or Aramaic, the language of everyday speech. Even Mark’s gospel was believed to have been written first in Hebrew before being translated into Greek, even though there were no extant copies of it in Hebrew.

But maybe now there were.

Could Martin Costa have found an original gospel?

Forged one, more like, knowing Costa! And why would it be in England? Could it have been brought there to bring the word to the ancient Britons? A Latin translation would have been more useful. After all many of the Britons spoke Latin by this stage because their conquerors were Roman. And the more educated among them could surely read the language. It would make more sense to translate the gospel into Latin and then bring it to England.

Besides, how would Costa even know that it was Hebrew? His scholarship did not extend that far. He might recognize the alphabet, but he wouldn’t know Hebrew from Aramaic. Maybe it was Aramaic. Or maybe it was Hebrew. Either way, if it was found at a Romano-British site that would be interesting.

Of course Costa could be lying. But what if he was telling the truth? If Costa had found — as distinct from forged — such a manuscript, his only angle would be financial. He would need to have it validated and then sell it to the highest bidder. But to Daniel the value of any such manuscript inhered in the knowledge that it would provide, not its financial value to some wealthy dilettante. Daniel didn’t care who owned the manuscript. It was a valuable chattel, but still — at the end of the day — just a chattel. It was the knowledge that it contained that imparted value to it. And as long as that knowledge was able to enter the public domain, it didn’t matter to Daniel who owned the chattel.

But first, Daniel had to know if Costa was on the level. He texted back.

“Will be back in three days. Cannot meet you till Tuesday.”

This time the wait was long. At the table, the girls were getting fractious and Daniel knew that any minute now, Julia would send them over to him and he would have to give them his undivided attention. Just before that happened, Costa’s next message came through.

“Meet me at the Three Tuns pub in Ashwell, Herts on Tuesday at One O’clock. And make sure you’re not followed.”

Chapter 5

The Urim monitoring station in Israel was the equivalent of the US National Security Agency in Maryland or Britain’s GCHQ in Cheltenham. That is to say, it was a vast, all-seeing electronic eye where they monitored vast swathes of telephone, mobile phone and data traffic. It was estimated that they monitored pretty much all transmitted information that went over the air waves whether by satellite or ground station. Even most of the traffic that went by land line could be monitored through a variety of technologies.

But most of this voice traffic never reached a human ear, nor the data traffic a human eye. There was simply too much of it for human analysis. Such information only came before a human being if it fulfilled one of two criteria. The first of these was the keyword test. Both text and speech were analysed by sophisticated algorithms for identifying key words that would flag up the content and trigger human intervention. Contra to what people thought, one couldn’t just rattle off a list of words to force the recording to be brought to the attention of a human analyst. The algorithms were actually quite sophisticated.

But there was another parallel criterion that could take such material from the realm of SigInt into the realm of HumInt. And that was the source or destination of the specific traffic that was being monitored. Certain people’s phone and internet communications were singled out for human monitoring because the people in question were themselves already under suspicion.

And one of these people was a man who called himself “HaTzadik” — The Righteous One. He was on the permanent surveillance list and under the monitoring criteria, all voice and data traffic to and from him, his home, his mobile and his IP address were to be referred automatically to Israel’s Sherutei Bitachon Klali — SHaBaK — or General Security Services. This was the equivalent of Britain’s Security Service — MI5.

And so an encrypted recording of HaTzadik’s nocturnal phone conversation with Sam Morgan was sent to SHaBaK to be analyzed by a human being.

Chapter 6

“Everything comfortable?” asked the pretty flight attendant.

Daniel nodded. Of course everything was comfortable. For the first time in ages, he was travelling first class, like he used to in the old days when he was married. Since his divorce he had downgraded to Business Class or even Economy. He was never one for luxuries or even comforts, having grown up on the Regent’s Park council estate in central London. But Charlotte always insisted on First Class. She was used to it and would accept nothing less.

Whenever he travelled by plane, he thought of Charlotte, scion of Pennsylvania aristocracy. Perhaps because travelling by air reminded him of their jet-setting lifestyle between the two worlds of New York and London, bringing back a flood of memories and endless speculations about maybes and might-have-beens.

They were childless and not by choice — a “George and Martha” couple was the way he sometimes described it. But although he felt that he had it in him to be a great father, that was not the main problem for their marriage. The problem was that in the eyes of his wife, he lacked ambition. Success to Charlotte, whether social or academic, was measured by how high one rose through the relevant hierarchy. Daniel, on the other hand, believed in the motto of an old school that he had attended briefly: rather use than fame. He didn’t feel that he was lacking in ambition. It was the quality rather than the quantity of his ambition that set him apart from Charlotte.

That and their differing sources of pleasure. She loved the high life, he liked the academic life. Her world was that of the salon; his, the ivory tower. To her, happiness meant haute cuisine dining and shopping at Harrods or Bloomingdales. To him it meant pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge and driving back the boundaries of ignorance.

Yet he was by no means all work and no play. He loved spending time with his young nieces and enjoyed outward-bound activities with his teenage nephews. In the winter months, he was equally good at keeping them occupied with kitchen table science. On one occasion, he had taught the boys how to make a radio out of household items like a rusty old razor blade, a pencil, a plastic bottle and some wire. To their amazement he then improved it by adding some foil, greaseproof paper, a brass nail, a coin and a lemon (which he described as “the battery”). He had download the information on how to do it from the internet and then challenged them to do a project of their own, making a shortwave radio, using a broken saucepan as the main component. They came through with flying colours.

These were simple pleasures that Charlotte never understood. To her, even the idea that two adolescent boys could prefer a home-made radio that you had to strain to hear with an earpiece, over a cool, hi-graphics video-game, contradicted the stereotypes that she had read about — as well as her assumptions about human nature. In the perennial conflict between the Having Mode of life and the Doing Mode, she found happiness in luxury possessions and the company of well-bred but ultimately shallow people. Daniel believed in the dictum of popular philosopher Cyril Joad, that happiness was the “by-product of purposeful activity.” And soirees with some latter-day “New York 400” were not his idea of purposeful activity.

This was ironic really, because he had first met Charlotte at a University function. But then again, as he recalled, the function was in honour of some rich donor, so it represented that awkward meeting point between academia and philanthropy, when scholarship and Mammon pay mutual homage to one another, with a mixture of envy and guilt.

Relaxing in his first class seat, he tried to remember if there had ever been a time when he had seen her looking anything other than comfortable. The only time he could think of was the event that had triggered their divorce: when he had caught her in flagrante delicto with one of his students. And even then, she had tried to put him on the defensive, reminding him of all the times he had regaled her with tales of his female students flirting with him and how he seemed flattered rather than merely amused by it. He responded by trying to make her recognize the difference between being subject to temptation and succumbing to it. But even then he felt as if he was talking to her in a foreign language.

Troubled by these painful memories, he slept a fitful sleep through most of the flight. But even though the sleep was punctuated by episodes of awakening, it was a ten and a half hour flight and so he was relatively fresh when he picked up the hired Audi A4 at Luton Airport. His own car was at Heathrow, but he decided that as he was going to be meeting the abominable Martin Costa in Hertfordshire, he may as well fly into Luton, so the drive would be shorter.

On the drive to Ashwell, through leafy country lanes, he tried not to think too much about his ex-wife, still less of the man he was going to meet. Martin Costa was an odious little spiv — a prostitute of academia — who had turned from incisive thought and the pursuit of knowledge to legerdemain and the pursuit of the quick and easy buck.

Paradoxically it had been the opposite with Daniel. It was his adolescent interest in sleight of hand that had led to his academic development. Because with his new found confidence in his skills at wowing an audience with illusions, he gained a sense of self-belief that led him to try harder in school. No longer satisfied with being in the “top third” of his class, he sought to be the best, at least in those subjects that interested him. That meant languages, history and even subjects that his school didn’t actually teach like psychology and cultural anthropology.

The fact that he went to a Jewish school was also helpful in forming his specialization. Although he no longer adhered with any great feeling to the faith of his childhood, he developed a powerful interest in Jewish history, which was taught at the school. He also found himself paying more attention in religious studies classes. He wasn’t interested in theology as such, but he was interested in human thought and in language — how it developed and the strange discrepancies between classical Hebrew and its modern counterpart.

Not sure what street the Three Tuns was in, he had set his SatNav for Ashwell. But by mistake, he had accepted the device’s suggestion of Ashwell and Morden Station, where he found himself looking at a pub called The Jester. Not quite sure of the etiquette of such situations, and not wanting to ask for directions to another pub without at least buying a drink, he parked and stepped out of the car. The first thing he noticed, was the all-pervasive smell of horse manure, which as a lifelong townie, he put down as being the rural norm.

In the pub, not wanting to touch alcohol while driving, he ordered a diet coke. While he was drinking at the bar, he engaged the barman in conversation and discovered that he was not actually in Ashwell at all, but rather two miles away from the village. He took the opportunity to obtain directions and proceeded down a narrow country road past isolated houses, parched fields of golden corn and a path leading to a trailer park, according to the signpost. The speed limit was 40 mph, but it dropped to 30 when he reached the pinch point that marked the entrance to the village.

Inside the village, he asked for directions again and found himself driving past a traditional village green on which a game of cricket was in progress. Except that this was no ordinary cricket game. For some reason, all the players were in fancy dress. As he slowed down to rubberneck, he spotted a school-master — complete with gown — Batman, Robin Hood, a soldier in camouflage fatigues, a turtle, a very out-of-place tiger and an equally out-of-season Santa Claus. It wasn’t clear whether this was a weekly occurrence or a special occasion — and he couldn’t escape the feeling that he had strayed into a real-life Wicker Man scenario — but he noticed children and parents watching the event, albeit in small numbers.

He was still mulling over the cricket game’s poor attendance when he parked the Audi in the quiet village street a few yards past the sub-post office. As he crossed the road to the red brick building that was Three Tuns, he heard the clip-clopping of horse’s hooves. Standing outside the pub, he turned to watch as two pretty young women in their early twenties rode by on horseback. Their image as rural young ladies was marred somewhat by the fact that one of them was sporting a couple of visible tattoos

There were two entrances, one for the hotel and one for the pub. He chose the latter, on the right. The place was half-full with lunch-time patrons. He sat down and looked around, trying to figure out which one of them was Martin Costa. It had been a while since they had last seen each other and Daniel wasn’t sure if he would recognize him.

Why the hell am I sitting in a village pub, waiting to meet a man I don’t trust as far as I can throw him?

He felt like Rick in Casablanca: not actually knowing why he was doing something, but doing it anyway. The only explanation that he could give himself is that there was something about that blurred text that looked awfully familiar — and his curiosity was aroused.

But where was Costa? The trouble was, none of the other patrons was alone. They were variously in couples or groups. Costa would be alone. The secretive nature of his approach, and the man’s very nature, assured Daniel of that. There was however a simple way to find out. He took out his phone and sent a text: “I’m here. Where are you?”

He looked around for any sign of some one receiving a text. It wasn’t a foolproof test: there were more patrons in the spacious grassy garden behind the pub. But two minutes later he got a reply.

“Am delayed slightly. Treat yourself to a meal.”

Daniel ordered fish and chips at the bar, but asked if they could replace the chips with mashed potato. They told him that it would be no problem. He told them that he wanted to eat in the garden. They gave him a flag with a number so they would know where to bring the food. Then he went to the loo and through into the garden to await the meal. In fact, although the garden was spacious, there were actually very few of the wooden tables there. Instead the garden provided space for children to run around, although there was also a toddlers playground behind it. Daniel looked around and finally found the only free table there.

When the food arrived, he saw that they had not in fact replaced the chips with mash. He considered sending it back, but decided not to. Taking the minor irritations that life throws at one was part of his philosophy. He wasn’t exactly a stoic. But neither was he one of those precious types who insists that everything has to be done just right. It was life’s little unpredictabilities that made every day different and worth living. Otherwise he would not be here now waiting for Martin Costa to get here.

In the end Martin Costa never did get there. Instead, Daniel got a text message, while he was still eating, saying: “Come to the derelict house on the way to Partridge Hill, just next to the house where they sell arts and crafts figures. Make sure you are not followed.”

Daniel smiled. Costa seemed to be enjoying playing the role of International Man of Mystery with his excessive use of the phrase about not being followed. Never for a minute did Daniel actually consider that maybe he was…

Chapter 7

They were dressed up as eighteenth century Polish noblemen, two bearded men in long frock coats and felt hats, with a thin black ribbon tied round their waists to separate the upper half of their bodies — containing the heart and the brain — from the lower half, which contained the sex organs.

But they were not fetishists. This was how they dressed, just as their ancestors had dressed this way for the last two hundred years. They were a small ultra-religious Jewish sect and like the Quakers and Amish Mennonites, they dressed in the style of clothes that had characterized their religious movement since it was first established.

Strictly speaking, it was not in the style of their religious movement that they dressed, but rather the style of the movement from which they had seceded. For this movement was in fact not quite as old some people thought. It had only been founded in 1938 after it broke away from a larger Jewish religious movement over a major political difference.

The older man, in his sixties but looking somewhat older, called himself “HaTzadik” — The Righteous One — although his real name was Shalom Tikva. And the very tall man he was addressing was his thirty-year-old son Baruch.

“When Sam Morgan arrives, he will be bringing something of importance, so treat him with respect.”

“What will he be bringing?”

The resentment in Baruch Tikva’s tone was palpable.

“I do not want to put the evil eye on it by talking about it. You will see when it arrives.”

“I don’t know why you trust that man. You should be very careful of him.”

“Why? Because he is a gentile? You sound like the profane ones!”

“I don’t mean because he is a gentile. I trust the Arabs more than the profane ones! But I trust Sam Morgan even less. He is greedy. And he has wormed his way into your trust. I mean no disrespect, but be careful of him my father.”

HaTzadik’s tone was conciliatory.

“You have nothing to be jealous of. You are my son and he… he is a stranger.”

But the words did not heal the wound: they twisted the pain even more.

Chapter 8

Daniel asked for directions from the girl tending the bar, but he had to ask several other people along the way as he navigated the village roads and paths towards the house. He walked rather than drove because he had been told that it wasn’t all navigable by car and it was easier to ask for directions on foot. SatNav was all very well, but how do you enter “the derelict house on the way to Partridge Hill” on a SatNav input?

The last stretch of the walk was along a narrow dirt track lined with trees, hedges and bramble — much of it overhanging, creating a shelter of foliage along the path. The house selling arts and crafts was on the left, set back somewhat from the path and had a large garden and grounds all around it. He knew it was the right house from the sign on the gate announcing that arts and crafts items were for sale there. But that house held no interest for him. He had been told to come to the derelict house next to it that stood directly on the path, also on the left.

The derelict house was in fact two semi-detached houses. The part farther along the path — to the right when looking at the house — had a brick facade. The upper bricks had been painted white, but the lower ones were still their native red. There was some foliage clinging to the exterior walls and the corrugated roof was dirty and bore patches of moss.

But it was the other house — standing closer to the arts and crafts house — that appeared to be the derelict one. This one had a stucco facade, although little of it was visible beneath the thick blanket of ivy clinging to the surface. The roof was a horizontal, watershed lattice of wood. But as he moved round the house to the left side, he noticed that there was a part of the house that receded from the path and had no roof at all, just the long wooden beam at the apex that had once supported it. Even some of the upper brickwork was missing.

This must be the place.

He moved round it to find an entrance, eventually seeing a door that was ever so slightly ajar. Was Costa already in there waiting for him? Or was he late again? And was the door open simply because the house was abandoned and contained nothing of value that anyone would want?

Daniel rapped on the wooden door with his knuckles.

“Anyone home?”

No answer.

He pushed the door gingerly with his hand. It swung open slowly and then, even slower still, started to close again. That could have just been the way it was hung on its hinges. At any rate, he stopped it with his hand and stepped across the threshold. As he entered, he turned his head to survey the contents.

He saw nothing untoward. The place was almost completely empty, save for an old dark wooden chest that seemed like some aging relic to remind people that that house had once been occupied. It was then that Daniel noticed a pair of feet protruding from beyond the wooden chest.

He well knew the old classic film noir scenario in which the innocent man stumbles on the corpse only to be accused of murder. The natural reaction was to run. But he was an adult and he had to keep his thought processes within the realm of a man’s estate. The feet might be attached to a dead body, but it could equally have been something innocent, like a tramp taking refuge in an abandoned house and oversleeping after a heavy night’s boozing. He had to know, before he did anything rash. So he took a couple of steps towards the chest and what lay partially obscured behind it.

But as he was about to take his third step, something arrested his movement. For in that instant he became aware of an unpleasant smell. Not a rotting or decaying corpse. But still a strong pungent smell.

It was the smell of petrol.

And before he could process the information any further, there was a sound from outside and movement in his peripheral vision as a burning object seemed to fly overhead. It landed near him and there was a loud, deep roar of air, as the house went up in flames. He made a dash for the door, but tripped and as he tried to get up, he started coughing and choking from the smoke and fumes.

He was amazed at how quickly the effect took hold of him. But this wasn’t just a fire: it was a fire started deliberately and aided by an accelerant. Though his mind was sharp enough to understand this, his body — wracked by the smoke-induced choking spasm in his throat — lacked the resilience to do anything about it. He could hardly keep his eyes open and his head was spinning as the blackness descended upon him.

Chapter 9

In a windowless room at the Mossad’s headquarters in the coastal town of Herzliya, a beep alerted David (“Dovi”) Shamir to the fact that a message had just arrived. Dovi, in his late thirties, was a man of southern Mediterranean appearance. His mother had been Iraqi and his father of German-Polish extraction. They had met in the army during the Six-Day War, when Dovi’s father had served in the unit that liberated the eastern areas of Jerusalem, including the Old City, from which Jews and Israelis had been excluded for the previous nineteen years.

Formerly a field operative in the Kidon department of the Mossad, Dovi was now a desk officer. Kidon specialized in assassinations, working in small teams. But Dovi’s preference for flexibility led to him being re-assigned to work as a single operative. Successful at first, he was compromised in an anti-terrorist operation in which he successfully executed a terrorist who was planning a major operation in London. The execution itself was implemented flawlessly and the terrorists’ plan to blow up the sunken wreck of a second world war munitions ship was thwarted. But Dovi’s face was captured on the terrorist’s webcam and he was now known to the enemy.

He had considered cosmetic surgery to alter his appearance — as the infamous terrorist Leila Khaled had done after she hijacked a TWA plane — so that she could resume her terrorist activities. In her case it had worked. She subsequently managed to board and initiate a hijacking of an El AL plane. But her efforts were thwarted by the bravery of the pilot — who refused to capitulate — and by El Al Security, who killed her terrorist partner and took Khaled alive, only to see her released by British Prime Minister Edward Heath as a collaborationist goodwill gesture towards the terrorists.

In the end, Shamir decided that cosmetic surgery could not be relied upon, so he retired to the back office. But he secretly missed the cut and thrust of field work.

He clicked on the eMail, keyed in his decryption key and saw the unencrypted eMail seconds later on the screen.

Intercept transcript — 5 August, 2012 — 1:30 IST

Call initiator(s): “Sam Morgan” (self-identified, see below) [no file or details]

Initiator locus: Ashford, Herts, Great Britain

Initiator phone: Cell phone +44 7535 330 560

Call respondent(s): Shalom Tikva (AKA “HaTzadik”) [on file]

Respondent locus: Me’ah She’arim, Jerusalem

Respondent phone: +972 2 681 3660

Reason(s): 1) Respondent on SHaBaK watch list for monitoring.

2) Conversation references subject (“Daniel Klein”) on watch list of Dovi Shamir.

FULL TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS:

SHALOM TIKVA: Hallo.

SAM MORGAN: It’s Morgan [PAUSE] Sam Morgan.

SHALOM TIKVA: I know. Why are you calling me at this time?

SAM MORGAN: We’ve got a problem. I’m at the dig site. One of the digging team found a scroll.

SHALOM TIKVA: Why did you wait till this unearthly hour to call me?

SAM MORGAN: Because he only just found it.

SHALOM TIKVA: What,

now

? What time is it there?

SAM MORGAN: Nearly midnight. He was digging after hours. I think he wasn’t part of the official team. But I know him. He’s a sleazy little man called Martin Costa.

SHALOM TIKVA: And where is he now?

SAM MORGAN: I’ve dealt with him.

SHALOM TIKVA: How?

SAM MORGAN: Permanently.

SHALOM TIKVA: Then why did you call me?

SAM MORGAN: Because he took a picture of it with his mobile phone and sent it to some one else?

SHALOM TIKVA: Do we know who?

[PAUSE]

SAM MORGAN: Yes. A man called Daniel Klein.

SHALOM TIKVA: And who is this Daniel Klein?

SAM MORGAN: He’s a professor or Semitic languages at University College London.

SHALOM TIKVA: And you think he’ll be able to interpret the scroll?

SAM MORGAN: The image was too blurred. He probably won’t be able to read the writing.

SHALOM TIKVA: Then I return to my earlier question. Why did you call?

SAM MORGAN: Because if he can read even

part

of it, then it’ll arouse his curiosity and he might start snooping around.

SHALOM TIKVA: Well then I suggest you deal with this Mr. Klein.

Call ended by SHALOM TIKVA.

Encrypted audio recording attached.

He had no need listen to the recording. It was all clear. The reason that it had been passed up the chain of command to Dovi was because he held a watching brief for Daniel Klein. Klein was not an intelligence man but an academic who had foiled a major terrorist attack against Israel that he had stumbled into while doing research on old Egyptian manuscripts in pre-Biblical Hebrew written in so-called “proto-Sinaitic” script. Initially resentful of this clumsy private citizen, bumbling his way through matters of state security, Shamir had come to admire Klein, when his academic competitiveness and curiosity had culminated in his crossing swords with some deadly enemies of the Jewish people — and winning.

Dovi had grudgingly respected Daniel from then on, but feared that those whose nefarious aims Daniel had thwarted, might come after him for revenge. So he had put Daniel on a watch list for the Urim monitoring station, although he had not gone as far as to tap Klein’s own phone.

But this transcript was three days old.

He understood why. It had taken time to filter up through the inter-service bureaucracy. But what did it mean “deal with” Mr. Klein. This Sam Morgan had said that he had already dealt with Martin Costa “permanently.” Did that mean he was going to do the same with Daniel Klein?

Not if Dovi Shamir had anything to do with it.

He could institute all sorts of processes in motion to protect Daniel Klein, including offering him refuge in Israel. But the first thing to do was call him and warn him.

Dovi reached for the phone and called Daniel’s number. He heard the ringing tone but there was no answer.

Chapter 10

Through the haze of his semi-conscious state, Daniel could hear his mobile phone ringing. It was in his pocket. If he could only get it out, he could ask whoever was calling him to get help. But strength eluded him.

No! he thought. Now is not the time to give up! You have responsibilities! You have people who love you!

He rolled over onto his back, so that reaching into his pocket would be easier, and forced himself to reach into his pocket and take out the phone. But as he did so, he heard a series of loud, staccato cracking sounds and saw movement above him. In that instant, he knew that the remnant of the ceiling was about to collapse.

No! his mind screamed.

In that moment, he rallied his resources, rolled round, leapt to his feet and made a dive for the door, dropping his phone in the process. The door opened inward, and when he pulled it at first, he knocked it with his foot, almost closing it again. But he managed to open it the second time and staggered out, just as the ceiling beam collapsed on where he had once been.

He was out in the open, but he could see very little. The path by the house was shaded, making the ambient light dim, and his eyes were watering from the smoke. In the distance he heard sirens in several different tones. Police? Fire Brigade? Probably both.

But as they drew closer, he found that he could no longer hold out in the fight for consciousness.

Chapter 11

“Do you have any aisle seats left?”

“We have one, but it’s right at the back.”

“That’ll do.”

The girl at the checkin pecked away at the keyboard, printed out the luggage tag, fixed it to the suitcase and then gave the man back his passport along with his boarding pass.

“That’s 6 °C, boarding at Gate 37 starts at 21:50.”

And with that he picked up his carry-on bag and the documents and walked off.

He didn’t know why, but he was always nervous when he went through security at Heathrow Airport. It was there for his own protection, but he always felt like a criminal when he went through it. Then again, when he thought about it more carefully, he was a criminal and so it was only natural that he should feel self-conscious in the face of all that scrutiny.

He wondered how thoroughly they would check his hand luggage. He didn’t want to let the parchment out of his sight. But in some ways taking it in his hand luggage was more risky, as hand luggage is subjected to even greater security checks. Still, he was sure that neither the parchment, nor the hard cardboard tube he had put in, would show up as anything suspicious in the x-ray.

Nevertheless, he smiled with relief when he got through to the other side without anyone saying anything. He put on his belt and shoes and put his wallet and mobile phone back in his pocket. He realized that he had plenty of time for duty-free shopping. But he knew he wouldn’t do any. Duty free was a rip-off. You could get cheaper goods at any discount store.

He decided to phone HaTzadik.

“Hi, it’s Sam Morgan.”

“And?”

“I just want you to know… I’m at the airport.”

“Lod?”

“Heathrow.”

“Why are you calling?”

Shalom Tikva sounded impatient.

“I just wanted to let you know.”

“Call me when you land.”

The line went silent.

Chapter 12

The first thing that he noticed was sound. His auditory sense was responding. There were people around, talking. There was movement… human activity.

He opened his eyes and saw the ceiling. It was just a plain, bland ceiling in a pale colour. But the room was too bright. He closed his eyes again and almost drifted back to sleep. Something stopped him… pain… not localized pain, but pain all over his body. It was more intense in his stomach than elsewhere. But then he realized that it wasn’t his stomach: it was his lungs. It hurt him to breathe.

He tried to remember who he was and where he was. He remembered a fire… being trapped… escaping. He remembered an SMS… a picture… his irritation towards the man who had sent it… Martin Costa.

Was that what it had been? A trap? Martin Costa that conman and thief and out-and-out scoundrel had lured him into a trap. But why? To kill him? It made no sense. He had clashed with Costa a few times before, but never in way so extreme or severe that Costa would have any reason to kill him.

Through the haze of confusion he remembered what Costa had sent him: a picture of a manuscript in post-Biblical Hebraic script. But it wasn’t in Hebraic script. That is, when he recalled the image, it didn’t look like the Hebrew alphabet. It didn’t look like anything. It was all too blurred and unclear.

Why then did he think that it was in Hebrew, or at least Hebraic script?

Because of Costa’s words.

“Why would a Romano-British site have a Hebrew manuscript?”

Why indeed?

It was those words that made him think it was in Hebrew — nothing in the text itself. And as he remembered it now, he had speculated that it might be Aramaic or some old less known Semitic dialect.

He opened his eyes again and forced them to stay open, despite the light.

Where am I?

He looked around in one direction and realized that he was in a hospital. But there was no one else about. He was in a private room. He wanted to curl up in the foetal position against the stomach cramps that he was feeling. But when he tried to turn onto his right side, he couldn’t. Something was holding his left arm by the wrist, restricting his movement.

He rolled onto his left side instead and saw what was restricting his movement. His left wrist was handcuffed to the bed.

But why?

He wrenched at the handcuff, but to no avail.

What the hell was going on?

He needed to talk to some one… a doctor… a nurse…

“Nurse! Some one!”

The door opened and two men walked in. But they were neither doctors nor nurses. The tall one, in a dark blue uniform, was aged about thirty. The other, slightly shorter and in plainclothes, looked in his mid to late forties, a few years older than Daniel. But there was no mistaking the fact that they were both policemen.

“What’s going on here?” asked Daniel.

It wasn’t the presence of police officers that he was asking about. His recollection of the fire and the protruding feet, made that all too reasonable and something to be expected. It was the handcuff on his left wrist.

The man in plain clothes flashed his warrant card at Daniel.

“Chief Inspector Vincent.”

“Sergeant Connor,” said the other, relying on his uniform for identification. “And you, Mister Klein, have some explaining to do.”

Chapter 13

Sam Morgan was still feeling the annoyance and frustration as he sat in the taxi to Jerusalem. The immigration staff at Ben Gurion Airport in Lod, Israel had been particularly obnoxious in the way they questioned him — treating him almost as if he were a criminal. At one point he was worried that they were going to get his suitcase from baggage and search it. That thought alone frightened the hell out of him. It would have been disastrous if they had found the parchment scroll.

How would he explain it to HaTzadik?

At some point he noticed that other passengers were getting similarly harsh treatment and some were even being escorted — or rather dragged — away from the area and not being allowed to enter the country.

It was only in the baggage area, when he asked another passenger about the incident, that it was explained to him that some protestors were trying to “infiltrate” the country to stage protests with Palestinian and “left wing” groups. With that reassurance, he had no qualms about scooping up his bag when it came round the carousel and marching confidently through the Green Channel at Customs.

But he was still fuming. Just because a few protestors were trying to enter the country was no reason to treat all foreign visitors as if they were criminals. Worse still, he couldn’t escape the feeling that it was only the non-Jewish passengers who were being subjected to the third degree.

He felt like talking about it to the taxi driver, but feared that this would merely flag him up as another “trouble maker.” So instead he sat in stony silence and soaked up the view of the buildings of the coastal plain, the fields and then finally the mountain road as it snaked its way upward towards Jerusalem.

It seemed like barely an hour after he left the airport, that he arrived at the David’s Citadel Hotel, a modern, luxury hotel adjacent to the newly developed Mamilla District. He head read about this area before he came — all part of his tendency to over-research and check things out. Looking around his environs now, he would not have been able to guess that the area had degenerated into a slum in the fifties and sixties, when it sat on the border of the no-man’s-land that separated Israel from Jordanian-occupied eastern Jerusalem.

It had taken twenty years after the liberation of eastern Jerusalem — and much bureaucratic wrangling and horse-trading — for this formerly run-down area to be torn down and completely rebuilt from the ground up. It was now a bustling mixed residential-commercial complex of apartments, hotels and shops with facades of light-coloured Jerusalem stone.

After checking in and ordering a light snack from room service, Morgan phoned Shalom Tikva.

“I’m here.”

“Where?”

“The Hotel. David’s Citadel.”

“You were supposed to phone me from the airport.”

“I forgot.”

“Have you got it?”

“Of course.”

“Well bring it round!”

The line went dead. That was HaTzadik,” Morgan thought, always brisk, brusque and to the point. He hadn’t served in the Israeli army for politico-religious reasons. But in some way he would have made a great soldier.

An hour later, after an energy-reviving snack and a shower, Sam Morgan was walking through the streets of Mea She’arim. The name Mea She’arim means “a hundred gates” and the neighbourhood — located in West Jerusalem but close to the Old City — was an old neighbourhood of narrow streets and linked houses with weathered facades of Jerusalem stone and first floor balconies supported by protruding rusted iron I-beams. At ground level, many of the windows were protected by white-painted wrought iron bars somewhat more ornate than the fencing on the balconies, that was in many cases chipped and peeled, revealing the rusted iron beneath.

Many of the outside walls were adorned with posters in Hebrew — plain black on white — announcing deaths, marriages and rabbinical proclamations. Morgan knew this only from what he had been told: he didn’t understand the Hebrew. But he did understand the one or two posters in English that warned — in dire tones and language — not to dress immodestly. These were specifically addressed to women and phrased in mildly threatening language to make clear to any woman who might show too much leg or arm that the same flesh that would arouse lust in normal red-blooded men would only arouse anger in this pious community.

Mea She’arim was the home to a number of ultra-orthodox — “haredi” — sects. Many of these were Hassidic and were openly against the very existence of the State of Israel, notably Satmar, Breslov, Shomer Emunim and the extremist Mishkenot Ha’ro’im. But the most fanatical of all in its hostility to the Jewish state was not a Hassadic sect but a religious order of Lithuanian Jewish origin called Shomrei Ha’ir — the Guardians of the City.

It was the leader of this sect, Shalom Tikva — AKA HaTzadik (literally “the righteous one”) whom Sam Morgan was on his way to see.

It took several wrong-turns and requests for directions before Morgan arrived at the correct address. He had to knock on the door, because it had no bell, and when he was ushered in by the aging white-haired, white-bearded owner, he looked around to see a house that had no radio and no television. These were considered instruments of sin, or at least temptation, by the ultra-orthodox.

“Did you bring it?” asked HaTzadik, as he led Morgan into the carpeted living room. This was a stupid question, Morgan thought. But it was wholly consistent with Shalom Tikva’s well-known impatience. In any case, living room was a bit of a misnomer. For the room was essentially a library, except for one small dining table at one end, near the kitchen. The walls were lined floor to ceiling with richly-bound books. Morgan suspected that many of these were volumes of that monumental treatise: the Babylonian Talmud.

He suspected, however, that there must be other books as well. But they were clearly all religious books. HaTzadik had told him once about other Jewish religious works such as the six books of the Mishne, the Arba’ah Turim, the Shulhan Aruch and the Zohar, a 1700 page Jewish mystical treatise from which the Kabbala is derived.

The impatient look on Shalom Tikva’s face snapped Morgan out of his state of awe. He unzipped the carry-on bag and handed over the cardboard tube containing the parchment scroll to the bearded man. For a minute Shalom Tikva’s eyes gleamed, but then calm returned, as if he felt that he dare not celebrate until he was sure.

He took the tube over to a large table in one corner of the room, switched on the desk lamp and prized the cap off the tube. Then he carefully extracted the parchment and opened slowly, almost with reverence, on the desk. There was a corner missing, the edges frayed around it, as if some one had torn it off roughly. But he ignored this. Instead, he studied the manuscript carefully, peering long and hard at the script, struggling to make out what it said. When he finally did, his face hardened into a scowl.

Chapter 14

“And then I collapsed on the ground and that’s the last thing I remember till I woke up here..”

In the stark, whitewashed interview room, Daniel was explaining to the police what had happened, starting from when he got the SMS while in California. He had been formally arrested at the hospital on suspicion of arson and murder, discharged from the hospital, brought here to Stevenage police station, allowed time to rest and was now being interviewed under caution. He had waived the right to a lawyer but in all honesty couldn’t understand why all this was happening. It was obvious that he had been lured into a trap by Martin Costa — if indeed it was Costa. But the looks on the faces of the interrogating officers were sceptical.

“And how do you explain Martin Costa’s body in the wreckage?”

This was the plainclothes officer. He had identified himself at the hospital as Chief Inspector Vincent.

“I told you: I noticed a body there just before the place went up in flames.”

“So he sends you a text telling you to come there and twenty minutes later, when you arrive, you find him dead?”

“I didn’t know he was dead. I mean I didn’t even know if it was him.”

“You’d forgotten what he looked like?”

“I only saw his feet protruding.”

“Then how did you know he was dead?”

This was Sergeant Connor, the uniformed man form the hospital.

“I didn’t. Like I told you, I was just going to check when the fire was started and building went up in flames.”

“Yet you knew it was a body?”

Daniel squirmed slightly, realizing that he had been perhaps a little imprudent in his choice of language.

“Well the feet were unmoving.”

“He could have been unconscious.”

“He may well have been. But if you want to quibble then I could point out that a body doesn’t necessarily mean a dead body.”

Connor looked over at Vincent. The chief inspector nodded, almost imperceptibly. Sergeant Connor continued.

“Well as a matter of fact, he was dead. The post mortem confirmed that Costa didn’t die of burns or smoke inhalation. He was bludgeoned to death by multiple blows to the head. The collapse of the roof would not have accounted for the injuries all around his cranium. But let me be clear about this Mr Klein, are you saying that you did not know that Costa was dead?”

“Well, in the circumstances — I mean with the legs sticking out and not moving — I think I probably considered the possibility that it was a dead body. But I didn’t really have any time to act on it before the place went up in flames.”

“Oh yes and you blacked out, recovered and managed to stagger out just in time before the remnants of the ceiling collapsed.”

“That’s right,” said Daniel, irritated by the aggressive approach. “Look could I ask why I even been arrested? Everything I’ve told you can be checked out and — ”

“Most of it,” Connor interrupted. “Not all of it.”

“Well the text messages can be. And the fact that I only flew in a few hours before the events.”

“That doesn’t put you in the clear.”

Daniel had already twigged that Connor was playing the bad cop.

“And why would I kill him?”

“Well let’s see now,” said the sergeant, as if thinking about this for the first time. “Martin Costa invites you to share some major new archaeological discovery with you. You race back from the United States, smelling the chance to make a name for yourself by getting cut in on a piece of the action, then Martin Costa does a one-eighty and leaves you in the lurch and so in a fit of rage you kill him. Then — desperate to cover up your crime — you set the place on fire.”

Daniel wasn’t sure what annoyed him more, the ridiculous accusation itself or the fact that Sergeant Connor was trying to sound like an American tough guy. Even his use of “one-eighty” instead of “U-turn” made his aspirations clear. For a minute Daniel flirted with the puerile temptation to address the sergeant as “Inspector Callahan.” But he realized that flippancy wouldn’t help his position and aside from that, there was a more important point to raise.

“Before the place went up in flames, I noticed a smell. And I believe it was the smell of petrol.”

A smirk crept onto Connor’s face.

“It’s remarkable how much your memory seems to be recovering.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

By now Daniel was beginning to get irritated by the sarcasm.

“The fire started at only a single point in the building, but the investigators did find traces of an accelerant.”

“Judging by the smell that I remember, I’d be surprised if it was only ‘traces’.”

“And what’s your point?”

Daniel spoke very quietly, to emphasize his point, forcing both Connor and Vincent to strain to hear him.

“That whoever set the place on fire did so using petrol as an accelerant. I don’t mean they used a Molotov cocktail, I think the place had already been doused with petrol. That’s why it spread so quickly. But I think you already know that.”

“We do already know that Mr Klein.”

Now Daniel leaned forward confidently.

“Then you’ll also know that I drove straight from the airport to Ashwell, had lunch at the pub and then went to meet Costa. So when and where would I have got the petrol to start the fire?”

The chief inspector nodded approvingly. But Connor didn’t see this. He leaned forward across the table and almost pressed his face against Daniel’s.

“From your car? It isn’t a diesel.”

“No but it wasn’t outside the burnt-out house either. It was back at the pub. There was no way to drive to the house anyway because the path was a footpath. The final stretch would have had to be on foot. And because I was unsure of the way and where to park, I left it at the Three Tuns and walked from there. So if your theory is correct and I killed him in a fit of rage and then set the fire to cover my tracks, that would mean I would have had to go back to the pub or rather the Post Office, siphon off some petrol, without arousing any suspicion, take it back to the house and then start the fire — and all that in broad daylight, without being noticed.”

Daniel would not have been in the least surprised if Sergeant Connor had turned a bright shade of red at this juncture. But that did not happen. Instead, the sergeant merely frowned and turned round to receive yet another approving nod from his otherwise silent superior. And again the smile returned to Connor’s intensely smug face.

“Well it so happens that some one did see you siphoning off petrol from your car.”

Chapter 15

Haredi Jews did not ordinarily watch television. Indeed by and large they didn’t even own television sets. But Baruch Tikva was not one to be straight-jacketed by tradition. As far as he was concerned, there was nothing in Halacha — Jewish law — that prohibited ownership of television sets as such. The reason that ultra-orthodox Jews avoided owning and watching them was because of the content. They might see something that would corrupt them or tempt them with lewd thoughts — such as an excessive displays of female flesh. The same was true of the internet.

But Baruch Tikva knew that they lived in the modern world and that the internet was a powerful device for outreach. Whilst Shomrei Ha’ir did not believe in proselytizing among the Gentiles, they did believe in forming political alliances with anti-Zionist groups and conducting anti-Israel propaganda whenever they could.

So Baruch Tikva had a Samsung Galaxy with internet connectivity to enable him to stay in touch with the outside world, to find out what was going on and to communicate with useful allies abroad. He also used it to watch Sky News and keep abreast of current affairs as they affected the cause that he believed in.

And it was while he was watching Sky news, that he saw the report about the man who had been arrested in England connection with the fire at the house in Ashwell. Baruch Tikva’s father had told him very little about what was going on and the name Sam Morgan was not mentioned in the report. But two names were mentioned. One was Martin Costa and the other was Daniel Klein. The reason he recognized these names was two-fold. Firstly, Klein had been in the news last year as a result of his adventures in Egypt and Jordan that had nearly led to a diplomatic incident. Klein had even been hailed as the “saviour of Israel” after it was revealed that he had helped prevent the release in Israel of some deadly virus, the details of which had never been fully explained.

But that of course was Zionist Israel, not the true Israel. That was the treacherous Israel that had betrayed the teachings of the Rabbis.

There was however another reason that the name stuck in Baruch Tikva’s mind. That reason was because his father had told him that Sam Morgan was supposed to kill Daniel Klein. And when Baruch pressed his father on the subject, his father had confirmed that it was the same Daniel Klein as the one who had been in the news.

But watching the news now he was seeing a very interesting report about British police arresting a man over a fire at a house or barn in an English village. According to the report, a man called Martin Costa had been killed in the fire and the man whom the police were questioning was Daniel Klein — the same Daniel Klein who had been in the news last year over the Egyptian affair.

But that made no sense!

Sam Morgan was supposed to kill Daniel Klein and Sam Morgan was now in Israel, having just brought something to Baruch Tikva’s father. Did that mean that Sam Morgan had left England without killing Daniel Klein? And if so then how would be able to do so now? If Klein was in police custody, then how would it be possible for Morgan to kill him?

And why had Klein been arrested? Who was this Martin Costa that he was supposed to have killed? Baruch Tikva vaguely remembering the name Martin Costa also cropping up in conversation with his father.

But what was going on?

Baruch wasn’t sure, but he knew one thing: he had to tell his father.

Chapter 16

Sergeant Connor’s words were ringing in Daniel’s ears.

“It so happens that some one did see you siphoning petrol off your car.”

Now it was Daniel’s face that glowed bright red.

“Who?”

This time, for some reason, Detective Chief Inspector Vincent decided to speak.

“We had an anonymous tip-off while you were in the hospital. A man phoned in saying he’d seen a man siphoning off petrol from a car outside Post Office near the Three Tuns. He even said it was an Audi A4.”

By now Daniel — who had been so calm until now — was frantic with fear.

“But don’t you see… that’s a lie! It must have been the person who started the fire! He’s creating a smokescreen.”

Daniel realized too late that the words sounded like a rather tasteless pun.

“No doubt that’s what your lawyer will argue. But the fact is, you were there. You just got out in time. By your own admission you were not particularly well-disposed to Martin Costa to begin with. And you were seen siphoning off petrol.”

“By an anonymous witness.”

“Whether we can use it in court will be up to the judge. In the meantime, I’m not satisfied that you’ve given us all the answers you can give.”

“All right then,” replied Daniel combatively. “But perhaps you’ll give me an answer. How did this… anonymous witness identify me? Does he claim to know it was me that he saw — as opposed to just ‘a man’?”

“They showed your picture on the news… the famous ancient language expert from that big case in Egypt. He phoned Crimestoppers after that and told them. He recognized you from the picture on the news.”

“Crimestoppers?”

Crime stoppers was a charity that worked with the police to pass on information that was given to them anonymously by members of the public. They did not trace incoming calls or even record them. That meant there was no possibility of identifying the man who had called in and claimed to have seen Daniel siphoning off petrol from the hired Audi A4.

But one thing Daniel knew for sure: whoever it was who had made that call, had murdered Martin Costa.

And he also tried, thought Daniel, to murder me.

Chapter 17

“ ‘And I will set aside for thee two hundred silver zuz mohar due thee for thy maidenhood…’”

“Two hundred what?” asked Morgan.

HaTzadik was translating from the parchment scroll that Sam Morgan had brought him, while Morgan held it open and looked on eagerly.

“It’s a unit of currency,” HaTzadik explained. “The zuz was a Tyrean coin… used in Biblical times.”

“Does that mean this is a document from Biblical times?”

“Not necessarily. But they refer to a Biblical coin because for this type of document they wanted to emphasize that it was a Biblical obligation.”

“What do you mean?”

“After the Bible and the oral law, the great sages created two documents of scholarship and commentary about it, called the Gemara. The Gemara, together with the written law or Mishneh Torah is called the Talmud. But there were two Talmuds: the Jerusalem Talmud and Babylonian Talmud. The Babylonian was seven times the size of the Jerusalem and much more coherent. But on the subject of the bride price, there is an ongoing dispute between the two Talmuds about whether this was a Biblical obligation or one decided by the rabbis at the time of the Sanhedrin. However, they all agreed that the protection of the rights of the wife was vitally important to the Jewish people. So it was decided to use this language in the marriage document — referring to a Biblical coin — so as to clearly imply that it was a Biblical obligation.”

“And what does it mean ‘I will set aside’?”

“It means he doesn’t have to pay it at the time of the marriage. It was a conditional promise for the future, if they get divorced.”

“Oh so it’s like a prenuptial agreement?”

HaTzadik looked at Sam Morgan irritably.

“You could say that. It’s more like a prenuptial clause within the marriage certificate.”

“What else does it say?”

“It continues — again referring to the Torah to emphasize the venerable nature of the husband’s obligations: ‘which belong to thee according to the law of the Torah, and thy food, clothing, and other necessary benefits which a husband is obligated to provide; and I will live with thee in accordance with the requirements prescribed for each husband.’ ”

“What are these other requirements prescribed for each husband?”

“Apart from food and clothing you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Well basically it’s his conjugal duties.”

HaTzadik looked embarrassed when he said this.

“That’s a religious obligation?”

“For the husband. For the wife it’s a right.”

“What if she’s not in the mood?”

“She can say no.”

“What if he’s not in the mood?”

Again Shalom Tikva looked uncomfortable.”

“He’s supposed to do it when she wants.”

“What… whenever she asks?”

“He’s… not supposed to wait for her to ask. He’s supposed to look for signs that she wants it and then offer it.”

“Cor blimey! Who needs feminism when they’ve got Judaism?”

“There were subsequent clarifications of the law in the Shulhan Aruch.”

“What’s that?”

“A codified form of the Jewish law, stripped down to the essentials. It basically describes a man’s conjugal obligations in terms of where he works and how far he has to travel to work.”

“You mean… like… it takes account of whether he’s too tired?”

Morgan was grinning from ear to ear, both at what he was hearing and at HaTzadik’s discomfort at talking about it.

“Basically yes.”

“So if his missus was in the mood, he couldn’t refuse point blank… but he could say he was shagged out after a hard days work?”

The puerile grin remained on Sam Morgan’s face.

“Except on the Sabbath.”

The grin vanished — replaced by a look of confusion.

“But I thought the Sabbath was a holy day? Aren’t you people supposed to be thinking about God and all that holy shi — holy stuff?”

HaTzadik looked at Morgan with growing irritation.

“Between a man and his wife, sex is a holy act. Now will you please drop the subject.”

“Okay,” said Morgan, nodding slowly. “But does that mean that this parchment is what I thought it was.”

Again HaTzadik thought carefully before speaking.

“It would appear to be.”

The look on Shalom Tikva’s face was grave. But before either of them could say any more, the tension that hung in the air was broken by a loud knock on the door, and a voice shouting from outside. The voice was that of Baruch Tikva — Shalom’s son.

And he sounded agitated.

Chapter 18

A wry smile came to Daniel’s lips as he lay on the bunk in the police cell bed looking up at the ceiling. He was imagining how his spoilt, pampered ex-wife would cope if she banged up in such austere conditions as this police cell.

She’d go out of her mind.

For Daniel it was different. He had never developed a taste for luxury. He could enjoy it when it was presented to him on a plate. But he could manage equally well without it. He remembered how, not long ago, he had slept for several days on the open deck of a felucca — a river boat on the Nile. And then for the next few days he had slept under the stars in the Sinai Peninsula, travelling towards Sharm-el-Sheikh by camel with a Bedouin caravan.

Charlotte would probably have mocked him with some cutting remark accusing him of masquerading as Lawrence of Arabia.

He stopped thinking about her. There were more important things to think about. Like when they were going to release him.

If they were going to release him.

Up until the end of the last interview, he had been sure that they would. Indeed it looked like they didn’t have a choice. But now he was not so sure. When they told him about the “witness” who had “seen” him siphoning off petrol, it had completely blindsided him. He would have dismissed it as a police trick designed to elicit a confession. But unlike America, the British police are not allowed to use such trickery and any evidence obtained thereby is inadmissible in court.

But it all fell into place when the police had used the words “anonymous tip-off.” That alone made it clear what was actually happening. Whoever started the fire had also called the police afterwards. Presumably, thought Daniel, the original plan had been to kill both of them and then when that failed, the killer did the next best thing and framed him.

But there was more to it than that. Daniel had seen the protruding feet and thought that it might be a dead body. Sergeant Connor had confirmed that he was already dead and that he had been bludgeoned to death. So presumably whoever killed him had either killed him there at the house or brought the body there and then prepared the place for the arson attack. That would make perfect sense, because the fire would also conceal the time of death.

Of course, it would have been quite hard to get the body there. For a start, there was no access by car. The house was only accessible via a long footpath. Lugging a body there undetected in broad daylight would have been even harder than siphoning off petrol from a car without being seen.

On the other hand there was a parallel road nearby and the body did not have to have been brought there in daylight. It would all depend on when Costa was killed. A determined killer could have parked nearby and carried the body (possibly wrapped in a blanket) up the slope and through the bramble that separated the road from footpath. It would have been awkward but not impossible.

But the question then was when was Costa killed?

Whoever killed him and set this up would have to have known about the meeting between them. Of course the killer might have killed him and then taken a look at the text messages on his mobile phone. They might have killed him to shut him up and taken his phone to see who he had contacted. That would have told them all they needed to know.

But then another thought struck Daniel.

What if the killer had killed him as soon as he sent the original SMS. If everything came down to that SMS with the picture — if this whole thing was about damage limitation and suppressing something that some one wanted to keep secret — then maybe Costa was killed right after he sent the message. That would explain a lot of things. Why he didn’t answer the phone when Daniel called back. Why he replied by text, insisting that he was short on credit and that the battery was low. That way he could avoid talking. His voice would have given away that it wasn’t Costa. But the texts betrayed nothing.

It was a trap all along!

But who had set it? Who had killed Martin Costa and used his phone to lure Daniel into a trap that nearly cost him his life? Who had made that call to frame Daniel? Who wanted to suppress whatever it was they feared that Daniel might reveal? And perhaps more important what was it that they wanted to suppress?

The image on the phone had been blurred and unclear. Had the meeting gone ahead he might have been able to see the original. But presumably that was gone now. Whoever had killed Costa had surely made off with the document that Costa wanted to show Daniel. It might have been possible to study the image from the phone at leisure. But Daniel had dropped his phone in the burning building and it had presumably been incinerated.

At the back of Daniel’s mind was the thought that there might be a solution to this problem — and even that the solution was starting him in the face. He was still thinking about this when he heard a clanking sound. He sat up on the bed as his cell door opened. Standing there in the doorway was a smug-looking Sergeant Connor and a dour-faced Chief Inspector Vincent.

“It’s not looking too good for you sunshine,” said the sergeant, obviously enjoying himself as he put on his best tough-guy voice. “We’re charging you with murder.”

Chapter 19

Sam Morgan had stayed in the living room while HaTzadik had gone to answer the door. The voices were raised… agitated. More than that… there was anger. Both men were shouting.

Morgan didn’t have a clue what it was about. He didn’t speak a word of Hebrew — or was it Yiddish? In any case, it was quite frightening, the level of anger that seemed to have been generated between them. He was glad that they were angry with each other and not with him.

Looking down at the manuscript, he tried to blot out their shouting as he contemplated the contents. Of course he couldn’t read it any more than he could understand the spoken language. But he thought about what a great find it was. And how glad he was that Shalom Tikva wanted it so badly. He had told HaTzadik that he was sympathetic to their cause… that he too was opposed to Godless Zionism — albeit from a Christian perspective rather than a Jewish one. But at the same time, he needed to be compensated for his efforts. His work involved risk. And risk entitled him to reward.

The shouting seemed to subside and he thought that Baruch Tikva would soon be leaving. But instead, the door to the living room opened and both Shalom and his son entered the room. And what was more alarming was that they were both looking at him with anger in their eyes. In the case of the older, average-sized Shalom, this was not particularly frightening, despite his narrow, penetrating eyes.

But in the case of Baruch, who was about six foot six tall, it was quite menacing.

It was the father who spoke.

“Why did you lie to me?” he asked.

Morgan tried to hold his gaze, but was momentarily forced to look away. When his eyes again met those of HaTazadik, he was barely able to mumble a pale “what do you mean?”

“Why did you lie to me!”

It started a quietly menacing growl and ended up a monstrous roar of anger.

“About what?”

Morgan was wondering if HaTzadik was starting to question the authenticity of the manuscript. There was surely no reason to. He was quite sure that it was genuine.

“About Daniel Klein! You told me you killed him!”

Chapter 20

“They should be able to get the records of Costa’s text messages — and your replies — from the phone company. They may even be able to get the actual content of the texts. But, of course, that doesn’t stop them putting their own interpretation on it.”

“What about the anonymous tip-off?”

Daniel was consulting his lawyer in a meeting room at the police station. The lawyer in question was in fact the duty solicitor assigned to the police station to help suspects who didn’t have a lawyer of their own.

“They probably won’t be allowed to use it in court. It didn’t trigger a specific action by the police like a search or anything that in turn led to the discovery of more evidence, let alone evidence that can be cross-verified by another means. I’m assuming, of course, that there is no physical evidence that petrol was siphoned off from the tank.”

“There’s no way there could be. I certainly didn’t siphon any off, and I don’t think there’d have been time for anyone else to. I mean I walked to the house at reasonable speed and the attack occurred within about a minute of me entering.”

The duty solicitor had advised him that he could get another lawyer and that he could do this either now or at a later stage. He decided for the time being to stick to the duty solicitor and decide later whether to get some one else. In any case, because he was being charged, the more important task was to make sure the solicitor found a good barrister to represent him in court.

“Well if you’re sure of that, then I have a suggestion that might help. We could ask the police to check the level of petrol in the hired car and compare it to the level when you hired it. I assume you started with a full tank?”

Daniel nodded.

“They can calculate the approximate fuel consumption and compare it to the amount you actually used. And of course we’d also ask them to check the mileage indicator against the records of the car hire company.”

“I don’t know why they didn’t do that first,” said Daniel irritably.

“They were probably being just a little too eager. I think they’re placing too much emphasis on your motive.”

“I don’t have a motive.”

“Well their theory is — ”

“I know what their theory is! But it’s all based on a false assumption — that he changed his mind.”

“But if he never got the chance to talk to you, then how do you know that he didn’t change his mind.”

Daniel looked at the lawyer astonished. This was pure courtroom demagoguery. If Daniel didn’t know then he couldn’t have a motive. But surely the initial presumption had to be that Costa hadn’t changed his mind. There was no specific reason to think otherwise — except to twist the facts to fit the theory. Daniel tried to explain this to the solicitor in the simplest language he could think of.

“I don’t know if he changed his mind or not. But there’s nothing to suggest that he did. And my theory is that he was killed well before the meeting and the fire was to conceal the time of death — as well as to kill me.”

“Now that is pure conjecture.”

“Yes but unlike this speculative theory that he changed his mind, it fits the facts. First of all he was dead when I got there.”

“But you said he might have been unconscious.”

Daniel was by now getting irritated with the solicitor’s “devil’s advocate” approach.

“As far as I knew, he might have been unconscious! But the police told me that he didn’t die of either burns or smoke inhalation. They said he was already dead before the fire. I know that I didn’t kill him. Therefore he must have been dead already — and not merely unconscious! And another thing, if he was merely unconscious, then he might have come round and got out before they threw in whatever it was that started the fire. That would mean that the arsonist-murderer was leaving things to chance. And I don’t believe that. This whole thing was too well planned.”

“Okay but there’s a big difference between framing you and trying to kill you.”

“That maybe, but I barely made it out of there alive. I certainly didn’t have any help getting out. That means that whoever did it was trying to kill me.”

“But why would they try to kill you and frame you?”

Chapter 21

“I said I dealt with him — not that I killed him.”

“But you let me believe that you killed him.”

Sam Morgan could see that HaTzadik’s anger was not assuaged by this feeble excuse. Neither was that of Baruch Tikva, who had never liked him. Technically it was true. He had been careful to avoid saying that he had killed Daniel Klein, perhaps because he didn’t want to admit that he had tried but failed.

He had covered his tracks brilliantly, phoning Crimestoppers and effectively setting up Daniel to take the rap. But he didn’t want to emphasize that. He wanted to portray himself as a man who knew that he was doing, not an incompetent buffoon.

“I killed Martin Costa and used the fire to cover up his injuries. As far as the police are concerned, he died in the fire. And they think that it was Daniel who caused the fire. That’s why he’s been arrested.”

“He can still talk!”

“Yes but he doesn’t know anything, so there’s not much he can talk about! The picture he got is far too blurred for him to read the manuscript.”

“Don’t be too sure of that!” said Baruch Tikva. “I have heard of this man before: he is not going to give up.”

Morgan was on the back foot and he knew it. Baruch Tikva was a big man and he could be quite menacing when he was angry.

“Trust me, right now reading a blurred image sent to his phone is the least of his worries. He’ll be more worried about clearing his name. And also I heard on the news that he lost his phone in the fire.”

HaTzadik was still angry.

“I want him dead!”

“There’s no way I can kill him now. He’s behind bars and they won’t let him out on bail… not for murder.”

“Can’t you get to him in prison?”

“No way. It’s not like America. And a murder suspect will be in a Category A wing.”

“What’s that?”

“High Security. That means he’ll be impossible for me to get at.”

“I don’t mean you. Can’t you contact the family of another prisoner and get them to do it? By offering them money?”

Morgan didn’t even hesitate in his reply.

“That would be almost impossible. They have CCTV cameras in British prisons. It would be very hard to kill some one undetected.”

“But a life prisoner would have nothing to lose. They don’t have the death penalty in England.”

Morgan smiled at HaTzadik’s naivety.

“They don’t have life either — except in rare cases. In England, life doesn’t mean life. Sometimes they can get out in as little as five years. But not if they commit another murder. The last thing any prisoner wants to do is lengthen his sentence by committing a murder for which he’s bound to get caught.”

Morgan could see the irritation on Shalom Tikva’s face — as well as that of his son, who spoke even better English. But there was nothing he could do. They had to face the facts.

“Is this Daniel Klein single?”

This made Morgan rather edgy.

“Why?”

“Leverage?”

“He’s divorced. His ex-wife is in America. But I don’t think threatening her is going to make any difference. I don’t think there’s any love lost between the two of them.

The older man turned to his son and said something in Hebrew orYiddish. The younger man replied.

“Did they have children?”

Morgan was becoming increasingly concerned by the direction this conversation had taken off in.

“No.”

Baruch Tikva said something to his father. HaTzadik replied.

“Ani rotseh sheh’ata tisa le’Anglia. Yesh li avoda ktana bishvilkha la’asot.”

Morgan didn’t understand, but a rough translation of his reply would be:

“I want you to go to England. I have a little job that I want you to do.”

Chapter 22

As a desk officer in the small tightly-knit Mossad, Dovi Shamir could be handling upward of a hundred cases at any one time. Often this meant little more than speed-reading a report from a katsa (field-based case officer). But at times he missed the cut and thrust of field work himself. That was why he had been only too happy to come out of retirement when a special assignment arose to eliminate a Hamas terrorist who had participated in the murder of two Israeli soldiers and who was planning a major operation in London.

However he had been seriously compromised and could not now work in the field or indeed anywhere outside Israel. Technically wanted for murder on an Interpol warrant, he had to stay in Israel, unless he travelled in disguise under a false identity.

But his experience made him a very good desk officer too. Of the many cases that he was covering, the one that concerned him most was the one that Daniel Klein had got caught up in. Although not a “Sayan” — i.e. a co-optee or asset, run by a field officer — Daniel was a non-Israeli Jew who had recently stumbled into a conspiracy that could have led to the deaths of millions of Israelis, had he not acted on his own initiative with courage, wisdom and haste.

For this reason alone, Dovi Shamir considered Daniel to be under his “protective wing” and the fact that Daniel was now in a British gaol awaiting trial for a murder that he almost certainly did not commit was most displeasing to Dovi. Accordingly, he was taking a personal interest in the case.

But there was a limit to what he could do. It had taken a lot of diplomatic string-pulling to save Dovi himself after the British police had him “bang to rights” on a charge of murdering Ismail Shahaid on British soil. The fact that his face had been plastered all over the news media made it even harder for the British to let him go, as to do so would be seen as a sign of favouritism to Israel, fuelling all the old conspiracy theories about the Zionists running the world. Even the Israeli authorities themselves had been ready to throw Dovi to the wolves.

In the end, what saved Dovi’s neck was the fact that he had done for Britain what Daniel Klein had done for Israel: saved a lot of innocent lives using his own initiative and working practically alone. Specifically, Dovi had prevented Ismail Shahaid’s terrorist colleagues from blowing up the wreck of the Richard Montgomery — a munitions ship from the Second World War that was sunk in the Thames Estuary and lay precariously on the seabed off the coast of Sheerness for several decades thereafter packed with unstable explosives.

This successful thwarting of a terrorist operation that would have left thousands of British citizens dead and caused millions of pounds worth of damage, gave the Israeli authorities enough leverage to bargain with and gave Dovi personally enough kudos to enable the British to release him with a nod and a wink. However, the international warrant was still open and technically he was still a wanted man.

Daniel Klein had also fallen afoul of the Metropolitan Police in London, when he had come under suspicion of murdering his mentor, the late Harrison Carmichael. He also came under suspicion over an attempt on the life of Egyptian Minister for Antiquities Akil Mansoor and for stealing antiquities from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, but these were all cleared up by further evidence and some adroit diplomacy.

So right now, all Dovi could do was sit tight and wait for these events to play out. From what he had been able to ascertain from local sources, the case against Daniel wasn’t all that strong. He had been lured into a meeting and then ambushed. Dovi even had proof that there was a plan to kill Daniel and of who was behind it. If necessary, this information could be made available to the British authorities through the appropriate diplomatic and shared intelligence channels. But Dovi wasn’t ready for that yet. Once they went down that route, it might tip off Shomrei Ha’ir that the authorities were on to them. Dovi wanted to play his cards close to his chest for a while longer, even if that meant that Daniel Klein would have to sit it out behind bars for a while longer.

Yet it was hard to understand why they had even arrested, let alone charged, Daniel. It was obvious that he had come close to being killed himself. He clearly had no motive to kill Martin Costa and phone company records would show that he had been lured there. And why kill by starting a fire? Then Dovi remembered that Harrison Carmichael had been killed by violent blows and then his house burnt down. The parallels were remarkable.

But Daniel had been cleared in that case. Did the police in this case really think that he was guilty in the Harrison Carmichael case after all? Or had the copper in charge of the present case just got hold of the wrong end of the stick? Dovi hoped that when the matter came to the remand hearing, wiser counsel would prevail. But in the meantime, he decided to hold tight. However, all that came to an abrupt end when a report came through on his eMail.

Internet Intercept summary — 9 August, 2012 — 16:30 IST

Client user(s): “Baruch Tikva” (Identified by IP address, MAC number, username and password) [on file]

Client computer locus: Mea She’arim, Jerusalem, Israel

Client computer IP address: 86.44.87.146

Client computer Mac no.: A7-DB-3C-9A-E0-6B

Respondent server owner: lastminute.com [listed organization]

Respondent server locus: Zurich, Switzerland

Respondent server IP no.: 2.17.241.8

Respondent server Mac no.: D2-FE-78-2C-29-A7

Reason(s): 1) Client user on SHaBaK watch list for monitoring.

SUMMARY:

Subject booked airline tickets in name of “Baruch Tikva” for travel to London on 10 August, 2012 at 07:10 IST on British Airways, Flight BA162.

It couldn’t be a coincidence.

Dovi realized immediately that this had to have something to do with Daniel Klein still being alive despite the ambush and Sam Morgan’s arrival in Israel. He would liaise with SHaBaK, who were keeping tabs on Morgan and the Tikvas — father and son. But right now he had a more urgent priority.

He logged on to lastminute.com and seeing that there was only one place remaining on that flight booked a ticket in the name of Siobhan Stewart. Then he picked up the phone and called an all too familiar mobile phone number.

“Hi Sarit. I have an urgent assignment for you.”

Chapter 23

The trip from the police station to the Crown Court had been brief but uncomfortable. The road had been somewhat bumpy. Either that or it was just a bad driver. Either way, Daniel couldn’t escape the paranoid feeling that this was a way of “breaking” a suspect, even though they had been perfectly polite to him, almost to the point of deference.

At the court he was able to meet with a new solicitor whom he had retained on the advice of a colleague who had told him that duty solicitors are a “waste of space.” Peter Hackett, the man he had hired in place of the duty solicitor was known to be very unpopular with the police.

“There’s a reason for that,” the solicitor had explained to Daniel over the phone.

“And what’s that?” Daniel had asked, already anticipating the answer.

“I’m good. I get results. That’s something the police don’t like.”

Like Daniel, Hackett was a man in his early forties of average height and athletic build, but athletic in the sense of lean and trim, not big or muscular. But there was something about him that inspired confidence. He radiated self-assurance and Daniel suspected that when he was in his element, he could be quite formidable.

“Okay let me brief you about what’s going to happen when we go into court. You’ll be asked to confirm your name. At that point you just say yes, nothing more. Don’t say anything else at that stage unless they actually get your name wrong, which almost certainly isn’t going to happen.”

Daniel nodded.

“Okay then the next thing they’ll do is read out the charge and ask you whether you plead guilty or not guilty. At that point you say ‘not guilty’ and nothing else. You can even sit down after that.”

“What about bail?”

“That’s what I’m getting to. At that stage, the judge will ask if there’s an application for bail. At that point I’ll make an application for bail. The judge will invite counsel for the prosecution to respond and needless to say he — or she — will oppose the application. There may be a bit of too-ing and fro-ing between me and the lawyer from the CPS and then the judge will rule.”

“What are my chances?”

“Of getting bail on a murder charge?”

“Yes.”

“It can happen. You have don’t have a criminal record for a similar offence, so the legal presumption is in your favour. On the other hand you did breach your bail conditions that time you were accused of killing Harrison Carmichael.”

“If I hadn’t done that I’d never have come up with the evidence that proved my innocence.”

“I can argue that, but it’s not the sort of thing that the Courts like to hear.”

“What do they like to hear?”

“That you’re sorry about that time, but that it was a very different case. That you came back of your own accord. That you’re a man of unblemished record when it comes to actual criminal convictions. That you have a permanent residence in this country. That you have a job. That you’re ready to surrender your passport and wear an electronic tag.”

“And you think that’ll swing it?”

The lawyer gave this a moment’s thought.

“We can but try.”

“Is that a coded way of telling me not to get my hopes up.”

The lawyer smiled.

“We’re on the same wavelength.”

“Is there anything I can do that might help tip the scales in my favour?”

Again the lawyer paused to give the answer the care and consideration it deserved.

“Nothing at this stage. When it comes to the committal hearing, what we really need is evidence.”

“What sort of evidence?”

“Something that might counter the prosecution’s theory about Costa changing his mind.”

“Like what? He never had a chance to tell me anything.”

“No but he sent you the image already. So we could argue that changing his mind was irrelevant.”

“Yes, but like I told the police, the image was blurred. That’s why I was meeting him. He was going to show me the original — at least I assume he was.”

“You know what they say about assume. But let me ask you this: why didn’t you just ask him to send you another copy of the image — a less blurred copy?

“I told him it was blurred and left the ball in his court. He chose not to do it that way.”

“But you see, that’s the problem. That suggests that maybe he decided not to be so open with you.”

“Or maybe he just felt that a face to face meeting would be more productive.”

“Now that is pure speculation. Can you take a look at the image and see if you can decipher it… or read at least part of it?”

“It was on my phone. I dropped that when I escaped.”

“It’s a pity you didn’t make a back up.”

The words jogged Daniel’s memory. He just about to blurt out that he had, when he decided to hold back. It occurred to him that he didn’t really know anything about this man who was representing him. Sure it was his lawyer, and as such some one who had a professional duty to him as the client. But how much did he really know about him? He had hired him on a recommendation. But even if Hackett was a hundred percent trustworthy, what if he was being watched? Whoever had tried to kill Daniel, it was evidently some one dangerous. Anything he told the lawyer might merely put the lawyer in jeopardy… and might leak out to the unknown enemy who was still out there.

Daniel decided to hold back for the time being.

Chapter 24

“I hope you didn’t take it personally,” said Baruch Tikva as he helped the young redhead get her hand luggage down from the overhead compartment. She was twentysomething and petite, yet athletic. But he wasn’t supposed to notice that. When she had first taken up her window seat next to him, he had objected to the airline staff, explaining that he was an orthodox Jew and that he couldn’t sit next to a woman. She had pointed out that she was modestly dressed but he insisted that either she or he be moved so that he could sit next to a man instead.

She agreed to move in principle, but explained that her bag was already in the overhead compartment and that as the plane had now more or less filled up, she might not be able to find room for it elsewhere. The flight attendant said that she could leave the bag there and collect it at the end of the flight. She agreed to this but insisted that if she needed anything from it during the flight she must be free to get it. The flight attendant diplomatically extracted a promise from Baruch Tikva that this would be no problem.

Baruch realized that he had probably come over as rather pushy, but he believed in standing up for his principles and he knew that airline staff tend to try to be accommodating. In the event the girl hadn’t come back during the flight and he actually felt grateful that she had agreed to be the one to move. Without giving way to the feelings of lust from his loins, he actually warmed to this girl somewhat, perhaps because she was clearly not Jewish. If her morals were loose, that was of no consequence, because she was a stranger. This meant that she wasn’t a traitor in the way that fallen Jewish women were.

So when she returned for the bag at the end of the flight, he realized that it made sense for him to take advantage of his considerable height to help her get it down. And she, for her part, seemed grateful. He had already picked up on the girl’s Irish accent and as he took the bag down, he noticed the name Siobhan Stewart on the baggage tag. Clearly Irish! But she didn’t look like a nun or even a convent girl. He suspected that she was simply a returning tourist who had just visited the Holy Land and that she either lived in London or was going to get a connecting flight to Ireland.

At passport control he was surprised to see that she was ahead of him in the non-EU passport queue. He assumed that Ireland was part of the EU. But again he dismissed it from his mind as he cleared Passport Control. Paradoxically, the queue for EU passports was longer than for non-EU — because border control staff had been re-assigned to customs in accordance with the government philosophy that catching smugglers was more important than facilitating the fast through-flow of passengers.

He didn’t have any stowed luggage of his own, only hand baggage, and so he went directly to the green channel with his small suitcase, passing through unimpeded, until he spotted a powerful man bearing a sign with the name “Tikva”. Baruch Tikva was a big man himself, but he sensed that the driver was a fighter who would be a formidable opponent. He suspected that this man was not merely the driver of the person he was going to see, but also the bodyguard. And he knew well why a bodyguard was needed.

The driver took his bag and led him to the short-term car park, where a white Rolls Royce was waiting. The driver opened a rear passenger door deferentially for Tikva, who stepped into a white leather-upholstered interior while the driver placed the bag in the boot. The half hour drive took them to Chesham Place in Belgravia.

Tikva was not a worldly man, having only rarely set foot outside of Israel and then usually only to Jewish areas of major metropolises like London’s Stamford Hill. But the townhouse in Belgravia lived up to his expectations. He had once seen an episode of a British television series set against the background of the British aristocracy in Edwardian times and this place reminded him of that.

After a five minute wait in an anteroom, Tikva was led into a rosewood-panelled drawing room where he found himself facing an elegant lady in her sixties, remarkably attractive for her age. He remembered that she had once been a model in TV adverts. She was dressed in an beige evening dress, but he was relieved that it was suitably modest.

“Good evening,” she said in the most upper class English accent he had ever heard. “I am Lady Lefou. But you may call me Chienmer.”

He looked at her blankly.

“My first name.”

She held out her hand. But he hesitated. As an orthodox Jewish man he was not supposed to shake hands with a woman. But it would seem impolite if he spurned the hand of his hostess. It would feed all the prejudices against the Jews that this woman was known for. On the other hand she would surely understand. She had criticized western women — or at least the younger ones — for the immodesty of their dress. And she had praised the Muslims for their standards of modesty, in contrast.

“A pleasure to meet you,” he replied, keeping his hands by his sides but bowing from the waist, like an old-fashioned English gentleman.

Bowing from the waist was acceptable, he told himself, as long as he didn’t bend the knee.

Orthodox Jews only bend the knee before God.

Lefou lowered her hand, as if realizing Baruch Tikva’s dilemma.

“Well sit down.”

She pointed to an armchair that bore an embroidered design of pink and purple on a fabric of pale gold. He sat, but realized afterwards that he had committed a faux pas and should have waited for her to sit first. She smiled at his obvious embarrassment, as she took her seat opposite him.

“First of all,” she said, “I want you to know that I don’t see you as tainted by the same brush as the Zionists.”

He remembered that although she had positioned herself as anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic, she had also declared herself to be against Judaism, as a religion, claiming that it was “dishonest, inhumane, supremacist, hate-fuelled, predatory, treacherous and does not deserve to be called a religion at all.” She claimed, however, that she was not hostile to people of Jewish descent per se. But that did not prevent her from accusing them of being part of a conspiracy with the Freemasons, from whom, she asserted, they were indistinguishable. A self-styled “atheist”, she also professed to be an admirer of Iranian Shi’ite Islam, which she claimed was similar to Hellenism!

However, although Shomrei Ha’ir believed, like other orthodox Jews, in the same Talmud that Lefou had lambasted, she had already made it clear, in their online communications, that she was ready to make an exception for them in the name of expediency. He nodded his acceptance of her “graciousness”, thinking that now was not the time to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“So Mr Tikva, I understand you want me to use my contacts to make certain arrangements for you.”

He coughed nervously and spoke in an uncharacteristically awkward tone.

“Yes. Both personnel and equipment.”

“Specifically?”

“I need a driver — a good one. Also a couple of men with guns who know how to use them.”

Chienmer Lefou didn’t flinch.

“That’s it?”

“Oh and one other thing. Three L-109 hand grenades.”

Chapter 25

“Your Honour, my client is a respected academic with no criminal record whatsoever. He has a tenured teaching post at University College London. He has published numerous scholarly papers in prestigious academic journals. He has participated in conferences around the world. He has but one residential address, in London and is a UK resident for tax purposes and has been on the electoral roll in the United Kingdom since his eighteenth birthday without abatement. He is a man of unblemished record and of good character, as attested by these affidavits from various colleagues both in the UK and abroad — which m’learned friend has accepted uncontested. For these reasons I would ask that he be released on bail and that bail be set at a reasonable amount.”

Because the charge was murder, the bail application had to go through a Circuit judge in the Crown Court, as a magistrates’ court lacked the authority to release on bail a person charged with murder. The judge, a tall man in his sixties, sat impassively through Peter Hackett’s brief presentation. Hackett was responding to the prosecutor’s initial submission that where the charge was murder, bail could not be granted unless the Court was satisfied that the accused would not harm anyone else while on bail. Hackett had responded by dismissing the suggestion that Daniel would harm anyone as absurd and then went on to argue for bail, instead of letting the prosecutor lead off with additional arguments against bail.

This was an unusual approach — as there was always a legal presumption in favour of bail — but it was not unheard of. The judge inclined his head towards the prosecutor.

“Mr Richmond.”

Hackett sat down and Anthony Richmond for the prosecution rose from his seat.

“Briefly, Your Honour, the Crown opposes bail and asks that the accused be remanded in custody until the Committal Hearing. Whilst it is true that he has no previous criminal record — nor indeed Cautions, Reprimands or Warnings — it is a matter of undisputed record that on a previous occasion he left the jurisdiction of the Court and went abroad using a foreign passport while on bail for another murder.”

Hackett stirred, as if poised to respond. But Richmond pre-empted him.

“Now the Crown concedes that Professor Klein was wholly innocent of that murder and indeed further freely concedes — without being prompted — that he was instrumental in identifying and physically apprehending the real killer in Israel where said killer was subsequently convicted of serious offences involving terrorism. The Crown also concedes that although Professor Klein left the jurisdiction of the court without authorization, and breached other bail conditions, he did finally answer to his bail upon his return to the United Kingdom, whereupon the Crown took the view that it was not in the public interest to prosecute him for his breach of bail conditions.

“However, the fact that Professor Klein was ready and able to breach his bail in such a brazen manner — going so far as to flee the country — means that there is a significant risk that he may do so again in this case. Furthermore, Professor Klein has a substantial — one may even call it a vast — network of contacts abroad as a result of the international nature of his work. The Crown concedes that he is resident in the United Kingdom and that he holds a tenured position here at a prestigious university and that his sole residence — as far as we know — is located within the jurisdiction of this Court. But he has relatives and contacts in the United States and Israel and could easily escape the jurisdiction of this Court, should he be minded to do so. That, in conjunction with the fact that he has done so on a previous occasion, renders him — in the submission of the Crown — ineligible for bail.”

Richmond sat down and Hackett rose again, not waiting for the judge to call on him to do so.

“Your Honour should know that if this is the main source of the Court’s concern, then Professor Klein is willing to surrender his passports to the Court. Indeed I have it here in my possession now for immediate surrender, should this satisfy Your Honour.”

Hackett sat down. The judge turned to the Crown’s representative.

“Mr Richmond?”

“Unfortunately, Your Honour, we don’t know how many passports Professor Klein has. He may have an Israeli passport for all we know. And even without a passport, he has shown himself quite resourceful in crossing borders when he is really determined.”

This was a reference to Daniel’s daring escape from Egypt in a speedboat that he hired in Sharm-el-Sheikh, followed by a hair-raising underwater swim while being shot at by Egyptian border guards. At the time it had been a white-knuckle ride adventure. Then, after that, it was a moment of glory to be joyously relived. But now it was coming back to haunt him, cited as proof that he was a flight risk and thus disqualified from being released on bail.

“Do you wish to add anything Mr. Hackett.”

The defence lawyer had shot his bolt. He knew that he had no more ammunition.

“No Your Honour.”

The judge shuffled his papers and appeared to be giving the matter some thought. Finally he spoke.

“My decision is as follows. Firstly, with regard to Section 114 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 as written into Section 6ZA of the Bail Act 1976 by way of amendment, I am satisfied that the accused is not likely to harm anyone if released on bail. Secondly with regard to Schedule 1, Part 1, 2 sub-paragraph a, of the Bail Act, I am satisfied that the accused would surrender to his bail.”

On hearing this Daniel was beginning to get his hopes up.

“However with regard to Schedule A, Part 1, 2 sub-paragraph b of the Bail Act, namely committing an offence while on bail, it should be noted that leaving the jurisdiction of the court is an offence. And whilst the accused was not charged with such an offence on the previous occasion that he was released on bail, it is a matter of undisputed fact that he committed said offence and therefore the possibility of a repetition of the offence is a distinct possibility that cannot be ruled out.”

It was like a knife twisting in his gut. One minute it looked like he was going to be released and the next minute, the prospect of freedom was whisked away from him.

The charge of murder still held no fear for him. The case against him was obviously weak, and he had every confidence that he would be cleared when the police did the back room work that would verify his account of events. But for now it looked like he was going to be spending some time behind bars.

“The accused is therefore remanded in custody for 28 days, pending a full investigation of the defence’s exculpatory claims. In the event that the prosecution wishes to proceed with the indictment, the defence may make a further application for bail at that time.”

Chapter 26

A feeling of dejection swept over Daniel as he was escorted back to the van. The guards actually seemed quite sympathetic towards him. There was no smugness or gloating as they slammed the van door behind him. It was if they realized that this was no “toe-rag” or “scrote” living a life of crime, nor even a man who thought he was above the law, but just an ordinary man swept up in a wave of circumstances.

This did not mean that they thought he was innocent, nor on the other that he was guilty. Just that he was an ordinary man who had somehow fallen afoul of the system and who now had to adapt to it, whether it be for a few weeks, a few months or a few years.

That last did not appeal to Daniel. But then again, in his mind, it wasn’t going to happen.

What evidence have they got? I was lured into a trap and some one set the place on fire? That’s not a case!

But as he felt the van moving, he realized there was more to it than that. What about the anonymous tip-off? They couldn’t even use it. So what did they have? Suspicion — naked suspicion. That was all.

In the darkened windows of the van, he saw flashes of light and he realized that photographers were holding up cameras, taking pictures, hoping that with the flash they would be able to capture his face. But the guard had been kind enough to position him facing the other way. At the time he wondered why. Now he realized.

His mind returned to his more serious predicament. Would they be able to check out his hired car and confirm that he hadn’t siphoned off any petrol? Would they “proceed with the indictment?” Peter Hackett had told him that if they did, it could be up to seventy days before the committal hearing.

Daniel was used to living in Spartan conditions, but he didn’t relish the thought of spending nearly four months behind bars.

At least it’ll be a British prison, he tried to reassure himself.

All those movies and TV series about prison rapes in the showers in American prisons didn’t exactly appeal to him.

“Cheer up mate,” said the guard in the van. “It might never happen.”

This was the kind of perky small talk that he could well do without. However, he couldn’t help but smile. The guard evidently meant well.

Daniel closed his eyes and tried to relax, feeling himself carried along by the smooth movement of the van. But his equanimity was shattered by the sound of an explosion. He opened his eyes to see panic on the eyes of the guard and hear machine gun fire raking the van. Peering though the heavy tinted glass between the rear and the driver’s section, he saw that the windscreen was not just shattered but was no longer there and the driver and front seat guard were slumped across the dashboard, unmoving.

He heard shouts from outside and saw the guard reaching into his utility belt first for his TASER and then for his CS-spray canister. For a second, it looked as if the guard was going to use them on Daniel himself. But then the guard turned to the door. There was a second explosion, but this one was much louder than the first — and more damaging. It smashed the double doors from their hinges and sent them flying, still locked together into the passenger cabin, smashing into the guard and slamming him against the partition between the cabin and the driver’s seat.

Daniel too was hit by it, but he turned away just as it happened and because he was further in, the impact was much less severe. It slammed hard into his left arm and shoulder with a powerful thump, causing a throbbing pain that lingered. But it was muscle pain. The door had impacted upon his flesh, but none of his bones were broken.

And it was then that Daniel found himself facing a most extraordinary sight. For standing outside the van, looking straight at him was an extremely tall, bearded man in the black costume of an ultra-orthodox Jewish sect.

Daniel’s mind was reeling from what was happening.

Has he come to rescue me?

But he had killed people. The driver and front seat guard had been either shot or blown up — possibly both — and the guard in the cabin was moaning in agony and bleeding profusely. Daniel hadn’t asked for this! He couldn’t accept freedom on these terms. It would be as if he had asked for this.

And then Daniel saw two things that began to put it into context. Firstly the tall, bearded man was holding a hand grenade in his left hand and a submachine gun in his right. Secondly, the man was raising the submachine gun into a firing position. But why?

Who is there left to shoot?

And then Daniel realized.

For a split second, he felt the urge to duck or squirm or cover his torso with his arms. But then he realized how pointless it would be. This was it: the “oh shit” moment.

And then it happened again.

There was a roar, like the gunning of a powerful engine and then another roar this one in a deeper pitch, but rising in pitch as it grew louder. And as the bearded man tried to position his finger on the trigger — made awkward by the grenade that was dangling from it — his eyes darted round and a look of terror broke out on his face as he tried to dive for cover.

He didn’t make it.

Instead he was hit by a large, powerful motorbike that sent him flying. The bike came to a halt directly behind the rear exit that had been turned into a gaping hole by the second explosion. And on the motorbike was a figure covered from top to toe in black leathers, face hidden by a fibreglass visor.

The figure’s head was turned so that he must have been looking squarely at Daniel. But who was he? Whoever he was, he was Daniel’s saviour. But what was Daniel to do now?

The figure looked round, in the direction that the bearded man had gone flying and signalled Daniel — with a sweeping gesture of his arm — to get out of the van and onto the motorbike. But Daniel hesitated. The same reservations applied as before. Even if the biker had not carried out the attack, to flee under these circumstances would make him look guilty. The authorities would have no way of knowing that the van was attacked by some one and that he had been rescued by some one else.

The man on the bike looked around frantically again and then produced a handgun and squeezed off two shots in what seemed like two different directions. The next thing that Daniel heard was a car engine roaring and receding. Again the man on the bike signalled Daniel, this time with the hand wielding the gun, but did not at any time point it at Daniel.

In the driver’s section, Daniel could hear voices on the radio suggesting that the police dispatcher was aware that something was up. But it was the next thing to happen that surprised Daniel most. The man on the bike lifted his visor to reveal his face and at that point Daniel saw that the he was in fact a she. And it was a face that he recognized. She had been baptised Siobhan Stewart.

But Daniel knew her as Sarit Shalev.

At that point his hesitation gave way to relief. He ran to the back of the van, leapt out and onto the motorbike, holding on to Sarit without fear or concern. The bike roared to life and swept past the fallen bearded man just as he was beginning to recover. Daniel felt the rush of wind and adrenaline as the powerful motor carried him away from the scene of the carnage. And in the distance he heard the sound of an approaching police siren.

Chapter 27

“How could you let this happen!”

“I don’t know who he was! One minute I was all set to kill him and a second later I was hit by the motorbike!”

This exchange between Baruch Tikva and his father was taking place over the phone. But their voices were so loud, they could have been standing eyeball to eyeball in the same room.

“But why were you standing in the middle of the road?”

“I wasn’t. I was standing directly behind the police van.”

“Then why did the motorbike hit you?”

“That’s what I’m telling you! It was deliberate!”

“What do you mean, deliberate?”

“After the bike hit me, he shot the two men who were helping me. They were professionals… men with guns who knew how to use them… and he just pulled a gun and shot both of them.”

“I thought you had three men with you?”

“Yes, but one was the driver.”

“And what did he do?”

“He ran away — the coward! He left me there. I nearly got caught. I had to run away… and I was limping. I thought he broke my leg.”

“You could have made up a story. Said you were a bystander and said the man on the motorbike was part of it.”

“But then I’d’ve been in the public eye. They’d ask me to tell them everything I saw. It’s better this way.”

“It’s not better, Baruch, it’s very bad!”

“I know… I know.”

Baruch Tivka was genuinely apologetic. He knew that he had let his father down and he felt guilty. He revered his father and would do anything for him.

“Do you have any idea where he has gone?”

“No. It came completely out of the blue. I don’t know how anyone could have known what I was planning.”

“Is it possible that the shiksa betrayed you?”

“ Chienmer Lefou. I don’t think so.”

“You know she hates all Jews?”

“Yes, but she made it clear that she was ready to work with us because we are against the Zionist heretics.”

“Then who could it be?”

Baruch Tikva tried to think.

“Maybe there’s a spy in the camp.”

“That’s impossible. I told no one but you.”

“Do you think they’re watching us?”

“Possibly. Or maybe Lady Lefou is being watched. She’s quite a controversial figure, you know. She attended the holocaust conference in Teheran.”

At the other end of the phone, there was silence. Finally the old man spoke.

“That would have brought her to the attention of the British authorities. They probably are watching her! You should have been more careful.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well at least we are not being watched.”

“But what are we going to do?”

Baruch had always wanted to impress his father with his initiative — as he had when he found out about Daniel not being dead. But now he too had failed to kill him. And worse still, he had effectively helped Daniel escape from the police. Apart from that, he had got two of Chienmer Lefou’s men killed. And the driver would probably go running back to her with tales of Baruch Tikva’s carelessness. He would get the blame.

And worse still, the people she hired were probably not her own. They were gangsters. That meant they had their own friends and contacts who would be looking out for them.

What if they think I lured them into a trap?

He knew now that he would have to lie low for a while, not only from the police but also from Chienmer Lefou and her network of contacts. Fortunately, she didn’t know where he was staying. All she had was a mobile phone number. And he knew that he could blend in with other ultra-orthodox Jews in Golders Green or Stamford Hill. The only thing that marked him out was his height.

His father spoke again.

“Do you remember I asked you about Daniel’s family?”

“Yes. But like I told you, he’s divorced. And they didn’t have children.”

“No,but I was thinking about his extended family… parents, brothers sisters, etc.”

“I think he has three sisters. I know that one of them has three daughters, eight-year-old twins and a five year old.”

Chapter 28

“They’re a small, ultra-orthodox Jewish sect called Shomrei Ha’ir.”

“I’ve heard of them. The most anti-Zionist Hassidic sect — ”

“Everybody’s heard of them! And they’re not Hassidic. Ultra-orthodox, yes. But not Hassidic. Technically they’re a Lithuanian Jewish sect.”

Daniel was looking at Sarit with that same feeling of lust that he had developed for her back in Israel, after he had seen through Gaby and her true colours. Physically they were very different women. Gaby, a former competitive swimmer, was taller than Daniel, whereas Sarit was barely five feet five. Yet despite the height, she was as fit as Gaby had been and had proved quite effective when the two women had engaged in a catfight in the shallows of the Jordan River. Gaby packed quite a bit of muscle into her small frame and now that she had taken off her biker’s leathers and stripped down to a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, she looked pretty damn sexy.

“Push your eyeballs back in,” she told Daniel, firmly.

His tension broke into a smile as he realized that he had been ogling her.

They were in a safe house in Edgware, having got back to London via a series of A and B roads, to avoid the numerous CCTV cameras that now seemed to be everywhere.

“How did you know they were going to be there?”

“We’ve been keeping them under surveillance.”

“We… being…”

“The Mossad. There’s a limit to what I can tell you, but suffice it to say that when your name came up on the radar, Dovi took a personal interest in it.”

Daniel remembered Dovi Shamir from his last little adventure. When he fled to Israel from Egypt, he had been interviewed by Dovi and initially given quite a hostile reception. But after that, a mutual respect had developed between them. Then, when Daniel foiled a plot to contaminate Israel’s water supply, he became something of a hero amongst the elite few who were truly in the know.

Sarit Shalev had also been part of it. But she had not always been Sarit Shalev.

She had first travelled to Israel from Cork in Ireland with her parents and brother, visiting Jerusalem’s numerous churches and wondering around the city as a curious eighteen-year-old. But a tranquil holiday was turned into something ugly when a suicide bomber injured her and claimed the life of her brother. After a short stay in an Israeli hospital, in which she saw Jews and Arabs treated by Israeli doctors — also both Jewish and Arab — she became increasingly interested in the conflict that had spawned the violence that had claimed her brother’s life.

But she noticed the vast gulf between the one-sided reporting and the more complex reality on the ground. She witnessed, at first hand, Palestinians staging incidents with their children to try and provoke a reaction from Israeli soldiers, while cameras rolled nearby. And she saw the Israeli soldiers remaining calm in the face of this provocation. This prompted her to want to learn more about the Israeli army in particular.

So the following year — bypassing the more traditional picking-apples-on-a-kibbutz option — she volunteered for eight weeks of equally menial duty on an Israeli army base under the auspices of an organization called Sar-El. It was soon discovered that she had a sharp mind and was a fast learner and so she ended up being given duties that a foreign volunteer would not normally be trusted with.

This was followed by her bold decision to apply for permanent residence and volunteer for a full two years of service in the Israeli army, much to the horror of her parents. After some gruelling interviews to test her intelligence and sincerity, and in defiance of plaintive parental appeals to come home, she was accepted by the Israeli army and spent the next two years serving in communications.

Upon leaving the army, she was planning to go to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to study psychology. But she took the fateful decision of responding to an ad for a job interview involving “interesting work abroad.” After passing that interview and several more — where they looked deeper into both her motivation as well as intelligence — she went through a rigorous initial training course, that was itself part of the selection procedure. Only then was she inducted into the Mossad and the real hard work began.

In the course of her training, she had proved herself more than usually resourceful, coming to the attention of Dovi Shamir by then a training officer after he had become compromised in Britain. He took the young Siobhan Stewart under his wing and singled her out for training as a kidon — an assassin. During that time she had changed her name, to the more Israeli sounding Sarit Shalev — with the emphasis on the second syllable in each case. Of course that was only the name she used when in Israel. She retained the name Siobhan Stewart, on her Irish passport, as it enabled her to work more freely internationally.

“He sometime shortens his name to ‘Bar-Tikva’.”

“Is that to sound more like Bar Kochba?”

“Bar Kochba?” Sarit echoed. “Could be. But he seems more concerned with fighting against his fellow Jews over their lack of piety.”

Bar Kochba — born Simon ben Kosiba, but renamed Bar Kochba, the Aramaic for “Son of a Star” by the great rabbi Akiva — was the leader of a Jewish uprising against the Romans in Judea in the year 135. Like the earlier Jewish rebellion between 66 and 72, it was brutally put down by the might of Rome. But it remains one of the high points in Jewish history for the struggle against tyranny.

She had told Daniel about Shalom Tikva — AKA “HaTzadik”. She had explained about the telephone intercepts and the SHaBaK and Mossad watch lists. And she explained how Dovi had called her at short notice after booking her onto the London flight to keep tabs on Baruch Tikva.

“But how did you know when and where he’d make his move?”

By now they were sitting down in the living room of the safe house having a cup of tea.

“I didn’t. I had a motorbike waiting for me at the airport and I followed him to an address in Belgravia — the home of a woman called Chienmer Lefou — nee Lowe.”

“Chienmer Lefou?”

“She calls herself ‘Lady Lefou’ although she isn’t really a lady.”

“But who is she?”

“Former model, professional trophy wife to the rich and titled, and now a well-spoken, but rather badly educated anti-Semitic whore.”

“Ouch! Now tell me what you really think about her?”

The smile didn’t leave Daniel’s face, nor the scowl Sarit’s.

“She’s a holocaust denier — or rather a denier-lite. She tries to play down the numbers rather than make a fool of herself by disputing it outright. But she also uses her ever-dwindling social connections to help holocaust deniers. And she tries to spread anti-Israel propaganda and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories — although she mainly preaches to the converted.”

“Is she open-eye or shut-eye?”

Sarit was surprised by this question. The terms originally referred to spiritualists and self-styled psychics. It didn’t mean that they literally closed their eyes when they performed. Rather, it referred to whether or not they believed their own bullshit. Shut-eye meant they did. Open-eye meant they didn’t. Now the term was used also for conspiracy theorists. Shut-eye were the ones who bought the conspiracy theories — often paying large sums of money for the books and videos. Open-eye meant they sold them — literally — knowing full-well that they were lying through their teeth, but making a pretty penny in so doing.

“Open-eye,” Sarit explained. “She may have initially been motivated by an argument she had with a Jewish woman about Lefou’s extravagance when arranging charity dinners. But after that she just went overboard, first venting her spleen for the sake of it and then realizing that she could actually make money out of it.”

“But how did you know about her?”

“I didn’t. I called in to Dovi. He checked the address online at the UK Land registry and got the owner’s name. He also checked it against the voting register to see who was actually registered as living there. Then he cross-checked the name against the various watchlists and needless to say it came up, with a whole long case file.”

“How many names of you got on the watchlist?”

“There are several lists, ranging from terrorists, to enemy-recruitables, to friendly recruitables to non-violent critics, etc. She’s on the non-violent critics and enemy-recruitables list. She’s seen as some one who would actively work against us if she could. Until now she’s been basically a talker. But the fact that Bar Tikva arranged to see her after Sam Morgan tried to kill you while he was working for them, meant that the meeting might have something to do with the attempts on your life. And of course because she’s on the enemy-recruitables list, she might be ready to do more than just talk. We knew that Bar Tikva didn’t go there just to have a chat.”

“What do you mean ‘arranged to see her’?”

Sarit looked confused.

“Pardon?”

“You said ‘Bar Tikva arranged to see her.’ That means it was pre-planned. How did you know?”

Sarit blushed. She wasn’t supposed to reveal more than she had to.

“Well we didn’t get it on an intercept, as we should have done. He used a new phone and we didn’t get its details until after that. His old phone actually went dead and we didn’t initially have the number of the new one. He probably ditched the old one for security reasons.”

“So he knows he’s being watched?”

“Not necessarily. He was probably just being cautious. But he may know now of course.”

“And when you said ‘we didn’t get its details until after that…’.”

Daniel smiled. Sarit smiled back.

“You’ve got it. That’s how we tracked him.”

“Tracked him?”

“After I followed him to the Lefou woman, I waited down the road, keeping the place under surveillance. When he emerged, I followed him to a hotel in Golders Green. Then Dovi called me and told me that they’d got a lock on his new phone number and they were tracking him. So I stood down and checked into another hotel there. I got a call bright and early telling me that he was on the move and got dressed quickly and followed him again. He was picked up at the hotel by three men in a car and I followed them.”

“They didn’t spot you?”

“Obviously not.”

“And where did they…”

“They drove through north London into Hertfordshire to the court where you were appearing. I saw them going into the court building but obviously I couldn’t follow them in, because Bar Tikva would have recognized me from the plane. But I figured they wouldn’t try anything inside the court building.”

“So you knew they were going to try and kill me?”

“I suspected. I mean, after the last attempt, it seemed reasonable that they’d try again. And the fact that Shalom Tikva sent his son here after Sam Morgan botched it, plus the fact that they went to the court building, suggested that they were up to something along those lines.”

“And you couldn’t have got some back up?”

“Not at such short notice. Time was of the essence and we didn’t have enough specific information to go to the police.”

“So my life was in your hands.”

“Don’t worry Daniel. You’re safe in my hands.”

Daniel smiled.

“I suppose they’re registered as lethal weapons.”

“Not quite. But I am trained to do my job.”

She decided not to tell him that she was an assassin and not merely a field officer.

“But I thought you guys always work in small teams — or even large ones.”

She knew what he was talking about: the assassination in Dubai. Maybe she didn’t need to tell him that she as an assassin.

“We work in small teams. We work in large teams and we work alone. We do whatever we have to do. The question is why do they want you?”

He told her about the blurred picture sent to his phone, the text exchanges with Martin Costa and dropping the phone in the house when it went up in flames.

“So you have no idea what was in the picture, other than that it was a Hebrew manuscript that he claimed to have found at the dig site?”

“Yes. I mean either Hebrew or Aramaic. Martin Costa may have thought himself to be a great Theology scholar, but he wouldn’t have known the difference.”

“So it looks like they’re trying to kill for nothing?”

“Well assuming that what they’re doing has something to do with Costa, I guess so. But then again they don’t know that.”

“Well regardless, Dovi regards you as an asset to be protected and if you want to come to Israel, we can keep you safe there.”

“I can’t stay there forever. I have my career. I have my life to lead.”

“Well we’ve got enough evidence to intercede on your behalf on the murder charge and to get them to arrest Bar Tikva. It’s just a pity that we don’t know what it is they’re after.”

Daniel realized that he could trust Sarit, so he decided to come clean.

“I did upload a copy to my cloud account.”

“You did?”

“Uh huh.”

Daniel was enjoying Sarit’s display of enthusiasm.

“Can I see it? There’s a computer here.”

“With internet?”

“High speed broadband.”

“Then you may.”

She led him upstairs to a room packed with computer equipment: a PC with four screens in one corner and a Mac with another four in the other. This wasn’t a computer room: it was a control centre for World War Three. Sarit threw the switch and the computer sprang to life. Daniel had expected the boot-up to be the bottleneck in this entire process. But the computer was on and ready for action in almost the blink of an eye.

“Solid state hard drives,” said Sarit when Daniel looked at her quizzically.

She eased the keyboard over in Daniel’s direction. He keyed in the URL of his cloud account, typed in one of his eMail addresses and then looked at her again, as if he expected her to look away while he logged on.

“You’re worried about your password?” she asked incredulously. “You think we couldn’t get it if we were interested?”

“Dovi probably already has,” he said with a shrug, and typed it in.

In another blink of an eye, the screen refreshed with his account summary. A couple of clicks opened up the image that he had uploaded. Sarit looked at it. She was somewhat less equipped to read it than Daniel, although she was able to make out the shapes of some of the Hebrew letters.

“You do know,” she said “that blurring of an image is usually caused by jerking the camera in one or another specific direction while the picture is being taken?”

He looked at her blankly.

“So?”

“Well that means that the blurring has a certain specificity about it. If the picture is, say of black text on a yellowish background. Then the blurring involves a specific amount of black and yellow depending on the speed of the movement and the exposure time or digital equivalent.”

“You’re talking in jargon,” he said.

“What I’m trying to tell you is that we have people who can use image-enhancement technology to clean up this image and get the text.”

Daniel’s puzzlement turned into excitement.

“Let’s go for it.”

Chapter 29

Julia Sasson was now back in England along with Nat, Romy and the twins. She had heard about Daniel’s arrest and subsequent escape and had tried to contact him, but it went straight to voice mail. Although he had always been more of a scholar than a man of action, she knew from recent escapade in the middle east that her older brother could handle himself in a crisis. But not being able to contact him was worrying. She wanted the reassurance of hearing his voice. So far it had eluded her. She sensed however, that he would get in touch in his own time.

In the meantime, however, she had her children to look after. That was her immediate priority. As it was still school holiday, she was taking them on an outing to Holders Hill Park. She had brought with her the usual collection of footballs, Frisbees, tennis rackets and tennis balls.

She knew that they’d be hungry — probably sooner rather than later — but the cafe in the park was expensive, like almost all local monopolies. So she brought along a big collection of sandwiches, including egg and onions, smoked salmon and chicken schnitzel. She also brought along several bottles of water as well as grape juice and apple-and-pear juice.

It had taken her time to find a parking space, but she had driven around, keeping her keen eyes open until she spotted a car about to leave and then she pounced. She got them out of the car and marshalled them together before using the key fob to look the car doors. With three children, even a simple task like crossing a narrow side-street was fraught with peril.

As she crossed the road, she noticed a tall man dressed in the black attire of some ultra-orthodox sect. They were very near to Golders Green and ultra-orthodox Jews went to the park just like others. And the fact that he looked away from her when she met his eyes was typical of the ultra-orthodox. According to their belief system, they are not supposed to stare at women — especially with lust in their hearts — but they sometimes didn’t quite live up to their highest ideals.

But what bothered Julia was the feeling that it wasn’t just a momentary glance.

She couldn’t escape the feeling that he had been staring at her… and that he had been doing so for some time.

Chapter 30

“This really isn’t a good idea Daniel.”

“Why? If we use a mobile they can’t trace it.”

“They can.”

“Only if they know I’m going to call him, which I very much doubt.”

Daniel and Sarit were arguing. He was holding the mobile phone that he had found there. She wondered whether she could take it from him by force. She was well trained in Krav Maga. But he looked pretty fit and could probably fight too if he had to. Besides, it wasn’t her duty to protect him from himself. Now that he had given them the file, he had no further obligations towards them — or they to him. If he wanted to put himself in jeopardy, that was his right. Except of course, that she might then have to leave.

She decided to explain it to him more clearly.

“Look, if you call him, they can’t trace it now. But you don’t know how he’s going to react. If he tells the police then they’ll go round and get his phone details and then get the phone company to provide them with the records. Then they’ll go to the mobile phone company and do a trace to see which ground stations and relay stations the call went through.”

“Yes, but if I withhold the caller ID with 141 then they won’t be able to get the number of this phone. So they won’t know what to trace.”

“Trust me, they can.”

“Okay, but I need to contact him.”

“Okay, I’ll tell you what I’ll do… Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll arrange with Dovi to route a computer call through Israel.

Five minutes later he was making the call.

“Professor Hynds speaking.”

Edward Hynds, Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge was leading the dig at the site in Arbury Banks.

“Hallo Professor Hynds, my name is Daniel Klein. I’m a Professor of Semitic Languages at UCL.”

“Yes,” said Hynds cautiously.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard of me but — ”

“Do you mean your ‘ancient’ Egyptian adventures or your more recent ones with the police?”

And with that the ice was broken.

“I guess that means you’ve heard of both.”

“It would have been very hard not to.”

“First of all, I should explain that I had nothing to do with the death of Martin Costa. I mean I was there when the fire started — I was lured into a trap — but I didn’t kill him.”

“It wouldn’t make any difference to me if you did. He was a boil on the backside of humanity and his death was no great loss to humanity in general or the academic community in particular.”

Daniel felt relieved.

“I assume then that he wasn’t part of the official dig team.”

“Lord no! I wouldn’t have let him come within a mile of the dig. And if I’d known that he had an interest in the subject, I would have taken out an injunction against him.”

“So he didn’t openly approach the site.”

“Again, certainly not.”

“How would he have been able to get his hands on an artefact from the site?”

“Well first of all, any potentially valuable items from the site are taken immediately under tight security back to Cambridge.”

Daniel interrupted to tell the professor about the picture of the manuscript Costa had sent by SMS. Hynds picked up the thread, speaking in a tone that Daniel noticed was quite slow and measured, as if he were a man to weigh up each word carefully before letting it pass his lips. There was also a kind of baritone depth to the professor’s vocal pitch.

“That’s what I’m coming to. A few days before the incident that you got caught up in, we had a night-time breach of security at the dig site. The ground had been disturbed and it was clear that one particular area was dug considerably deeper than the others. It appears that some one was looking for something very specific — and based on what you’ve just told me, it looks like they found it.”

“Can I ask you this professor: although the manuscript appears to have some Hebrew letters on it, I can’t be sure that it is actually Hebrew… or Aramaic. What I was wondering is what are the chances that the manuscript Costa found might have been written in some local British language and alphabet?”

Hynds thought about this for a few seconds before responding.

“The local Brythonic tribes — Iceni and Trinovantes — didn’t have any writing systems of their own. I mean not at the time when we believe this site dates to. We believe that the site may have started in the late bronze age, but continued into the early iron age about two thousand years ago. Local writing systems came later.”

“What about the priestly classes?”

“In due time, the Druids developed a writing system. But throughout the time period this site was used — as far as we know — they relied on their great oral tradition.”

“But surely the more educated among them would have developed some sort of writing skill. I mean in most societies, the political leaders, the kings and feudal overlords, would have needed a writing system for bureaucratic purposes.”

Again, Hynds held his tongue for a few seconds, to give a more considered answer.

“Well of course many of the people spoke Latin. Not just the leaders. Britannia been occupied since 43 AD. And within ten years of that, the more educated among the Britons — kings and leaders — could read and write in Latin as well. But it goes without saying that they used the Roman alphabet for that purpose. They would have had no reason to write Latin in any other alphabet, even if they’d had one.”

“And presumably they also didn’t write their own local languages in the Roman alphabet.”

“There’s never yet been a case of such writings being found. Now admittedly, we haven’t really discovered any writing dating back to that period — other than the writing on coins which is always in Latin. Anything written on papyrus or parchment hasn’t survived. And they didn’t write on stele like the Egyptians or clay tablets like the Sumerians and Akkadians.”

“So what sort of things do you discover at these digs?”

“Most of the archaeological finds in Romano-British sites were metallic, wood, ceramic or leather: coins, weapons, pottery and jewellery. In this case, we haven’t find any coins or jewellery thus far, just pottery fragments and some armour pieces — certainly no manuscripts.”

“So if a manuscript were to be found?”

“Well if it was ‘found’ by Martin I Costa, my first suspicion would be that it was a forgery.”

“But you said there had been an intruder at the dig site.”

“Yes. Which leads me to my second point. If it isn’t a forgery — and if it is in Hebrew script — then it would be the find of the century.”

Chapter 31

“It’s hard to find a precise routine because it’s the school holidays.”

“But is it the mother who’s usually with them?”

“Yes? During the day. They sometimes meet up with the father after work, but usually their mother just takes them home by then.”

Baruch Tikva was telling his father the results of his attempts at surveillance on Daniel Klein’s sister and nieces.

“So when they’re out and about, it’s with their mother only.”

“Most of the time, yes.

“And you know where they live?”

“Yes.”

“But they never go to the same place twice.”

“Not on their outdoor outings. However, one thing I have established is that three times a week, the mother takes the youngest one to a gymnastics class.”

“And does she stay with her while she’s there?”

“No she leaves her there and takes the others either to the coffee shop or the park.”

“Okay, now how easy is it driving around that area?”

“Well the roads are okay because the traffic wardens are very active and aggressive around that area.”

“Do they clamp the cars or just ticket them?”

“Ticket them.”

“Okay, and where is this gymnastics place?”

“It’s in a place called Chalk Farm… near a busy area called Camden Town.”

“Okay now can you rent a place near there, at short notice, that’s well hidden and that can be soundproofed?”

“I’ve already checked it out. I can rent something called a lockup at short notice. It’s like a big garage. And I can sound proof it, no trouble.”

“Okay, I want you to rent one of those…”

“Lockups.”

“And sound proof it. Then kidnap the youngest. And make sure you’re not caught!”

Chapter 32

“Don’t you think that’s pushing it just a bit?”

“I need to speak to him.”

Daniel and Sarit had been at the safe house for twenty four hours now and Sarit was getting a bit tired of babysitting. But it was taking time for the bureaucrats to get things in motion, squaring it with their British counterparts about Daniel. They had the evidence of the phone messages but they weren’t sure if it was enough. And also they wanted to find out exactly what Shomrei Ha’ir were up to.

So Sarit and Daniel had killed time, playing chess — Daniel winning about two games in three — while waiting for the results of the image enhancement that was being done back in Israel. Daniel was finding it hard to stop fantasizing about Sarit, even though he knew that they both had to keep it professional. She would not take kindly to romantic overtures in this context and he knew it.

The age difference didn’t bother him, and he suspected that it wouldn’t bother her either. But when he had been in Israel the last time, he had picked up on the fact that she had a thing for Dovi and he knew that if it wasn’t for her field work and a probable rule against in-house relationships, the pair of them would probably be an item.

Just now, Daniel had told Sarit that he needed to phone his lawyer and he requested that she again route the call through Israel.

“Look there’s a big difference between talking to your lawyer and talking to a stranger.”

“I know,” said Daniel. “A stranger owes me nothing. My lawyer has a duty to act in my best interests. It’s covered by privilege.”

“Oh, are you a lawyer?”

“No, but everyone knows that lawyer’s have privilege.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that. Being an escaped prisoner could be construed as an ongoing criminal offence. He might be legally obliged to report it. Even if he can’t reveal your whereabouts, he might be obliged to reveal the fact that you made contact.”

“I won’t tell him my whereabouts. And as for the fact of making contact, I don’t care if they know that — just as long as they can’t trace us.”

Sarit could see that he wasn’t going to back down and — again — it was his call.”

“Okay.” She said.

Once again it took a few minutes to set up the call.

“Hi Peter, it’s Daniel — Daniel Klein.”

“Daniel! Where are you?”

“Never mind that. Listen, there’s something I want you to do for me.”

“What?”

“I want you to get the witness statements and the pathology report and — ”

“I’ve already got them.”

“Are they in digital form?”

“No, they’re on paper. Why?”

“Okay listen I’ll be very brief. I want you to scan them and eMail them to me. You’ve got my eMail address.”

“Okay I can do that. But you know they’re probably monitoring your eMail box and can track where you — ”

“Yes I know that but don’t worry. Let me worry about that.”

Daniel’s plan was to ask Sarit to get Dovi or some one at the Mossad to download it and then resend it to another eMail address that he would set up or to hers so that she could access it from here. But there was no reason to share this information with Hackett.

“Okay. I’ll get my secretary to do that right away. But I must tell you as your solicitor that what you did was extremely foolish and puts you in a lot more trouble.”

“You mean escaping?”

“Well obviously I mean escaping. Look this isn’t just a single killing any more. It’s now the murder of two guards as well — and injury to a third.”

“Look I had nothing to do with that. Those guys were trying to kill me!”

“I know that!”

Daniel’s suspicions were alerted.

“Know that? How?”

“The same way the police do. The third guard survived. He was badly injured but he survived. He told them that the man in black — the man with the gun — was apparently trying to kill you.”

“Then they know I’m innocent!”

“Of the killing of the guards yes. And they figured that it wasn’t a planned escape — or at least that you didn’t plan it. But I’ll tell you one thing. You’re lucky those were private guards. Because if they’d been coppers, they wouldn’t give a flying fig if you were in it or not! They’d be baying for blood. By the way, who was the guy on the motorbike?”

“The… motorbike?”

“The guard who survived told the police that when the man in black was about to shoot you, he was rammed by some one on a motorbike. And then you leapt on the motorbike and rode off into the sunset.”

“Did they get the number of the motorbike?”

“You trying to cover your arse maybe?”

“You could put it like that.”

Daniel wondered if Hackett was picturing the wry smile on his face.

“If they did, they didn’t tell me.”

“So for all they know, it could just have been a good Samaritan.”

Hackett chuckled.

“They might have thought that, if the third guard hadn’t survived or hadn’t been conscious and seen what happened. But then you’d be in the doghouse. Anyway, according to the guard, this guy on the bike had a gun and used it very effectively to take out two of the attackers. The police would have loved to interview them and find out who they were working for. But unfortunately, they’ve shuffled off this mortal coil, thanks to your friend with the revolver. Whoever that guy on the bike was, he’s a pro. Be careful.”

“I will.”

Sarit had explained that she used a revolver because it was less likely to jam and because it retained the cartridges from the bullets. It didn’t have a safety, but like every pro, she kept her hammer chamber empty.

“Are you still with him?” asked Hackett. “Or did he just drop you off somewhere?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“Probably just as well. Saves me from being put on the spot.”

“Okay there’s one other thing. Can you ask the police — as discreetly as possible — if they searched Martin Costa’s house and if they found anything that looked like it might be an ancient manuscript on parchment of papyrus?”

“You mean like the one he sent you a picture of?”

“Exactly.”

“Okay, I’ll ask them. But I have a feeling that might alert them to the fact that you contacted me.”

Chapter 33

Dovi was speed-reading yet another report from a field agent when the call came through from the Urim monitoring station.

“We’ve got an audio intercept from Shalom Tikva’s phone. We’re sending it through now.”

“Why the call?”

“It’s urgent. Something about kidnapping one of Daniel Klein’s nieces.”

Dovi’s fingers sprang into action, calling up the transcript, not bothering with the audio. His other hand was calling Sarit at the safe house.

“Hallo Sarit,” he said quietly. “Listen don’t react overtly, but is Daniel in the room?”

There was a second’s hesitation.

“Yes.”

The hesitation was presumably a warning not to speak to loud. That meant that he was close to her.

“Listen, we haven’t any time to lose. I’ve just had a call from Urim. They picked up a call between the Tikvas, father and son.”

“Local?”

“The father’s here. The son is still in your neck of the woods. Anyway the point is — and stay calm when you hear this — they’re planning on trying to kidnap Daniel’s youngest niece. I believe her name is Romy. She’s five.”

“What!”

She was about to add “The bastards” when Dovi spoke again.

“I like your way of not reacting.”

“Sorry.”

“Anyway, the position is this. We can tell the local police but then they’ll swoop in on the family and it’ll tip the bad guys off that we’ve got them under surveillance. At the moment they don’t even suspect.”

“But we can’t take risks with a — ”

“Don’t talk, just listen. We are going to tell the Metropolitan Police. As you say it’s too serious not to. They’ll probably have to put the whole family under protection because from the way they were talking, little Romy was merely their first choice. But the problem is that until the intercept was transcribed and flagged, Bar Tikva had time to make some of the arrangements. I’m going to put some procedures in place to reduce the lead time on these intercept messages from Urim involving Klein and his family. But in the meantime, it looks like time is of the essence.”

“Have you got his whereabouts?”

Even as they were speaking Dovi was using one hand to peck away at the keyboard and manipulate the mouse, calling up the historic trace report on Baruch Tikva’s mobile phone. He could broaden it to the precise location every fifteen seconds, or create a line on a map of varying scale. The intensity of the line also flagged areas where Tikva had stayed for a long time. He noticed one at Chalk Farm in London, a north-central area close to Camden Town, which he knew well.

“Right now he’s in transit going south from Golders Green. He also seems to have spent some time at an address in Chalk Farm. I’m zooming in on it now with Google Maps and going into Street View.”

“Can you see it?” asked Sarit impatiently.

“Just a minute… yes I can. It’s a lockup.

“And is that where he’s going now?”

“No… right now he appears to be headed for Chalk Farm, but he’s not going the route for that address, although he does appear to be heading towards that general area. The map shows that on previous days he’s been at another address, but not so long or so frequently.”

Dovi clicked on another tab and looked at the transcript of the phone intercept.

“Good God, he’s going to kidnap her now!”

“What as in… right this minute?”

Dovi’s voice took on a new urgency.

“Yes Sarit! Right this minute!”

“You’ve got to call the police!”

Dovi wondered how Daniel was reacting to his side of the conversation. With his perfect Hebrew, he would know that Sarit was agitated about something and that something urgent was going down. But from what Sarit had said, he would not know why.

“I’m calling them now, but I can’t be sure they’ll take it seriously. If I say it’s happening they’ll ask me what colour car he’s driving. Look there’s no other choice Sarit, you’re going to have to go there!”

“And leave Daniel?”

“Yes Sarit! Leave him! He doesn’t need you to babysit. But his niece needs you to stop this thing from going down.”

“Shall I — ”

“No don’t tell him a thing. Just tell him that it’s something urgent and you’ll tell him when he gets back!”

“Okay.”

“Oh and tell him not to answer the phone.”

Chapter 34

Peter Hackett had been hesitating for a long time. As Daniel’s solicitor, he was protected by privilege. Indeed he was duty-bound to keep that privilege and not disclose any privileged information. And the act of passing on the witness statements and post-mortem report was not in anyway a breach of the rules.

Even if his client had been in custody, he could quite lawfully have handed over copies of those documents to him. With the exception of cases involving terrorism or national security — which this case plainly wasn’t — the accused is allowed to see all the prosecution evidence that his lawyer sees. And an accused is entitled to see not only the evidence that the prosecution intends to use, but also any unused evidence that they have considered but deemed to be of no relevance to the prosecution case.

So Hackett had no concerns about passing on that evidence to Daniel’s eMail address and he hoped that Daniel would be prudent about accessing it. Not that he wanted Daniel to remain at liberty. But he knew that it would be better for Daniel to turn himself in of his own accord than to be tracked down and re-arrested, not to mention being charged with the additional charge of unlawful escape and possible supplementary charges involving other murders.

But that in turn led right back to Hackett’s other dilemma: how to handle Daniel’s request for information about the police search of Martin Costa’s home? He had reservations about asking the question. But his client had requested it. And it could provide some useful information for the defence. He had to make the call to DCI Vincent.

“I was basically wondering if the search of Martin Costa’s flat revealed anything.”

“If it had we would have told you. Look don’t worry Mr. Hackett, you’ll get all the material well before the next hearing. But right now we’re still waiting for the records from the phone company. I’m surprised you’re not asking about that.”

“Well that I assumed you would give me as soon as you’ve got it. But the reason I was asking about Costa’s flat was because of what Klein was saying about the image that Costa sent him. He said it looked like a manuscript and so I was wondering about the original.”

“Well presumably it was destroyed in the fire — if it existed at all. I mean Costa was supposedly all set to bring it to the meeting.”

“That may be a probability. But it isn’t a certainty. Klein thought it might still be at Costa’s home.”

“What do you mean thought? When did he tell you that?”

Hackett realized that he had to think quickly.

“At the court… at the remand hearing. It was one of the things we talked about.”

Hackett realized that he was actually contributing to an escalation of Vincent’s suspicions. He wasn’t supposed to be revealing what specifically he and his client had been discussing. The fact that he was — and that he was gabbling — was practically advertising the fact that he had something to hide. By now, Vincent probably knew that Daniel had called him. But it was too late to go back now.

“For the record, Mr. Hackett, we didn’t find any ancient manuscripts at Martin Costa’s flat, nor indeed anything that might be mistaken for an ancient manuscript. We didn’t find any ancient artefacts or antiquities, nor any forgeries. We did find plenty of books about forgery techniques and how to identify forgeries. But given the line of work we know that Costa was in, that’s hardly surprising.”

Chapter 35

Bar Tikva was waiting in Chalk Farm, in the cheap van that he had bought from a man in a pub. He was parked down the road from where Julia Sasson had taken little Romy for her gymnastics lesson. This was going to be difficult to pull off alone, but he had promised his revered father that he would do it and he intended to keep his promise.

It was going to be difficult for two reasons. First of all, this time he had no back-up whatsoever. After the fiasco last time, he didn’t think it wise to approach Chienmer Lefou or her underworld contacts. He had probably alienated them by getting two of them killed the last time. They for their part probably thought he was a loose cannon and would not be inclined to trust him.

Furthermore, he had read somewhere that mainstream British criminals are not into child-abduction, even if it were purely for blackmail purposes. He knew that he would probably get a rough reception from them if he had approached them about this project.

The other reason it was dangerous was because he couldn’t actually drive. In Israel, because of Shomrei Ha’ir’s refusal to recognize the State of Israel or participate in any of its institutions or official processes, he and other members of his sect had never learned to drive. He did in fact have some practice, from when he was in the Williamsburg neighbourhood of Brooklyn, with other members of his sect. But he had never passed a driving test or acquired a driving licence. So he could control a car — at least an automatic like this one — but he didn’t know the driving laws or understand the road signs.

This time, Julia had stayed in the cafe, rather than taken the twins elsewhere. So all three of them would be together when she led them to the car that she too had parked down the road.

He waited nervously as the minutes ticked by, praying to HaKadosh, Baruch Hu — the Holy One, Blessed be He — that he would succeed in this plan and fulfil his obligations to his father and to Shamayim — Heaven.

Finally they emerged: Julia, holding Romy’s hand, and the twins on their mother’s other side. She led them down the street on the same side as the sports centre and then as they were about to cross the road he gunned the engine and drove straight at them. He was not planning to hit them: only to get them to react exactly as they did.

He saw the look of terror in Julia’s eyes as she scooped up Romy and shouted at the twins to get back. They obeyed their mother’s instructions and Julia followed them, leaping back to the pavement and practically dropping Romy as she lost her balance. Bar-Tikva flung the passenger door open and reached out, trying to yank little Romy, who was now crying like her sisters, while Julia tried to assess the damage and the overall situation. He was just about to grab her when he heard a screeching sound and beheld a sight that terrified him.

For with that screeching sound came a motorbike like the one that had slammed into him a couple of days before, preventing him from killing Julia’s brother.

No, not “like the one” — the SAME one!

And as it screeched to a halt behind his van, he saw the same black-leather clad rider. His first reaction was to panic. But then he noticed that the rider was actually quite small. And it occurred to Bar-Tikva that he would probably beat this man in a fight. But then he saw the rider reaching for something and he remembered that the rider also carried a gun — and knew how to use it.

Realizing that he didn’t stand a chance, he pulled his large frame back into the van and slammed the door behind him. For a split second, he considered reversing into the bike and throwing the biker into the air. It would be sweet revenge for the painful knock he had taken last time, as well as for this time. But that hand was still poised to produce the gun and he knew that the biker could probably roll clear and then put a bullet or two in him just he had dealt with the two gunmen he had brought with him on the previous job.

It wasn’t worth the risk, he realized.

It angered him that he had been thwarted twice. But if this was the will of Hashem — the Name — then he must accept it. He put the van in gear, put his foot down on the accelerator and drove off at speed.

Chapter 36

“He was telling the truth after all.”

DCI Vincent was briefing Sergeant Connor and the rest of the core team about the phone company records in a corner of the Incident Room

“Do we know the contents? Or just the fact that they were in contact?”

“We’ve got the actual messages. Everything was exactly the way he said, practically verbatim. His recollection was pretty damn good.”

“That doesn’t mean he didn’t kill Costa. They could’ve had an argument. Costa might have changed his mind.

“Could have, might have… that’s all just speculation. The evidence checks out. As to what went down there. We know that Klein was telling us the truth about the build up to the final events. Why should we doubt his word about what happened when he got there?”

“‘Cause it doesn’t make sense. Why would anyone else try to kill them? And why by fire? And what about the tip-off about Klein siphoning off petrol?”

The Chief Inspector smiled.

“Oh yes, the famous anonymous tip-off.”

“Anons are frequently reliable. And the caller didn’t even ask for a reward.”

“That’s what makes it unreliable.”

“Why?”

The DCI smiled at his sergeant’s naivety.

“Look at it this way Joe, if you were an ordinary citizen and you saw the chance to help the police catch a criminal and make some money for yourself at the same time, wouldn’t you do so?”

“That’s why I became a copper sir,” said Connor, smiling.

Vincent smiled back at the sergeant’s smart-Alec reply.

“Okay but you know what I mean. The reward can be paid anonymously. People often call Crimestoppers for precisely that reason. But this one didn’t bother about the reward… like maybe he had some other agenda.”

“Isn’t that also speculation sir?”

“It is. But let’s just call it informed speculation. I mean an anonymous tip-off is only useful if it leads us to some real solid evidence or to investigate some one so that we find the real solid evidence. But in this case, the only evidence we have left — that incriminates Klein — is the anonymous tip-off itself. That’s about it.”

“Have we got the test results back about the quantity of petrol in the tank and the fuel consumption estimates?”

“We’ve got the results, but the margin of error’s too big.”

“But what’s the bottom line?”

“The bottom line is that he probably didn’t siphon off petrol from the tank. So even that’s a point in his favour.”

“And what about the escape?”

“Based on what the surviving guard said, it wasn’t so much an escape as an attempt to kill him.”

“But what about the man on the motorbike sir? I mean he didn’t force Klein to get on the back and ride pillion. Klein made that choice.”

“That’s the hangnail in this whole scenario. There seems to be a third force at work here — or maybe even a fourth force. I’m losing count.”

“Well whoever it was, was pretty ruthless. I mean he took out those two gunmen without a moment’s hesitation.”

“Yes, but that’s the thing sergeant, he only killed what might be called the guilty. He didn’t touch the innocent.”

“Maybe he was trying to silence them?”

“That makes no sense.”

“Why not? Maybe he set the whole thing up. He was using them to spring Klein and then when they’d done their work, he silenced them.”

“But if the plan was to spring Klein, then why did the man dressed like a Hassidic Jew aim his gun at Klein, like he was trying to kill him?”

“Maybe he wasn’t aiming it at Klein sir. Maybe he was trying to kill the third guard.”

“Then why didn’t the man on the bike let him?”

Connor thought about this for a few seconds.

“Cause he panicked?”

“And why did the man on the motorbike let the big man live if he was trying to silence him? Why not shoot him too, if the aim was to silence him and not merely stop him?”

“That’s a good question. But he did send him flying when he rammed him with his motorbike. And his principle aim by that stage did seem to be to get Klein out of there.”

“Exactly. Whereas the others looked like they were trying to kill Klein.”

Connor backed down, deflated.

“So you don’t think they were on the same team sir?”

“No sergeant. I think we’re dealing with two separate forces here: one trying to kill Daniel Klein and the other trying to keep him alive.”

At that moment, a member of the team manning the phones waved to get the DCI’s attention.

“What is it?” asked Vincent.

“It’s a call from the Met. There’s been an attack on a woman called Julia Sasson and her children… by a man dressed as a Hassidic Jew.”

“And?” the DCI murmured, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Well it was also foiled by a man on a motorbike… who then drove off.”

“Let me speak.”

He strode across the room and grabbed the phone.

“DCI Vincent.”

“Hallo, this is DI Wilson, Met Area 2, Colindale. I suppose you got all that?”

“Yes, but what sort of attack was it And who was the victim?”

“Well we’re still gathering evidence and getting down the details, but it may have been an abduction attempt on the daughter of a woman called Julia Sasson.”

“And what do we know about this Julia Sasson?”

“Well that’s the interesting thing. She’s the sister of Daniel Klein.”

Chapter 37

“Are you incapable of getting anything right!”

Shalom Tikva was unable to contain the rage inside him that was prompting him to pour out his scorn on his own flesh and blood. His son had let him down once again and he well knew why: arrogance! Baruch had tried to do what was beyond him. How could he kidnap the girl all on his own with no back up and without even being fully qualified to drive? The operation was doomed from the start.

Maybe, Shalom Tikva could console himself, by accepting that it was the will of Hashem. But would it have failed had his son not been so arrogant?

And yet, what choice had their been? He knew that Baruch couldn’t go back to Chienmer Lefou after the previous fiasco. It had taken a long time to win her trust and to learn to trust her. And now she would probably never trust either of them again. His son had burnt a bridge there. And yet…

There was another thought nagging at Shalom Tikva’s mind.

How far can we trust her?

This was what lie at the heart of the problem. For it was becoming increasingly clear that some one was trying to stop them. But it was some one who knew what they were up to. Could it be that Chienmer Lefou was playing a double game? Had she arranged to help Baruch kill Daniel Klein and then betrayed him? That didn’t make sense. It was her own men that she sent along, or at least criminals whom she had hired.

Maybe she considered them expendable? She had that quiet aura of a ruthless matriarch.

But why did she help them in the first place? Why not refuse? And what, in that case, would she be trying to do? What was her game? If she wanted merely to kill Baruch, there were simpler ways.

Maybe she wanted to discredit Shomrei Ha’ir. After all, they believed in Judaism — a religion she hated. They believed in the Talmud — a document that she despised. And they believed that the Seven Laws of Noah were obligatory upon the Gentiles — a concept that she found abhorrent, not because she necessarily wanted to commit murder or theft or adultery or incest — nor even because she was against the creation of law courts — but simply on principle. Was it possible that a woman in such a mental state could really be trusted to help them, just because she hated the Zionists even more?

The more he thought about it, the more convinced Shalom Tikva became that it was Chienmer Lefou who had betrayed them.

But there was just one problem. Chienmer Lefou had known nothing of this last operation. Baruch hadn’t told her about his plan to kidnap Daniel Klein’s niece. That put her in the clear. And yet it was too much of a coincidence that this man on the motorbike had been able to turn up twice and foil both the assassination attempt and the kidnapping. There had to be a spy in the camp.

But who?

It was inconceivable that any one of his own people could have betrayed them. Indeed, with the exception of two other rabbis in the movement, no one knew what they had been planning. He had conferred with the two other rabbis, because although he was recognized as the most learned scholar among them in the finer points of Jewish Law, he considered himself to be first among equals and he wanted to be sure that he stood on halachically safe ground when he authorized the kidnapping. This wasn’t even the abduction of a goy, but rather of a Jewish girl. So he had to tread carefully.

But the other rabbis agreed that it was permitted if it was in the service of Hashem. And so he authorized it. But evidently, HaKadosh Baruch Hu was displeased with them, for he reached out and smote them, foiling their endeavours. Only there must have been some human agent involved. For when Hashem sends down the Angel of Death, even against the Jews, it is through the hand of man that he works.

And then HaTzadik realized that there was one man who was not of their people who knew at least part of what they were planning. That man supposedly did not speak Hebrew, but maybe he understood more than he let on. And that man was standing only a few feet away from him now.

Shalom Tikva put the phone down and turned to Sam Morgan with a look of anger in his eyes.

“It was you wasn’t it?”

“What do you mean?” asked Morgan, the apprehension rising in his voice.

“It was you who betrayed us! You warned them what we were planning!”

“Planning? I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Klein’s niece! You knew we were planning to kidnap her!”

“What!”

“You warned them.”

“Warned who?”

“The police! Or some one!”

“I didn’t! I swear!”

The fear in his voice was palpable. But that meant nothing to HaTzadik.

“You were the only one who knew! The only one who could have told them.”

“I didn’t know. And I can’t believe you would do such a thing. But I… I…”

“Ata medaber Ivrit? Yiddish?”

“I… I don’t understand”

Shalom Tikva was testing him to see if he understood either Hebrew or Yiddish. Because they hadn’t actually told him the plan. So the only way that Morgan could have told anyone was if he had overheard them talking and understood.

But then something else occurred to HaTzadik. Who would Morgan have warned? If he had told Daniel Klein or his family, they would have avoided the area altogether and not let it come to the brink. And if he had told the police they would have relocated them and put them under police protection. They would not have used the little girl as bait. And if they had then the place would have been swarming with police and Baruch would not have been able to get away as he did.

No, this plot was foiled by just one man, on a motorbike. And the last one had been stopped in exactly the same way. And this man on the motorbike had been highly proficient with a gun.

Could it be some one from Israel perhaps? A former soldier or some one from Israeli intelligence? If so they were doing pretty well, considering that they were operating in foreign territory. But then again that’s what intelligence people were trained to do. But therein lie the problem for Shomrei Ha’ir. For neither Baruch, nor any other member of their sect, was trained to operate in England.

Now they did have members in London, in the Stamford Hill area to which Baruch had quickly moved, in order to avoid Golders Green where his cover might have been blown. But they were as unworldly and closeted as Baruch. They would hardly be in a position to do anything remotely resembling a covert operation — especially when their beards and black frock coats made them stand out like a sore thumb. No what they needed was some one who could blend in — some one who had already shown himself to be a man of cunning and duplicity.

Shalom Tikva looked at Sam Morgan.

“I want you to go back to England and join Baruch.”

“Why?”

The fear on Morgan’s face was obvious. He and Baruch Tikva had never really liked each other.

“I want you to work together.”

Chapter 38

Before Sarit had rushed off after the phone call, she had told Daniel how to log on to her eMail. After she left, he had downloaded the witness statements and pathologist’s report on Costa that Dovi had retrieved and forwarded. Daniel had printed them out and was now reading the post-mortem report, very carefully. As he had expected, and as the police had told him, the cause of death was a series of violent blows to the head, not the fire or even smoke inhalation.

But the state of the body — the burns, etc — might give some indications about the fire and possibly about how long he had been dead. Unfortunately, the report made it clear that the fire actually made it very hard to establish the time of death. The report concluded that Costa could have been killed just before the fire, but could just as easily have been killed hours, days or even weeks before.

Daniel’s mind was working along the lines of a theory that Costa may have been killed immediately after sending the picture — hence Daniel’s call going straight to voicemail. As he read on he came across a short paragraph that said that one of Costa’s hands was curled up and traces of fibres were found underneath his fingernails. That could indicate a struggle. But were the fibres from clothes (which might indicate what the killer was wearing) or flesh, which could give the police an exact DNA profile of the killer?

Daniel flipped on ahead, seeking out the page with the lab analysis of the fibres. And it was at that point that he got quite a shock. Because what it said was that the fibres were cowskin. But before he could process the information, his attention was caught by something else.

The plasma TV was on in the background and something on the wide screen caught his attention. He looked up to see the face of his sister, Julia. And she seemed to be agitated. He grabbed the remote and turned up the sound. But what he heard was not her voice but a TV reporter’s voiceover.

“It is not clear if this was a crude murder attempt or an equally inept abduction. What is clear is that but for the prompt thinking of a good Samaritan on a motorbike, something very unpleasant could have happened to a young mother and her children.”

Daniel was unable to contain himself. He wasn’t prepared to risk using the house phone, but he grabbed the mobile that Sarit had left for him to be used “in emergencies only,” keyed in 141 to withhold the called ID and then called his sister.

“Hallo?”

It was a nervous voice, but it was Julia.

“Julie, it’s Daniel.”

“Daniel!”

“Are you able to talk?”

“Yes. But quickly. They’re in the other room. Checking out the security.”

“Who?”

“The police.”

“I just wanted to know if you’re all right.”

“I’m fine… just about. Who was that man?”

“Who?”

“The man who tried to kill us… and grab Romy.”

“I don’t know. But I think he’s the same man who killed Martin Costa.”

“If it hadn’t been for that guy on the motorbike — ”

“It wasn’t a guy.”

“What?”

It was a blushing moment. Daniel remembered that well-worn phrase of Hagrid from the Harry Potter books: I should not ‘ave said that!

Except that he had. And it was too late to take it back.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Daniel, do you know something about it?”

He had to think quickly

“I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but I’m getting help from… the Israelis.”

He decided not to use the word Mossad.

“As long as you’re — sorry, gotta go.”

She ended the call. Daniel realized what had happened. She had spoken too loud when he had let the cat out of the bag about the “guy” on the motorbike and caught the attention of the cops in the other room.

The question was, would they treat her with kid gloves or take the phone off her and pressure her for answers?

Chapter 39

They pitied him, but they didn’t try to comfort him. Instead they merely ignored him, or at least pretended to.

Baruch Tikva was standing in the front row of the small shul — synagogue — in Stamford Hill. The synagogue was little more than a large room and it belonged to Shomrei Ha’ir. But the locals did not know this man. All that they knew of him was what they could see and hear. That he was a member of their sect — they could tell that from his attire — and that he was tormented by sadness and feelings of guilt.

This was not a formal prayer time, and there were only three others in the synagogue, the shamas — an official who assisted in the day-to-day matters of the synagogue — and two others who were there to make arrangements for other members their families.

He stood before the Ark of the Covenant — Aron Hakodesh (literally the “Holy Cupboard”) with tears in his eyes, his voice choking on his words, as he addressed Hashem in Yiddish, confessing to his failure to do the word of the Holy One Blessed Be He. As the words flowed through his constricted throat and stumbled out of his mouth in a tangle of guttural Germanic sounds, he expressed his guilt at letting down not only his father but Shamayim — Heaven — itself.

“I have failed as Jew!” he exclaimed through a flood of tears that he couldn’t dam up at source. “I have failed in my piety! I have not lived as a good Jew should live. I haven’t prayed as good Jew should pray. I haven’t served you as I should have served you. I have not found grace in your eyes. I have been tempted by the stranger’s ways. I have made myself unclean before you. I am impure. My heart is corrupted. I have betrayed when I should have served. I have doubted when I should have believed. I have been depraved by all that is profane and not kept faith with all that is holy.”

He broke down again, crying a river into the side of his clenched fist.

The other three men present felt truly sorry for him. He was a fellow Jew who had fallen on misfortune and he was to be helped, if help could be given. If his hardship had been financial, they would have given him tsedaka — charity. If his hardship had been medical, they would have given him advice or drawn on their network of contacts.

But it was clear from what he was saying that his crisis was not material but spiritual. What ailed him was not from without, but from within. Whether it was a trouble in the family or bereavement or just some personal inner feeling of failure, there was nothing they could for him unless he asked. He was praying to God and his fate was in the hands of the Almighty. If he had asked for spiritual guidance and support, they would have summoned the rabbi, who was no doubt nearby.

But he asked for nothing of them. He asked only of God.

But his next words troubled them.

“Help me to kill Daniel Klein.”

Chapter 40

“What’s up?” asked Sarit, noticing the distressed look on Daniel’s face as she walked through the door.

“I saw the news… about my sister.”

Sarit — who had been in the process of removing her biking leathers — stopped stone still and looked at him.

“She’s okay.”

“I know! I’ve — ”

He was about to say “I’ve spoken to her,” but she would probably then go into panic mode about him using the phone. So he had to think quickly.

“I’ve seen on the news. They said she was unharmed.”

Sarit carried on stripping down to her indoor clothes.

“They also said the attack was foiled by a man on a motorbike.”

Sarit, who was by now back in a T-shirt and shorts smiled alluringly.

“I’m flattered.”

Despite his anger at being kept out of the loop, Daniel couldn’t help but smile back at her.

“You might have told me.”

“Told you what? And when? I only just got back.”

“You could have told me before you left.”

“Before I left I didn’t know what was going to happen.”

“I could have come with you.”

“And done what? Get in the way? Get yourself caught? Slowed me down? Look Danny, these people want to silence you. They’ve tried once already. This time they were going to grab one of your nieces for leverage.”

“So it was an abduction attempt.”

“Of course it was.”

“Not a murder attempt.”

“How would it help them to kill anyone else in your family? You remember the old dictum of Capablanca, the chessplayer — the threat is greater than its execution? That was their game. They wanted to grab one of your nieces to use her as a bargaining chip.”

“But how did you know? In advance I mean?”

“I’m not really supposed to say. Can’t you guess?”

“No.”

He looked pitiful — angry, but pitiful. She wasn’t supposed to say, but after a few seconds, she did.

“Intercepts.”

“You’re tracking them and listening in?”

“Project Echelon — an alliance between the NSA, GCHQ and the Urim monitoring station in Israel.”

Daniel was amazed.

“Then why don’t you just tell Scotland Yard and get them picked up?”

“We can do that and get Baruch Tikva. But we also want to get the people behind him. Some of them are here and some of them are in Israel. We want to get all of them.”

“And how many of them are there?”

“Well there are several organizations involved. It’s not a simple case of one organization. There’s Shomrei Ha’ir and then there are some anti-Semitic lunatics here in Britain. And they in turn work with holocaust deniers, the Iranians and fascist and neo-Nazi groups. It’s all one big network of meshuganas.”

“And you think you’re going to get all of them?”

“Well obviously not all of them. But we hope to bag a few of them, if we can hold off and find out what exactly it is they’re after.”

“And in the meantime I’ve just got to sit tight while you babysit.”

“I’m afraid so. Did you have a chance to read through the witness reports?”

She walked further into the room as he sat down at the coffee table and picked up one of the printouts.

“Not yet. I was concentrating on the post mortem report.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Their were traces of animal fibres under his fingernails.”

“What animal?”

“Cowhide — unsplit, untanned cowhide.”

“You think he might have been on a farm?”

Daniel smiled.

“No you don’t understand. We need to get them to carbon date those fibres.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t think they were from a living animal — or even a recently killed animal. I think they were from old parchment.”

“And what makes you think that?”

“You have to understand something about Jewish scribes and Jewish religious law pertaining to religious documents. All Jewish documents were handwritten by scribes on parchment made from cowhide.”

“But I’ve seen Jewish religious books printed on paper.”

“Yes, but those books are not originals. Prayer books and books for scholarship are another matter, but actual religious artefacts like torah scrolls have to be handwritten by a scribe and made from parchment. The same goes for the text inside a mezuzah that Jews put on their doorposts — and also tefillin.”

“To fill in what?”

“Not ‘to fill in’ — tefillin. Those leather boxes that orthodox Jews strap to their arms and foreheads when they recite morning prayers. They have pieces of parchment inside them with certain paragraphs from the Torah. And there are special rules about what type of parchment can be used for what items. For example the parchment in the mezuzah can be made from either the inner or outer part of the hide or from the unsplit hide, a type of parchment called gevil. Torah scrolls are supposed to be made ideally from the gevil — the unsplit hide — but can be made from the outer hide or klaf. And tefillin can only be made from the outer hide.”

“Why such complex rules?”

“Well for tefillin, space was at a premium and the outer skin was thin and so it made good, efficient use of the available space. For a Torah scroll, the main concern was durability, because the scroll is taken out and read from and rolled on from one week to the next. So they wanted something that would last a long time. The main advantage of gevil was that it had precisely that durable and long-lasting quality. Also of course, a complete Torah is too long for a single animal hide, so they had to make it in several pieces and stitch them together. It’s easier to stitch together when it’s a thick, unsplit hide. Most of the Dead Sea Scrolls were written on gevil.”

“So do you think that this manuscript Costa found might have been a Torah scroll?”

“It’s possible. Or maybe the parchment from a mezuzah.”

“But why would he have fibres under his fingernails?”

“Well, let’s not forget he was killed by some one — quite possibly over the parchment. Maybe there was some sort of fight… a struggle for the parchment. Costa must have tried to hold on to it and the other person killed him.”

Sarit nodded.

“That makes sense.”

“And now the manuscript is gone and our only hope of finding out what it was is if your boffins at the Mossad managed to enhance the image sufficiently to make the writing legible.”

Sarit perked up at these words.

“You’re right. They should have finished the image enhancement by now. I’ll check.”

She logged on from the tablet and a smile lit up her face.

“Take a look at this,” she said, handing him the tablet.

He looked at it and what he saw amazed him. The letters had assumed a new clarity under the skilled hand — and computer software — of the experts who had worked on the digital image enhancement and what he found himself looking upon was a page of a manuscript in the form of the Hebrew alphabet that was used in Judea circa the first century. But the language was Aramaic. And as he started translating it, it dawned on him what he was reading.

“Holy shit!”

Chapter 41

“Come in, quickly,” called Bar-Tikva from the top of the stairs after buzzing him in.

Bar-Tikva had rented a one-room bed-sit over a shop in Stamford Hill, but he had no desire to let anyone see a goy entering his home. Who knows what gossip, what lashon hara — “evil tongue” — it would lead to. Sam Morgan closed the door quickly behind him and began climbing the stairs.

“I have a letter from your father,” said Morgan when he reached the top. He handed Bar Tikva the letter in the sealed white envelope.

Morgan had arrived from Israel and taken a black taxi here right away. As soon as he had told the driver that his destination was Stamford Hill, the taxi driver had regaled him with tales of life in London’s East End in the nineteen fifties. The driver was a war baby, now pushing retirement age. But he was the kind of man who wanted to die with his boots on.

Although not Jewish himself, the cabbie assumed, erroneously, that Sam Morgan was, and spent the entire journey rabbiting on about his “nice Jewish neighbours” including “the booby” who used to give him and his brother “lockshen soup” when they got home from school while their parents were both out working.

It amused Morgan to listen to the driver. Presumably he was hoping for a big tip at the end. Morgan obliged him, on the pragmatic grounds that in a worst case scenario, he didn’t want this man talking about him to the police and the best way to ensure a man’s silence was to make him your friend. If subsequently there was a report on Crimewatch in which his description came up, Morgan didn’t want the taxi driver rushing to the nearest phone and grassing him up.

Morgan looked around at the sparsely furnished room. The furniture was old and the atmosphere musty and smelly — with odours from the past that had accumulated in the poorly ventilated room. The room itself was over a shop and had a view of the high street.

While Morgan stood looking around, Bar-Tikva tore open the letter and read it. In fact, Morgan had steamed it open to try and find out what it said. But it was in Hebrew — or Yiddish, using the Hebrew alphabet at any rate — and he couldn’t make head or tail of it. So he re-sealed it, hoping that Bar-Tikva wouldn’t notice. Given the enthusiasm with which Bar-Tikva tore the envelope open — determined to get to the contents — Morgan suspected that he didn’t.

The only thing that Morgan didn’t understand was why HaTzadik had given him a letter in the first place. Why not a phone call. HaTzadik had a mobile phone after all — even if it didn’t have internet connectivity. Then again perhaps he was afraid of being monitored. Shomrei Ha’ir were not too popular in Israel, because of their virulent anti-Zionism. One of their former leaders had once said that if he had a nuclear bomb, he would use it on Israel. In the eyes of some ultra-Orthodox Jews, this had put him beyond the pale — even some of those who were themselves anti-Zionist.

Casting a brief glance at Bar-Tikva now, Morgan noticed him smile as he read the letter. It was so unusual to see Baruch Tikva smile — he was usually such a misery-guts — that Morgan couldn’t help but wander what had brought this mirth to his face.

“Okay,” said Bar-Tikva after he finished reading the letter. “My father wants us to work together. He says that you know this country better than I do, so you are in a better position to avoid mistakes than I am.”

What Bar-Tikva didn’t tell Morgan was that the letter also cautioned his son not to trust Sam Morgan because there was evidently a traitor in the camp and until they knew who it was, he should be very wary of “that greedy Englishman.” But in any case, Morgan was no longer thinking about the letter. He was thinking about his own plans to take this matter further.

“That’s right. And I’ve been thinking about what we need to do. The way I see it, it also starts at the dig. That’s where Martin Costa found the parchment and that’s where Daniel Klein is bound to go sooner or later of he wants to get any more information. So that’s where we have to be to intercept him and to find out what he’s up to.”

“You mean… what.. we just turn up at the dig site?”

“No obviously we need a cover story. We need to find a way to worm our way in. But it isn’t going to work if you turn up there dressed like that. You’re going to have to ditch the religious garb.”

Chapter 42

“ ‘On the day Third of the week, the 28th day of the month Iyar in the year three thousand eight hundred and twenty one since the creation of the world according to the reckoning which we are accustomed to use here in the city of Verulamium in the land of Brittania…’ ”

Daniel was reading in his mind and translating slowly, as Sarit listened in amazement.

“And this is in Aramaic?” asked Sarit.

“This is in Aramaic. And the script is right for the time.”

“And what time is that?”

“By my reckoning some time in the first century of the Common Era?”

Daniel was an atheist rather than a practicing Jew. His insistence on “Common Era” and “Before the Common Era” — rather than AD and BC — was based on academic rigour, not theology.

“Can we work it out exactly?”

“Sure, but we’ll have to go online.”

Daniel minimized the image and did a search for an app or website that could convert from the Jewish calendar to the civil calendar. The first few that he came up with could only go back as far as the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar. Eventually he found one that worked and entered the information, while Sarit went into the kitchen to make coffee.

“Good God!”

“What?” Sarit called out.

“It’s from the year 61.”

Sarit had come rushing in, holding a mug that she had just rinsed out.”

“What date?”

“May… May the forth.”

“Anything particular about that day?”

“No, but the year’s particular enough. Wasn’t that the year that Boudicca fought with the Romans?”

“Wait a minute. Didn’t Professor Hynds say that the site had something to do with that?”

“Not exactly. All he said was that it was a Romano-British site. That covers a five hundred year period.”

Daniel minimized the calendar conversion app to get on with the translation. Sarit stood there, realizing that the coffee could wait.

“ ‘Simon son of Giora said to this maiden Lanevshiah daughter of Farashotagesh ‘Be thou my wife according to the law of Moses and Israel.’ ”

“Are those Jewish names?”

“Simon and Giora are. In fact there was a very famous Simon son of Giora at the time of the Judean uprising 66 CE.”

Daniel froze suddenly, as he realized how close that date was to the date of this document.

“What about the others?”

“They don’t sound Jewish. Heck they don’t sound anything in particular. Assuming I’m pronouncing them properly.”

“What because of the vowels you mean?”

Aramaic, like Hebrew and Arabic, was written in an Abjad — a consonant alphabet with no vowels.”

“No vowels?”

“I mean no written vowels. Obviously they sounded out the vowels when they spoke. But the vowels were never transcribed in the written form. That came with later developments in written language. In an Abjad, The vowels are implied by the context and the rules of grammar. To those familiar with the language, this is no problem.”

“Which you are.”

“Which I am. But when it comes to names, it can be problematical, especially if they’re old names or foreign names and uncommon ones at that.

“Maybe we can get some advice from Professor Hynds.”

Daniel looked pleased at this.

“But we’ll have to be careful,” she added.

“Okay let’s get on with this. ‘and I will work for thee, honour, provide for, and support thee, in accordance with the practice of Jewish husbands, who work for their wives, honour, provide for and support them in truth.’ He looked up at Sarit, who was still standing there expectantly.

“So what is it?”

“It’s a standard ketuba — a Jewish marriage agreement in which the groom asks the woman to become his wife and undertakes to support her and provide for her.”

“So it’s like a contract?”

“Sort of. It’s written in the third person from the point of view of the witnesses, whose names are… Barach and Aristobulos. They’re essentially attesting to the fact that this is what the man said to the woman. And after that, the document is given to the wife as her protection.”

“But why would there be a Jewish marriage certificate at a Romano-British site?”

“That’s just one of the big-mysteries, Sarit.”

Chapter 43

The incident room was a hive of activity when the report came through. The young WPC saw it on her computer and realized instantly what it was. With a click of the mouse, she sent it to the printer. And then got up from her desk and walked a few feet to retrieve it. There were maybe half a dozen computers in the room. But they all shared one laser printer.

She scooped it up from the printer’s Out tray and carried it over to the corner of the room where DCI Vincent was working.

“Sir we’ve got a trace on that call to Julia Sasson’s phone.”

The WPC handed the printout to the Chief Inspector.

“Great!” said the DCI, bristling with enthusiasm. “Let’s pay our friend Daniel Klein a visit.”

The WPC squirmed with embarrassment.

“I didn’t explain very well Sir. It’s not actually the full address.”

Vincent looked up, irritably.

“What do you mean?”

“The phone doesn’t have GPS. They could only trace it by the ground stations. They’ve go an approximate address but not an exact one.”

Vincent looked at the printout annoyed. It showed the area and explained the degree of accuracy. That meant they would have to search several streets.

Chapter 44

“So who was this Simon, son of Giora — the famous one I mean?”

“They were sitting down drinking coffee. Daniel had decided that he needed a break from translating of the Aramaic marriage document, and Sarit took the chance to flesh out her knowledge of ancient Jewish history, continuing the odyssey that had began when she was caught in a suicide bomb explosion by a Palestinian terrorist and continued when she served in Sar-El and the Israel army, before being recruited into the Mossad and trained as a Kidon — a deadly assassin.

“Simon Bar Giora was one of the rival leaders of the Jewish uprising against the Roman’s that began in the year sixty six.”

“What do you mean rival leaders?”

“You have to understand, Sarit, that the Jewish struggle for freedom from Rome — just like the struggle of the ancient Britons — was riven by factionalism and rivalry.”

“Sort of like the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea?”

She had said it with a cheeky grin on her face — a look that softened her and briefly replaced the hard, tough killing machine that he knew her to be with the giggly schoolgirl that she could have passed as, if such camouflage had been necessary. But Daniel simply nodded approvingly, confirming that there was more than an element of truth to her flippant rejoinder.

“Not much is known about his early life. The name Giora can mean a stranger or convert. It may not be his father’s name at all. Anyway he first became known round about the year 66 when he was a young soldier who fought against the Romans in what Josephus called the ‘Jewish war.’ It was actually the first full-scale war between the Jews and the Romans.”

Joseph ben Matityahu — as he was originally known — was a Jew who changed sides when he saw the writing on the wall. In the early stages of the Jewish rebellion against Rome, he had been trapped in a siege in the town of Yodfat, which fell to the Romans despite allegedly being defended by thousands of Jews. Josephus, according to his own account, suggested that they salvage their honour by committing mass suicide. But suicide was forbidden in Jewish law and so they drew lots and killed each other, leaving one last man… who just happened to be Josephus. He was taken prisoner, used by the Romans as an interpreter and ultimately came over to the roman side fully and given citizenship and a role as an official historian.

“And the second was the one with Bar Kochba,” said Sarit, determined to show that she was not completely ignorant of these matters.

“Technically that was the third. But anyway, from what little we know about Bar Giora, he was probably quite young at the time, but he proved himself to be a resourceful strategist and military commander. He attacked their flanks and concentrated his forces on capturing their beasts of burden. A bit like capturing undamaged enemy tanks these days and then using them against the other side.”

“Sounds like Arik Sharon,” said Sarit with another cheeky grin.

General Arik Sharon was a famous — if somewhat controversial — Israeli military commander who had distinguished himself in numerous battles, including turning the tide of the Yom Kippur War, which Israel was losing, by crossing the Suez Canal and cutting off the Egyptian Third Army, whilst threatening also to cut off their Second Army.

“That’s actually quite a good comparison,” said Daniel. “Anyway. The point is that despite Simon Bar Giora’s military prowess, the leaders of the Judean uprising were reluctant to promote him to a senior position. This was partly due to the fact that they were afraid of him, both because of his powers and his popularity, but also possibly because of his parentage. If he was the son of a convert, they may have been more sceptical of him.”

“I guess amongst some people in Israel, I’ll never be accepted.”

Daniel heard the pain in her voice and although he couldn’t really speak for others, he wanted to reassure her.

“As an Israeli, I’m sure you’ll be accepted.”

“But I didn’t even consider converting to Judaism. I’m still a Roman Catholic at heart, whatever my politics.”

“Yes, but you served in the Israel army. And to secular Israelis, that’s the important thing. Anyway there was another factor at work in the case of Bar Giora. The priestly authorities at the Temple were realistic enough to know that they could never defeat the Romans outright and they wanted to negotiate with them. Bar Giora didn’t give the impression that he was a man who wanted to negotiate.”

“The same divisions as Israeli politics today.”

Daniel smiled. He didn’t profess to be an expert on modern Israeli politics, but Sarit’s point jelled with what little knowledge he had on the subject.

“And there was yet another reason why they were against him. In addition to his hardline stance against the Romans he was also a bit of a social revolutionary. He robbed the rich Jews as well as attacking the Romans.”

“It sounds like he was the Robin Hood of his day.”

“Exactly. And you have to remember that the Sadducee priests — or Tzadokim — were the aristocrats of Judean society. They were effectively the wealthy class. So by attacking the rich, he was attacking their constituency.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t kill him.”

“Oh, they tried. In fact for a while, he had to hide out in the mountain fortress at Masada with the zealots.”

“So he was part of the mass suicide?”

The Masada legend was writ large into Jewish national history. But the story was a lot more complicated that most people believed.

“He wasn’t there at the final siege. You see the man who was really out for his blood was the High Priest at the Temple: Ananus ben Ananus. But then Ananus — or Hanan in Hebrew — was deposed soon after that. Then later Hanan was killed by the zealots who hated the Sadducees because they thought of them as traitors and collaborators with the Romans. In fact he may have been killed by Edomites who were Gentile allies of the zealots.”

“So what then?” asked Sarit. “Bar Giora joined the zealots?”

“Well, sort of.”

“What do you mean ‘sort of’?”

“Well he came down from Masada and joined the fray, staging raids, robbing the wealthy and even killing them — and his social agenda of freeing the slaves and giving financial rewards struck a chord with the underclass.”

“So now he’s the Lenin of Judea.”

“You could say that. And by this stage, he was building up a huge following. But his strength was also his weakness. According to Josephus he had 40,000 civilian followers in addition to his soldiers and the other zealots — like John of Giscala — were beginning to get worried about him.”

“But what was their ideology?”

“Good question. If anything it was closer to his than to the Sadducee priests. They were against collaboration with the Romans — or even compromise — just like Bar Giora. They opposed luxurious living, just like Bar Giora. Some people have even described them as ascetics, although that may be an exaggeration. But ideologically there was nothing to separate Bar Giora from John of Giscaala, as far as we know. But as ever, with ideological movements, there’s always a personal element. It was the cult of personality. It was less like Stalin and Trotsky, and more like Hitler and Ernst Roehm — ”

“That’s a horrible analogy!” Sarit snapped. She had heard enough of this from Anti-Semites, without having to hear it from a Jew.

“Don’t take it literally Sarit, but you have to remember that war always was an ugly business. And there are always personal rivalries. Anyway Bar Giora was considered such a threat to John of Giscala that John’s men sat a trap for him.”

“What trap?”

“Well they knew that militarily Bar Giora was too savvy to beat in a pitched battle, so they lured him into an ambush and captured his wife. They tried to use her as a bargaining chip to get him to lay down his weapons and stop fighting, but instead, he went berserk.”

“In what way?”

“Well he raided Jerusalem — holding the ordinary population responsible for what their leaders had done and he pretty much went on the rampage. When his men caught those who tried to flee, they either killed them or tortured them. In some cases, he cut off their hands and sent them back, telling them to warn the Jerusalem authorities that he’d do the same to everyone in the city unless they let his wife go.”

“And did they?”

“Yep! They were shitting in their pants at what he was doing, because although he may have seemed like a madman, he had a lot of popular support from the poorer classes and the freed slaves.”

“So now he’s what, Spartacus?”

“Robin Hood. Lenin. Mao Tse-Tung. Spartacus. He was all of those and more!”

“So what happened?”

“What happened is they let her go, just like he demanded. At least that’s the first thing that happened. But like all these stories, it can never really have a happy ending.”

“The beginning and middle don’t seem to happy either,” Sarit remarked dryly.

“No and it continued in pretty much the same vein. He couldn’t camp inside the walls of Jerusalem, because that would have made him vulnerable to John’s forces. But he was being squeezed also by the Roman advance. And even with his large force, he didn’t dare take on the disciplined Roman army in a pitched battle. So he camped just outside the city walls and attacked those in Jerusalem that he considered to be supporters of John of Giscala.”

“It sounds like he spent more time fighting against rivals on his own side than he did fighting against the Romans.”

“To a large extent that’s true. And it was ultimately his undoing — his and Johns. Because if Bar Giora was a terrorist, John of Giscala was a tyrant and many of those in Jerusalem were tired of John’s despotic ways and saw Bar Giora as just the revolutionary ruler to get rid of him. This was also true of some of the official priestly authorities that John had overthrown. In fact, in many ways Bar Giora had become a myth of almost Messianic proportions. And this was after the time of Jesus, but before Christianity had grown into a powerful force. So they let him into the city and his men went to war with John’s men.”

“This really is beginning to sound like Monty Python!”

“Except that nobody was laughing — ”

“Or looking on the bright side of life,” Sarit interrupted with a cheeky grin.

“There wasn’t much of a bright side to look on. The city became like Belfast at the height of the troubles, or Beirut during the wars there between Maronites and Muslims. Battles lines drawn and separated by heavily-manned barricades and no-go areas. Bar Giora controlled the upper parts of the city and some of the lower parts, but the bulk of the lower parts and the Temple and its courtyard were still under the control of John. Meanwhile the Romans, under Titus, were closing in and by year 70, they had put the city under siege.”

“And did Bar Giora and John make peace?”

“You’d think so wouldn’t you?”

“But did they?” asked Sarit impatiently.

“Like hell they did. Even though it was the sabbatical year, when they didn’t grow any grain and even with the city besieged, so the harvest couldn’t reach them, they seemed more concerned with attacking each other’s grain stores than with conserving food and fighting the Romans.”

“God, what arse holes!

“I couldn’t have put it better.”

“No wonder they lost!”

“Wait, it gets better. Because another faction broke away and seized the Temple itself.”

“Ye Gods!”

“So now you had three Jewish factions all fighting each other when they should have been fighting the Romans. Of course the Roman’s had a de facto motto: Divide et impera. And while the Romans were doing that, Bar Giora was basking in his near messianic reputation and minting his own coins. Meanwhile his and John’s civilian supporters were staring to abandon them and even their soldiers were deserting, as they realized — what their leaders had failed to realize — that the Romans were closing in. Then — finally — the feuding rivals did join forces, but by then it was too late. Titus had breached the city walls and the belatedly united factions were now fighting for their lives.”

“And we know what happened then,” said Sarit sadly, almost as if she hoped that this time, upon the retelling, history would have a different ending.

“But even then, it wasn’t over Sarit. They put up quite a brave resistance, considering how far they’d let things slide. But pretty soon the city fell and the temple was destroyed.”

“ ‘There shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down,’ ” said Sarit, to herself, quoting Jesus’s prophecy as she stared into some imaginary point in the distance.

“Exactly.”

Listening to this account had proved to be a bit of a strain for Sarit. She went over to the window and looked out.

“Wouldn’t it be poignant if they’d been killed at the Temple, making their last stand shoulder to shoulder, like brothers?”

“It would have been. But that’s not quite the way it happened — although Bar Giora did effectively meet his fate on the Temple Mount. What actually happened is that Bar Giora and a small band of followers, aided by stonecutters, tried to dig their way out to freedom. But they ran out of food and couldn’t make it — or at least, that’s the way Josephus tells it.”

“I gather you don’t like Josephus?”

“He was a traitor and his stories are self-serving. In his account of the mass suicide at Masada, he copied the events of his own treachery at Yodfat. Anyway, realizing that all was lost Bar Giora dressed up in a King’s robes and climbed out of the ground at the spot where the Temple’s innermost chamber — the Holy of Holies — once stood.”

“A grand entrance.”

“Grand, but futile. For a moment the Romans were terrified. Then they gathered their wits and grabbed him and from then on it was the familiar pattern like most of the leaders who challenged Rome.”

“Crucifixion?”

“Actually no. They took him back to Rome in chains, paraded him through the city and then threw him to his death from the Tarpeian Rock — that’s a cliff-face of the Capitoline Hill in Rome.”

“Oh God!”

Daniel’s head spun round to look at Sarit, wondering what it was in his words that had provoked such a reaction. But he quickly realized that it was not his words that had prompted her reply. She was looking out the window.”

“What is it?”

“Daniel, what have you done?”

“What is it?”

She turned round to look at him, her face ashen white.

“The police are outside.”

Chapter 45

“Professor Hynds! Professor Hynds! You’ve got to come and see this!”

The young man was breathless from his sprint. He had been on the other side of the dig site — almost diagonally opposite the professor’s makeshift office — and he had been forced to run two sides of a square to reach the professor.

Emeritus Professor Edward Hynds looked up and swept a strand of grey hair from his eyes.

“What is it?”

“You’ve got to see this, professor,” said the gangly youth. “We found clay jar… intact.”

The professor scratched his silver beard, contemplatively.

“Okay, well follow procedure. Hand it to your coordinator and have him bag it up and marked… carefully.”

The breathless youth stood there immobile, looking at the professor, expectantly.

“No you don’t understand.” The voice was still panting from his recent exertions. “He’s the one who sent me to tell you.”

“Why would he…”

Hynds trailed off, sensing that something was missing from this explanation.

“He opened it, professor.”

“What?”

“He opened the jar. It had a cork lid. And he took it off and there was a jute bag inside. And inside that was a piece of leather and rolled up inside that was piece of parchment!”

Hynds put a hand on the table and stood up to his full six foot height. Although only a year and bit shy of his proverbial three score and ten, he was in pretty good nick. He tipped the scales at sixteen stone, but most of it was muscle. This was not some deskbound professor who had gone to fat. This was a man of the outdoors who kept himself fit by hill-walking and gardening. When he did find himself deskbound for any significant period — such as when he had to fulfil the academic’s perennial obligation to generate a scholarly paper for publication, so as to stay on the cutting edge of academia — he took advantage of the various local gyms to counterbalance the desk time with a muscle-building and cardiovascular work out.

“When you say parchment, do you mean papyrus?”

It sounded patronizing, but Hynds knew that some of these students were wet behind the ears and didn’t know the difference.

“He said parchment. In fact he said it looked like Jewish style parchment — whatever that means.”

By this stage, the Hynds was moving round the desk. He knew that Jews had very particular ways of preparing parchment, that differed significantly from the iron age Romans and Romano-Britons.

“Did he say what was on it?”

“He said it was a map… a map of Europe actually. But he also said something about writing on it.”

Hynds realized that the reason he hadn’t brought the map back to the office was in case the professor wanted to check out the spot where it was found. After a find like that, they would almost certainly want to prioritize the digging in that area. But Hynds also wanted to check out the stratum that the find had come from. And the area coordinator had probably realized this.

“I think I’d better go and take a look.”

And without further ado, Hynds was out of the door, leaving behind the tall, bearded man who had come to the office volunteering to participate in the dig.

Chapter 46

“Your sister? Why the hell did you do that?”

“I had to find out if she was all right… and to tell her that I was.”

Sarit and Daniel were arguing. The police had not in fact come to their door, but appeared to be checking other houses further down the street.

“And it didn’t occur to you that they could do a trace?”

“I thought that if I kept it short, and they weren’t tracing already, then they couldn’t.”

“You think they can only do live traces? You didn’t know they could pull the records from the phone company and get a retroactive trace.”

“But how can they do that when the phone doesn’t even have GPS on it.”

“By the ground stations! They can check which ground stations it was routed through and work it out that way!”

“But then they can’t get an exact fix, just a general area.”

“My God Daniel are you completely techno-illiterate? The ground stations in rural areas are spaced far apart, but the ones in urban areas are packed close together.”

“Then why aren’t they here now?”

Sarit had to take a deep breath to keep her temper.”

“They’ve got about ten cars out there! They’re searching house to house and from what I can see they’ve blocked one end of the street. They’ve probably blocked the other too!”

Although he was trying to sound calm, Daniel was anything but. He knew as well as Sarit what sort of trouble they were in, even if he was trying to play it down in his mind.

“What are we going to do?”

“There’s only one thing we can do. Use the motorbike.”

“Can’t we just go upstairs and keep quiet?”

“It won’t work. If they’re this determined, they’re probably asking neighbours if they’ve seen anything suspicious. All it’ll take is one of them to say a couple of people on a motorbike and the games up.”

“But if they’ve blocked off the road…”

“Then we’ll use the pavement. It won’t be blocked completely.”

“And if it is?”

“Then I’ll just have to do a Steve McQueen.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

Two minutes later they were in the garage, dressed in bikers leathers and helmets. Sarit was gunning the engine and Daniel was unlocking the door. He signalled her that the door was unlocked as she revved the engine and kicked away the support. Then, in response to a nodded signal from Sarit, Daniel swung the door open and Sarit rolled forward. She didn’t pause as she reached him, but right on plan, he swung his leg and leapt awkwardly onto the pillion seat — like an old-fashioned high-jumper doing the western roll — as the bike roared across the driveway into the street and swung a sharp right, nearly taking out a copper in the process.

As expected the street was blocked by a police van and a car, but the pavement was clear, except for a few policemen milling around and telling pedestrians who wanted to use the street that it was closed for the next two hours, even if they lived there.

The police on the pavement turned round in response to the roar of the bike and one of them even tried to play the hero and block their path. But when it came to a game of chicken in a make-or-break situation like this, Sarit took no prisoners. The brave yet foolish copper, was the first to blink, leaping aside at the last half-second. Sarit leaned the bike and took a sharp turn at the end of the street, but within a few minutes they could hear the sound of a helicopter.

Daniel was surprised that they had been able to scramble it so quickly. The question was what was Sarit going to do about it. One thing he knew was that most of these police helicopters had a limited range. But the helicopter could call in ground forces to intercept. She might try to go near an airport, where flying restrictions might prevent the helicopter from entering.

But in the end she headed straight for a built up area. The closer they got to the centre of London, the higher the helicopter had to fly, under health and safety rules about flying low over densely populated areas. And because there was low cloud cover, this made it harder for them to see the motorbike.

She made it into the Brent Cross Shopping Centre outdoor car park, from where they raced into the centre, still in their biking leathers.

“What now?” asked Daniel.

“We go to the toilets, strip off the leathers, then meet outside.”

“Do we take the leathers with us?”

“No leave them. We have to split up from here. This place’ll be swarming with cops in seconds. And remember it’s you they’re looking for.”

“What should I do?”

“I’ll stay on the upper level and make out like I’m looking for you on. You come down to M amp;S and buy some other clothes. Buy them and change into them there and then leave on foot. Make your way to the Pond at Hampstead where Jack Straws Castle used to be. I’ll meet you there.”

In one minute, Daniel was in ordinary street clothes outside the toilets, having left his leathers in a cubicle. He looked around, but Sarit was nowhere to be seen. He knew that there were CCTV cameras in the building. But he didn’t know if Scotland Yard could patch into them in the way they could with the platform and ticket office level cameras of the London Underground. All he did know is that he had to act quickly.

As Sarit had said, he made his way to Marks and Spencer and quickly selected the most size-tolerant clothes. He paid for them in haste and then went back into the changing rooms to change into them — the security tags having already been removed. He was still self-conscious and nervous when he left, but he kept his head down and walked out to where the buses were. He knew that with his head down, the cameras — which were usually placed high — couldn’t catch his face. And if they were looking out for his clothes when he left the toilet, then he was now wearing different clothes.

But he realized also that they would probably be watching the exits for people leaving. So he knew what he had to do — and it took nerves of steel. He had to hang around. Not look around as if he were looking for some one else, because that too would attract attention. But look like any other shopper.

So he casually strolled into WH Smith and started looking at books.

He knew what Sarit would be doing. Wondering around up in the upper floors like she was looking for some one. Although she had told him that she was going to meet him at the Pond, he suspected that she was using herself as bait, or offering herself up as a human sacrifice, to help him get away.

The trouble was, if they caught her, would they think he was really still around and that she was looking for him or would they assume that she was doing it to help him getaway? If the former, then they would think that he was still there and would look for him in the shopping centre. But if he left now, he would also attract scrutiny. He had to hold out as long as he could. It occurred to him that she might have gone to another shop for a change of clothes. If so, they might not be able to identify her either.

It was difficult keeping his nerve over the course of the next half hour. But he held out, even managing to get absorbed in some of the books that he was pretending to be interested in. Only when a check of his watch confirmed that forty minutes had elapsed, did he leave the shopping centre by the exit that led to the area away from the buses and by the road. He was going to make his way across a dangerous crossing to the pedestrian walkway of the overpass. It was underneath one of the roads and not visible from a helicopter. But then h realized that there were probably CCTV cameras there and they would be closely monitored.

Instead he made his way to a bus stop away from the main group of buses and took the first bus out of there. He rode it for three or four stops and then got off. He wandered around almost aimlessly and then hailed a black cab.

“The Pond, near the Heath.”

“‘op in mate,” said the friendly London cabbie.

And with that, he was on his way.

Chapter 47

“Okay girls,” said Julia. “Hurry up and finish packing. It’s one suitcase each.”

Suitcase was a relative term. The twins’ suitcases were actually quite small, typical children’s suitcases. Little Romy, on the other hand, had managed to persuade her mother to give her one of the unused “grown-up” suitcases.

“Why does Romy get a bigger suitcase?” one of the twins asked, plaintively.

Julia tried to ignore it, knowing that whatever answer she gave, she’d find herself facing a mutiny.

“Because I need to pack all my shoes,” said Romy, smiling sweetly.

Romy was very much a girlie girl and by the age of four she had already become intensely fashion-conscious — definitely her mother’s daughter. While the twins had always asked for toys whenever presents were due, Romy had developed a taste for shoes and a mature sense of fashion. One of her favourite questions to her mother was: “do these shoes go with this dress?”

Although a long way short of Imelda Marcos’s record, Romy had built up a sizeable collection of footwear, enhanced by the fact that she tended to outgrow them quickly but had a profound aversion to actually throwing them away. Not content with merely owning them, she insisted on taking them with her on this unexpected holiday to Israel.

The Sassons had decided that they could not afford to hang around as sitting ducks to these lunatics who were trying to harm them. Julia’s parents in Jerusalem had invited them to stay with them for the summer, and although it would be a bit crowded, they decided to accept.

It had not been an easy decision. After the attack, Nat and Julia had sat down and thought long and hard about it. The problem was that they didn’t actually know how long it would be before whoever was doing it was caught. They knew that it had something to do with Daniel’s predicament, but precisely what was unclear. And they also had no inkling of how long Daniel’s current situation would persist. But they couldn’t stay in Israel past the end of the school holidays. That would be completely impractical.

On the other hand there was a possibility that the situation might be resolved before school resumed in September. And although Nat couldn’t afford to take time off work, he could stay in contact with them via the internet and know that they were safe. That would be a weight of his mind and at least it would give them some breathing room.

Against that, the police had offered them police protection and assured them that they could protect the children against any further abduction attempts. They did not think it had been a murder attempt. The way the driver had almost hit them as he lurched forward, was merely a sign of his ineptitude, as proven by the fact that he had acted alone. The fact that it was a lone attacker, was in some way reassuring, according to the police. It implied that he had limited capacity to obtain assistance.

On the other hand they conceded that the attack on the police van carrying Daniel had been the work of career criminals. Indeed the two who were shot by the unknown man on the motorbike were themselves known to the police as violent thugs.

“Ready,” Shir announced, arriving in the living room with her suitcase.

“Me too,” echoed May, lugging her case along.

“Romy!” Julia shouted out to her youngest in the other room. “Are you ready?”

“Not yet. I’m still arranging my shoes. I don’t want them to get damaged. You know how the people at the airport throw suitcases about without caring what’s inside.”

Julia smiled.

Where on earth did she get that from?

Then Julia remembered that it was something she had said when they got back from America.

Kids! They remember everything — especially the things you want them to forget!

“Hurry up Romy. Or the nice policeman will go without us.”

The police had agreed to give them a lift to the airport and stay with them until they were safely airside. Romy had taken a shine to one of the young policeman. So it was no surprise when, seconds later, Romy appeared in the living room, struggling to drag her suitcase behind her.

Julia smiled again. The incentive had worked.

The police kept a vigilant eye out for anyone around them as Nat loaded up the people carrier and Julia strapped the children in — one of the female Community Support Officers even helping with the seat belts. But they were only on the look out for actual threats. A man innocently sitting in his car down the road was not a threat. And in any case, he drove off while the Sassons were still getting ready.

For his part, the man in the car had seen enough. The sight of the suitcases alone told Sam Morgan that they were going to the airport. He guessed that it was Heathrow and he figured he even knew where they were flying to.

Chapter 48

The man was standing somewhere in the centre of the motorway service station, holding one of those sturdy cardboard tubes of the type that retailers sometimes use for posters and wall maps. He was looking around in every direction but the right one. Sarit had pointed him out and then moved off, circling round him, to let Daniel approach him alone from behind. If this was a trap, she wanted to be free to spring Daniel from it.

“Professor Hynds I presume.”

The professor spun round.

“Daniel Klein!” he said with enthusiasm. “We meet at last. And please… call me Ted.”

“And call me Daniel.”

The Emeritus Professor of Archaeology from Cambridge extended a large hand which Daniel shook. The firm grip was reassuring to Daniel. He had always taken it as a sign of honesty and he made sure to make his grip similarly firm to give equal reassurance to the professor.

“So,” said Ted amiably, “I understand you have something to tell me?”

“And you said you’d also made an interesting discovery.”

“Yes indeed.” Ted looked around. “Shall we get something to eat? I’m not hungry myself, I got here early and had something to eat while I was waiting, but if you want something.”

“Er, no. I’d rather we kept on the move. As you know, the authorities are still looking for me. It’s a long story, but for now let’s just say I want to avoid staying in one place for too long.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“We can along the motorway and talk.”

Ted thought about the practicalities of the situation.

“But we’ll still have to get back here don’t we? I mean I assume you came here by car too.”

“I hired a car. Let’s take mine and I’ll drop you off back here at the end.”

“Okay.”

They started walking towards the exit and the open air car park.

“Just as a matter of interest, how did you manage to hire a car? I mean you’re name would’ve set off alarm bells wouldn’t it?”

“I had a friend do it for me.”

As he walked past Sarit, she gave him a nod to indicate that she had not spotted any surveillance. They walked out, and the professor held the door open for the attractive redhead behind him, not realizing who she was. While Daniel led Ted to the car, he knew that Sarit was still looking around for signs of a possible police presence ready to swoop in. Only when they reached the car, did Sarit close the gap and manoeuvre round the pair of them to get to the driver’s seat.

Ted did a double take at this, prompting a smile from Daniel’s face.

“Oh Professor Hynds — I mean Ted — may I introduce you to my partner in crime, Sarah Smith. Miss Smith, Professor Hynds”

“Please… call me Ted said the professor smiling and again offered his hand. But when “Sarah” responded, he did not shake her hand in a firm grip, nor indeed shake it at all. Instead he raised her hand towards his lips, bowed from the waist and kissed the hand, like a medieval knight acting out a scene of courtly love.

Daniel was unsure of how Sarit was going to take it, but was relieved when she smiled and nodded politely at the professor.

“Sari — Sarah will drive. That way we can talk.”

Sarah got into the driver’s seat. Daniel and Ted sat at the back. As Sarit was manoeuvring the car back onto the M11, Daniel decided to kick-start the flagging conversation.

“So who’s going first?”

“Oh you lead. I’ll follow.”

“So the fibres in the dead man’s hand tend to confirm the authenticity of the document,” Ted was saying, nodding enthusiastically at what Daniel had told him so far.

“Yes… although they haven’t actually been carbon dated.”

“Are they going to do so?”

“Well I asked my lawyer to suggest it to the police. But I don’t know if they will. I mean it may be of interest to us but it doesn’t exactly help to either incriminate me or eliminate me from their inquiries, so I’m not sure how much importance they’ll attach to it.”

“If nothing else, it’ll tell them for certain if this parchment is an authentic historical artefact.”

“Yes. Anyway, I’m now beginning to think it is. It’s hard to see how all this could be happening over one of Martin Costa’s forgeries.”

“You said, you had some information about the content?”

“Oh yes.”

Daniel explained about the digital image enhancement — omitting any reference to the Mossad — the script and language and to his translation of it.

“A marriage certificate?”

“Yes.”

“This really is absolutely incredible. I mean a Jewish marriage certificate in England dating back to the Romano-British period is absolutely… well it’s incredible! Unprecedented!”

“The thing is that there is quite a famous character in Jewish history called Simon Bar Giora, and although the name Simon was a very common Jewish name at the time, Bar Giora was somewhat less common.”

“The name sounds familiar.”

“He was one of the leaders of the first Jewish revolt against Rome, in 66.”

Daniel filled Ted in on the details, as he had with Sarit.

“And you think this really was the same man?”

“It seems very unlikely that he would have gone to Britain. There’s no obvious reason why he would have done. On the other hand, as I was telling Sarit, we know very little about him.”

“Telling who?”

Daniel blushed as he heard sniggering from the driver’s seat.

“Okay, you got me there.”

“I won’t pry,” said Ted. “But regarding travelling from Judea to Roman Britain, remember that both Britain and Judea were parts of the Roman empire. And the Romans did encourage trade between different parts of their empire. That was one of the main reasons for having an empire.”

“But I thought the trade was supposed to be for the benefit of Rome.”

“As long as they got their cut, they didn’t mind the locals making a profit too. It kept the natives docile and made them all the more servile to Rome.”

“But Bar Giora wasn’t a merchant, Ted. He was a soldier — or at least a rebel leader.”

“Maybe he started off as a disgruntled merchant who became a rebel. The thing I don’t understand is who did he marry? It’s unlikely that he would have brought his betrothed with him to Britain while travelling for trade purposes.”

“Well it’s hard to read actual names, especially names that are not normally written in Hebrew script, because the Hebrew alphabet doesn’t use vowels. But the name of the woman appeared to be something like Lanevshiah which isn’t exactly an ancient Jewish name that I recognize. And her father was called something like Farashotagesh, which sounds vaguely Persian.”

Ted thought about this for a while.

“I was going to say, it’s more likely that he married a local girl. If he felt strongly about it, and if he was wealthy, her father might have agreed to her converting to Judaism in exchange for a high bride price.”

“The trouble is that in Jewish marriages, the bride price was a kind of promise in the event of divorce. A sort of ancient prenuptial agreement. But then again, if he was a wealthy man generally, then maybe mammon and love would have overcome religious objections. Did the ancient Britons have strong objections to religious conversion?”

“No not really. They were pagans like the Romans and they followed the general pagan tradition of worshipping the local Gods — often even finding equivalence between their Gods and other people’s Gods. But the problem is those names don’t sound too much like iron age British names… or Roman names.”

“The ketuba was signed by two witnesses. One of them had a Jewish sounding name — presumably a member of Bar Giora’s entourage.”

“Who was that?”

“Barach.”

“That sounds familiar.”

“It sounds like the Hebrew word Baruch meaning blessed. I suppose it could be considered like the name Benedict. But if it was Baruch, it would have had a Hebrew letter vav to serve as a placeholder for the oo vowel.”

“Wait a minute,” said Sarit, from in front of them. “What was that Hebrew name again?”

“Well the name on the ketuba looked like Barach, which in modern Hebrew would mean ‘he ran away’.”

“Now I remember!” said Sarit excitedly. “I thought it sounded familiar. There’s a character called Barach in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology.”

“Of course!” Ted exclaimed. “I thought I recognized your accent!”

“What’s the Ulster Cycle?” asked Daniel.

Sarit spoke again.

“It’s a collection of myths and tales dating from around the seventh century but set round about the time of Jesus. Barach was a Druid priest who advised Conchobar Mac Nessa, the greatest king of Ulster. The story goes that Barach saw the sky getting dark and interpreted it as an omen telling of the death of Christ. And when he told this to Conchobar the king was overwhelmed with grief.”

“That’s right,” said Ted. “You certainly know your Celtic legends. I think there was something about him hacking at a tree in grief and anger until an old wound from his head started bleeding again and he died. That’s Conchobar I mean, not Barach.”

“Well presumably this is all just coincidence,” said Daniel.

“Oh yes,” said Ted. “I don’t think anyone’s suggesting the legends were true. They were originally oral pagan legends, but by the time they were transcribed, they’d probably been edited somewhat by monks to bring them into line with Christian beliefs. But the point is that the name Barach could be a local name. It doesn’t have to be this…”

“Baruch,” Daniel added.

“Okay but you said there were two witnesses.”

“Well the other was a name was very easy to read. It’s a name of Hellenic origin, but it was a name that was found in several members of Herod’s family. Aristobulos.”

Daniel was expecting some comment from Ted in response to this — expecting anything but the reaction that he actually got. For when Daniel said the name, he noticed that the look on Ted’s face was one of shock — the man was absolutely shaken to the core.

Chapter 49

“Why can’t we go through there?” asked Shir.

She was pointing to a bank of machines at the far right end of passport control where people were just placing their right hands and then walking through. Julia thought about how to explain it to an eight-year-old.

“It’s a special machine that can read people’s hand prints.”

“What do you mean ‘reading’ them?”

“It can tell who they are by their handprint. And if it recognizes them, it lets them through automatically, so they don’t have to stand in the queue like us.”

The queue was long and didn’t seem to be moving, so as usual the girls were getting impatient.

“So why can’t we use it?”

“Because it’s only for Israelis.”

“That’s not fair,” said May.

“In order to use it, you have to register with them beforehand and they can only register people who live in Israel.”

Romy was pointing in another direction.

“Then why can’t we stand in that line over there?”

Julia looked round, wondering if she had indeed missed the chance to stand in a shorter queue. Of course the problem was you could never really tell. You could join what looked like the shortest queue only to discover that another queue was moving faster. In fact in Julia’s experience, that was usually the case.

“That’s a queue for Israelis only too.”

“But why can’t they use the machine? Then we could stand in that line?”

“Because not all Israelis have registered to use the machine. And if they haven’t registered, then it hasn’t got their records.”

The discussion fizzled out, but the twins and Romy kept looking over at the hand-scanner wistfully, as if wishing that they too could use it. Julia relied on the scanner to keep them distracted and pre-occupied while the queue crawled slowly forward. She knew that it would be another long wait at the baggage reclaim, but she remembered that the carousel had held the girls spellbound at LAX on their way to Disneyland and she assumed — translation: hoped — that it would be the same here in Ben Gurion Airport.

It was over an hour later that she passed through customs with the suitcase on a trolley and the girls on the suitcases, having relegated airport safety rules to obscurity. By that stage her mother, Helen, was going frantic with worry, as Julia had forgotten to switch her mobile phone back on after the flight. When the Sasson’s finally emerged groundside, it was Shir and May who spotted their grandmother first, followed a second later by Romy. But it was Romy who tugged at her mother’s arm and pointed to alert her.

“Julia,” said Helen with a smile. She wanted to embrace her daughter, but it was hard to when she was being swarmed by the equally loving embrace of her granddaughters. When she finally extricated herself from the zealous affections of the happy threesome, Helen and Julia exchanged a quick hug before Helen exerted her matriarchal authority to restore some discipline to the situation.

“All right girls,” she said firmly, “to the car.”

This produced a quickly scramble back to the luggage trolley which very nearly degenerated into a three-way fight. But Helen made short shrift of this.

“Cut it out girls! No you can’t ride the trolley. You’ll have to learn to walk. You’re not babies.”

Coming from their grandmother, this seemed to work.

It was a long walk to the car, especially in the humid heat. The airport town of Lod was on the coastal strip and on hot days, with the humidity from the sea, it could feel like a sauna. To Helen this was nothing, but neither Julia nor the little ones were used to it. Still, they were troopers and none of them wanted to wilt or succumb to complaining before the others did. Soon they were in the car on the way to Jerusalem, with the air conditioning turned up to high.

Julia thought she noticed a car behind them that had pulled out of the airport car park at the same time as hers. Presumably the driver of the vehicle was going to Jerusalem too, or at least somewhere near Jerusalem. At any rate, she thought nothing more of it.

Chapter 50

“Aristobulos wasn’t just a common name in the Herodian dynasty, Daniel. It was also the name of one of the seventy disciples — the one who went to Britain.”

“What do you mean seventy disciples? I thought there were only twelve.”

Ted replied in his slow, deliberate spoken baritone.

“There were twelve immediate disciples, the ones who were part of Christ’s immediate circle. But in Luke, Chapter 10, it describes how Jesus appointed seventy disciples — or in some traditions seventy two — and sent them out in pairs to spread the word to what it calls ‘every city and place whither he himself was about to come.’ This is generally understood to mean the whole world. In other words, they were sent out to spread the word to the world at large.”

“It just goes to show the gaps in my knowledge,” said Daniel sheepishly. I didn’t know anything about these seventy disciples. Are they called disciples rather than apostles to distinguish them from the original twelve?”

“Oh er no. In fact, the eastern churches call them the Seventy Apostles. But the western churches refer to them as disciples.”

“And Aristobulos was one that he sent to Britain?”

“Yes. According to tradition.”

“But you said Jesus sent them out in pairs”

“That’s right. According to eastern orthodox tradition he was the brother of Barnabus and both he and his brother travelled with Saint Paul.”

“How much of this is known and how much of it is speculation?”

“It’s pretty much all speculation — or let’s call it tradition. But that’s with reference to the origins of Aristobulos. Although there’s no documentary evidence to support it, there is a general acceptance in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches that there was a person called Aristobulos of Britannia who lived, preached and died in Roman Britain in the first century. He is regarded as the first Bishop of Britain and a saint, although the Catholics and Orthodox differ on whether or not he was martyred. The Catholics say yes; the Orthodox say no.”

“But they don’t differ on whether he was one of those seventy disciples or apostles?”

“No, they agree on that. It’s just that apart from the religious tradition itself, there’s no evidence that such a person was ever in Britain.”

“Well this ketuba might just change that — albeit at the price of making him a bit more Jewish than the churches might like.”

“Well let’s not forget that the early Christians basically thought of themselves as messianic Jews.”

“True.”

“There is one other thing, Daniel.”

“Yes.”

“Well you mentioned that the name Aristobulos was common in the Herodian family. It has been speculated — in the Roman Catholic Encyclopaedia no less — that Aristobulos of Brittania was Aristobulos the Minor.”

Daniel recognized the name from his knowledge of Judean history.

“The youngest son of Aristobulos the Fourth?”

“Exactly… and thus a grandson of Herod the Great.”

Daniel thought about this for a long time.

“Very little is known about Aristobulos the Minor, Ted. Unlike some of the Herodian family’s other progeny, he lived a relatively quiet life, except when he chided Caligula for setting up statues of pagan gods in the Temple.”

“A very courageous act, considering Caligula’s paranoid propensities.”

“Yes, but he came through okay because Caligula died in 41 and we know that Aristobulos the Minor outlived his brother, Agrippa the First, who died in the year 44.”

“But of course, we still don’t know when the ketuba was actually from.”

“No we don’t. But like I said I asked my lawyer to get the police to have it carbon dated.”

“If does turn out to be Aristobulos the Minor, then maybe he didn’t live such a quiet life after all.”

The conversation fizzled out at this point.

“Okay Ted, I’ve told you what I’ve got. Now you tell me your big news.”

“We found another piece of parchment, at the dig site. It was inside a clay jar sealed with a cork.”

“And what was on this parchment.”

“It was a map — a map of Europe as envisaged by the Romans In the first century. There were no Americas and the bulk Asia was largely unknown. There was Europe and Africa and the near and middle east. But everything centered around the Mediterranean.”

“But what’s so special about it that it got you so excited?”

“Well firstly the parchment itself didn’t look like any traditional Romano-British parchment. I can show it to you afterwards, but I suspect I know what you’re going to tell me. It’s probably a Jewish-style parchment.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Firstly the type of parchment itself. Secondly, because there’s writing on the map and it isn’t Latin — or even the Roman alphabet. I’ll need to show it to you, but based on what everything we’ve been talking about, I suspect it’s Hebrew or Aramaic.”

“Okay let’s head back to the service station and you can show it to me there.”

“Got that,” said Sarit from the front, pulling into the slow lane, preparing to take the next exit.

“Can I ask you something about those names Daniel?”

“What names?”

“The names on the marriage certificate.”

“Barach and Aristobulos?”

“No, the bride… and her father.”

“Lanevshiah and Farashotagesh?”

“Yes.”

“How certain are you about the pronunciation. I mean you said yourself that foreign names were hard to transliterate.”

“Well first of all it was a complete guess as to where the vowels go. I mean I could have inserted vowels where none were intended or missed out vowels that were supposed to be there. Also like I mentioned, where there’s a Hebrew letter vav it can either be pronounced like the letter V or used as a placeholder for one of two vowels, either oo as in soon or O as box. We can play around with various combinations and see if we can come up with anything that you recognize as a Romano-British name.”

“But you’re sure about the consonants?”

“Most of them yes.”

“Most of them?”

“Well one of them is the Hebrew letter shin which is pronounced like an S-H as in shout of short. But it can also be the Hebrew letter sin which is pronounced like an S. And also, in Farashotagesh, I read the first letter as the Hebrew letter Fay, which is pronounced like an F. However it could just as easily be read as the Hebrew letter Pay, which is pronounced like a P.”

“So it might actually be Parashtagesh?”

“Exactly. And the daughter could be Lanoosiah.”

For the second time in this car trip, Ted looked like he’d been pole-axed.

“Could it be Lannosea?”

Daniel was encouraged by the surprise and enthusiasm in Ted’s voice.

“It could very well be.”

But before either of them could follow up, their car was viciously side-swiped by a large lorry that had been overtaking them in the middle lane, sending them veering across the hard shoulder and rolling upside down into a ditch, to the loud screeching of metal.

Chapter 51

He kept several cars between them, but the man in the black frock coat continued to follow Julia Sasson and her family up the mountain road that wound its way up to Jerusalem. He had hovered around the arrivals area of the airport and picked up on Julia Sasson both from her description and the presence of the twins and the younger child. It was unlikely that there would be another family with precisely that arrangement and a young woman who matched Julia Sasson’s description.

He felt guilty at the temptation of lust that afflicted him when he looked upon the woman. But he told himself that it was her fault. He would ask his rabbi — HaTzadik — for guidance on this matter.

He would have to be alert now, because they were approaching the entrance to Jerusalem and that meant they could take the Sacharov Gardens entrance on the right that led to the Givat Sha’ul neighbourhood. However, he was not surprised when they passed the entrance and went on instead to the main entrance to the city instead.

Once they were inside the city with its busy traffic, he had to stay alert, because it would be all too easy to lose the car amidst the turnoffs and side streets. So he made sure that this time there was no more than one car between them as he followed through the labyrinthine streets. Jerusalem, the “new” city outside the Old City walls — was no carefully planned metropolis like New York City or the other major cities of the USA. It had grown organically over the course of its 150 year history.

And its rapid growth meant that new roads were constantly being built in the suburbs, while traffic was frequently log-jammed in the city centre. The new tramlink in Jaffa Road, far from alleviating the congestion, had augmented it because now cars, taxis and even buses were rerouted behind the shouk — the market — into a street far too narrow for them to navigate safely.

But the Sassons didn’t take the road behind the shouk. Instead they took another route that led them to an area of south Jerusalem, along a winding road that to its left had a panoramic view of the old city, the sun glinting off the golden Dome of the Rock, built by Muslims on the site where the ancient Jewish temple once stood, and now claimed by Muslims to the exclusion of the Jews.

Not that this bothered the man in the car. He believed that Jews should not enter the Temple Mount because they did not know where the Holy of Holies was situated. And as only the high priest was allowed in the Holy of Holies, it followed that no one — or at least no God-fearing Jew — should enter any part of the Temple Mount.

These thoughts were still with him as he followed the car past the roundabout by the forest just before Government House, the former British High Commissioner’s residence from the days of the British Mandate, now used by the United Nations. The roundabout took him into East Talpiot, a large sprawling neighbourhood with buildings of the ubiquitous near white or cream-coloured Jerusalem stone facade.

He held back as they turned off into another winding road, this one descending down a shallow hill. The reason for holding off was because he suspected that they had no more turnoffs and he didn’t want to make it to obvious that he was keeping them under surveillance.

After a couple of minutes, he went the same way, following the single road’s winding turns. A couple of times, he cast his gaze to the left, as gaps between the buildings gave him a panoramic view of the small valley on the other side of the hill against which these buildings had been built. These buildings were separate houses, attached middle eastern style with some atop one another, but each with a separate entrance from the street. To his right, on the upper part of the hill, were taller buildings containing apartments.

He noticed the car parked outside one of the buildings to his left, but kept his eyes on the road, except when they darted sideways as he passed the car that he had been following. He noticed that a gate was open and the Sassons — mother and children — were carrying suitcase downstairs to the lower house while Julia’s mother locked the car. Although the house was apparently in a basement, when viewed and entered from this side, he knew from the topography of the neighbourhood and the fact that it was against a hill, that it would actually have a panoramic view across the valley on the other side — and probably quite a nice garden.

But more importantly, he knew exactly where it was.

Chapter 52

Like every accident, the noise was followed by an eerie silence. Only after a while did the silence break and the normal background noises return. To some extent this was because of other cars stopping. But then most cars in the slow lane simply steered into the middle lane, even if they did rubberneck as they passed.

For Daniel it was a different story. He was busy unfastening his seat belt from his inverted posture and watching with relief as Ted did the same. But what about Sarit?

For a few seconds, it seemed as if she was not moving. But then she stirred.

“Sarit? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Then her professionalism took over. “We need to get out of here.”

As they awkwardly clambered out from their inverted postures, they could hear the sound of emergency service sirens in the distance. Daniel, while still on his hands and knees, helped Ted out, after Sarit had ignored his extended hand. But when he tried to stand up himself, he found that he was quite unsteady on his feet, as if his sense of balance had gone, or at least been thrown out of whack temporarily.

For a second they stood there, their clothes in disarray, trying to get their breath back and regain their bearings and sensibilities.

“That was deliberate!” Ted gasped. “Some one was trying to kill us.”

“They were trying to kill me!” said Daniel sharply. He felt, now, the anger that he should have felt when they had a go at his sister and nieces.

“We need to get out of here!” said Sarit with even greater urgency as the sound of the sirens grew nearer.

“Shouldn’t we wait?” said Ted. “We should tell the authorities.”

“If we do, then Daniel is liable to get locked up — and possibly me too. Now I don’t know about you, but I’m out of here.”

And with that she climbed over a fence into a field and then began walking, first normally, then fast and finally running. Ted and Daniel looked at each other and realized that they had no alternative but to follow. For Daniel it made sense, but for Ted it was more a case of follow-my-leader.

But as Daniel looked back to see if Ted was all right, he noticed that the archaeology professor was holding the cardboard tube

“What’s that?”

“That’s what I want to show you.”

“Let’s save it for later,” said Daniel.

For a man of his age, Ted seemed remarkably fit, keeping up with Daniel with no trouble at all. The shortness of breath only showed when he spoke.

“Who’s trying to kill you Daniel?”

“Whoever killed Costa. And whoever took the ketuba from him.”

On the other side of the field, they climbed the fence again to find themselves on a narrow country road, wide enough for cars to pass each other with difficulty, but with no pavement to speak of. But a distance of about a hundred yards, separated Sarit from the men. Only when she had led for a few more minutes did she relent and turn round to see where they were. The distance was too great to carry their voices and she didn’t want to attract attention, so she waved to them to catch up.

But at that point they heard the thing they most dreaded: a helicopter. They all knew what this meant: the police were on to them. But this did not mean that they knew it was Daniel. Sarit had rented the car and Ted’s car was still at the motorway service station. The police would have had no way to link up the missing accident victims with any wanted persons. All they would know was that the people inside the overturned car had crawled away alive.

Of course leaving the scene of an accident was a crime and the police would certainly be looking for them. But if the police were basing their search on information that there were three people — two men and a woman — then the separation would work to their advantage. Daniel realized that their best bet for avoiding attention was not to be together.

Instinctively they knew what to do. Sarit turned and looked away from them and crossed to the other side of the road, like she had nothing to do with them. Ted and Daniel turned round and started walking back along the road in the opposite direction, so that in effect they would be walking towards the scene of the accident, if not actually following a path that would take them all the way there.

It occurred to Daniel that if anything the helicopter should be on the lookout for the truck. A vehicle fleeing the scene of an accident in which a car had been driven into a ditch was far worse than the passengers making their way away — especially as they might be seeking medical assistance. But maybe they already had the truck and were now free to focus their attention on the occupants.

At any rate, as the helicopter was in the distance when they first turned, they knew that they hadn’t been spotted already. They walked slowly and gesticulated freely, waving their hands in an animated fashion, as if they were not trying in any way to avoid being noticed. Obviously, they could not walk down onto the motorway, so after they were confident that they had been seen and dismissed from the police helicopters reckoning, they turned off into another side street and Daniel called Sarit from his new mobile phone to arrange a rendezvous.

It was a family-friendly pub/restaurant. Ted, who had already eaten, was limiting himself now to a salad, but the other two hadn’t eaten a proper meal since yesterday and were tucking into grilled steaks with pepper sauce. Daniel had chosen the fries, while Sarit had opted for a baked potato.

As Ted was eating the least, he was in the best position to be talking the most.

“So if Lanevshiah was Lanosea, then we could be talking about the daughter of Boudicca. And Farashotagesh, you said the F could be a P the S-H could be a plain S and some of the vowels could be misplaced. So I’m thinking… Prasutagus?”

Daniel nodded.

“It could be. Even though there isn’t a second vav to act as a placeholder for the second oo sound, there is a kind of soft double o sound that’s pronounced like in book rather than soon — and that softer vowel doesn’t need a placeholder.”

“So Prasutagus fits perfectly.”

“But who was he?” asked Daniel.

“He was the King of a Britannic people called the Iceni — Ikeni as the Roman’s called them. He was the husband of Boudicca.”

Now that, at last, was a name that Daniel recognized.

“The queen with flaming red hair who wore a golden torque and fought against the Romans.”

“Exactly Daniel. And damn near won!”

“I have to admit that I don’t know the story as well as I should.”

“Well for that you have to understand the background. Prasutagus was the king of the Iceni people in east Anglia until round about 60 or 61 AD. He was a client king or vassal of Rome. The custom was for client kings to hold their kingdom in their lifetime and then bequeath it to Rome upon their death. But when Prasutagus died, he left only half his kingdom to Rome and the other half to be divided between his wife Boudicca and their two daughters. Needless to say this outraged such a patriarchal society as ancient Rome.”

“So they seized the lands?”

“Well more than that. First they called in their loans — and it has to be said that Prasutagus and the Iceni nobility had been living on huge loans. One wealthy Roman creditor alone, Seneca the Younger, had lent them something like forty million sestertii — that’s a about fifty million pounds.”

“Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.”

“You’ve hit the nail on the head there Daniel. And the first thing they did to show their outrage was demand the money back — with interest!”

“And presumably the Iceni couldn’t pay it.”

“Obviously not. So the Romans seized all the lands and effectively enslaved the Iceni, including the nobles.”

“But how did a woman get to be their leader? I mean even if she was the king’s widow.”

“You have to bear in mind what the Romans did in addition to seizing the land. They had Boudicca publicly flogged. And they raped her daughters. And that was an act of defilement that the Iceni could not forgive. They were already a proud people who had rebelled against Rome once before when they were forced to disarm and now the Romans were defiling their queen and her daughters and this was all too much for them.”

“So they rallied under the banner of their queen.”

“Yes.”

“She must have been a pretty good military strategist — even if she did lose in the end.”

“Actually, she wasn’t. She just had demographics on her side.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well the Romans had decided that the druid priests were a major threat to them — far more so than the nobles or kings — because the kings and nobles were corruptible by bribery, but the Druids lived up to high ideals.”

“It’s always the clergy,” said Daniel with a wry smile.

“Exactly. But the druids were concentrated in what was then called Mona — modern day Anglesey in north Wales. And so the Romans had most of their army concentrated there on a systematic campaign of genocide to wipe out the druids. In fact this might have been the real reason for the conflict with the Brythonic peoples. It was Tacitus — and later Cassius Dio who told the story of Boudicca and neither of them were there at the time, although Tacitus’s father-in-law Agricola was.”

“So are you saying the whole story of the uprising is a myth.”

“Oh no, although the Roman sources certainly exaggerated the scale. But they may also have gilded the lily when it comes to the causes. Was it the flogging of Boudicca and the rape of her daughters or the massacre of the revered druids? Or maybe it was the rape and flogging in the case of the Iceni but the massacre of the druids that gave them the support of other tribes. But whatever the cause or causes, there certainly was a revolt. We know that from the archaeological records.”

“And what exactly did they do? I mean if they were in East Anglia and the Romans were in Anglesey, who exactly did they fight?”

“Basically, Boudicca and her rebel army — if one could call them an army — attacked those towns that were deemed to be representative of Rome, even if they were populated by their fellow Britons. The first place they attacked was the Roman town of Camulodunum. That’s modern day Colchester.”

“And that was originally a Roman city?”

“Well strictly speaking it had originally been a local city — the capital of the Trinovantes tribe. But by the time it was attacked by Boudicca it had become a Roman colonia — that was the highest status of Roman city, even larger than a municipalis. It was settled by retired Roman soldiers, who liked to lord it over the locals. That made it a perfect target for the irate Britons: not too well guarded, but symbolizing everything they despised about Rome. When the local Romans knew the British hordes were coming, they requested reinforcements from the Roman procurator, Catus Decianus. But he underestimated the scale of the problem and only sent two hundred auxiliaries.”

“That’s all they had?”

“Well no, not exactly. After Boudicca had laid siege to the city for two days, the commander of the Ninth Legion, the Hispana, sent some reinforcements to break the blockade. But still not enough, given the large size of the forces that had allied themselves to Boudicca. Most of the Roman forces were wiped out, but the cavalry got away, as did their commander, one Quintus Petillius Cerialis.”

“He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.”

“Exactly, and he did indeed redeem himself in the final battle and go on to become governor of Britannia. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Boudicca systematically destroyed the city with a take-no-prisoners policy.”

“That must have put the wind up the Romans.”

“Oh it did that all right. Catus Decianus, the discredited procurator, fled to Gaul. And when the news of the defeat got to Suetonius — the Roman governor — he and his men began hurrying back. But of course there was no point sending just the cavalry. And the bulk of their men were on foot.”

“But surely by then Camulodunum would have been destroyed. I mean they must have known that? And surely Boudicca wouldn’t just stick around would she?”

“Oh no, she didn’t Instead she went on to Londinium, which at the time was a major commercial city, though not the capital that it was going to one day become. And that’s where the Romans were trying to get to as well, because they knew that Londinium would be next on her hit list.”

“But presumably Boudicca got there first — not having to cover such a great distance.”

“Of course. In fact Suetonius did get there with an advanced party, but he didn’t have enough men to make a fight of it. He’d seen what happened at Camulodunum when Petilius had decided to fight with inadequate forces and he decided not to make the same mistake. There were very few Romans in Londinium. Most of the inhabitants were locals or foreign merchants. So he simply pulled his forces out — ignoring the pleas of the locals — and abandoned Londinium to Boudicca’s angry mob, who burnt it down.”

“And we know that for a fact?”

“Oh yes. Archaeological excavations at various London sites have confirmed a combustion layer. It’s seen in dust covering coins and pottery from before 60 AD but not after.”

“So what did Petronus do?”

“He waited for the rest of his forces to arrive in the area north of Londinium. Meanwhile Boudicca and her ever growing army went on to destroy Verulamium, also mostly by fire.”

“Verulamium?”

“Modern day St. Albans. It wasn’t really a Roman city but it was heavily romanized — largely by choice of the inhabitants themselves. So it would also have been a natural target for a vast horde that had grown to detest anything Roman. You have to remember that in addition to the fighters, this vast army was accompanied by the wives and children of the British combatants. It wasn’t so much a war or a military campaign as a rampage with very little by way of planning.”

“So far, I make it Boudicca three, Romans nil.”

“And so it was, but by now the Roman army was back. You could say they made a couple of last minute substitutions and their team was now back to full strength. Suetonius now assembled his army, somewhere that the Britons would have to pass through if they wanted to get back to their lands. There is some dispute as to whether they had planted their crops that year — ”

“Similar to the Jerusalem siege in the year 70,” Daniel interrupted.

“Exactly. But regardless of that, the Iceni and their allies couldn’t just wonder around aimlessly. According to Tacitus, Suetonius assembled his forces in a place where he had the topography on his side. He had a forest behind him and steep slopes on either side.”

“But couldn’t be attacked from above if he did that?”

“No because the wasn’t overlooked by the steep slopes. They overlooked the approach to his front line. That meant that Boudicca’s army would be funnelled into a narrow area where their front line would be no larger than the Roman line. So the Roman’s could pick them off one line at a time.”

“But the Romans were still outnumbered weren’t they?”

“Oh yes, Daniel. But not to the extent that Tacitus or Cassius Dio suggest in their historical propaganda. The Romans had the Germina Legion — that’s the fourteenth, as well as some of the twentieth legion, known as Valeria Victrix. He also had the cavalry remnant of the Hispana, the famous ninth legion, plus assorted auxiliaries. The one thing he didn’t have was the second Legion, the Augusta, who were stationed in Exeter. He had in fact sent a message to Poenius Postumus, the commander of the Augusta, telling him to send forces. But Postumus declined to do so.”

“Does history record why?”

“Some say he was afraid. Some say he didn’t have time to get them there and some say he had to maintain a rear guard defence and that his decision was sound strategy. I’m inclined to the last of those, but regardless of my opinion, when he missed out on the great battle he was so shamed for depriving his men of a part of that great victory, that he committed suicide.”

“Ah, so we are now talking about the final battle.”

“Yes. And this is where Boudicca’s strategy — if one could call it that — fell apart. First of all you have to remember the Romans had an iron discipline to match Boudicca’s iron will. Secondly they knew military strategy inside out. It was in their blood… and their history. So when the first line of Britons charged at them, the Romans used their spears. Even if the Britons defended themselves with their shields, the spears imbedded themselves in the shields and bent or warped, so they couldn’t easily be removed from the shields.

“Then when the Britons charged again, the Roman’s held their shields in a tight formation and when the Britons got close enough to engage, the Romans fought with swords taking advantage of their superior combat skills. When the Britons tried to flee, they found their retreat blocked by their own wagons that contained their families whom they had brought along with them. And then with the Britons in retreat and disarray, it was the Romans who went on the rampage with a take-no-prisoners policy.”

“And what happened to Boudicca?”

“Well according to Tacitus, she poisoned herself. According to Cassius Dio, writing a hundred years later, she fell ill and died and was given a lavish burial.”

“But where did Cassius Dio get that? I mean he must have read Tacitus’s account.”

“Oh certainly… and it’s not clear where he gets his story from, other than the propaganda element, which to some extent is present in both their narratives. But the interesting thing is that Tacitus actually gives two different accounts. In his more detailed account in the Annals he mentions suicide. But in the Agricola, which is an account of his father-in-law’s career — and remember his father-in-law was there — he says that Boudicca’s rebellion ended through what he calls ‘socordia’ — which means indolence. In other words it just fizzled out — which suggests a much smaller revolt.”

“But there’s no possibility that she was captured?”

“None whatsoever. If that had happened, she would have been taken back to Rome in chains and paraded through the streets.”

“And that would presumably have been recorded by other writings in Rome.”

“Exactly Daniel. And no such record exists.”

“But if this ketuba is genuine — and we can’t be sure without the original — then this is…”

Ted nodded.

“Words fail me too Daniel. If the daughter of Boudicca got hitched to a visiting Judean — let alone one of the leaders of the Jewish uprising of 66 in Judea — then it’s a find that promises to rewrite history.”

For a while they sat there in silence, contemplating the enormity of the discovery, or at least the potential discovery. Finally Daniel spoke.

“Okay, now what is the significance of the site where you were digging?”

“Compared to yours, it almost pales into insignificance.”

“Maybe, but tell me anyway. At least you’ve got something concrete to show for your troubles. And it might just add to the big picture.”

Ted smiled, encouraged by Daniel’s words.

“Well, Arbury Banks has been suggested as a possible site for the final battle. The site was originally a late bronze age site in pre-Roman Briton. But it may also have been the site of the final battle. At any rate, that’s what we’ve been looking into.”

“But what’s so special about this map that you found?”

“Well first of all. It’s on parchment — and like I said, not the type of parchment you usually find in Roman Britain. Secondly remember what I said about the writing. I’m hoping that you might recognize it.”

And with that Professor Hynds cleared his plate from in front of him, opened the cardboard tube and carefully removed the parchment, that was now inside a transparent folder. It was actually quite a thick, sturdy parchment, that Daniel instantly recognized as gevil the unsplit cowhide that orthodox Jews used to make Torah scrolls.

But as the professor carefully unrolled the parchment and transparent plastic, Daniel recognized something else. The map showed the Mediterranean Sea as a flat horizontal oval, with Europe to the top. North Africa to the bottom, Iberia and the Atlantic Ocean to the left and Judea and Mesopotamia to the right. But there was also an arrow pointing to the Italian peninsula where Rome would be. And adjacent to that arrow was some writing in a Hebraic script that Daniel recognized as from about 2000 years ago, just like on the ketuba that Martin Costa had found.

But there was something different about this writing.

“What does it say?” asked Hynds.

“I wish I could tell you.”

Hynds did a double take.

“But isn’t it Hebrew… or Aramaic?”

“The lettering is Hebrew script all right. But I don’t recognize the language. It’s not Hebrew or Aramaic.” Daniel stared long and hard at the short text. “It’s not any Semitic language that I recognize.”

Chapter 53

The man who had followed the Sassons and Helen Klein to the house had been told by HaTzadik not to use the phone. They had been wary of using the phone at the best of times. But now with HaTzadik concerned that they might be under surveillance, they had to be extra careful. So instead, he drove back to the city centre.

He was in fact one of the few members local of Shomrei Ha’ir who could even drive. Because the sect was so fanatically opposed to the State of Israel, they refused not only to participate in its elections or to serve in the army, but even to cooperate with its institutions. Hence learning to drive was very difficult for Israeli members of Shomrei Ha’ir even though foreign based members — in the UK and USA — had mastered the skill driving of driving and were licensed to do so.

In the case of this man, he was Israeli, but he had not always been a member of the sect. For most of his life, he had been a secular Jew with no religious upbringing whatsoever until a personal crisis had caused him to “see the light” and become a ba’al teshuva — a master of repentance — who had hazar bitshuva, returned in repentance. This was not a convert, but a lost soul who had returned to the fold — the Jewish equivalent of a “born again” Christian.

As such he capable of equalling if not exceeding the fanaticism of other members of the sect. It also meant that he could be ruthless in his dealings with other human beings in order to fulfil the wishes and demands of HaTzadik, his beloved “rebbe” or teacher.

Once he reached the city centre, he drove around for twenty minutes before he found a place to park. Then he walked to Mea She’arim.

“The house is in the basement. There’s gold-painted metal gate. You go down the stairs and to the right and that’s where they are.”

“And you just drove by once?”

HaTzadik was grilling his man on the details. This time Shalom Tikva was taking personal command of the operation and he didn’t want it to go wrong yet again. He would proceed the plan with hours of prayer, knowing that success or failure was in the hands of Hashem. But in the meantime, he would plan it carefully and diligently.

“No I stopped further down and started chatting to a religious couple about buying a property in the area. I asked if it’s quiet on shabas and used that as a starting pointing.”

“And what did you find out?”

“About what it’s like on shabas?”

“About anything!” snapped HaTzadik, irritated. “What are the neighbours like?”

“There’s a hostel for mentally retarded girls.”

“A hostel?”

“Well… a sort of mini-hostel. It’s a basically an apartment where they’ve got several teenage and young adult girls staying.”

“And staff?”

“A woman comes to visit them during the daytime.”

“That’s it? But surely if they’re retarded…”

“They’re not severely retarded; just mildly. And some of them have behavioural problems. Anyway they were the only neighbours I was able to find out about.”

“What about access?”

“Well there’s only one actual entrance — and that’s the gate I told you about, But there’s a garden that overlooks the sloping hill and the valley. I took a look at the valley. There’s no road anywhere near it, but a fit person could climb up the hill and get to the garden that way.”

“And how easy would it be to get from the garden into the house?”

“Not that easy. All the windows have solid bars.”

“But what about how they get to the garden from the house?”

“Well from what I could see they had heavy shutters, that they presumably lower at night — or maybe just to keep the sun out. But there’s also an iron door and again, I assume they lock it at night.”

“But when you looked at it… during the day?”

“It was open.”

“And aside from that,” HaTzadik added, “if there’s a garden… and if there are little girls… they probably like to go outside and play.”

Chapter 54

Ted was looking at Daniel with unmitigated disappointment. And even Sarit, who had been content to eat in silence while these two academic gentlemen were having their discussion on ancient Roman history, was now paying attention. She had been riveted by their analysis of the conflicts that befell the Roman empire, but she had been hoping all along that something would emerge out of this that would tell them why there was such interest in the dig site at Arbury Banks… and why a fanatical anti-Zionist Jewish group was taking such an interest in the matter.

So far, an artefact trafficker, two policemen and two thugs-for-rent had been killed. There had been two attempts on Daniel’s life, one on Sarit’s and one on Ted’s — as well as a kidnap attempt on Daniel’s sister or nieces. They had established that a missing parchment, stolen from the dig site, was an ancient Jewish marriage certificate between a man who might have been a famous Jewish revolutionary leader or military commander who fought against the Romans in Judea and woman who was almost certainly the daughter of a Celtic queen. And now they had a map with some writing in the Hebrew alphabet but an unknown language that even a scholar of Daniel’s high repute was unable to recognize, much less translate.

“Can you tell what language group it belongs to?” asked Ted.

Daniel stared at the writing, well and truly mystified.

“Well if you ask me, it looks like Welsh!”

“Welsh?”

After all their discussions about the druids and the Roman massacres at Mona, this was an interesting turn of events.

“From what little of it there is.”

“Can you transliterate for me?”

“Why? Do you speak Welsh?”

“I do as a matter of fact.”

“Okay, well I’ll have a go, but remember what I said about it being hard to place the vowels and the double pronunciations of some of the letters.”

“If there are several variations give me both.”

Daniel came up with several transliterations, using various permutations of vowels and alternative letter pronunciations. Ted wrote it down on a serviette, using columns for the different pronunciations and vowels. Then he started writing individual permutations.

“Anything?” asked Daniel after a while.

“Nothing,” said Ted. “At least nothing in Welsh.”

“What about Breton or Cornish?”

“Also not. But I think it could be an older language that may be the forerunner of one of those. You see languages like Welsh, Breton and Cornish — even in their old forms — only go back to the ninth century. But I suspect that this is proto-Brythonic — the ancient language of the Britons in the Roman times or even earlier. But of course we know very little of that language, apart from a few place names and nouns found on coins. But we know some of it. Or rather we know that if we find samples of it, we can be sure that some of the words would have been carried over into one or more of those other languages. So for instance, I recognize the third person feminine pronoun here.”

“She?”

“She. And in fact I can come up with a translation. I just don’t know if it’s the right one.”

“What is it?”

“Well it could be read as something like… ‘she shall be aroused.’”

Daniel smiled.

“Kind of near the knuckle for the ancient world. Was is it? Some kind of classical porn.”

“I suppose it could be,” said Ted with a smile.

Sarit scowled.

“Perhaps you two can stop acting like schoolboys and come up with something useful.”

“Well actually I was just thinking about something… or perhaps remembering would be a better word.”

The other two fell silent and looked at Ted, awaiting some form of elaboration.

“Well, there was a case a few years ago, in which a document was found in Rome when they were doing some archaeological excavations at a place called the Domus Aurea and if I remember rightly… I wish I had a phone with internet connectivity.”

“I’ve got one,” said Sarit, taking it out. “What are we looking for?”

“That’s what I’m saying. I don’t really remember the details, just that it was a document in an unknown script. They thought it was Hebrew or Aramaic, based on the alphabet in which it was transcribed. But it turned out not to be. They said it was an unknown language and they couldn’t decipher it. So I was just wondering if it could be something like this might be… the Hebrew alphabet, but the old Brythonic language. The ancient Britons didn’t have an alphabet of their own don’t forget, and the educated ones spoke and wrote in Latin. But maybe some of them learned the Hebrew alphabet and used it to write their native language.”

“I’m doing a search,” said Sarit. “What shall I look for?”

“Like I said, I wish I could remember the details.”

“Try typing in ‘Hebrew’ ‘manuscript’ and… what was that place called?”

“The Domus Aurea.”

“ ‘Domus aurea’ as search terms. See what you come up with.”

“It might be a long list,” said Sarit.

“Well let’s give it a try,” Daniel replied.

Sarit started thumbing and fingering away at her smart phone.

“In the meantime,” asked Daniel, “what exactly is this… Domus Aurea?”

Ted smiled, again in his element.

“The Domus Aurea was a huge prestige project of Nero.”

“He of the great fire of Rome.”

“Precisely Daniel. Although the Domus Aurea was built after the great fire. In fact there was one theory that Nero actually started the fire in order to clear land for construction of the Domus Aurea. Anyway, the point is the Domus was a huge mansion — or villa as they called it. It was plated in gold leaf — hence the name. But it was more a place of entertainment than residence. It had 300 rooms, but nothing resembling sleeping quarters has yet been found, although admittedly it hasn’t been fully excavated.”

“Even now?”

“You have to understand that the complex extends across the Palatine, Esqualine and Caelian hills. After Nero’s death it was regarded as such an embarrassment that it was covered over with earth and built over.”

“Built over?”

“Yes. The Baths of Titus, the Baths of Trajan, the Temple of Venus and Rome and most important, the Coloseum — or the Flavian Amphitheatre as it was originally called — were all built on the site of the Domus Area and its grounds. And obviously they can’t dig up under all those buildings — at least not without threatening their structural integrity.”

“So it’s possible that there may be sleeping quarters there, somewhere on the site?”

“Oh yes. It may hold all manner of unknown treasures in the unexcavated parts. But you also have to understand the sheer size of the place. Even the lowest estimates put the size of the complex at one hundred acres. But some think it may have been three times that. It had a huge bronze statue of Nero, frescoes, mosaics not only on floors but also on parts of the ceiling — which was something of an innovation at the time — an artificial lake and a huge rotating dining hall.”

“Did you say rotating?” asked Daniel.

“Yes.”

“But how did it rotate?”

“Some complex mechanism. Archaeologists discovered what they think was the mechanism in 2009. But they still aren’t sure exactly how it worked. Anyway the Domus Aurea was originally discovered during the renaissance. Artists like Raphael and Michelangelo, visited the subterranean site and carved or scratched their names on frescoes — as did the Marquis de Sade and Casanova somewhat later.”

“Is it open to tourists today,” asked Daniel. “The accessible parts I mean?”

“No it was closed in 2005 for safety reasons, because rain and ground subsidence threatened a partial collapse.”

“Couldn’t they strengthen it with maintenance work?”

“They tried… and they even reopened it in 2007. But then they had to close it again for further safety work in 2008. It’s still closed to the public today, although there is still some archaeological work as well the ongoing maintenance. That’s how they discovered the rotation mechanism as well as the manuscript. Interestingly, although they found a banqueting hall, they still haven’t discovered anything that could have served as a kitchen.”

There was movement next to them, as a middle-aged man with a moustache and short beard was led to the table next to them. He sat down and started perusing the menu.

“Got it!” said Sarit.

“The kitchen?” asked Daniel.

“An article about finding the manuscript.”

“And?”

“It says exactly what you said Ted. They found a waterlogged Jewish-style parchment in the part of the ruins that housed the rotation mechanism for the great banqueting hall. Ah, this is interesting. It was restored with the help of a manuscript restoration team from the Hebrew University.”

Ted pressed for information.

“Anything about the contents?”

“Yes. It says that although the lettering system was Hebraic, the underlying language was unknown but did not appear to be Semitic, Greek, Latin, Etruscan or anything indigenous to the region.”

“Do they show any pictures of the manuscript?” asked Daniel.

“No.”

“Where is the manuscript is now?” asked Ted.

Sarit flicked her finger against the screen several times, in order to scroll down

“It’s now in… the Vatican library.”

“The main library?” asked Ted.

Sarit squinted at the screen.

“Er… no. It’s in the secret archives.”

“Is that a problem?” asked Daniel. “I thought the secret archives are open to accredited scholars.”

“They are,” said Ted. “But you need an introductory letter from an accredited institution. Now I could get one from Cambridge, but it’ll take a few days and we don’t know if they’re on to me — either the police or the people who tried to kill us.”

“And I can’t even go near University College,” said Daniel.

“Maybe I could get my contacts to forge letters of introduction?” Sarit suggested.

Ted shook his head.

“That wouldn’t work.”

“Would they check them out?” asked Sarit.

“Normally no,” Ted explained. “But normally there would be prior contact, arranging the visit, the date and the time and giving the applicants details and explaining the purpose of the research. Then the presentation of the letter of introduction would be the final formality. In this case we haven’t got any of that. And if we apply now it’ll take a while. And if we use your name Daniel, we increase the risk to you.”

“Can’t you go alone?” asked Sarit. There’s no arrest warrant outstanding for you.”

“And who’s going to transliterate the Hebrew?”

“I could. I read Hebrew. And as far as I know the form of Hebrew text hasn’t changed much in the last two and a half thousand years.”

“Yes but you’re not an accredited scholar.”

“You could say I’m your assistant.”

“They wouldn’t agree,” said Ted. “They’d say ‘your assistant can wait outside or go to a cafe while you do the research.’ Sorry, but that’s how they operate.”

Daniel sat forward, seized by an idea.

“We might just have something to bargain with.”

“What do you mean?” asked Ted.

“The ketuba. They might be interested in that. Evidence of Judeans in Roman Britain within thirty years of the crucifixion?”

“Yes but there’s no evidence that they were early Christians though.”

“No, but one of the witnesses was Aristobulos. And remember the early Christians were essentially messianic Jews. We could hold out the tantalizing prospect that it might have been Aristobulos of Britannia.”

“But it’s just a picture of the ketuba. We haven’t got the original parchment. And the first thing they’ll suspect is a forgery.”

“No but that’s the other thing. We do have your map… and it does have Hebrew lettering that appears to be a non-Semitic, non-Romance, non-Greek language. If we can show them that we have some idea what language their document is in — don’t tell them specifically, but make it clear that you have the ability to translate it if it’s the same as on the map — then they might grant us special access.”

Ted thought about this idea.

“You know Daniel, it might just work. The only question is how are we going to get there?”

“I don’t understand,” said Daniel.

“Well if I understood correctly, you were sprung from custody and you’ve been on the run ever since. So presumably, you haven’t got your passport with you. And even if you did have, you must be on some airport watch list by now.”

The disappointment was hard to withhold from Daniel’s face.

“You’ve got a point there.”

“Passports are no problem,” said Sarit firmly. “I can get them for both of you.”

The man at the neighbouring table was still looking down at the menu, trying very hard not to react to what he was hearing.

Chapter 55

“Shamir,” said Dovi, answering the phone in his pithy style.

“It’s Uri at SHaBaK.”

“Yes.”

“We have a little problem with our friends in Shomrei Ha’ir.”

“Specifically?”

“Well we stepped up surveillance on Shalom Tikva after his son’s antics in London and now it seems that Daniel Klein’s sister Julia has brought her daughters here to get them out of harms way.”

“Out of the frying pan into the fire, as it were.”

“Yes well maybe some one should have warned them.”

There was a hint of criticism in the General Security Services man’s tone.

“My officer is babysitting for Klein. She didn’t have any direct contact with his sister.”

“Well anyway, the SHaBaK officer continued, the point is she’s here now.”

“And what’s the problem?”

“The problem is they know?”

“Who know?”

“Shomrei Ha’ir.”

“How?”

“We don’t know what happened in England — ‘cause that’s not our department — but it seems Julia, her mother and her daughters were followed from the airport by one of HaTzadik’s loyal men.”

“What he just saw her there and recognized her?”

Dovi was incredulous.

“No, not exactly. It seems that he was waiting for her… waiting and watching.”

“But that means they knew she was coming.”

“Exactly. But as I said, it’s not in our remit to keep tabs on them abroad.”

“All right, I get the message,” said Dovi irritably. “But how much do they know?”

“Ah yes, that’s what I’m coming to. You see we’ve set up nearby and we’re using a laser scan of the window.”

This was a technique in which a laser was aimed at a window and a camera monitored its micro-vibrations and converted it back into sound. Any sound generated in that room or even audible in that room could be detected by this method.

Even double-glazing wasn’t a problem as the laser could penetrate to the inner glass and the camera could be aimed at that same inner glass to pick up the vibrations. In some ways that was better because there would be less noise from the outside of the glass affecting the audio pick-up. However in practice most of the old buildings in Mea She’arim didn’t have double glazing and so there would be some external interference. But as there was no major stream of motorized traffic in the area, the audio pick-up would be of reasonably good quality.

“Okay cut to the chase Uri, what did you get?”

By now Dovi was growing tired and irritable with Uri’s game of one-upmanship.

“It seems that they know the exact address, they know the layout and they’re planning to kidnap one or more of the girls.”

“Well get onto to the police for God’s sake! Or get some of your men over there!”

“I’ve done that already. I just wanted to keep you in the loop. They should be there very shortly.

Chapter 56

Daniel had seen many large and impressive buildings in his time. But nothing could have prepared him for the magnificence of the Vatican Library. The richly veined marble and high vaulted ceilings were everything he expected to see in such a library and more.

He and Ted had entered through the Porta di St. Anna in the via di Porta Angelica, adjacent to the Vatican Library. They were escorted by Swiss guards, in navy blue uniforms, thorough brass doors and up a claustrophobic staircase, that belied the overall scale and grandeur of the place.

Finally they were led into an office where they were greeted by Pierre-Philippe Dubois the Archivist of the Vatican Secret Archives who was also the Librarian of the Vatican Library — the two posts having been held as one since 1957. As he rose to greet them, Daniel and Ted realized that neither of them had won outright the bet that they had made on the aeroplane. They had never seen Dubois before, but Daniel had speculated that he would be of patrician bearing.

Ted, in contrast, who was somewhat older and thus less in awe of senior academicians, suggested that he would look like more of a bespectacled scholar and that the broad shoulders of Daniel’s vision would be replaced by the hunched shoulders of one who spends long hours poring over leather bound codices.

In the event, they exchanged a brief eye-contact and muted smile that acknowledged that the truth lay somewhere in the middle. After the introductions and minted tea all round — consumed well away from any valuable books or manuscripts — the hard questions began.

“So… I understand that you have some things to show me that you feel might be of interest to the Vatican secret archives.”

He was looking at Ted when he said this, assuming that the senior man would speak for both of them. But Ted nodded in Daniel’s direction and it was Daniel who led off, explaining about the manuscript that Martin Costa had found. He didn’t actually mention Costa or the fire or anything to do with the police or being on the run, but he explained that the manuscript was not currently available in its original form.

To make the abstract more concrete, he showed Dubois a glossy laminated colour printout that they had prepared earlier at an internet cafe and explained precisely what the document was, where it was found, the possible identities of the persons named in it and the fact that surviving fibres established that it was indeed an old Jewish-style parchment.

When he finished speaking, he could tell that Dubois was far from convinced.

“Forgive me for my perhaps unfair scepticism, but a picture of a manuscript that is no longer extant is hardly best evidence. I am well aware of your credentials Professor Klein, and you Professor Hynds, but it would be hard for me to commit to anything more than the mildest of curiosity in the absence of the actual manuscript — or at least a more detailed explanation of why it is no longer available.

Watching him now, Daniel wondered how much he actually knew. They had only phoned when they arrived in Rome, but Monsignor Dubois would surely have checked them out through their academic institutions, even if he remembered Daniel from his recent adventures in Egypt.

Had he also Googled them and found out about Daniel’s brush with the law? Did he know that Daniel was technically a fugitive from British justice? Was there in fact a European or international arrest warrant out for Daniel? And were the Carabinieri closing in on them even as they spoke?

Daniel shifted awkwardly as these doubts and fears enveloped him.

“I’m sorry,” Dubois followed up. “I did not mean to make you uncomfortable. I am simply pointing out that the Vatican would have to study these documents very carefully before coming out with any statement about their authenticity. And in the absence of the original document, there isn’t really much to study.”

Daniel was about to say more, when Ted leaned forward. He didn’t immediately speak or interrupt, but the Archivist picked up on his body language and invited him to join the conversation.

“Professor Hynds.”

“Yes, er well I let my colleague lead off because I’m a firm believer in starting with the hors d’oeuvre rather than the main course.”

Ted paused to give Dubois the chance to acknowledge the humour with a smile. The Archivist was happy to oblige. Ted then spoke in a slow, deliberate tone, explaining about the map, whilst periodically lifting the cardboard cylinder into the air to make Dubois aware that unlike Daniel’s missing ketuba, this was something concrete, real and truly a “bird in the hand.”

The only point at which Ted departed from the pre-arranged script — making Daniel uncomfortable yet again — was when he told the Archivist that he was sure the language was proto-Brythonic, the original language of the Celtic Britons and that he was one of the few who could translate it. This was something he was supposed to hold back, for better leverage. As it was, the Vatican could always seek out other experts, now that Ted’s disclosure had set them in the right direction. But they would have known of Ted’s strengths and specializations anyway.

Finally, Ted opened the cylinder and carefully withdrew the plastic envelope containing the parchment map. It was only when he had carefully unfurled the map and allowed Dubois to inspect it, with watering eyes, that Ted made his move to reel in the catch of the day.

“I understand that you hold in this archive a Jewish-type of parchment containing Hebrew lettering but in an unspecified language. I am going to stick my neck out here and speculate that — like this map — the parchment that was found at Domus Aurea also contained proto-Brythonic text written in the Hebrew alphabet.”

Dubois looked stunned. Ted realized that he had to strike while the iron was hot. So he spoke again, before the Archivist could gather his wits

“Daniel is one of the finest scholars of Semitic alphabets and pronunciation,” he said, subtly shifting the centre of gravity on Daniel’s vocation, to strengthen his point. “And I am one of the few people specializing in the old Brythonic languages, The important thing is that between us we have the skills that few others have. If my conjecture is right and the Domus Aurea parchment contains proto-Brythonic text in the Hebrew alphabet then Daniel can provide the best possible transliteration, which I can then translate. Between us we can reveal a secret that others — and I suspect you also — thought was locked away forever.”

There was an awkward moment, when the archivist seemed lost in the deepest of contemplation, before a smile graced Monsignor Dubois’s lips.

Chapter 57

“We’re going to throw the garbage away,” said May.

“What both you?” asked Bernie, their grandfather.

“Yes, why not? There Mai’s throwing the ordinary garbage and I’m taking the plastic bottles to the recycling bin.”

“Okay but stay on the pavement and watch out for cars.”

Although only eight, in the twenty four hours that they had been here, the twins had shown that since the last time they had come to visit, they had become very grown-up and helpful. It was clear from the beginning that they liked to show how they were not only self-sufficient and capable of doing things for themselves, but also ready to help around the house. They knew that grandpa Bernie and Grandma Helen were no longer as young as they used to be, and so they wanted to show their gratitude towards them by helping them and showing them that they were considerate and eager to help.

So now they were climbing the stairs chattering to each other and listening with curiosity to the sirens in the distance that seemed to be getting closer. At the top of the stairs, they closed the gate and turned right in the sheltered overhang of the buildings, past the end of the row of attached houses and into the bright sunlight.

The long street was not a bus route and in some ways could easily have been mistaken for a cul-de-sac, except that it was in fact open at both ends. But they had no intention of going to the end of the street. After the attached row of houses on the left ran out the street continued towards the green dumpster or “frog” as Israelis called it, with the wire mesh cage for the plastic bottles a few yards before it.

All this was perhaps thirty yards away from where they were. To their left was the valley and to their right the street, in which many cars were parked but few in motion. This was not a through road to anywhere else. The only cars that used it were the ones owned by those who lived there or were visiting others who lived there. Everyone else used the high road above the blocks of flats on the right than ran parallel to this street.

So there was nothing to disturb the tranquillity of the twins as they walked at a leisurely pace towards the “frog” laughing, joking and larking about. They didn’t notice the windowless workman’s van that had started just after they closed the gate and was almost coasting along in neutral behind them. But just as they reached the wire cage for the plastic bottle recycling, the vehicle came up next to them and the side door slid open.

They looked round startled as two men reached out and yanked them in. They screamed in terror, or at least tried to. But the men who had grabbed them, clamped large hands over their mouths to stifle their screams. A second later a third man slammed the door shut while the driver, gunned the engine, engaged the gears and lurched forward down the street.

While the sirens entered the street from one end, they were speeding up towards the exit, the roundabout and the road that passed Kiryat Moriah that would take them to the promenade and the heart of the city.

The driver smiled. Because it was a winding road, the police could not even see them. And by the time they had figured out had happened, they would have gone through to Derech Beit Lehem, and become lost in the city traffic.

So swift had they been, that no one had seen what had happened to give a description of their vehicle. By the time, the police figured it out, they would be long gone and they would have the children safely locked away.

Chapter 58

“ My mother… something… the people…. Then there’s a negative… in other words not or no… then there’s a word… how did you pronounce that?”

The threesome were huddled in front of a 30 inch screen displaying a digital copy of the parchment. Dubois had explained that the original had been so badly water damaged that they were lucky to be able to get a clear image of the text. So instead they worked from this image on the large screen at an oak desk in a private room. Despite the Vatican’s venerable age and centuries of tradition, they had some of the most modern technology.

They sat in something that was more than a row but less than a semicircle. Daniel was in the middle with Monsignor Dubois to his left and Ted to his right. Ted had a notebook in front of him and a pen in his hand, so that he could transcribe Daniel’s phonetic transliterations and then work from them.

Staring long and hard at the text, Daniel transliterated again and then gave several alternative pronunciations. Ted scribbled hastily as Daniel spoke. When he had finished transcribing, he pondered the pronunciation for a few moments before trying again.

“My mother… something… the people… not to fear… for we had… and that word you pronounced Undressed-ah.”

“That was just a rough guess, Ted. I don’t really know how it’s pronounced. It could be Endarasheda for all I know.

“I think that’s Andraste… a local pagan goddess. The missing word could be some alternative word for told — not any of the words I know — or it could be a stronger word like urged or exhorted.”

“Can we put it all together in a sentence?” suggested Dubois.

“Yes. Then it would be: ‘My mother exhorted the people not to fear, for we had Andraste on our side.’ And I think I can translate the next sentence. Can you just remind me of the transliteration of the next bit.”

Again Daniel transliterated the Hebrew lettering, imputing vowels according to the placeholder letters and his best guesses. Ted smiled and spoke quickly.

“That ones a lot easier. ‘And they did listen to her words and their courage was strengthened.’” Ted looked up with tears in his eyes. “It’s incredible. It’s all here.”

“It is incredible,” Dubois seconded.

“And it’s clearly from the point of view of her daughter. So it ties in very neatly with the ketuba.”

“But why,” asked Dubois, “would the ketuba be in England and this document here in Rome?”

Daniel and Ted looked at each other and shrugged. Neither of them had a clue. But both realized that the answer may lie in this document itself.

They continued for several hours, to their collective amazement, translating an account that described Boudicca’s final battle and defeat. It turned out that the scale of the battle was much smaller than Tacitus and Cassius Dio had implied. And the text made clear that many of the Iceni and other tribes had returned to their lands before that, driven by hunger and a shortage of food. It also made clear that there were many surviving family members who fled the scene and were not pursued by the Romans.

At one point Ted commented that Tacitus’s first account in the Agricola might have been the more factually accurate and his later writings in the Annals an embellishment. But then the translation took a strange turn. Daniel translated a pair of sentence, and noted — without Ted’s help — that it contained the name Israel. The three of them exchanged mutual glances as they sensed that something big was coming. Ted translated with enthusiasm.

“After our defeat Simon and Aristobulos… something… my mother…”

“Killed?” asked Daniel.

“No it can’t be. Because it goes on: Aristobulos and Simon something her that Andraste was a false God and that if she worshipped only the true God of… Israel…”

There was a break in his voice and he couldn’t continue.

“How does it go on?” asked Daniel.

Dubois leaned back and shook his head at Daniel, warning him to hold back and not to pressure Ted. It was obvious that this was an emotional moment for the Cambridge professor. This was an amazing document for him, He had devoted a huge chunk of his life to finding the site of Boudicca’s final battle and now not only was it clear that he had found it at Arbury Banks, but there was another document here in Rome, apparently written by Boudicca’s daughter and referring to Simon and Aristobulos — the groom and witness respectively from the marriage ketuba that had been found at Arbury Banks by Martin Costa.

Ted forced himself to continue.

“…and that if she worshipped the true God of Israel, he would be her rock of refuge.”

“She converted to Judaism?” asked Daniel.

“It doesn’t say that,” Dubois stepped in. “In those days the God of Israel — from a pagan frame of reference — would have been the Christian God too.”

“Also, we haven’t yet got to her reply Daniel. Can you transliterate the next bit for me.”

Daniel transliterated and Ted transcribed. But as he looked at the text, a sense of awe and amazement broke out over his face. He looked at Daniel and Dubois in silence, as if unable to trust his voice.

“What is it? asked Daniel.

Ted started to speak, coughed to clear his throat and then spoke… even more slowly and deliberately than his usual cautious academic style.

“And so we… received… their God. And Simon… thought or decided or resolved… to fight the Romans in their house.”

Daniel looked at Dubois, then at Ted, then at Dubois again.

“To fight the Romans in their house?”

The Catholic scholar explained.

“Taking the fight to the enemy. Not an unusual tactic in modern warfare. But almost unprecedented in those days.”

Ted stirred uneasily at this.

“Actually, as a tactic in war, it’s not quite as modern most people think. It may not go back to the first century, but in the American revolutionary war — over two hundred years ago — John Paul Jones attacked the port of Whitehaven.”

“It was a bit of a damp squib, if I remember rightly.”

“Technically yes. He had a problem with a mutinous — or at least avaricious crew. But it did undermine British morale.”

“Does the manuscript give any indication of what they did specifically?” asked Dubois, his tone mildly impatient.

“Let’s see,” said Daniel.

Ted nodded and muttered a pale “Okay.”

Daniel transliterated another sentence or two, Ted struggling to keep up with his phonetic rendition and to distinguish between continuations and alternative pronunciations. After about half a minute, the Cambridge professor had another go at translation.

“And I was given to Simon in marriage and then we hid from the Romans. And after a time we went by the way of the sea to the heart of the enemy to cause pain in her. But Aristobulos said we must fight not with swords but with… the Holy Spirit.”

Again, Ted had to pause.

“ ‘So he went instead to Mona to tell the dru the word of one God so that they might be healed and made strong.”

“The dru?” echoed Dubois. It was for Ted to explain.

“I think that must be the druids.”

Again the three faces met.

“Preaching the Gospels!” said Dubois, excitedly.

“So what does this mean?” asked Daniel. “Putting it all together. Aristobulos, and possibly Simon also, convinced Boudicca and her daughter — or daughters — that the pagan religion of the druids had failed them.”

“The druids were a very powerful force in Romano-Britain until then,” said Ted. “But Boudicca’s defeat and the massacre of the druids at Mona may have led to a desperate reappraisal. And if some one came along offering a plausible alternative, that explained the defeats and setbacks, without giving too much credit to the victors, then the time and conditions were ripe for a religious conversion.”

Daniel had a question.

“This sentence about Aristobulos going to Mona…”

Ted let Daniel’s unfinished question hang in the air for a while before answering.

“There are several traditions associated with Aristobulos of Britannia. That he went somewhere in Wales is one of them.”

Daniel was cogitating.

“Okay, and that line ‘we resolved to fight the Romans in their house,’ I’m wondering who is ‘we’? Is it just Boudicca, her daughter and Simon or could be some small faction of survivors?”

“It probably refers to a small band of followers. It’s unlikely that the three of them alone decided to take on the might of Rome — even in the form of guerrilla warfare.”

“Let’s try the next bit,” Daniel suggested. Again he transliterated. Ted transcribed the words. But there was a change in his mood as Daniel transliterated. At first Ted’s pace was almost leisurely. But at a certain point it turned frantic.

“What is it?” asked Daniel, sensing Ted’s contagious excitement.

“What you just said… what it means.”

“What does it mean?”

“It means… ‘And we hid in the hills outside the city… and in the houses of those… who hated the emperor. And we hurt the Romans in many ways… but we did not fight them in the daylight.’”

“That’s it?”

“No Daniel, that’s not it. That’s the first sentence. But the next sentence reads: ‘And then… we made a great fire… in their city.”

Daniel’s jaw dropped. He turned to Dubois.

“The Great Fire of Rome?”

Chapter 59

“Let us go!” shrieked May as the was dragged along down the corridor by one of the men.

“My daddy will kill you!” Shir threatened the man who was dragging her. He was about to hit her when the third ma who had just closed the door behind them, shook his head. He seemed to be the leader and the girls realized that he was the one they had to watch and be careful of.

They were taken to a room at the end of the corridor. At first it looked to them as if the room had no windows, but then they looked up and saw that very close to the ceiling there was a wooden board nailed to the wall, and they both realized in that instant that there was a window behind it, but a small window and one that would be very hard to reach, even if it were not covered. The fact that there was a board over it, meant that if they shouted for help it would be hard for anyone too hear them.

The one strange thing about the room that they also noticed was that it had two small beds and a lot of toys, almost as if it had been a children’s room. They wondered where were the children who used it. Had they grown up? Run away? Maybe they had died and these people had kidnapped them to replace them.

The two men let go of the girls, but stood close to them in case they tried to run away. The third man stood in front of them, looking down at them.

“Okay first of all I want to tell you that we won’t hurt you if you don’t try to escape. We’ve brought you here because we want to get some one to talk to us.”

“Who?” asked May.

“Your uncle,” said the man who had been holding Shir.

The man who was the boss looked at the other man angrily. The twins noted this and realized that the man who had spoken wasn’t supposed to tell them.

“But why?” asked Shir. “I mean why didn’t you just call him on the telephone.”

“Or send him an eMail?” added May.

“He always answers his eMail,” said Shir.

“Or you could call him on Skype,” May suggested.

“Or you can send him a text,” Shir explained.

“Enough!” the man shouted. The huddled together frightened, both wanting to cry, but neither wanting to give in to tears before the other did first. “As soon as we are able to speak to your uncle, we will let you go.”

“Promise?” asked May.

The man hesitated.

“I will promise to let you go, if you promise not to try to escape…”

The girls looked at each other. Then one of them put her hands behind her back, remembering something that they had learned in America from other children they met in Disneyland.

“I promise,” she said.

The other did likewise, also putting her hands behind her back, unseen by the kidnappers. In England, crossing ones fingers meant that one was hoping for something to happen. But in America, if you made a promise with your fingers crossed, it meant that you didn’t have to keep the promise.

“Promise,” she said when finally managed the tricky operation of crossing her fingers.

“Okay,” said the man. “And I promise too.”

They smiled.

“Will you give us food if we get hungry?”

“Yes of course we’ll give you food. We won’t all be here all the time. But there’ll always be one of us here if you need anything. In the meantime, there are lots of things to do here. Look…” He pointed. “Lots of toys. You can play with them.”

They looked around and saw some dolls, and some lego — which didn’t really interest them. But the one thing that caught there eye was a skateboard. The only trouble was, they didn’t have space in the small room to use it.

“Okay I’ll leave you alone now.”

The three men left the room and the girls heard the sound of the door being locked. When they realized they were alone, the girls started to cry and hug each other. But only for a minute. Then one of them said: “I don’t believe that man.”

“But he promised,” said the other. “And he’s orthodox. It’s a sin to lie.”

“Yes but it’s also a sin to kidnap people,” said the other. “And if he did one sin then he might do another.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“We need to escape.”

“But how?”

“There’s a window up there. That’s why they put that board there.”

The other one peered up to it, squinting to see it.

“But it’s got nails or screws or something. Otherwise it would fall.”

“Okay, we’ll have to find some way of tricking them… listen.”

“What?”

“They’re going.”

“But he said there’s always be one of them staying.”

“I know, but listen… to of them are leaving. That means there’s only one. That means it will be easier to escape.”

“But how are we going to escape?”

“I’ve got an idea. I’ll whisper it in your ear.”

Ten minutes later they were calling out to the one who stayed. When he opened the door, they saw that it was one of the nasty ones. But that didn’t matter. In fact, in some ways that made it better.

“We’re hungry!”

“Yes, you said you’d give us food!”

He looked embarrassed and confused, like he didn’t think it would actually happen,

“What… what would you like?”

“Chips!” said one.

“With tomato ketchup!” said the other.

He smiled with relief.

“Well I think I can manage that. We’re got oven chips. Would you like some mini schnitzels with that? I can heat them in the microwave.”

They looked at each other and smiled.

“Okay,” they said.

He didn’t know why they were smiling so much as he left and locked the door behind him. It was only food after all. But the happier they were, the less troublesome they would be. One less problem to worry about.

Chapter 60

Dubois shifted uncomfortably as both Daniel stared at him, waiting for his answer to Daniel’s last question.

“There were always rumours circulating at the time. Don’t forget, this was the time of Nero, one of ancient Rome’s most paranoid of rulers.”

Daniel smiled at this.

“I thought they were all paranoid.”

“Actually no. Caligula and Nero were. Later, Domition was. But not all of them. They had probably had cause to be. If anything, some of them were too trusting… like Claudius.”

“But who started the fire?”

Dubois gave this some thought before taking up Daniel’s challenge.

“According to Tacitus, some of the locals blamed Nero himself for the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD. However, Tacitus himself claimed that Nero was in Antium at the time of the fire. Suetonius and Cassius Dio blamed Nero. But their accounts were written later and were clearly second hand. There were probably contemporaneous accounts by other historians, but none have survived, except a vague passing reference by Pliny the Elder to trees being burnt.”

“So all this took about him burning the city to get inspiration for a poem or song was just a rumour that spread among the hoi polloi.”

“One of several actually Daniel. The only thing we can say is that he took advantage of the fact that the area had been cleared of buildings to build the Domus Aurea, his huge prestige project.”

“It sounds like an early conspiracy theory,” said Daniel.

“In many ways that’s exactly what it was. We still don’t know what the cause of the fire was. It may have been arson or it may have been purely natural causes. In fact, fires were not that uncommon in Rome. There were several more after that. It’s just that there were rumours at the time. It’s become part of folklore that Nero started it to inspire himself for a great musical or poetic composition. But even that theory is matched by a counter-theory to the effect that his poetic effort was an exhortation to those who were fighting the fire to succeed in their endeavours.”

Daniel remembered something else.

“But wasn’t there also some story that Nero himself blamed the early Christians?”

“More than a story. He had Christians arrested and tortured and when they gave in to the torture and confessed, their coerced statements were used as a pretext to arrest others. However, the modern view is that the fire was probably accidental.”

“But now this document would seem to contradict that.”

“If it’s true.”

Daniel was surprised by this response from Dubois.

“You think it’s a forgery?”

“Oh no, I’m sure the document is authentic. But that doesn’t rule out the possibility that it contains a propaganda element. Taking credit for an accident that has befallen ones enemies is as old as human conflict itself.”

They noticed that Ted had been silent for a while. Daniel looked at him and saw the almost catatonic look on the Cambridge professor’s face.

“What is it?”

“I’ve been thinking about those words on the map. She shall be aroused.”

“What about them?”

“Well first of all, although there was an arrow pointing to Rome, I assumed that the words referred either to Boudicca or to her daughter… referring to whatever she did in Rome. But from the lack of a neuter pronoun and the use of she, in this context, to refer to Rome. I’m wondering if that too was a reference to Rome.”

“You mean it was saying that Rome shall be aroused.”

“No Daniel, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that aroused is only one way of translating the word. It could also be rendered as… ignited.”

Daniel latched on to this.

“And the map was found in England. So, the implication would be that they intended to start a fire or fires in Rome!”

Dubois pursed his lips and then nodded approvingly.

“You have a point there. Shall we continue?”

Daniel scrolled up and started to transliterate again.

Ted resumed this transcription and hesitant translation.

“ ‘After the fire… there was much… anger towards… those who… kept faith with the one true God… and we were… hunted and killed… where they found us.’ Next bit please Daniel.”

Daniel transliterated the next sentence. Ted translated.

“ ‘And Simon… begged or urged or beseeched me to come with him to his homeland and I did obey.’ ”

At this point, Ted looked at Daniel expectantly.

“What’s next?”

Daniel looked blank.

“That’s it.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s where the manuscript ends.”

“But why? I mean why not continue after that?”

“Well whatever continuation there was,” said Daniel, “presumably took place in Judea. I mean we know that if this is the Simon Bar Giora, he fought against the Romans in Judea between 66 and 70.”

“Yes, but if she went with him, then why did she leave this manuscript here?”

“There could be any number of reasons,” said Dubois. “It they were planning to escape from Rome, then they would have been mindful of being captured and they would not have wanted to be caught in possession of such an incriminating manuscript. Also, it is possible that some of their faction decided to stay behind and they left the manuscript with them to continue recording their activities.”

“They went to Judea” said Ted, disappointed.

They were now back in Monsignor Dubois’s private reception room, drinking tea, served by a young priest. Sarit was with them and Ted was filling her in on the details.

“After that, we know what happened to Bar Giora — assuming it’s the same one that Daniel was telling us about. But we don’t know what happened to Lanosea. So that’s as far as we can go.”

“Not necessarily,” said Sarit, with a gleam in her eyes.

She found herself, suddenly, the centre of attention. But it was Daniel who spoke for them all.

“What do you mean?”

“While you were in there, I was surfing the net and doing some searches with similar keywords. You’re not going to believe it, but it turns out there’s a parchment written in Hebrew script but in an unknown language and you’ll never guess where it was found!”

“Where?”

“Jerusalem… under the Temple Mount…”

The young priest’s ears pricked up when he heard this.

Chapter 61

“We can eat the schnitzels as long as we leave the chips,” said one of the twins to the other.

The man had brought them a tray with mini chicken schnitzels and chips and several packets of ketchup, just as they had requested, as well as two plastic bottles of water.

“But I thought we need the oil.”

“Yes but the chips have more oil than the schnitzels. And anyway, I’m hungry.”

“Okay then I’ll eat mine too.”

They ate the schnitzels quickly and then set to work.

“I’ll do the floor,” said May, tipping out the chips onto the floor and squidging them around. Meanwhile Shir was tearing off the corners of the packets of ketchup. When they had finished Shir took up her position while May set up the skateboard and covered it with a blanket.

Then they looked at each other nervously.

“Ready?” asked May

“Ready” said Shir, closing her eyes.

May splashed some water from one of the bottles onto her face. Then she ran to the door and started banging frantically.

“Help! Help!”

She banged again.

“Help! Please help!”

They heard footsteps approaching the door.

“Stop that!” said a voice from the other side of the door. “No one can hear you!”

“Please help! It’s Shir… she’s hurt.”

“What do you mean hurt?”

He sounded nervous.

“We were playing… and she fell and hit her head. I think she’s dead.”

They heard the key being turned in the lock and Shir — who had opened her eyes out of curiosity — closed them quickly before he entered.

The door flew open and the man with beard looked into the room and saw Shir lying on the floor, her head covered in blood. May was standing looking at her. But from the profile view of her face, he could see that she was crying.

Realizing that he had to check he strode briskly into the room, stepping on the raised blanket on the floor without really thinking about it. But as he took his next step he noticed something happening to his balance. He didn’t know that under the blanket was the skateboard or that under that the floor had been covered in oil and grease and squidgy chips. All he knew that his foot and leg were flying backward and his body was flying forward.

Hearing the noise, Shir opened her eyes and saw him about to fall on top of her. She quickly drew her knees up, curled up in a ball and rolled away just as the bearded man landed on the floor with a sickening thud and a blood-curdling cry of pain.

“Quick Shir!” said May, running out the door and holding the handle, Shir ran to the door in three steps and straight out. May closed the door behind her and locked it with the key that the man had left in the lock, while Shir wiped the ketchup off her face with her sleeve. Then they ran to the door and tried to open it, but it was locked. And they could hear the man shouting angrily from inside the room at the end of the corridor.

Chapter 62

The world is going to hell in a hand basket and has been ever since the Second Vatican Council.

Of this the young priest had no doubt. The New World Order — orchestrated by the Jews — was being ushered into what had once been the bastion of God’s Holy Truth. And it was all being done in the name of expediency by those who cared nought for Truth and all for Power.

The Pope — Christ’s vicar on Earth! — had quoted the Talmud… that vile treatise that contained the most evil blasphemies against our Lord and our Lady. And he had done so more than once: both in France and in the United States, when visiting synagogues in those countries.

It was bad enough that the Church had cowered before the Russians when it fiddled the results of the Papal election of 1958 when the conservative, anti-communist Cardinal Giuseppe Siri was elected and then forced to resign, before his name could even be released, by Russian threats to his family and a thinly veiled nuclear threat against the Vatican itself. They had even gone so far as to release white smoke from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel to announce his election and he had already selected the papal name of Gregory XVII. Instead under Soviet threats and pressure from liberal French cardinals, he stepped aside. Two days later the more liberal Cardinal Angelo Roncalli was elected, taking the papal name of John XXIII.

And since then it had been capitulation after capitulation. Absolving the Jews of deicide for the Blood of Christ, Vatican II, Pope Paul VI kissing a copy of the Koran and now the Church was kowtowing to Zionism, with Pope Benedict XVI quoting from that blasphemous Jewish text.

What next? Embrace a Buddhist? Wicca? Satanism?

And now, these Jewish interlopers were in the sacred corridors of the Vatican, translating documents found in Rome and claiming them as their own… using them to justify their actions of the past and being greeted as honoured guests. And it seemed that they had found clues to other similar documents in Jerusalem — documents dating from the time of Christ or shortly thereafter.

He was glad that he had been contacted by HaTzadik and asked to keep an eye on the visitors from England. At least there was one Jew who, despite his lack of acceptance of Christ, at least showed the humility to respect the Church and her teachings. The priest prayed that God would open the heart of HaTzadik and his followers to the acceptance and love of Christ.

In the meantime, the priest would serve God by calling his allies and warning them of the plans of these vile people.

Chapter 63

“It’s locked!” one of the twins screamed.

“But where’s the key?” shouted the other.

“It ought to be in the lock. It’s dangerous not having a key in the lock! What if there’s a fire and you need to get out quickly?”

“We do need to get out quickly!”

They could hear the nasty man banging on the door of the room at the end of the corridor and shouting at them, saying God was going to punish them for breaking their promise.

“Where is it?”

“It must be somewhere!”

They were panicking now.

“There!”

She was pointing at the wall. The other looked round and up.

“Where?”

“On the hook.”

She tried to reach it, but it was too high. The other one tried, but she couldn’t reach it either. They could hear banging on the door of the room where they had locked the man. And then the handle started rattling.

He was trying to get out. He was going to get out! Any minute now, he’d break the door down!

One of them tried to jump and grab the bunch of keys. She couldn’t reach it. The second tried… same result. The first one tried again, this time managing to get her fingers too it, but not to pull it off the wall. The second one tried and she too made contact, but failed to retrieve the keys. Finally, the first one tried, jumping with all her might and timing her grab perfectly.

This time she succeeded, but dropped the key on the floor, unable to support its weight in her fingers. The other scooped it up off the floor.

“Quick we’ve got to find the right key!”

Several of the keys were obviously the wrong size or shape and wouldn’t even fit the lock. Eventually they found one that fit. But it didn’t turn. They tried another, with similar lack of success.

By now the banging and rattling and shouting was becoming so loud that the girls were terrified. They were sure he was going to get out and if he did they didn’t know what he would do, he sounded so angry. Finally the third key went into the lock and turned. They managed to get the door open just as they heard something break in the other room.

Not waiting to discover if that meant that the man had got out, they raced out of the flat, into the corridor and down the stairs. From there they raced into the street, turned one way — without even caring which way it was — and started running down the pavement.

“Stop those girls!” A man’s booming voice called out behind them. They looked back to see the man running after them. Several people looked at them but no one stopped them. Then a man blocked their path and they were filled with terror.

In desperation, the one who was in front darted out into the road. A car screeched to a halt and the driver leaned to shout at them for being so stupid. Ignoring him, the girl waved her arms in the air as if waving at some one in the distance. She turned to her twin who was still on the pavement and called out: “It’s a police man!” Then she turned back the way she had been facing and shouted “over here!”

By the time she looked back to her twin, she saw that the man who had been chasing them had turned round and was now running in the opposite direction.

Chapter 64

“Is there not one of you capable of performing a simple task without getting it wrong? You are shamed in the sight of Hashem if you cannot even do one thing write when the survival of the true Jewish people is at stake!”

Once again HaTzadik had been let down by those whom he trusted. And once again he was furious.

“It wasn’t my fault. They were cunning little vixens and they tricked me!”

This did nothing to assuage HaTzadik’s anger.

“Tricked you! Tricked you! They were eight-year-old girls! How could they have tricked you?”

“They lied to us! They promised that they would not try to escape… and then they set a trap for me.”

The man’s tone was pleading. It was not that he feared HaTzadik. He feared only the wrath of God. But he was ashamed. And he wanted to hide his guilt. But he couldn’t blame the others. He was in charge… and he was alone with them at the time.

“Did it not occur to you that little girls might lie? Especially as they are the daughters of Chilonim.

Chilonim was a term, for non-religious Jews. HaTzadik continued.

“You are an idiot! You knew they weren’t Yiras Shamayim!”

In other words, they were not God-fearing Jews; therefore they couldn’t be trusted.

“I am sorry my teacher, I’m sorry.”

“Just make sure you stay away from the house. The police will come looking. In fact, do go back there and clean out anything that can link them back to us. Do it quickly and then get out of there!”

Shalom Tikva ended the call, his mind in turmoil. This was a bigger failure than those of his son. With his son’s failure, at least there was no trail to follow. He had hired strangers in the attempt to kill Klein and they had ended up dead and thus unable to talk. When he failed to kidnap the youngest of the Sasson girls, at least he had made a clean getaway, unless they got the number of the car and traced the rental back to his son’s name. But aside from that Baruch was now on his way back to Israel and so the British police couldn’t arrest him.

But this failure was different. The girls had run away from a apartnment and they could identify the flat and lead them back there. The one thing he had going for him was that the girls were probably traumatized and so would initially be counselled by psychologists before eventually being asked to help the police find the house. That gave them a window of opportunity. And that was why he had told his follower to go back to the flat and clean it out.

The phone rang again.

What is it this time?

But as he looked at the readout on his mobile phone, he saw that it was a foreign number. It looked vaguely familiar. At the back of the mind he suspected some kind of a trap. But what could they do from the other end of a mobile phone.

“Yes?”

“Hallo…”

The voice spoke in English. But it was not a British accent — it sounded like an American.

“Yes?”

“Is that Shalom Tikva?”

HaTzadik hesitated.

“Who is this?”

“It’s Father Enoch. You remember you asked me to tell you if anyone showed an interest in the Domus Aurea parchment.”

“Yes?” said HaTzadik realizing what he was about to hear.

Over the next few minutes, Enoch told HaTzadik about the visit of Daniel, Ted and Sarit, including their apparently successful decipherment of the manuscript and the fact that they had also found out about a similar document in the Temple Mount tunnels and were coming to Israel to meet the Israeli professor whose team had discovered it.

At the end of the call, HaTzadik thanked Brother Enoch for his assistance and spoke a few pious sounding words about “the brotherhood of our peoples” and the “wickedness of the Zionist impostors who pretend to be Jews.” Then he called an Arab friend. As he waited for an answer, he realized that he now had a perfect opportunity. His grievance was not with the Sasson family, but with Daniel Klein.

And now Daniel was unwittingly about to enter the lion’s den.

“Shahaid, I have a favour to ask of you.”

Chapter 65

“This is the most preposterous theory I’ve ever heard.”

Seated in a Jerusalem cafe with her British and Irish guests, Professor Leah Yakarin, didn’t trouble to hide her opinions. In the rough and tumble world of academia, she knew that one had to fight one’s corner with vigour or go down to a tougher slugger. It was like prize-fighting, except that it was usually gloves off and to hell with the Queensbury rules.

“Any more preposterous than the theory that Essenes didn’t really exist?” asked Daniel.

The Essenes were one of three, or possibly four, Jewish factions that existed in Judea in between the second century BCE and the first century CE — the others being the Sadducees, an aristocratic priestly sect notionally descended from Tzadok the first High Priest in Solomon’s temple, and the Pharisees, a sect of learned but humble men. Some scholars, basing their beliefs on the writings of Josephus, also identify a fourth school of thought — the “Sicarii” — whom Josephus distinguished from the Essenes. Both Essenes and Sicarii — so named for the dagger or sica that they carried — are sometimes referred to as zealots. But the Sicarii were believed to be of Galilean origin, whereas the Essenes were identified with Jerusalem,

But Professor Yakarin was one of a small number of academics who argued that the Essenes were real or a figment of the imaginations and propaganda of certain Greco-Roman writers.

“There is no credible evidence that the Essenoi existed,” said Professor Yakarin, using the Greek name by which Josephus had called them. “The Dead Sea Scrolls, which the Essenes supposedly kept and guarded, make no mention of them. The so-called Essenes were former priests who had lost a power struggle. The Biblical scrolls were removed from the Temple… when they were ousted by other factions.”

Daniel was in an argumentative mood.

“But not all of the Dead Sea Scrolls were Biblical texts. Some were about daily life and other matters. One of the scrolls describes a small sect living communally in the Dead Sea area. That can hardly be a reference to Jerusalem.”

“No, but that scroll may have been by the priestly sect who fled from Jerusalem. They may even have lived in Qumran or Masada. But that doesn’t make them a separate sect — just a group of deposed priests hiding out from their enemies in a civil conflict. But it didn’t mention the name Essenes. And all that talk about ascetic lifestyles is just a load of baloney. Josephus had spent three years travelling in Judea with an ascetic called Banus who probably filled his head with those ideas. And as a scholar he read about the Spartans and their lives of deprivation. He was writing a mythology for his Greco-Roman audience.”

“Look, I’m no great fan of Josephus myself,” said Daniel. “But the Essenes weren’t only described by Josephus. Pliny the Elder and Philo also mention them. And in fact Pliny mentioned them even before Josephus. He even said they lived in Ein Gedi — right by the Dead Sea and Masada.”

“Yes but Pliny’s total summary of them is confined to no more than half a dozen lines. And what does he actually say about them? That they didn’t use money, that they existed for thousands of generations — and that they never married!”

“Okay so he exaggerated a little, but that — ”

“A little? Look I’m not saying that its impossible for a celibate sect to maintain itself like the Shakers, through conversion and recruitment. But for how long? And remember the Shakers operated in America which had a larger population from which to recruit new members. Also Pliny insisted that all the Essenes were men. They didn’t recruit women at all. That sounds like some sort of Spartan sect or some sort male-only club that characterized certain groups of Christians. And that kind of Christianity was itself an outgrowth of certain Greco-Roman traditions, not Jewish ones.

But in Greco-Roman tradition, the life of deprivation was associated with military preparedness, not devotion to God.”

“Not necessarily Daniel,” said Ted. “The Stoics were hardly militaristic.”

“And according to Josephus the Essenes were,” replied Daniel.

“Which leads right back to my theory,” said Leah Yakarin. “Josephus was writing fiction to appeal to his Greco-Roman readership.”

“Maybe not entirely fiction,” Ted suggested. “Maybe just gilding the lily.”

Leah Yakarin thought for a moment.

“If they were celibate, then they would have really been a small sect — and probably wouldn’t have lasted more than two generations at most.”

Daniel stepped in.

“Okay but Josephus says that the Essenes did marry. It may be that a small number carried there asceticism to the extreme of celibacy. And Philo wrote about them even earlier, crediting them with similar communal lifestyles.”

“But Philo didn’t speak Hebrew, despite his Jewishness. He was essentially a Greek of Jewish origin. And he may also have been pandering to Greek ideas. He didn’t even call them by the Latin form, Esseni, or even the Greek form, Essenoi. He called them Essaioi without an N and said it meant ‘holy’. It was Josephus who called them Essenoi and Pliny called them Esseni.”

“We’re getting a bit hung up on nomenclature here,” Ted stepped in. “Surely whatever they called themselves, we can all agree that they existed?”

“No we can’t!” snapped Professor Yakarin, still fighting her corner. “We can accept that there were communities living in the Dead Sea area, Qumran, Ein Gedi and even Masada. But that doesn’t mean they were a large ascetic sect. They were deposed priests who lived in exile from Jerusalem after losing a power struggle.”

Daniel decided to bring the discussion back on track.

“We’re moving a bit of the point here. We were talking about the Domus Aurea manuscript.”

Leah Yakarin shook her head.

“I remain sceptical about that too. You said yourself, you never saw the original — just an image on a computer screen.”

“Yes but we do have the original of the map.”

“Which you still haven’t shown me.”

“We don’t want to take it out too much,” said Ted. “You know what excessive handling can do to a document.”

“Of course I know. In fact a Russian colleague of mine has pointed out that there’s been a lot of careless handling of the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

“Then I’ll ask you to take our word… for the time being.”

“I trust your integrity Professor Klein. Your reputation precedes you. But what is it you want from me?”

“Well we understand that your archaeological team discovered a parchment manuscript, that hasn’t yet been deciphered, in the Temple Mount tunnels.”

Leah sat still as she considered this.

“Not exactly in the tunnels. It was in the earth removed from the excavations at Solomon’s Stables between 1996 and 1999.”

Ted looked confused.

“But wasn’t King Solomon much earlier than the rebellion against Rome — I mean like a thousand years before that?”

“The name Solomon’s Stables is actually a misnomer,” said Leah. “It actually dates to the time of Herod the Great. One of his prestige projects was to extend the Temple Mount platform with twelve rows of vaulted arches, supported by eighty eight pillars on huge stone blocks. The space below became storage space.”

“And that’s been excavated?” asked Ted incredulously. Wouldn’t that threaten the structural integrity of the entire site.”

This was Ted’s area of expertise.

“Tell me about it,” said Leah, shrugging her shoulders.

“And the Muslims didn’t object?”

“It was the Waqf who did it — to build another mosque.”

Ted was about to ask what the Waqf was when Daniel stepped in to explain.

“The Muslim religious trust that controls the Temple Mount.”

But it was Leah Yakarin who was in her element now.

“We told them it was dangerous, but they did it anyway. It could have led to the Dome of the Rock or the Aqsa mosque collapsing. And then they’d have blamed us.”

“But when you said they found it in the earth, do you mean they just handed a mass of earth over to… what? The Israel Antiquities authority.”

“Not exactly Professor…”

“Hynds,” he reminded her.

“They weren’t doing a proper archaeological dig for research purposes. They were just digging it up to build another mosque. They put the earth on trucks and unceremoniously dumped it in the Kidron Valley near the Mount of Olives. They knew that it was likely to contain priceless artefacts associated with the long Jewish period before the Muslims invaded but they just didn’t care. As far as they were concerned, if the historic artefacts associated with the Jewish period were destroyed or lost forever, so much the better.”

Ted picked up on this.

“But you said something was found.”

“A lot of things were found. You see the Israel Antiquities Authority didn’t want to get involved. After effectively allowing the Waqf to get away with an act of brazen anti-Semitic vandalism, they kept a low profile. But others weren’t so willing to allow thousands of years of archaeological evidence of the Jewish connection with the temple mount to be wiped out by a bunch of Philistine savages. So in 2005 a salvage operation was mounted under the auspices of Bar-Ilan University.”

“So it’s in Tel Aviv?”

“No. Bar-Ilan are supervising. But any artefacts found are stored in Jerusalem.”

“And you were in charge of the project.”

“Not exactly. I was one of several historians asked to review and analyze the finds at the time when they made the discovery. But since then, my controversial views on the Essenes led to a big falling out and so I was asked to resign from the project. Anyway, the project is still going on and so far we’ve found flint tools dating back some ten thousand years, ostraca, jewellery, clothing, coloured stone and glass fragments that we think come from mosaics, official ritual seals, something like a thousand ancient coins, statuettes and figurines, ivory dice, game pieces made of animal bone, mother of pearl furniture inlays, weights of both stone and metal and — as you mentioned — a parchment manuscript found inside a clay jar. And as you said a parchment manuscript written in Hebrew lettering but in a language that we cannot decipher. We’re not even sure what linguistic group it belongs to.”

Daniel and Ted exchanged a knowing glance. She was about to say more, but was interrupted by a commotion at the entrance to the cafe. An Arab with a bulging waistline had barged past the security guard at the door and was reaching into his jacket.

“Get down!” Leah shouted, realizing what was happening.

They ducked under the table just as the explosive belt detonated sending splinters of wooded furniture and shards of crockery flying across the room.

Chapter 66

Ben Gurion Airport seemed to have an even bigger police presence than usual. Baruch Tikva noticed this as he stood in line at passport control. He suspected that he might be the subject of this interest — the very thing he had tried to avoid, just as he had sought to avoid being identified when he left Britain.

He had shaved off his beard and was not wearing his religious garb, ensuring that he looked different to his Israeli passport picture. Also, he was not using his Israeli passport, even though he was supposed to under Israeli law. But there was no danger of Border Control catching that on their computers, because he was also using a false name. His late mother had been American and for that reason he had been entitled to an American passport. He had always had one and when he went to England, although he had left Israel on his Israeli passport — as required by Israel law — he had entered the UK on his American passport.

While in the UK he had made an “emergency” visit to the American embassy, applying for a new or at least temporary American passport. He had not claimed that his American passport was lost, for that would have delayed the process. Instead he pointed to the fact that he had shaved off his beard and that consequently he no longer looked like his passport photo.

To add a new layer of security to this, he applied for a change to his surname on the passport. If he had been submitting the application by post he would have had to send in some supporting documents, such as a court record of an official name change. A woman could submit a marriage certificate. But because he was making an in-person appearance at the embassy, he could simply make a declaration to the effect that he was now using his mother’s maiden name for all legal purposes and would be changing his name legally at the earliest opportunity thereafter. In order to avoid the wrath of God, he affirmed rather than swore an oath. But his mother’s maiden name would also appear on the records in Israel, so he simply invented a different name.

Thus armed with a new beardless image and a new name — Baruch Finkelstein — he was able to enter Israel with his America passport. There was a tense moment, when the woman in the immigration booth at passport control eyed him up suspiciously and asked if he had an Israeli passport. He said no, with an awkward smile and although she still showed signs of suspicion, she stamped his passport with a three month tourist visa and let him through with a polite “have a nice stay in Israel.”

Chapter 67

Leah Yakarin opened her eyes in the intensive care wing of the hospital.

“What happened?”

There were tubes sticking out of her and monitoring equipment keeping track of her vital signs. It was clear that she was still dazed and weak. But she was out of danger. Sarit spoke gently

“There was an explosion. A suicide bomber. You saw him… you warned us… If you hadn’t warned us… we’d all be dead.”

Leah Yakarin had ducked for cover too. But she had been the nearest to the bomber and she bore the brunt of the explosion. In fact, the last thing she remembered was the bomber looking over at their group just before he detonated the bomb.

“Were there many casualties?”

There was a hint of guilt in her voice, as if she would blame herself for any deaths — even though it was not her fault. Daniel and Ted — who themselves had been mildly injured — knew the answer to the question. But they exchanged a nervous look, as if wondering whether it would be appropriate to let her know about the deaths of others when she was so obviously fragile, emotionally as well as physically.

Finally it was Sarit who answered.

“Four. Four dead and about twenty injured. It could have been a lot worse if other people hadn’t heard your warning. Most of the people ducked for cover just in time… thanks to you.”

Daniel realized that Sarit had called it right. Leah needed the reassurance. For all Leah knew, the casualty toll might have been substantially higher. And she was eating herself up over this. Four deaths was four too many. But it was a lot less than it might have been. This way, Leah had the reassurance that the death toll was low and that she had been instrumental in saving lives.

“He was… looking… at us.”

She was still straining to speak, even though she was now wide awake.

Sarit’s phone buzzed. She took it out surreptitiously and looked. It was a message from Dovi:

Go outside and call me ASAP!

She slipped the phone back into her pocket and said “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Outside she lost no time in calling Dovi.

“What is it?”

“I just saw some intercepts from Urim. Shalom Tikva called a man known to SHaBaK — an Arab with Hamas contacts.”

“When?”

“While you were in transit from Italy.”

“You think there’s a connection?”

“Well before that, he received a call from the Vatican. He has a man on the inside there, believe it or not. The man told him that the three of you were on your way.”

“So it wasn’t random.”

“No. You were being targeted.”

Sarit got irritated at this.

“Why don’t you just arrest him? All of them. Shalom Tikva and that son of his… and anyone else in their organization who might know anything.”

“We’re going to.”

“You should have done it already.”

“The problem is that once we arrest him, he’ll clam up and we won’t get any more.”

“So instead you put us in danger — and damn nearly got us killed!”

“It was a tough call. Anyway SHaBaK are going to pull him in and grill him!”

“That may not stop other members of Shomrei Ha’ir.”

“I know. We’re sending some people over to guard Leah Yakarin and the others, if they’ll cooperate. In the meantime stay alert.”

Chapter 68

They had come in numbers — police and General Security Services — but still a mob was beginning to form. It wasn’t just Shomrei Ha’ir who were anti-Zionist. Many of the ultra-orthodox sects were. And whilst some of the people in Mea She’arim were from the pro-Zionist Agudat Yisrael faction, the overwhelming tendency of the residents of the area was towards opposition to the State of Israel and its institutions.

So the mob that gathered to “watch” as the police and SHaBaK came to arrest Shalom Tikva was to say the least somewhat hostile. But the police had been aware of this. That is why they turned out in force. Treading lightly in order not to alienate a large part of the community was all very well. But after the explosion at the cafe, it was gloves off. Singing the praises of terrorist organizations was bad enough, but doing business with them crossed the line. One can sup with the devil, but selling ones soul to him put one beyond the pale.

And Shalom Tikva wasn’t just wanted in connection with the suicide bombing by Hamas, he was also wanted in connection with the abduction of the Sasson twins. That meant that a cozy cell now awaited him.

The trouble was — as the police found when they battered down the door to his apartment — that the bird had flown. Whether he had been tipped off or merely read the writing on the wall, the result was still the same.

Gone!

Disappointed, the search teams went in and began bagging up and boxing up items to help with the investigation, carrying them out to waiting vans. As the crowds grew and became more volatile, the police called in reinforcements, including border guardsman, who didn’t hesitate to use their batons. And when even that didn’t suffice, tear gas was used.

And in the distance, watching all of the action and blending in with the crowd, was Shalom Tikva. When he grew bored, he turned and edged his way out of the crowd.

Chapter 69

“The scan is actually clearer than the original manuscript, because we can bring out the contrast more sharply.”

The woman who was addressing Daniel and Ted was Irene Peres. Initially, Daniel had used Leah Yakarin’s name as a contact to try and obtain a viewing of the undeciphered manuscript. But neither that nor the combined reputations of Daniel and Ted had been enough to persuade the man in charge of the antiquities to let them take a look at the manuscript.

“It’s just too delicate,” the professor had explained.

So Daniel had drawn on his network of support. His step-mother’s sister, Irene Peres, was a physical chemist who had worked for the Antiquities Authority until she fell out with them over their handling of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the ensuing discussions, it emerged that Irene was now advising his team. As soon as that became apparent, Daniel put in a call to her and asked if she could use her good offices to smooth the way.

It turned out that Daniel had been right about the latest scientific methods. They could use X-rays generated by a synchrotron both to bring out layers of a palimpsest and to sharpen the top layer, making it fluoresce so that it could be scanned more clearly.

Irene had been first amazed, then sceptical and finally open-minded to Daniel’s thesis about the parchment containing proto-Brythonic text transcribed in the Hebrew alphabet. But none of the more conventional theories fit. So she had taken it upon herself personally to have the scan created and now Daniel and Ted were working from it, Daniel transliterating and Ted translating the fragments of manuscript that they had found

“I told them of my mother’s… victories or triumphs… against the Romans and they were… it could be encouraged or inspired or emboldened… anyway, it’s something positive.”

Nili, a young assistant, was writing it down as Ted spoke. Daniel transliterated the next sentence — or at least the next one that he could read clearly. Even with the enhanced scan, not every word or sentence was visible. Again Ted translated.

“So the people rebelled against the taxes and the false Gods and the… I suppose it could translated as oppression or persecution… and they killed the Romans and the traitors. And the Romans sent an army to weigh down upon them.”

Alex transliterated another few lines and Ted attacked them with gusto.

“Then Simon did wage battle with them. I advised him of things… or matters… I learned from my mother’s fight with the Romans… and… others… or perhaps that should be other men… told him not to… heed or obey… a woman. But he… received — or it could be translated as he accepted — my advice or counsel… and attacked them from behind… and killed many of them. But he did not stay to fight until they were all defeated… he killed the ones who were behind… and then retreated when the others turned on him.”

Ted and Daniel looked at each other.

“Guerrilla warfare,” said Daniel. Ted nodded.

“One of the golden rules in fighting against the well-disciplined army of Rome was never to engage them in a pitched battle. That’s where Caractacus came unstuck. That’s where Boudicca failed. And that seems to be the lesson that her daughter had finally learned.”

“Her daughter?” said Irene, in total surprise.

“If that ketuba I told you about is to be believed.”

“I’ll believe it when I see the original and can test it myself,” said Irene sceptically.

“Well whoever she is,” said Daniel, “she’s a feisty woman who thinks she’s competent to give military advice to a man. And that wasn’t exactly what you’d expect from a Judean woman in those days.”

“How does it go on?” asked Irene, her interest now piqued.

Daniel transliterated the next block of text — recognizing at least one of the names, or at least thinking he did — and then looked at Ted to give him his cue.

“The Romans sent… it could be read literally as ‘greater armies’ but I think the best word is reinforcements. And although Simon inflicted great losses upon them he and his… fellow commander Yochanan of Gush Halav came to Jerusalem.”

“That’s John of Giscala,” said Daniel.

“Oh is it?” asked Ted, surprised.

“Yes. Giscala was the Roman name for Gush Halav, a town in the Galilee.”

“Interesting,” said Ted. Okay, the next bit. But the most powerful of those who were against Rome did not want Simon for a leader, because he was the son of strangers and because he was married to me, also a stranger and because he… received or accepted… my advice on matters of war and they said he was a fool to… receive the counsel of a woman.”

Daniel looked at Irene smugly.

“What?” asked Irene.”

“A stranger… she says so herself.”

“Well given that it’s apparently in proto-Brythonic, I think we could have guessed that much already.”

“Okay but you’re not doubting the authenticity of this document are you?”

“Well obviously not! We’ve carbon dated it and run thermoluminescence on the urn it was found in. The urn dates to 74, plus or minus 25 and the parchment dates to 63, plus or minus fifteen.”

“Well in that case, it would be absurd to accept this parchment and then reject the ketuba from Arbury Banks.”

Irene thought for a moment.

“Maybe some one knew about this one and forged the Arbury Banks ketuba to skew the interpretation of this one.”

“Then they’d’ve had to know exactly what this one said. Do you know anyone who might have been able to do that? They would have had to see the content, read the Hebrew alphabet and be able to translate it from proto-Brythonic. Do you know anyone outside of us as a team who can cover all those bases?”

“No,” said Irene, shaking her head slowly.

“Then I think we should accept that this is the written word of Boudicca’s daughter after she married Simon Bar Giora.”

“Let’s see what other pearls of wisdom we can glean from her,” said Irene. Even when forced to admit that she was in the wrong, she could be sarcastic.

“You’re mixing your metaphors,” said Daniel, before turning back to the manuscript and Ted, to transliterate another block of text, which included the word Masada as well as some other names that he recognized. Ted scribbled enthusiastically while Daniel spoke and then looked down at his notes.

“So he robbed the rich and corrupt. But the priests in Yeru…”

“Yerushalayim, You can translate that as Jerusalem. Yerushalayim is what it’s called in Hebrew.”

“Okay let’s go on… the priests in Jerusalem who were friendly with the Romans sent out men to kill my husband and he knew that he was not safe… because even John of Giscala had… set his face against him for they were rivals for… leadership. So he fled to Masada and took refuge there. But when Hanan the son of Hanan was killed by the men of Yoch — John of Giscala… he came down from Masada and returned to fight against the Romans.”

Daniel was nodding approvingly. All of this was known history to him, albeit from Josephus, whom he regarded as self-serving and not altogether reliable. He scrolled up the image and transliterated another block of text for Ted to transcribe. Ted took a sip of water before proceeding.

“But in the eyes of John, my husband was not an ally but a bitter rival and so he would not let him into the city. So Simon attacked Idum who were the allies of John.”

Ted looked at Daniel, puzzled.

“The Edomites. They were a non-Jewish people, indigenous to a nearby region that straddled what is today the Israel-Jordan border. They were supporters of John of Giscala.”

Ted continued translating.

“Now John was afraid of my husband for he had a great army and with my counsel his wisdom in warfare was… immense. So John learned from the ways that Simon had used against the Romans and he attacked… by… I suppose the best way to translate it would be by speed and trickery.”

“An ambush?” asked Daniel.

“Or guerrilla warfare,” Ted replied. “Anyway, the next bit is quite interesting… at least if I understood it correctly. They captured me and my… now this is an interesting word. It could mean my friends, my extended family, my servants or my household.”

“Entourage?” suggested Daniel.

“Yes that’s a good one word translation. They captured me and my entourage. It doesn’t say anything about Simon himself.”

“They didn’t take him prisoner,” Daniel said.

“Oh. This is known history?”

“By and large yes — the battles and fighting I mean. But not the involvement of Boudicca’s daughter and her marriage to Simon Bar Giora.”

“Let’s do the next bit.”

It followed the familiar pattern of transliteration followed by translation.

“But the Judeans they spared and set free.”

Ted looked at Daniel.

“Is that meant to imply that she and her entourage were targeted because she and her people weren’t Jewish?”

Daniel thought about this.

“I suppose that inference could be drawn. Although the Idumeans — or Edomites — were also not Jewish. Go on. You haven’t translated all of it.”

Ted looked down to read the rest of what Daniel had rendered phonetically.

“But Simon became greatly angered and he unleashed great vengeance upon all that were guilty in his eyes and they set me free and my entourage free.”

The next few lines described the civil war between Bar Giora and the other factions and how — when the Romans were closing in — they tried to escape through the tunnels under the Temple Mount taking a supply of food and using stone cutters and how they ran out of food. But then they came to the interesting part.

“So Simon made me swear that I would stay hidden with the others and flee with my mother’s gold and silver jewels to Masada with Eleazer ben Yair, while he alone, dressed in the robes of a king appeared before the Romans.”

This time it was not Ted that Daniel looked at, but Irene. For they both knew the familiar story of Masada all too well. Eleazer ben Yair led the Judeans in their last stand at Masada when they allegedly committed suicide. But according to this manuscript, however, he had been right there in the tunnels with Bar Giora and Boudicca’s daughter, before escaping to the fortress by the Dead Sea.

But Ted had picked up on something else.

“What’s this about gold and silver jewels?”

Irene shook her head.

“As far as I know, nothing like that was ever found. I mean they found coins proclaiming the Redemption of Zion, which are believed to have been minted on the authority of Bar Giora. And they found costume jewellery made with beads and they found mother-of-pearl and ivory. But no precious stones. And apart from the coins, no precious metals.”

“The reason I ask is because we know Boudicca, and the Iceni in general, did have gold and silver jewellery,” said Ted.

To Daniel, this was no mystery.

“Well presumably if she did take it with her to Masada, that would explain why it hasn’t been found in the Temple Mount salvage project. And presumably if the Romans found it at Masada, they would have looted it.”

“Unless they hid it. But that leads me right back to the same question I asked regarding the Domus Aurea Parchment. Why was this left behind at the scene? Why not take the manuscript with her?”

“Presumably because they were so desperate to get out and they couldn’t take anything that wasn’t necessary. They probably had to lie in wait after Bar Giora made his appearance through the opening the stone masons had cut and play possum until the Roman’s left. Remember, even according to Josephus, Bar Giora hid in the tunnels with others. Yet it only records Bar Giora himself being captured. They presumably had find a way of sneaking out undetected. The manuscript would have been a useless liability.”

Irene remained sceptical.

“And yet they took the jewels! And if the events were so important as to transcribe, you’d think the manuscript would be as valuable to her as the jewels — if not more valuable.”

“Maybe her husband made her swear to leave it behind,” Daniel speculated. “Also, if they were captured by Romans, the jewels could be used to bribe their way out of it. A Roman who captured them with the jewels would have received a reward. But why settle for ten or twenty percent when you can have the whole thing?”

“There is another explanation.”

This was Ted.

“Just because Josephus doesn’t record the others being captured doesn’t mean they survived. Maybe they stayed and waited till it was safe but gave out to hunger. Or possibly the stronger fitter ones escaped and the others died there. I’m not saying that happened, but you can’t assume that because they intended to get out of there, that they succeeded. The manuscript doesn’t record the outcome.”

Daniel had a thought.

“Were any bones found amidst the rubble?”

He was looking at Irene.

“Interestingly, no. But that’s a good question. But one can’t even read too much into that because although the Muslims dug twelve metres down into the southeastern corner of the Temple Mount, it’s quite likely that the subterranean tunnels extended throughout the whole site. We know that there are hidden chambers there, but it’s doubtful that the Waqf will grant you or any other Jew access.”

But Daniel was remembering something he had been told during a recent encounter in Egypt… and he realized that once again he might be able to draw on his extensive network.

Chapter 70

The soldier was walking along by the side of the road. Officially, Israeli soldiers were no longer allowed to hitchhike, under standing orders designed to prevent kidnappings by Palestinian terrorists. Certain events had made the practice dangerous, even for male soldiers. To back up the rule and stamp out the dangerous practice, Israeli military police had resorted to staging fake kidnappings of soldiers caught hitchhiking, followed by swift military trials and fines.

But despite these measures and the obvious risks, some Israeli soldiers continued to hitchhike nevertheless, unofficially and inconspicuously. The army buses would normally take them as far as bus stops at major junctions and from there, they would make their way home using buses, on which they were allowed to travel free of charge.

So when Baruch Tikva saw the soldier walking along the road near the intercity junction, he knew that he was secretly hoping for a lift. He drove past at a slow speed and stopped just in front, opening the window and leaning towards the man on the asphalt pavement with a smile.

“Are you going to Mevasseret?”

He took a chance on getting it right. Naming a specific destination — a small township outside Jerusalem — would sound less suspicious than asking where he was going. If he got it wrong he could always loop around and try again with another soldier. But there was no need. Soldiers had been warned to watch out for tricks, like Arabs wearing Jewish-style skullcaps and playing Jewish religious music on the CD player. But you can’t beat appearance. Some Arabs can look like some Jews, and vice versa, but Baruch Tikva was pale-faced and so obviously of north European or north American ancestry that there was no way this soldier could doubt him.

“Yes.”

“Need a lift?”

“Yes… Thank you.”

Baruch pressed a lever to open the boot. The soldier threw his kit bag in the back and then got in the front seat, keeping his compact assault rifle. There were no doubts in the soldier’s mind when Baruch drove off in the promised direction. But within a few yards of where they had started, Bar-Tikva had whipped out a stun-gun, camouflaged as a mobile phone and given the soldier a ten second shock the torso that had left him barely conscious.

Realizing that a young fit soldier would probably not stay unconscious for long, Bar Tikva drove on, ignoring Mevasseret and looping back towards Motsa, a somewhat larger township outside Jerusalem. But instead of driving into Motsa, he stopped by the thick leafy trees by the entrance and finished off the job with a knife.

Then he got out, went round to the passenger side, hauled out the body and dumped it amidst the trees where it could not be seen from the road.

As he drove off and took the turning to Jerusalem, it was hard not to smile at how easy it had been. He would shed no tears over the dead soldier. Although the killing had been expedient rather than ideological, the fact was that the soldier had chosen to serve the evil Zionist entity. Even if he had been a conscript, he could still have refused. And he was obviously a Chiloni — a secular Jew and not a God-fearing one, with no commitment to Hashem and not in the least bit yiras shamayim.

The important thing to Bar Tikva was that he now had what he wanted: the assault rifle.

Chapter 71

“Okay, now remember,” said the Arab. “We must be careful… and very quiet. If anyone challenges us, let me do the talking.”

When Daniel and Ted had left Irene, she was full of excitement about what they had discovered. They had agreed to publish a joint paper which would combine Irene’s scientific analysis of the parchment, and the clay urn in which it was found, with the linguistic analysis of Daniel and Ted, as well as an historical overview.

But while Irene was excited enough about the translation and the link between the Temple Mount Parchment and the other discoveries at Arbury Banks and the Domus Aurea, Daniel and Ted were still not satisfied. Neither the magnitude of the discoveries, nor the contents thereof could explain why people were ready to go to such great lengths to silence them — especially earlier, when they did not have anything like as much information as they did now.

So Daniel had decided to take up Irene’s de facto challenge and try to gain access to the underground tunnels. Not the Jewish controlled tunnels outside the Temple Mount, dating to the seventh century CE, when the Arabs effectively raised parts of the Old City on arches and vaults to make access easier, but rather the tunnels built before the Arabs arrived, that extended from Solomon’s Stables under the Temple Mount itself.

As Irene had said, these tunnels and underground chambers were under the control of the Waqf — the Muslim trust that had control of the Temple Mount. And there was no way that they would let a Jewish historian venture into these tunnels. As far as the Waqf was concerned, anything that brought to light details of the pre-Islamic, Jewish association with the Old City of Jerusalem was something to be suppressed.

So Daniel had drawn on an old contact from his recent Egyptian adventure — a Nubian boatman on the Nile called Walid, who had a network of contacts even larger than Daniel’s quite formidable mental rolodex. When he first made the call, it was a long shot, but a long shot to nothing. Explaining what he wanted in Arabic, but holding out very little hope, he was pleasantly surprised when Walid confirmed that he could help and then put Daniel in contact with his fourth or fifth cousin once or twice removed.

So now here he was at night, on the Temple Mount, with Ted and a man called Salim who looked like he was in his eighties but was probably only in his seventies. The Levantine sun had tendency to age the skin and could make old people look older than they actually were in this neck of the woods.

The Temple Mount itself is the elevated area in the Old City of Jerusalem that houses the Dome of the Rock and the Aqsa Mosque, built in the seventh century of the common era by Muslim conquerors who had believed that the Prophet Mohamed had been here on account of a dream he had in which he ascended to heaven from the Temple Mount itself. Although purely a journey in his mind, some Muslims still insisted that the Prophet was there in person.

Jerusalem had played a fluctuating role in Islamic history. After the Jews of Medina — who had been there for five centuries — failed to accept Mohamed as a prophet of God, he turned on them and had them massacred under various pretexts of dubious probity. To signify his rejection of all things Jewish other than monotheism itself, he changed the direction Muslims faced when they prayed, from the Jewish capital of Jerusalem — with its sixteen centuries of association with the Jews — to the pagan shrine of the Kaba in Mecca. Thereafter, he concentrated his efforts on securing control of the Arabian Peninsula.

However after Mohamed’s death, his successors — the caliphs — embarked upon a campaign of imperialism in which they conquered many neighbouring territories, including Jerusalem. To strengthen their claim to the city, in the minds of the faithful, they restored Jerusalem to the pre-eminent status it held in Mohamed’s mind before he had massacred the Jews of Medina, and built sacred buildings in Jerusalem upon the already sacred Jewish shrines, thus asserting Islamic supremacy over the conquered and the vanquished.

But now one of them was helping Daniel and Ted as a favour to a relative, showing that goodness — as much as villainy — transcends the religious divide.

After using hena to darken their faces and kitting them out in Arab robes — not by any means de rigeur in east Jerusalem, but useful for allaying suspicions — he led them into the subterranean Marwani Prayer hall and through it to an almost concealed entrance at the back. This led them into a stark dank chamber with stone walls. Daniel shone his torch all around to take a look at the walls, hoping to find inscriptions. Ted tried likewise. But the walls were bare, carved into the rock beneath the Temple Mount. This was an untouched chamber that had been this way for centuries.

“Help me with this.”

Daniel and Ted turned round to see Salim struggling to prise up the edge of a stone slab with what seemed like little more than the tips of his fingers. For an old man he appeared to be remarkably strong, as the edge of the stone slowly rose a few inches from the floor in his firm grip. But it was obvious nonetheless that Salim was struggling and he would surely drop the stone back in place. So they rushed over and helped him, quickly inserting their hands and lifting in unison.

Even with all three of them combining their efforts, the weight of the block was apparent and they struggled to lift it.

“Over there,” said Salim indicating where they should move it.

The direction meant that Ted would be moving backwards and Daniel forward, while Salim himself moved sideways. But it was Daniel who nearly fell into the hole, as the stone slab obscured his view. He just about managed to avoid it, moving partly around the hole and then stepping over it as they laid the slab on the side. Then Daniel turned round to see the opening in the ground into which he had very nearly fallen. It led to a lower chamber.

It was Daniel, the youngest and fittest of the three who went first, followed be Ted whom he helped down. They looked around to see that they were at the beginning of a horizontal shaft. But as they waited for Salim to follow, they heard him saying something in tense Arabic, in a tone that spoke of surprise and fear. Ted didn’t know what the words meant, but Daniel did. They meant “Who are you? What do you want?”

In the silence that followed, Daniel strained to hear a reply. But all he heard was nothing except silence, followed by a volley of gun fire. Then when the reverberating echo subsided, the silence returned.

“Salim!” Daniel shouted. “Salim are you all right?”

The fear began to set in. Daniel moved to a position just under the entry point and reached up, trying to pull himself up. But as he did so, he noticed a man standing over him in the chamber above — a big man.

And Daniel recognized him. The beard was gone, or most of it had, but the face was unmistakeable. It was the man who tried to kill him when the police van was attacked. The man that Sarit had told him was Baruch Tikva — or simply Bar Tikva, as he liked to call himself.

And once again, the man was armed. But this time it was an assault rifle that he was pointing at Daniel.

Chapter 72

“So you’ve been blogging about Israel for how long?”

“Quite a few years now.”

Nili was enjoying this man’s company, even if he was a lot older than she. He had a warm sophisticated charm and an air of bon vivant about him, that made her feel comfortable, perhaps even somewhat aroused. He had come around after everyone had left and she was getting ready to leave herself, just finishing up. He wanted to see one of the professors about the project. He had heard that a friend of his — Daniel Klein — was helping them with the translation and he wanted to blog about it, especially if Danny had got some results.

But they had all gone home.

She suggested that he call “Danny” who was after all in Israel, but the man had explained that the call would be routed through England and Danny “really hated” getting calls like that because the mobile phone company charged him a fortune for rerouting those calls. He said never mind, he would hook up with Danny back in England.

It was at that point that Nili took pity on him. She explained that she didn’t know where Danny was staying or how to contact him but that he had got some good results on the translation and that they would be published in due course, but that she couldn’t reveal any of the details without permission.

Then the man took the initiative and asked if she was doing anything this evening. For a moment she had hesitated, feeling a bit on the defensive. But before she could say no, he had smiled at her and said “just dinner. I like to dine in fine restaurants and perhaps you could advise me on which is a good one, while I’m here in Jerusalem.

The truth of the matter was she didn’t know good restaurants from bad because most of them were out of her price range. She knew which were the expensive ones, but price didn’t necessarily guarantee quality and if she was going to avail herself of this man’s generosity — or loneliness — then she didn’t want to make a fool of herself. So she agreed to let him take her to dinner and then, on a pretext of going to the bathroom, she had put in a quick mobile call to a friend.

Two minutes later, when she emerged, she suggested that they go to the Colony restaurant, which in fact was not expensive at all, but came highly recommended.

Now they sat there enjoying their main courses, he eating the grilled entrecote steak in red wine sauce, she enjoying the stuffed chicken breast — after starting with shared plates of stuffed mushrooms and sweet potato ravioli.

“So no juicy titbits,” the man said, hopefully.

“Unfortunately not,” said Nili. “But I mean if you can catch up with your friend Danny, I’m sure he’d be happy to tell you.”

“But you don’t know where he’s staying?”

“No, sorry.” Then she brightened up. “You could try calling Ted, if you know him.”

The man looked up from his food, surprised, but quickly gathered his wits.

“Oh Ted’s with him?”

“He was when they did the translation. I mean it was Ted who did the translation. Your friend Danny just transliterated the Hebrew.”

“We are talking about the same Ted, I hope. You mean Ted Hynds, yes?”

Nili inclined her head in silence for a moment.

“I think that was his name.”

“I did have his number. But it’s probably in my old address book back in England. I haven’t been in touch with him for a long time. Oh well.”

He carried on eating.

“I suppose the other thing you could do is call the office in the morning and get the contact details. Professor Peres will be there.”

“Whose he?”

“She. Irene Peres. She’s a scientist who did the tests on the manuscript and prepared the digital copy that Danny and Ted used for their translation. She’s related to him apparently — to your friend Danny I mean.”

“Okay I’ll do that. I just hope I don’t end up missing him. You’re sure he said he’s staying in Jerusalem aren’t you. It would be a pity if he jumps on a plane to another destination like the USA or Greece or somewhere and I end up missing him again. It’s happened before you know.”

“Oh I don’t think there’s any chance of that. They’ve still got more work to do on the translation and writing the paper.”

“Yes but knowing Danny they’ll probably end up working long distance via the Internet. He’s very peripatetic is our Danny.”

“Perri…”

“He travels a lot.”

“Well he won’t be leaving the country tomorrow, because I think he’s got plans to visit Masada before he leaves.”

“Masada?”

Nili blushed. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to have mentioned that. It had been the Temple Mount Parchment that had drawn his attention to Masada. She realized that she had effectively given away something that she should probably have kept silent about.

“Oh well,” the man continued. “I’ll call tomorrow and ask this Professor…?”

“Peres.”

“Peres… whether she can give me his local contact details. Maybe you can tell her to expect my call.”

“Sure.”

Nili looked a little uncomfortable.

“Is there a problem?” he asked.

She blushed again.

“I’m sorry… only I’ve forgotten your name.”

She squirmed. But the man just smiled.

“Oh is that all? It’s Sam… Sam Morgan.”

Chapter 73

Daniel leapt aside just as Bar Tikva fired off a volley of rounds at him. But he knew it wasn’t over yet, when Bar Tikva crouched down and stuck the rifle through the hole of the floor that he and Ted had dropped though less than a minute before.

“Move!” he shouted at Ted, who was frozen with momentary panic. Ted moved just in time to give Daniel the space he needed to avoid the shots. Because of the angle at which the man had been able to insert the gun, there was no danger of the shots being fired along the entire stretch. Instead the last rounds of the volley embedded themselves in the plastered walls while Daniel and Ted raced along the underground cavern.

When Ted felt he had got far enough from the volley, he stopped. He was mildly out of breath, but his regular health regimen meant that he had the stamina to run a lot more if he had to. Daniel stopped behind him.

“I think he’s out of ammo. But he might have another magazine.”

But Ted was not listening. The danger held less interest for Ted than curiosity. He was looking around, shining his torch at the plastered walls of the subterranean chamber.

“What is this?” asked.

Daniel took a moment to catch his breath.

“If my calculations are correct, Ted, we’re in something called the Lower Aqueduct. It supplied the Old City and the temple from springs outside the city.”

They heard sounds at the entry point of the chamber from whence they had run.

“Is he coming after as?” asked Ted.

“If he does, we’d better run,” Daniel whispered, shining his torch back in the direction that the sound had come from. But there was no sign of Bar Tikva — just more sharp, staccato, clanking sound. Daniel realized what was happening. Bar Tikva was putting the stone slab back, trapping them in the tunnel.

Ted looked at Daniel with a concerned expression in his face.

“Can we get out?”

Daniel nodded in the direction away from their starting point.

“That way. But it won’t be quick.”

“Why how long is it?”

“That depends on how far we need to go in order to get out. But I can tell you this tunnel runs all the way to Solomon’s Pools in Bethlehem.”

“Bethlehem?”

“Yes. And that’s over thirteen miles from here.”

“And because it had to work under gravity, I assume that it’s all uphill.”

There was resignation in Ted’s tone.

“Yes, but the good news is that it’s not such a steep gradient. Solomon’s Pools are at elevation of seven hundred and sixty five metres. The Temple Mount is seven hundred and thirty metres above see level. So that’s a drop of thirty metres in thirteen miles… I think that’s about twenty one and a half kilometres. So it’s a very small drop.”

“I’ll say. And presumably this was built by Herod the Great.”

“Actually no. It’s been dated back to the Hasmonean period — way before Herod.”

“Good God. And I thought only the Romans had that sort of engineering experience.”

“Well Herod brought his Romanized education later. But the ancient Jews had quite a lot of engineering experience.”

“Never mind that now. What about Salim?”

Daniel’s mind was brought back down to reality. Salim had been helping them and now he lay dead — murdered by the same madman who had been pursuing him since he had been arrested in London. The same madman who had tried to kidnap his niece. And probably the same madman who had killed Martin Costa and set fire to the derelict house in Ashwell. It all seemed so long ago and far away now.

But what did he really know about the lunatic? In London he had appeared as a religious Jew with a long beard. The beard was gone now and Daniel couldn’t think of why. Sarit had told him that the people who were after him were from Shomrei Ha’ir. But why had they targeted him? And why Martin Costa? It must have something to do with what Costa had found… but what? The ketuba? Perhaps. It showed that a Jewish leader had married out of the religion. But then again Bar Giora was himself a convert or a son of a convert.

Why would any of that matter? Shomrei Ha’ir might not approve of marrying out of the faith, but it happened long ago. And Bar Giora was hardly the most famous or most important of Jewish leaders through the ages. In the long line of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Daniel, Ezra, Jeremiah and Elijah, he was nothing. Even among the military leaders, like Joshua, Judah the Macabee and Bar Kochba, he was small fry. So what was the big deal? It was just another interesting footnote in the rich history of the Jewish people. Nothing to get hot under the collar about… hardly a reason to kill people.

And now Martin Costa was dead, the two criminals who had helped Bar Tikva when he attacked the police van were also dead and Salim was dead. Perhaps no one would shed any tears over Martin I Costa — and the two criminals that Chienmer Lefou had supplied him with would certainly not be missed. But Salim was another matter. Salim was a good man who was helping him because his distant relative Walid had called him all the way from Egypt and asked him to.

And now he would have to explain to Walid and to Salim’s family why their relative had died. And although they would hold the gunman responsible and not Daniel himself, it was hard for Daniel not to feel at least partially responsible. He had brought Salim into this, even if he could not have known of the specific danger that they faced.

And when he did explain and they came down to retrieve the body, there would be an almighty incident about the fact that a Jew had killed a Muslim on the site of Haram ash Sharif, as the Muslims called the Temple Mount.

“Daniel?”

“The voice was Ted’s, gently snapping Daniel out of his daydream.”

“Sorry. I was just thinking about Salim.”

“I know,” said Ted, sympathetically. “But we need to get out of here.”

Ted led the way down a tunnel from the chamber but then suddenly stopped as if he had been struck by lightening. For he now found himself standing in a humongous cavern, larger in area than the one where they had just been and with a much higher ceiling.

“What the…”

His voice trailed off into silence as he swung his torch around and the light bounced off the stone walls. The reflected light was feint, indicating the distance between his torch and the yellow-plastered walls, as well as the divergence of the beam. Daniel joined him and used his torch to view the opposite side to the one where Ted was aiming his.

“It’s the Great Sea,” said Daniel.

“The what?”

“The Great Sea. This is one of the biggest reservoirs under the Temple Mount, if not the biggest. It was discovered by two explorers in the nineteenth century: Conrad Schick and Charles Warren. Warren was the man who discovered an ancient gate to the temple mount that now bears his name. Anyway Warren and Schick discovered that there were many ancient underground reservoirs or cisterns under the Temple Mount. The biggest one that they discovered was this one, which they called the Great Sea. They even brought an artist with them, called William Simpson, a Scotsman who had documented the Crimean War with water colours.”

“But there’s no light down here? Did they have oil lanterns?”

“They did. But he painted it by the light of a burning magnesium wire. Anyway, we need to go that way.”

He pointed to a tunnel and set off in the direction he had pointed, leaving Ted to follow.”

“I presume we’re still under the Temple Mount.”

“Yes, but we won’t be for much longer.”

“Where does this lead?”

“If my memory serves me right, it leads to somewhere called Wilson’s Arch.”

“I assume that’s named after another nineteenth century explorer,” said Ted.

“Of course. I mean obviously he didn’t build it — it existed in the time of Jesus and even earlier — but Charles William Wilson discovered it. It’s located at one end of the Western Wall and once supported a road bridge that was level with the Temple Mount and that led to a gate called the Gate of the Chain.”

“So it predates the Muslims?”

“Not exactly. The arch was we now see it, was rebuilt by the Muslims after they conquered the city in the seventh century. But it rests on the remnant of an older bridge that was built by Herod the Great. During the first Great Revolt of sixty six to seventy, the original bridge was destroyed either by the Romans, or more likely by Jewish freedom fighters to make it harder for the Romans to attack the Temple Mount.”

They continued on their way, alternating in the use of their torches so as not waste battery power unnecessarily.

“I think we’re now somewhere under the Jewish Quarter,” said Daniel.

“How do you know?”

He shone his torch to show an opening in the wall above the tunnel.

“During the Byzantine period, between three fifty and six fifty, the city experienced a period of tremendous growth because of the stability brought by the eastern Roman empire. In order to provide water for the growing population, the Byzantines built a second channel above the first.”

“The Upper Aqueduct?” asked Ted.

“What?”

“I assume that if this is the Lower Aqueduct, then the one that the Byzantines built above it was the upper aqueduct.”

“Actually no. There is something called the Upper Aqueduct, but it follows a completely different route, This is more of a later development to the Lower Aqueduct that runs between this point under the Jewish Quarter and the Hill of Evil Counsel.”

“The Hill of Evil Counsel?”

“Where the UN building is located.”

Ted smiled.

“Very apropos.”

Ted, Daniel remembered, was a Daily Mail reader.

“It’s not really a different channel,” Daniel explained. “Part of the way it’s a separate parallel channel running slightly higher than the original. But in other parts, the Byzantine engineers simply expanded the existing channel.”

“But why would Byzantium expand the water channel to the Temple Mount?” asked Ted. “They were Christians. Surely they wouldn’t have any interest in the Temple Mount.”

“They didn’t. The Temple mount was abandoned by then. I mean it wasn’t in use. In fact they let it degenerate into a rubbish heap — something that shocked the early Muslims when the Caliph Omar invaded after Mohamed’s death. But the Byzantines didn’t just widen the aqueduct, they also diverted the waters… probably to the Nea Church. The Muslims then diverted it back to the Temple Mount and later the Mamluks made further improvements.”

“How come it’s so dry now?”

“Well the Ottoman Turks rebuilt it in 1500 using an enclosed ceramic pipe. That was still bringing in water to the Old City up until 1967.”

“Good God.”

“Fortunately for us, the old channel is still navigable. But we may have to crawl in parts.”

“Anyway, if we want to make any progress, we have a choice. We can either climb up into the upper channel and stand, or stay down here and stoop or even crawl part of the way.”

“I’m not sure if I can get up there,” said Ted.

“I can make a hand stirrup.”

“And then how will you get up?”

“I can run and jump and you can pull me.”

Ted weighed up the options.

“Can we stand all the way up there?”

“No, at some point we’re still going to have to crawl.”

“Then lets just stay down here… follow the original tunnel.”

Daniel switched on his torch and led the way, stooping rather than actually crawling.

“We’re now following the Western Hill,” Daniel grunted as he struggled along awkwardly.

“What’s that?”

“It’s what Josephus referred to as the Upper City. At some point soon we’ll be crossing under the Old City wall, just west of the Dung Gate.”

“The Dung Gate?”

“That’s what it’s called. And it did exactly what it says on the tin.”

“Hopefully we won’t smell it down here.”

“I said did. It hasn’t been used for that purpose for ages. And it’s possible that the original Dung Gate was in a different location.”

“And where does it lead from there?”

“Around the slopes of Mount Zion, it crosses the Hinnom Valley, then past the Sultan’s Pool and goes under Mishkenot She’ananim.”

“The Sultan’s Pool?”

“A water basin dating back to the time of Herod, or possibly even the Hasmoneans. It was expanded into a reservoir by the Ottomans — hence the name.”

“But if it was used as a reservoir…”

“Yes it was fed by the lower aqueduct. And yes we may be able to get out there! But I think the exit is blocked and we’ll have to go via the old route that bypasses it to the North.”

“Then how are we going to get out?”

“We’ll have to go all the way to East Talpiot… that’s the neighbourhood by the Hill of Evil Counsel.”

“And that means…”

“A long walk.

Chapter 74

It was the dead of night when Bar Tikva crept out of the hidden chamber and back into the Marwani Prayer Hall, leaving the body of the Arab behind him and Daniel trapped in the underground chamber along with his friend. But neither the darkness nor the silence held any fear for Bar Tikva. He was a God-fearing Jew.

Beyado afkid Roohi,

beh’eit eeshan veh’a’eerah,

veh’im roohi geveeyati,

adonai lee veh loh eerah

Into his hand I commit my spirit,

When I sleep and when I awake,

And with my spirit my body,

The Lord is with me and I will not fear.

That was how he felt. Strong not because of his own native bodily strength, but because of the strength and courage that his faith gave him. He knew that the Muslims had finished their late night prayers. That was why Daniel Klein and the Englishman had come here now, thinking they were safe. That was why Bar Tikva felt safe, crossing through the mosque and leaving the way he came, crossing the Temple Mount and leaving.

But now they were doomed. Even if the cried out for help, the Muslims would not hear them through the stones and above the sound of their prayers. And if they did find them, they would probably suspect them of some manner of wrongdoing and would tear them limb from limb! They would think they were agents of the Temple Mount Faithful — those vile Zionist, nationalist Jews who wanted to rebuild the Temple!

Rebuild the Temple?

Without a command from Hashem?

It was bad enough that the Zionist vermin had rebuilt the Jewish state — a state based on secular values and not the ideals of purity taught by all the great Jewish sages throughout the ages. The redemption of Zion would only come when the Messiah came! And that day would only come when all Jews returned in repentance.

And that day was surely not now. Not when Jews were brazenly breaching the Sabbath. Now when restaurants in Israel were serving pork! Not when Jewish men in America and elsewhere were marrying non-Jewish women and worse still Jewish women marrying non-Jewish men!

We should live in peace and friendship with the goyim, and accept their government, but we should not consort with them.

To Baruch, as to his father, this was the greatest sin of all. And it was this that was keeping the Messiah at bay. These chilonim — these irreligious Jews — were not only holding back the Messiah for themselves, they were denying their fellow Jews, the more pious among them, the joys and bliss that would be brought by the harbinger of the perfect era.

So he had no qualms about what he was doing now.

He made his way through the Jewish Quarter that had been turned into a slum during the nineteen year Jordanian occupation and rebuilt by the Zionists after the Six Day War, leaving the Old City via the Dung Gate. Oblivious to the fact that he was following the same route, on the surface, as the subterranean route being followed by Daniel and Ted, he walked by the city wall, taking out his mobile phone and calling his father’s mobile. He knew that his father was in hiding. But he would surely take a call from his son.

“Is it done?” asked his father.

“It is.”

“Did they beg?”

There was a cruel streak in his father. But it was not his place to judge.

“I didn’t stay to hear.”

“What do you mean, ‘stay to hear’?”

“I didn’t manage to shoot them. But there was no need.”

“What do you mean?”

Baruch explained how he had trapped them in the underground cavern with the heavy stone and bragged how even he had great trouble lifting it. But before he could finish his explanation his father interrupted him in a tone of unmitigated rage.

“Have you been sent from Shamayim to be a curse upon me!”

It took no more than these words to his strong, tall, powerfully built son, into a fit of tears like a small child. His father was angry. But what had he done wrong? He had done as his father had told him. He had killed Daniel Klein and the other man. Why should his father be angry?

“I don’t understand,” said Baruch, in the tone of a little girl, as the tears streamed down his cheeks.

“Do you think the cavern is nothing but a sealed chamber? It is an aqueduct — like Hezekiah’s tunnel! They can escape!”

“But I thought Hezekiah’s tunnel was… was…”

“There are two aqueducts! And this one is the other one!”

“I am sorry. I am sorry!”

“Never mind that now! Tears are for fools. Do you have the car with you?”

“I parked it near the Sultan’s Pool.”

“Okay come to the house of Aryeh. And be careful that you are not followed. Tomorrow we have work to do! I intend to end this once and for all!”

Chapter 75

“How much farther?” asked Ted. Despite his general fitness and his regular work-out regime, the long walk and crawl was beginning to take its toll. They had been going for nearly four hours now. If it had been a normal walk for Ted, that would have translated into at least fifteen miles. But this was a staggered walk in fits and starts over uneven ground, partly in high-ceilinged narrow tunnels, partly in stooping passages and partly in crawling “pipes” where the greatest strain was in his knees, as the pressed into and rubbed against the hard stone.

“I’d say we’re very nearly there,” Daniel replied, puffing like a worn-out locomotive. Despite following a fitness regime himself, on the advice of his nephews, he too was feeling the strain.

“Nearly where?”

“I think we’ve passed Abu Tor… well past by now. That means we’re under the promenade that overlooks Jerusalem. The one that leads to the Hill of Evil Counsel.”

Ted looked at his watch.

“You know it’s four in the morning!”

“I know. It’ll be dawn soon. That could be useful.”

“Why?”

“Because if there are any openings, we’ll be able to see them from the light shining through… once there is light.”

“What do you mean if there are any openings? Does that mean there might not be?”

“There are some. I mean I know there’s one at the entrance to the forest near Government House.”

“Government House?”

“The UN Building. It used to be the residence of the British High Commissioner. But it’ll be a lot easier to find if we’ve got some light.”

They crawled on, for a long time, and at some point they saw light streaming in.

“It’s up there,” said Daniel, pointing to an almost vertical shaft.. “How’s your tension climbing skill?”

“Never tried,” said Ted. “But I work out with weights so I reckon I’ve got the upper body strength.

They flipped a coin for who was going first and Daniel won — or lost… depending on how you looked at it.

Ted made an interlocked hand-stirrup for Daniel to enable him to reach the beginning of the shaft. Daniel stepped on it, lifted his other leg clear of the ground and inserted his arms, placing the palms of his hands on opposite sides of the wall of the shaft. Then he raised his free leg and places his foot against one wall. Finally, pressing against the walls with three limbs and his upper back, he lifted his foot from the stirrup Ted had formed and placed it too against one side of the shaft wall, higher than the other foot.

Now, fully supported by the tension of his own limbs against the walls of the shaft, he raised first one hand then the other, to a higher level, placing each one against the wall and pressing hard. Then he released the tension of his lower leg and placed it against the wall in a higher position, again applying pressure.

In this way he was able to climb the short distance up to the top of the shaft from whence the light was entering. But then he came upon a problem.

“It’s not good news,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Stand clear, I’m coming down.”

“What is it?” Ted repeated.

“It’s blocked. Stand clear.

Ted stood clear, while Daniel climbed down part of the way and — when his foot detected empty space — dropped the last few feet. He felt his ankle twisting and regretted doing it that way.

“What are we going to do?” asked Ted.

“I know there’s another exit. But it’s a few hundred yards further up.”

“I can make it.”

“I’m not sure I can,” said Daniel, grimacing as he took a step forward on his twisted ankle.

They carried on, and Daniel felt the pain in his twisted ankle. Ted looked back a couple of times, as if asking if he should wait. But Daniel shook his head, rejecting the sympathy. He noticed that by stretching his foot and walking on the ball of the foot, he could negate much of the pain. In any case it soon became irrelevant as a drastic drop in the ceiling height forced them to resume crawling.

It was maybe fifteen minutes later when they noticed another shaft of light entering the tunnel this time from the side. They had to climb slightly and then squeeze through an aperture that seemed like the birth passage of a new born baby. But with a lot of pushing and twisting and sharp intakes of breath, they managed finally to emerge on the side of a slope overlooking a valley illuminated by the light of dawn.

The valley was silent at this dawn hour, except for the sounds of the muezzin in the distant mosque, calling the faithful to prayer. But it was not an empty valley. It was occupied by a large low building and several others further away of four or five stories, all clad in cream-coloured Jerusalem Stone. As they stood up, looking around and brushing the dust and dirt off their clothes, Daniel was looking in the other direction, up the slope of the hill where they had emerged to a garden with a white painted fence.

Daniel raised his right index finger to his lips and then pointed to the fence. Behind it was not only a garden but a row of buildings that were something between houses and flats — middle eastern style homes attached and in some cases one atop the other, but with separate entrances.

As Daniel approached the fence, Ted followed with some degree of confusion if not trepidation. The white fence was of uneven height, but Daniel selected the lowest part and climbed over. Ted did likewise and found himself in a garden that had potted plants and cacti around the borders, but white tiles occupying the bulk of the surface area. To their right, in the corner was a swinging love-seat on a green-painted metal frame, sheltered by its own awning, as well as by a green-painted wrought iron gazebo, covered in clinging vines.

But that was not where Daniel’s attention was focussed. It was on the house, and in particular the metal garden doors and the shutters behind them that ran down to ground level. As Daniel approached the shutters, Ted sensed movement behind them and wanted to warn Daniel. But he didn’t want to shout and disturb anyone at this time of the morning. In a few seconds, Ted realized what was happening. The shutters were slowly rising. And from the rumbling whirring sound and the slow, steady rate at which they rising, it was clear that they being operated not by a human hand but a motor.

And while they were still rising a sliding glass door was opening behind them to reveal a man in his early eighties, looking at Daniel through the metal garden door, as he inserted a key and open it.

“What are you doing here?” asked the man.

But the voice was not hostile. It was surprised, to be sure, but tinged with a trace of pleasure. Daniel half-turned towards the archaeologist behind him.

“Ted. Meet my father.”

Chapter 76

“Wake up! Wake up!”

Shalom Tikva was shaking his son’s arm. He had entered the living room of the friend’s house where they had both been hiding out and was now rousing his son aggressively. For most of the night, Baruch Tikva had slept a fitful sleep after arriving at Aryeh’s house. And now, just as he was finally nodding off in the small hours of the morning, his father was waking up.

“Wha… what? What is it?”

“We must get up and recite Shaharis.”

The word Shaharis was the Ashkenazi classical Hebrew pronunciation of Shaharit — this was the morning service, recited by orthodox Jews either quietly and individually or out loud by a minyan, a quorum of ten males aged 13 or over.

Baruch got up and staggered to the bathroom.

“Why so early?” he called out. “We can davan later.”

We can pray later.

“No we can’t. We have something to do.”

“What?” Baruch called out over the sound of running water.

“We are going to rid the face of Israel of our enemies.”

“But how do you know where they are?” Baruch called out.”

“I know where they have to go. They will go where this ends. They will go where it started.”

“And where did it start?” he asked, shouting to be heard over the water.

“Where the sinners took their lives… where the woman died.”

“But how will we rid ourselves of them?”

The water stopped.

“I met a Palestinian friend,” said Shalom Tikva. “He gave me something… as a favour.”

When Baruch Tikva emerged from the bathroom, he saw that his father was holding a hand grenade.

Chapter 77

“And you think that the answer is at Masada?” asked Helen, as they sat together at the breakfast table.

“That’s the only place it can be,” Daniel replied. “We know from the Temple Mount Parchment that when Bar Giora emerged from below ground and was captured by the Romans, he gave his wife, and the rest of the group, strict instructions to make their way to Masada. We know that Eleazer Ben Yair was his right hand man and we know that Ben Yair made it back to Masada. So we must assume that Lanosea did too.”

“But what do you expect to find there? Masada has been thoroughly excavated.”

“Actually it hasn’t. The north and west have, but the southern part somewhat less. And the eastern part not at all. There was an unwritten agreement among archaeologists not to excavate everything, but to leave some things to future generations.”

“But you can’t just start digging there.”

“I’m not going to dig. But we can look.”

“And what do you expect to find?

“I don’t know. I guess that’s the fun of looking.”

After Daniel had explained to Helen and his father, Bernie, about their adventures, both in England and in the Old City, they had taken turns in the shower and Bernie had supplied them both with a change of clothes, although in the case of Ted, the legs and sleeves were a bit short because of the height difference.

Now they were tucking into a hearty breakfast at Chez Klein, including smoked salmon, pickled herring, fried eggs, Emek cheese (similar to Edam or Gouda), rye bread, mini-Chala — the best bread rolls Ted had ever tasted — and fresh salad that really was a salad, not just soggy lettuce, comprising a mixture of tomatoes, cucumber, green peppers and radishes. You couldn’t fault the Kleins (senior) when it came to hospitality.

“Are you sure you’re not just going to get yourselves arrested?” asked Helen.

“Or worse,” added Bernie.

Even though Daniel was in his forties, his father still spoke to him as if he were a child, or at best a teenager.

“We’ll be careful,” said Daniel.

Ted was listening in silence… and amusement.

“I still don’t see what you can hope to find,” said Helen.

Earlier on, she had surprised both of them by telling them that she had been part of the Hebrew University team that had helped the Vatican Library with the restoration of the waterlogged Domus Aurea Parchment.

“We might not find anything. But I think that after everything we’ve been through so far, it’s worth a try. At minimum I’ll be able to ask the information people there some questions that might help us further. Maybe with the results we’ve already got we might be able to persuade the Antiquities Authority to allow a new dig. Ted here has a formidable reputation as an archaeologist and I like to think I have some cache as linguist.”

“I wouldn’t place too much confidence in the Antiquities Authority,” said Helen.

Her sister, Irene, had clashed with the Antiquities Authority over their handling of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and effectively fallen out with them.

“If we want to get a license to dig, we don ‘t really have any choice. In the meantime, a quick visit to Masada might enable us to fill in some gaps so that when we put out case, it stands on rock solid ground — ‘scuse the pun.”

“Well in that case we’d better go online after breakfast and check out the bus times to Masada.”

“Ah,” said Daniel, awkwardly, looking at his father. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I was wondering if you might lend us the car.”

Bernie, flicked his head in Helen’s direction, keeping his eyes on Daniel.

“You’ll have to ask the lady of the house,” he added, by way of explanation.

Daniel looked at Helen, not quite sure how to phrase the question, given that she had already heard it.

She smiled, amused at his awkwardness.

“All right,” she said. “But just make sure you bring it back in one piece.”

Chapter 78

Sarit hadn’t spoken to Daniel since they had parted company at the hospital. A guard had been placed at Leah Yakarin’s bedside and Sarit had gone back to her other duties, which essentially meant reading up about anti-Israel organizations and learning about their infrastructure in preparation for future assignments against them. Daniel and Ted could have had close protection, but that would have entailed restriction of their movements, something they were loath to agree to.

Sarit’s duties also included checking out the numerous anti-Semitic videos on YouTube to familiarize herself with the faces and warning signs of such people. Some YouTube anti-Semites had even taken to hiding their faces and using voice changers to cover their tracks. She would not of course be assigned to kill them. But it was important to be able to identify them and know how to distinguish the talkers from those who would actually be ready to take hostile action against Israel itself or Jews — whom the State of Israel had a duty to protect from violence.

It was while she was doing this research that she got an internal call from Dovi Shamir, her ex-lover and the man who had trained her and turned her into a lethal killing machine.

“Sarit come to my office please.”

“Now.”

“Yes now!”

It was on a different floor and at the far end of a corridor. But she was there in less than a minute.

“Don’t sit down,” said Dovi as she reached for a fold-up chair.

“What’s the emergency?”

“We’ve had a call from SHaBaK. Apparently Urim intercepted calls that gave them a fix on Shalom and Baruch Tikva.”

“So why don’t they arrest them?”

“They tried to get them in a dawn raid, except that they swooped in a bit after dawn.”

“And I assume the birds had flown?”

“Exactly.”

“Where were they staying?”

“A friend’s flat in the Ma’alot Dafna neighbourhood.”

“Did the friend also fly the coop?”

“No, he was still there. They took him in and hauled him over the coals.”

“Did he sing?”

“Eventually.”

“And?”

“They’re going to Masada.”

“Why?”

“Because they think Daniel and Ted are going there.”

“And why are you telling me this?”

“Well last time you thought Daniel Klein was in danger, you went rushing off to protect him… against my express orders.”

Sarit remembered the incident all too well.

“If I remember rightly you said it was SHaBaK’s business.”

“Which didn’t cut any ice with you, if I remember rightly.”

“Well they had been kidnapped and taken across the border to Jordan. So technically it was Mossad business.”

Dovi smiled at Sarit’s response.

Feisty as ever.

“Look I’m not here to rake over embers of the past.”

“Then I return to my question. Why did you summon me.”

“Well I thought you might like to get down there and give him some protection.”

“Now that really is the job of SHaBaK… and the police.”

“Yes but you know what Baruch Tikva looks like.”

“Oh come off it. SHaBaK have pictures of both of them — and probably half their members. They know what both of them look like.”

“You’ve seen him recently. You know what he looks like now.”

“Unless he’s shaved off his beard.”

“Actually he has — according to CCTV footage from the airport.”

“How did he manage to get back into the country undetected?”

“Well it appears that he used an American passport and his mother’s maiden name.”

“And that’s all it took to give border control the slip?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Anyway, it’s up to you. I don’t want you to take any risks, but according to your reports, when you confronted him in England you were dressed in leathers and a helmet and he didn’t realize that you were a woman. So if you go there now, dressed like a tourist, he won’t recognize you. And that should give you an advantage.”

“And what if Daniel or Ted greet me and let the cat out of the bag?”

Dovi thought for a moment.

“That could be a problem.”

“And why don’t we just warn them?”

“We haven’t got a contact number. They both lost their phones in the explosion.”

“Knowing Daniel, he would have got a new one at the first opportunity and given the number to all his contacts.”

“Maybe he did, but we’re not on his contact list.”

“And he hasn’t contacted me either.”

“There is something else Sarit.”

“What?”

“We had a call from his father.”

“Whose father?”

“Daniel’s. He was acting on his son’s instructions. It seems that Daniel and Ted were at Solomon’s Stables last night.”

“Solomon’s Stables?”

“Yes. Or rather the mosque that was built there ten years ago.”

“What were they doing there?”

“Exploring the water cisterns and tunnels. Apparently they thought they might find some relics or artefacts there.”

“And did they?”

“No. But an attempt was made to kill them. Instead an Arab who was helping them was killed. And now we’ve got to enter into some delicate diplomacy with the Waqf to handle the situation.”

“And we know all this because…”

“He told his father.”

“And did he tell his father something that might actually help us, like where he was going now?”

“We think so.”

“Think so?”

“His father claimed that he didn’t know. But we think that’s because Daniel requested it. He presumably doesn’t want anyone to know that he’s looking for artefacts without permission of the Antiquities Authority. But we know that’s where HaTzadik and Bar Tikva are going… and we know they think that Daniel is going there too. So I think it’s a pretty safe bet.”

“And you want me to go there to cover his ass?”

“It would be nice to have some one there who has his interests at heart… and the skill to protect them. But it’s up to you.”

Sarit had already been thinking about it and her mind was already made up.

“I’ll go.”

Chapter 79

“It’s magnificent,” said Ted as the cable car carried them up toward the top of Masada. Through the glass, Ted saw the plateau draw ever closer while in the other direction the ground receded and the panorama of the desert and the dead sea unfolded before his eyes. They had eschewed walking up the snake path, favouring the practicality of saving their strength for the exploration they had yet to undertake, over the experience of treading that ancient path cut into the pinkish grey rock.

When the cable car arrived at the top and its doors opened, they stepped out onto wooden walkway, that led to an entrance: the snake path gate. The entrance was an archway and inside it they found temporary shelter from the intense sunlight. Sitting down on the stucco benches, they tried to get their bearings and work out a strategy.

“There’s a tourist shop,” said Daniel, pointing to the side.

“Do you need it?” asked Ted.

“Not for myself. But you can get a guidebook there — or even a headset to listen to the commentary.”

“That’ll only slow us down,” said Ted. “I’ll listen to your commentary. And if I’ve got any questions I’ll ask.”

And with that, they walked through the arch on the other side that led them across paving stones and onto the ruins of a mountain fortress that had become the stuff of legend. As they walked across the open surface, they felt the morning sun beating down upon them. Even at this early hour the solar rays were harsh. By mid-day they would be oppressive. But at least there were few people about at this time. They almost had the site to themselves.

Ted looked around to take in the view. Masada was essentially a giant table in the Judean Desert — a rock plateau with walls that were cliffs rising 1300 feet above the surrounding ground to the east and 300 feet to the west, the difference being due to the relative heights of the surrounding bedrock. Although less than 200 feet above sea level, it’s positioning in the Dead Sea Rift valley meant that its plateau stood 1500 feet above the surface of the Dead Sea.

From where Ted stood, it was hard to see some of the edges of the plateau. It’s shape was rhombic, nearly 1800 feet on its longest axis and half that on its shortest. Although essentially a ruin, parts had been rebuilt, whilst remnants of other parts had been exposed to hip height by archaeology. In one direction stood the reconstructed Northern Palace and in another, the massive Western Palace.

“So where do we go?” asked Ted.

“Let’s start over there,” said Daniel, pointing straight ahead to an area marked “Quarry”.

He led the way to an open area, marked off by a protective metal rail. The reason for the rail was obvious. There was a very large hole on the ground, maybe fifteen feet across exposing large amounts of rock.

“This must be where they quarried the stone to make the round stone blocks that they rolled down the hill onto the Romans — as well as the arrowheads and spears.”

“They must have given the Romans quite a run for their money,” said Ted, nodding approvingly.

“Interestingly, Josephus doesn’t actually describe any resistance. The way he tells it, they just sat here, like sitting ducks until it became clear that they were doomed and then they chose death over slavery, rape and defilement. The men killed their wives and children, then they drew lots and chose ten men to kill the others — to avoid the Biblical injunction against suicide and finally their leader Eleazer ben Yair killed the other ten. Not that Josephus was there. He based his account on the survivors.”

“There were survivors?”

Ted was surprised.

“Two women allegedly from Eleazer Ben Yair’s own family and five children. They allegedly hid in the water cisterns.”

“Allegedly.”

“As I’ve said before, Josephus’s account isn’t unbiased. He characterizes the mass suicide as murder, portraying it as a wicked and barbaric act, ignoring what the Romans would have done to the people had they survived. And there are other discrepancies.”

But Ted was only half listening. He was leaning on the metal rail, looking down at the quarry, concentrating on the an opening at the side of the bottom of the hole and how it appeared to lead off to the side.

“Do you suppose that leads anywhere?” he asked, pointing to the opening.

Daniel stared long and hard at the narrow opening.

“It could, I suppose. But I have a feeling it’s just a couple of extra feet in — and in any case too narrow to crawl.”

“But something could be put there. Like some of the other finds.”

“Anything hidden there would have been found by now. This is part of the well-excavated area, don’t forget.”

Daniel led on to an open area, with Ted following more slowly and looking around. Daniel had been here a number of times. Ted, in contrast, though familiar with the story from his many years of scholarship, had yet to actually set his eyes upon these ancient stones. So this was a new experience for him.

“These were the store rooms,” Daniel explained.

Rooms was perhaps not the right word. Archaeological excavation had exposed the walls to a height of maybe eighteen inches, but it was essentially a ruin and there was no ceiling.

“Presumably this is all that was left after the Romans wreaked their vengeance.”

“It’s more complex than that. This is actually a reconstruction. There were twenty three store rooms in all. The first seventeen were built as one room, which was later subdivided. Then six more were added. This part here is the southern side of the access corridor. As you can see, each room is 27 metres by four.”

“What do you mean a reconstruction?”

“It was actually an earthquake that brought the walls down. But the room was set on fire and the wooden beams brought down.”

Daniel paused, as he remembered what had happened to him in the house in Ashwell, when this little adventure had started. He continued speaking.

“When Yigael Yadin excavated this site in the sixties, he found a thick layer of ash on the ground from the fire. The large ceramic vessels that stored various items had been smashed, although they’d been smashed from the side, as if in a deliberate act of destruction, rather than by the collapsing ceiling. This confirmed what Josephus had written. Anyway, Yadin decided to erect the walls again.”

“Were the storage jars empty?”

“No that’s another thing. They were full or partly full. According to Josephus, the Jewish leaders at Masada didn’t want the Romans to think that they were killing themselves because they had run out of food, so they didn’t actually destroy the food, but left it intact.”

“And what was in the vessels?”

“Various things: oil, flower, wine. And the vessels were marked with names or single letters. Possibly heads of household — although that would imply familial ownership and clash with the idea of a collectivist community. Also some of the vessels bore inscriptions like “fit for the purpose of holiness” — the word for fit is ‘kosher’ — or in other cases warnings like “these jars are disqualified.”

“And where are these jars now?”

“In the Masada Museum, down below. We can look at them later. Let’s go on.”

“Where to?”

“The bathhouse.”

The bath house was still standing. Although a ruin, it’s features could still be made out. It consisted of three chambers: the cold room, the tepid room and a hot room. The hot room was the main one, heated by a hypocaust that was heated by an oven outside the building. One could still see a few remaining patches of the frescoes that had once adorned the walls. But most of the black and white tiles of the mosaic floor were gone. In their place one could see the stone pillars that supported the upper floor and separated it from the lower so that hot air from the oven could be circulated and hot water pipes run in to feed the large pool.

“This was the main public bath house. There’s a smaller one on the lower terrace of the Northern Palace near here, that was probably originally a private bath house for Herod the Great and his family.”

“How many people were here? I mean when the rebels made their last stand.”

“Ah yes, Ted, now that’s a very interesting question. You see they had enough weapons for an army of ten thousand. Josephus says there were 967 fighters.”

“That seems like a very exact number.”

“Exactly. And that’s one of the reasons for scepticism. Especially as only thirty bodies or skeletons have ever been found. And twenty five of those were in a cave at the foot of the mountain and some scholars now believe that they were Romans.”

“Some scholars?”

“Well they were re-buried, by the State of Israel, with full military honours. But even at the time, some sceptical voices were raised. Firstly they were originally buried with pig bones. Jews wouldn’t do that.”

“Maybe it was a deliberate act of defilement,” Ted suggested. “The victors gloating over the vanquished.”

“That’s possible. But there were other factors. Like the fact that they were powerfully built — suggesting professional soldiers rather than volunteers defending their homeland. The fact that they were found at the bottom the mountain.”

“You said that twenty five of them were found in the cave at the foot of the mountain. What about the other five?”

“Well a man in his early twenties, a woman of about seventeen or eighteen and a child of twelve were found in the Northern Palace. And two men were found in the public bathhouse. But what was interesting is something else they found in the public bathhouse. A full head of woman’s hair cut off with a sharp instrument while she was still alive.”

“Do you mean a skull?”

“No, just the hair… and no body or skeleton.”

Ted found this deeply puzzling.

“What does it mean?”

“Well one theory is that she was a foreign woman — possibly attached to the Roman encampment — who was captured when Masada was seized from the Romans at the start of the rebellion. There’s a passage in Deuteronomy that says that if a woman is captured in war, her head must be shaved and her captor must then wait a month before having sex with her. Presumably the idea was to make her less attractive and to discourage him from doing so. But later it became a general practice to cut the hair off female captives.”

“But why would they have a woman out here? Would she have already been a slave? A camp follower?”

“That’s anyone’s guess. But I’m just wondering if she could our enigmatic author of the Domus Aurea and Temple Mount Parchments… AKA Boudicca’s daughter.”

“Lanosea.”

“Exactly.”

They went outside and looked around a bit. Ted was looking at one of the inscribed metal plaques that offered explanations of the nearby features.

“You said before that the five survivors were found hiding in one of the cisterns.”

“Yes.”

“Well it says here that there was a major water cistern here. That water was collected below and brought up by donkey. There’s a Watergate down there. I think we need to check it out.”

“It’s a fascinating place to look at, but it’s at a lower level. That means a long walk down followed by an equally long walk up.”

“I think it’s worth it,” said Ted.

“Maybe later if we’ve got time.”

“But isn’t it possible that we might find something there… something that’ll fill in the last piece of the puzzle?”

“There’s a problem Ted. Of all the places at Masada, the Northern Palace is the one that’s been excavated the most. Followed by the Western Palace.”

“I know,” Ted replied. “I remember you saying that at your parents’ place.”

“My point is that we’re unlikely to find anything there — short of doing some seriously destructive digging that would get us arrested. And anyway, we haven’t got the equipment. Whatever was there to be found, has been found already.”

“So where do we go from here?”

“Well the southern side has been excavated to some extent. But the one area that’s been neglected so far, is the eastern side. Paradoxically that’s the side we came up on — the side with the cable car and the Snake Path.”

Daniel led Ted back, almost the way they came and past the entrance to the eastern side.

“What are those?”

Ted had stopped to look at some not particularly big holes in the ground that appeared to have some mini caverns leading off them like mini bus shelters carved into the stone. They were marked off from the area that could be entered by metal railings. By now, Ted was looking at the metal plaque that explained.

“Dwelling caves, used by anchorite monks in Byzantine age.”

“Yes. I was reading. Do you think there could be anything down there?”

“They don’t look big enough. And they don’t lead anywhere. What you see is what you get. And again, anything that could have been found probably has been.”

Daniel led on to another area nearby, a large roped off area including a wooden bridge. A warning sign read; “Danger! Under construction. No passage.”

“What’s this?” asked Ted, catching up.

“The eastern cistern. This is probably where the survivers hid. This is the sewage cistern, rather than a fresh water cistern. So it would be wider and thus more likely to accommodate people. It predates Herod and goes back to the Hasmonean dynasty, who built the original fortress before Herod developed it. But it was later renovated by the Byzantines.”

“So again, not much to be found.”

But this time, Daniel was not so dismissive.

“Here at least there would have been more room to hide something. And the Byzantines who came here were anchorite Christians like I said. They rejected worldly possessions — a bit like the Essenes were supposed to have done according to Josephus, Philo and Pliny.”

But he wasn’t looking at Ted when he said this. He was looking at a very large open hole and an opening that seemed to branch off sideways from that hole. Unlike the quarry, this opening looked big enough to admit the passage of people, as he had suggested before when discussing the sewage cistern. And apart from a warning sign and the possibility that they might be challenged, there appeared to be nothing to stop them taking a closer look.

Chapter 80

“Masada,” the bus driver called out.

Shalom and Baruch Tikva looked nervously at each other as they stood up and got off the bus. There were only a handful of others getting off. Some of the bus passengers had got off earlier at the Dead Sea resorts of Ein Fashkha and Ein Gedi. Others were going on to the beach hotels at Ein Bokek. But about half a dozen were getting off here at Masada, so they would not be completely alone. They had just managed to get the eight O’clock bus and it was now 9:40, still relatively early.

“Do you think they are here yet?” asked Bar-Tikva.

“If so we will see them. And if not we will be waiting for them.”

Bar-Tikva smiled at his father’s reassuring wisdom.

In the heat of the sun, it was a long, tiring walk from the forecourt where the bus had stopped to the area they had to get to. Although they were taking the cable car from the tourist centre on the ground, they had to walk up a steep, paved slope and up some stairs, to get there.

When they got to the ticket office, they thought that it was rather expensive — especially for the cable car both ways. Shalom was even ready to walk. But his son realized that although he could climb the Snake Path, it would be a problem for his father. The Ramp Path on the side of the town of Arad would have been easier, but it was too late for that now. Without private transport, there was no way that they could get to it.

So they paid up, grumbling the whole time, and then waited until there were enough people for the operators to justify the use of the cable car. Some ten minutes later, they were atop the mountain fortress where pious Jews had made their last stand against the strangers who had sought to impose alien values and false Gods upon them.

They were the first through the entrance and the first thing they did when they got there was look around. In fact it was only Baruch Tikva, the son, who was looking. His father didn’t know what Daniel looked like… or Ted. Baruch had the advantage of height. But he saw no sign of them. They might not be here, or they might be out of sight. One couldn’t really see the whole of Masada from a single spot no matter how tall one was.

Aside from that, they might be in the bathhouse or they might have gone down to the lower terrace of the Northern Palace.

But then, as Bar-Tikva turned a full circle to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, he saw a man in his sixties climbing down into what looked like a roped off area. And the man didn’t look like a workman or a uniformed member of staff.

And the man himself had looked around furtively before disappearing from view.

Chapter 81

Daniel had led the way, stepping over the rope at its lowest point and clambering down into the large ditch. Ted had followed, but more slowly. And to Daniel’s annoyance, he had rather foolishly looked around before doing so.

Daniel, although not trained or experienced in tradecraft, knew better than to advertise his clandestine intentions by looking around like that. But it was too late to do anything about it. He just hoped that no one had noticed. There were very few people about and staff were always very thin on the ground here. Added to that it was a large site, so the prospects of being seen were minimal. In any case, this was an area that was roped off for people’s own safety. They presumed that people would not take unnecessary risks. And no one had actually called out to Ted or asked him what he was doing. So there was nothing to worry about.

Once inside the large open hole, Daniel moved what was little more than a portable grating to expose the opening that branched off. He shone his torch in to see that there was no sudden drop and then clambered in. he had to crawl on his backside for a while until it widened out. Ted followed using the same technique and apparently far more comfortably. He remembered that Ted had seemed quite comfortable in the lower viaduct in Jerusalem. And of course Ted was a very experienced archaeologist who was used to roughing it. He could compete with any survivalist if he had to.

The found themselves in a low tunnel where they could stoop, if not actually stand. Ted shone his torch too, noticing that Daniel’s was fading. In the lower aqueduct, Ted had used his more sparingly and so he had more juice left in his battery, while Daniel was paying the price for his more liberal usage.

“So this is where they hid,” said Ted.

“If Josephus’s version is to be believed.

The walls were covered in plaster, some of it from the Hasmonean period. But in other parts the plaster was no longer present and it was clear that it had been widened. There was no sudden drop, just a winding path. This was natural. If the sewage cistern was made by man then they would have found it easier to build this way than a sheer drop. The only way to make a sheer drop would have been to cut away downwards and stand on the ground they were working on.

“What was that?” Daniel blurted out.

“I didn’t say anything,” Ted replied.

“No, I don’t mean a sound. I saw something when you were waving your torch around.

Ted waved his torch again, aiming it at the same section of the wall. But this time he moved it more slowly, to give Daniel the chance to catch whatever it was he had seen before.

“That’s it! Hold it!”

Ted held the torch frozen.

“Can you move it back again… where it was a moment ago.”

“Which way?” asked Ted.

“Up and away from us… diagonally.”

Ted moved it slowly and then it became apparent to Daniel what he was looking at. Some old woven jute fabric was sticking out of a cavity in the wall. Daniel reached out for it and tugged gently. He did not want to tear or damage it. But it didn’t budge. He gripped portions of the fabric with both hands for better purchase and pulled again, gently at first, then with steadily increasing force until more of the fabric emerged.

It became clear to him at some point that what he was pulling on was a bag and that part of the reason it was jammed was because it contained solid objects and the hole in which it was embedded was not straight. Some of the objects had become stuck. He used one hand to apply pressure to the outside of the bag, moving the objects, while pulling with the other hand. Eventually the bag emerged and he placed it on the ground. He opened it carefully, in such a way that the opening was upright, even though the bag was on its side. That way he could lift items out and place them on top of the bag rather than on the ground.

Then, slowly and gingerly, he reached it and gripped an item. He was careful and delicate with his touch, because he had heard clinking sounds when he reached in and he suspected that the bag might contain ceramic materials, similar to those famous ceramic shards that had been found by Yigael Yadin’s archaeologists in the nineteen sixties — shards that bore the names of men, including Ben Yair.

But when Ted shone the light on the object he had just removed it was apparent that it was not made or clay but of silver. It was a bracelet. And not mere costume jewellery either. This was a genuine solid silver bracelet.

“Not bad for a community of ascetics,” said Daniel, with conscious irony.

“I’ll say, What else is there?”

Daniel reached in again and produced a broach. He held it up to Ted’s torch and perusal.

“Silver again?” said Daniel, seeking confirmation.

“Silver,” Ted confirmed.

Daniel put in on top of the bag. But when he produced another item from the bag, they got the shock of their lives. Because although this item too was a broach, it was a different colour from the other — a bright yellow colour.

“It’s gold!” Daniel blurted out.

Ted moved his torch close and leaned forward to make absolutely sure. There was no doubt: it was gold. At that moment, impatience got the better of Daniel. This bag did not contain delicate parchment manuscripts or fragile pottery shards. This was a treasure bag containing jewellery fashioned of precious metals. Although a manuscript would have been the greater find in his eyes, this was certainly the more unusual, and it had the added virtue of bearing out the authenticity of the deciphered contents of the Temple Mount Parchment.

Unable to contain himself any longer, Daniel seized the bottom of the jute bag, at the sides, lifted it up and emptied the contents onto the floor where he and Ted were now crouched. What fell out — no poured out — of the bag were dozens of broaches and pendants and bracelets and rings of gold and silver. When Daniel had lifted out the bag and deposited it on the ground, he had gained some sense of its weight and he estimated it to be between two and three kilograms.

Four and a half to six and a half pounds! Of jewellery! In silver and GOLD!

And in the middle of the pile was the piece that stood out from among the rest — a golden torc.

“Could that be…?”

He couldn’t even finish the sentence.

“The golden torc of Boudicca?” Ted completed.

Daniel did not have Ted’s encyclopaedic knowledge of Romano-Brittain, but he knew that torcs were a common item of Celtic jewellery and that Boudicca was said to have worn a golden torc.

Daniel picked it up and felt the weight in his hand.

“It’s solid!”

He meant solid in the sense of not hollow as opposed to solid in the sense of not plated. They didn’t do plated jewellery in the iron age, but they did do hollow torcs, especially full-sized torcs for the neck, like this one. Except that this one was not hollow. It was solid gold and that meant it was extremely valuable.

He held it up and invited Ted to shine his torch on it.

“Oh… my… God!”

Ted looked puzzled by this.

“What?”

“There’s writing on it… engraved… look.”

Ted transferred the torch to his other hand and leaned forward and looked. There was indeed some sort of writing engraved on a cylindrical shaped block in the centre of the torc. But it was not any sort of writing that Ted could read. It was not the Roman alphabet, nor the Greek one.

But it was writing that he had learned to recognize. It was the Hebrew alphabet.

“My God.”

Now the surprise had hit him too.

“But why…”

Daniel seemed to be locked in thought. He had the same question in mind as the one Ted had stifled. Even if the torc had been brought here from Britain, why would it have Hebrew writing engraved on it.

“It must have been added later,” Daniel suggested.

“But what does it say?”

Daniel peered at it again.

“The last word is Ikeni or Icheni, which I assume was the name of her tribe.”

“Yes that’s right. The Romans called them the Ikeni, But the name they called themselves was probably Icheni, from the Proto-Brythonic word ich, meaning a horse. They were the people of the horse.”

“The Hebrew letters Kaf and Khaf are virtually the same letter, depending on the context. Like I told you, later, they added dots and other symbols for vowels.”

“Okay but what’s the problem with the first bit?”

“It’s not Hebrew. Maybe it’s like the manuscripts… Proto-Brythonic written in Hebrew.”

“Let’s see.”

Daniel lifted it closer to himself, but held it at such an angle that Ted could shine his torch on it. Daniel read the words, including Icheni. Then Ted translated again.

“That says simply… Queen of the Icheni. Just what we thought in fact… Daniel?”

Daniel was staring at the writing, very intently.”

“I think I’ve just made a discovery.”

“We’ve made several discoveries,” Ted replied, the confusion heavily invasive of his tone.

“No I mean, more than that. Look at that letter.”

He took out his pen and pointed to the second letter of the last word.

“What about it?

“It’s the Hebrew letter Kaf of Khaf… the one I told you about… the one that can be pronounced like a K or alternatively like the ch in loch.”

“Well what about it?”

“Well it’s written in the style that of the Hebrew alphabet about two thousand years ago, just like the parchments.”

“Well that makes it authentic doesn’t it?”

“Yes and that form is only marginally different from the form used today. I mean on religious documents they still use that style today. The only difference is like the difference between say Times New Roman and a more blocky sans serif typeface.”

“Okay,” said Ted, still not sure where this was going.

“Well in that form of the Hebrew alphabet, the letter Kaf is only slightly different from the letter Samech. If I can show you.”

He put down the torc and took out a pen and a scrap of paper from his pocket.

“This is a Kaf…”and this is a samech… see the similarity?”

k s

“Yes I see. But what’s your point?”

“My point is, Ted, that this kaf here on the torc — presumably by a Jewish scribe — is written in such a way that the left side is almost enclosed, so that it could very easily be mistaken for a samech.”

“You said that. But so what?”

“Well suppose some one wrote a manuscript, in Hebrew or Aramaic, referring to the Icheni or Ikeni. And then some one else came along — some one to whom Hebrew or Aramaic were not a first language — and they wanted to translate what they were reading into… say… Greek. With the Kaf written like that, then might they not a word like Icheni or Ikeni be easily mistaken for… Isseni… or allowing for the ambiguous initial vowel… Esseni?”

“Holy moly!” said Ted.

“I’m surprised it took you so long to figure it out,” came a voice from above them.

They looked up to see Shalom Tikva leaning into the entrance to the cistern… holding a hand grenade.

Chapter 82

As Masada loomed up ahead, Sarit was driving Israeli style: with little regard for the laws of the road and even less for the laws of physics. She knew how easy it was for even the best intelligence and security services to bungle things by underestimating the threat and she had no intention of letting Daniel become another casualty of such ineptitude!

They should have arrested Shalom Tikva as soon as they had evidence that he had ordered a killing. The fact that he had used ambiguous wording in his instructions to his son, would not have been a barrier to a guilty verdict in a trial by judge, the only sort of trial available in Israel. And they should not have let Baruch Tikva slip through the net. The British should have caught him there and when they failed to do so, passport control should have caught him when he re-entered Israel.

The British had been quick enough to arrest Daniel on the flimsiest of evidence and had unreasonably refused him bail on the strength of the fact that he had fled the country the last time they falsely accused him. The fact that he had been vindicated didn’t seem to matter to the judge.

And yet Baruch Tikva had been able to attack a police van and kill two policemen, yet go on to escape and even make an attempt to abduct one of Daniel’s nieces. Then two of Daniel’s nieces had been kidnapped by the henchmen of Shalom Tikva and only then did the police and Security Services go into action and start arresting them.

But by then it was too late. Because by then, Shomrei Ha’ir knew that the authorities were on to them and they scattered into the four winds.

And now they knew that these enemies of the state were making their last stand — going after Daniel Klein for reasons that had still not become clear. He had made a few discoveries about Jewish history. But what had that set them against him? How did an expert on ancient languages — and a British professor of archaeology — manage to fall afoul of a Bible-toting sect of Jewish fanatics? Was there some connection between the modern zealots of Judaism and the ancient zealots that Daniel was researching and studying?

That was surely unlikely. These ancient sects that have existed for centuries were the stuff of a whole new wave of historical thrillers, but they surely had no basis in reality? Besides, the ancient zealots were nationalistic Jews, whereas the modern ones were decidedly anti-nationalist. Indeed anti-Zionism was the hallmark of most ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects. With one or two exceptions, it was the moderates who supported Zionism.

She had spoken to Dovi a couple of times on the way and he had assured her that a Border Guard unit had been dispatched there. It was a sensitive area, so there would be Border Guardsman and soldiers nearby anyway. But it was unlikely that they would have been given pictures of who they were looking for. And what if HaTzadik had sent other people. How would they know who to look out for?

The most they could do is look out for anyone trying anything fishy. That meant they would have to be reactive rather than proactive.

Sarit was still going fast when she turned into the bus forecourt. Private vehicles were supposed to park further away, but when a security guard approached and started giving all that swaggering “I’ve got a dick and you haven’t” Israeli macho, she just flashed a badge at him and told him to back off.

The Mossad had no jurisdiction on the home front, but when in Israel they carried ID that enabled them to avoid hassle from other law enforcement officials.

Ignoring the security guard who was no doubt watching her ass and mentally undressing her, she ran towards the tourist centre and the cable cars.

Chapter 83

“What are you going to do?” asked Daniel hesitantly.

“Hand over the bag,” said HaTzadik.

“Is that what this is all about?” asked Daniel. “A few pagan baubles? Not some pious cause after all, but just the old God of mammon?”

“It’s nothing like that,” Shalom Tikva snarled. “You couldn’t even begin to understand.”

“I think I’m beginning to,” said Daniel. “You’re not greedy. But like any other terrorist gang, you need money to finance the revolution. You justify it by telling yourselves that the money is to change the world, not to live the high life.

The mockery wasn’t entirely real. He was trying to goad HaTzadik into talking. Partly this was playing for time, but partly he wanted to understand what was going on. What did Shalom Tikva mean when he said “I’m surprised it took you so long to figure it out.”

“We didn’t do it for the treasure. We weren’t even sure that it existed. Although I suspect Sam Morgan was.”

“Sam Morgan?”

Daniel remembered the name from what Sarit had told him. Sam Morgan, Sarit had determined, was the man ho had killed Martin Costa and tried to kill Daniel at the house.

“A man who is helping us — or at least was helping us.”

Did this mean that Sam Morgan was dead? Or that they had fallen out?

“But what is that we took so long to figure out? The possible confusion between the Essenes and the Ikeni?”

“It’s more than possible confusion Professor Klein. That’s really what this is all about. You see archaeology has always been divided into two camps. The people who crave knowledge and the people who want to make a quick buck.”

“And where do you stand?” asked Daniel.

“We stand apart from all that. Our only interest is in the purity of the Jewish people. But you’re right. There are people who like to steal ancient artefacts and then sell them on the black market. Yigael Yadin once implied that Moshe Dayan fell into that category.”

Yigael Yadin was a former soldier who went on to become one of Israel’s leading archaeologists. Moshe Dayan, was the legendary former soldier and Defence Minister, who was an amateur archaeologist whom Yadin implied was also a private collector with a less than ethical approach.

“But why does all this bother you so much?” asked Daniel. “To the point of killing people who have done you know harm.”

“You have done us immense hard, Professor Klein. Even if you don’t realize it.”

“But how?”

“You know about the Dead Sea Scrolls — dozens of ancient manuscripts found in the caves of Qumran over the course of a decade, starting in 1946 when an Arab shepherd boy made the initial find?”

It was more of a rhetorical question really. Of course Daniel knew about the finds of nearly a thousand ancient scrolls from the first century, some books of the Bible, some part of the post-Biblical record of the Second Temple period and some a contemporary record of the life and times of the people who kept them.

Daniel nodded.

“Well in addition to the known finds, Professor Klein, there were also some finds that were… shall we say… removed from the scene and sold privately. Does that surprise you?”

“I know that there have been cases of theft of archaeological finds Israel. So I suppose the answer is no, it doesn’t surprise me.”

“Well would it surprise you then to know that one of those documents was some surviving parts of Josephus’s original Aramaic manuscript of the Wars of the Jews?”

Now that did surprise Daniel. And from the look on Ted’s face it left him surprised too. In fact it left them both feeling like they’d been kicked in the ribs.

Chapter 84

Sarit just missed the cable car and had to wait for the next one to arrive a minute or so later. She wanted to get in but the operator tried to stop her, saying that it wouldn’t be leaving for a few minutes. But Sarit had no intention of waiting. She flashed her badge and ordered the operator to take her up right away. The cable car arrived and not a minute too soon. Sarit got in first and waited while the others filed in. The operator complied and let her in.

As he closed the door, he noticed a man running towards it, from the ticket office. He looked at Sarit as if to ask whether he should wait for the man. But the implacable look on Sarit’s face made it clear that she wasn’t in the mood for waiting.

As the cable car rose into the air, she turned and saw the man who had caught the operator’s intention.

Well saw was perhaps not the right word. For as Sarit turned towards the man, he for his part turned away.

Chapter 85

“It was sold to us by a corrupt Jordanian official — for a large sum of money, I might add. We spent many months studying it. We knew that it was the work of a Jewish traitor, but we wanted to know how much truth — or how little — there was in it.”

“And?”

“What it told us was a horror story. It was not just Boudicca’s daughter who came here from Britain, but a whole host of her people. Maybe not a vast army, but certainly more than just a small party. She came with a large entourage of handmaids and ladies in waiting. There were some men to — or at least boys who soon grew into men, cutting their teeth in a guerrilla war in Rome, culminating in the Great Fire of 1964. They weren’t just a small band of followers. Many of the women were the widows of the warrior leaders of the uprising of the Icheni.”

“You knew that they were called Icheni?” Ted intervened.

“Oh yes! And we also realized that it had been misread when translated. Josephus’s handwriting had a peculiarity that caused him to almost completely close off the Kaf, making it look like a Samech. He didn’t just do it once; he did throughout the manuscript, or at least the portions that we found. Thus the myth of the Essenes was born. Until then, the stories about the Essaoi by Philo and Pliny — written and pronounced differently — had been legends about ascetics. Josephus’s Icheni became confused and conflated with them.”

“But there were some ascetics amongst the Judeans,” said Daniel. “Josephus even travelled around Judea in the company of one for about three years.”

“Yes, that is true. There were such people amongst the Judeans, but they were few and far between. However with Josephus’s manuscript being misread by the Greek translator and apparently referring to the Esseni, the floodgates to a new myth were opened.”

Ted was confused by this line of reasoning.

“But why would a few misunderstood references to a relatively small number of refugees from Roman Britain, give rise to such a powerful and sweeping legend?”

“To understand that, you must understand what really happened. The vanquished peoples of Britain didn’t just come here and keep themselves to themselves. They intermarried with some of the Jewish rebels, following the depraved corrupt example of Simon Bar Giora. And this was the cause of the great division among our people that set brother against brother!”

“How so?” asked Ted, still far from convinced.”

“Although our religion permits conversion and receives sincere converts, it must be based on true belief, not just a desire for marriage, And it must be done in a proper way, according to Halacha — Jewish law.”

“And these conversions didn’t?”

“In some cases, there were no conversions. Just impure marriages. But others were against it, even at the time.”

“That’s why they kidnapped his wife,” said Ted. “That’s why the Jerusalem rebels didn’t want to elevate him as a leader of the rebellion — because he was married to a stranger.”

“Exactly,” said HaTzadik. “Just as his followers were married to others in her entourage. They were deemed to be a poison in our system, a leprosy in the camp, a cancer in our midst. And the other rebels wanted to destroy them, to render our people pure again. But Bar Giora used the violent methods that he had learned from a woman — who had learned them in turn from her mother — to force the righteous among us to release the vile woman and her entourage unharmed. And it didn’t end there.”

“What do you mean?” asked Daniel, sensing from HaTzadik’s tone that something terrible and new was coming.

“As I said, many of the entourage married and intermingled. But a DNA study in 2006 showed that forty percent of Ashkenazi Jews are descended from just four women dating back to the first century of the Common Era — four women with a genotype that is more common in Europe than the Middle East. Based on Josephus’s manuscript, we believe that we know the names of those four women. Boudicca’s daughter and three other women in her entourage.”

“But that’s an incredible finding!” Ted blurted out, not quite realizing how Shalom Tikva’s mind was working. “That’s a major discovery that sheds new light on your people.

“Incredible and major to you, but horrendous to us!”

“But why?”

“I would not expect a goy to understand! Our religion is based on the premise of matrilineal transmission or orthodox conversion according to Halacha. We cannot let it be known that forty percent of Ashkenazi Jews are the descendents of non-Jewish women.”

Now it was Daniel’s turn for confusion. He could understand the historic concern with ethnicity in the religion. But why would matter today? The wife of Moses was a convert. Ruth — the grandmother of King David — was a convert. Why should this matter in the modern era?

“But that DNA study has already been published. You can hardly conceal it now.”

“The DNA study says nothing about the identities of those women… or their religion or ethnicity. Or whether or not they converted according to Halacha.”

“Then what’s your problem?”

“The problem is the manuscripts that reveal the origins of those women.”

“Manuscripts? In the plural?”

“The one that gives it away most clearly is the original Aramaic manuscript of Josephus’s Jewish War.”

“But you’ve got that!” said Daniel. “And how come none of that material appeared in the Greek version. I mean the name Esseni appears, but nothing about their origins in Britannia.”

“Presumably, it was redacted,” said HaTzadik.

“By Josephus?”

“Hardly. If it was his own translation, he wouldn’t have made the error of calling them the Esseni. The Greco-Roman translators probably had no vested interest in proclaiming the power of the vanquished tribes of Britain or for that matter the power of women — something that was even more anathema to their way of thinking than it is to ours.”

“So if you’ve got the manuscript, what’s the problem?”

Shalom Tikva’s face took on an ugly appearance.

“The problem — my brother Daniel — is the Domus Aurea and Temple Mount manuscripts.”

“You know about what’s in them?”

“We read about them when they were found. We obviously didn’t know their exact contents, but we had some idea based upon their obvious provenance as Hebrew text in an unrecognized language. And we knew that it would only be a matter of time before they were translated.”

“Then you know there’s nothing you can do to stop it. The truth is out there.”

“Yes it is. But there’s a limit to how much credibility can be placed on it. The real killer — if you’ll excuse the pun — was a ketuba between Lanosea and Bar Giora. But we’ve got that.”

“Your man Sam Morgan,” said Daniel, bitterly.

“That’s right. And now the last piece of the puzzle is that treasure. You see that’s the key to the whole thing. That treasure can prove a link between the manuscripts and Masada… and can effectively authenticate them. So now I must ask you to put the jewels back in the bag and hand it over.”

And just to make it clear how determined he was, he waved the grenade slightly, just enough to remind them that he had it and was ready to use it. Daniel began putting the jewellery back into the jute bag, slowly.

“Hurry up!” snarled HaTzadik angrily.

Ted knelt down to help Daniel. Then Daniel rose to a stooping posture and took a few steps towards HaTzadik, noticing as he drew closer that the pin was still embedded firmly in the grenade. Realizing that he had an opportunity, Daniel practically thrust the bag into HaTzadik’s free hand, knowing that this would momentarily deprive his adversary of the opportunity to pull the pin. In that same split-second he reached over and pressed on Shalom Tikva’s thumb, in an effort to force him to drop the hand grenade. But the manoeuvre failed as HaTzadik jerked his hand back, pulled the pin with the other hand that held the bag and then tossed the grenade behind Daniel.

Daniel spun round to see the grenade land somewhere on the ground. But in this darkened chamber it was hard to tell where. When HaTzadik pulled the bag out, light entered the chamber from outside. Ted shone his torch on the ground to add to the light and help them locate the grenade. But they both knew that with a four second fuse, the chances of survival were slim.

Then the light of Ted’s torch caught the grenade and in an instant, Daniel dived onto the ground, scooped it up, threw it out through the opening and hit the deck. Almost in time with his forearms hitting the ground, there was a massive explosion. In that same split-second, a pile of dirt and an avalanche of rubble rained down upon them.

Chapter 86

The cable car had arrived and Sarit was already walking briskly on the wooden walkway when she heard the explosion. At that point the brisk walk broke into a run. Within seconds she was through the archway at the entrance and onto the plateau.

She arrived to see people swarming around an area ahead of her and a little to the right. Some looking concerned, others crouching down. A couple of men in dark green uniforms — border guardsmen — were telling people to stand back. As she raced up to the scene, she heard a man who was crouching down saying “I’m a doctor.” The border guardsmen left him alone, but ushered the others back.

She arrived to see the self-styled doctor trying to revive a man in the black religious garb common amongst the ultra-orthodox. One of the border guardsman tried to interpose his arm and push her back. She pulled out her ID and flashed it at him. He backed off without another word.

The man on the ground was a small man and Sarit knew immediately who he was: Shalom Tikva. She felt like telling the doctor not to waste his efforts. But she had more important concerns right now. Where was Baruch Tikva? And where were Daniel and Ted? She turned to the border guardsmen.

“What happened?”

“There was an explosion. That’s all we know.”

The other guardsman had a theory.

“Probably a grenade.”

Sarit needed to know more.

“Concussion or fragmentation?”

The border guardsman shook his head. He was whistling in the dark.

The doctor leaned back from Shalom Tikva, also shaking his head. He answered Sarit’s question.

“Concussion.”

Sarit realized that he was probably a military doctor, or at least had experience of treating military casualties. But if it was a concussion grenade, who had thrown it? Neither Daniel nor Ted were likely to have had such an item in their possession, still less to have used one.

Then she surveyed the immediate environment and had a thought.

“What’s that?”

She was pointing to the large ditch. A member of staff looked where she was pointing and then at Sarit.

“It’s the sewage cistern. We’ve been doing some maintenance work on it.”

“Is there supposed to be an opening there?”

“Of course. It was accessible, but entry was prohibited.”

In that instant, Sarit realized exactly what had happened. The only thing she didn’t know was if they were still alive. Without explaining her actions, she leapt into the ditch and started clawing away at the rubble, tossing it aside in handfuls and attacking it with the ferocity of a mother trying to save her baby.

Some one made the mistake of trying to stop her. She back-elbowed them.

“There are people trapped in there!”

Some one asked “how do you know?”

“Just trust me, I do!”

Seeing the determination in her eyes, first the border guardsman and then some of the members of the public, clambered into the ditch and started digging away at the earth and rubble, bare-handed.

Chapter 87

“Daniel… Daniel are you okay?”

Somewhere in the haze of his semi-consciousness, Daniel recognized Ted’s voice. It was that same eerie feeling of the calm after the storm that he had after the explosion in the cafe that had nearly killed Leah Yakarin… the same feeling of pain, discomfort and not quite being there that he had when he woke up in that hospital room after the fire in the house in Ashwell.

Only, this time, when he opened his eyes, it was dark.

“I can’t see!” he yelped, in a state of panic.

“I lost the flashlight.”

Ted’s tone was reassuring.

So I’m not blind at least.

It was still a hope. Until he saw light he couldn’t be sure. He sat up and felt room to manoeuvre around him. They weren’t buried alive. But in the absence of light, and assuming Ted was telling the truth, they were trapped. He had to be sure. He had to know if there was anyone out there to help them.

“Hallo!”

Ted joined him in calling out.

There was an echo as their voice travelled down the cistern into the open. That was reassuring. They could probably get out if they went down rather than up. But it was a long way and they couldn’t see. There might be a sheer drop along the way, or at least a steep one. And without light they would have no way of knowing.

Of course if there was an opening at the bottom, there ought to be light. But if it was around several bends, then it might be very feint. As Daniel’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, he began to see. There was a small amount of light. He remembered reading somewhere that normally ones eyes are adjusted to the dim light when one first wakes up. That’s why people who have just been awoken cannot stand bright light. But maybe that only applied to a long period of sleep.

Determined not to stay here and wait for the cavalry, he started tearing at the rubble and throwing it behind him.

“We need to get out of here!”

Ted joined him, throwing all of his effort into the endeavour.

Suddenly, at a point above where they were clawing and digging, a speck of light appeared. Some one was outside… some one was trying to help them. Daniel called out

“Hallo!”

“Daniel? Daniel is that you?”

He recognized the voice… a woman’s voice.

“Sarit?”

“Yes it’s me. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Is Ted with you?”

“Yes, he’s okay too.”

The hand-digging became more intense now that it had borne fruit. The fact that they were alive and easily accessible meant that it was worth making that little bit of extra effort to get them out. In little more than five minutes they were free, shaken and dazed but still in good nick, as Ted described it.

“Where’s HaTzadik?” asked Daniel, as Sarit crushed the life out of him with a bear hug.

She disengaged and pointed just outside of the ditch. Daniel saw the fallen man, but no treasure bag.

“Dead.”

Sarit already knew the answer. But she looked over to the doctor, for confirmation. He nodded. But Daniel had to know more.

“What about his son?”

“Was he here?”

“I didn’t see him. But I’m sure he was here.”

He was about to explain about the treasure bag, when a woman’s voice wailed out from a distance.

“Please! Some one help us!”

They looked around to see a couple near the entrance archway looking frantic and desperately trying to get the attention of thee crowd that had gathered round the ditch. It was the woman who had called out. The man seemed to be trying to look in two directions at once — at the crowd and at the entrance.

“What is it?”

“He had a gun! He grabbed our son!”

The border guardsman started racing towards the couple.

“Was it an Arab?”

“No, a doss.”

Doss was a word for ultra-orthodox Ashkenazi Jews. It had acquired mildly derogatory connotations, but like so many other pejorative epithets, the intention depended on the tone.

Daniel and Sarit ran over, with Ted only a fraction of a second behind them. Sarit took the initiative.

“Which way did they go?”

“To the cable car… I think.”

The mother was going to say more, but the sound of a gunshot in the distance struck terror into her. She screamed.

But there was no time to comfort her. Sarit took off first, with Daniel second. Ted was going to follow, but one of the border police stopped him. They had seen Sarit’s ID and that she clearly knew the man who had gone off after her. But they weren’t sure about this man, even though he too had been trapped in the rubble.

Unable to pass Sarit on the narrow wooden walkway Daniel arrived at the cable car just behind her. The cable car operator was lying there bleeding from the torso. He was clutching the wound, but was clearly in pain. Sarit half turned.

“Call the doctor!”

Then she went to work on the cable car mechanism, trying to figure it out. Daniel saw one of the border guardsman on the walkway. Switching to Hebrew, to make himself understood, Daniel called out to him.

“Send the doctor quickly! The cable car operator’s been shot.”

By the time the words were out of his mouth, he heard a whirring sound and looked round to see that the cable car had come to a halt halfway down. Sarit stood up to see a look of concern on Daniel’s face.

“He might harm the child.”

“He’ll try to bargain first. They always do.”

Daniel looked down at the wounded man and started taking off his belt. But it was Sarit whom he addressed.

“Can you do first aid?”

“I’m trained. But the doctor’s coming.”

“Try and stop the bleeding.”

“You can’t put a tourniquet on the torso…”

But Sarit realized that she had misunderstood Daniel’s meaning. He stood up on a metal railing, threw the thick belt over the cables and leapt, sliding down the cables, holding onto both ends of the belt for dear life.

Chapter 88

After watching Daniel land on the top of the cable car, Sarit crouched down and applied pressure to try and stem the bleeding. She was still concerned with Daniel’s safety, but she knew that he could take care of himself. And this man who lay before her on the ground was dying. However, she knew that he needed proper medical help and she stepped back the second the doctor arrived.

While the doctor went to work on the cable car operator, Sarit looked down to see Daniel standing on the roof of the cable car. He was opening one of the trap doors in the roof of the cabin and then trying to clamber down.

Suddenly Baruch Tikva reached up and tried to grab Daniel’s legs. He had the size and strength. But Daniel had the speed and agility to keep one foot free. As Bar Tikva made a second attempt to pull him down and make him land badly, Daniel kicked him away with his free foot.

In response, Bar Tikva dragged the boy — who was aged no more than six — to the side door, forced the side door open manually and threatened to throw him out. The boy screamed in terror at what the big man was threatening. He looked to Daniel with appealing eyes, as if begging Daniel to save him.

But Daniel was now driven to anger by the memory of what Bar Tikva had done already. He had targeted Daniel’s nieces and now he was threatening another innocent child, this one selected purely at random. Realizing that Bar Tikva was probably bluffing, but unwilling to provoke him with a direct challenge, Daniel resorted to psychology.

He grabbed the treasure bag that Bar Tikva had left unattended when he tried to grab Daniel’s legs and smiled at Bar Tikva.

“That boy is worth nothing to me. But this is worth plenty to you. If I have it, I can use to validate the manuscripts and expose the truths that you wish to conceal.”

Bar Tikva looked angry. Then Daniel held out an olive branch.

“Let’s trade.”

Bar Tikva contemplated for a moment and then smiled.

“Okay.”

Bar Tikva dragged the boy over to the middle of the cabin, leaving the door, which now remained open. Daniel met him there and handed over the bag in such a way that Bar Tikva was forced to let go of the boy in order to take possession of the treasure bag. As soon as this was accomplished, Daniel lifted the boy and deposited him in a far corner.

Then Daniel turned his attention back to Bar Tikva. In a fraction of a second, Bar-Tikva was on to him, pinning him against the side of the cable car, his powerful hands around Daniel’s throat. But Daniel knew how do deal with this. Putting his hands together in front of him he swept up and outward, breaking Bar Tikva’s stranglehold. He followed up by grabbing the back of Bar Tikva’s head and pulling it forward, whilst lowering his own head and leaning forward to deliver a powerful head butt.

Bar Tikva emitted a grunt and fell back. But he still wasn’t down for the count. Clutching his nose, he lurched at Daniel yet again. Only this time he didn’t try to pin him down in a grappling hold. Instead he swung wildly at him with clenched fists. There was no particular skill to the blows, and Daniel was able to block or parry them, protecting his head and his torso.

But the sheer strength and intensity of the blows raining down on his forearms was painful and relentless, making it hard for him to rally his reserves and deliver any sort of counter attack.

With the doctor now trying desperately to save the life of the wounded cable car operator, Sarit decided that she had to make helping Daniel her main priority. Her first action was to scoop up the walkie-talkie that the cable car operator had dropped when he was shot. Her intention was to tell the operator of the other cable car to bring this one down and let Bar Tikva get away as long as didn’t take the boy. They had other armed guards down there and if it came to a stand off, then they could grant Bar Tikva safe passage but minus the child.

Her reasoning was that it was better that Bar Tikva escape than that anyone else be killed. But she quickly realized that this approach was impractical. Bar Tikva would demand the child, until he got clear. His organization had already shown how ruthless they could be. And Bar Tikva was no less ruthless than the organization that he served.

He had to be stopped. And Daniel needed help. But how?

Suddenly another plan of action flashed into her mind. She turned to Ted.

“Quick! Give me your belt!”

“What?”

Ted was confused.

“Your belt! I needed it now!”

Ted whipped off the belt and handed it to her.”

“I hope it’ll support your weight.”

They both knew what she was planning. But Ted’s belt was narrower than Daniel’s. On the other hand, Sarit was much lighter than Daniel, so that might just even the odds. As Daniel had done a moment ago, she threw the buckled end of the belt over the cables, grabbed it when it came over on the other side and took the same leap of faith into the void and slid down the cables, ignoring the abyss below.

Landing on the roof of the cable car, she saw that the trap door on the roof of the cabin was still open, so she lowered herself in feet first and dropped to the ground. So involved were Daniel and Bar Tikva in their fight, that they didn’t notice her. Only the little boy did. through his tears. She went over to him and gave him a hug and whispered in his ear.

“Don’t worry. I’ll stop the bad man.”

Then she spun round and delivered a vicious kick to the back of Bar Tikva’s head. But because of his rapid flurry of punches delivered to Daniel, his position changed just as it connected and it thus had less than the intended lethal effect.

It did however momentarily stun the big man, forcing a temporary abatement to his action. He spun round and was indignant to see that it was a woman who had struck him and that the little boy was smiling at what he had just witnessed, even through his tears. Fuming with rage Bar Tikva half turned to face her. Daniel grabbed the treasure bag and swung it at the big man. But Bar Tikva merely grabbed the bag with both hands and wrenched it away from Daniel, who had to release it in order to keep his balance.

At that point, Sarit got another idea. Smiling at Bar Tikva and almost taunting with her face and a wiggle of her hips, she positioned herself between him and the open door. Putting on an exaggerated form of her Irish accent, she smiled again and said: “Beaten by a woman eh? And a Shiksa at that? I guess that spells the end of the Jewish people.”

She knew from the look on his face that she had pressed the right button. Here was a man who was obsessed not only with the primacy of his father’s interpretation of the Bible and the sanctity of the Talmud but also the ethnic purity of the membership of the religion. But she wondered now, in this final split-second, if she had the speed and the agility to pull it off. Yes or no, however, it was too late to go back now. Incandescent with rage, he charged at her, still holding the treasure bag. Just as he was almost upon her, she twisted her hips and dropped to the ground sideways, planting her legs in front of his path.

But he avoided her by the adept expedient of taking a long stride and leaping over her. Then to avoid going through the open door, he rolled into a ball and landed in the corner of the cable car. They came to their feet simultaneously, but now — with the element of surprise lost — it was bar Tikva who had the advantage. He hooked an arm round Sarit and got her in a head lock, dragging her to the open side door. But Daniel — whose senses were still reeling from the avalanche of Bar Tikva’s blows, was not going to let the big man succeed.

He launched himself at Bar Tikva and delivered his own flurry of blows to the head, like a boxer working out with a punch bag. Bar Tikva released his grip in pain stepped back, intending to rally his reserves and come back at Daniel. But Daniel never gave him the chance. He lowered his head, lurched at Bar Tikva and with an almighty body charge sent the big man sailing out of the cabin and into the abyss, dropping the treasure bag in midair as he fell.

However, by giving it his all, the forward momentum proved too much and he found himself hanging out of the cabin head first, with only Sarit on his legs, preventing him from falling. Somehow he managed to find the upper body strength to raise his torso, reach back and grab on to one of the doors with his fingers. He felt as if the digits would snap as he applied pressure and slowly pulled himself back into the cabin.

Chapter 89

Sarit was cradling the little boy in her arms when they returned to the top of the plateau. She had used the walkie-talkie to get the cable car operator at the base station to send them back up to the top. Returning the child to the parents was the first priority. But as she looked over at the doctor, she realized that the news about the man who had been shot was not good.

More soldiers and border guardsman were arriving at the base and Sarit had notified Dovi Shamir, who was now liaising with SHaBaK. The arriving cable car brought border guardsman and some ambulance crews to deal with the formalities at the top, although both Shalom Tikva and the cable car operator would almost certainly be pronounced dead at the scene.

The people on the plateau were told they would have to wait until the bodies were removed before they would be allowed to leave. This was deemed preferable to having them effectively walk past the body by the cable car. But some of the ambulance staff checked over the older people of the plateau to make sure they were all right and more help and first aid would be waiting when they went down to the tourist centre below.

In the meantime, their details were being taken as they may be needed to give witness statements as this was now a criminal investigation. Sarit was allowed to go down already because of her Mossad ID and she was able to take Daniel and Ted with her, on her guarantee.

When they got to the bottom, they were allowed to go, unimpeded, to the place where Bar Tikva had fallen, although not to approach the body, which was being examined in situ by a pathologist from the coroner’s office. Instead, they looked around for the treasure bag, which he had been holding in his hands when he sailed out of the doorway of the cable car. But, interestingly, it was nowhere to be found.

They started looking round, widening their search in ever increasing circles, but to no avail.

“Where the devil could it be?” asked Daniel, frustrated by this turn of events. Ted looked at him chidingly, putting him on the defensive. “Look I don’t care about the treasure per se, Ted. It wasn’t ours anyway. But the inscription… the fact that the treasure was here.”

“We can still back up our case with the parchments and the translations.”

Daniel knew that Ted was right. Even though the ketuba was lost forever and preserved only as a digital image, without the original parchment — and even without Boudicca’s treasure — they still had the Temple Mount Parchment and the Domus Aurea Parchment. The Vatican would cooperate with them on that. It wasn’t some deep, dark secret that threatened the Roman Catholic faith. And contra to HaTzadik’s paranoid fears, it didn’t threaten the Jewish religion either. Rather, it would add to the sum of human knowledge and spread further light on the history of Judeo-Christian monotheism throughout the west.

Yet it was frustrating. The ketuba and the Boudicca treasure would have completed the picture. But instead, they had been thwarted by the skulduggery of Bar Tikva.

Sensing his mood, Sarit approached Daniel and put a comforting hand on him.

“It isn’t necessarily lost for good. When we do a proper search with metal detectors and gravitometers, it’ll probably show up under a few inches of wind-swept sand. It fell from quite a height don’t forget. It could easily have got embedded below the surface.”

Daniel smiled weakly. He would have preferred to search the area personally until he found the treasure. But that wouldn’t be very practical. Within a short time, a helicopter had landed and Dovi Shamir had turned up at the scene. He gathered Sarit, Daniel and Ted around him and told him that they had to go with him to a secret location to make their formal statements.

Chapter 90

“The El Al desk is over there,” said Daniel, pointing.

“You didn’t really have to accompany me,” Ted replied. “Not if you have to stay here.”

“I didn’t really have to stay here at all. I go back to England now and then fly back in a week. But I could do with a rest after all this excitement. My nephew’s swearing in is in a week’s time and I could use the break to catch my breath. I’m thinking of spending the whole week by the Dead Sea.”

“I’d’ve thought you’d be sick of that place.”

“Oh not Masada. I was thinking more of a hotel in Ein Bokek. Floating in the salty water or doing the mud treatment.”

“Enjoy it,” Ted replied with a smile.

“It’s either that or Eilat. I’ll see what Julia’s doing. She’s also staying on for another week. So I thought we might make a family occasion of it. And my brother-in-law Nat is flying in today. In fact after I’ve seen you safely through, I’ll probably go to arrivals and meet him.”

“When does he land?”

Daniel looked at his watch.

“He’s already landed. But with border control and baggage, I reckon he’ll be airside for the next hour at least.”

“Are you two travelling together,” said a pretty woman from flight security.

This was the pre-check-in security check that they use as the first line of defence against terrorists.

“Oh er no,” said Daniel. “I’m not flying today. My friend here is. I’m just here to see him off safely.”

The pretty girl smiled and went through the routine security questions. They sounded banal and some people wondered why asking these questions would catch a real terrorist who was planning something. But these staff were highly trained and they knew exactly what to look out for. They even asked a few questions about Daniel and he answered himself, explaining his own family residential connections to Israel as well as his academic vocation.

A minute later, Ted was putting his suitcase on the X-ray scanner and three minutes later he was checking in at the desk for pre-booked checkins. They went through to the section where the groundside fast food and shops were located. Daniel, who knew Ben-Gurion Airport’s Terminal 3 quite well, was acting as a guide.

“You can get some fast food over there, but it’s not exactly cordon bleu.”

“Fast food never is.”

“Believe me this is worse than fast-food in England. The steak houses here are great, but when they take out franchises with the Big Three, they get it wrong. There’s better food airside.”

“Okay, well I guess this is goodbye for now, or what is it you say in Hebrew?”

“Lehitra’ot.”

“Lehitra’ot. I’ll see you back in England. We have a paper to work on.”

They shook hands and Ted went off through the second security check, the one that would involve metal detectors and ex-ray inspection of hand baggage.

Daniel was quite looking forward to working with Ted on the paper. In the meantime, he walked back, intending to go upstairs to arrivals where he expected to have to wait an hour for his brother-in-law.

However, as he emerged back into the checkin area, he noticed a man who looked terribly familiar walking into the men’s toilet, carrying a rucksack.

It can’t be!

And yet he had just seen it with his own eyes. If he hadn’t, he would never have believed it, But there was no mistaking what he saw. He strode briskly towards the toilet that the man had entered, but by the time he got there, there was no sign of the man. Then he realized why. The man had gone in to a cubicle. So Daniel waited calmly until the man emerged and then he stepped into his path.

Daniel didn’t know this, but the man whom he was confronting had been calling himself Sam Morgan when he had his dealings with Shalom Tikva and Shomrei Ha’ir. But that wasn’t his real name. And that wasn’t the name by which Daniel addressed him now.

“Hallo Costa.”

Chapter 91

Martin Costa’s jaw dropped.

“Da… Da… Daniel! What a pleasant surprise.”

He was trying to sound chummy — and he even forced his lips into a false smile to go with it. But the tone of Daniel’s reply was hostile.

“What are you doing here?”

The false smile vanished from Costa’s face.

“What? Oh er I’m here on holiday. Just doing a spot of sightseeing.”

“Pull the other one Costa; it’s got bell’s on.”

“Okay, well. I suppose you know now I’m not dead.”

“I know a lot more than that. If you’re not dead, then you set it up. Set it up to make it look like you were dead. Set it up to make it look like I killed you. Or even set it up to kill me too.”

“Oh no Daniel I’d never do that.”

“The hell you wouldn’t! I barely made it out of that place alive!”

“Oh come, come Daniel. I’m sure you’re exaggerating. A fit, healthy man like you.”

It sounded patronizing. But Daniel would have been angry however Costa had put it.

“I lost consciousness in the smoke! I just about managed to stagger out of there. I could’ve been killed!”

The anger in Daniel’s eyes was reflected by the fear in Costa’s.

“Well I can assure you that wasn’t my intention.”

“And I suppose you didn’t kill that other guy.”

“Well no er… I mean actually I er did kill him. But it was self-defence.”

“Self defence. The guy was out cold! What did you have to burn him to death for.”

“I didn’t burn him to death Daniel, I swear! He was already dead!”

“Then why the fire? If you weren’t trying to kill me?”

“I was trying to conceal the time of death. And the circumstances. I needed a smokescreen — if you’ll excuse the pun.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The idea was that they’d think I was dead. That would give me room to go about my… er… business.”

“Who was he?”

“Just some old meths-swilling tramp.”

“That didn’t give you the right to kill him.”

“I already told you, it was self-defence. And anyway, he’d’ve been dead within three months with his lifestyle.”

“What do you mean self-defence? How? When? Where?”

“In the office shed… at the dig site… at Arbury Banks. He was probably just looking for a place to use as a sleeping shelter. But he burst in when I was looking at the parchment and studying it. But when the door flew open, my instinct was to roll it up and try to hold on to it. He must have sensed that it was something worth getting his hands on. Anyway, he made a grab for it and when I pulled it out of his reach, he made a grab for me.”

“And?”

“Well at that point I panicked. I picked up a paperweight from the desk and smashed it over his head. He must have already been weak from all the drinking and meths and all that ‘cause he died. And then I… I guess I panicked a second time ‘cause I decide to move the body and make it look like he died in a fire. I knew about the old uninhabited house on the way there, ‘cause I’d passed it. So I decided to use it.”

“You mean you decided to use me! You invited me to meet you because by then you’d already decided what you were going to do. You didn’t invite me to the house until you were sure you could transport the body there undetected, so you told me to meet you at the pub instead. But then you took the body to the house and then when I came back to England, you phoned me at the pub and sent me to the house, intending to kill me there.”

“Not to kill you.”

Daniel stared at him long and hard. It was true. Martin Costa didn’t have the heart of a killer.

“Okay, maybe you did hope I would make it out of there alive. But you did try to frame me.”

“It wasn’t that, it’s just that you were a natural suspect. That was just the police, jumping to conclusions.”

“And who made that anonymous phone call telling them they’d seen me siphoning off petrol from the tank of the car I’d hired?”

A guilty smile crept on to Martin Costa’s face.

“Okay… maybe I did try to set you up. But only to negate the threat. I mean I needed some one to take the rap and I needed to make it look like I was dead. You know how hard it is for a man with my reputation. I figured that if I could establish myself as dead I could set up shop elsewhere. You know, like Sherlock Holmes pretended to be dead for three years, concealing his true fate even from his friend Doctor Watson.”

“I don’t think that analogy works too well Costa. Moriarty might be a better comparison.”

Costa smiled.

“You flatter me.”

“Right now I’m more inclined to flatten you.”

“Oh very good! Achilles and the Turtle!”

But Daniel was in no mood for humour.

“You were calling yourself Sam Morgan weren’t you?”

The look on Costa’s face changed to one of fear.

“How the hell did you know that?”

“Let’s just say that you haven’t been quite as clever as you thought. People have been watching you.”

“Wha — what people?”

“The kind of people who don’t like what Shomrei Ha’ir have been doing… or what you’ve been helping them with.”

Costa’s voice took on a tone of denial.

“I was never part of them! We merely had certain mutual interests.”

“Membership is hardly the issue! You were helping their cause.”

“Not their cause Daniel. My own.”

“They weren’t that pragmatic. They would never have trusted you if you’d told them your aims were purely venal. Even Chienmer Lefou had common cause with them.”

“I don’t know anything about that. I told them that I supported their cause. But it was just a ruse to get them to trust me. I only did it so I could get close to them. I mean they paid me for the parchment. But I had to carry on playing along with them. I knew that the treasure would turn up sooner or later. You see they knew about the connection between Boudicca’s daughter and Bar Giora.”

“I know. They had the original Josephus manuscript — the Aramaic original.”

“Well there you are then. And I’d researched it and suspected the connection after I read about tartan fabrics from Judea.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Just something I read. Remember Joseph’s coat of many colours? How the literally translation means a ‘coat of stripes’.”

“I know,” said Daniel. “And some people think that means tartan.”

“Well tartan fabrics were traded all over the Roman empire — just like other things. That’s how tartan got to England. But some of them in Britain were identified as coming from plant fabric grown in Judea in the second half of the first century. That’s how I became interested.”

“And you put it together from that?”

“I wouldn’t say I put it together. But I suspected the link. And I always wondered about what happened to Boudicca’s treasure.”

Daniel scowled at this odious, venal man.

“And of course treasure is all you care about.”

“Is there anything wrong with that? You’ve got what you wanted. Why shouldn’t I get what I want?”

He lifted up his rucksack to indicate what he was talking about.

“Because it’s too late for that Costa.”

“Too late? Why? You’ve got the two manuscripts — or at least access to them.”

“I’ve got the translation of the ketuba too — and the map.”

“The map?”

“It doesn’t matter Costa. What matters for you is that the game is up.”

“All right… look… I’ll give you the treasure. You can have it all Daniel. Everything. Do what you like with it. Keep it for yourself. Or give it to charity. Whatever you like. Just let me go. Let’s forget this ever happened. The bad guys are dead. You can have Boudicca’s treasure and the prestige or rewriting the history books. Just let me walk away and we can wipe the slate clean.”

“I can’t do that Costa. You see too much water has flowed under the bridge. Too many people have died. Too many people have suffered.”

“But that wasn’t me Daniel,” said Costa, picking up the rucksack and holding it close to himself, like a cherished lover. “That was Bar Tikva and his father.”

“But you were part of it!”

“But only a small part. I’m not really responsible, Daniel.”

“We’re all responsible for our actions, Costa — and for the consequences. And now you’re going to have to answer for yours.”

Daniel realized afterwards that he should have been more careful. He should have seen the look in Martin Costa’s eyes. But he didn’t catch it — at least not in time to brace himself for what came next. For in that split second, Costa swung the rucksack at his head. He managed to put up an arm to block it. But the weight of the rucksack — packed with gold and silver — was sufficient to send Daniel flying.

And as Daniel fell, Costa took off for the exit, before Daniel had even hit the ground!

But he didn’t get far. For when he turned the corner and reached the entrance, he slammed into the rock hard chest of a tall, muscular man who towered over him by almost a head and who looked down on him with a face of implacable anger. And before Costa could say another word, the left fist of the man shot out and delivered a crushing punch that broke Costa’s nose and sent him reeling onto his back, the stars dancing before his eyes.

“That’s for my daughters!” said Nathaniel Sasson.

Epilogue

“You want a date?”

Daniel turned round to see a pretty young woman standing there holding a large serving platter. She was not asking Daniel if he wanted to go out with her but rather offering him a dried date to eat. He picked one on a skewer and chewed it slowly, savouring it and thinking about its enigmatic significance.

Daniel was back on the plateau of Masada a week later, along with several hundred other people. The event that had brought them all there was the swearing in of an Israel army unit. One of Daniel’s other sisters — Naomi — had two sons in the Israel Defence Forces, and her younger son was about to be sworn in to his unit along with another hundred and twenty young men who had just completed their basic training.

The practice of swearing in at Masada had fallen into disuse but was now being revived and Daniel’s nephew was to be one of the first in this newly revived tradition.

The reason that the date was of such significance was on account of its provenance. During the excavations at Masada between 1963 and 1965 a small cache of ungerminated seeds were found in a jar by Hebrew University archaeologist Ehud Netzer. They were suspected of being 2000 years old. However this could only be tested, by radiocarbon dating, and this was a destructive test that would make it impossible to germinate them thereafter. But the prospects of germinating such old seeds was anything from low to non-existent and it was deemed to be sufficiently important to find out the age of the seeds, for the historical value of the information.

So two of the seeds sent to the University of Zurich where they were carbon dated to between 155 BCE and 64 CE. The remainder of the seeds were given to botanical archaeologist Mordechai Kislev at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv who kept in storage for some forty years. Then, in November 2004, Sarah Sallon, director of the Hadassah Medical Organization’s Louis L. Borick Natural Medicine Research Center in Jerusalem asked Kislev if she could have a few to pass on to desert agriculture expert Elaine Solowey, the director of the NMRC cultivation site at Kibbutz Ketura in the Aravah desert.

Solowey was quite surprised at the request, as germinating 2000 year old seeds was something that had never been done before and calling it a “tall order” would have been an understatement. However, she rose to the challenge, and conducted extensive research into how such seeds might be germinated. By January 2005 she was ready to apply her research to the challenge and she set to work, first soaking the seeds in hot water to soften them and make them more absorbent to other liquids, then soaking them in a nutrient, following this up by treating them with an enzymatic fertilizer that was made from seaweed.

Solowey then planted the seeds on the 25th of January 2005. She chose that date for symbolic reasons, because it coincided with Tu Bishvat, the Jewish “New Year for Trees” — a harvest festival when Jews celebrated the renewal of fruit growth after the winter. Two months later, one of the seeds sprouted into a date palm and continued to flourish over the next few years. Because of its age, it was named Methuselah, after the Biblical character who reputedly lived till the age of 969. Three years later it had reached a height of four feet and two years after that it stood well over six feet tall.

Unfortunately, date palms can be male and female and although the males can pollinate the females, only the females can bear fruit. Much to the disappointment of all concerned, Methuselah was male and so could not yield fruit. However, three other seeds started to flower, two of them date palms and one of them Myrrh. One of the date palms had recently flowered and proved to be female. It was this second plant that had produced the first dates of the ancient plant that the honoured guests and relatives of the soon to be sworn in soldiers were now eating.

The flowers of the female plant would also be pollinated later with pollen from Methuselah, thus preserving the entire ancient genome.

As he chewed the date slowly and savoured its rich flavour, Daniel pondered its significance: the triumph of a stubborn people over others who thought themselves culturally superior and believed that this gave them an excuse to Lord it over others. He thought about modern Israel and wondered if, to some small extent at least, they had become like their ancient enemies.

But then he recalled the cruelty and tyranny that Israel’s modern enemies were capable of — even towards their own brethren. And he realized also that it was precisely because the Jewish people had modernized — because they had been able to look to the future, without forgetting the past — that they had managed to bridge the gap between history and destiny in a way that few other nations could even understand.

And in that moment, he realized — that warts and all — Israel was a country that it’s people had a right to proud of. As if sensing the thought going through his mind, his sister Naomi — the proud mother of the young soldier — came into his view and walked towards him. They were joined by Simone and Julia, his other siblings, Nat and Barry (Naomi’s husband). Their parents couldn’t be there: they were babysitting for Romy and the twins.

The siblings and in-laws exchanged a few words about the events of the last two weeks. Daniel explained that the Israeli authorities had interceded on his behalf with the British government and the charges against him had been dropped — including any possible charges relating to his escape. Martin I Costa would be extradited to England to stand trial for Arson, Unlawfully Disposing of a Body, Perverting the Course of Justice and quite possibly attempted murder — all charges arising out of the fire at the house in Ashwell. There was even a possibility that Chienmer Lefou would also be prosecuted.

But it was now time for the families and guests to take their places, as the swearing in ceremony was about to begin. First came the marching-in and the speeches. Daniel sat through them tolerantly, but it was not the speeches he had come to hear. He came here to see the flame being lit and his nephew proclaim in proud and defiant tone — in unison with his fellow soldiers — the words that would guide him not just for the next three years, but also for the rest of his life thereafter:

“Masada shall not fall again!”

Content

Adam Palmer
The Boudicca Parchments

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Epilogue