by Jeff Spence
So far so good. The references were to the right time period — first century, the Roman retaliation to Jewish revolt — and even mentioned the kittim, an apparent code word used by some sectarians for the Romans in those days. Since the Romans sacked the Jerusalem Temple, and it was probably treasure from that temple that Ben was trying to find, then at least the chronology lined up. He read on.
From the Temple the wealth of his favour rests in the hands of those with the zeal to guard it in secrecy. From the people of his remnant gold and silver flow. From the wicked, treasure falls like blood into the hands of the righteous. — In caves of earth we hide wisdom, under stones we hide our wealth. The enemy brings his might against it; with his might the enemy defeats himself. With his eyes the wicked seeks the wisdom of the LORD, but with his hands he covers over righteousness and salvation.
He pondered the line "the wealth of his favour" and "his remnant gold and silver flow." These were encouraging. This seemed to be reference to actual gold and silver, actual treasure from the temple itself. Or maybe he was just being hopeful. The next line, also, seemed clearly to speak to the amassing of wealth in the Holy Place…
In a fraction of a second, his skin burst into gooseflesh, adrenaline exploded into his bloodstream, and he nearly cried out as he jolted in his chair, toppling his coffee cup from the table.
"Geez, Ben, ease up on the java!"
It was Marina. She had crept up behind him as he had intently studied his work.
He put his hand on his heart, shook his head and smiled, somewhere between relief and embarrassment. She grabbed his shoulders and shook, gently, smiling and easing the situation as best she could. She had forgotten that he was not the type of person to be more at ease in the midst of danger and chaos than in the humdrum, day-to-day routine of normal life. Poor Ben.
"Must be interesting, professor. What are we looking at?" She peeked over his shoulder at the scribbled lines of text.
"Looking hopeful so far. We're on the right track as far as setting and time period goes — assuming it's not a forgery — but nothing concrete yet, no specific landmarks. Might in the end prove to be another interesting literary fragment from the period, but nothing more.
"That would be a shame. Do you think they'd believe-" She let her words trail off at the look on his face. His pen began to scribble more words on the yellow legal pad in his hand. He scrawled a few words, each above the next, then came to the end of the string and returned to cross out the unlikely contenders. What was left intrigued Marina enough, but to Ben, the unsung expert on the Copper Scroll, it was more than he could have hoped.
On tin we scribed our silver, on copper our gold, on silver the very wisdom of the LORD.
"What does it mean?"
He paused. "Good news for me… maybe not what Bass or the others want to hear."
"Why? Tell me."
"If there were three scrolls, three objects on which they 'scribed' or 'wrote,' then the tin one has not been found or, just as likely I suppose, it hasn’t survived. The copper one… well, that could be the Copper Scroll, obviously."
"And it tells where the gold is. That fits."
"Sort of. It tells about a lot of treasure, not just gold — but that could be metaphorical, a synecdoche for treasure in general."
"And so the silver one?"
"Well, finding the Temple treasure would be amazing, don't get me wrong here, but if the Silver Scroll is what I think this says it is, then it might lead us to much more. It might lead us to more scrolls." His face fell.
"What, what's wrong?"
"It just occurred to me…"
"What?"
"That if this scroll is a map to otters scrolls, it might be leading us to the caves already found around Qumran. It might give us clues as to the location of writings we've had for seventy years already."
"But it was in a cave, right? Why leave clues to a cave in the cave itself? That doesn't make sense."
"There were eleven caves though. The Copper Scroll was found in Cave Three. Now that I think about it, we don't even know that this Silver Scroll was found in the caves at all. Maybe it was, but Bass didn't tell me. He might not even know himself."
"So it could be what you say, a map to treasure we already have."
"That's not going to make many people very happy."
They were both still. Silent.
"I need lunch," Marina sighed at last, "You want some?"
Ben nodded, "Yeah, I'd better. Anything though, I'm not picky."
She noticed him watch her in the mirror as she stretched and walked back over to the kitchenette. Even through the thick terrycloth robe, her shape was a pleasure to see.
She leaned back, room service menu in hand, and began to read through each item, one by one. In that moment, she felt thoroughly content, despite their situation. She knew the feeling wouldn’t last.
He smiled and returned to his work.
We all have our areas of meticulous scholarship, she thought, and scanned the menu for the perfect meal.
Marina waited for the food, unable to keep her mind from wandering to times past, when meals were not so easy to get. Despite their danger — which was a welcome distraction from unbidden memories — the quiet and luxury of the room left her too much time to contemplate. It was too still to keep the demons at bay.
She forced herself to focus on the television, muted and with the captions on. She studied each detail of each scene in an effort to ignore the images and feelings that welled up in her anyway. It was like an unwanted movie playing across the surface of the hotel menu.
She was a little girl, maybe ten years old, or eleven, and at Bratislav's home again. Still. Winter had come and almost gone, but spring had not yet arrived. Food was worth more than gold, but she and Bratislav had neither one. Her little ribs stuck out of a frame already slight and lean. Her cheeks had begun to sink and her eyes seemed much older than her tender years. She had stopped looking in the misty mirror at all, those past few weeks. Bratislav said nothing, but he had begun to cough. It wasn't the eager cough brought on by the slip of water down the wrong passage, or the purposeful cough meant dislodge real or imagined phlegm from a congested windpipe. Bratislav's cough was that of the aged and weak. His body had become too fatigued to swallow. His heart had begun to forget to care.
In the night she curled up in her little nest in the attic and heard him below her, the hollow rack echoing between too-thin walls in sharp contrast with the mellow, baritone moan of the wind outside. Her own hunger pains had begun to subside, though she hadn't eaten in three days. Young as she was, she knew that was a bad sign. Worse yet, bitter to her tender heart for the old man, was the powerlessness she felt for the one who was risking everything for her, who had shared his food with her through the cold months and had now run out. If not for the extra food she had eaten from his meagre supply…
She reached over, under the rough folds at the top of her bed, and felt for the cold steel. They were there, side by side, the two handguns she had collected. One from Bratislav, one from the man in the bakery. Her hand found the one from Bratislav. Wrapping her thin fingers around the roughness she lifted it, like a man lifts an anvil, and crawled out through the high vent into the darkness.
She had returned an hour later, trembling and tear-stained, favouring her right wrist as if she had fallen on it. Bratislav did not ask what had happened to it. He didn't ask where the three small tins of food had come from. Something in the hollows of her eyes perhaps told him not to. Or told him what he needed to know without the need for words. They ate the three tins, like a feast of kings.
Lunch had come and gone. Ben worked on, with Marina watching movies, napping, even massaging Ben's weary shoulders until the sexual tension had grown too acute for either of them and he had proclaimed the need to get back to the translation. True enough, in any case. He was making good progress and she didn’t want to break his concentration or his momentum. Too much was riding on his work.
By the time Marina was studying the menu again for the supper options, Ben sat back in his chair, blew out a long breath of air, and dropped a scribbled, written and rewritten patch of chicken-scratched translation on the table.
Marina glanced over. "What's wrong?"
"Finished."
"Really?!" She jumped from the bed, smiling with enthusiasm, and grabbed the notepad from the table. She read aloud.
The gold remains pure, no image mars its surface. In the day of the seventh battle, when the Sons of Darkness face the Sons of Light, the Sons of Light shall raise the untainted gold on banners of gopher wood wound with myrtle, the aroma of the LORD will pass between the armies and the wicked shall fall, the pure breath of the LORD shall linger and the righteous shall stand amidst it.
When…
She halted. "Where is the rest of it?"
Ben nodded, "Yes, that is a good question."
"Does it just end there?"
Ben looked up at her, eye to eye, "I highly doubt it. There's no break in the image on this last paper, and I can see here where the metal continues on to the left of the last photograph. Which means that-"
"That Bass has the rest of it."
"If there is a 'rest of it.' Might be that this is all he has, too."
"But I think we both doubt that."
"Doesn't seem the type to operate without some kind of assurances, does he?"
"The threats, though. Your family's safety is his assurance."
"Even then, why not hold back some of the text. Once I was this far, he could give me the rest and we go from there. No risk on his part to do so, and it would protect him from just the sort of situation we're in now. He might even have a second guy working on it. We might only be one branch of his strategy.”
"So what now?"
"I think it's over, Marina."
"Over?"
"You should get home. Or at least take a while, lie low, then go home."
"And what would you do?"
"Wait for you to be safe, then call Bass. I have no choice. I don't know how to contact Leonard Kantor — don't even know if he's less a crook than Bass anyway — and Mimi, David. I can't let them get hurt. Once I’m not of any use to Bass anymore, which might already be the case if he’s got a backup plan, what’s to stop him from doing something just out of spite or revenge? What’s to stop him from…” He stopped talking, the catch in his throat threatening to become something even less under control, something shoulder shuddering and utterly embarrassing.
"That's bullshit, Ben."
He looked up at her.
"Seriously, that's not what I signed up for." She placed her hands on her hips, like a superhero… or a defiant teen. "We can't just leave it, and no, we can't let Mimi and David get hurt. So we have one choice."
"And that is?"
“Like you said, we call Bass."
"And say what? 'Sorry we attacked your goons and fled the country with your pictures and your money'?"
"Yes. Exactly. Though the goons attacked us before we attacked them. That was self defence."
"You think Greg Bass will care if it was self defence?"
"No. I don't think he cares much about his hired muscle at all, either way. I bet he cares a great deal about this scroll though, and about what you've already translated and figured out. You thought it would take you a week. It’s taken what, three days so far? What are the chances anyone else out there is faster than that? If there even is someone else working on it for him. If he has the end of the scroll, it's because he thinks the end of it contains the good stuff. What do you think? Do you think the end of it contains the good stuff?"
Ben paused. Then he nodded.
"Well then," she said, setting her jaw and staring fiercely, like she would take on the lot of them single handedly if need be, "A club with fries for me, then the phone call. Burger this time? They have a nice blue cheese and bacon…"
TWENTY
He paid no notice as his office door clicked open and his secretary stepped in and then stood, motionless and silent by the entrance. The two men in front of him didn't even realise the addition to the room until they had concluded their business and stood to shake hands with their host.
Kantor smiled and shook their hands as if they had all afternoon to trade niceties, but inside his neatly buttoned vest his heart pounded as if he had suddenly burst into a full sprint. What he didn't know is if he was, in that moment, the lion chasing the goat… or if he was the goat. Janet had been given his mobile phone and one reason only for which to disturb his meetings.
As the door closed on the elevator in the exterior office, he remained there, not wasting time in returning to the inner sanctum. "What is it?"
She said nothing in return, but handed him his mobile phone. The line was open.
"Hello?"
"Yes hello Mr. Kantor."
"What is it?"
"The subject has just completed the translation for which he has photographs, but he does not, apparently, have all of them."
"I see." Kantor was not worried by this. As the owner of the scroll itself, he knew that it was incomplete, that a corner had been broken from the outer end. A flaw, to be sure, but nothing likely to be catastrophic. ”Is that all then?"
"No sir." A pause. “They've called the Texan."
"Take them. Now."
Kantor hung up the phone.
Marina stepped out of the little room at the end of the hall, a fresh bucket of ice in one hand and a Mekupalet candy bar in the other. She didn’t know the brand, but it looked good. Her eyes moved from the image on the package to the hallway in front of her.
With his arms already in full motion, the first man slammed a steel ram against the door and it burst open, shattering fragments of broken doorjamb into the room. She heard Ben shout in alarm. The second man stepped quickly in. She heard "On the floor!" and "Where's the woman?!" and dropped the bucket.
The man with the ram turned his head at the sound and their eyes met. He reached behind him for his gun and took two long steps toward her.
Those steps were his first mistake.
As his hand pulled the weapon free from its holster at the back of his belt and came around toward her chest, her slippered foot whipped up and caught the underside of his arm, just behind the wrist. It was with wide-eyed disbelief that he watched his gun spin up toward the ceiling. Even as he watched, he reached with his other hand to try to capture it.
That was his second mistake.
Her knee came up as she lunged at him and the full force of her momentum struck him just below the rib cage. He crumbled. The gun hit the floor behind them and she spun to grab it. A quick motion made sure it was loaded as an already-chambered round spun off into the air, another one taking its place in a fraction of a second. He had been serious then, she thought, a bullet chambered even while at rest. Serious men. But she was serious too.
As she rose to her feet, the other man stepped from their room, pistol at the ready, and a third from the adjoining suite, also armed and ready to fire.
"Put the weapon down," the first one said, appraising the sight of his comrade squirming for air on the floor at her feet, not making the mistake to underestimate the woman who stood before them, armed and without the hint of a tremble in her steady grip. "Put it down and no one gets hurt."
"Fuck you," she spat, raising the gun toward his head. The stances of both men sank a little lower and the line from eye to firearm grew tight and straight. Everything had happened in seconds, but it was enough time for her to weigh the situation.
It wasn't good.
There was a door to her left, but it would be locked. No time to shoot her way through it. If there was time for that it would only be because everybody else was dead, and then there would be no need. No, once her finger squeezed the waiting tension in the trigger, things would happen fast and in a most permanent manner. The best she could hope for would be to take two or three of them with her. Strictly speaking, she shouldn't h
ave hesitated; that might cost her a kill.
"Wait!" It was Ben, coming from the room, still crouching, hands held up over his head, "Don't… please, wait!"
All three sets of eyes in the hallway stayed on target, even as they watched him in their peripheral.
Ben's head was spinning. Beyond the shock of the man bursting into his room when he had expected the gentle entrance of a beautiful woman with a bucket of ice and some chocolate, he now faced an armed showdown in the hallway. He didn't know how Marina had gotten a gun, or how she could possibly be as cool and poised as she seemed to be, but seeing her there, the first woman he had really let in since Donna's death… now facing trained killers in a foreign country?
He didn't even know who these guys were. Bass's men? Not likely, he had just spoken with the man and agreed to do it his way, without any more violence or tricks. Kantor? Possibly, but then what was going on? Were they there to stop him from translating for Bass, to kill him if need be? To kill… maybe both of them? And how did the big guy get face-down on the floor? Was he with them, or just some guy who went out for ice from an adjacent room? He looked like he was one of them. But that would mean… Marina?
"Please don't hurt her." He heard his voice as if someone beside him had spoken the words. "Please… just don't hurt her. What do you want from me? I'll do it. Just let her go."
"Ben," her voice was low, steady, but the adrenaline was waning and her hands had started to tremble just a little bit, "Step back. We can't let these bastards do this. I won't let them do this. They're not taking you, and they're not taking me."
At her words, Ben moved his feet, but instead of retreating back into the room, he rose into a tenuous crouch, stepped in front of the nearest gunman, and straightened his legs. Slowly. Deliberately, despite the nervous wobble. The professor's chest was then directly between the muzzle of the weapon and Marina's crouched form. He moved forward until the muzzle made contact with his sternum.