The Moses Stone

by James Becker

  39

  'You have some news?' Eli Nahman asked, as he walked into the room in the ministry building in Jerusalem, Yosef Ben Halevi following close behind him.

  'Yes,' Levi Barak said, gesturing to the two academics to take seats at the table. 'Through one of our operatives in Morocco,' Barak began, 'we do now have more information about this relic. But we still don't know where it is. Our best guess is that the English couple mailed it to their home.'

  'Can you send someone to check that?' Nahman asked.

  Barak shook his head. 'There's no need,' he said. 'Our people in London have already started investigating.'

  'And?'

  'And we're not the only ones looking for it.'

  Nahman glanced at Ben Halevi. 'Who?' he asked.

  'There were two obvious addresses to cover in Britain,' Barak began, not answering Nahman's question directly. 'The O'Connors' own house and the one belonging to their daughter and son-in-law. Both are in a city called Canterbury, in Kent, in south-east England. We organized watchers at both properties. Yesterday, the team covering the O'Connors' property observed their daughter drive to the house and go inside. About ten minutes later an unknown male was seen at the side door of the house. He'd approached the property from the rear, across a stretch of waste ground, not down the street, which was why they didn't see him coming. Our team got several photographs of him.'

  Barak passed each man two pictures. They showed a dark-skinned, black-haired man, obviously filmed through a powerful telephoto lens, standing beside a house.

  'He's holding a crowbar,' Barak continued, 'and he used it to force the side door. He was apparently unaware that anyone was inside the property. A few minutes later he came out of the house and ran away, using the same route as before, down the garden and over the waste ground.

  'Several minutes after that, a neighbour entered the house – perhaps she'd seen the daughter's car parked in the driveway – and emerged seconds later screaming. Police cars and an ambulance appeared, and we now know that Kirsty Philips, the O'Connors' daughter, had been killed, obviously by this intruder.'

  'Who is he?' Nahman demanded.

  'We don't know,' Barak replied. 'We've circulated an "anything known" request through all the intelligence services with whom we have good relations but I don't expect this man's face will be on any of their databases. We believe he's probably a member of a Moroccan gang.'

  'And did he get the tablet?'

  'We don't think so. Our watchers are still in place, and the same man has been seen in the vicinity again, but he didn't approach the house because of the large number of police there. Obviously, if he had got the tablet, he would be long gone.'

  'So where is it?' Ben Halevi demanded.

  Barak shrugged. 'We don't know. It could still be in the post system somewhere, or maybe the British police are sitting looking at it. If they are, we should find out today, through one of our contacts in the Metropolitan force.'

  'And if they're not?'

  'The moment this man' – Barak gestured at the photographs on the table – 'reappears after the police have left the house, I've given orders to our surveillance team to snatch him for interrogation.'

  An expression of distaste passed across Nahman's face. 'But I haven't been consulted about any such action.'

  Barak shook his head. 'I'm sorry, Eli, but this matter has now moved a long way up the tree. I've come here to keep you informed as a matter of courtesy, but I'm now taking my orders direct from the head of the Mossad. Finding that tablet has become my highest priority. All other considerations are secondary, and any level of collateral damage is acceptable. And it means that anyone who tries to prevent us from obtaining the relic will be considered expendable.'

  The shock clearly registered on Nahman's face. 'Dear God,' he muttered. 'Is this really necessary?'

  Barak nodded and glanced at the two men. 'If you're right in your analysis of the pictures we've recovered, those four clay tablets could lead us to the ultimate key to Jewish sovereignty. We will do whatever it takes to recover that relic.'

  40

  Ahmed grabbed a handful of Angela's hair and pulled her head firmly against the chair. He ran the back of the blade of the flick-knife down her cheeks, first one, then the other, playing with her, the tip of the cold steel leaving a transient white furrow on her lightly tanned skin, a mark that faded into invisibility almost as soon as the blade had passed.

  'Which side first?' he muttered, leaning close to her ear. 'It's your face, so you can choose.'

  Angela's eyes bulged as she choked behind the tape gag, a thin trickle of mucus running from her nose. Bronson had never seen such terror on any human face, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

  'I'll tell you anything I know,' he said desperately.

  'Tell me where the tablet is,' the tall man replied, his voice rising almost to a shout at the end of the sentence.

  'I don't know,' Bronson said bitterly. 'And I won't know, no matter what you do to me, or to Angela.'

  'Then she'll die here, and so will you. Get on with it, Ahmed,' he added.

  At that instant there was a sudden noise from the floor above the cellar. The tall man grimaced in annoyance, stood up and turned towards the door. Ahmed stopped moving, his blade resting on Angela's left cheek.

  Bronson stared at the door. He heard another noise, raised voices, and the clatter of shoes on concrete. The tall man called out something in Arabic, his irritation obvious from the tone of his voice.

  'Wait for me to come back,' he instructed Ahmed, and headed for the stairs.

  For two or three minutes there was a confusion of noise from above, shouts of alarm or perhaps anger, a succession of faint thuds, and then silence fell once more. Staring at the flight of concrete steps, Bronson saw a jellaba-clad figure walking down them. He felt a sudden stab of fear. The tall man was returning, and this time there would be no further delays.

  But when the figure arrived at the entrance to the cellar, Bronson's brow creased in puzzlement. The man was holding a large piece of cardboard in front of him, which completely obscured his face and most of his upper body.

  Bronson glanced at Ahmed, who looked equally puzzled.

  'Yacoub?' Ahmed asked.

  The answer and what happened next were both unexpected.

  'No,' the man said, and dropped the cardboard.

  Immediately, Bronson recognized the familiar features of Jalal Talabani, his face grim as he raised the pistol in his right hand, looking for a target.

  Ahmed emitted a sudden curse, then swung the flickknife downwards, towards Angela's face, at the same instant as Talabani pulled the trigger. The semi-automatic pistol was fitted with a slim suppressor, and the noise of the shot was little more than a dull pop. The slide flew back, a brass cartridge case tumbled to the ground, and Talabani fired again, then once more.

  On the other side of the cellar, Ahmed clutched at his chest and flew backwards, the flick-knife falling from his hand. As he crashed against the wall, a sudden fountain of blood sprayed in a wide arc across the floor.

  Talabani ran over to the fallen man, felt for a pulse and then stood up, sliding the pistol into a holster under his jellaba. He bent down again, grabbed the flick-knife and strode across to Bronson.

  'Jesus, Jalal. Am I glad to see you,' Bronson gasped.

  'You've been lucky, my friend,' the Moroccan police officer said, as the newly sharpened blade of the knife made short work of the cable ties, freeing Bronson from the chair.

  'Here,' Bronson said, and took the knife from Talabani. He swiftly cut Angela free, pulling the tape gently off her face.

  'Thank God, thank God,' she sobbed, clinging to Bronson with a strength born of pure desperation.

  Still holding Angela, Bronson turned to Jalal. 'How the hell did you manage to get here?' he demanded. 'And where are the rest of your men?'

  'Somebody telephoned in a report of your kidnapping on the street, and managed to get the n
umber of the van,' Talabani said. 'That was broadcast immediately, and we've had teams out looking for it all night. I was driving past this house – it's on the outskirts of Rabat – when I saw it parked outside. I called for back-up, obviously, but I decided to try to get in myself. There were only a couple of people upstairs, and I managed to take care of them, and that tall one-eyed man as well – his name was Yacoub and he was well known to us – when he came up to investigate, and the rest you saw.'

  Bronson shook his head. 'Thank God you did,' he said, 'that bastard you shot down here was just about to start slicing up Angela.'

  She gave a sudden shiver as he said the words. 'Let's get out of here,' she muttered, tears streaming down her face.

  'Go now, my friend,' Talabani agreed. 'This place will be swarming with police officers any minute now, and I'm quite sure neither of you wants to get involved in a circus like that. Why don't you take my car?' He produced a set of keys from his pocket. 'Go back to your hotel. I can always get a statement from you later.'

  'Won't that cause you problems, Jalal?'

  'Nothing that I can't handle. Go.'

  'Come on, Angela,' Bronson said. 'We're out of here.

  Thanks, Jalal. I owe you.'

  They climbed the stairs out of the cellar, Angela still clutching Bronson, and walked down the hall towards the wide-open door of the property. Angela shuddered at the sight of two unmoving figures sprawled on the floor of the passageway, their jellabas covered in crimson stains. She stepped over them gingerly, trying to avoid any contact with the bodies. Bronson glanced through an open door into a side room, to see another silent shape lying motionless on the floor. Talabani had obviously been very thorough.

  Outside the house, dawn had just broken. Angela stopped and gulped in several deep breaths of fresh air, then suddenly vomited onto the dusty ground.

  'God, what a nightmare,' she muttered, pulling a packet of tissues out of her pocket and wiping her mouth. 'How quickly can we get to the airport?'

  Two minutes later, Bronson steered Talabani's Renault away from the whitewashed house, back towards the centre of Rabat, Angela sitting beside him, still tense and shaking from her ordeal.

  Jalal Talabani stood in the doorway and watched as his car disappeared down the road, then turned back into the property. He strode through the entrance hall, stepping over the two motionless figures sprawled on the floor, and through the open door into a side room.

  On a couple of large cushions against the opposite wall a man lay on his back, a large dark red stain marring the front of his jellaba.

  'They've gone,' Talabani announced. 'Was that how you wanted it done?' he asked.

  The tall man with the frozen face swung himself up into a sitting position on the cushions and leant comfortably back against the wall. He looked across at Talabani and nodded. 'That was exactly how I wanted it done. The two men outside gave you no trouble?'

  Talabani shook his head. 'They pulled their pistols when I came in, but they were a lifetime too slow. Why did you want me to kill them?' he asked. 'And Ahmed as well?'

  Yacoub stood up. 'Because Bronson had to believe this was for real. He and Lewis had to believe they'd escaped and that I was dead. Only then would they feel safe enough to follow the trail and find the relics. The men – all of them – were expendable.'

  'What now?'

  'My men are already in position. They'll follow Bronson and Lewis, and when they find what I'm looking for, I'll take it off them. And then I'll kill them.'

  41

  Bronson paid the two room bills at the desk, carried their bags out to the hire car, then took the road heading south out of Rabat towards Casablanca and the airport. They'd barely left the outskirts of the city when his mobile rang.

  'You want me to answer that?' Angela asked, as Bronson fished in his pocket for the phone. He'd insisted she down a glass of brandy at the hotel, and he was surprised at how quickly she seemed to have recovered from her ordeal.

  'No, thanks. It's probably work,' he said.

  Bronson pulled the car in to the side of the road as soon as he saw an open space, then answered the call.

  'I've been trying to reach you, Chris,' DCI Byrd said. 'Get on the first flight you can. There've been some developments in the case over here.'

  'In England?' Bronson asked. 'What kind of developments?'

  'Kirsty Philips has been found dead – murdered, in fact – at her parents' home in Canterbury.'

  'Dear God, that's awful. What about her husband?'

  'He's pretty much fallen to pieces. I've got a team working on the murder, but I need you here to liaise with them, just in case there are any connections between her death and what happened to her parents out in Morocco. How soon can you get back?'

  Bronson glanced at his watch. 'I'm on the way to the airport right now,' he said, 'but I doubt if I'll be on the ground in London until late this afternoon. Do you want me to come in to the station tomorrow morning to check in with you, or go straight off to the crime scene?'

  'You might as well go straight there to make your number with the inspector in charge – that's DI Dave Robbins. The SOCOs and forensic teams will probably still be at the house. I'll send you a text with the address. Come in and see me tomorrow afternoon.' Byrd paused. 'You sound a bit tense, Chris. Are you OK?'

  'I've had a really traumatic night. I'll tell you about it when I see you.'

  Bronson snapped the phone shut and turned to Angela. 'That was my boss,' he said, his face grim, 'and it wasn't good news. Kirsty Philips has been murdered.'

  'Oh, God. It's got to be linked to that clay tablet, hasn't it?'

  Bronson started the car again and pulled back on to the road. 'Yes,' he said. 'And we both know that the people who want it want it very badly indeed.' He paused. 'So what are you going to do now? I don't think you're in any danger now that the tall man – the one Talabani called Yacoub – is dead. But you can move into my house if you're worried about staying in your flat.'

  Angela looked at him for a long moment, then sighed, pushing her hair back from her eyes. 'Thank you – I'd like to do that,' she said simply. 'But, you know, I've not finished with this hunt just yet. When his thug was getting ready to slice my face to ribbons, that man Yacoub said something to you that I simply can't ignore. He said that he believed the inscription on the tablets could provide the location of the Silver Scroll and the Mosaic Covenant.'

  'You remember that?'

  'Trust me, Chris, I can recall every second I spent in that cellar, and everything anybody said.'

  'I've never even heard of the Silver Scroll,' Bronson said. 'And what the hell is the Mosaic Covenant?'

  'OK. In 1952, archaeologists working at Qumran found a scroll made of copper, which was unusual enough. What made it simply astonishing was that, although almost every other Dead Sea Scroll contained religious texts, the Copper Scroll was simply a list of buried treasures. The trouble was that the locations didn't make any sense – they were just too vague. But one listing on it referred to a second scroll that had been hidden somewhere else, a scroll that provided more details of where the treasures were concealed. That document – which nobody's yet found – has become known as the Silver Scroll.'

  'And the Mosaic Covenant?'

  Angela nodded. 'The word "mosaic", with a small "m", has several different meanings, though they all include the concept of multiple colours or components. But when you spell the word with a capital letter, "Mosaic", it means only one thing: "relating to Moses".'

  'That's "Moses" as in "Moses and the Ten Commandments", you mean?'

  'Exactly. The Prophet Moses, the author of the Torah and leader of the Israelites. That Moses.'

  'And what about the Covenant?' Bronson asked. 'You're not talking about the Ten Commandments?'

  Angela nodded slowly. 'That's exactly what's meant by the Mosaic Covenant. I mean, forget about the Ark of the Covenant. That was simply a wooden box covered in gold leaf that was used to carry the Covenant around
. The Ark probably rotted away to nothing centuries ago. But this is a possible clue to the location of the Covenant itself – the tablets the Ark was built to house.'

  'You can't be serious, Angela. Is there any credible evidence that Moses even existed?'

  'We've been down this route before, Chris,' she said with a slight smile, 'and I think you know my views. Like Jesus, there's no physical evidence that Moses was a real person but, unlike Jesus, he does appear in more than one ancient source, so he's got more credibility for that reason alone. He's mentioned in the writings of numerous Greek and Roman historians, as well as in the Torah, and even in the Qur'an.

  'But whether or not there's any historical reality to Moses as a person rather misses the point. If that man Yacoub was right, the people who hid the relics and prepared the tablets two thousand years ago did believe they possessed something that had belonged to Moses. That means whatever the relic actually was, it was already ancient even then. And any kind of stone tablet dating from well over two millennia ago would be an extremely important archaeological find.'

  'So you're going to start looking for it?'

  'Yes, I am. I simply can't pass up a chance like this. It's the opportunity of a lifetime.'

  Bronson looked at her face. No longer pale, it was flushed with excitement and her beautiful hazel eyes sparkled with anticipation. 'Despite all you've gone through today? You nearly got killed in that cellar.'

  'You don't have to remind me. But Yacoub is dead, and whatever his gang gets up to now, I doubt if chasing us to try to recover that clay tablet is going to be high on their list of priorities. In any case, we'll be leaving the country within a couple of hours, and I don't think that either the Silver Scroll or the Mosaic Covenant is in Morocco. The reference to Qumran is clear enough, and I have a feeling that – whatever was hidden by the people who wrote these tablets – they were buried in Judea or somewhere in that general area. The clay tablet the O'Connors found must tell us their whereabouts.'

  Bronson nodded. 'Well, if you want to do any more investigating, I'm afraid you'll have to do it by yourself. I've got to get back to Maidstone to write up my report, and I might even get sucked into the investigation into Kirsty Philips's murder. I certainly don't think I'll be able to convince Dickie Byrd that I suddenly need to head off to Israel. Are you sure that this is worth following up?'