The Moses Stone

by James Becker

  'Are they what you thought they were?' Levi Barak asked.

  Ben Halevi shook his head. 'It's far too early to say, but to me they look right.'

  'And to me,' Angela said. 'You do mean the Decalogue, don't you? The original covenant? The second set of stones that Moses himself carried down from Mount Sinai?'

  Yosef Ben Halevi nodded slowly, barely able to take his eyes off the ancient relics.

  'Right,' Barak said briskly. He looked back at Bronson. 'You just killed a man,' he stated flatly, 'and as a police officer you know what that means.'

  'It was self-defence,' Angela said hotly. 'If you saw what happened, you'd know that.'

  'I did see it, but there's a problem. The Sayeret Matkal officers are properly authorized members of Israel's armed forces, able to carry weapons and use them. That man' – he pointed at Yacoub's body – 'was killed by a pistol, and not the type we carry.' Barak turned and beckoned one of the officers towards him. 'Give me your weapon,' he instructed.

  The officer hesitated for a second, then undid the Velcro strap on his holster and handed over the pistol.

  'This,' Barak said, 'is an Israeli Weapons Industries SP-21 nine-millimetre pistol. One of its characteristics is the polygonal rifling in the barrel. That pistol' – he pointed at the weapon Bronson had dropped on the ground – 'is a Czechoslovakian CZ-75, with conventional rifling. When we carry out a post-mortem on the body, we'll find one or two deformed nine-millimetre slugs in the torso, and the rifling marks will clearly show the make and model of pistol that fired them. That will tell the pathologist that this man wasn't killed by any of the troops I ordered to come here. That's the problem.'

  Barak stepped across to where Yacoub's body lay, and with a single quick movement raised the pistol and fired a single round into the corpse's chest. The body twitched with the impact.

  Then he walked back and returned the pistol to the Sayeret Matkal officer. 'Now,' he said, 'the pathologist will find a bullet fired from an SP-21 in that man's body, and will come to the appropriate conclusion.'

  'What about the other two slugs?' Bronson asked.

  'I think that the post-mortem will show that they passed straight through his body and were not recovered. And now,' Barak said, 'it's time for you to leave. We have to tidy up this place before the tourists start arriving tomorrow morning, and we've still got to find where that one-eyed bastard hid the Silver Scroll.'

  Three minutes later, Bronson and Angela stared down through the open side door of the helicopter as it lifted away from Har Megiddo. Below them, banks of floodlights were being set up to enable the search for the Silver Scroll to get under way, and the top of the old fortress seemed to be swarming with black-clad men.

  77

  The rays of the early-morning sun were just striking the roofs and upper levels of the buildings around them, turning the white stone to silver, when Bronson pulled the hire car to a stop in a parking space just off Sultan Suleiman, close to the bus station and at the very edge of the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem.

  He and Angela got out and started walking south-west, towards the Damascus Gate. It was three days later, and they were booked on a flight back to London out of Ben Gurion late that afternoon, courtesy of the Mossad. They'd spent most of the time since the showdown at Har Megiddo in an interview room in an anonymous ministry building in Jerusalem, explaining precisely what had happened since Bronson had been briefed to fly out to Morocco what seemed like weeks earlier. Eventually, Levi Barak and Yosef Ben Halevi had decided that there was nothing else they could usefully tell them, and Barak had suggested it would be best for all concerned if they left Israel as soon as possible.

  On this, their last day in the country, they'd decided to take a look around the Old City. As they crossed the street to walk along beside the massive city wall, Bronson glanced behind him.

  'Are they still there?' Angela asked, taking his hand.

  'Yes. Two grey men in two grey suits.'

  Levi Barak had made it clear that they could go where they liked before their flight, but insisted that they would be watched at all times, and they'd quickly got used to the sight of their two silent shadows.

  There were no tourists anywhere, and precious few locals, and the day was pleasantly warm, but the pink and turquoise sky was redolent with the promise of baking heat later.

  'It's like having the place to ourselves,' Angela said.

  The sense of quiet and calm lasted until they reached the open area in front of the Damascus Gate.

  Despite the early hour, there were already crowds of people milling round the dozens of temporary stalls – many of them little more than small wheeled carts with umbrellas to shade the produce and the seller – that had been set up among the stately palm trees. Angela and Bronson walked past elderly women wearing traditional embroidered dresses selling snap peas from open sacks, and the air was heavy with the scent of fresh mint. In several places Bronson saw colourful posters, all depicting handsome young men, spread on the ground almost like prayer mats.

  'Arab pop stars,' Angela said, in answer to his unspoken question.

  They walked down stone steps, worn smooth by the passage of countless feet over numberless years, through an impressive archway topped by turrets and into the noisy, bustling and vibrant world of the Khan ez-Zeit souk. A world of narrow cobblestoned alleys; of coffee shops where men played cards and talked as they bubbled tobacco smoke through water pipes; of cobblers and tailors and spice sellers and stalls selling brilliantly coloured fabrics; of boxes of vegetables and vendors surrounded by hanging meat; of men dropping balls of chickpeas into huge cauldrons of boiling oil to make falafel. Arab music – discordant to Bronson's ears – blasted from tinny transistor radios and the occasional ghetto-blaster, almost drowning out the cries of the vendors hawking their wares and the constant buzz of conversation, of haggling and arguing over the prices and quality of the goods on offer.

  They turned left on to the Via Dolorosa, leaving the hubbub behind them. Bronson took Angela's hand as they walked.

  'Well, I suppose you could say we achieved something,' he said.

  'Absolutely,' Angela replied. 'This has been a really good week for archaeology in general, and Jewish archaeology in particular. Without lifting a finger, apart from employing a bunch of special forces troops and a few surveillance officers, the Israelis have recovered the legendary Silver Scroll, which means that if there are any Jewish treasures left buried somewhere out in the desert they'll now be recovered by Jewish archaeologists, which has to be the right thing. Mind you, that will take year sbecause of the time they'll have to spend just conserving the scroll and working out how best to open it to read the inscription.'

  'Let's hope they don't send it to the people in Manchester who cut open the Copper Scroll.'

  'I don't think that's likely. Silver – and I'm assuming the scroll is silver – is much more resilient than copper, and being immersed in fresh water for the last two millennia shouldn't have done much more than tarnish it. There's even a possibility they might be able to unroll it and read it just as it was written, though I think that's perhaps a bit optimistic.'

  Then Bronson asked the question that had been troubling him the most.

  'Those stone tablets, Angela. Do you really think they were the Mosaic Covenant? Do you think Baverstock was right?'

  Angela shook her head. 'I'm an academic, and that means I'm paid to be cynical about anything like this. But I don't know,' she said, 'I really don't know. From what I've read of the biblical descriptions of the Decalogue, they were pretty similar, but that doesn't prove anything. Some scholars believe that the passages in the Bible accurately describe the stone tablets, but it could just as easily work the other way round. The stones could have been fashioned to match the biblical descriptions. In other words, they could have been manufactured specifically to validate the oral traditions of the Bible, to give the wandering Israelites something solid to believe in.

  'But a p
art of me – just a small part – thinks that Baverstock might have been right. There was something spooky, almost other-worldly, about those two stones. Like the fact that there didn't seem to be any dust on them, although the cavity we dragged them out of was full of the stuff. And the way they seemed almost to glow when we shone our torches at them.' She gave a slight shiver. 'This doesn't sound like me talking, Chris, does it?'

  'What do you think the Israelis will do with them now?' Bronson asked, as they turned right to head towards the Kotel Plaza and the Wailing Wall.

  'They'll keep them safe, obviously,' Angela said. 'I had a few words with Yosef Ben Halevi after they'd finished questioning us. I asked him the same thing, and his reply was interesting. He said they'd worked really quickly, and had already taken hundreds of pictures of them, and carried out a variety of other tests to check the patina of the stones, the way the Aramaic letters were formed, all that kind of thing, to try to establish their age. But then he told me that he'd been instructed – and the way he expressed it suggested the order came from the very highest level in the Knesset – that the tablets were not to be put on display, or their existence acknowledged, because of the possible political repercussions if they were.'

  'So what are they going to do with them?' Bronson asked again.

  'Yosef said they'd be going back where they belonged.'

  'What – back to that altar at Har Megiddo?'

  Angela shook her head, then pointed ahead of them, towards the Kotel Plaza. 'That's the Wailing Wall,' she said. 'Do you know why it's called that?'

  'No idea.'

  'The origin of the name is simple enough. After the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, no Jews were allowed to visit Jerusalem until the early Byzantine period. Then, they were permitted to visit the Western Wall just once each year, on the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple. The Jews that came here leant against the Wall and wept over the loss of their holy temple, and that was how the "Wailing Wall" name was coined.'

  Bronson looked again at the massive structure on the other side of the square. 'But that Wall was never actually a part of the Temple, was it?' he asked. 'It was only a supporting wall for the ground on which the Temple had once stood. So why do the Jews revere it so much?'

  'You're quite right – it was nothing directly to do with the Second Temple itself. But Orthodox Jews believe that the divine presence, what they call the Shechinah, continues to reside in the place where the Temple used to stand. When the Temple was built, the Holy of Holies, the inner chamber where they would have kept the Ark of the Covenant, was at the western side of the building, and that was where the Shechinah would have remained. All Jews are forbidden by their own laws to go on to the Temple Mount itself, to the original Temple site, so that wall' – she pointed – 'is the closest they can possibly get to that location. And that's why it's so important.'

  'So?'

  'So I think you could argue that if the Ark of the Covenant was supposed to be kept somewhere on the other side of that wall, that would also be the logical place to keep the Covenant itself.'

  They walked towards the north side of the Kotel Plaza, to the entrance to the Western Wall Heritage, where tours of the tunnels that lay behind the Wailing Wall began.

  'That's odd,' Angela said. The gate was obviously locked, and there was a large sign across the entrance that stated the exhibition and tunnel were closed due to possible subsidence.

  She walked forward and peered into the gloom beyond the gate. Then she turned round and walked back to Bronson, a small but satisfied smile on her face.

  'What is it?'

  'There are lights on inside, and I could see various people moving around. I'd be amazed if there was any subsidence in the Kotel Tunnel. The stones there are absolutely massive – the biggest one weighs about six hundred tons – and they're resting on solid bedrock. I had my suspicions when I saw that the place was closed, but seeing people inside there now is proof to me. The Israelis are going to put the Moses Stones right back where they belong, in some kind of a hidden shrine behind the Wailing Wall, and as close as they can get to the site of the Holy of Holies of the Second Temple. So now, when the devout Jews come to pray at the Wall, they'll be as close as anyone's been for the last two millennia to the Mosaic Covenant.'

  Bronson stared at the Western Wall Heritage entrance for a few seconds, then nodded. 'Yes,' he said. 'That does make sense.'

  They turned away to head back towards the car, Bronson glancing behind at their two escorts.

  'You know you never answered my question,' he said.

  'Which one?'

  'The one I asked you in the helicopter as we flew away from Har Megiddo. I said we should form a partnership. We seem to be getting quite good at tracking down lost relics.'

  Angela nodded, then laughed. 'But has it occurred to you that every time somebody's pulled out a gun, it seems to have been pointing straight at us?'

  'Yes,' Bronson said slowly, 'but we've survived it all, haven't we?' He paused and looked at her. 'Suppose I gave up being a copper and you stop working at the museum, and we just spent our time tracking down buried treasure?'

  'Are you serious?' Angela demanded.

  'Yes, I am. We do work well together.'

  'And would our partnership be more than just a working one?'

  Bronson took a deep breath. 'You already know the answer to that,' he said. 'I'd like that more than anything.'

  Angela looked at him for a few seconds before replying, then she smiled. 'Why don't we talk about it over lunch? I spotted a decent-looking restaurant on the Via Dolorosa.'

  'Brilliant idea,' Bronson said. Linking arms, they walked down Chain Street towards the Church of John the Baptist and the ancient, tortured heart of that most ancient of cities.

  THE END

  James Becker writes

  about the presence of the past

  in THE MOSES STONE

  This is a work of fiction, but I've tried to ensure that the book is firmly grounded in fact wherever possible. The places I've described are real, and most of the events I've written about which occurred in the first century AD are also in the historical record.

  Masada

  The description of the fall of Masada is as accurate as it is possible to be, almost two millennia after the event. The siege ended precisely the way I described it, with the Sicarii defenders effectively committing mass suicide rather than surrender to the hated Roman army. Two women did survive the siege, and they later told the historian Josephus what had occurred. Their account is generally accepted as being an accurate and certainly contemporary description of the events of the last hours before the fortress fell.

  Between 1963 and 1965 the Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin carried out excavations on the site, during which eleven ostraca – small pieces of pottery or stone – were found in front of the northern palace. One of them bore the name 'Ben Ya'ir', the leader of the Sicarii, and each of the others bore a single different name. It's not known for certain, but it seems at least likely that these were the names of the ten men who carried out the executions of the Sicarii defenders prior to the breaching of the wall of the citadel.

  Hezekiah's Tunnel and the Pool of Siloam

  Nearly three thousand years old, this tunnel remains a significant feat of engineering.

  Jerusalem is situated on a hill, and was fairly easy to defend against attackers because of its elevation. The one problem the defenders had was that their principal source of water was located out in the Qidron Valley and lay some distance outside the walls of Jerusalem. So a prolonged and determined siege, which was the commonest way of taking most military objectives in those days, would always result in the capture of the city because eventually the stored water supplies would run out.

  In about 700 BC, King Hezekiah was very concerned that the Assyrians led by Sennacherib would besiege Jerusalem and decided the water supply problem had to be solved, though there's now some doubt about whether he really de
serves all the credit.

  In 1838 an American scholar named Edward Robinson discovered what's now known as Hezekiah's Tunnel. It's also called the Siloam Tunnel because it runs from the Gihon Spring to the Pool of Siloam. The tunnel was obviously intended to function as an aqueduct and channel water to the city. It's more or less S-shaped, about a third of a mile long, and there's a slope of a little under one degree all the way down, which would ensure that the water would flow in the right direction.

  Building it would have been a massive undertaking given the tools the inhabitants of the city were known to possess, and current theories suggest that the tunnel was actually partly formed from a cave that already ran most of the way. An inscription was found at one end of the tunnel which suggested that it was constructed by two teams of workmen, starting at opposite ends. The spring was then blocked and the diverted water allowed to flow to Jerusalem itself. That's basically the legend and more or less what the Bible claims.

  But in 1867, Charles Warren, a British army officer, was exploring Hezekiah's Tunnel and discovered another, much older, shaft system now called Warren's Shaft. This consisted of a short system of tunnels which began inside the city walls and ended in a vertical shaft directly above Hezekiah's Tunnel near the Gihon Spring. It allowed the inhabitants to lower buckets into the water in the tunnel without exposing themselves outside the walls. Dating it accurately has proved difficult, but the consensus is that it was probably built in about the tenth century BC.

  And if that wasn't enough, a few years later, in 1899, yet another and very much older tunnel was discovered that also ran directly from the Gihon Spring to the Siloam Pool.

  This is now known as the Middle Bronze Age Channel, and is estimated to date from about 1800 BC, almost four thousand years ago. It was a simple ditch dug deep into the ground, and was then covered with large slabs of rock, themselves hidden by foliage. Obviously the fact that it was a surface channel as opposed to an underground tunnel was a potential weak point in a siege.