by Jon Land
* * * *
T
he photos are in good shape, considering their age,” Ari Coen said after inspecting the snapshots Ben had produced.
“What happens now?” Ben asked him.
Coen wheeled his chair over to a state-of-the-art scanner. “We digitize each picture and transfer it onto a database. Then we ask the computer to enlarge and clarify the digitalizations, so they can be read. You might even be in for a pleasant surprise.”
“Surprise?”
“Well,” Coen explained, “fifty years ago the faded or illegible portions of the scroll remained a mystery. Today, even using photographs, the computer will be able to see what we can’t and fill in many of the blanks. That should yield a much more complete translation than anything Winston Daws could ever have come up with.”
The process went surprisingly fast. Coen was careful to keep Winston Daws’s snapshots in the precise order in which Ben had handed them to him. The scanner screen could accommodate three at once, and Ben listened to the quiet whir of Coen’s computer as it accepted the material. He watched the pictures gather shape on the monitor, Coen moving on to the next series only after the screen flashed digitalization complete.
There were fifty-four snapshots in all, accounting for eighteen separate digitalizations for the computer to complete. Ben had no idea how many of these Daws had actually translated with Mordecai Lev’s help to begin the story that had led to his death; he would not know that until he found someone to finish the job, so the story would be complete.
“Now,” Ari Coen said, gathering up the pictures in a neat stack before sliding over to the printer, “let’s see what we have here. . . .”
* * * *
CHAPTER 83
I
hope these prove worth it, Inspector,” Coen said as he handed Ben a stack of fifty-four pages, one for each of Daws’s pictures.
Because the photos had been of different sections of a scroll, there was some overlap of contents, the end of one page often repeated at the beginning of another. But the writing was surprisingly legible, except for those blurred areas even the computer could not enhance.
Ben studied the top page. “I can’t read the language. Is it Hebrew?”
“Aramaic, I think. Long dead. Not many around who can even translate it anymore.”
“I know somebody,” Ben said, flirting with a smile.
Coen switched off his color printer. “Then this might be your lucky day.”
* * * *
H
ershel Giott lay in a hospital bed in the intensive care ward of Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital, so many tubes and wires running in and out of him that the machines had to fight for space around his bedside. It was all Danielle could do to look at her mentor as tears brimmed in her eyes.
She had maintained a daily vigil over her father after his stroke until he gradually wasted away and died. That day had brought relief with it until the reality that she was alone had sunk in. Her mother dead, both brothers, and finally her father. She learned she was pregnant only a few weeks later, looking upon it as a gift from her father as well as God. But then the gift was cruelly torn from her and with it, perhaps, the opportunity to live the life Israeli women were supposed to. And yet she realized it had been a good thing for her in the end, forcing her to look more deeply into herself and decide exactly what it was she wanted out of life.
Now, standing at her dying mentor’s bedside, she could feel a life growing in her again. A second chance, perhaps her last chance. The baby all that mattered, the baby and its father who might be dead soon too unless she could do something to prevent it.
Before her Hershel Giott stirred, but Danielle recalled the doctor’s words that he continued to lapse in and out of consciousness without ever regaining lucidity. How much she wanted to say to him, but time had run out as it always seemed to. Once again she had fooled herself into believing there would always be another day, only to be disappointed. Maybe someday she would learn.
Giott’s eyes fluttered and he mumbled something. Danielle saw that his parched lips were wedged together by dried spittle. She lifted the water cup from his bedside, made sure the top was tightly on, and eased the straw into his mouth. The old man’s throat pursed and writhed, working hard to suck in some liquid.
After all he has done for me, Danielle thought, this is the best I can do for him.
The water began dribbling down his chin and she pulled it back, drying the droplets with a tissue.
Water . . .
Something began to dawn on her while she stood there with the plastic cup in her hand, the water swirling about inside it.
Water . . .
A resource more valuable than oil in the landlocked West Bank that drew eighty percent of its supply from the Eastern Aquifer beneath the desert.
Oh, my God ... of course!
At last she understood the basis for the unholy alliance that had been forged between Rabbi Mordecai Lev and Commander Moshe Baruch. The reason why oil in the West Bank was so valuable to them . . . and why they needed to keep its existence a secret from everyone else.
Because this wasn’t really about oil at all.
Standing over Hershel Giott’s bedside, Danielle began to tremble. It was as though her mentor had revealed it all to her, one final gift to remember him by.
Ben, she thought, realizing the true scope of what they were facing. I’ve got to find Ben. . . .
* * * *
Y
ou realize the value these have,” Coen said, handing Ben a large manila envelope.
Ben squeezed the fifty-four pages inside and fastened the clasp. “They’re not the originals.”
“But, according to you, they still tell a story no man has ever heard. Think about that.”
“I have. Too much.”
“You should do something about your conscience, Inspector.”
“Like you have?”
Coen shrugged. “All I have to believe in is money, and one thing I’ve learned since leaving Israel is that money isn’t enough.”
“Why don’t you go home?”
“Did it work for you. Inspector?”
An alarm began to sound through the house.
“Intruders,” Coen said. “We’ve got to get you out of here,” he added, and surged ahead of Ben toward the door. “Hurry!”
Outside, the staccato bursts of gunfire could clearly be heard. Overhead the distant whine of jet aircraft was getting louder.
“Take my Jeep,” Coen said, tossing Ben the keys as they rushed out of the house. “It’s your only chance.”
“You should do something about your conscience too.”
Coen started to retreat back inside. “I’ve been here before. Just get the hell away and tell Colonel al-Asi I’ll contact him from wherever I end up.”
Coen disappeared inside before Ben could say thank you. He turned and sprinted toward the black sports utility vehicle parked in the semicircular drive set before the house.
Ben had just climbed behind the wheel when the first explosions lit up the sky, followed by the spreading glow of fire as a section of Ari Coen’s marijuana crop burst into blames.
Napalm! The jets were firing napalm!
Ben revved the Jeep’s engine and spun it back down the drive, tucking the envelope with the digitized pages of Josephus’ lost scroll under his jacket to protect it. A hundred yards down the road, the bright lights of an Israeli army armored personnel carrier nearly blinded him, and with no place else to go, he turned off into the fields, where he knew the Israeli soldiers would not follow, since the napalm would reduce them to smoldering ash in a matter of minutes.
The Jeep bucked through the thick stalks that surrounded him on all sides, separated by only yard-wide rows between the plants. He could hear the screech of incoming rockets and felt the Jeep jostled each time one struck. A few times it seemed the tires were actually lifted off the ground, more so with each strike, and Ben realized he was literally racing
the fire-breathing rockets across Ari Coen’s land. He could feel the sweat soaking through his shirt. The envelope containing the pictures and pages was already wet, and Ben desperately feared they were going to go the way of the original scroll.
Lost. Gone forever.
He couldn’t let that happen.
The flames reared up in his rearview mirror, and Ben gave the Jeep more gas as twin rockets exploded on either side of him. All at once the flames briefly enclosed the vehicle, until the Jeep sped out of them only to encounter yet another series. This time a wall of fire lay directly in his path, and Ben burst through it feeling the heat start to sear him and watching the paint peel off the Jeep’s hood in the glow of the flames around him. It felt as though the air were being sucked out of his lungs. The steering wheel was scorching beneath his hands. The back window exploded and a hot gush of wind, followed closely by a finger of fire, singed the back of his neck.
Ben screamed in desperation and stamped the accelerator pedal all the way to the floor. He had found hell and half expected the demons of his past to scratch at the car as he tore past them.
But there was only the return of an endlessly black night and a sudden cool wash of air welcoming Ben back to the world he gratefully surged into.
* * * *
* * * *
CHAPTER 84
B
en leaned against the door, pounding it again and again.
“I’m coming! I’m coming!” a weary voice called from inside. Father Mike finally flung the door open and regarded him with a shocked expression. “What the hell happened to you?”
Ben leaned against the doorjamb for support, showed Father Mike the envelope in his left hand. “How well do you remember your Aramaic?”
* * * *
F
lave Pocacinni watched with piqued curiosity as the priest ushered a man he recognized as Ben Kamal into the small rectory attached to the Jericho church. Pocacinni had been at his post, nestled amid refuse in a narrow alley between two buildings across the street, for twelve hours now. From this distance, even through his miniature binoculars, Pocacinni could not tell whether Ben Kamal was carrying anything on his person.
He dialed a number on his digital phone and spoke as soon as it was answered.
“This is Pocacinni, Colonel,” he said to Gianni Lorenzo. “He’s here.”
* * * *
T
hey sat at the kitchen table, the envelope between them, Ben guzzling water from a glass he kept refilling from a pitcher.
Father Mike touched the envelope with a finger, stopped short of grasping it. “So the legendary lost scroll of Josephus exists, after all. . . .”
Ben finished draining another glass. “Just a copy, I’m afraid.”
“What’s the difference? You have the proof you wanted.”
“I don’t know what I have. I need you to tell me.”
Father Mike hesitated, eyes rotating between Ben and the manila envelope. “I could destroy this right now.”
“You won’t.”
“Why?”
“Because you want to know the truth as much as I do.”
“Do I?”
Ben shoved the envelope across the table at the priest. “Yes.”
* * * *
F
ather Mike returned to the table wearing his reading glasses with a yellow legal pad and pen in hand. A single bulb, hanging from the ceiling, provided a thin shaft of light that extended barely beyond the reach of the table.
Ben watched him flipping through the pages, making notes on the legal pad as he went. Some sections of the scroll’s contents took longer to go over than others. A few, as Ben suspected, must have indeed been indecipherable based on the way Father Mike referred to them on his pad.
Time lost meaning; the hours passed with the pages and the notes. Ben nodded off in brief spurts that ended as more pages were flipped and more notes taken. Father Mike never looked up, never seemed to move anything other than his eyes, hand, and pen across the pad. He showed no reaction at all, lost in a scholar’s indifference yet obsessed by the task. Ben left him to that task in silence.
With the last page flipped, Father Mike continued to hold his gaze downward, his attention rooted on the notes before him as if he had disappeared into the story they told. Ben watched him flip his notes back to the first page. Father Mike removed his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes. When he finally looked up, his face was blank.
“I don’t know if you’re going to like this,” the priest started.
* * * *
CHAPTER 85
T
he old doctor heard heavy feet sloshing through the mud before he saw the two shadowy figures lugging a third between them.
“I’ve been waiting since sundown, Captain,” the doctor said, holding the door open. “Hurry up and get him inside.”
The soldiers carried the man into the dim glow cast by the room’s oil light. They smelled like the rank and spoiled street muck that coated their feet. Perspiration, strong and salty, glistened on their brows and dropped from their cheeks. The trail of blood that had speckled the mud in their wake followed them across the stone floor.
“Lay him on the table,” the doctor ordered. He closed the door behind him and made sure all the shutters were latched. “He is still alive, I presume?”
“We wouldn’t have bothered, if he wasn’t,” the captain replied, straightening the unconscious man’s legs upon a heavy wood table matted with straw that crackled under his weight.
“A fool’s errand, nonetheless,” the doctor said, approaching the table with lantern in hand.
“We all have our orders.” The captain frowned. “To follow whether we approve of them or not.”
“I’m not a member of your Roman guard.”
“You are a citizen, all the same.”
“But not a miracle worker.” The doctor moved his lantern closer to the prisoner and ran it along the length of his body, stopping at his head, where plum-colored blood soaked the table in a widening swatch. “Do your superiors really expect to get away with this?”
“They have no choice.”
The doctor looked up from the prisoner and swallowed hard. “And this has no chance.”
“Just do your part. What happens afterward is not your concern.”
“And if I refuse?”
“My orders are to kill you.”
The doctor laid a goatskin bag containing his instruments on a stone pedestal within easy reach of the table. “Then I suppose I should get started.”
He lifted a pot from the open flame where he had set it long before to boil and placed it too on the pedestal next to a rag. Next he removed the first instrument from his bag and inspected it in the dull glow of the oil light.
“All the same, Captain, even if this works it will change nothing.”
“You’d better hope it does,” the captain said grimly, “for all our sakes.”
* * * *
F
rom what you’ve told me, that was as far as Winston Daws— and Lev as a young man—got in their translation,” Father Mike explained after he had finished paraphrasing the first part of Josephus’ tale. “Because so much of the scroll was illegible, and because they lacked the equipment they needed, they assumed the patient was Christ and the doctor had been ordered to save him.”
“And the Knights Templars struck before Daws and Lev could get any further.”
“If they had,” Father Mike said. “If they’d been able to . . .”
“What?”
Father Mike’s face was grim, or perhaps just weary. “You really want to know?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because you may not like what you hear, Ben,” Father Mike said and picked up his paraphrased translation of the story where he had left off.
* * * *
T
he Doctor moved a circular instrument over the prisoner’s right palm. The hand was dirty, but otherwise unmarred by blood o
r wound. The doctor started to lower the point of the instrument toward his flesh, then stopped and gazed again at the two soldiers from the Roman guard.
“I’m much more used to treating wounds, not inflicting them.”