The Scroll

by Grant R. Jeffrey

  “I told you that I confirmed the void is right below you. Must you doubt everything I say?” Nuri’s jaw tensed.

  “I don’t doubt you, Nuri. I believe the void is where you say it is. The question is, how could someone hide a treasure beneath a stone step that is carved out of the ground? I’ll bet Joel’s salary that we’ll find the tread we want a little farther down.”

  “Hey, leave my salary out of this.” Rubin began moving dirt with a small trowel.

  “Why down and not farther up?” Ben-Judah inched closer.

  “Because Amber told us that down was the right direction.”

  “What? No I didn’t. You just said to choose—”

  “I’m just kidding, Amber. If I’m right, then we have a fifty-fifty chance that the tread we’re looking for will be down from where we are.”

  It took twenty minutes to delicately remove the dirt along the wall for a length of three treads. At the third tread, Chambers found what he was looking for: a slight gap, just two millimeters wide, where wall met tread. They found a matching space on the opposite side of the tunnel.

  “Well, this is interesting. Amber, let’s use your light again.” She shone the bright beam from the video camera on the area. The blinking red light told him she was recording. “I need a pick.”

  In any other context, someone might have handed him a big tool with a point and blade on one end. Instead, Rubin placed a dental pick in Chambers’s hand, which he used to scrape along the narrow gap. Dirt came out easily. He moved past Rubin and Simon and did the same to the other side. “Clever men, these Jewish monks.”

  He handed the small instrument back to Rubin and started pushing and pulling centuries of dirt away from the step; much of it landed in his lap and around his legs. Rubin joined him, and soon another three treads were cleared and brushed clean.

  Cove snapped several shots. “I’m afraid I don’t follow. You think this tread leads to the treasure several steps up? Is that it?”

  Chambers nodded. “The scroll gave enough hints and even a distance—forty cubits—from the east-facing entrance. Of course that’s vague, probably purposely so. Remember, these treasures are meant to be found—not by us—but by the people who hid them, or at least the next generation. It’s unlikely anyone else would find the hiding place, but if they did, the monks didn’t want to make it easy on them.”

  “So what do you propose now, David?” Nuri didn’t seem pleased. “We still have the same basic problem. If we’re going to hammer our way into the chamber, then why not just break through the stairstep directly over the cache?”

  “Look, I know we’re supposed to be working fast, but that doesn’t mean we can’t take a little time to learn how these men thought and worked. It may be important later.”

  “What do you propose, David?” Ben-Judah stroked his long beard.

  “Let’s see if we can’t move this stone tread before we start chiseling things to pieces.”

  “But it fits into the walls,” Elizabeth said. “Doesn’t that, like, mean it’s wider than the corridor?”

  “Yes, it does, Elizabeth—”

  “People call me Lizzy.”

  “Okay, Lizzy. You’re right, but the tread had to be placed here in the first place. The tunnel is carved out of natural rock. Obviously they didn’t build the tunnel after the stairs. My guess: the stone slides to the right or left.” He looked at Amber. “Choose right or left.”

  “Not this time, bub. You make your own choices.”

  Chambers smiled. “This is what I love about archaeology.” He rose, stepped to one end of the tunnel, placed his back against the stone wall, positioned his boot-clad feet on the tread, and pushed.

  Nothing.

  He tried again, straining. Rubin and Simon tried to help by pushing with their hands. The stone moved a quarter of an inch but no more. It felt to Chambers like the end hit something. “Let’s try it from the other direction.” This time the stone moved an inch, then three. The sound of sand grinding against stone filled the space.

  Chambers and the two aides struggled. Despite the cool air in the tunnel, sweat dotted Chambers’s brow, then drew together in streams. He pushed back into the tunnel wall until he could feel the chiseled stone pressing through his brown work shirt and used his legs to apply as much pressure to the tread as possible. The tread alone had to weigh hundreds of pounds, and trying to move it along more stone was nearly impossible.

  “Let me have a go at it.” Landau didn’t wait for permission. He elbowed Chambers aside. The day before, Chambers learned firsthand that Landau was strong. Recalling the event made his neck hurt.

  Landau followed Chambers’s technique, putting his back to the wall and using his legs to slide the stone slab to the side. It moved, but not far enough. Just as Chambers had convinced himself that they would have to destroy the tread with the handheld pneumatic hammer, Landau grunted, then groaned loudly. The stone moved another inch, this time pulling away from the hand-cut socket in the wall.

  Landau stopped and sucked in a lungful of dusty air. Sweat dripped from his face. “That’s a workout.”

  “See, and you probably thought I was just a wimp.” Chambers looked into the small gap.

  “What makes you think I’ve changed my mind?” Landau followed the quip with a weak grin. “Give me a sec, and I’ll give it another try.”

  “Hang on. It’s time for a little physics.” Chambers moved up the tunnel, stepped outside, and found what he was looking for: a long-handled shovel and a crowbar. He returned to the others and set the blade of the shovel in the thin gap between the end of the tread and the wall. He pushed against the wood handle, using it as a lever. He repeated the action and each time the block moved a few millimeters. When he looked up from his work, he saw Landau holding the long metal bar.

  “Say when.”

  “I think now would be good. We have enough room to swing the stone over the lower tread and from beneath, the one above.”

  “So turn the stone?”

  “Exactly.” Chambers hoped the set hole on the opposite side was wider than he could see. It had to be. There was no other way to explain how the stone had been placed two millennia ago.

  The men repositioned themselves. Cove and Elizabeth took turns snapping shots. Amber kept the video camera going but was still able to direct her assistant.

  It took fifteen minutes for Chambers and Landau to move the stone another four inches and pivot the one end away from the wall. With the help of Nuri, Rubin, and Simon, they finally dislodged the step, pushing it to the north side of the tunnel. Chambers was breathing hard and dripping with perspiration. Only his pride kept him from sitting down.

  Behind the area where the stone had rested for two thousand years was packed dirt. Chambers lowered himself, studied the packed fill. “I need a trowel.” One was handed to him. He began digging, slowly at first, then faster. It took close to half an hour for him to clear the space beneath the upper tread. He piled the dirt to either side of him. No one spoke. The drama before them might be missed by others, but not this collection of people. “The tread bridges the distance between the walls. The dirt doesn’t seem to be structural—” He stopped suddenly. His trowel hit something other than dirt. “Found something. Feels like wood. Spongy wood.”

  Chambers lay on his stomach and pointed his flashlight into the cavity. He pushed to a kneeling position and drew a dirty hand across his brow. “I’m going to try to break through the wood with the crowbar.” He looked at Nuri. “I don’t suppose you thought to have a remote camera brought in with the other equipment.”

  “It just so happens, I did.”

  “That’s good thinking. Let’s get that ready to go.”

  Chambers returned his attention to the void and the wood barricade at the back of the fifteen-centimeter-high space. The wood put up no resistance. Several sharp thrusts with the crowbar produced a small, ragged opening. Chambers reached under the stone and gently fingered the hole. The wood was about
as thick as a two-by-four but much softer. The fact that it had remained at all impressed Chambers. He pulled back a piece of the wood. It was dark and crumbled in his hand. He paused and wondered about the last hand to touch what he was holding.

  Nuri reappeared with a handheld device connected to a coil of what looked like thick wire coated in black insulation. Chambers moved to the side to give Nuri room to work. Taking Chambers’s place, Nuri went to work, uncoiling the fiber optic “snake” and activating the handheld control and display.

  “What are you doing?” Cove asked.

  Nuri looked at Chambers. “This is your baby. You tell him.”

  “This is a camera. Sometimes called a snake camera because”—he held up the black cable—”it looks like a snake. Clever, no?” He pointed at the end of the device. “There are tiny lights, which the camera needs to take good video. We can see the image on this handheld monitor, and we can control the light and direction of the camera here.”

  “Like what plumbers use to look inside pipes?”

  “Yes.” Nuri activated the device and pointed the end of the “snake” at Amber. “Say cheese.”

  She aimed the video camera at him. “You say cheese.”

  “Just making sure the camera is working.” Nuri slipped the lens into the space cleared by Chambers.

  Looking over Nuri’s shoulder, Chambers watched the small video screen in the monitor. The monitor went from black to a dark image with a white glow made by the inline light. A second later, Chambers saw the hole he had created. “That ought to be big enough.”

  Nuri huffed. “By a factor of ten, David.”

  “I was using a crowbar, Nuri; hardly a delicate tool. It’s still better than a pneumatic hammer.”

  Nuri didn’t respond. He paused as the camera reached the uneven-shaped hole, then looked up at Ben-Judah. The others parted to give the professor room to move down the steps. Landau helped him take a stand that allowed a view of the small screen.

  “Shall we?” Nuri asked.

  “Proceed.” Ben-Judah’s words came with a tremor.

  Nuri pushed the camera through the hole.

  NINETEEN

  Chambers sat in the dirt on the side of the hill a few meters from the tunnel opening. He watched as the delivery truck with the familiar brown paint job pulled away, headed along the same course he had used yesterday in his anger-fueled departure, something he now regretted. What he could not see was the armor behind the paint and gold lettering. The fact that such an armored truck had been created proved Ben-Judah and Trent’s belief that the treasures not only existed but would be found. Chambers had shared their belief in the reality of the treasure but had serious doubts anyone could find them, if they still existed. After all, not a single treasure had ever been found. Until now.

  There was a great deal of work to do before they could say much about the horde with any authority. The wood chest would be carbon dated, the tool marks in the tunnel would be analyzed, and the silver would be tested by a metallurgist. Those things had to be done. Science required it, but Chambers and the others already knew what they had found: silver from the temple treasury. A pomegranate emblem had been stamped into each bar. A pomegranate was one of the emblem motifs of the first and second temples.

  A haze blurred Chambers’s thinking. His mind, normally sharp, quick, and analytical, was awash in a boiling emotional stew. Thrilled as he was with the find, moved as he was with its importance, he also felt shame for the brutish techniques they used to retrieve the artifacts. He had been successful in minimizing damage by removing the keystone step, but once Nuri had slipped the snake camera through the pilot hole Chambers had created with his own brutish wielding of a crowbar, he knew there was no way they could remove the chest, which was too damaged by age and decay and too large to fit through the narrow opening. How the ancients managed to get the box into the void in the first place was a ship-in-the-bottle mystery. Given time, weeks—maybe months—he might have been able to figure it out, but Ben-Judah gave the command.

  “Retrieve it.”

  Nuri took the handheld pneumatic hammer and placed the hardened-steel chisel in the center of the tread over the void. It was done with brute force instead of finesse, and Chambers couldn’t help feeling a bit like the grave robbers who used to steal artifacts from Egyptian tombs and sell them to the highest bidder. He could still hear the sound of the pneumatic hammer, powered by compressed air, as it split the tread. To Nuri’s credit, he hesitated before pulling the trigger. As much as he disdained the man, Chambers had to acknowledge he was a good archaeologist in his own right.

  The silver ingots found in a decayed chest would not be sold. They had too much historical value for that, and the way Ben-Judah wept at the sight of them told Chambers that their significance to the Jews was more than he could imagine.

  “You okay?” Amber stood by his side. He hadn’t heard her approach. “You look a little lost.”

  “Not lost, just conflicted.”

  “What is there to be conflicted about? We just broke every dig rule in the book.”

  His eyes traced her dirt-powdered face. She was never more beautiful than when on a dig site. “Why the rush? This isn’t like the professor. He’s always been … been …”

  “Cautious? Pedestrian? Rigid about rules?”

  “I was going to say orthodox, but you’re spot on. This isn’t like him.”

  “He’s hiding something.” She pushed back a strand of hair.

  “Like what?”

  She lowered herself to the ground and sat next to him. “If I knew what it was, then it wouldn’t be hidden.” She smirked. “I do know this: it takes a lot to move a man like Ben-Judah off center. I’d hate to see our new technique appear on the Discovery Channel.”

  “Not much chance of that. Although Cove was snapping photos as if his life depended on it. I’m not sure National Geographic will consider keeping the pics to themselves. What are the others doing?”

  “Ben-Judah told them to take a break. Nuri wants to do another GPR survey on the back wall.”

  “Why? The first one showed a dead end.” Chambers stretched out his legs and leaned back on his arms.

  “The idea of a stairway to nowhere bothers him. I’d think it’d bother you.”

  “Are we going to argue now?” Chambers looked away. “Because I’m a tad spent. Maybe we can reschedule the fight to another time.”

  Amber turned her gaze to the flatland that separated the Dead Sea from the hill. Two thousand years ago, the Dead Sea was larger, but since dams had slowed the flow of the Jordan River, evaporation had slowly reduced its volume. At one time, the water would have been much closer to the hill they sat upon.

  “I’m not trying to pick a fight, David. Really, I’m not.”

  “What are you trying to do?”

  “You know, some people go through life avoiding emotional land mines; you seem intent on jumping from one bomb to the next. I came over to compliment you.”

  “A compliment, eh. I suppose I could tolerate one of those.” He grinned.

  “I know the technique … the lack of technique in this dig has been a problem for you. That’s true for all of us. You did a magnificent job in there.”

  Chambers appreciated the comment. “Thanks. I wish I could have figured out the rest.”

  “So does Nuri. That’s why he wants to explore the back wall. He thinks it may hold the secret to how the Essenes did what they did. He thinks they may have built the stairs as a ruse or that they never completed the work—”

  “That they had to rush to hide some of the treasures because the Roman army was bearing down on Jerusalem, so they made a small side tunnel.” Chambers thought for a moment. “The GPR showed no voids beneath the stairs other than the one we found.”

  “Not under the stairs, David. Along the stairs on the other side of the tunnel.”

  “Not a bad idea, but then why create a tread that could be removed?”

  She shrugged. “I d
on’t know. Maybe to frustrate people like us. People searching for the treasure, I mean.” She picked up a small stone and rubbed dirt off its surface. “Do you want to tell him he’s wasting his time?”

  Chambers looked at the late afternoon sky. “No. His idea makes more sense than mine.”

  “What’s your idea?”

  “You looking for a good laugh?”

  “You know me, I love to laugh.”

  “Okay, just laugh at the idea not me. I am a delicate flower.” He tried not to grin at his own comment.

  “Sure you are. Just a daisy struggling for your share of sunlight.”

  “When I was thinking about this a few moments ago, I told myself it was a ship-in-a-bottle mystery. Have you ever seen anyone build a ship in a bottle?”

  “No.”

  “I had an uncle who used to do it. When I was a kid he tried to show me how it was done. I didn’t pay much attention. I didn’t like my uncle much and only went to his home on holidays. I do remember seeing him insert small parts of the boat into the bottle. The parts were hinged. I don’t mean with metal hinges, but somehow they were attached in such a way that once their binding was released, usually a small string or rubber band, they would open. You can’t do that with the whole model but you get the idea.”

  “Wait a sec.” Amber’s forehead wrinkled. “Are you saying they built the chest in the cavity?”

  “I told you it was a wacky idea, but it could be done. When we analyze the chest, we’ll know more.”

  Amber dropped the pebble. “What kind of hinge would they use?”

  “It doesn’t have to be hinged. Okay, I’m doing this off the top of my head, but let’s say they used a pin-and-hole system. Or maybe a mortise and tenon joint. First they put the base of the chest in the cavity, maybe with the back side already attached. I’d have to test this, but they might have been able to insert the base and attached side. Maybe not. Anyway, the base either has holes for pins or mortises for tenons. They would insert a side with glue on the tenon and set it in place and so on. It’d be a pain, but it could be done. If it was done that way, then I could imagine someone practicing the procedure over and over until he had it down. The last two things they would do would be to reach through the opening and drop in the silver ingots one at a time, then slide the lid over.”