“Hands and knees for this one. But it’s only a couple meters.” He could see some agitation building in her skeptical gaze.
Amit took the lead again, shuffling along on all fours into the rear chamber. When he stood, he immediately went for a second pole light close to the opening. The room came to life as Jules clambered in and got to her feet.
For a few seconds she said nothing as she paced the perimeter of the square chamber, skipping a corner where equipment and tools were heaped, pausing in spots to run her fingers along the hash marks cut into the stone walls. “Who made this?” she finally asked.
“I’m almost positive it was the Essenes.”
“Ah, the Essenes,” she incredulously replied. “Our scroll-writing friends again. A busy bunch, weren’t they?”
And he hadn’t even shown her just how busy they’d been. “Those bricks you saw on the ground out there”—he pointed to the passage—“had sealed the opening and were covered in earth and clay so no one would ever find this place.”
“Okay. So let’s say they carved this room.” Downplaying the significance, she shrugged. “So? Why?” But she could tell by the shit-eating grin on the Israeli’s face that he knew more—lots more. “And I’m still not seeing the glyph.”
“The good stuff is down below,” he promised, pacing over to the toolboxes placed around the opening in the floor to prevent anyone from falling in. With Jules watching over his shoulder, he slid some of the stuff aside to access the steps. “Why don’t you go first?” he said to her.
A tentative pause. Then she took a step closer and angled her flashlight downward. “Sure.”
Amit’s widening grin pinched his goatee at the corners. Now she was doing a lousy job of suppressing her excitement. “Careful on the steps.”
Jules kept her right hand on the wall as she made her way down, fingertips rising and falling over countless other hash marks. Her hiking boots squeaked on the smooth treads. At the base of the steps, she made some room for Amit to stand beside her.
While she stood frozen in place, mouth agape, Amit reached over to turn on another pole light that sucked out the darkness from the spacious, cube-shaped chamber. When he looked back to Jules, her breasts were rising and falling fast, and she wasn’t paying much attention to the fact that he noticed. The cool air had only improved the show.
Her mesmerized gaze was glued to the huge painting covering the wall opposite the steps. It was a magnificent specimen—white with colorful designs—and looked like it had only been painted yesterday. She strode over to it.
“I’m sure I don’t need to remind you not to touch it,” he teased.
“Ha-ha,” she said without taking her eyes off the image. “It’s amazing.”
In the center of the wall painting was a small arched niche carved into the underlying sandstone—empty. Spreading out around it, concentric circles made a sunburst, drawn upon a larger design—an equilateral cruciform, wrapped by grapevine tendrils. The ends of the cross widened into spades, each painted with Judaic symbols—two shofars, the ceremonial horns used to usher in the Jewish New Year, on the north and south axis; two lemon-shaped etrogs—fruits used during Sukkot, the feast of the Tabernacle—at the east and west points.
But most intriguing were the four quarter circles that curved between the arms of the cross, each containing a most unusual symbol—a dolphin entwined around a trident.
“I wonder what was here,” she said, pressing her face close to the empty niche.
“A clay jar, actually,” he knowingly replied. “And it contained three scrolls.”
Her astounded eyes finally gave him some time. “You’re kidding! Where are they?”
“Certainly would not have been wise to leave them here,” he reminded her. “I brought them to the Rockefeller Museum for transcription.”
“Jesus,” she gasped. “This is amazing.” Hands on her hips, she studied the painting a few moments longer, eyes squinting tight at the strange dolphin-trident symbol. “This symbol . . . what’s it doing here?”
He moved close to her side and took it in once again. “Crazy, right? Seems almost pagan.”
“Exactly.” She gave it a few seconds longer, then shook her head in defeat.
“We have a sacrificial altar too,” he added, moving to an enormous raised stone commanding the room’s center. It had been carved into a cube, its top scooped out like an ancient sink.
“Spooky,” she said, giving it only a cursory once-over.
“A nd a mikvah.” He pointed to the far corner, where more steps sank into a wide rectangular pit cut into the floor—once filled with water and used for ritual bathing and purification. The finding was consistent with other mikvahs found in the village near the sea and underscored the Essenes’ strict hygienic practices.
“You’d think they were using the place as a temple,” she said with some sarcasm.
But that’s precisely what Amit had thought too. “The plot thickens,” he replied simply.
“And the glyph?”
“Right. Over here,” he said, waving her to the corner closest to the stairs.
“On the wall there.” He pointed to an etching that wasn’t easy to discern until they were within a meter of it.
Jules aimed the flashlight directly at it to pull the shadows out from the lines. “So I take it you’re thinking the Essenes did this?”
“It would make the most sense. The room was sealed away. The jar was still here when we opened this chamber. If anyone else had come in, they’d at least have taken the jar, don’t you think?”
Looters were looters. “I see your point.” She ran a finger along the lines. “And this is very clear. A clear message. Even its positioning near the steps . . . the last thing one would see when exiting the chamber.”
“So the question is,” he asked, “why leave a glyph for Heliopolis?”
She considered this. “A forwarding address, I suppose.”
He hadn’t thought of this. “How so?”
“Well, whatever was here, maybe upstairs in the other chamber, must have been moved to Egypt.”
Amit blanched. “My God, Jules. That actually makes sense,” he muttered.
“Good thing you brought me here.” She patted his solid shoulder. “Question is, what was in the chamber upstairs?”
“Maybe the scrolls have something to say about it,” he surmised, stroking his goatee. That’s when he heard the first faint sounds coming from above, trickling down the steps.
“But if these symbols—”
“Shhh,” he cut her off, grabbing her wrist. “Hear that?” he whispered.
“What?”
“Shhhhhh.”
Then Jules did hear it. Subtle scraping sounds. Feet scuffing along stone? “Are you expecting someone?” she whispered.
He shook his head. A program started running in the back of his brain—a hardwired protocol from his IDF days, activated only during the silent infiltrations of radical Islamic safe houses in Gaza. “Let’s get up top,” he suggested, pulling her to the steps. Then, as an afterthought, he quickly unzipped the rucksack and pulled out a tiny device.
“What are you doing?”
“Keep moving. I’m right behind you.”
20
******
In the front corner of the upper chamber, empty polyethylene toolboxes and storage bins were stacked three high. The clunky radar unit was parked in front of it all, next to a small generator. Behind the organized clutter, a sizable gap ensured there would be no contact with the chamber walls. But now, contact had been made—not by the gear, but by Jules and Amit as they squeezed in tight to shield themselves. Since the stack was barely a meter in height, Jules was practically flat against the cool stone floor. Amit could only fit sideways, lying on his left side.
Amit’s head peeked out the side just enough to monitor the shadows playing across the floor in front of the passage opening. Thus far, it sounded like only one set of footsteps. A looter, he guessed. Hi
s fingers wrapped tighter around the handle of a hefty pickax he’d grabbed from a tool rack. It would only be a matter of time before . . .
The scuffing sounds grew louder as the dark silhouette stretched in front of the passage.
The intruder was coming.
Amit craned his head back at Jules and signaled for her to stay low. Keeping his head out of view, his ears fixed on the footsteps to monitor the movement.
Chssst, chsst.
Pause.
Chssst, chssst,... chssst, chsst.
The intruder was now in the chamber. Amit hoped his decoy would divert any search behind the boxes.
Then he could hear the quiet footsteps easing down the steps toward the loud voice spouting academic jargon in the lower chamber.
Waiting till he counted seven footfalls, Amit quietly got up on his haunches and crawled over to the steps, careful not to let the pickax scrape along the stone. It wouldn’t take long for the looter to realize that the lower chamber was empty and that a small digital recorder was playing back Amit’s dictation at high volume from the bottom of the bathing pit.
The intruder figured it out sooner than expected. Amit heard a gruff male voice curse in Hebrew, then footsteps rushing back to the steps. He dropped the pickax and scrambled for the stone slab set just beside the hole. With all his might he began pushing the slab over the opening.
The first muffled spitting sound confused Amit as something ricocheted off the edge of the slab, taking a chunk of the stone with it. It took a split second for it to sink in: the man was shooting at him! The gun was equipped with a silencer—not what he’d expect from a run-of-the-mill grave robber. “Jules! Get out of here! He’s got a gun!” he yelled.
The feet were rushing up the steps. No time to think. Amit gave another huge push and the stone fell into place.
Another obscenity came from below.
The archaeologist’s eyes darted around for something to pull over the top of the slab. Nothing heavy enough to keep the man trapped for long.
The slab suddenly fractured in the middle. Once. Twice. Each time with a thwunk.
The guy was shooting it to pieces. Amit didn’t bother with the pickax, but grabbed his flashlight and doused the lights.
Jules was already in the outer chamber as Amit began scurrying through the passage on all fours. “Don’t wait! Go!” he screamed to her.
With flashlight in hand, Jules dashed into the tunnel.
Amit killed the lights in the front chamber too, then flicked on his flashlight. From the other side of the passage, he could hear the large pieces of slab tumbling onto the floor. He raced down the tunnel.
Up ahead, Amit spotted Jules. She was regrouping from a nasty fall, blood pouring down her right knee. “Keep moving!”
He caught up to her as she was beginning to make her way down the ladder, raw fear glinting in her eyes. “I want you to run as fast as you can, back the way we came,” he instructed in a low voice. “And zigzag. Don’t run in a line. Turn off the flashlight when you’ve made it out about fifty meters.”
She nodded quickly. He liked the fact that she knew when wisecracking wasn’t appropriate.
Amit was already a third of the way down the ladder when Jules hit the ground running. She looked back over her shoulder and paused when she saw that he wasn’t following her.
“Go! ”
Luckily, she listened.
There was a sharp bend to the cliff wall, just beneath the outcropping that formed a rim beneath the cave. Immediately switching off his light, Amit threw his back up against the stone face behind the ladder. He hoped the intruder wouldn’t see him there.
As she sprinted through the gorge, Jules’s flashlight cut side to side, up and down.
Go, Jules, go. She seemed even faster than his intern Ariel.
Then the gun spat overhead.
Dread came over Amit when he saw Jules stumble . . . no, not stumble. The shot must have pinged off something in front of her, forcing her to duck and weave. Then her flashlight disappeared. And so did Jules—swallowed by the dark gorge.
Another curse echoed from above.
There was a long pause. Too long. Was the gunman trying to figure out where Amit had gone to?
But less than two minutes later, the man mounted the ladder to make his descent.
Amit made his move. He lunged forward, throwing both hands against the ladder. It took everything he had to lever the man’s weight away from the wall. The gun swung as the ladder teetered sideways.
The gunman landed flat on his back against some jagged stones and let out a moan. The ladder came down right on top of him, trapping his gun hand between its rungs.
Then the dazed assassin—dressed all in black, including a mask—was scrambling beneath the ladder, trying to train the gun on the giant Israeli target. That’s when the C-4 the assassin had planted throughout the chambers, tunnel, and cave opening detonated.
Amidst a pulsing rush of orange fire, rock and debris shot out from the cave opening, the blast rumbling like a thunderclap through the gorge. The powerful shock wave pulled Amit off his feet and landed him right on top of the ladder, his mass instantly snapping the gunman’s protruding forearm between the rungs. The broken limb bent unnaturally to one side, a spear of bloody bone jutting through the black sleeve. The man howled in pain.
Amit covered his head with his hands. Rocks showered down on him, pounding his back. When the deluge ended, he quickly looked up to see that the gunman was struggling to use his good arm to retrieve the fumbled handgun.
Amit got to the gun first. Then came the rage.
“Stay where you are!” he shouted in Hebrew, pointing the gun at the man’s face. The weapon felt very familiar. The man’s dropped flashlight sat beside them, and Amit could see the blood seeping out of a tear in the mask where the man had taken a stone to the head. He reached down to pull off the man’s hood. As it loosened from under his shirt the man reached to his hip for a knife.
As the blade darted quickly into the light, Amit reacted, throwing out his free hand to grab the wrist. Instinct and adrenaline told him to shoot the man. Instead, he brought the gun up high and slammed it against the man’s head where the rock had started the job. He went out cold.
Amit peeled back the mask and tried to place the face. The guy was young, maybe mid-twenties—appeared to be an Israeli. A quick search of his pockets yielded no identification. Nothing but two magazines full of ammo. He pocketed them.
Amit wasn’t about to pull him down the gorge. And forget about calling the authorities. Qumran was situated in the West Bank, policed by the Palestinian Authority. He knew the political kowtowing he’d endured just to get permission for these excavations. The last thing he needed was to be connected to an explosion and a rogue Israeli hit man.
He took out his cell phone, swapped the gun for the flashlight, and snapped a mediocre picture of the man’s face.
Folding the phone, he slid it into his pocket and picked up the gun. Dismay came fast as he pointed the flashlight up through the heavy dust. The blast had completely collapsed the cave. He had to remind himself that the scrolls still remained—that he and Jules were still alive.
But it crushed him to see that the discovery of a lifetime had just been obliterated.
And he was determined to find out why.
21
******
Jerusalem
Despite the high-speed connection with an IP address assigned to an Internet café located in Phoenix, Arizona, the streaming data feed had taken over three hours to finish. The entirety of the data stored on the American geneticist’s laptop had been transferred to a new hard drive located in Jerusalem’s Old City, in an office beneath the Temple Institute’s unassuming museum gallery in the Jewish Quarter.
The delay had been prolonged by the sophisticated encryption and password protection layers that had locked down the hard drive. However, highly secretive code-breaking algorithms were standard issue on the mobile phones of
field operatives.
Analysis of the computer’s contents had then been entrusted to the evercapable, waiflike twenty-one-year-old computer whiz named Ziv.
“There’s an awful lot to look at here. So I began by sorting the files, pulling out all the program-specific stuff. I usually look at source tags first; tells me where data is originating,” she explained to Cohen. Beside her workstation—which, with its multiple plasma screens, armada of slim drive towers, and blinking lights, looked like command central for a space mission—the surly rabbi stood with arms crossed.
Cohen let the mousy computer genius spout some technical jargon. It seemed to give her confidence. And he needed her to stay motivated.
“And all these files here”—her wiry fingers tapped the keyboard at hyperspeed and a list came up on the center monitor—“caught my attention. Seems they all came off a server—an intranet actually.” Her eyes showed fatigue from the hours she’d spent staring into glowing plasma crystals, not to mention overt frustration at Rabbi Cohen’s keeping her well after the workday ended. It was already nine p.m., and he seemed to have no intention of quitting. The rabbi looked a bit edgy too, she thought.
The Sacred Blood Page 10