Contract With God (11 page)

Andrea flashed a smile around the table, which some people returned.

‘The man with the moustache is Tommy Eichberg, our head driver. And lastly, on the right, Doc Harel, our official quack.’

‘Don’t worry if you can’t remember everyone’s name,’ said the doctor, raising her hand. ‘We’re going to spend a fair amount of time together in a place that’s not renowned for its entertainment, so we’ll get to know each other pretty well. Don’t forget to carry the ID badge the crew left in your cabins—’

‘As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter if you know everyone’s name as long as you do your job,’ the old professor interrupted. ‘Now, if you would all turn your attention to the screen, I’m going to tell you a story.’

The screen lit up with computer-generated images of an ancient city. Above a valley rose a settlement of red walls and tiled roofs, surrounded by a triple outer wall. The streets were full of people going about their daily routines. Andrea was amazed by the quality of the images, worthy of a Hollywood production, but the voice narrating the documentary was that of the professor.
This guy’s got such a huge ego he can’t even hear how lousy his voice sounds
, she thought
. He’s giving me a headache
. The voiceover began:

The peaceful scene of women filling their water vessels and children playing beside the outer walls near the wells was interrupted as distant banners crowned by eagles appeared on the horizon. Trumpets sounded and the children, suddenly frightened, ran back inside the walls.

The screen displayed a battering ram destroying the outer wall. From the city’s highest hill temple priests witnessed the scene with tears in their eyes.

Surrounded by corpses, a group of Roman soldiers carried a gigantic
menorah
out of the burning temple while their general looked on from his horse, smiling.

An old priest with a white beard and dressed in a black robe was talking with two young men as others waited their turn in a large stone cave lit by torches.

Holding a torch, the priest led the eight men, who were carrying a large object with the aid of a litter, through a network of tunnels.

The professor pressed a button and the screen went dark. He turned to the audience, who were waiting expectantly.

‘What those men did was quite incredible. They travelled fourteen miles carrying an enormous load in roughly nine hours. And that was only the beginning of their trip.’

‘What were they carrying, Professor?’ Andrea asked.

‘I suppose it was the most valuable piece of treasure,’ Harel said.

‘All in good time, my dears. Yirm əyáhu went back inside the city and spent the next two days writing a very special manuscript on an even more unusual scroll. It was a detailed map with instructions on how to recover the different portions of the treasure that had been salvaged from the temple . . . but he couldn’t manage the work alone. It was a verbal map, etched into the surface of a copper scroll almost ten feet long.’

‘Why copper?’ asked someone at the back.

‘Unlike papyrus or parchment, copper is extremely durable. It is also very difficult to write on. It took five people to complete the inscription in a single session, at times taking turns. When they had finished, Yirm əyáhu divided the document into two parts, giving the first to a messenger with instructions for its safekeeping at a community of Yisseyites who lived near Jericho. The other part he gave to his own son, one of the
kohanim
, a priest like himself. We know this much of the story firsthand because Yirm əyáhu wrote it down in its entirety on the copper manuscript. After that, all trace of it was lost for 1,882 years.’

The old man paused to take a sip of water. For a moment he no longer looked like a wrinkled, pompous puppet but seemed more human.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, you now know more of this story than most of the experts in the world. Nobody has figured out exactly how the manuscript was written. Nevertheless, it became quite famous when one part of it surfaced in 1952 in a cave in Palestine. It was among the 85,000 or so fragments of text that have been found in Qumran.’

‘Is this the famous Copper Scroll of Qumran?’ Dr Harel asked.

The archaeologist once again turned on the screen, which now displayed an image of the famous scroll: a curved plate of dark green metal covered in barely legible writing.

‘That is how it is referred to. Researchers were immediately struck by the unusual nature of the discovery, as much by the odd choice of writing material as by the inscriptions themselves - none of which could be properly deciphered. What remained clear from the start was that it was a list of treasure containing sixty-four items. The entries gave an idea of what would be found and where. For example, “At the bottom of the cave that is forty paces to the east of Achor Tower, dig three feet. There you will find six bars of gold.” But the directions were vague and the quantities described seemed so unreal - something like two hundred tons of gold and silver - that the “serious” researchers thought it had to be some kind of myth, a hoax or a joke.’

‘It seems a lot of effort for a joke,’ said Tommy Eichberg.

‘Exactly! Excellent, Mr Eichberg, excellent, especially for a driver,’ said Forrester, who seemed incapable of paying the slightest compliment without an accompanying insult. ‘In AD 70 there were no hardware stores. An enormous plate of ninety-nine per cent pure copper must have cost a great deal. Nobody would have chosen to write a piece of fiction on such a precious surface. There was a ray of hope. Item Number sixty-four was, according to the Qumran Scroll, “a text such as this, with instructions and a code for finding the objects described”.’

One of the soldiers raised his hand.

‘So this old guy, this Yermijacko . . .’

‘Yirməyahu.’

‘Whatever. The old guy cut the thing in two, and each part held the key to finding the other?’

‘And both had to be together in order to find the treasure. Without the second scroll there was no hope of figuring things out. But eight months ago, something happened . . .’

‘I’m sure your audience would prefer the shorter version, Dr,’ said Father Fowler with a smile.

The old archaeologist stared at Fowler for a few seconds. Andrea noticed that the professor seemed to be finding it difficult to continue and asked herself what on earth had happened between the two men.

‘Yes, of course. Well, suffice it to say that the second half of the scroll finally turned up, thanks to the efforts of the Vatican. It had been handed down from father to son as a sacred object. The duty of the family was to keep it safe until the appropriate time. What they did was hide it in a candle, but eventually even they lost track of what was inside.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me. It was - how many? - seventy, eighty generations? It’s a miracle they continued the tradition of protecting the candle all that time,’ said someone sitting in front of Andrea. It was the administrator, Brian Hanley, she thought.

‘We Jews are a patient people,’ said Nuri Zayit, the cook. ‘We’ve been waiting for the Messiah for three thousand years.’

‘And you’re going to be waiting another three thousand,’ said one of Dekker’s soldiers. Loud bursts of laughter and slapping of hands accompanied the distasteful joke. But nobody else laughed. Because of the names, Andrea guessed that, with the exception of the hired guards, nearly all the members of the expedition were from a Jewish background. She could feel the tension in the room mounting.

‘Let’s continue,’ said Forrester, ignoring the soldiers’ ridicule. ‘Yes, it was a miracle. Have a look at it.’

One of the assistants brought over a wooden case about three feet long. Inside it, under protective glass, was a copper plate covered in Hebrew symbols. Everyone, including the soldiers, stared at the object and began commenting on it in low voices.

‘It looks almost new.’

‘Yes, the Copper Scroll of Qumran must be older. It’s not shiny and it’s cut into small strips.’

‘The Qumran Scroll appears to be more ancient because it was exposed to the air,’ the professor explained, ‘and it was cut into strips because the researchers couldn’t find any other way of opening it to read the contents. The second scroll was protected from oxidation by the wax covering it. That’s why the writing is as clear as the day it was written. Our own map of the treasure.’

‘So you’ve managed to decipher it?’

‘Once we had the second scroll, figuring out what the first one said was child’s play. What wasn’t easy was keeping the discovery quiet. Please don’t ask me details of the actual process because I’m not authorised to reveal any more, and besides, you wouldn’t understand it.’

‘So we’re going in search of a pile of gold? Isn’t that a little trite for such a pretentious expedition? Or for someone who’s got money coming out of his ears like Mr Kayn?’ asked Andrea.

‘Ms Otero, we’re not looking for a pile of gold. As a matter of fact, we’ve already discovered some.’

The old archaeologist signalled to one of his assistants, who spread a piece of black felt on the table and, with some effort, lifted a resplendent object onto it. It was the largest bar of gold Andrea had ever seen: the size of a man’s forearm but roughly shaped, it had probably been formed in some millennial foundry. Although its surface was studded with small craters, mounds and imperfections, it was very beautiful. Every eye in the room was glued to the object, and there were whistles of admiration.

‘Using the clues from the second scroll we discovered one of the hiding places described in the Copper Scroll of Qumran. That was in March this year, somewhere on the West Bank. There were six bars of gold like this one.’

‘How much is it worth?’

‘Around three hundred thousand dollars . . .’

The whistles turned into exclamations.

‘. . . but believe me, that’s nothing compared to the value of what we’re looking for: the most powerful object in the history of mankind.’

Forrester made a gesture and one of the assistants took the bar away, but left the black felt. The archaeologist took out a sheet of graph paper from a file and placed it where the gold bar had lain. Everyone leaned forward, intent on seeing what it was. They all recognised the object sketched on it immediately.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, you are the twenty-three people who have been chosen to recover the Ark of the Covenant.’

RED SEA

 

 

A ripple of amazement spread through the room. Everyone began to talk excitedly, and then badgered the archaeologist with questions.

‘Where is the Ark?’

‘What’s inside it . . .?’

‘How can we help . . .?’

Andrea was shocked by the assistants’ reactions as well as by her own. Those words, the Ark of the Covenant, had a magical ring that enhanced the archaeological importance of discovering an object over two thousand years old.

Her breathing quickened. Suddenly she had hundreds of questions for Forrester, but she knew straight away that it would be pointless to ask. The old man had taken them to this point and now he was going to leave them there, begging for more.

As if confirming Andrea’s theory, Forrester was looking at the group like the cat that had swallowed the canary. He gestured for them to be quiet.

‘That’s enough for today. I don’t want to give you any more than your brains can assimilate. We’ll let you know the rest when it’s time. For now, I’m going to turn things over to—’