Read The Solomon Scroll Online

Authors: Alex Lukeman

Tags: #Fiction & Literature, #Action Suspense, #Mystery & Suspense, #Espionage, #Thrillers

The Solomon Scroll (3 page)

BOOK: The Solomon Scroll
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Some made their money selling guns or drugs or women. Nazar sold all of those, but his main source of income was information. He lived at the center of a web of thieves and spies that reached across the Middle East and Europe, from the back alleys of Damascus to the corporate board rooms of London and Paris.

Not much of importance in the Middle East escaped his notice. For Al-Bayati, the endless wars were a blessing from God. Not that he believed in God. He believed in an insatiable deity of a darker nature, worshipped by his Carthaginian ancestors in centuries past. Nazar's god was old, older than the one revered by Christian, Jew and Muslim alike. It was to him that he directed his prayers and supplications.

The only other thing he believed in was greed. An intelligent and cunning man, Nazar found his most profitable information came from new developments in technology. New weapons, new discoveries, better ways to wage war. All these things equaled new ways to make money. The man who knew what was coming would always stay one step ahead of his competitors. To that end he had informers watching for information he could turn into profit. He had eyes in the nuclear facilities of Russia, men who watched the Israelis, and men in the temples of science in Europe. It was one of these who had told him about the odd looking Italian and his volcanic scroll. Nazar had dispatched his agent at once.

Professor Caprini's overnight bag rested on the desk in front of him. Nazar looked up at the man who had brought it. His name was Addison Rhoades, a disgraced British spy who'd become one of Bayati's most valuable assets. Rhoades was Bayati's fixer, the man who took care of problems. A small problem, Rhoades took care of it himself. A large one, he knew men who could do what needed to be done.

At first glance Rhoades looked like a successful European businessman. He was dressed in a good suit, a light blue shirt and a lavender tie knotted to perfection. A closer inspection revealed the dissipation in his face, the tight lines around his eyes and the darkness under them. He was tall, stronger than he looked and a highly trained assassin.

"You opened the bag?" Nazar said.

"Yes. The scroll lies in a case within."

"Are there notes?"

"There's a computer. I haven't looked at it but if there are notes, that's where they'll be. There are copies of the x-rays."

"Excellent. I assume you left no traces behind."

"You haven't read the papers today?"

Nazar thought. "The train in Italy?"

"Yes."

"Ah. A bit extreme, wasn't it?"

"It seemed best," Rhoades said.

"Who else knows about the x-rays?" Nazar asked.

"As far as I know, only one person. The technician who operated the machine."

"I want you to go back to Grenoble," Nazar said. "Eliminate him. Destroy any records of the results as well."

"That may involve damage to some very expensive equipment," Rhoades said.

"It's of no importance. The French will repair it. Make it look like some kind of terrorist attack."

"As you wish."

"You've done well, Addison."

Nazar reached into a drawer. He took out a small, foil wrapped ball. Rhoades wet his lips. Nazar saw the longing on his face.

"Make sure this doesn't interfere with your mission."

"Of course," Rhoades said. He took the ball, placing it in his pocket.

When Rhoades had left, Nazar opened Professor Caprini's laptop and booted it up. The screen requested a password. Nazar inserted a flash drive loaded with a program stolen from Russian intelligence. The screen went dark for a moment then cleared, revealing a dozen file folders against a blue background. Nazar clicked on the one marked Herculaneum.

The file contained the pictures taken in Grenoble, showing what lay beneath the crusted surface of the scroll. Even crystal x-ray tomography wasn't good enough to show what was written on most of the ancient document. But what had been revealed was enough to set Nazar's black heart beating.

 

 

CHAPTER 7

 

 

Stephanie and Elizabeth were in Elizabeth's office when Nick and Selena arrived. Ronnie came in right after them.

"I got a heads up from the White House," Elizabeth said. "Rice wants us to look into something that happened in France."

"If there's a chance we're going out soon you'd better get Ramirez in here," Nick said. "He needs to be in on the planning."

"Have you decided to keep him?"

"I don't know yet but this seems like a good time to show him how we work."

"Last I saw of our rookie, he was in the workout room. Steph, would you ask Sergeant Ramirez to come up here please?"

Down in the workout room Diego was on the treadmill, running in place. His mind was going faster than his feet.

Who the hell are these people?
he thought.
This is one weird set up. Hell, they're old, Carter and his Indian buddy. I wonder what happened to his ear? The blonde, Selena. Where did she learn to fight like that? And the whole operation is being run by a woman.

He punched a button. The speed picked up.

Those weapons in the armory...they're not fooling around. I still don't know what it is they do. If they're not spooks, what are they? Problem solvers, Harker said. What the hell does that mean? What kind of problems?

Stephanie came to the door. "Sergeant, Director Harker wants you upstairs."

"Right away."

He shut down the machine, felt his body thinking his feet were still moving. Stephanie was already gone. Diego mopped his brow with a towel and went upstairs.

Once Ramirez was seated, Harker got to the point.

"Sergeant, you are still on probation but Nick and I thought you should be here to see how we approach an operation. Put up the pictures please, Steph."

Stephanie touched a key on her laptop. The monitor on Elizabeth's office wall sprang to life with a picture of a large, gray building that looked like a giant doughnut. The walls and roof were one, rounded unit. The structure made a full circle, with a large open area in the center. Blackened, twisted metal showed where the force of an explosion had blown a large hole in the side.

"Looks like somebody took a bite out of it," Ronnie said.

He was wearing a faded blue Hawaiian shirt from his collection, covered with happy ukulele players strumming their instruments and wearing leis.

"Speaking of looks, you look like a music hall in old Waikiki," Nick said. "Where did you get that shirt? The Goodwill store?"

"Hey, this is a classic from the 70s. When are you going to learn to appreciate the finer points of being well-dressed?"

"Excuse me," Elizabeth said, "I wonder if I could have your attention?"

"Sorry, Director," Nick said

Ramirez watched the exchange in disbelief.

"What is that place in the picture?" Nick asked.

"The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France."

"That's a mouthful."

"It's one of the world's top facilities for studying x-rays and radiation, not to mention physics and chemistry. It's a very big deal. Someone just put it out of commission, as you can see."

"Terrorist attack?" Selena asked.

"That's the official line."

"What's the unofficial?"

"Unofficially, no one knows anything except that it was sabotage. The area that was targeted deals with a specialized technique called crystal x-ray tomography. It's like a super CAT scan, only instead of people it scans objects. The files and equipment in that part of the building were destroyed. Selena, you can read Aramaic. Is that right?"

"It depends. Usually I can."

"It's routine for all files created at the facility to be duplicated on another server. The research is too important to trust to only one backup source. The explosion destroyed one server but the files still exist on the backup. French security found x-rays of a scroll written in Aramaic taken in the days just before the attack."

"That's interesting, but how does it relate to the explosion?"

"The scroll could be the reason for it. It was sealed in volcanic debris during the eruption of Vesuvius. A professor from the Italian National Museum named Caprini brought it in to see if the text could be read by using x-rays. It turned out that the first page and part of the second could be seen. Caprini was a biblical archaeologist. He knew how to translate it."

"Was a biblical archaeologist?"

"He's dead. That's one reason the French think the scroll has something to do with this. He was headed back to Italy when an explosion blew him and his train off a bridge in the Italian Alps. It wasn't an accident."

"I read about that," Ronnie said. "More than two hundred people died in that wreck."

Nick looked at Harker. "You said one reason. There are others?"

"The technician who operated the x-ray equipment for Caprini was found dead after the explosion. He was killed before the blast."

"Someone murdered him?" Selena asked.

"Yes."

"Where's the scroll?"

"Good question. Caprini had the scroll and copies of the x-ray results with him on the train. No trace of them was found in the wreck."

"Was the facility attacked before or after the train wreck?" Nick asked.

"The day after."

"Seems like a big coincidence, two explosions involving that scroll."

"I don't believe in coincidences. Neither does French security. While he was in Grenoble, Caprini let it slip that the scroll could start a new war in the Middle East."

"I'm getting really tired of going to the Middle East," Nick said. "The damn place is always full of people killing each other in the name of God."

"You may be going there again. It depends on what's on that scroll and why someone would want to kill for it. The French think the explosion at the facility was an attempt to destroy records of what the x-rays revealed. They also think there's a connection with the attack on the train."

"How did you find that out?" Nick asked.

"I have a contact in DGSE, French security. The French government doesn't always cooperate with us but in this case my contact thought he should give me a heads up. Anything that could light off the Middle East concerns both Paris and Washington. I thought the president ought to know about it. He told me to follow up. Steph, can we see the next picture?"

The x-rays of the scroll appeared on the monitor. Selena leaned forward to get a better look. There were few people in the world as knowledgeable as her when it came to understanding the ancient languages of the Middle East.

The pictures showed ghostly images of white writing against a black background. They looked like rows of chicken tracks. There were gaps in the writing. A faint second layer could be seen underneath the first, a different part of the rolled scroll. The letters were difficult to see, the lines of writing incomplete.

Selena studied the pictures. "This is Aramaic from around the time of the Roman conquest of Judea. It was very common then. Everyone used it."

"When was that?" Ronnie asked.

"The Romans conquered Jerusalem in 63 CE."

Before she'd joined the Project Selena had been in high demand on the university circuit, lecturing on the dead languages of the ancient world. For Selena, reading Aramaic was like reading an out of date newspaper.

"Can you read it?" Elizabeth asked.

"Yes, but I'll need to consult some references."

"Can you have something for me by morning?"

"Make a copy and I'll take it home with me."

 

 

 

CHAPTER 8

 

 

"This is going to upset a lot of people," Selena said.

It was later that night. Open books and pieces of paper with scribbled notes littered the surface of the table in front of her. Nick looked up from a book about a sheriff in Wyoming who was shadowed by the ghosts of dead warriors. He was someone Nick could relate to.

"Can you read the scroll?"

"The part that was x-rayed. It's too bad it can't be unrolled. No one will ever see the rest of it but what there is will make a lot of trouble."

"What does it say?"

"It's an account by a man named Ephram. He seems to have been part of the Jewish resistance to Roman rule that brought on the first Jewish-Roman war, back in 66 CE. That's four years before the Romans crushed the revolt and destroyed the Second Temple."

"Please don't tell me this is going to get everyone upset about the Temple."

"It will, and it's not just the Temple. This mentions one of the most famous people in the Bible, King Solomon."

"I thought that was just a story," Nick said. "About Solomon. Like in the book
King Solomon's Mines.
The Queen of Sheba, lost treasures, all that."

"Many historians believe Sheba and Solomon were real," Selena said. "No one's quite sure where Solomon's kingdom was. It was probably Israel and part of what's now Jordan and Egypt. According to the Bible, King David was his father. The scroll says Solomon was buried near David, in a place called Ir. That's the City of David in modern-day Jerusalem and the scroll seems to verify the biblical story. By itself it's enough to get everybody excited."

"If Solomon was buried in Jerusalem, how come nobody has dug him up?"

"Because he's not there anymore. The scroll says his bones were taken away as the Romans advanced on Jerusalem. That's not all. The sacred objects of the Temple went with him, a treasure that would be priceless today. The Jews were afraid the Romans would desecrate the tomb and violate the Temple. I don't know about the tomb but they destroyed the Temple after they looted it. "

"Does the scroll say where everything was taken?"

"South to the mountains of Edom and the kingdom of the Dedanites."

"I never heard of Edom or the Dedanites."

"The kingdom of Dedan was in what's now Saudi Arabia, between the desert and the coast of the Red Sea. It's desolate country. There's nothing there but sand, rock and a few villages built high in the mountains."

"Sounds like a perfect place to hide something," Nick said.

"Ephram writes that everything was placed in a hidden tomb. When this gets out, everyone will start looking for it."

BOOK: The Solomon Scroll
11.52Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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