Contract with God aka The Moses Expedition

15

EN ROUTE TO THE GULF OF AQABA, RED SEA

Tuesday, 11 July 2006. 6:03 p.m.

The room was dominated by a large rectangular table set with twenty neatly placed folders, in front of which sat a person. Harel, Fowler and Andrea were the last ones in and had to sit in the spaces that were left. Andrea ended up between a young African-American woman dressed in some sort of paramilitary uniform and an older man, balding, with a bushy moustache. The young woman ignored her and went on talking to the companions to her left, who were dressed more or less as she was, while the man to Andrea’s right offered his hand, with its thick, coarse fingers.

‘Tommy Eichberg, driver. You must be Ms Otero.’

‘Another person who knows me! It’s a pleasure to meet you.’

Eichberg smiled. He had a round, pleasant face.

‘I hope you’re feeling better.’

Andrea was about to answer but was interrupted by the loud, unpleasant sound of someone clearing his throat. An old man, well over seventy, had just entered the room. His eyes were almost buried in a nest of wrinkles, an impression that was accentuated by the tiny lenses of his glasses. His head was shaved and he had a huge greying beard that seemed to float around his mouth like a cloud of ash. He wore a short-sleeved shirt, khaki trousers and thick black boots. He began to speak, his voice as sharp and unpleasant as a knife scraping teeth, before he reached the head of the table where a portable electronic screen had been placed. Beside it sat Kayn’s assistant.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Cecyl Forrester and I’m Professor of Biblical Archaeology at the University of Massachusetts. It’s not the Sorbonne, but at least it’s a home.’

There was some polite laughter among the professor’s assistants, who had heard the joke a thousand times.

‘No doubt you have been trying to figure out the reason for this trip ever since you set foot on this ship. I hope you were not tempted to do so beforehand, given that your, or should I say our, contracts with Kayn Enterprises require absolute secrecy from the moment they were signed until our heirs rejoice at our death. Unfortunately the terms of my contract also require that I let you in on the secret, which I plan on doing over the course of the next hour and a half. Do not interrupt me unless you have an intelligent question. Since Mr Russell has informed me of your particulars, I am familiar with every detail, from your IQ to your favourite brand of condom. As for Mr Dekker’s crew, don’t even bother opening your mouths.’

Andrea, who was partially turned towards the professor, heard a threatening whisper from the people in uniform.

‘That son of a bitch thinks he’s smarter than everyone else. Maybe I’ll make him swallow his teeth one at a time.’

‘Silence.’

The voice was soft but it had an undertone that was so violent it made Andrea shudder. She turned her head enough to see that the voice belonged to Mogens Dekker, the man with the scar, who was leaning his chair against a bulkhead. The soldiers immediately went quiet.

‘Good. Well, now that we’re all in one place,’ Cecyl Forrester went on, ‘I’d better do the introductions. The twenty-three of us have been brought together for what will be the greatest discovery of all time, and each of you is going to play a part in it. You already know Mr Russell to my right. He’s the one who selected you.’

Kayn’s assistant nodded his head in greeting.

‘To his right is Father Anthony Fowler, who will act as the Vatican’s observer on the expedition. Beside him are Nuri Zayit and Rani Peterke, cook and assistant cook. Then Robert Frick and Brian Hanley, administration. ’

The two cooks were older men. Zayit was skinny, aged around sixty, with a down-turned mouth, while his helper was heavy-set and a few years younger. Andrea couldn’t quite tell his age. The two administrators, on the other hand, were both young and almost as dark as Peterke.

‘Besides these overpaid workers, we have my idle and sycophantic assistants. They all have degrees from expensive colleges and think they know more than me: David Pappas, Gordon Durwin, Kyra Larsen, Stowe Erling and Ezra Levine.

The young archaeologists shifted uncomfortably in their chairs and tried to look professional. Andrea felt sorry for them. They must have been in their early thirties, but Forrester had them on a short leash, which made them seem even younger and more insecure than they actually were – which was the complete opposite of the people in uniform seated next to the reporter.

‘At the other end of the table we have Mr Dekker and his bulldogs: the Gottlieb twins, Alois and Alryk; Tewi Waaka, Paco Torres, Marla Jackson and Louis Maloney. They’ll be in charge of security, adding a high-calibre component to our expedition. The irony of the phrase is devastating, don’t you think?’

The soldiers didn’t react, but Dekker righted his chair and leaned across the table.

‘We’re going into the frontier zone of an Islamic country. Given the nature of our… mission, the locals could become violent. I’m sure Professor Forrester will appreciate the calibre of our defence if it comes to that.’ He spoke with a strong South African accent.

Forrester opened his mouth to respond, but something on Dekker’s face must have convinced him that now wasn’t the time for any more acid retorts.

‘Further to the right you have Andrea Otero, our official reporter. I’m asking you to cooperate with her if and when she requests any information or interviews so that she will be able to tell our story to the world.’

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:

Welcome to Jerusalem. It is April in the year AD 70. The city is in its fourth year of occupation by rebel zealots, who have expelled the original inhabitants. The Romans, officially the rulers of Israel, can no longer tolerate the situation and Rome charges Titus to administer a decisive punishment.

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.

Within a few hours the city is surrounded by four Roman legions. This is the fourth attack on the city. Its citizens have repelled the previous three. This time Titus uses a cunning trick. He allows the pilgrims entering Jerusalem for the Easter celebrations to cross the line of battle. After the festivities, the circle is closed, and Titus does not allow the pilgrims to leave. The city now contains twice as many people and its food and water supplies are quickly being depleted. The Roman legions launch an attack from the northern side of the city and knock down the third wall. It is now the middle of May, and the fall of the city is only a matter of time.

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.

The city eventually falls in September, and Titus fulfils the promise he made to his father, Vespasian. The majority of the city’s inhabitants are executed or dispersed. Their homes are looted and their temple, destroyed.

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.

The second temple of Solomon was burned to its foundations, and remains thus to this day. Many of the temple’s treasures were stolen. Many, but not all. After the fall of the third wall in May, a priest by the name of Yirməyáhu had come up with a plan to save at least part of the treasure. He chose a group of twenty brave men, giving packages to the first twelve with precise instructions on where the items should be taken and what should be done with them. These packages contained the temple’s more ‘conventional’ treasures: large amounts of gold and silver.

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.

Yirməyáhu entrusted the last eight men with a very special mission, ten times more dangerous than that of the others.

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.

Using the secret passages under the temple, Yirməyáhu led them beyond the walls and away from the Roman army. Although that area, at the rear of the 10th Fretensis Legion, was patrolled from time to time by Roman guards, the priest’s men managed to elude them, reaching Yəriho, the modern-day Jericho, with their heavy load the following day. And there the trail disappears for good.

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.’