The Exodus Quest

II

Gaille was drifting to sleep when suddenly she jolted awake, sat up, turned on her light. Stafford's two books were on her bedside table. She grabbed the one about Solomon's lost treasures, flipped through the pages to a photograph of the Copper Scroll, most mysterious of the Dead Sea Scrolls: a treasure map written in Hebrew, but containing an anomaly that no one had ever satisfactorily explained: seven clusters of Greek letters.

She took the book over to her laptop, turned it on, brought up Knox's photograph of the mosaic. A thrill shivered her as she saw that the clusters were identical, though arranged in a different order. But the figure in the mosaic was pointing at the K??; and the line that made up the seven-pointed star went past the other six clusters in the exact same sequence as in the Copper Scroll.

She sat back in her chair, astounded, confused, electrified. The Copper Scroll had been an Essene document, and thus linked to Knox's Therapeutae site. But even so…

She grabbed her phone. Knox would want to hear this at once, whatever the time. But he wasn't answering. She left messages instead, telling him to call at once. Then she sat there, reading Stafford's book and studying the photographs, brooding on what it might mean, her mind fizzing with the excitement of the chase.