The Moses Legacy

Chapter 78

‘Why did we let them get hold of the manuscript?’ asked Sarit.

She and Dov Shamir were in the Mossad’s headquarters in Herzliya. She was supposed to be going to Eilat for some R amp;R, but she had asked for permission to stay and keep working on this assignment. She didn’t like leaving a job unfinished.

‘We couldn’t really stop them. They’re both prestigious academics and they had the Antiquities Authority behind them.’

‘Couldn’t we have said it was a matter of national security?’

‘The PM knows about the security angle. But a three-thousand-year-old manuscript isn’t going to threaten national security in itself. Besides, we know that Harrison Carmichael had a copy-’

‘Which Goliath destroyed in that fire.’

‘The point is he already translated it.’

‘Yes, but the New Covenant managed to suppress publication.’

‘ Delay publication,’ Dov corrected.

‘Well, with Carmichael dead and Professor Tomlinson so well connected, he’ll probably be able to block publication.’

‘So Daniel Klein’ll get the credit when he publishes his translation. The point is, Sarit, that we can’t stop it. And there’s no reason why we should. The threat to national security is not in the contents, but in what people do with the information. And let’s face it, The Book of the Straight doesn’t really tell us the exact location. All we know is that it’s somewhere on the other side of the Jordan River. If they knew where to look, they wouldn’t have been wasting time trying to get samples of infected clothes.’

‘But the infection is still out there. Look at what happened to that curator in England. He had all the symptoms: the fever, the snake-like lesions…’

‘It doesn’t appear to have spread.’

‘And what about the Egyptians?’

‘They seem to have contained it too.’

‘So it’s not all that virulent.’

‘Not the Egyptian strain certainly. If Carmichael’s translation is right, then it mutated into a more virulent strain in the Jordan area.’

‘How can we be so sure of that? I mean it’s not like Carmichael was an epidemiologist.’

‘No, but it’s a case of reading between the lines. We got hold of a copy of Carmichael’s paper and gave it to our own epidemiologists for an assessment.’

‘And how badly should we be worrying?’

‘Well, as long as it’s in stasis, there should be no problem.’

She was about to say something more when Dov’s phone went. She watched as his face went from sombre to grave.

‘Has General Security been notified?… Okay, keep me posted.’

When he put the phone down, his face drained of blood and Sarit looked at him expectantly.

‘That Samaritan rabbi they spoke to, Aryeh Tsedaka… he’s been found dead in the synagogue in Holon. There were signs of a struggle and his neck was broken.’