The Moses Stone

62

'Are you sure this is the place?' Dexter asked, the beam of his flashlight playing over the walls of the tunnel.

All three men were standing in water up to their thighs, their shorts and the lower parts of their shirts soaked. So far they'd found nothing at all.

'I keep telling you that I don't know,' Baverstock said, his voice angry. 'This was my best guess, based on the mention of a cistern in the clay tablets. Hezekiah's Tunnel was the most important water source the people of Jerusalem had, so logically it was certainly somewhere we had to check. And it's close enough to the Temple Mount to match the "end of days" reference as well.'

'The trouble is that this is just a tunnel hacked out of the rock,' Dexter said. 'There are virtually no hiding places anywhere in it, as far as I can see.'

'Well, we certainly won't find anything if we just stand here talking,' Baverstock growled. 'Keep moving, and keep looking. I only want to do this once.'

* * *

Bronson and Angela had been walking for perhaps twenty-five minutes when their torches picked out an almost pagoda-shaped and fairly low section of the roof, the rock in the centre forming a graceful downward curve while the edges extended slightly upwards. That section of the tunnel was fairly wide.

'This is the meeting point,' Angela said. 'This is where the two tunnelling crews met back in 701 BC.'

'That's amazing,' Bronson said, 'especially when you think how easily they could have missed each other. Look at the technology they had to use in the Channel Tunnel to make sure both teams arrived at the same place at the same time.'

They moved on, and a few moments later Bronson stopped again.

'There's another really short tunnel here,' he said. 'It's only a few feet long.'

'There are two of these,' Angela told him. 'It looks as if they were started by the workmen who were digging towards the spring, but then they must have realized they were heading in the wrong direction and abandoned them.'

They checked every inch of the false tunnel, above and below the water level, then carried on to the second one, where they repeated the process.

'The walls and roof are pretty rough in places, but I've not noticed anything that could be a hiding place for a box of matches, far less a two-foot-long scroll,' Bronson said.

'And I assume what we're looking for would be at least that sort of size?'

'Probably, maybe even bigger than that.' Angela sounded fed up. 'I still think this was the most likely place for them to have hidden it, but maybe I misread the clues.

Anyway, we're here now, so let's keep looking.'

A few minutes later, as they approached the Pool of Siloam and the ceiling height rose considerably, Bronson spotted a dark oval in the wall high above them.

'That's worth a look,' he said, moving his torch around to try to illuminate the opening better. 'I think that's a cavity.'

Angela peered up as well. 'You could be right,' she said, sounding more hopeful.

Bronson found a small ledge and carefully placed his torch on that to provide some light. 'I reckon it's about ten feet up,' he said. 'If you stand on my shoulders you should be able to reach inside it.'

Angela switched off her own torch and tucked it inside the pocket of her shorts.

Bronson cupped his hands together. Angela put her foot in the stirrup he'd formed, rested her back against the wall of the tunnel and lifted herself up. As she placed her feet on his shoulders, Bronson moved slightly forward and braced his arms against both sides of the narrow tunnel.

'Can you reach it?' he asked.

'Yes. I'm just about to feel inside.' There was a pause, and then Angela's voice, high and breathy with excitement, announced: 'There's something here!'