The Omega scroll

CHAPTER TWENTY

Jerusalem

I n the days that followed, the parishioners of Mar’Oth banded together to help their new, unassuming priest settle in, and some of the Muslims joined their Christian brothers to help as well. Giovanni’s kindness to their Imam had not gone unnoticed and within a remarkably short time the little Christian church and Giovanni’s quarters were clean and functional. Patrick O’Hara kept his word too, and less than two weeks after Giovanni had settled into Mar’Oth, he was summoned back to Jerusalem to meet Yossi Kaufmann, his wife Marian and their son David. Giovanni arrived early and Patrick, ever sensitive to the people around him, briefed Giovanni on the Kaufmann family background.

‘Over the years the Kaufmanns have had more than their fair share of family tragedy. Yossi and Marian both lost their parents in the Holocaust and their eldest son, Michael, was killed in the 1967 Six Day War. David fought in that as a young platoon commander and took part in the assault and liberation of the Old City. In fact he was responsible for capturing the Rockefeller Museum from the Jordanians and with it the vaults that held the Dead Sea Scrolls. David hates telling the story but I’ll be prevailing upon him to tell you how he did it. It makes fascinating listening.’

After dinner, Patrick, Giovanni, Yossi, Marian and David settled into the big comfortable armchairs in Patrick’s rambling study.

‘ Basta, basta! Patrick. An excellent dinner as usual but domani! Tomorrow! I have to work tomorrow.’ Professor Kaufmann was used to his host and he protested as Patrick filled his glass. Yossi Kaufmann was tall and square-shouldered, his face fair-skinned and sculpted with laughter lines. His sense of humour was also reflected in his gentle blue eyes.

‘You speak Italian, Yossi?’ Giovanni asked.

‘ Soltanto un poco,’ he replied, putting his thumb and forefinger close together to indicate a little.

‘Yossi’s too modest,’ Marian protested. Marian Kaufmann was tall and elegant. Her long dark hair shone in the soft light, framing her unlined face and her soft but alert brown eyes. They were, Giovanni thought, a very striking couple. ‘As well as English and Hebrew, Yossi is quite fluent in Italian and he also has some quite passable Arabic and French.’

‘What about you, David?’ Giovanni asked.

‘I get by, I guess,’ David replied with a boyish grin. ‘My pursuits have been a little less glamorous than Italian and French. Not much call for ordering a beer in Koine or Aramaic!’ David’s playful demeanour made him look much younger than his thirty-nine years.

‘I’ve been trying to converse with the villagers of Mar’Oth in Arabic. All I can say is that they are very tolerant,’ Giovanni said. ‘You were a platoon commander in the Six Day War?’

‘A very good one,’ Yossi replied, always ready to give his son credit.

‘Have you ever wondered if the Omega Scroll was amongst those you liberated from the Rockefeller Museum, David?’ Patrick loved a good conspiracy.

‘The Professor and I,’ David replied, using his father’s title as a term of endearment, ‘have often wondered about that. It was pretty chaotic and we had enough trouble securing the building without counting and checking what was in the vault.’

The Professor’s face was inscrutable. Yossi Kaufmann had seen some recent Mossad reports indicating that the original and one copy of the Omega Scroll had indeed been in the vaults.

‘You should tell Giovanni the story, David,’ Patrick prompted.

‘Oh, I’m sure Giovanni doesn’t want to hear about the war,’ David replied reluctantly.

‘I’m sorry,’ Giovanni replied, mindful of the loss of David’s brother. ‘I don’t want to raise any painful memories.’

‘Don’t be sorry,’ Marian said gently. ‘We miss Michael but we’ve come to terms with his loss. It just makes us all the more determined for peace.’

‘But it can’t be peace at the expense of one side,’ Yossi warned. ‘There will never be peace until we reach a solution with the Palestinians that is equitable for both sides. The Palestinians must be given their own State. On the other hand, those who criticise the Jewish nation for warmongering have very little understanding of how reluctant we have been to fight, how divided the Cabinet was in 1967 and that the Palestinians are not the only ones to have suffered terrible losses. In the end we were given little choice. Even today there are still some who want to push us into the sea and if nothing else, the 1967 war serves as a reminder of how futile that approach is. Wars are not the answer,’ Yossi said sadly. ‘But when the Jewish nation is pushed into a corner we will fight with every means at our disposal.’

‘Yes, but David is such a reluctant hero,’ Marian added with a warm smile. ‘Perhaps I should start, Patrick?’

‘Let me refill your glass,’ Patrick replied, reaching for the red wine.

Acre

From the day Yossi and Marian had arrived in Acre as teenagers on a fishing trawler after their escape from Vienna in 1938, they had both been captivated by the old city with its Crusader walls, minarets, mosques, souks and the great Khans, where the merchants of Italy and Provence had plied their trade. By 1967 they had found a modest holiday house that was close to the ancient harbour. It was on a narrow, twisting street and one of a row of houses that dated back to the Turkish Ottoman Empire of the eighteenth century.

Marian Kaufmann had set the table simply. Two candles representing God’s commandments: zachor, to remember, and shamor, to observe the Sabbath; a glass of wine and two loaves of challah that would remain covered with a white cloth until after the blessings. Marian had long ago lost her own Jewish faith behind the forbidding bluestone walls and wire of the Nazi charnel house at Mauthausen, the concentration camp in Austria where both Yossi’s and her own parents had been brutally murdered. Despite this, Marian had a deep respect for Yossi’s beliefs and she was happy to observe the Jewish ritual. Yossi and Marian had agreed that both of their sons would receive instruction in the Torah, but the matter of faith had been left to the boys to decide for themselves. David, Marian knew, would never have time for religion. Michael, blond, tall and three years older than David, had the same strong faith as his father. Given the boys’ natures it could have been expected to be the other way round – Michael was brash and aggressive; David, mischievous but thoughtful.

Yossi removed the white cloth from the bread and holding one loaf in each hand, he blessed it: Barukh atah Adonai Elohaynu melekh ha-olam – Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the Universe. Ha-motzi lechem min ha-aretz. Amein – Who brings forth bread from the earth. Amen.

Like the Christians and the Muslims, it was a ‘thank you’ to the God of Abraham, the same God for all the faiths. The same God and the same hope for peace, yet once again the war clouds were gathering over the cities of the Jews, Christians and Arabs.

‘How is the flying going, Michael?’ Yossi asked.

‘Very well,’ Michael responded enthusiastically. ‘By the end of next week I will have two hundred hours on the Mirage,’ he added proudly.

‘Do you think there will be a war, Yossi?’ Marian asked, dreading the thought.

‘I hope not. Going to war with the Arabs will not solve anything. I think it’s time both sides pulled back from this madness. It’s time we both tried to walk a mile in the other man’s shoes. Palestinians simply want the opportunity to work in peace and make a contribution, but a man without a country is a man without dignity and until we reach agreement on the Palestinian State, the killing will continue.’

‘I don’t agree,’ Michael said. ‘I think it’s about time we taught these lying Arab bastards a lesson, one they won’t forget in a hurry!’

‘Michael Kaufmann! I will have none of that language in this house.’ Marian had some clear rules when it came to swearing. Yossi suppressed a smile. The language in the officers’ mess would no doubt be a lot worse. Yossi was proud of his sons but he, like Marian, had often reflected on how very different their sons were. It was almost as if there was an old soul and a young soul.

Michael was the young soul; full of the enthusiasm and invincibility of youth, a zest for war and adventure without the wisdom to consider the consequences. All he had ever wanted to do was fly, and after graduating at the top of his pilot’s course he had been assigned to a conversion course for the Dassault Mirage III, dubbed by the Israeli pilots as the Shahak, the ‘skyblazer’. After achieving another graduation first, Michael had been posted to the Israeli Defense Force’s premier fighter squadron, the 101st, at the huge Hatzhor Air Base. Yossi knew that if it came to war the 101st would be the first into combat. David was the old soul. Partway through an archaeology degree at the Hebrew University at Mount Scopus, he too was in the Reserves as an infantry platoon commander. Yossi also knew from bitter experience that all wars were vicious, but for the infantry they were particularly so, especially if it came to hand-to-hand fighting.

‘I shouldn’t be telling you this,’ Michael continued, unabashed by his mother’s rebuke, ‘but the Arab scramble time is at least twice that of ours. We’ll have ’em on toast!’

‘What about you, David? Are you looking forward to teaching the Arabs a lesson?’ Marian asked.

David shrugged. ‘If we have to fight, we have to fight. But I don’t agree with Mikey. The Palestinians have lost their homes and their livelihood and I guess you’re right,’ he said, looking at his father. ‘They’re just as much a family people as we are. At the end of the day we took their land. They need a country, too.’

‘I always knew there was a reason I didn’t go to university,’ Michael retorted. ‘They’re Arabs, for hell’s sake.’

Marian sighed. Always it was war – race against race, white against black, Arab against Jew, Christian against Muslim, faith against faith, hatred over tolerance – a vicious and unbroken cycle of escalating violence. It was in man’s power to break it, but he had chosen not to.

Jerusalem

Lieutenant David Kaufmann knocked before entering Brigadier General Menachem Kovner’s office.

‘You sent for me, Menachem?’ David asked. Brigadier General Kovner looked up from a desk cluttered with intelligence reports filed in different coloured folders. The green ones were marked ‘Confidential’ and the red ones ‘Secret’; the one open on Kovner’s desk was crimson, marking it as a ‘Top Secret’.

‘Come in, David, and have a seat.’ Kovner, a wiry, fit-looking professional soldier, picked up the file and joined his much taller lieutenant at the small conference table that was jammed in one corner of his office.

‘What I’m about to tell you must not go out of this room. You are not to discuss it with anyone, except your battalion commander, who is aware of the task I’m about to give you. There is now a strong possibility that we will go to war with Egypt. If we do, the General Staff hope to restrict the war to the one southern front but that will depend on what the Syrians do in the north and what the Jordanians do in the east. It is the Jordanians that I want to talk to you about.’

‘Me?’ David was at a complete loss as to why a platoon commander could have any influence on the eastern front.

‘The Old City and the Dead Sea Scrolls are now in the hands of the Jordanians. The scrolls are being held in the Palestine Museum. When we went to war with Egypt in 1956 the Jordanians stayed out of it. The view in the Cabinet is that they will do so again, but I’m not so sure.’

‘You think the Jordanians will attack?’ David asked.

‘To put it bluntly, yes. Unlike November 1956, the Jordanians know that this time Israel stands alone. Neither the British nor the French will be there and the United States and the Soviets will try to stay out of it. The Jordanians have had your university and our small enclave on Mount Scopus under siege for nearly twenty years. They would dearly love to get it back. The most important of the Dead Sea Scrolls are housed in the Rockefeller Museum.’ Brigadier General Kovner got up from the table and pulled down one of several maps that were held in a rollerblind cabinet on the wall. It was a map of Jerusalem and its environs showing the locations of Jordanian units. He opened the crimson file on the table and placed some aerial photographs and the floor plans of the museum in front of David.

‘The Rockefeller Museum is located on Sultan Suleiman Street.’ Menachem Kovner pointed to Kerem el-Sheik, a hill just outside the north-eastern corner of the Old City walls where the museum had been built. ‘Three months ago the Jordanians nationalised the museum.’

‘So it’s now Jordanian property?’

‘Correct. And whilst I’m not sure the Rockefeller family are overjoyed, in a way the Jordanian Government has played into our hands. If they attack us and enter the war, and if – and this is a big “if” – we drive the Jordanians out of Jerusalem, the museum and more importantly its contents will fall into Israeli hands.’

David realised very clearly what he was being asked to do.

‘You want me to capture the Dead Sea Scrolls.’ It was a statement rather than a question.

His Brigade Commander smiled. ‘Not single-handedly. From time to time your battalion commander and I will be taking an interest in your progress. Given your background and your knowledge of the Scrolls’ importance, it will fall to you to ensure these priceless antiquities are not lost to the scholarship of the world. To help you I have arranged for Private Joseph Silberman to join your platoon, but Silberman is a rather unusual recruit.’

‘Unusual?’

‘Up until a couple of weeks ago he was an inmate of Ramle, and other than teaching him how to shoot to protect himself, we haven’t had time to give him the normal military training.’

‘Ramle! What’s he done?’ David asked, intrigued as to why his platoon would need the services of someone confined to one of the harshest prisons in Israel. ‘Why is he coming to me?’

Brigadier General Kovner reached for a slim green file marked ‘Silberman’. ‘His service record, such as it is, and a short biography. He’s not dangerous and very intelligent. He is being assigned to you because he is a master safecracker, one of the best.’

‘You want him to crack the Rockefeller’s vault?’ David ventured quietly.

‘Precisely. The vaults in the Rockefeller are big and heavy and they would take a considerable amount of explosive to gain access. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, Mossad have not been able to get hold of the combination. I don’t need to tell you that the Dead Sea Scrolls are irreplaceable, and the world would be less than amused if they were damaged in the process of our blowing up the doors.’

‘A locksmith?’

Brigadier General Kovner shook his head. ‘There is no way of knowing how much time you will have. You might capture the museum, only to have the Jordanians put in a heavy counter-attack once they tumble to what we’re after. Silberman is used to working quickly under pressure. Besides, it’s in his interest to get the vault open.’

‘A pardon?’ David asked insightfully.

Kovner nodded. ‘A job working in Mossad for the good guys.’ Defining Mossad as the good guys was equal to assigning a degree of benevolence to the CIA, David thought, but he didn’t comment.

‘You never know, Silberman might be able to teach you a few things.’

‘I can’t imagine when I might next need to break into a safe, but I shall watch him with interest. Is the museum heavily guarded?’ David asked.

‘Heavily enough. Last night Jordanian infantry were deployed around the museum itself and there are more infantry and tanks deployed around the Dome of the Rock and the Western Wall.’ Kovner traced his finger around the remains of the temple the Romans had destroyed in 70 AD.

‘Think of it, David! We might just get it back. For the first time in two thousand years Jerusalem might again be our capital, and for the first time in nearly two decades Jews will be able to pray at Judaism’s holiest site.’

‘It’s been a long time,’ David agreed, aware of his superior’s strong Jewish faith.

‘Of course it all depends on whether Jordan attacks first, but between you and I, I hope they do!’

Menachem Kovner would not have long to wait.

In the Knesset in West Jerusalem, Israel’s Military Intelligence Chief, Brigadier General Yossi Kaufmann, was winding up his briefing to a divided War Cabinet. ‘Nasser will go to war to shore up his own position in the Arab League,’ Yossi concluded.

‘We have no choice, Prime Minister.’ It was the Defense Minister, Moshe Dayan. ‘If we wait for them to strike first we face the very real possibility of defeat. We are outnumbered by overwhelming Arab strength on the ground, in the air and on the water.’ Moshe paused and eyed each of his colleagues. ‘If we strike first, we will have the advantage of surprise, and that is a critical principle of war,’ he concluded, quoting the great war strategist Von Clausewitz.

The Cabinet fell silent. All eyes turned to the Prime Minister.

Prime Minister Eshkol looked at the faces of his Cabinet ministers sitting around the table.

‘I am reminded of our ancient forefathers and Psalm 27,’ the Prime Minister said. ‘“Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident.” We go,’ he said sadly, ‘and may God go with us.’

Once again the trumpets of the shofars, the ram’s horns, were sounded as they had been sounded so many times before. As they had done under Joshua and King David, the twelve tribes of Israel were once again going to war. This time, instead of the sound of swords being unsheathed, the chilling sounds of war would be those of 105mm Howitzer rounds being slammed into steel breeches.

Opposite the Gaza, in the Negev, and in the Sinai the big guns exploded with a roar of flame and smoke, jumping with the recoil. Before the shock absorbers could fully retract, young Israeli warriors, sweat already beading, sprang at the gun levers. Steel breeches clanged open and smoking brass casings bounced to the ground, to be replaced immediately with another deadly round. Like mini express trains, thousands of rounds roared into the night, each with an Arab life etched on the high explosive casing.

A father, a mother, a son, a daughter.

Death to the Arabs.

A taxi driver, a sales representative, a bank teller. Death to them all. It was time to teach them all a lesson.

Underneath the roar of the big shells the huge twelve-cylinder Merlin engines of the centurion tanks snarled into life, forming three separate spearheads. Before the sun rose on yet another bloody Middle East battle, the Israeli armoured divisions roared into the Gaza and across the ancient desert of the Sinai, battalions of young Israeli infantry soldiers lurching crazily in their wake.

Hatzor Air Base, south of Tel-Aviv

Like every other pilot on the giant Hatzor Air Base, Lieutenant Michael Kaufmann had been woken at four in the morning. The waiting was over; the squadron safes had been opened and the sealed orders for the high-risk Operation Moked broken out.

In the past, air superiority had been achieved by operating the Mirages in large numbers to attack the Egyptian air bases. At the same time as the runways were bombed, base installations were attacked with rockets and the anti-aircraft defences were suppressed. Now, the Soviet-supplied Egyptian Air Force was much bigger and the Israelis had been forced into a strategy of operating small groups of three and four aircraft against a greater number of targets. The Egyptian air defences would be ignored, as would the base installations, and more importantly for the pilots, there were no Israeli fighters assigned to provide protection from Egyptian interceptors. The Israeli pilots would have to watch their own backs.

Hatzor Air Base was still shrouded in pre-dawn darkness as Michael found a space and perched himself on a table at the back of the crowded briefing room. The room was noisy, but the laughter was nervous. No one knew what the Soviet-supplied surface-to-air missiles were really capable of and that was every Israeli pilot’s greatest fear. Suddenly the room hushed as their Commanding Officer, one of the Israeli Defense Force’s most experienced pilots, made his way to the front of the room.

‘What we’ve all been waiting for,’ he said confidently. ‘As you can see from the board behind me, H-Hour is in just under three hours at 0745. The strategy is to hit hard and destroy the Arabs on the ground, and given that their reaction is on a par with a wet week, that shouldn’t be too hard.’

More nervous laughter echoed around the room.

‘A total of seventeen air bases will be hit simultaneously. Our task is to destroy the enemy aircraft at Bir Tmada and Cairo West. The first strikes will take out the runways to prevent the Egyptians getting their aircraft into the air. The next waves will target the aircraft on the ground. I will lead the first wave into Bir Tmada with Captain Linowitz on my wing and Major Shapirah will lead the first wave into Cairo West with Lieutenant Kaufmann on his.’

Michael nodded, his face set with determination.

‘Benny and Michael,’ he said, looking first at Major Shapirah and then at Michael, ‘when you have released you are to refuel and return to the navigation turning point here.’ The Commanding Officer turned to the operations map and indicated a point off Bardavil and Port Said.

Michael listened with rising excitement as their Commanding Officer flicked on an overhead showing the enemy deployments and the tasking detail. The Egyptian line-up was impressive: one hundred and fifty MiG-15 and -17s; eighty MiG-19s; one hundred and thirty of the latest Russian MiG-21s; twelve SU-7s; and thirty of the massive TU-16 strategic bombers.

‘We will take off in complete radio silence with our radio sets switched off. Our strategy depends heavily on surprise.’

‘What happens if we have a problem after take-off?’ one of the younger pilots asked. ‘The base will be busy with aircraft behind us and we’ll be on radio silence.’

‘You set course for the coast and eject.’

Several of the pilots exchanged glances. Even under normal conditions the chances of being found in the sea after ejecting were by no means certain. The chances of being found when no one knew where or when you had ejected were almost nonexistent.

Michael had no such fears. Instead he felt a surge of exhilaration. He was in the first wave and a short time later he and the other superbly trained young Israelis strode from the 101 Squadron crew room at Hatzor Air Base into the crisp early morning air. It was still an hour before dawn, and darkness cloaked the quietly humming air base. The bus to take them out to their aircraft was ready, its engine running. Unlike their fellow airmen across the Suez Canal, the Israelis had been careful to disperse all of their precious aircraft in blast shelters and one by one the bus dropped each pilot at his allotted bay.

Michael’s ground crew were waiting. With the exception of the sergeant, every one of them was a civilian and like much of the Israeli Defense Force, they were a ragtag-looking outfit with not a matching windcheater in sight, but appearances could be deceptive. They might have seemed a far cry from the immaculate pit crews of the world’s Formula One racing teams, but Michael’s crew and the other Israeli ground crews would have been employed by any Formula One pit boss on the circuit. They could re-fuel, re-arm and turn an aircraft around in under eight minutes. It was one of the factors that would decide the war in the air. For the first two days of the war, the Israelis would manage to have their jets in the air for 80 per cent of the day. It was a feat that no other air force in the world could match, and certainly not the Arabs.

Michael greeted his crew with his customary smile and sprang up the aluminium ladder propped against the fuselage of his aircraft. He eased himself into the narrow cockpit and gave the ground crew the thumbs-up.

The Mirage IIIC was coiled in its nest like a giant three-legged bee with sand and brown coloured camouflage and a touch of green that on low-level runs made the Shahaks very hard to pick up from above. The Star of David was emblazoned on the starboard and port air intakes of the fuselage; some things were not meant to be hidden. The trademark delta wings were swept back at sixty degrees and external fuel tanks were suspended under each wing like two giant cigars. Under the fuselage were 150-kilogram runway-piercing bombs along with two 30mm cannon on either side that could fire over a thousand rounds a minute. In Michael’s case, his aircraft’s wing racks were also fitted with Matra ‘Diamond’ air-to-air missiles.

Michael flipped open his pre-flight checklist and commenced his pre-start checks. He could have done it blindfolded: Ignition/Ventilation switch – ignition Pre-heat switch – off Low-pressure fuel pumps – off Afterburner cock – on Speed brake switch

…

Halfway through his pre-start he pressed the rudder trim light to test it. He grinned as he glanced at the next check. Radio sets – on. Skip that one, he thought wryly. One after another he tested the armament master light, the speed brake light, the incident warning lights and the undercarriage flasher. Satisfied, he looked to his flight crew sergeant and gave him the thumbs-up for an engine start. Checking that the fuel cock and pumps were both on, Michael depressed the starter button and confirmed the ignition light. When the engine reached 700 rpm he moved the throttle to idle. Automatically his eyes flicked across the instrument panel, monitoring the fire warning lights, and the oil and hydraulic lights. With the rpm stabilised at 2800, he gave the thumbs-up again to his crew chief and when the wheel chocks were away he moved slowly out of the blast shelter to join the first wave of aircraft, sashaying down the taxiway to the far end of the runway – navigation and anti-collision lights extinguished, dark menacing shapes, engines with wings. The faint glow of the instrument panels reflected on the visors of the young Israeli pilots.

Death to the Arabs.

The Jordanians started shelling the Jewish sector of the Old City a few hours after the Israelis launched their attacks in the south against the Egyptian forces in the Sinai. At first the Israeli Cabinet was unperturbed. The High Command had expected that King Hussein would show a measure of loyalty to the Arab cause, but when the shelling got heavier and spread along the whole of the eastern front, the Cabinet began to realise that war with Jordan was inevitable.

As a lieutenant, David was not accustomed to attending even battalion orders, much less brigade, but these were not ordinary times and he took his place alongside his Commanding Officer and waited for Brigadier General Menachem Kovner to begin.

‘Last night the Jordanians machine-gunned innocent civilians on the Jaffa Road. This morning they captured the United Nations Headquarters at Government House and they have started shelling the city. Over six hundred buildings have been damaged including the Prime Minister’s residence, the King David Hotel and many of the holy sites, including the dome of the Church of the Dormiton.’ The Church of the Dormiton was just south of the Old City, close to King David’s tomb, and reputedly the place where Christ had presided over the Last Supper.

‘Mount Scopus has also been captured by the Arabs.’ Menachem strode over to the operations map. ‘The Jordanian presence south of the Old City threatens to outflank the entire city, including the Knesset. As a result, the 19th Armoured Brigade is now moving from its positions east of Tel-Aviv and has orders to re-take Mount Scopus and the Hebrew University to the north of the Old City. The 6th Brigade has orders to advance in the south and re-take the Mount of Evil Counsel. From there they will turn north towards the Garden of Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives. We have possibly the most difficult task of all. The American Sector and the Rockefeller Museum.’ Kovner paused and looked at his commanders. ‘It has taken nearly two thousand years, but a little over an hour ago, Cabinet approved plans to re-take the Old City of Jerusalem.’

His announcement was greeted with a loud cheer. As in the time of King David, the Israelites were preparing once again to take back their ancient capital. The modern equivalent of King David’s warriors were the crack paratroopers of the 9th Airborne Brigade, all of them Reservists.

When the applause had died down Brigadier General Kovner outlined his plan. If successful, the results of the battle would be broadcast in minutes, not only to Israelis, but to Jews in every corner of the world. If they failed, they would not be forgiven lightly.

‘Because of the holy sites, not only Jewish, but Christian and Muslim as well, there will be no artillery or air cover over the Old City itself. It will come down to hand-to-hand fighting,’ Menachem Kovner said, ‘but we have one advantage. We are experts at night-fighting, and for that reason we go tonight.’

Crump. Crump. Crump. The night sky over Jerusalem lit up as the Jordanians pounded it with artillery and mortar shells.

Death to the Jews.

David and the rest of his platoon took shelter in doorways and around corners as a sudden burst of machine gun fire crackled across the deserted road. When viewed from behind, the lines of green and red tracer seemed surreally graceful as they ricocheted off the old stone walls and climbed into the night sky, but on his platoon’s side of the road it looked decidedly ugly and David ducked as the bullets cracked and thumped around him.

‘Above the Gate! On the ramparts!’

‘I see him!’ One of his section commanders raised an M79 and took cool and deliberate aim.

‘Grenade!’ The shoulder-fired grenade snaked across the road and exploded on top of the Damascus Gate. The machine gun fell silent.

Death to the Arabs.

‘Cover me!’ David dashed forward another 45 metres to the next alleyway. Centimetre by centimetre, metre by metre, grenade by grenade, the platoon fought their way up Sultan Suleiman Street towards the Rockefeller Museum. The small-arms fire was sporadic now but again David asked for cover as he ran towards the corner of Haroun al-Rashid and Suleiman. Suddenly the world exploded and he was thrown to the ground. Dazed, he shook his head and crawled into the nearest alleyway.

‘Shit!’ he muttered to himself. ‘Fucking tanks!’ He felt his right cheek. Blood. And a lot of it. Another flash appeared from the bottom of the Mount of Olives and David hugged the cobblestones as the round exploded 45 metres in front of his position. Obviously the 6th Brigade had been unable to dislodge the Arabs.

Lieutenant Michael Kaufmann forced himself to relax as he waited to roll. The radio silence was eerie. They had done it before in practice but this time it was for real. He scanned his instruments again, looking for the slightest sign of a mechanical problem but all the warning lights were out, and the Mirage had an advantage over normal aircraft. Even if rotation and the point of no return was reached, Michael could still deploy his braking chute and bring the aircraft to a stop in the wire barrier at the far end of the runway. Once the nose wheel was up and he had lift-off, however, any engine failure could be catastrophic. Despite his thirst for battle Michael had no desire to join the select few who had survived an ejection during take-off.

Trims neutral. Booster pumps on. Afterburner cock on. Hydraulics normal, switch down. Canopy locked. Like a well-oiled machine, he routinely ticked off each taxiing check. Again he tested the controls for freedom of movement. A tongue of flame exploded from the rear of the first Mirage on the runway. His Commanding Officer was rolling. Michael was fourth in line and when his turn came he followed the other aircraft onto the ‘piano keys’ and checked his gyro against the runway heading. At the same time he applied the foot brake and quickly ran the engine up to ‘full dry’. The rpm needle spun around rapidly and when it reached 8500 he released the brakes and lit the after-burner. Checking for ignition, Michael pushed the throttle forward and was almost immediately pushed back in his seat as 6200 kilograms of thrust from the Snecma Atar 9C turbojet blasted out of the exhaust and the fully laden Mirage accelerated down the long runway. At the rotation point Michael eased the stick back and launched after the three glowing orange flames that were already well above him. Afterburners. They increased the aircraft’s climb rate to over 1500 metres a minute. The undercarriage lights went out abruptly and Michael checked his rudder trim. He quickly levelled out and closed on the three points of orange light in front of him. Out over the inky blackness of the Mediterranean towards the navigation turning point, selected to give the Israeli pilots an attack vector from the north from which the Egyptians would least expect them.

The launch of the fighters and the rest of Israel’s precious one hundred and sixty combat aircraft had been timed so that each would arrive over the seventeen Egyptian air bases at 0745, when the Egyptians would be at their mandatory breakfasts. To avoid the Egyptian radars the run in to the target would not be above 20 metres. It called for some very precise navigation and flying from the Israeli pilots.

Across the Suez Canal the Egyptian pilots and their ground crews slept peacefully. At the big Abu Suweir Air Base the main radar was turned off for repairs, the unconnected cables and technicians’ tools still strewn around the building. As Lieutenant Michael Kaufmann and the rest of his squadron streaked low across the Mediterranean towards the Nile and Cairo West, many of the Egyptian aircraft still had their protective covers on and were parked wing tip to wing tip.

At 0743 Michael followed Benny Shapirah as they climbed and turned on their final bombing run, bracing himself for the Egyptian anti-aircraft fire he felt sure would come soon. He watched as Benny dropped the specially designed 150-kilogram runway-piercing bombs right over the runway in front of him and then Michael held them in his bomb sight as the parachutes deployed, slowing the bombs down. The retro-rockets fired, burying the bombs deep in the runway concrete. As the runway erupted in front of him, Michael calmly screamed towards it and added two more bombs to the destruction of the strip.

In an instant they were past the airfield and climbing. Back to their base to refuel and then out over the Mediterranean where they would provide the combat air patrol high above the turning point, just in case the Egyptians woke up to the Israeli navigation plan.

That didn’t seem likely, Michael thought, grinning behind his visor as he watched the Mirages behind him streak in to strafe the Egyptian planes lined up like ducks in a shooting gallery.

Lieutenant Michael Kaufmann couldn’t have been more wrong.

Two more flashes from the Mount of Olives and seconds later the road in front of Lieutenant David Kaufmann erupted with a deafening roar. Red hot pieces of flying metal tore great chunks of stone from the ancient walls of the Old City while David and his platoon hugged the ground. When the shrapnel had shrieked past, David held his hand up, thumb towards his ear and little finger towards his mouth, the sign to summon his radio operator from further down the alley. Ignoring the blood streaming from the wound to his cheek, David focused his binoculars on the general area of the flashes. Slowly and deliberately he scanned the foothills of the Mount of Olives on the other side of the Valley of Kidron. Desert camouflage did not blend well with the greenery in an olive grove and it was not long before he picked out the first of the Jordanian tanks. Tanks usually operated in troops of three and David scoured the hillside until he had found the other two. Sliding his compass from the side pocket of his trousers he took a bearing and did a quick mental calculation to convert the magnetic bearing to a grid bearing on the map.

‘Two this is two two, over.’

‘Two, over.’

‘Two two, fire mission battery. Grid 950619, direction 285, three tanks dug in, over.’

‘Two, roger. Wait, out.’

Thank God there were no restrictions against artillery targets on the Mount of Olives, David thought, not fancying his chances of getting into the museum with the cross-hairs of three 105mm guns watching him from a little more than 1300 metres away. More importantly, his superiors would not be too pleased if the priceless scrolls were blown into any more fragments than they were already in.

‘Shot, over.’

‘Shot, out.’

The Israeli guns supporting David’s brigade were about 6 kilometres back in the Rose Park, not far from the Knesset. A muffled and distant crump was followed by the hollow roar of an express train as the 105mm armour-piercing round whistled overhead, but it missed its target, exploding further up the hill from the tanks and to the right. David remained unperturbed. Close he thought, but not close enough. In any case it was rare to score a direct hit with the first round.

‘Left 100, drop 100, fire for effect, over.’

‘Left 100, drop 100, fire for effect, out.’

David watched the Mount of Olives explode in brilliant flashes of orange. A bigger explosion and the unmistakable shape of a tank barrel rose briefly through the smoke. One down, two to go, but then first one and then the other tank broke cover, throwing large clumps of dirt and broken olive trees behind their tracks as they withdrew at high speed towards the safety of the next hill.

David turned his attention to his own target. He positioned a machine gun so that it had a good view of the foyer of the museum and he broke cover.

‘Let’s go!’

The first section followed their young leader towards the entrance. With just 45 metres to go a burst of fire from the gardens around the museum tore into his signaller running beside him. Once again, a grenade arced towards the Arab position and the score was settled.

‘Grab the radio!’ David yelled. He checked for a pulse. There was nothing that could be done other than to press on with the attack. His signaller had been married a week. Angry, David doubled forward to the wall beside the museum entrance where he paused. He then leapt into the foyer and sprayed the courtyard with a sustained burst of fire. Two goldfish in the pool were added to the casualty list. The Arabs had fled.

Wall by wall, corridor by corridor, room by room, Lieutenant Kaufmann and his men cleared the museum. When David was satisfied that no Palestinian or Jordanian forces remained, he posted sentries on the roof, then headed unerringly towards the vaults in the basement, taking three men and Joseph Silberman with him.

If Private Silberman had been shaken by being in the thick of a fire-fight with only a few days military training behind him, there was no sign.

‘This is it. Think you can crack it?’

Silberman smiled. ‘It’s 1930s technology. Fifteen minutes. Twenty at the outside.’

David watched, fascinated, as Joseph took a stethoscope from the little black bag he had over his shoulder, plugged in the earpieces and placed the diaphragm against the combination dial. First, he spun the big dial to the left to clear the tumblers and then he turned it one revolution to the right.

‘Twenty-five,’ he announced as his stethoscope picked up the distinct click of the cam and lever mechanism engaging. ‘Last number.’

David wrote it down in his notebook. In the short time Joseph Silberman had been part of his platoon he had actually come to like the little Israeli from ‘the other side of the tracks’. Silberman had offered to show David how to break into a safe and pick a lock with the special tools he kept for just that purpose. Out of curiosity, David had found time to understand and practise Joseph Silberman’s illegal craft on a wall safe and a padlock. Now he was watching the master in action.

Silberman continued to turn the big silver dial with its hundred black gradations. When he was satisfied that the old vault had only three tumblers, Silberman started to rock the dial back and forth, advancing one or two gradations each time. Suddenly he stopped.

‘Eighteen,’ he said as the soft ‘nikt’ of another tumbler slot being lined up sounded in his stethoscope. Silberman was better than his word. Ten minutes later he turned the big wheel on the vault door and the huge retaining bolts slid noiselessly from their recesses.

‘After you, Lieutenant,’ he said, stepping back with a satisfied grin on his face. The challenge of breaking in. Nothing gave Joseph Silberman greater pleasure.

‘I’m glad you’re on our side,’ David said as he stepped past Silberman and into the vault. The Mossad agent had not been mistaken. Rows of small black trunks were coded and stacked in racks that reached to the ceiling. Two were stored separately from the others and David opened one of them and stepped back in awe.

The Isaiah Scroll. Up until now, the oldest known text of the complete Book of Isaiah had been the Ben Asher codex from Cairo which had been dated to 895 AD. David knew he was looking at leather from Qumran that had been inscribed at least a thousand years earlier. Had he had time to open the trunk next to it the world might have been a different place. The Omega Scroll held the clues for civilisation to avert the final countdown. David was jolted from his thoughts by the sound of running footsteps. One of his section commanders burst into the vault.

‘David! They have reached the Wall!’

For twenty years the Old City of Jerusalem had been part of the border between the Arabs and the Jews. No Jew had lived in the city’s Jewish Quarter since the Israelis, mostly elderly rabbis and their students, had been forced out when the Arab Legion stormed through the narrow streets in May of 1948. The most holy of Jewish cities had been turned into a tangle of blocked alleyways and barbed wire. Today the concrete barricades, twisted wire and rusted tin had been stormed by a different legion. The 9th Airborne Brigade could now add ‘street fighting’ to their list of skills. House by house, alley by alley down the Via Dolorosa where Christ had laboured with his cross on the way to Calvary, past the Mosque of Omar where Muhammad had ascended to heaven. With grenade after grenade, sniper bullet after sniper bullet, the Israeli paratroopers had fought their way to the Wall. As the sun rose above the Old City, battle-hardened veterans leaned against the ancient stones erected by King Solomon and wept. The chaplain to the Israeli Defense Forces, Rabbi Shlomo Goren, raised the shofar to his lips and the discordant blare of the ram’s horn rose above the intermittent sniper fire and the heavier sound of distant artillery. Rabbi Goren opened his old Torah.

‘Praise the name of the Lord!’ His voice echoed around the Temple Mount. ‘Trust in the Lord Israel, for He is thy strength and thy shield. He has heard thy supplication. He has become thy salvation. Give thanks to the Lord for He is good and His steadfast love endures for ever.’

The Israelis were back.

Brigadier General Kaufmann was in the Command Centre when the news was received. He had never witnessed anything like it. Loud cheers echoed around the room and generals and sergeants had tears streaming down their cheeks. It was a memorable day amongst the many in the long battle-scarred history of the Jewish nation.

Elsewhere the war was going better than any Israeli could ever have dreamed it would. Nearly half the Egyptian Air Force had been annihilated in the first few minutes of the war. The surprise had been complete and absolute. The news came in that David had captured the Scrolls and Yossi silently thanked his God for his son’s safety, adding a prayer for Michael.

En route to the navigation turning point the two Mirages were just passing through 3000 metres when Michael’s earphones crackled.

‘Ilyushin-14, 900 metres. Cover me!’ Benny yelled. The need for radio silence had long since disappeared. Without waiting for a reply, Major Benny Shapirah rolled into the attack and dived on the unsuspecting Russian Ilyushin-14 transport.

Michael scanned the skies and then he saw him, coming out of the sun at about 6000 metres.

‘MiG-21 on your tail,’ he reported quickly.

‘Got ’im. Let him come,’ Benny replied.

Michael watched, almost mesmerised as Major Shapirah broke off the attack on the Ilyushin and allowed the MiG-21 to close on his tail. Benny slowed his aircraft, forcing the Egyptian pilot to overshoot, a manoeuvre that would not be found in any textbook on dogfighting. It required nerves of steel and Benny, one of Israel’s aces, had spent many hours perfecting it. As the hapless Egyptian shot past Benny’s Mirage, Benny loosed off three short bursts of cannon fire. Seconds later the MiG-21 disintegrated in a ball of flame as the 30mm cannon found its mark.

Michael recovered his vigilance just in time to sight the second Russian-built MiG-21 ‘Fishbed’ coming in below him and lining up for an attack on Benny’s Mirage.

‘Second Fishbed on your tail, am engaging,’ he reported nonchalantly as he rolled into the attack behind the second Egyptian. The Egyptian had made the mistake of allowing his focus to remain on his target to the exclusion of everything else. By the time the Egyptian pilot realised he wasn’t ‘clean’ it was too late. Michael held his sights on the now twisting and turning MiG until he had closed to less than 200 metres. He depressed the trigger on the joystick repeatedly, slowly and deliberately, and short bursts of cannon ripped into the fleeing Egyptian. It exploded in front of him as the cannon found the high-octane starter fuel tank that the Russian aeronautical engineers had inexplicably positioned beside the pilot’s oxygen bottle. For a moment Michael was blinded as he flew straight through the black pall of smoke.

‘Michael! On your tail!’ A third MiG had joined the fight.

Instinctively Michael broke hard right, then left, but his aircraft was already shuddering as the Egyptian’s cannon found its mark. Michael rolled, broke left again and pulled up hard in a desperate bid to shake off his pursuer. Another burst of cannon shattered the canopy, shrapnel hitting Michael in the neck. As the Mirage spun out of control, throttle still fully forward, Michael tried to reach for the ejection handle, his arm strangely heavy and unresponsive.

‘Eject, Michael! You’re hit! Eject! Eject!’

Lieutenant Michael Kaufmann never heard the message. At close to the speed of sound the Mediterranean was like a concrete wall. One of Israel’s finest young pilots had flown his last sortie.

‘General Kaufmann, could I have a word?’ The young Israeli captain’s eyes were misty. Instinctively, Yossi knew what she was about to tell him.

Jerusalem

‘I’m very sorry about Michael. Such a senseless loss,’ Giovanni sympathised. ‘It must have been very hard to deal with.’

‘Yes, even though it was nearly twenty years ago, we still miss him every day,’ Yossi said with a sad look in his eyes. ‘It has made me very determined that his life and the lives of others will not be wasted, although we don’t seem to learn much from history,’ he added ruefully. ‘Unless we stop building settlements on Palestinian land and start genuine negotiations we’re all going to be on a very slippery slope,’ Yossi said. ‘Today it’s hijacking airliners, tomorrow it might be something far more sinister.’

‘What makes you say that?’ Giovanni asked.

‘I spent a long time in military intelligence, Giovanni. It’s common knowledge that several of Israel’s enemies are keen on acquiring nuclear technology, but there is something else. Have you ever seen any of the work I’ve done on the codes in the Dead Sea Scrolls?’

‘Patrick was kind enough to give me one of your papers. I found it fascinating.’

‘Then you will have seen my analysis on the horrifying warning that is in the Omega Scroll.’

Giovanni was tempted to lay his cards on the table. He felt sure he could trust Patrick and Yossi but he held back. The Vatican would deny it all emphatically.

‘The Essenes were a very advanced and thoughtful scientific community,’ Yossi said, ‘and I believe if they saw fit to record this warning, we should take notice.’

Long after Patrick’s guests had left, Giovanni lay awake in his room overlooking the Old City’s Christian Quarter Road. Could it be that when the Romans destroyed the Essenes at Qumran, an ancient seat of scientific learning had been lost? Giovanni knew that many people would be sceptical, but he also knew many ancient civilisations were far more advanced than at first thought. The dry cell battery, he recalled, had been invented over two thousand years before it had appeared in Western civilisation. The ancient versions had been made out of a copper cylinder set in pitch with an iron rod inside and there was an example of one in the Baghdad museum, but when the Greeks and Romans developed a preference for oil, the technology had been lost. Was it possible there was a lot more to the Essenes than modern scholarship had allowed? The answer lay hidden in the Judaean desert.