The Omega scroll

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Langley, Virginia

M ike McKinnon put down the file ‘Nuclear Fallout – Medical Issues’ and shook his head. Even if al-Qaeda issued a 30-minute warning and the emergency broadcast system was activated over TV and radio, only those few who had immediate access to a nuclear fallout shelter would be able to react. Even those who survived the devastating blast would suffer terribly. The radioactive cloud, Mike knew, could cover hundreds of square miles, especially if the wind and weather conditions were un-favourable. The brain cells in people subjected to any more than a few thousand of what were known as rads or radiation doses would be so damaged they would immediately start to swell. After a day of vomiting, excruciating headaches and seizures, tens of thousands would die. Even after a few hundred rads, half those exposed, perhaps a million people in the larger cities, would experience intense abdominal pain as the cells of their intestinal lining were destroyed. Their hair would drop out, bleeding would occur from the gums and anus, and death would occur within days. Those who staffed the city hospitals would themselves be part of the death toll. The countdown for civilisation had begun the day that man split the atom, Mike thought bleakly. As soon as they were ready, he knew the Islamic fundamentalists would not hesitate.

Mike reached for Professor Kaufmann’s paper on ‘The Omega Scroll and the Islamic Nuclear Factor’ and again he wondered whether there was a connection between the nuclear suitcases now in the hands of al-Qaeda and the ancient Dead Sea Scroll. Kaufmann had argued persuasively that in monotheistic religions there had been three revelations, the first to the Jews, the second to the Christians and finally to the Muslims, and he had now deciphered the ancient codes that seemed to make a connection with the third revelation, Islam and a coming atomic holocaust.