The Solomon Scroll

CHAPTER 7

Stephanie and Elizabeth were in Elizabeth's office when Nick and Selena arrived. Ronnie came in right after them.

"I got a heads up from the White House," Elizabeth said. "Rice wants us to look into something that happened in France."

"If there's a chance we're going out soon you'd better get Ramirez in here," Nick said. "He needs to be in on the planning."

"Have you decided to keep him?"

"I don't know yet but this seems like a good time to show him how we work."

"Last I saw of our rookie, he was in the workout room. Steph, would you ask Sergeant Ramirez to come up here please?"

Down in the workout room Diego was on the treadmill, running in place. His mind was going faster than his feet.

Who the hell are these people? he thought. This is one weird set up. Hell, they're old, Carter and his Indian buddy. I wonder what happened to his ear? The blonde, Selena. Where did she learn to fight like that? And the whole operation is being run by a woman.

He punched a button. The speed picked up.

Those weapons in the armory…they're not fooling around. I still don't know what it is they do. If they're not spooks, what are they? Problem solvers, Harker said. What the hell does that mean? What kind of problems?

Stephanie came to the door. "Sergeant, Director Harker wants you upstairs."

"Right away."

He shut down the machine, felt his body thinking his feet were still moving. Stephanie was already gone. Diego mopped his brow with a towel and went upstairs.

Once Ramirez was seated, Harker got to the point.

"Sergeant, you are still on probation but Nick and I thought you should be here to see how we approach an operation. Put up the pictures please, Steph."

Stephanie touched a key on her laptop. The monitor on Elizabeth's office wall sprang to life with a picture of a large, gray building that looked like a giant doughnut. The walls and roof were one, rounded unit. The structure made a full circle, with a large open area in the center. Blackened, twisted metal showed where the force of an explosion had blown a large hole in the side.

"Looks like somebody took a bite out of it," Ronnie said.

He was wearing a faded blue Hawaiian shirt from his collection, covered with happy ukulele players strumming their instruments and wearing leis.

"Speaking of looks, you look like a music hall in old Waikiki," Nick said. "Where did you get that shirt? The Goodwill store?"

"Hey, this is a classic from the 70s. When are you going to learn to appreciate the finer points of being well-dressed?"

"Excuse me," Elizabeth said, "I wonder if I could have your attention?"

"Sorry, Director," Nick said

Ramirez watched the exchange in disbelief.

"What is that place in the picture?" Nick asked.

"The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France."

"That's a mouthful."

"It's one of the world's top facilities for studying x-rays and radiation, not to mention physics and chemistry. It's a very big deal. Someone just put it out of commission, as you can see."

"Terrorist attack?" Selena asked.

"That's the official line."

"What's the unofficial?"

"Unofficially, no one knows anything except that it was sabotage. The area that was targeted deals with a specialized technique called crystal x-ray tomography. It's like a super CAT scan, only instead of people it scans objects. The files and equipment in that part of the building were destroyed. Selena, you can read Aramaic. Is that right?"

"It depends. Usually I can."

"It's routine for all files created at the facility to be duplicated on another server. The research is too important to trust to only one backup source. The explosion destroyed one server but the files still exist on the backup. French security found x-rays of a scroll written in Aramaic taken in the days just before the attack."

"That's interesting, but how does it relate to the explosion?"

"The scroll could be the reason for it. It was sealed in volcanic debris during the eruption of Vesuvius. A professor from the Italian National Museum named Caprini brought it in to see if the text could be read by using x-rays. It turned out that the first page and part of the second could be seen. Caprini was a biblical archaeologist. He knew how to translate it."

"Was a biblical archaeologist?"

"He's dead. That's one reason the French think the scroll has something to do with this. He was headed back to Italy when an explosion blew him and his train off a bridge in the Italian Alps. It wasn't an accident."

"I read about that," Ronnie said. "More than two hundred people died in that wreck."

Nick looked at Harker. "You said one reason. There are others?"

"The technician who operated the x-ray equipment for Caprini was found dead after the explosion. He was killed before the blast."

"Someone murdered him?" Selena asked.

"Yes."

"Where's the scroll?"

"Good question. Caprini had the scroll and copies of the x-ray results with him on the train. No trace of them was found in the wreck."

"Was the facility attacked before or after the train wreck?" Nick asked.

"The day after."

"Seems like a big coincidence, two explosions involving that scroll."

"I don't believe in coincidences. Neither does French security. While he was in Grenoble, Caprini let it slip that the scroll could start a new war in the Middle East."

"I'm getting really tired of going to the Middle East," Nick said. "The damn place is always full of people killing each other in the name of God."

"You may be going there again. It depends on what's on that scroll and why someone would want to kill for it. The French think the explosion at the facility was an attempt to destroy records of what the x-rays revealed. They also think there's a connection with the attack on the train."

"How did you find that out?" Nick asked.

"I have a contact in DGSE, French security. The French government doesn't always cooperate with us but in this case my contact thought he should give me a heads up. Anything that could light off the Middle East concerns both Paris and Washington. I thought the president ought to know about it. He told me to follow up. Steph, can we see the next picture?"

The x-rays of the scroll appeared on the monitor. Selena leaned forward to get a better look. There were few people in the world as knowledgeable as her when it came to understanding the ancient languages of the Middle East.

The pictures showed ghostly images of white writing against a black background. They looked like rows of chicken tracks. There were gaps in the writing. A faint second layer could be seen underneath the first, a different part of the rolled scroll. The letters were difficult to see, the lines of writing incomplete.

Selena studied the pictures. "This is Aramaic from around the time of the Roman conquest of Judea. It was very common then. Everyone used it."

"When was that?" Ronnie asked.

"The Romans conquered Jerusalem in 63 CE."

Before she'd joined the Project Selena had been in high demand on the university circuit, lecturing on the dead languages of the ancient world. For Selena, reading Aramaic was like reading an out of date newspaper.

"Can you read it?" Elizabeth asked.

"Yes, but I'll need to consult some references."

"Can you have something for me by morning?"

"Make a copy and I'll take it home with me."