"That makes sense," Ronnie said.
"There's a large cistern here," Rivka said. "Perhaps that's what was meant. A place where the water gathers."
"That has to be it," Nick said. "Where is it?"
"I can show you," Rivka said. "There's a stairway leading down to it. Part of it is closed off."
She turned to Gideon. "Gideon, you stay here with the vehicles and the weapons. I don't want to leave them unguarded."
"No problem. I've been here before. It's not like I'm missing anything."
Rivka led them to a booth near the cistern. They paid a fee and were issued hardhats, required for everyone who wanted to explore the ancient waterworks. Then they approached the steps. The stairway down to the cistern was steep and uneven. A wooden railing had been installed along the outside of the stairs. The steps and walls were made of fitted stone.
They descended with care, keeping a hand on the railing. Selena felt her calves straining as they went down and felt thankful she was still in shape. She wondered if they were going to have to climb back up, or if there was another way out.
At the bottom of the steps, a tunnel led into the cistern itself. They ducked under the low entrance and came out inside a cavernous space carved from solid bedrock. Strategically placed lights illuminated the cistern.
"This is something," Ronnie said. "A lot of work went into this."
"I wonder how much water this thing held?" Nick said.
"A lot," Lamont said.
Friedman examined the walls of the cistern, looking for anything that might constitute the clue they were looking for.
"I don't see anything," he said. "If there was something here, it's been covered over. The plaster that's left on the walls has been repaired."
"It would've been too easy to find it right off," Nick said. "Besides, we might not be in the right place."
"Where else would it be?"
"How does the water feed into this?"
"There's an aqueduct. It channels rainwater in."
"Let's go look at that," Nick said.
"The exit is over there," Selena said. "I'm glad we don't have to climb up those steps."
They mounted a series of low, wooden platforms that led to a door set in the side of the rock. They opened the door and emerged into the sunlight. Nick squinted in the sudden glare and put on his sunglasses.
Rivka led them to where an aqueduct had once funneled winter rains into the cistern. The opening was blocked with a heavy iron grill. The ground was covered with loose rock and rubble. It sloped down sharply to the opening.
"I'm going down there," Nick said.
"Watch your step," Ronnie said.
"Yeah."
Nick half walked, half slid, down to the grill blocking the way in. Large rocks encircled the opening. He took out a pocket flashlight and shone it through the grill. The light reflected off rough walls that tunneled down into the cistern. The lower part of the walls were worn smooth from the passage of water over the centuries, but the upper section was much as it had been when it was first dug, three thousand years before.
"I see something carved high up on the rock," Nick called. "It looks like an eye."
"An eye? Describe it," Friedman said.
"Like I said, it looks like an eye. An eye shape with a dot in the middle."
"That could be ancient Hebrew."
"The letter ghah," Selena said.
"Exactly," Friedman said.
"What does it mean?" Ronnie asked.
"If it's the letter ghah, it means to watch or to know."
"Figures," Lamont said. "It's an eye."
"Can you see anything else, Nick?" Friedman said.
"Nope." He moved his light around. "That's all there is."
He put the light away and scrambled back up on all fours. He stood and dusted off his pants.
"It was carved in the rock, up high, above the waterline."
"It doesn't help us much," Friedman said.
"I'm not so sure about that," Selena said. "It's from the right timeframe. The scroll was written in ancient Hebrew, so it's consistent with that."
"So how does it help?"
"If this is the first marker, it could be telling us to watch for something."
"Yeah, but what?" Nick asked.
"The second marker? I guess we'll have to follow the rest of the instructions to find out," Selena said.
Back at the vehicles, Nick pointed at a dirt streaked motorcycle parked near the well.
"I haven't seen one of those in years," he said. "It's an old English bike. A Triumph."
"I didn't know you liked old motorcycles," Selena said.
Nick laughed. "There's a lot you don't know. I had a bike when I was at school, before I got into the Marines. That one was a Norton. It was faster than hell, bigger than this one."
As they drove away, the man who had been following them took out his cell phone.
CHAPTER 16
Back at the vehicles, they considered the next move.
Friedman scratched his chin. "The scroll said the next marker is twenty-two parasas to the south."
"What's a parasa in modern measurements?" Ronnie asked.
"In biblical times, they measured distance by parts of the human body," Friedman said. "An arm, a leg, the width of the palm, the length of a finger and so on. You combined those measurements into larger and larger amounts until you got to a parasa, or parsa'ot in old Hebrew. Because they used measurements that varied according to the size of the body, it's not an exact distance. Roughly, a parasa is four point eight kilometers."
"So, twenty-two parasas would be somewhere around a hundred plus kilometers?"
"That's correct."
Nick looked at a map. "That would put us right in the middle of the Wilderness of Zin."
"I see a problem with this," Gideon said.
"What's that?"
"You're saying that the next marker could be a hundred kilometers or more from here. That's a lot of territory. Plus we don't have any idea what route Moses actually followed. It's not like he had roads, he was walking in the desert. You see where I'm going?"
"A wild duck chase," Rivka said.
"Goose, not duck," Nick said. "A wild goose chase."
"It's a good point, Gideon," Selena said. "But when Solomon wrote the scroll he would have known that. There has to be something to indicate where that second marker is located, something more than a rough distance."
"Let's think about this for a minute," Nick said. "The instructions say to follow in the steps of Moses, right?"
Gideon nodded. "Right."
"So where did Moses go?"
"Wandering in the desert, for forty years," Ronnie said.
"Sure, but where did he go? Where are the important stops?"
"Mount Sinai," Rivka said. "But that's in Egypt."
"Not necessarily," Friedman said.
"What do you mean?" Lamont asked. "In Sunday school they told us it was in Egypt."
"You went to Sunday school?" Ronnie asked.
"Every week. My grandma made sure I went. Besides, I liked the stories. And we got cookies."
"That explains it," Ronnie said
Friedman cleared his throat. "If I can go on?"
"Sorry, Doc," Ronnie said.
"There are several mountains that could be Mount Sinai. One of them is in the Wilderness of Zin, Mount Karkom. That's almost exactly twenty-two parasas from here."
"You think the second marker is on Mount Karkom?"
"It could be," Friedman said. "There are reputable archaeologists who think Mount Karkom is the Mount Sinai of Genesis. It's a theory. No one's sure where it is."
Nick said, "Gideon's right. Heading into the desert and hoping for the best isn't going to work. Mount Karkom could be right. It fits with everything else in the scroll."
"Guess we'll be camping in the desert tonight," Lamont said.