The Treasure of The Copper Scroll
The opening and decipherment of the most
mysterious of the Dead Sea Scrolls,
a unique inventory of buried treasure
by John Marco Allegro
Costello opened the book to the title page and found it copyrighted in 1960, then began slowly flipping through its pages, trying to get a brief overview before reading it cover to cover. On page 33, he came across Allegro’s translation of the now-notorious Copper Scroll.
ITEM 1: In the fortress which is in the Vale of Achor, forty cubits under the steps entering to the east: a money chest and its contents, of a weight of seventeen talents.
ITEM 2: In the sepulchral monument, in the third course of stones — light bars of gold.
ITEM 3: In the Great Cistern which is in the Court of Peristyle, in the plaster of its floor, concealed in a hole in front of the upper opening: nine hundred talents.
And so it went, for page after page.
ITEM 47: In the reservoir which is in Beth Kerem, ten cubits on its left as you enter: sixty-two talents of silver.
ITEM 48: In the vat of the olive press, in its western side, a plug-stone of two cubits (it is the opening): three hundred talents of gold and ten serving vessels.
Costello had never read anything like it. Nor had he ever planned to. But now people were apparently being killed, and he had to know more. He skipped ahead to chapter 3, “The Treasure.” One passage in particular caught his eye.
“Tales of buried treasure are to be found in any folklore, and Jewish literature has them in full measure,” wrote Allegro, who went on to summarize some of the more popular versions from the Bible, as well as from extrabiblical literature, like the second book of Maccabees, which said that the prophet Jeremiah once “commanded the Tabernacle and the Ark to accompany him” to Mount Nebo on the shores of the Dead Sea. “There he found a cave in which he placed the Tabernacle, the Ark, and the incense altar, and then sealed its entrance,” Allegro explained. “Even the prophet’s followers did not know its whereabouts, but he promised that it would be revealed when ‘God shall gather His people together again, and receive them unto His mercy.’
“Most of these traditions look to the time when the Messiah would restore the glory and the Temple and its treasures,” Allegro concluded, adding that “all such stories bear the obvious marks of fiction either in the manner and place of concealment or in the nature of the treasure concerned.”
But what intrigued Costello most was that Allegro explained that he believed the Copper Scroll was no legend. He believed that it was real and fully expected the treasures to one day be found.
Is that what Jon and Erin are really doing, hunting for the Temple treasures and the Ark of the Covenant? Whatever they were doing, someone was trying to kill them before they succeeded. Someone was killing everyone connected to the Copper Scroll. And for all Costello knew, it might actually be someone in his own government.
50
It was almost 3 a.m. when Rajiv finally got home.
She quietly closed and locked the front door behind her, then checked on her husband. He was sound asleep. Next she tiptoed into her closet, pulled out a small carry-on suitcase, and took it back down to the kitchen of their Tysons Corner town house. There was no time to pack clothes, but she wouldn’t need them anyway. With the money she was being paid, she could buy anything she wanted when she reached her destination.
Rajiv crawled under the sink, pulled up the linoleum, and pried away two wood panels. Inside was a steel box sealed shut with a combination lock. Inside the box were six fake passports, six different credit cards — each tied to the aliases on the passports — and nine thousand dollars in cash, all in well-worn twenty- and fifty-dollar bills. She stuffed it all in the suitcase, zipped it up, and replaced the wood panels under the sink. Then she took one last look around at a home she had loved but always known she’d one day flee.
She would actually miss her husband, she suddenly realized. He had been better to her than she had expected. Indeed, he had turned out to be a very sweet man — attentive, doting, the kind of man she might have enjoyed growing old with, if she had ever planned to stay married to begin with. It had never dawned on Peter Mohan Rajiv that his arranged marriage to Indira Visaloo Parajee had been a sham from the beginning, and in a way, she loved him for that. But it was over now. She hoped it would not destroy him, but she feared it would.
Rajiv jumped in her BMW Z4 and took off; then came the hard part: which airport, which alias, which getaway city? Dulles and Reagan National were out. It was too likely she’d run into someone she knew. The same was true with BWI. Even JFK was risky. She got on the beltway and headed north to 95. She could be in Boston in eight hours, nine at the most, and in London by morning.
It was a gamble. But it was the only chance she had.
51
“Erin? Can you hear me?”
She could hear the words. She knew it was Jon. She was just having trouble actually getting her eyes open. She found his hand and squeezed it gently, and a moment later, she was looking into his beautiful green eyes.
“Hey, welcome back,” she heard her husband say.
She smiled and tried to speak.
“You need some water?” he asked, apparently not sure if he had heard her right.
Erin nodded, almost imperceptibly.
Jon quickly poured her a glass from the carafe on the bedside table. He held her head up as she took a few sips and then gently lowered her head back onto the pillow.
“You had me worried for a while there,” he said as his eyes filled with tears. “You’ve gotta stop doing that to me.”
“I’m sorry,” Erin whispered back.
“It’s okay. I forgive you,” he replied. “Just don’t let it happen again.”
He put another pillow under her head to prop her up a bit. “How about some good news?” he asked.
Erin nodded eagerly.
“It’s pretty big,” he said, smiling. “You might want to lie down for this.”
She loved to see those crinkles form around his eyes.
“I found the Key Scroll.”
Erin gasped. “You’re kidding,” she whispered as she tried to sit up.
“I’m not,” he replied, his eyes telling the story.
“In the tunnel?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” he confirmed. “Right where Donovan thought it was all the time. Unfortunately, I found him as well. His bones at least. Harkin’s too. It was pretty grim.”
“How did they die?” she asked of the men who had once been her colleagues.
“Land mine, snipers — I doubt they even knew what hit them.”
Erin winced and squeezed his hand again. It was amazing they hadn’t been killed as well.
There was a knock at the bedroom door.
“Come in,” Bennett replied.
Natasha entered the room. She pulled up a chair next to the bed, a yellow legal pad and a pen in her hands.
“You done?” Bennett asked, clearly surprised to see her.
“Yes!” she said, her face showing the relief. “I just finished. It went faster than I’d expected.”