When Jalal Talabani left the police station in Rabat that evening, he didn't follow his usual routine and walk to the car park to collect his car and drive to his home on the northern outskirts of the city. Instead, he visited a local café for a drink and a light meal. Then he followed a circuitous route around the nearby streets, varying his pace and stopping frequently to check behind him. Only when he was quite certain that he was unobserved did he walk to a public telephone and dial a number from memory.
'I have some information you might find useful.'
'Go ahead.'
'There's a British policeman named Bronson here in Rabat looking into the deaths of the O'Connors. He's also interested in finding an old clay tablet. Do you know anything about that?'
'I might,' the man replied. 'Where's he staying?'
Talabani told him the name of Bronson's hotel.
'Thank you, I'll take care of him,' said the man, and ended the call.
11
Early that morning, in a conference room in one of the numerous Israeli government buildings near the centre of Jerusalem, three men met by appointment. No secretaries were present; no notes were taken.
In front of each man were two large photographs, one in colour and the other monochrome, depicting a grey-brown clay tablet in considerable detail. There was also a photocopy of the article from the British regional newspaper, together with a translation of the text into Hebrew.
'That report appeared yesterday in a British newspaper,' Eli Nahman began. He was elderly, thin and stooped, with a white beard and a mane of white hair topped with a black embroidered yarmulke, but his eyes were a clear and piercing blue, and sparkled with intelligence. He was a senior professor at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and an authority on pre-Christian relics.
'The story was spotted by one of the Mossad's assets in London and forwarded to Glilot,' he continued, gesturing to the younger man sitting at the head of the table.
Levi Barak was in his late thirties, with black hair and a tanned complexion, his otherwise regular features dominated by a large nose that would forever stop him being described as handsome. He was wearing a light tan suit, but had hung the jacket over the back of his chair to reveal the shoulder holster under his left armpit, from which the black butt of a semi-automatic pistol protruded.
'As you know, we have standing instructions to inform Professor Nahman when any such reports are received, and I called him yesterday afternoon as soon as I saw this article,' Barak said. 'What you see is all the information we have at present. We've instructed our asset to monitor the British press for any further information about this story. He's also been ordered to drive over to Canterbury – that's the city in Kent where these people lived – and obtain copies of all newspapers printed there. He will forward to us any other reports and articles he can find.'
Barak paused and glanced at the two other men.
'The problem we have is that there's very little hard data here. All we really know is that two elderly English people died a couple of days ago in a road accident in Morocco, and that at some point prior to this they came into possession of an old clay tablet. What we have to do today is decide what action, if any, we should take.'
'Agreed,' Nahman said. 'The first step, obviously, is to decide if this clay tablet is a part of the set, but that's not going to be easy. The picture printed in the paper is so blurred as to be almost useless, and the report gives no indication as to where the relic is now. To help us make a decision, I've supplied photographs of the tablet we already possess, so we can at least compare the appearance of the two of them.'
He paused and looked across the table at the young man sitting opposite him. 'So, Yosef, what's your opinion?'
Yosef Ben Halevi stared down at the photocopied picture of the newspaper article for a few seconds before he replied. 'There's not much to go on here. Without a ruler or something else in this picture to provide scale, we can't do more than estimate its size. It could be anything from about five to twenty or thirty centimetres long. That's the first problem. If we're to determine if this is one of the set, the size is critical. Is there any way of finding out the dimensions of this relic?'
'Not that I can think of, no,' Nahman said. 'The newspaper report describes the object as a "small clay tablet", so the chances are that we're looking at something no more than, say, ten or perhaps fifteen centimetres in length. Any bigger than that and I doubt if the word "small" would have been used. And that, of course, is about the right size.'
Ben Halevi nodded. 'The second point of comparison must obviously be the inscriptions. Looking at the pictures of the two relics, it appears to me that both are superficially similar, and both have the diagonal mark in one corner that I'd expect. The lines of characters are different lengths, and that's not a normal characteristic of Aramaic script, but the newspaper photograph is too poor to allow me to do more than try to translate a couple of words.'
Like Nahman, Ben Halevi worked for the Israel Museum, and was an ancient language specialist and an expert on Jewish history.
'Which words can you decipher?' Nahman asked.
Ben Halevi pointed at the newspaper article. 'Here, along the bottom line. That word could be "altar", and I think the second word from the right is "scroll" or perhaps "scrolls". But the image is very blurred.'
Nahman regarded his friend and colleague keenly. 'How confident are you, Yosef?'
'You mean, do I think this tablet is one of the four? Perhaps sixty or seventy per cent, no higher. We need to see a high-quality picture of the inscription or, better still, actually recover the tablet. Only then can we be certain.'
'That's my view exactly,' Eli Nahman agreed. 'We have to get our hands on that tablet.'
Levi Barak looked at the two academics. 'It really is that important?'
Nahman nodded. 'If it's what we think it is, then it's vital we recover it. Make no mistake about this, Levi. What's written on that tablet could be the final clue we need to locate the Testimony. It could mark the end of a search that's been running for the last two millennia. Take that to your masters at Glilot and ensure they know just how serious this is.'
'It won't be easy, and it might not be possible,' Barak pointed out. 'Even for the Mossad.'
'Look,' Nahman said, 'that tablet exists, and we simply have to find it before anyone else does.'
'Like who?'
'Anyone. Treasure-hunters, obviously, but we can deal with people whose only motivation is money. What worries me are the others – the ones who would be desperate to find the relic so they can destroy it.'
'Muslims?' Barak suggested.
'Yes, but perhaps radical Christians as well. We've always been a persecuted minority, but if we could find the lost Testimony it would validate our religion in a way that nothing else ever could. That's why we simply must recover that clay tablet and decipher the text.'
Barak nodded. 'We have assets in Rabat and Casablanca. I'll instruct them to start looking.'
'Not just in Morocco,' Nahman emphasized. 'The couple who found it were English, so you should search there as well. Spread your net as wide as possible. Thanks to that newspaper, a lot of people will now know about that clay tablet. Your men are likely to find they're not the only ones hunting for it.'
'We can take care of ourselves.'
'No doubt. Just make sure you also take care of the tablet. Whatever happens, it mustn't get damaged or destroyed.'