Bronson kicked out and rose up, never allowing the beam of the torch to waver, keeping its light on the object. Then he was beside it, his lungs bursting, but determined to find out exactly what it was.
It looked almost like a log of wood, but the moment his hand closed around the end of it he knew it was some kind of metal. Bronson tugged at it, but it seemed to be jammed into a natural fissure in the rock. He changed his grip and pulled again, bracing himself against the wall of the cistern with his other hand, his fingers still awkwardly clutching the torch.
This time he felt the object move. He pulled again, and in a cloud of debris it suddenly came free.
Bronson kicked out, away from the wall and up towards the surface. As his head popped out of the water he sucked in a long breath, then another.
He passed the torch up to Angela and grabbed for the rope.
'What is it?' she asked, her voice high with anxiety.
'I don't know,' Bronson said, still panting for air. 'It was jammed into a crevice in the wall of the spring. I think it's metal. Here.'
Angela got down on her knees and stretched out both hands to him. Taking the object from him, she placed it carefully on the platform beside her as he began hauling himself up the knotted rope.
The climb wasn't as bad as Bronson had feared, because he could use his feet on the side of the cistern as well as the rope, and in a few seconds he was standing shivering beside Angela on the platform.
She rummaged in the rucksack and pulled out a towel.
Shivering and stamping his feet to get warm, Bronson dried himself and started to get dressed. Then she moved the beam of her torch to shine on whatever it was he'd found in the cistern.
'It looks like a sheet of metal, rolled into a cylinder,' she said, her voice husky with emotion, and Bronson could see her beginning to shake too. 'It's covered in algae, but I think I can see marks on it. God, Chris, I think this might be it. I think you've found the Silver Scroll.'
73
'And so do I,' said a new voice, somewhere above Bronson and Angela.
Suddenly the darkness was split by a trio of powerful torch beams that dazzled them. It was like Hezekiah's Tunnel all over again, except that this time there was nowhere for them to run to. They were trapped in a dead end, unarmed and helpless.
Bronson and Angela were pinned by the light, standing on the wooden platform and staring up at the men holding torches at the top of the final staircase.
Hoxton moved his torch backwards slightly to illuminate the pistol he held in his right hand.
'As you can see, we're armed,' he said, 'so don't try anything stupid.'
'What do you want?' Bronson demanded.
'I'd have thought that was obvious,' Baverstock said. 'We're here to take that scroll. Thanks for finding it for us. We didn't even need to get our feet wet.'
Angela recognized his voice immediately. 'Tony? I should have guessed. What are you doing here?'
'The same as you, Lewis. Looking for the treasure the Sicarii hid here two millennia ago. I'm so pleased you've found it. This is going to make me very rich.'
'Nonsense,' Angela objected, her tone sharp and angry.
'If this is the Silver Scroll, it needs to be properly analysed and conserved. It must go to a museum.'
'Oh, it'll end up in a museum eventually, don't worry about that,' Baverstock assured her. 'What you've got there is probably the world's most famous treasure map.
And when we've translated the text we'll have access to the greatest collection of buried treasure in history. We'll spend the next few years digging it all up and carefully selling a few of the best bits on the black market – Dexter here is an expert in that field – and then we can all retire on the proceeds. Then I'll trot back to the British Museum with the scroll. My name will be as famous as Howard Carter's.'
'I always thought you were an academic, Tony,' Angela said, her voice dripping scorn. 'But you're really just a grubby little tomb-robber, aren't you?'
'I am an academic, but I've always been quite happy to do a bit of freelancing on the side. Rather like you, in fact.'
'And if we give you the scroll, you'll let us go?' Angela asked.
'Don't be so naïve,' Hoxton snapped. 'If we let you live, you'll tell somebody about this scroll and the Middle East will be full of treasure hunters within a matter of days. Your career, and your life, are going to end right here.'
'I'm a British police officer,' Bronson warned him. 'Kill me and you'll have every copper in Britain looking for you.'
'If we were in a cellar in England, I'd agree with you, but we're standing underneath a deserted fortress in the middle of Israel. Nobody's going to know you're dead; no one will ever know you were even here. Both your bodies will simply vanish. That well behind you is deep enough to hold your bones for all eternity. Now, hand over that scroll.' Hoxton pointed at Baverstock. 'Get it, Tony.'
Baverstock took a step towards the staircase leading down to the platform to take the relic, his pistol pointing at Angela, but Bronson had one desperate card left to play.
He grabbed the scroll and jumped back, holding the relic directly above the dark water of the well.
'One more step and I'll drop this,' he threatened. 'I've no idea how far down this spring goes, but I can promise you it is deep. You'll need specialist diving equipment to recover it – if you ever do. As you said, this well could hold its secrets for all eternity.'
For several seconds nobody spoke or moved, and then a single shot rang out, the echo crashing and reverberating around the cavern, shockingly loud in the confined space.
And then a man screamed in pain.
74
Dexter tumbled sideways, his pistol clattering to the floor as he grabbed at his leg, the shock of the bullet's impact momentarily stunning him. Then the pain hit him and he screamed.
Baverstock dived to the ground, trying to roll clear of the line of fire. Hoxton span round, swinging his torch beam back up the tunnel, desperately searching for the origin of the shot as he brought his own pistol to bear. The light flashed over three motionless figures, standing barely twenty feet away.
The moment he heard the shot, Bronson dropped the scroll on to the wooden platform and pushed Angela bodily to one side and down into what cover there was behind the rocks that lined the chamber.
Before Hoxton could bring his weapon up to the aim, he was blinded by two beams of light and heard the sound of a second shot.
He felt a crashing impact in his chest at the same moment, and tumbled backwards onto the wooden walkway. Then a numbing, crushing sensation spread across his torso as the lights around him seemed to fade into blackness. And then he felt nothing at all.
The beams of the torches shifted, the men holding them looking for new targets. They fixed on Baverstock, cowering at the side of the walkway and clutching a pistol. Two shots echoed round the chamber, so close together that they sounded like a single report, and Baverstock slumped backwards, tumbling off the walkway and onto the rocky floor of the tunnel below.
An ominous silence fell as the echoes of the shots died away, and then again someone screamed in pain.
'Jesus, Chris! What the hell's happening up there?' Angela whispered.
'Keep down. I don't think anybody's shooting at us. Not yet, anyway.'
Bronson grabbed the rucksack and reached inside it. He pulled out a crowbar and stood up, tucking the cold steel tool behind him, into the waistband of his trousers. It wasn't much of a weapon, but it was all he had. He'd managed with less before, he told himself. Far less.
'Like rats in a trap.' The voice was soft, barely audible over Dexter's howls of pain.
The three men moved forward cautiously, their torch beams dancing on the floor.