The Moses Stone

'Dust?' Angela asked after a moment, glancing at him.

'Yes. The dust of two millennia, I suppose.'

Angela pointed at the tablets. 'But there's not a speck of dust on either of these.'

Bronson looked more carefully. 'Maybe I knocked it all off when I dragged them out,' he suggested. 'What are they? The Aramaic could almost be some kind of a list. It looks like a series of individual lines of writing rather than a solid block of text.'

For a few seconds Angela didn't reply, just knelt down and stared at the two tablets, the tips of her fingers gently tracing the Aramaic characters. Then she looked up at him, her face pale.

'I never thought we'd find anything like this,' she said softly. 'I think these could be described as "the tablets of the Temple of Jerusalem and of Moses". It looks to me as if these could be early – really early – copies of the Decalogue.'

'The what?' Bronson noticed that Angela seemed almost to be having difficulty breathing.

'I mean the Ten Commandments, the Mosaic Covenant. The tablets God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai. The covenant between God and man, the actual tablets that laid out the rules of the faith.' She paused for a few seconds, then looked at Bronson, her eyes wide, almost scared. 'Forget about the Ark of the Covenant. We could be looking at two copies of the Covenant itself.'

'Who says they're copies?' asked Baverstock, stepping out from behind them, a pistol in his hand.

76

Angela and Bronson span round to stare at Baverstock, disbelief clouding their eyes. The light from their torches glinted off the barrel of the automatic he was pointing straight at them.

'I thought you were dead,' Bronson muttered.

'That was the idea. I'm sorry about this,' Baverstock said, the tone of his voice giving the lie to the words. 'It might have been better if you'd both died down there in the tunnel. Don't try to dazzle me. Shine the torches at the tablets, or I'll shoot one of you right now.'

Bronson and Angela obediently lowered their hands and aimed the torch beams downwards to illuminate the slabs they'd just recovered from the cavity in the altar. The two ancient stones seemed almost to glow in the light from the torches.

'You can't be serious,' Angela said. 'Are you really suggesting these could be the original Covenant with God that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai? You actually believe these tablets were inscribed by the hand of God?'

'Of course not. Whatever hands carved these, they were made of flesh and blood, but otherwise I'm perfectly serious. There's no doubt that something known as the Mosaic Covenant existed, because the Israelites built the Ark to carry it around. The Ark vanished in about 600 BC when the First Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians, but there are no traditions relating to the stones themselves. Most archaeologists assume that when the Babylonians looted the Temple they stole the Covenant as well as the Ark, but there's nothing in the historical record to confirm this.'

Baverstock stopped talking and stared hungrily at the two slabs of stone that rested against the side of the ancient circular altar.

'So what happens now?' Angela asked. 'We should take these to a museum and get them examined and authenticated.'

Baverstock's chuckle was anything but humorous in the darkness. 'I don't think so, Angela. I've no intention of sharing the glory. The Silver Scroll slipped through my fingers. That's not going to happen with these. I'm going to take them, and you're going to die.'

'So you're prepared to kill the two of us just for your pathetic little fifteen minutes of fame? That's so sad, Tony.'

'It won't just be fifteen minutes, Angela. It'll be a lifetime of glory. And your deaths will just add a little more blood to the thousands of gallons that have already been spilt in this place over the millennia.'

The sudden beam of light from Baverstock's torch dazzled them both, and Bronson saw the pistol in the man's hand as he took aim.

Bronson reacted instantly. He threw his torch straight at Baverstock, the beam playing wildly across the rocky ground, a momentary distraction. Then he started to move. He stepped sideways, pushed Angela down onto the ground, and charged towards Baverstock.

Baverstock dodged to one side, avoiding the flying missile, and swung his weapon back to aim at his target – Angela.

Then Bronson hit him, knocking his right arm sideways just as Baverstock pulled the trigger. The bullet whined harmlessly across the ancient hilltop fort, far into the night. Bronson spun round, slightly off-balance. He reached out to grab the other man's arm, but Baverstock dodged, took a couple of steps backwards and swung his pistol and torch towards him.

For less than a tenth of a second Bronson stared into oblivion, looking straight down the barrel of the other man's automatic, then he threw himself to one side, landing painfully among the sharp-edged rocks.

Baverstock started to turn, to alter his aim and fire again, but suddenly he stopped dead. His head slumped forward and he dropped his arms, the pistol and torch clattering to the ground. Then he clutched at his stomach, lifted his head and screamed, a high, wailing call of utter agony and despair that echoed from the surrounding rocks and stones.

Bronson grabbed his own torch, which had fallen nearby and was still working, and shone it at him. The pointed end of a slim steel blade was protruding grotesquely from Baverstock's midriff. As Bronson watched, horrified, the blade moved upwards, blood pouring from the gaping wound. Baverstock's clutching fingers plucked ineffectively at the steel, more blood pouring from his hands as flesh was sliced off, and his howls of agony redoubled.

What he was seeing was so inexplicable that for perhaps two seconds Bronson simply stood there gaping. Then he ran towards the stricken man. But he never reached him.

Before Bronson had taken more than a couple of steps, the knife angled sharply upwards. Baverstock's howls were suddenly cut short and he tumbled limply to the ground. He twitched once, then lay still. Directly behind him, the unpleasantly familiar figure of Yacoub was revealed, a long-bladed knife, still dripping blood, clutched in his right hand. And looming out of the darkness behind him were his two men, each pointing a pistol straight at Bronson.

'Unfinished business,' Yacoub said shortly, kneeling to clean the blood off the blade on Baverstock's trousers. The knife vanished inside his jacket, and he shifted the pistol to his right hand. 'I thought we'd killed him in the water tunnel. Get back over there,' he said, gesturing to Bronson.

'Stay behind me, Angela,' Bronson said, as he stopped next to her and turned to face Yacoub.

'Very noble,' Yacoub chuckled. 'You'll take a bullet for her? That won't be a problem. I've got plenty.'

'You said you'd let us go,' Bronson said. 'Isn't it enough that you've got the Silver Scroll?'

'That was before you found those stones. I heard what that man Baverstock said about them. If those two slabs of rock really are the original Mosaic Covenant, they could change the whole course of the conflict here in Israel. My comrades in Gaza will know how to make the best use of them.'

'They should be in a museum,' Angela said, her voice angry. 'You shouldn't be playing politics with relics as old and as important as these.'

Yacoub gestured irritably with his automatic pistol.

'Everything in this country is to do with politics, whether you like it or not. Old or new, it doesn't matter. Any weapon we can use, we will use. And now you can see why you're both expendable. Nobody must ever know that those stone tablets were found here in Israel. But I will be merciful. You'll both die quickly.'

He lifted his pistol and pointed it at Bronson.

But before he could pull the trigger, there was a muffled bang from somewhere close by, and a faintly luminous object shot up into the sky. In seconds it ignited, burning with the brilliant white-hot light of magnesium, and the darkness was instantly turned into light.