‘Where does the DNA model fit in with the Essenes?’ Allegra asked David, determined to find out as much as she could about the second element of the scroll.
‘Those models in the Shrine of the Book were made from diagrams found in the Qumran library. Your Professor Rosselli from Ca’ Granda was starting to investigate further when he was shot. Did you know him well?’
‘Pretty well,’ Allegra said sadly. ‘He was a mentor.’
‘I’m sorry. It didn’t get much coverage here but Yossi was shocked. He confided in me at the time that he thought someone didn’t want Rosselli to get too close to the truth. Did Rosselli talk much about his theories on the origin of DNA?’
‘He was pretty wary. I think someone had warned him, but he had a lot of time for Francis Crick. I read his book but to be honest, I still have an open mind about DNA being introduced from a higher civilisation.’
‘So do I, and in the 1970s suggesting that a higher civilisation had sent rocket probes here would have qualified Crick for a padded cell, but when you think about it, we’ve got space probes headed for the icy wastes of our own galaxy and in the billions of others, it’s absurd to think we’re the only planet with life.’ David’s face grew serious. ‘Yossi has an open mind too, although his code work indicates that the Omega Scroll might confirm Crick’s theory.’
Allegra was seeing another side of this fun-loving man with the boyish good looks and impish sense of humour; the serious side.
‘Feel like lunch?’ David asked. ‘There’s a cave over there,’ he said, pointing to an opening halfway up the other side of the wadi. ‘For that one we won’t need climbing spikes.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ Allegra said, following him out of the ruins.
It took them nearly half an hour to negotiate the same rocks that the young Bedouin boy had scrambled over fifty years before, searching for his goat, but it was worth the effort. Allegra followed David into the same long narrow chamber where the Bedouins had discovered the first of the scrolls.
‘It’s a pity the two Bedouin boys didn’t know what they’d found,’ Allegra said. ‘It would have been an incredible feeling to have known you were the first person in here after nearly two thousand years.’
‘Not the case now though,’ David replied ruefully. ‘It looks as if an army’s been through here.’
Even an army of people could miss something critical if it had been deliberately sealed from view. Another tiny sprinkle of dust fell from the high ledge concealed just inside the entrance to the cave, but neither David or Allegra noticed it as they found a place for lunch in the shade of the cave opening.
‘Chardonnay?’
‘Why not. I’ll bet you didn’t bring anything else.’
‘Did too. Water is the lifeblood out here.’
‘Then I’ll have some of both. I wonder what Lonergan is hiding in that vault,’ Allegra mused, accepting a smoked salmon roll.
‘It will take a bit of finding out. They haven’t even given us access to the museum yet but Yossi’s on his case and from experience I know my father doesn’t give up on things without one hell of a fight.’
‘Is it hard having a famous father?’
David smiled. ‘You get used to people saying “Oh, you’re Professor Kaufmann’s son”, but Yossi has always encouraged me to do my own thing and he makes it pretty easy. Even when we served in the Army together the father-son thing wasn’t really a problem.’
‘What’s it like? Fighting a war.’
‘I think when you’re young there is a feeling of excitement. Until someone starts shooting at you and you realise you need a spare set of underpants.’
Allegra laughed.
‘Some of the politicians milk war for all they’re worth,’ David continued, ‘especially if they think it will go down well with the public. But when you’ve been involved in one, you realise how utterly senseless and what a terrible waste it all is. I guess it took the death of my brother Michael for it to really hit me.’
‘I had no idea,’ Allegra said apologetically. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘That’s OK. It took a while to come to terms with his death but there is hardly an Israeli family, or a Palestinian one, who haven’t lost loved ones. Part of the price of war. I was very angry for a while, and I still miss the crazy bastard.’
‘I’m so sorry, David. These days we seem to turn to war as the first solution to a problem.’
In the car park below Yusef Sartawi answered his mobile. ‘Yes, I am in position. They are at the entrance to Cave One.’ The message was deliberately short and cryptic.
‘We all have a defined time span and we should make the most of it,’ David said, getting to his feet, ‘but a lot of us spend our time killing each other and manoeuvring for power. Take this cave.’ David wandered back inside. ‘What they found in here is for the whole of humanity, not just a few privileged Catholic academics, yet we’re still fighting the Catholic Church tooth and nail to try to get to the truth.’ He brushed at what he thought was a bug in his hair. Another fine sprinkle of sand fell on his neck and he brushed at it again, but this time he stopped and looked up as he felt the sand trickle down his back. Above his head he could see what looked like a small crack in the rough rock of the overhanging wall. He turned to Allegra, who was still standing in the entrance.
‘Come and have a look at this.’
‘What,’ she said, stepping back into the cave.
‘There’s a crack in the rock here.’
Together they peered at the crack as a few more grains of sand trickled out of it. David retrieved the small pick from his backpack and started to scrape at the fissure. The ancient mortar that had finally succumbed to the same tremors that had rocked Bishop O’Hara’s whiskey bottles and Allegra’s apartment in Jerusalem came away easily. David’s pulse quickened.
‘This is mortar,’ he said excitedly. The pick started to come up against the rock of the cave and the straight edge of what looked like a small sealed cavity started to appear.
Working more slowly David picked at the mortar, edging his way around the extent of the cavity opening. The cavity was only about 60 centimetres square and the entrance had been ingeniously blocked with rock that had been chiselled from the cave wall. The mortar had been carefully mixed to match it.
‘Whatever is in here the Essenes obviously wanted to hide it from the outside world,’ David said as he slowly scraped away at the last of the mortar. Suddenly he stepped back and covered his nose.
‘Ugh!’ The air escaping from the cavity was foul.
‘Cover your face,’ he said quickly, signalling for Allegra to get out of the cave.
‘ Cryptococcus neuromyces?’ Allegra asked, giving the fungus spores that had killed more than one unwary archaeologist their scientific name. The lung disease caused by it would start with headaches and a fever coupled with difficulty in breathing. The bleeding would follow and the toxins would be transported to the brain, where they would attack the meninges and the victim would hallucinate and die.
‘I don’t think we’re faced with an Essenes’ version of a curse of the Pharaohs,’ David replied. ‘The air here has a very low humidity so it’s unlikely to have any nasties in it, but let’s be careful just the same. Whatever’s in that cavity has waited for two thousand years. It can wait another few minutes.’
David was right to be cautious.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Langley, Virginia
I n the basement below Mike McKinnon’s office the massive Cray mainframe computers hummed quietly, collecting and collating thousands of reports from all over the world. Reports from station chiefs in over a hundred countries; analysis from seismic listening devices and satellite imagery; results from bugs placed in embassies and offices and reports from dozens of other sources, both human and electronic.
Mike McKinnon’s initial views on being assigned to a presidential search for some ancient scroll had been unprintable, liberally sprinkled with a four-letter word for intercourse, but true to his years of training he had put together a plan that might turn up even the smallest clue. Kaufmann’s paper on the Dead Sea codes had been caught in the net, and now Echelon was producing results as well. Echelon was the codename for the National Security Agency’s system for intercepting phone calls, emails, faxes, telexes and any other electronic emission from anywhere around the globe, but the Echelon file on the Omega Scroll posed more questions than it answered.