Some things were not adding up, Mike mused. Why would the Vatican put out a surveillance contract on an internationally renowned expert in archaeological DNA? Her presence at some ruins was normal enough, but which one. ‘At the entrance to Cave One’ wasn’t much help. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. And why was Hamas involved? And who was this fellow Lonergan who kept getting a mention? McKinnon decided it was time to get a little closer to the action by relocating to Israel. He would be able to monitor the report collection from the CIA cell in the American Embassy in Tel-Aviv.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Qumran
N either David or Allegra could contain their excitement any longer and David eased the rock from the front of the cavity in the cave wall. Both of them gasped.
‘My God, David. It’s another urn.’
The rough clay pot had stood on the concealed shelf since the destruction of Nehemiah’s Temple. David carefully lifted the urn and gently placed it on the floor of the cave. Not quite 30 centimetres high, it had been sealed with the same bowl-like lid as the others that had been found over forty years before. David took his penknife and carefully sliced through the seal of soft black pitch. He reached into the jar and took out a roll of faded yellow linen that had started to disintegrate. Inside was a leather bundle.
‘Allegra! It’s another scroll.’
Allegra nodded, speechless. The earlier discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls had been hailed as the greatest archaeological discovery of the twentieth century. Allegra wondered whether this might be its equal in the twenty-first.
‘Someone’s gone to an awful lot of trouble to hide it,’ Allegra said, her heart rate slowing.
‘The problem is,’ David mused, ‘how do we get it out of here without someone seeing us.’
‘Interfering with the property of the State?’
‘I’m more concerned that we don’t start a stampede of Bedouins out here armed with pickaxes and mattocks. I’d rather keep it quiet until I’ve done the translation and we can see what’s in it.’
‘What if one of those Israeli patrols stops us on the way back. If they search the vehicle…’ Allegra said, thinking out loud.
‘We can’t leave it here!’ they said together.
‘Snap!’ David said with a grin. ‘I guess we’ll just have to risk it and hope that Captain Shagnasty and his boys out there aren’t in too much of a checking mood. In the meantime, we’d better try and make this cavity look as if it was part of the original find,’ he said, reaching for his brush.
They certainly would not have been done for speeding. David’s driving was uncharacteristically sedate as Allegra cradled the priceless cargo. Yusef Sartawi followed at a discreet distance, allowing a big truck to get between him and his surveillance targets. One thing was puzzling Yusef. When the pair had returned from the ruins, the Israeli had seemed extremely cautious in handling his satchel.
As David and Allegra passed the turnoff to Jericho an open-backed Israeli truck loomed from the opposite direction, two heavy machine guns trained on Onslow’s windscreen. Allegra held her breath. The truck cruised slowly towards them, the Israeli soldiers suspicious and alert, then just before the soldiers drew level they seemed to relax and the truck went past.
‘Israeli plates help,’ David said. ‘Not to mention my stunning artwork on the doors, although just because it says Hebrew University is no guarantee. These guys have learned to take absolutely nothing at face value.’
Six more Israeli trucks scrutinised their progress but surprisingly none of them stopped. Just the same, Allegra was very relieved when they reached the Mount Scopus campus and they got their priceless cargo safely into their office in the laboratory.
‘It’s in Aramaic,’ David said after they had carefully laid the scroll out on the desk. A look of confusion shadowed his face. ‘It looks like an inventory. Why would the Essenes go to such lengths to hide an inventory?’ His confusion was replaced with astonishment as the reason for the urn being hidden from the rest became apparent.
‘Allegra,’ he said, looking up from his magnifying glass. ‘This is not only the complete list of scrolls, this scroll contains the precise locations of all the caves in Qumran that the Essenes used to store their library.’
‘That explains why it was so well hidden,’ Allegra said. ‘If anyone found this it would automatically lead them to all the other documents.’
‘Exactly.’ David’s grasp of Aramaic was unequalled by anyone else in the field and he translated it as easily as he might have from Hebrew into English. He frowned as he read the titles and locations of the scrolls, and then he whistled softly. ‘The Omega Scroll! There are three copies listed here.’
‘Which makes it far more important than any of the others,’ Allegra said.
David rubbed his eyes. After two hours spent deciphering the inventory in the scroll his initial exhilaration was replaced by disappointment.
‘The three copies of the Omega Scroll are listed, but from what I know of Qumran and the caves, all of the caves on this list have been thoroughly explored already. How many were taken by the Bedouin and traded on the black market is anybody’s guess,’ David said. ‘This inventory just completes part of the puzzle. We’ve no idea where any of the copies of the Omega Scroll might be now, or even if they still exist,’ David said dejectedly.
‘But we do know they were written. Professor Rosselli knew and someone killed him before he got too close, and the Vatican has been pretty ferocious in keeping the scroll secret,’ Allegra said, thinking back to her conversations with Giovanni.
‘That protection might be as much to distance Christ from the Essenes as anything else,’ David said, still pessimistic. ‘It’s not widely known, but Christ’s use of the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount was not original. “Blessed are the meek” has an earlier form in an Essenes scroll, and “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” came from the War Scroll found in Cave One. Christ’s Beatitudes of the Gospels were built on the Beatitudes found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Christ’s message in the Bible is not unique, and the Vatican will do anything to prevent that from coming to light.’
‘I agree with you,’ Allegra said, ‘and that is something carbon dating can resolve.’ She decided it was time to declare her hand. ‘The duplication of the Beatitudes would be enough to explain the Vatican’s extraordinary efforts to distance Christ from Qumran, but there is another reason. When I said to you earlier today that all would be revealed, it wasn’t me you thought you’d see.’
David grinned. ‘I thought my luck had changed there for a while.’ His face became serious as Allegra continued.
‘As damaging as Christ’s relationship with the Essenes and Mary Magdalene might be to the dogma, it is the Omega Scroll the Vatican fear the most. What I’m about to tell you will put someone’s life at risk, so it can’t go past us.’
David nodded.
‘You remember Giovanni Donelli?’
‘I met him at dinner at Patrick O’Hara’s. Is he still in the Vatican?’
‘He’s now the Patriarch of Venice. It’s his life that is at risk.’
David shook his head in disbelief when Allegra finished recounting Giovanni’s time with Pope John Paul I and his suspicions over Petroni.