“Adrenaline,” said Bennett.
“Caffeine,” said Erin, peeking out from the blankets.
“Revenge,” said Natasha.
A chill settled over the room, despite the fire now crackling in the fireplace.
“Yes, well, how can we help?” asked Dmitri. “What do you need now?”
Bennett looked at Erin, then at Natasha. “A lawyer, for starters,” he said.
“I guess so,” said Dmitri. “Well, I’m afraid Katya here doesn’t practice much anymore, but I could make some calls. . . .”
“No, no,” said Bennett. “You’d be perfect, Mrs. Galishnikov. Do you still have your license?”
“Please, Jonathan,” she replied. “We’ve known each other too long. Call me Katya. But yes, I still have a valid law license.”
“And everything we say from this point forward would be covered by attorney-client privilege?”
“Of course,” she said. “And from what I can tell, you’ve got an airtight case for self-defense.”
“Actually, that’s not our main concern right now,” said Bennett.
“What is?” asked Dmitri.
Again Bennett looked at Erin and Natasha. Both nodded, though each a bit reluctantly. So he opened his backpack, pulled out the blanket, and set it on the coffee table in front of them, where he unwrapped it until the scroll he had found deep inside Mount Ebal was visible.
The Galishnikovs stared in disbelief.
“What is it?” asked Dmitri.
“Bait,” Bennett replied.
* * *
Mariano slammed down the phone and unleashed.
He threw a plate across the kitchen. When it smashed against the refrigerator, he began heaving everything on the table across the room—plates, glasses, silverware. Then he flipped the table over and stormed around Miriam Gozal’s house, cursing at the top of his lungs. Lost them? His team had actually lost the Bennetts and the Barak girl? It was unbelievable. It was impossible. Now what was he supposed to do? Someone would pay for this failure.
* * *
Bennett laid out the whole story.
The serial killings. Mordechai’s last words. How they had met the Baraks and learned about Abdullah Farouk. Finding the Key Scroll. Their emerging theory that perhaps the Copper Scroll was an elaborate ruse, designed to cause people to look in dozens of different locations when the treasures—if they were, in fact, real—could be hidden in just a single location.
Bennett’s new theory was that now that they had the Key Scroll and the scroll from Mount Ebal, they had the initiative. If they could only find the treasure, Mordechai’s killers would find them and the conspiracy that had left a trail of blood from London to Los Angeles would soon unravel.
“And that gunfire back there?” asked Dmitri.
Bennett nodded. “The bait is working.”
“And you think this scroll will lead you to the treasures?”
“It better,” he said. “It’s the only hope we’ve got.”
* * *
An hour later, Mariano’s team pulled into the driveway.
They gathered in the living room of Miriam Gozal’s house, their heads hung low. The team leader explained what had happened as Mariano paced the thick Persian carpets, barely able to contain the rage seething within. He didn’t ask questions. He didn’t ask for clarifications. The team leader just continued talking, and Mariano finally could take it no longer. Before anyone realized what he was doing, he drew his silenced pistol and fired two bullets into the man’s head.
Everyone got the message. Mariano didn’t want excuses. He wanted the Bennetts and whatever they had found in that cave.
* * *
Natasha excused herself from the discussion.
She was still in pain, still battling shock, but she knew full well that none of them were going anywhere until she cleaned and translated the scroll they’d just found. The longer she waited, the more danger they were in. So she requested a toothbrush, baking soda, a glass of water, and a washcloth and headed for the dining room as Katya went to gather the items.
But Dmitri still had more questions.
“You’re certain this Abdullah Farouk fellow is behind all this killing?” he asked.
“I’m not sure if it’d hold up in court, but yes, we’re sure,” said Bennett.
“And you think that’s who opened fire at you?”
“I doubt it was Farouk personally. But his people? Sure.”
“How much do you know about him?”
“Not much,” Bennett conceded. “Obviously, an heir to an enormous fortune, said to be worth several billion dollars, but Farouk is also believed to be a shrewd investor. For the past several years he’s been concentrating most of his assets in Iraqi oil and real estate. But his real passion is collecting antiquities. He apparently owns one of the world’s largest private collections of Babylonian, Persian, and Roman artifacts and keeps most of it at his summer estate in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, overlooking the Red Sea. Fancies himself an amateur archeologist but has obtained most of his collection through auctions and on the black market.”
“And you said he’s obsessed with hunting the Ark?” asked Dmitri.
“That’s putting it mildly,” Bennett replied. “He once told a London paper that the Ark wasn’t some ‘relic’ to be put in a museum but ‘a weapon of mass destruction’ that would help Arab leaders build a caliphate from Morocco to Pakistan.”
“Then I doubt he’s working alone,” said Dmitri.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it doesn’t sound like he wants the Ark sitting on his mantel, if he finds it. He’s an ideologue. He thinks the Ark can help someone build a new Arab empire. The question is, who is the someone he’s working with?”
Bennett suddenly realized just how tired he and Erin were. They hadn’t been thinking through the larger geopolitical picture. They’d been in pure survival mode.
“Farouk has had a great deal of contact with Iraqi officials of late, though I’m not sure exactly who,” said Bennett, considering the implications. “You don’t think there’s an Al-Hassani connection to all this, do you?”
“After the firestorm, who else is standing?” said Dmitri.
“Whoa, whoa, wait a minute,” said Erin, pulling herself up to a sitting position. “Aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves?”
“Maybe,” Bennett conceded. “But Dmitri has a point. Farouk has money, and influence, and a vision of a new Arab empire. But he couldn’t build it on his own, even with the Ark in hand. He’d need a partner, someone with land, oil, and an army and an air force.”
“But, Jon, really, Mustafa Al-Hassani?” Erin countered. “Do you hear what you’re saying? Al-Hassani was a philosophy professor, for crying out loud. Saddam threw him into the gulag for being a reformer. If we hadn’t invaded Iraq, he’d still be rotting in prison. You really think the morning after he won 63 percent of the vote he woke up and thought, Forget Thomas Jefferson. I think I’ll pattern myself after Joseph Stalin?”
“I don’t know,” said Bennett. “But be honest—neither do you.”
“Maybe not,” said Erin. “But I know a few things. I know Al-Hassani invited Eli Mordechai, the former head of the Israeli Mossad, to visit him in Iraq. I know he gave Mordechai classified Iraqi documents that exposed a conspiracy to overthrow the Russian government—a conspiracy that proved to be real, mind you. I know that Al-Hassani has quietly confided to you and me that he might be open to a peace treaty with Israel. And I just don’t see this guy hiring Abdullah Farouk to play Indiana Jones for him, then ordering his thugs to gun down Mordechai in broad daylight. The whole notion is ridiculous, Jon. Al-Hassani isn’t crazy. Farouk is. It’s him we should be looking for. Period.”
“You don’t think Al-Hassani could be trying to capitalize on the firestorm to rebuild the Babylonian Empire?” asked Jon.
“Rebuild the region? Yes. But rebuild an empire? I doubt it. Even if he is, I highly doubt he’s sending
out hit teams to get it done.”
“What if he is?” asked Bennett.
“Jon, how stupid do you think Al-Hassani is? You think he would really gamble everything he’s got, after all we’ve done for him and his people, to turn Iraq back into a base camp for a whole new wave of global terrorism?”
“Actually, I think that is precisely what Eli believed,” said Dmitri.
Jon and Erin both looked at him.
“As you know, Eli was quite skeptical of your country’s efforts to rebuild Iraq—not a critic, mind you, but a skeptic, to be sure. Remember what he said at your reception? He said the War of Gog and Magog wasn’t the end; it was just the beginning. He said evil was regathering, that something worse is coming. And that last posting on his weblog—how did he put it again?”
Bennett reluctantly finished Galishnikov’s thought, for those very words had been ringing in his ears ever since he had first read them.
I supported the war in Iraq, Mordechai had written. I believed Saddam Hussein was a serious threat to the region and the world, and I believed in the cause of regime change. Removing Saddam was not as easy as we had hoped, nor as quick. But the question isn’t whether we should have gone to war in Iraq. The real question is, what exactly are we building there? Are we making Iraq safe for democracy, or safe for the Antichrist?
61
TUESDAY, JANUARY 20 – 11:34 a.m. – MEDITERRANEAN COAST OF ISRAEL
It was time to change the subject.
“It won’t be long until they track us here,” said Erin.
“What do you mean?” asked Dmitri.
“The tail numbers,” Erin explained. “Once they trace those, they’ll know it was your helicopter.”
“That’s not public information,” said Dmitri.
“Maybe not. But like Jon said, we think they’re working with someone inside the prime minister’s office.”
Dmitri shook his head. “I can’t believe that. A traitor in David Doron’s inner circle? It’s impossible, I tell you.”
“Yet people keep dying, don’t they?” said Erin. “With all due respect, sir, the question isn’t whether there is a mole. It’s how easily Farouk and his men can contact him and how quickly Farouk can figure out where we are. That gives us only a few hours, at best.”
“Maybe you’re right,” said Dmitri. “But I have three homes, ninety-two drill sites, and the refineries. What are the chances they’ll look here first?”
“These guys are pros. They won’t think for one minute we’re all hanging out at some oil well. They’re coming here—believe me—and I’d suggest we not be here when they arrive.”
* * *
Al-Hassani exploded.
“What do you mean you lost them?”
Viggo Mariano swallowed hard. He knew what was coming. He was just glad he and the Iraqi leader were separated by several hundred miles.
“We’re doing everything we can, Your Excellency,” Mariano insisted. “My team from Jordan just landed in Tel Aviv.”
“How many?”
“There are three of them, plus the four of us.”
“How’d they get in?”
“Does it matter? I told you, I’m taking care of it.”
“Why doesn’t that reassure me?” sniffed Al-Hassani.
“Fine,” said Mariano. “They’re journalists. They’re posing as an Italian television crew. They just rented a car. They’re meeting me in Jerusalem in an hour.”
“Weapons?”
“We’ll give them what we can.”
“And then what?”
Mariano stalled. The truth was, he had no idea.
* * *
Technically, what Bennett had found wasn’t a scroll.
Not in the classic sense of the word, anyway. It was copper, like the others. But it was not rolled up as scrolls typically are. Thus it had no need to be sliced into pieces with a laser or a special circular saw. It actually looked more like a copper tablet. It was rectangular in shape—about a foot long and a foot and a half wide—and engraved with an ancient form of Hebrew lettering.
Exhausted and still in pain from her wounds, Natasha took longer on the translation than might otherwise have been usual, but she was determined to get it right. Finally, after more than two hours, she finished typing her notes into the laptop she had borrowed from the Galishnikovs and called the group into the dining room, where she had been working without a break.
“What have you got?” asked Bennett. “Are we on the right track?
“I think so,” said Natasha. “This may be the most intriguing one of all. Let me take it section by section.”
She pulled up a split-screen image with a digital photograph of the first paragraph in the scroll on the left side and the English translation on the right. Then she read the English aloud.
“All the commandments that I am
commanding you today you shall
be careful to do, that you may
live and multiply, and go in and
possess the land which the LORD
swore to give to your forefathers.
You shall remember all the way
which the LORD your God has led you
in the wilderness these forty years,
that He might humble you, testing you,
to know what was in your heart,
whether you would keep
His commandments or not.
He humbled you and let you be hungry,
and fed you with manna
which you did not know,
nor did your fathers know,
that He might make you understand
that man does not live
by bread alone, but man lives
by everything that proceeds
out of the mouth of the LORD.”
“I ran a search,” said Natasha. “That’s Deuteronomy 8:1-3. Now, watch this.”
“For the LORD your God
is bringing you into a good land,
a land of brooks of water,
of fountains and springs,
flowing forth in valleys and hills;
a land of wheat and barley,
of vines and fig trees and pomegranates,
a land of olive oil and honey;
a land where you will eat
food without scarcity, in which
you will not lack anything.
When you have eaten and are satisfied,
you shall bless the LORD your God
for the good land which He has given you.”
“That’s also Deuteronomy 8,” Natasha noted. “But only verses 7, 8, part of 9, and all of 10.”
Bennett quickly explained to the Galishnikovs the “missing link” theory they’d been using to crack the scroll codes, then asked Natasha what was missing this time.
“I think the second half of verse 9 is the clue,” said Natasha. She pulled up a new screen with the full verse.
“. . . a land where you will eat food without scarcity,
in which you will not lack anything;
a land whose stones are iron,
and out of whose hills you can dig copper.”
“‘Out of whose hills you can dig copper,’” she repeated. “That’s it. That, I think, links it conclusively to the others.”
“Go on,” said Erin. “Show us the next section.”
Natasha flashed a new image on the screen and read the text aloud.
“It came about
in the sixth year,
on the fifth day
of the sixth month,
as I was sitting in my house
with the elders of Judah
sitting before me, that the
hand of the Lord God
fell on me there. Then I looked,
and behold, a likeness
as the appearance of a man;
from His loins and downward
there was the appearance of fire,
and from His loins and upward
the appearance
>
of brightness, like the appearance
of glowing metal.
Then He brought me to
the entrance of the court,
and when I looked, behold,
Shallum the son of Col-hozeh,
the official of the district
of Mizpah, repaired the Fountain Gate.
He built it, covered it and
hung its doors with its bolts
and its bars.
After him, Nehemiah son of Azbuk,
official of half the district
of Beth-zur, made repairs as far as
a point opposite the tombs.”
“I’m not sure I could follow any of that,” said Bennett.
They were all thoroughly confused.
Natasha did her best to walk them through it. “What’s interesting is that it’s all Scripture,” she began. “What’s odd is that it’s a real mishmash. The first part comes from the book of Ezekiel. Then it shifts abruptly to Nehemiah. The key, remember, is in finding the passages of Scripture that are missing from the scroll. In this case, I think the most interesting missing portion is Ezekiel 8:7-8.”
She pulled up the translation of those verses on the laptop.
Then He brought me
to the entrance
of the court, and
when I looked, behold,
a hole in the wall.
He said to me,
“Son of man,
now dig through the wall.”
So I dug through the wall,
and behold, an entrance.
“You think the scroll’s author is telling us to dig through a wall?” asked Bennett.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I think,” Natasha replied.
“But what wall?”
“That’s where the next missing passage seems to come in.”
Shallum the son of Col-hozeh,
the official of the district
of Mizpah, repaired the Fountain Gate.
He built it, covered it and
hung its doors with its bolts