The Boudicca Parchments (36 page)

“Okay but what’s the problem with the first bit?”

“It’s not Hebrew. Maybe it’s like the manuscripts… Proto-Brythonic written in Hebrew.”

“Let’s see.”

Daniel lifted it closer to himself, but held it at such an angle that Ted could shine his torch on it. Daniel read the words, including Icheni. Then Ted translated again.

“That says simply… Queen of the Icheni. Just what we thought in fact… Daniel?”

Daniel was staring at the writing, very intently.”

“I think I’ve just made a discovery.”

“We’ve made
several
discoveries,” Ted replied, the confusion heavily invasive of his tone.

“No I mean, more than that. Look at that letter.”

He took out his pen and pointed to the second letter of the last word.

“What about it?

“It’s the Hebrew letter Kaf of Khaf… the one I told you about… the one that can be pronounced like a K or alternatively like the ch in loch.”

“Well what about it?”

“Well it’s written in the style that of the Hebrew alphabet about two thousand years ago, just like the parchments.”

“Well that makes it authentic doesn’t it?”

“Yes and that form is only marginally different from the form used today. I mean on religious documents they still use that style today. The only difference is like the difference between say Times New Roman and a more blocky sans serif typeface.”

“Okay,” said Ted, still not sure where this was going.

“Well in that form of the Hebrew alphabet, the letter Kaf is only slightly different from the letter Samech. If I can show you.”

He put down the torc and took out a pen and a scrap of paper from his pocket.

“This is a Kaf…”and this is a samech… see the similarity?”

k s

“Yes I see. But what’s your point?”

“My point is, Ted, that this kaf here on the torc – presumably by a Jewish scribe – is written in such a way that the left side is almost enclosed, so that it could very easily be mistaken for a samech.”

“You said that. But so what?”

“Well suppose some one wrote a manuscript, in Hebrew or Aramaic, referring to the Icheni or Ikeni. And then some one else came along – some one to whom Hebrew or Aramaic were not a first language – and they wanted to translate what they were reading into… say… Greek. With the Kaf written like that, then might they not a word like Icheni or Ikeni be easily mistaken for… I
ss
eni… or allowing for the ambiguous initial vowel…
Esseni
?”

“Holy moly!” said Ted.

“I’m surprised it took you so long to figure it out,” came a voice from above them.

They looked up to see Shalom Tikva leaning into the entrance to the cistern… holding a hand grenade.

Chapter 82

As Masada loomed up ahead, Sarit was driving Israeli style: with little regard for the laws of the road and even less for the laws of physics. She knew how easy it was for even the best intelligence and security services to bungle things by underestimating the threat and she had no intention of letting Daniel become another casualty of such ineptitude!

They should have arrested Shalom Tikva as soon as they had evidence that he had ordered a killing. The fact that he had used ambiguous wording in his instructions to his son, would not have been a barrier to a guilty verdict in a trial by judge, the only sort of trial available in Israel. And they should not have let Baruch Tikva slip through the net. The British should have caught him there and when they failed to do so, passport control should have caught him when he re-entered Israel.

The British had been quick enough to arrest Daniel on the flimsiest of evidence and had unreasonably refused him bail on the strength of the fact that he had fled the country the last time they falsely accused him. The fact that he had been vindicated didn’t seem to matter to the judge.

And yet Baruch Tikva had been able to attack a police van and kill two policemen, yet go on to escape and even make an attempt to abduct one of Daniel’s nieces. Then
two
of Daniel’s nieces had been kidnapped by the henchmen of Shalom Tikva and only
then
did the police and Security Services go into action and start arresting them.

But by then it was too late. Because by then,
Shomrei Ha’ir
knew that the authorities were on to them and they scattered into the four winds.

And now they knew that these enemies of the state were making their last stand – going after Daniel Klein for reasons that had still not become clear. He had made a few discoveries about Jewish history. But
what
had that set them against him? How did an expert on ancient languages – and a British professor of archaeology – manage to fall afoul of a Bible-toting sect of Jewish fanatics? Was there some connection between the modern zealots of Judaism and the ancient zealots that Daniel was researching and studying?

That was surely unlikely. These ancient sects that have existed for centuries were the stuff of a whole new wave of historical thrillers, but they surely had no basis in reality? Besides, the ancient zealots were nationalistic Jews, whereas the modern ones were decidedly
anti
-nationalist. Indeed anti-Zionism was the hallmark of most ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects. With one or two exceptions, it was the moderates who supported Zionism.

She had spoken to Dovi a couple of times on the way and he had assured her that a Border Guard unit had been dispatched there. It was a sensitive area, so there would be Border Guardsman and soldiers nearby anyway. But it was unlikely that they would have been given pictures of who they were looking for. And what if HaTzadik had sent other people. How would they know who to look out for?

The most they could do is look out for anyone trying anything fishy. That meant they would have to be
re
active rather than
pro
active.

Sarit was still going fast when she turned into the bus forecourt. Private vehicles were supposed to park further away, but when a security guard approached and started giving all that swaggering “I’ve got a dick and you haven’t” Israeli macho, she just flashed a badge at him and told him to back off.

The Mossad had no jurisdiction on the home front, but when in Israel they carried ID that enabled them to avoid hassle from other law enforcement officials.

Ignoring the security guard who was no doubt watching her ass and mentally undressing her, she ran towards the tourist centre and the cable cars.

Chapter 83

“What are you going to do?” asked Daniel hesitantly.

“Hand over the bag,” said HaTzadik.

“Is that what this is all about?” asked Daniel. “A few pagan baubles? Not some pious cause after all, but just the old God of mammon?”

“It’s nothing like that,” Shalom Tikva snarled. “You couldn’t even
begin
to understand.”

“I think I’m beginning to,” said Daniel. “You’re not greedy. But like any other terrorist gang, you need money to finance the revolution. You justify it by telling yourselves that the money is to change the world, not to live the high life.

The mockery wasn’t entirely real. He was trying to goad HaTzadik into talking. Partly this was playing for time, but partly he wanted to understand what was going on. What did Shalom Tikva mean when he said “I’m surprised it took you so long to figure it out.”

“We didn’t do it for the treasure. We weren’t even sure that it existed. Although I suspect Sam Morgan was.”

“Sam Morgan?”

Daniel remembered the name from what Sarit had told him. Sam Morgan, Sarit had determined, was the man ho had killed Martin Costa and tried to kill Daniel at the house.

“A man who is helping us – or at least
was
helping us.”

Did this mean that Sam Morgan was dead? Or that they had fallen out?

“But what is that we took so long to figure out? The possible confusion between the Essenes and the Ikeni?”

“It’s more than
possible confusion
Professor Klein. That’s really what this is all about. You see archaeology has always been divided into two camps. The people who crave knowledge and the people who want to make a quick buck.”

“And where do you stand?” asked Daniel.

“We stand apart from all that. Our only interest is in the purity of the Jewish people. But you’re right. There are people who like to steal ancient artefacts and then sell them on the black market. Yigael Yadin once implied that Moshe Dayan fell into that category.”

Yigael Yadin was a former soldier who went on to become one of Israel’s leading archaeologists. Moshe Dayan, was the legendary former soldier and Defence Minister, who was an amateur archaeologist whom Yadin implied was also a private collector with a less than ethical approach.

“But why does all this bother you so much?” asked Daniel. “To the point of killing people who have done you know harm.”

“You have done us
immense
hard, Professor Klein. Even if you don’t realize it.”

“But how?”

“You know about the Dead Sea Scrolls – dozens of ancient manuscripts found in the caves of Qumran over the course of a decade, starting in 1946 when an Arab shepherd boy made the initial find?”

It was more of a rhetorical question really. Of course Daniel knew about the finds of nearly a thousand ancient scrolls from the first century, some books of the Bible, some part of the post-Biblical record of the Second Temple period and some a contemporary record of the life and times of the people who kept them.

Daniel nodded.

“Well in addition to the known finds, Professor Klein, there were also some finds that were… shall we say… removed from the scene and sold privately. Does that surprise you?”

“I know that there have been cases of theft of archaeological finds Israel. So I suppose the answer is no, it doesn’t surprise me.”

“Well would it surprise you then to know that one of those documents was some surviving parts of Josephus’s original Aramaic manuscript of the Wars of the Jews?”

Now that
did
surprise Daniel. And from the look on Ted’s face it left him surprised too. In fact it left them both feeling like they’d been kicked in the ribs.

Chapter 84

Sarit just missed the cable car and had to wait for the next one to arrive a minute or so later. She wanted to get in but the operator tried to stop her, saying that it wouldn’t be leaving for a few minutes. But Sarit had no intention of waiting. She flashed her badge and ordered the operator to take her up right away. The cable car arrived and not a minute too soon. Sarit got in first and waited while the others filed in. The operator complied and let her in.

As he closed the door, he noticed a man running towards it, from the ticket office. He looked at Sarit as if to ask whether he should wait for the man. But the implacable look on Sarit’s face made it clear that she wasn’t in the mood for waiting.

As the cable car rose into the air, she turned and saw the man who had caught the operator’s intention.

Well saw was perhaps not the right word. For as Sarit turned towards the man, he for his part turned away.

Chapter 85

“It was sold to us by a corrupt Jordanian official – for a large sum of money, I might add. We spent many months studying it. We knew that it was the work of a Jewish traitor, but we wanted to know how much truth – or how little – there was in it.”

“And?”

“What it told us was a horror story. It was not just Boudicca’s daughter who came here from Britain, but a whole host of her people. Maybe not a vast army, but certainly more than just a small party. She came with a large entourage of handmaids and ladies in waiting. There were some men to – or at least boys who soon grew into men, cutting their teeth in a guerrilla war in Rome, culminating in the Great Fire of 1964. They weren’t just a small band of followers. Many of the women were the widows of the warrior leaders of the uprising of the Icheni.”

“You knew that they were called Icheni?” Ted intervened.

“Oh yes! And we also realized that it had been misread when translated. Josephus’s handwriting had a peculiarity that caused him to almost completely close off the Kaf, making it look like a Samech. He didn’t just do it once; he did throughout the manuscript, or at least the portions that we found. Thus the myth of the Essenes was born. Until then, the stories about the Essaoi by Philo and Pliny – written and pronounced differently – had been legends about ascetics. Josephus’s Icheni became confused and conflated with them.”

“But there
were
some ascetics amongst the Judeans,” said Daniel. “Josephus even travelled around Judea in the company of one for about three years.”

“Yes, that is true. There were such people amongst the Judeans, but they were few and far between. However with Josephus’s manuscript being misread by the Greek translator and apparently referring to the
Esseni
, the floodgates to a new myth were opened.”

Ted was confused by this line of reasoning.

“But why would a few misunderstood references to a relatively small number of refugees from Roman Britain, give rise to such a powerful and sweeping legend?”

“To understand that, you must understand what
really
happened. The vanquished peoples of Britain didn’t just come here and keep themselves to themselves. They intermarried with some of the Jewish rebels, following the depraved corrupt example of Simon Bar Giora. And
this
was the cause of the great division among our people that set brother against brother!”

“How so?” asked Ted, still far from convinced.”

“Although our religion permits conversion and receives sincere converts, it must be based on true belief, not just a desire for marriage, And it must be done in a proper way, according to
Halacha
– Jewish law.”

“And these conversions didn’t?”

“In some cases, there
were
no conversions. Just impure marriages. But others were against it, even at the time.”