The Boudicca Parchments (19 page)

“And did Bar Giora and John make peace?”

“You’d think so wouldn’t you?”

“But
did
they?” asked Sarit impatiently.

“Like hell they did. Even though it was the sabbatical year, when they didn’t grow any grain and even with the city besieged, so the harvest couldn’t reach them, they seemed more concerned with attacking each other’s grain stores than with conserving food and fighting the Romans.”

“God, what arse holes!

“I couldn’t have put it better.”

“No wonder they lost!”

“Wait, it gets better. Because another faction broke away and seized the Temple itself.”

“Ye Gods!”

“So now you had
three
Jewish factions all fighting each other when they should have been fighting the Romans. Of course the Roman’s had a de facto motto:
Divide et impera
. And while the Romans were doing that, Bar Giora was basking in his near messianic reputation and minting his own coins. Meanwhile his and John’s civilian supporters were staring to abandon them and even their soldiers were deserting, as they realized – what their leaders had failed to realize – that the Romans were closing in. Then – finally – the feuding rivals
did
join forces, but by then it was too late. Titus had breached the city walls and the belatedly united factions were now fighting for their lives.”

“And we know what happened then,” said Sarit sadly, almost as if she hoped that this time, upon the retelling, history would have a different ending.

“But even then, it wasn’t over Sarit. They put up quite a brave resistance, considering how far they’d let things slide. But pretty soon the city fell and the temple was destroyed.”

“ ‘There shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down,’ ” said Sarit, to herself, quoting Jesus’s prophecy as she stared into some imaginary point in the distance.

“Exactly.”

Listening to this account had proved to be a bit of a strain for Sarit. She went over to the window and looked out.

“Wouldn’t it be poignant if they’d been killed at the Temple, making their last stand shoulder to shoulder, like brothers?”

“It would have been. But that’s not quite the way it happened – although Bar Giora did effectively meet his fate on the Temple Mount. What actually happened is that Bar Giora and a small band of followers, aided by stonecutters, tried to dig their way out to freedom. But they ran out of food and couldn’t make it – or at least, that’s the way Josephus tells it.”

“I gather you don’t like Josephus?”

“He was a traitor and his stories are self-serving. In his account of the mass suicide at Masada, he copied the events of his own treachery at Yodfat. Anyway, realizing that all was lost Bar Giora dressed up in a King’s robes and climbed out of the ground at the spot where the Temple’s innermost chamber – the Holy of Holies – once stood.”

“A grand entrance.”

“Grand, but futile. For a moment the Romans were terrified. Then they gathered their wits and grabbed him and from then on it was the familiar pattern like most of the leaders who challenged Rome.”

“Crucifixion?”

“Actually no. They took him back to Rome in chains, paraded him through the city and then threw him to his death from the Tarpeian Rock – that’s a cliff-face of the Capitoline Hill in Rome.”

“Oh God!”

Daniel’s head spun round to look at Sarit, wondering what it was in his words that had provoked such a reaction. But he quickly realized that it was not his words that had prompted her reply. She was looking out the window.”

“What is it?”

“Daniel, what have you done?”

“What
is
it?”

She turned round to look at him, her face ashen white.

“The police are outside.”

Chapter 45

“Professor Hynds! Professor Hynds! You’ve got to come and see this!”

The young man was breathless from his sprint. He had been on the other side of the dig site – almost diagonally opposite the professor’s makeshift office – and he had been forced to run two sides of a square to reach the professor.

Emeritus Professor Edward Hynds looked up and swept a strand of grey hair from his eyes.

“What is it?”

“You’ve got to see this, professor,” said the gangly youth. “We found clay jar… intact.”

The professor scratched his silver beard, contemplatively.

“Okay, well follow procedure. Hand it to your coordinator and have him bag it up and marked… carefully.”

The breathless youth stood there immobile, looking at the professor, expectantly.

“No you don’t understand.” The voice was still panting from his recent exertions. “He’s the one who sent me to tell you.”

“Why would he…”

Hynds trailed off, sensing that something was missing from this explanation.

“He opened it, professor.”

“What?”

“He opened the jar. It had a cork lid. And he took it off and there was a jute bag inside. And inside that was a piece of leather and rolled up inside that was piece of parchment!”

Hynds put a hand on the table and stood up to his full six foot height. Although only a year and bit shy of his proverbial three score and ten, he was in pretty good nick. He tipped the scales at sixteen stone, but most of it was muscle. This was not some deskbound professor who had gone to fat. This was a man of the outdoors who kept himself fit by hill-walking and gardening. When he did find himself deskbound for any significant period – such as when he had to fulfil the academic’s perennial obligation to generate a scholarly paper for publication, so as to stay on the cutting edge of academia – he took advantage of the various local gyms to counterbalance the desk time with a muscle-building and cardiovascular work out.

“When you say parchment, do you mean papyrus?”

It sounded patronizing, but Hynds knew that some of these students were wet behind the ears and didn’t know the difference.

“He said parchment. In fact he said it looked like Jewish style parchment – whatever that means.”

By this stage, the Hynds was moving round the desk. He knew that Jews had very particular ways of preparing parchment, that differed significantly from the iron age Romans and Romano-Britons.

“Did he say what was on it?”

“He said it was a map… a map of Europe actually. But he also said something about writing on it.”

Hynds realized that the reason he hadn’t brought the map back to the office was in case the professor wanted to check out the spot where it was found. After a find like that, they would almost certainly want to prioritize the digging in that area. But Hynds also wanted to check out the stratum that the find had come from. And the area coordinator had probably realized this.

“I think I’d better go and take a look.”

And without further ado, Hynds was out of the door, leaving behind the tall, bearded man who had come to the office volunteering to participate in the dig.

Chapter 46

“Your
sister
? Why the hell did you do that?”

“I had to find out if she was all right… and to tell her that
I
was.”

Sarit and Daniel were arguing. The police had not in fact come to their door, but appeared to be checking other houses further down the street.

“And it didn’t occur to you that they could do a trace?”

“I thought that if I kept it short, and they weren’t tracing already, then they couldn’t.”

“You think they can only do
live
traces? You didn’t know they could pull the records from the phone company and get a retroactive trace.”

“But how can they do that when the phone doesn’t even have GPS on it.”

“By the
ground stations!
They can check which ground stations it was routed through and work it out
that
way!”

“But then they can’t get an exact fix, just a general area.”

“My God Daniel are you completely techno-illiterate? The ground stations in rural areas are spaced far apart, but the ones in urban areas are packed close together.”

“Then why aren’t they here now?”

Sarit had to take a deep breath to keep her temper.”

“They’ve got about
ten
cars out there! They’re searching house to house and from what I can see they’ve blocked one end of the street. They’ve probably blocked the other too!”

Although he was trying to sound calm, Daniel was anything but. He knew as well as Sarit what sort of trouble they were in, even if he was trying to play it down in his mind.

“What are we going to do?”

“There’s only one thing we can do. Use the motorbike.”

“Can’t we just go upstairs and keep quiet?”

“It won’t work. If they’re this determined, they’re probably asking neighbours if they’ve seen anything suspicious. All it’ll take is one of them to say a couple of people on a motorbike and the games up.”
“But if they’ve blocked off the road…”

“Then we’ll use the pavement. It won’t be blocked completely.”

“And if it is?”

“Then I’ll just have to do a Steve McQueen.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

Two minutes later they were in the garage, dressed in bikers leathers and helmets. Sarit was gunning the engine and Daniel was unlocking the door. He signalled her that the door was unlocked as she revved the engine and kicked away the support. Then, in response to a nodded signal from Sarit, Daniel swung the door open and Sarit rolled forward. She didn’t pause as she reached him, but right on plan, he swung his leg and leapt awkwardly onto the pillion seat – like an old-fashioned high-jumper doing the western roll – as the bike roared across the driveway into the street and swung a sharp right, nearly taking out a copper in the process.

As expected the street was blocked by a police van and a car, but the pavement was clear, except for a few policemen milling around and telling pedestrians who wanted to use the street that it was closed for the next two hours, even if they lived there.

The police on the pavement turned round in response to the roar of the bike and one of them even tried to play the hero and block their path. But when it came to a game of chicken in a make-or-break situation like this, Sarit took no prisoners. The brave yet foolish copper, was the first to blink, leaping aside at the last half-second. Sarit leaned the bike and took a sharp turn at the end of the street, but within a few minutes they could hear the sound of a helicopter.

Daniel was surprised that they had been able to scramble it so quickly. The question was what was Sarit going to do about it. One thing he knew was that most of these police helicopters had a limited range. But the helicopter could call in ground forces to intercept. She might try to go near an airport, where flying restrictions might prevent the helicopter from entering.

But in the end she headed straight for a built up area. The closer they got to the centre of London, the higher the helicopter had to fly, under health and safety rules about flying low over densely populated areas. And because there was low cloud cover, this made it harder for them to see the motorbike.

She made it into the Brent Cross Shopping Centre outdoor car park, from where they raced into the centre, still in their biking leathers.

“What now?” asked Daniel.

“We go to the toilets, strip off the leathers, then meet outside.”

“Do we take the leathers with us?”

“No leave them. We have to split up from here. This place’ll be swarming with cops in seconds. And remember it’s
you
they’re looking for.”

“What should I do?”

“I’ll stay on the upper level and make out like I’m looking for you on. You come down to M&S and buy some other clothes. Buy them and change into them there and then leave on foot. Make your way to the Pond at Hampstead where Jack Straws Castle used to be. I’ll meet you there.”

In one minute, Daniel was in ordinary street clothes outside the toilets, having left his leathers in a cubicle. He looked around, but Sarit was nowhere to be seen. He knew that there were CCTV cameras in the building. But he didn’t know if Scotland Yard could patch into them in the way they could with the platform and ticket office level cameras of the London Underground. All he did know is that he had to act quickly.

As Sarit had said, he made his way to Marks and Spencer and quickly selected the most size-tolerant clothes. He paid for them in haste and then went back into the changing rooms to change into them – the security tags having already been removed. He was still self-conscious and nervous when he left, but he kept his head down and walked out to where the buses were. He knew that with his head down, the cameras – which were usually placed high – couldn’t catch his face. And if they were looking out for his clothes when he left the toilet, then he was now wearing different clothes.

But he realized also that they would probably be watching the exits for people leaving. So he knew what he had to do – and it took nerves of steel. He had to hang around. Not look around as if he were looking for some one else, because that too would attract attention. But look like any other shopper.

So he casually strolled into WH Smith and started looking at books.

He knew what Sarit would be doing. Wondering around up in the upper floors like she was looking for some one. Although she had told him that she was going to meet him at the Pond, he suspected that she was using herself as bait, or offering herself up as a human sacrifice, to help him get away.

The trouble was, if they caught her, would they think he was really still around and that she was looking for him or would they assume that she was doing it to help him getaway? If the former, then they would think that he was still there and would look for him in the shopping centre. But if he left now, he would also attract scrutiny. He had to hold out as long as he could. It occurred to him that she might have gone to another shop for a change of clothes. If so, they might not be able to identify her either.

It was difficult keeping his nerve over the course of the next half hour. But he held out, even managing to get absorbed in some of the books that he was pretending to be interested in. Only when a check of his watch confirmed that forty minutes had elapsed, did he leave the shopping centre by the exit that led to the area away from the buses and by the road. He was going to make his way across a dangerous crossing to the pedestrian walkway of the overpass. It was underneath one of the roads and not visible from a helicopter. But then h realized that there were probably CCTV cameras there and they would be closely monitored.