The Boudicca Parchments (6 page)

SAM MORGAN: Because if he can read even
part
of it, then it’ll arouse his curiosity and he might start snooping around.

SHALOM TIKVA: Well then I suggest you deal with this Mr. Klein.

Call ended by SHALOM TIKVA.

Encrypted audio recording attached.

He had no need listen to the recording. It was all clear. The reason that it had been passed up the chain of command to Dovi was because he held a watching brief for Daniel Klein. Klein was not an intelligence man but an academic who had foiled a major terrorist attack against Israel that he had stumbled into while doing research on old Egyptian manuscripts in pre-Biblical Hebrew written in so-called “proto-Sinaitic” script. Initially resentful of this clumsy private citizen, bumbling his way through matters of state security, Shamir had come to admire Klein, when his academic competitiveness and curiosity had culminated in his crossing swords with some deadly enemies of the Jewish people – and winning.

Dovi had grudgingly respected Daniel from then on, but feared that those whose nefarious aims Daniel had thwarted, might come after him for revenge. So he had put Daniel on a watch list for the Urim monitoring station, although he had
not
gone as far as to tap Klein’s own phone.

But this transcript was three days old.

He understood why. It had taken time to filter up through the inter-service bureaucracy. But what did it mean “deal with” Mr. Klein. This Sam Morgan had said that he had already dealt with Martin Costa “permanently.” Did that mean he was going to do the same with Daniel Klein?

Not if Dovi Shamir had anything to do with it.

He could institute all sorts of processes in motion to protect Daniel Klein, including offering him refuge in Israel. But the first thing to do was call him and warn him.

Dovi reached for the phone and called Daniel’s number. He heard the ringing tone but there was no answer.

Chapter 10

Through the haze of his semi-conscious state, Daniel could hear his mobile phone ringing. It was in his pocket. If he could only get it out, he could ask whoever was calling him to get help. But strength eluded him.

No!
he thought.
Now is not the time to give up! You have responsibilities! You have people who love you!

He rolled over onto his back, so that reaching into his pocket would be easier, and forced himself to reach into his pocket and take out the phone. But as he did so, he heard a series of loud, staccato cracking sounds and saw movement above him. In that instant, he knew that the remnant of the ceiling was about to collapse.

No!
his mind screamed.

In that moment, he rallied his resources, rolled round, leapt to his feet and made a dive for the door, dropping his phone in the process. The door opened inward, and when he pulled it at first, he knocked it with his foot, almost closing it again. But he managed to open it the second time and staggered out, just as the ceiling beam collapsed on where he had once been.

He was out in the open, but he could see very little. The path by the house was shaded, making the ambient light dim, and his eyes were watering from the smoke. In the distance he heard sirens in several different tones. Police? Fire Brigade? Probably both.

But as they drew closer, he found that he could no longer hold out in the fight for consciousness.

Chapter 11

“Do you have any aisle seats left?”

“We have one, but it’s right at the back.”

“That’ll do.”

The girl at the checkin pecked away at the keyboard, printed out the luggage tag, fixed it to the suitcase and then gave the man back his passport along with his boarding pass.

“That’s 60C, boarding at Gate 37 starts at 21:50.”

And with that he picked up his carry-on bag and the documents and walked off.

He didn’t know why, but he was always nervous when he went through security at Heathrow Airport. It was there for his own protection, but he always felt like a criminal when he went through it. Then again, when he thought about it more carefully, he
was
a criminal and so it was only natural that he should feel self-conscious in the face of all that scrutiny.

He wondered how thoroughly they would check his hand luggage. He didn’t want to let the parchment out of his sight. But in some ways taking it in his hand luggage was
more
risky, as hand luggage is subjected to even greater security checks. Still, he was sure that neither the parchment, nor the hard cardboard tube he had put in, would show up as anything suspicious in the x-ray.

Nevertheless, he smiled with relief when he got through to the other side without anyone saying anything. He put on his belt and shoes and put his wallet and mobile phone back in his pocket. He realized that he had plenty of time for duty-free shopping. But he knew he wouldn’t do any. Duty free was a rip-off. You could get cheaper goods at any discount store.

He decided to phone HaTzadik.

“Hi, it’s Sam Morgan.”

“And?”

“I just want you to know… I’m at the airport.”

“Lod?”

“Heathrow.”

“Why are you calling?”

Shalom Tikva sounded impatient.

“I just wanted to let you know.”

“Call me when you land.”

The line went silent.

Chapter 12

The first thing that he noticed was sound. His auditory sense was responding. There were people around, talking. There was movement… human activity.

He opened his eyes and saw the ceiling. It was just a plain, bland ceiling in a pale colour. But the room was too bright. He closed his eyes again and almost drifted back to sleep. Something stopped him… pain… not localized pain, but pain all over his body. It was more intense in his stomach than elsewhere. But then he realized that it wasn’t his stomach: it was his lungs. It hurt him to breathe.

He tried to remember who he was and where he was. He remembered a fire… being trapped… escaping. He remembered an SMS… a picture… his irritation towards the man who had sent it… Martin Costa.

Was that what it had been? A trap? Martin Costa that conman and thief and out-and-out scoundrel had lured him into a trap. But why? To kill him? It made no sense. He had clashed with Costa a few times before, but never in way so extreme or severe that Costa would have any reason to kill him.

Through the haze of confusion he remembered what Costa had sent him: a picture of a manuscript in post-Biblical Hebraic script. But it
wasn’t
in Hebraic script. That is, when he recalled the image, it didn’t look like the Hebrew alphabet. It didn’t look like
anything
. It was all too blurred and unclear.

Why then did he think that it was in Hebrew, or at least Hebraic script?

Because of Costa’s words.

“Why would a Romano-British site have a Hebrew manuscript?”

Why indeed?

It was those words that made him think it was in Hebrew – nothing in the text itself. And as he remembered it now, he had speculated that it might be Aramaic or some old less known Semitic dialect.

He opened his eyes again and forced them to stay open, despite the light.

Where am I?

He looked around in one direction and realized that he was in a hospital. But there was no one else about. He was in a private room. He wanted to curl up in the foetal position against the stomach cramps that he was feeling. But when he tried to turn onto his right side, he couldn’t. Something was holding his left arm by the wrist, restricting his movement.

He rolled onto his left side instead and saw what was restricting his movement. His left wrist was handcuffed to the bed.

But why?

He wrenched at the handcuff, but to no avail.

What the hell was going on?

He needed to talk to some one… a doctor… a nurse…

“Nurse! Some one!”

The door opened and two men walked in. But they were neither doctors nor nurses. The tall one, in a dark blue uniform, was aged about thirty. The other, slightly shorter and in plainclothes, looked in his mid to late forties, a few years older than Daniel. But there was no mistaking the fact that they were both policemen.

“What’s going on here?” asked Daniel.

It wasn’t the presence of police officers that he was asking about. His recollection of the fire and the protruding feet, made that all too reasonable and something to be expected. It was the handcuff on his left wrist.

The man in plain clothes flashed his warrant card at Daniel.

“Chief Inspector Vincent.”

“Sergeant Connor,” said the other, relying on his uniform for identification. “And you, Mister Klein, have some explaining to do.”

Chapter 13

Sam Morgan was still feeling the annoyance and frustration as he sat in the taxi to Jerusalem. The immigration staff at Ben Gurion Airport in Lod, Israel had been particularly obnoxious in the way they questioned him – treating him almost as if he were a criminal. At one point he was worried that they were going to get his suitcase from baggage and search it. That thought alone frightened the hell out of him. It would have been disastrous if they had found the parchment scroll.

How would he explain it to HaTzadik?

At some point he noticed that other passengers were getting similarly harsh treatment and some were even being escorted – or rather dragged – away from the area and not being allowed to enter the country.

It was only in the baggage area, when he asked another passenger about the incident, that it was explained to him that some protestors were trying to “infiltrate” the country to stage protests with Palestinian and “left wing” groups. With that reassurance, he had no qualms about scooping up his bag when it came round the carousel and marching confidently through the Green Channel at Customs.

But he was still fuming. Just because a few protestors were trying to enter the country was no reason to treat all foreign visitors as if they were criminals. Worse still, he couldn’t escape the feeling that it was only the
non
-Jewish passengers who were being subjected to the third degree.

He felt like talking about it to the taxi driver, but feared that this would merely flag him up as another “trouble maker.” So instead he sat in stony silence and soaked up the view of the buildings of the coastal plain, the fields and then finally the mountain road as it snaked its way upward towards Jerusalem.

It seemed like barely an hour after he left the airport, that he arrived at the David’s Citadel Hotel, a modern, luxury hotel adjacent to the newly developed Mamilla District. He head read about this area before he came – all part of his tendency to over-research and check things out. Looking around his environs now, he would not have been able to guess that the area had degenerated into a slum in the fifties and sixties, when it sat on the border of the no-man’s-land that separated Israel from Jordanian-occupied eastern Jerusalem.

It had taken twenty years after the liberation of eastern Jerusalem – and much bureaucratic wrangling and horse-trading – for this formerly run-down area to be torn down and completely rebuilt from the ground up. It was now a bustling mixed residential-commercial complex of apartments, hotels and shops with facades of light-coloured Jerusalem stone.

After checking in and ordering a light snack from room service, Morgan phoned Shalom Tikva.

“I’m here.”

“
Where
?”

“The Hotel. David’s Citadel.”

“You were supposed to phone me from the airport.”

“I forgot.”

“Have you got it?”

“Of course.”

“Well bring it round!”

The line went dead. That was HaTzadik,” Morgan thought, always brisk, brusque and to the point. He hadn’t served in the Israeli army for politico-religious reasons. But in some way he would have made a great soldier.

An hour later, after an energy-reviving snack and a shower, Sam Morgan was walking through the streets of Mea She’arim. The name Mea She’arim means “a hundred gates” and the neighbourhood – located in West Jerusalem but close to the Old City – was an old neighbourhood of narrow streets and linked houses with weathered facades of Jerusalem stone and first floor balconies supported by protruding rusted iron I-beams. At ground level, many of the windows were protected by white-painted wrought iron bars somewhat more ornate than the fencing on the balconies, that was in many cases chipped and peeled, revealing the rusted iron beneath.

Many of the outside walls were adorned with posters in Hebrew – plain black on white – announcing deaths, marriages and rabbinical proclamations. Morgan knew this only from what he had been told: he didn’t understand the Hebrew. But he did understand the one or two posters in English that warned – in dire tones and language – not to dress immodestly. These were specifically addressed to women and phrased in mildly threatening language to make clear to any woman who might show too much leg or arm that the same flesh that would arouse lust in normal red-blooded men would only arouse anger in this pious community.