The Moses Stone (19 page)
He would, he decided, wait an hour or so before he called Charlie Hoxton. First, he would take several photocopies of the card and try to work out just why his client had been so desperate to get hold of the clay tablet.
34
Night was drawing in, and up in Bronson’s hotel room he and Angela seemed to have reached a stalemate.
The tablet held in the Paris museum had yielded its secrets easily enough. In just a few minutes Bronson had translated the French words into English and written them out. But the Cairo tablet proved to be much more difficult because of the poor clarity and definition of the single photograph they’d managed to find in the museum archives.
They’d spent hours trying to match the letters from the downloaded font with the characters in the photograph, but it was a long and tiresome process and they hadn’t had very much success.
“I think,” Angela said, staring at the image on her laptop screen, “that this picture was only ever intended for basic identification purposes. Somebody must have been told to photograph each of the objects the museum had acquired, purely so they would have a visual record of the relics. Pictures that could be used for research and translation would presumably have been taken later on, with a higher-resolution camera and much better lighting.”
“Can you get anything at all from it?” Bronson asked.
“Yes, but probably only about half the words in the top three lines. The others are so blurred and out of focus that they could be almost anything.”
For over an hour Angela and Bronson studied the image, trying to interpret and copy onto paper the unfamiliar marks that comprised the written Aramaic script. Then Angela fed the results into the on-line Aramaic-English dictionary.
“So what have we got?” she asked, finally leaning back from the computer and stretching her aching muscles.
“Why don’t I go and get us some drinks?” Bronson suggested. “Of the alcoholic variety, obviously.”
“A gin and tonic would be just perfect. Preferably a long one, with lots of ice.”
Bronson left the room and returned a few minutes later, carrying a tray with two tall glasses in which ice chinked agreeably. He put the drinks down on the small dressing table and then returned to his perch on the side of the bed.
“Thanks,” Angela said. She raised the glass to her lips and took a long swallow. “That’s better. Now, where are we?”
“I’ve written out every word that we’ve managed to translate, and I’ve done a kind of drawing of each tablet,” Bronson said. “I’ve included blanks for the words we haven’t deciphered so that we know which words are missing.”
He placed a sheet of A4 paper on the table in front of Angela and they both looked at what he’d written on it. He’d drawn three rectangles of roughly the same size, and in each of them he’d put the English meaning of the words Angela had translated from the Aramaic, in the same position as the original word on the tablet. The result wasn’t encouraging.
“This first one”—Bronson pointed at one of the boxed outlines—“is the Cairo tablet. That’s the top left of the four if you’re right about the meaning of the cross in the center.”
As they’d both expected, there were far more blanks than words:
“Now,” Bronson said, handing another sheet to Angela, “as Aramaic is read from right to left, the words we’ve managed to translate should appear in this order.”
On the new page, he had just written the words in sequence, including all the blanks, except for the last two lines on which they’d so far failed to decipher even a single word:
“That’s not a hell of a lot to go on,” Angela muttered, then turned her attention back to the paper.
“This is the O’Connor tablet,” Bronson said.
“There were only eight words in this text that Baverstock managed to translate,” Angela said, “and that complete second line definitely makes no sense to me.”
“Nor to me,” Bronson said. “This is the correct order of the words.”
The final oblong, containing the text of the tablet held in the Paris museum, read:
within a days settlement scroll ben
our stones of B’Succaca from the
now side Jerusalem silver have the
we of the we cave completed
our height concealed cistern place now
invaders to of of of last
“And this is the list of words in the right order.”
ben scroll settlement days a within
the from B’Succaca of stones our
the have silver Jerusalem side now
completed cave we the of we
now place cistern concealed height our
last of of of to invaders
“When Baverstock described this as gibberish, he wasn’t kidding,” Bronson added. “Can you make any sense of it?”
Angela groaned. “No,” she said, “but whatever system of encryption the author of these tablets used, it must have been something fairly simple. I mean, at this period of history there
were
no sophisticated ciphers. We must be missing something, something pretty basic. The only thing that’s fairly obvious is that Baverstock was right about Qumran.”
were
no sophisticated ciphers. We must be missing something, something pretty basic. The only thing that’s fairly obvious is that Baverstock was right about Qumran.”
She pointed at the two lower oblongs Bronson had drawn. “He said that this word here—
Ir-Tzadok
—might refer to Qumran. The full Aramaic name for the place was
Ir-Tzadok B’Succaca
, and the second part of that is right here on the Paris tablet. But,” she added, “not even that makes much sense.”
Ir-Tzadok
—might refer to Qumran. The full Aramaic name for the place was
Ir-Tzadok B’Succaca
, and the second part of that is right here on the Paris tablet. But,” she added, “not even that makes much sense.”
“Why?”
“Because Aramaic text is read from right to left, not left to right, but the word
Ir-Tzadok
is on the left-hand tablet and
B’Succaca
is on the right. So if I’m right about the cross that was inscribed in the middle of the slab of clay before the tablets were cut out of it, then we should read the right-hand tablet first, then the left-hand one. So that would make those two words read
B’Succaca Ir-Tzadok
, which is nonsense, quite meaningless.”
Ir-Tzadok
is on the left-hand tablet and
B’Succaca
is on the right. So if I’m right about the cross that was inscribed in the middle of the slab of clay before the tablets were cut out of it, then we should read the right-hand tablet first, then the left-hand one. So that would make those two words read
B’Succaca Ir-Tzadok
, which is nonsense, quite meaningless.”
“I see what you mean,” Bronson said slowly. He leaned back in the chair and stretched. “Look, we seem to have been stuck in this hotel room all day trying to work this out. Why don’t we have a bite to eat downstairs? It might clear our thoughts, and we might even have a flash of inspiration.”
35
“I tell you, Charlie, I was lucky to get out of Morocco in one piece. If that bastard had guessed I was standing in the crowd, I really believe he’d have killed me right there.”
“And this was out in the open?” Charlie Hoxton was hearing for the first time about the events Dexter had witnessed in Rabat. The two men had met in a noisy pub near Petworth, and Dexter had just handed over the card that he’d obtained from Zebari. “In broad daylight?” Hoxton persisted.
Dexter nodded. “It was just after nine this morning, and there were plenty of people about. He didn’t care at all. One of his men shot Zebari in the head; then they got back in the car and drove away. I just legged it, straight to the airport. I didn’t even stop to pick up my clothes.”
Hoxton nodded and looked again at the piece of card he was holding, turning it over in his hands. “And all he was interested in doing was getting this back,” he said to himself. “That’s good. Very good indeed.”
“What do you mean ‘good?’ ” Dexter demanded.
“I mean that if Zebari’s killer is so desperate to recover the tablet, he must know it’s genuine. But where the hell is it?”
Dexter ignored the question. “He’s bloody dangerous, Charlie, and he knows my name. He might be over here already, looking for me, and maybe for you as well.”
“I’m bloody dangerous too, Dexter, and don’t you forget it.”
Across the table, Dexter could see the unmistakable bulge of a shoulder holster under Hoxton’s left arm.
“And I’m not very impressed with this bloody card,” Hoxton snapped. “The picture’s not much better than the ones we’ve already got, and it’s certainly not worth fifteen grand. Couldn’t you have canceled the deal once you saw it?”
“I tried,” Dexter said, “but he pulled a gun on me.”
Hoxton grunted in displeasure. “And what the bloody hell does this bit here say? Is that a copy of the Aramaic text?”
Dexter shook his head. “No. That’s just an explanation of where the tablet came from. It’s in Arabic, but I’ve written out a rough translation for you.”
Hoxton dropped the card on the table and took the sheet of paper Dexter offered. He unfolded it and read the English text.
“Is this accurate?” he demanded.
“It’s probably not an exact translation—my Arabic isn’t good enough for that—but it’s close enough, I think.”
Hoxton didn’t reply, just scanned the words on the page.
“It doesn’t tell us much, does it?” he said. “It’s like an exhibit card in a museum.”
Dexter nodded. “Zebari told me the tablet had been displayed in a case in one of the public rooms in the owner’s house, with the card beside it.”
Hoxton read out the first few lines from Dexter’s translation. “ ‘Ancient clay tablet recovered from the ruins of Pirathon or Pharaton (Greek), today the site of the Arab village of Farata in Israel. The inscription is in Aramaic but is garbled and the meaning is unclear. Possibly a part of a set.’ So where was this Pirathon or Pharaton?”
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