Adam Palmer - The Moses Legacy

‘The shroud?’

‘The shroud that the tablets were wrapped in.’

She realized what this meant.

‘And where are the man and the woman? Did they go to get help?’

‘No… they thought I was dead.’

Looking down at him, she realized how close to death he was.

‘Listen, I’ll go and get help.’

‘No. You must stop him.’

He grabbed her arm, as if to emphasize the seriousness of the situation. ‘He has taken the shroud!’

‘I’ll go for help,’ she said.

But as she looked down at him now, she saw that he was beyond help. She knew that she had to find Goliath and stop him. But how? And where were Daniel and Gabrielle?

It was then that she saw the gun.

Was that the gun that he used to kill Sheikh Ibrahim?

She noticed that it was jammed. But firearms had been part of her Mossad training and she had learnt several methods of clearing a jammed cartridge from the chamber of a semi-automatic. The quickest method was known as tap-rack-bang.

Running on adrenalin as she followed her training to the letter, she tapped the base of the magazine with the palm of her left hand, to make sure it was firmly in place, then racked the slider back in a fast snapping motion to discharge the empty cartridge. There was no need for the bang as she had no reason to fire. But she felt safer having a weapon.

‘Goliath! Are you there?’

Sarit froze. It was a man’s voice, but there was a strange paradox in the sound. It sounded like the man was shouting, and yet the volume was muted. It was tinny and muffled. And it was coming from inside the cave.

‘Goliath!’

No! It was coming from inside Ibrahim’s body.

She looked at him in the dim light of the cave, trying to understand. Then she noticed the strange glow coming from beneath his body.

That was when she realized.

She reached under his torso, forcing her hand in deeper against the weight of his body. She had to use her other hand to lift him slightly before she was able to extricate the mobile phone that he had fallen on.

She raised the phone to her ear.

‘Goliath!’ the voice said again.

‘Hallo,’ she replied.

‘Who is this?’

‘My name is Siobhan. Who are you?’

The line went silent. She looked at the phone and saw that the battery was down to 3% – too little to make a call. Any minute it would die completely. But before it did, she checked the number: +1 202…

She didn’t know all the US regional phone codes, but there were a few that stuck in her memory. 212 – New York City, or at least Manhattan. 213 – Los Angeles. And 202 – Washington DC.

Senator Morris. It had to be.

She would have liked to follow it up, but right now she didn’t have time to find out. She had urgent business to attend to.

‘Now then,’ said Professor Fikri, ‘what is this fascinating academic matter that you wanted to talk about?’

They were in the office of Hakim Fikri at the University of Jordan, sitting opposite the man who had been entrusted with the task of examining the bones found in the cave at the Snake Monument. A man of average height and build in his forties with a dark, neatly trimmed beard, he had agreed to see them at short notice because of their academic credentials: the world’s foremost expert on Semitic languages and a leading Egyptologist who worked closely with Akil Mansoor. They had only revealed this when they arrived at the reception desk, not before. But they had not told him what they wanted to talk about.

‘We met a man called Talal Ibrahim,’ said Daniel. ‘Sheikh Ibrahim.’

Daniel was studying Professor Fikri’s face for signs of recognition. There was a slight flicker, but no more than that.

‘Oh, yes, Talal. How is he?’

Daniel felt his face flushing. He didn’t know what to say.

‘He’s fine,’ said Gabrielle, stepping in to fill the silence. ‘He sends his regards.’

‘I’ll come straight to the point, Professor,’ said Daniel. ‘The reason we’re here is because we wanted to ask about the bones.’

This time it was Fikri’s face that flushed. ‘Bones?’

‘We understand that some bones found in Petra were brought here for you to study.’

‘Well, quite a number of bones and skeletal remains have been brought here for study,’ said Fikri, ‘especially from Petra.’

Daniel nodded. ‘I know. It’s a site of great archaeological importance, and there’s a considerable necropolis there. But the bones we’re thinking of were found at one particular cave, overlooking the Snake Monument.’

Fikri swallowed nervously and appeared to be looking around the room, almost as if he wanted to run out.

‘There are so many cases I deal with. I’d have to look it up. I can’t remember that one. I’m sure it can’t have been anything special otherwise I would have done.’

Daniel knew that he was lying. Even apart from his manner it made no sense. An academic would love to make a big find and publish a major paper on the subject. And Sheikh Ibrahim had told them of how cagey Fikri had become.

But what was he afraid of?

Daniel decided to help the professor to open up by asking a few leading questions.

‘Presumably you were going to conduct radiocarbon tests to date the bones, DNA tests to determine the ethnicity and maybe a magnetic imaging scan to determine possible causes of death?’

‘I think you’ve been reading too many thrillers,’ said Fikri with a forced smile. ‘An NMR scan can only reveal physical and anatomical characteristics. Unless the cause of death was violence or injury such tests are pretty much useless.’

‘And was the cause of death violence or injury?’ asked Daniel.

‘No.’

‘Were there any other tests you could do to determine cause of death?’

‘We took a couple of tooth and gum samples for toxicology and came up negative. But that doesn’t rule out poisoning, of course. Not all poisons would show.’

‘I was wondering why nothing has been published about those bones?’

‘It wasn’t all that interesting.’

‘But Sheikh Ibrahim told us that last time he asked you about it you didn’t even want to discuss the subject.’

‘Come on now, Professor Klein. You know how cagey we academics can be before we publish our results.’

‘Yes, but you didn’t publish your results. I could understand if that was the silence before publication of a paper discussing the subject, but you said yourself it wasn’t that interesting.’

‘Look…’ he was very nervous, ‘there are some things that are better not to talk about.’

Gabrielle stepped in. ‘Could I ask you point-blank, Professor Fikri: is there any chance that these are the bones of the biblical figure Moses?’

‘I think you may be getting a little carried away, Miss Gusack.’

Daniel expected her to quibble over her title. But this time she ignored it completely.

‘We were told that there are local traditions linking Petra to the encampment of the Israelites before they entered the land of Canaan. Pharaoh’s Column, the Valley of Moses, Mount Aaron.’

‘I know that,’ he said stiffly, ‘but you’re serious scholars. Those local legends are based on a somewhat literalistic interpretation of the Bible – not to mention a desire to pander to Western tourists.’

Daniel was hoping that Gabrielle would resist the temptation to mention The Book of the Wars of the Lord.

‘But even if you don’t take it literally,’ said Gabrielle, ‘there still must have been a kernel of truth in it. In the ancient times people made up stories as stylized accounts of real events. And that includes the possibility of a biblical character called Moses, or with some similar name.’