Adam Palmer: The Moses Legacy

And she had just admitted that it had been she who told the Israelis about Goliath. She had betrayed them and got Goliath killed, and now she was sitting here taunting them with her treachery… mocking them for their credulity… gloating over her betrayal of their righteous cause. It was all too much for Professor Tomlinson to take. He stood up and moved towards her menacingly, with hatred in his eyes.

‘What do you mean “an emergency”? Daniel asked, although he already had some idea.

Sarit was looking at them intently, like she had a lot to say and very little time in which to say it. The sinking sun made her shadow look ridiculously long.

‘The man who locked you in the tomb – the man who forced you to go to the cave in Petra. He was working for an organization that hates Israel and the Jewish people.’

‘Look, there’s no point beating about the bush,’ said Daniel. ‘We know about the spores.’

‘Then you know what Goliath is planning to do.’

‘Goliath?’ Gabrielle echoed, unable to suppress the smile.

‘That was his code name. The people he’s working for wanted to use the spores for a terrorist attack on Israel. You may not know this, but they sent Goliath to get a sample of that boy, Joel’s clothes from the hospital. He failed. And he also wanted to get a sample of your clothes when he stole the jeep after locking you in the tomb. I put a stop to that, but I understand that he’s got the shroud now.’

‘How do you know?’ Gabrielle challenged.

‘Sheikh Ibrahim told me.’

‘He’s still alive?’

‘Not any more. But he told me that Goliath took the linen shroud that the tablets were wrapped in and that means he intends to use it. We need to warn the Israeli authorities. The battery on my mobile phone died. I found the one Goliath dropped in the cave, but the battery’s run out on that one too.’

Daniel took out his mobile and was frantically trying to get it to work.

‘Damn,’ he said. ‘Mine’s out of juice as well.’

They looked over at Gabrielle. She shook her head.

‘If we drive fast we might be able to make it to the King Hussein Bridge just after him,’ said Daniel. ‘Then we can warn the authorities.’

Sarit was shaking her head.

‘It’s Friday. The bridge closes at lunchtime.’

‘Then he must be stuck on this side too,’ Daniel replied with relief.

‘Not necessarily,’ Sarit contradicted. ‘There are two other crossings that are open until eight: the Yitzhak Rabin Crossing in the south and the Nahar Yarden Crossing in the north.’

‘He left us in Petra,’ said Gabrielle. ‘So he probably took the one in the south.’

‘Damn!’ shouted Sarit. ‘That means he’s probably in Israel already. We have to get to a phone! We have to warn them!’

Then Daniel remembered something.

‘I don’t know if this helps, but there was something he said when he took the shroud.’

‘What?’ asked Sarit.

‘He said: “I’m going to make the evil usurpers drink the water of death”.’

Sarit thought about this for about half a minute. Then it suddenly hit her.

‘Of course!’

‘What?’ asked Daniel and Gabrielle in unison.

‘You know what the main reservoir for the State of Israel is?’

‘No,’ said Daniel.

‘The Sea of Galilee.’

Recognizing the encroaching danger in the professor’s approach, Audrey stood up too.

‘No, Paul,’ cried Senator Morris. ‘Not here!’

Tomlinson pushed Audrey against the wall. But he hadn’t noticed the lamp with the heavy bronze base on the side table. Even in the agony of Tomlinson’s stranglehold, Audrey had the presence of mind to grab the lamp with one hand and smash it down on the professor’s head.

She only had to do it once and her attacker fell to the ground in a lifeless heap. As the lifeblood returned to her head, her arm dropped to her side and she let the lamp slip from her hand. It landed on the floor with a thud.

Realizing what she had done – what she had been obliged to do – she turned to the senator.

‘You killed him.’

‘It was self-defence.’

‘What are you going to do?’ he asked weakly.

‘What I should have done from the beginning: tell the truth.’

‘You’re going to tell them about the New Covenant?’

‘Yes… both the police and my readers.’

‘But that’ll destroy us.’

‘I certainly hope so, Arthur. I certainly hope so.’

For a moment, she wasn’t sure she had said the right thing. Senator Morris was capable of anger himself. She had seen that in the past. But as she saw the faraway look in his eyes, she realized that his anger had spent itself.

Barely a couple of seconds later, he broke down in tears.

‘My daughter,’ he sobbed.

‘Jane? What about her?’

‘She died… of the plague.’

Finally Audrey mellowed slightly.

‘I’m sorry.’

She was tempted to remind the senator that it was he who had sent his daughter on the dig. It was he who had used her for his own means. He had told her to get a sample of Joel’s clothes and if he thought that they contained the spores then it meant he was ready to risk her life for his evil cause. Like Agamemnon sacrificing Iphigenia to get wind for the sails of his ships in the war against Troy.

There was no reason to sympathize with him. With Jane perhaps – but not with Morris.

But in an instant, all that was swept into irrelevance as the senator clutched his chest and fell to the floor, writhing in agony.

‘So what is this organization that hates Israel and the Jews so much?’ asked Gabrielle.

Abandoning the car that Gabrielle had been driving, they had piled into Sarit’s and were heading north, with the sun low in the sky to their left.

‘They’re called the New Covenant and it isn’t only Israel and the Jews. It’s the West in general. They hate the United States. They hate Britain. They hate blacks. They hate liberals.’

‘So it’s not Islamic extremists then?’ asked Daniel.

‘No, nothing like that. More like those racist rednecks that support the Ku Klux Klan and think there’s a Jewish conspiracy running the world. But their leaders aren’t stupid. They’re smart people who pander to gullible followers.’

‘So why hasn’t anything been done about them?’ asked Daniel. ‘I mean if you know who they are.’

‘Well, we don’t know who all of them are. They operate within a cell structure. But we’ve built up a pretty good picture and we’re keeping tabs on them – along with the FBI and various other law enforcement agencies.’

‘But I mean why haven’t they been prosecuted on terrorism charges?’

‘Well, up until now they’ve been mostly a talkshop. Big on rhetoric but nothing else. They spread stories over the Internet and in newspapers when they can. They talk the talk but they seldom walk the walk. Only now it’s different. They decided to try and get their hands on the spores that caused an ancient plague and use them to destroy Israel.’

‘But how did they know about the spores?’ asked Daniel. ‘I mean the people that this… Goliath was working for?’

‘One of the members of the New Covenant is a professor of Linguistics or something like that. He was asked to peer review a paper by Harrison Carmichael in which he essentially deciphered Proto-Sinaitic script.’

‘He told me about it… sort of… but I didn’t take him seriously at first.’

‘That’s understandable. He was suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. But that didn’t detract from his intellectual powers. He had, in fact, translated The Book of the Straight.’