Paul Christopher - The Sword of the Templars

He stripped off the insulation on both and touched them to each other. All the gauges lit up. Leaving the two wires connected, he hit the starter button, and the engine fired instantly.

“Your chariot awaits,” said Holliday.

Peggy untied the boat, and she and Wanounou climbed down into it. Holliday eased them away from the pier, then spun the wheel, turning the small boat in a tight circle until the bow was facing toward the cave exit and the open sea.

“Which one of these gauges is fuel?” Holliday asked.

“That one,” answered Wanounou, pointing. “According to it we’ve got half a tank.”

“How far is Haifa?” Holliday asked.

“Bat Galim is about seven miles or so. The harbor is a little farther around the headland,” said Wanounou.

“Then let’s get the hell out of Dodge,” said Holliday, and he pulled back on the throttle.

The inflatable made the short trip up the coast in a little less than half an hour, with Wanounou turning several shades of green in the process. Not only wasn’t he a swimmer, he wasn’t much of a sailor either.

Rather than get into a tangle of bureaucracy by trying to return the boat to its rightful owners Holliday simply drove it up onto the beach in front of the Mйridien Hotel and left it there.

Getting back to Jerusalem with the alabaster vase turned out to be just as simple. At the hotel they bartered with a taxi driver named Bashir for a two hundred shekel ride back to the Land Cruiser, which they found exactly where they’d left it, apparently unharmed and untouched. There was no sign of any other vehicle except for a fresh set of tread marks in the soft dirt by the side of the road. A good-sized truck or SUV, from the width of the tires.

As far as Holliday could tell no one followed them on their return to Jerusalem. After a completely uneventful journey on the busy highway they arrived back at the university shortly after five o’clock that afternoon. They went to Wanounou’s lab in the basement of the Archaeology Building.

The lab was a long, narrow, windowless room approximately twenty feet wide and the length of an Olympic swimming pool. The length of one entire wall was taken up with floor-to-ceiling metal shelving units, and the opposite wall was a collection of benches, computer work stations, and equipment pods that ranged from spectroscopes and comparison microscopes to laser saws, portable X-ray machines and megasonic cleaning tanks.

The center of the room, from one end to the other, was taken up by a long row of light-box tables for sorting, examining, and preliminary sorting of artifacts. On the tables were trays of tools, solvents, acids, and adhesives to aid in conservation, ongoing maintenance, and reconstruction of individual finds.

It was midsummer, and the laboratory was empty except for Peggy, Holliday, and the professor; the rest of the faculty and most of the grad students were either in the field or on holiday.

Wanounou took the vase to one of the light-box tables and switched it on. The table glowed bright white. He sat down on a stool, with Peggy and Holliday on either side. He took a pair of disposable gloves out of a pop-up box, then selected a long-bladed X-Acto knife from one of the trays. He weighed the jar on a small digital scale and noted the weight in a notebook he’d taken from a drawer in the table. That done, he pulled over an illuminated fluorescent magnifier and examined the jar more closely.

“Sealed with some sort of mastic,” said Wanounou.

“Mastic?” Peggy asked.

“A resin gum. They used it for medicinal purposes in the Middle Ages, but they also used it as a sealant, like a gummy varnish. It dries that yellowy color and gets very brittle.”

“Isn’t there some kind of solvent?” Holliday said, eyeing the X-Acto knife.

“Sure, there’s even some pretty inert ones, but it’s safer to chip it off; less likely to damage whatever’s inside.”

Using the scalpel-bladed knife, Wanounou scored the surface of the sealant covering the ceramic stopper of the jar, working the gouge deeper and deeper until after about ten minutes’ patient work the knife slipped into the crack between the stopper and the vase itself.

As Peggy and Holliday watched, Wanounou put the knife down, chose a pair of long-nosed, locking surgical forceps, and gently lifted the lid off the vase. He set the lid aside and tilted the vase so the light from the magnifying lamp shone into it.

“Anything inside?” Peggy asked.

“Something.”

“What?”

“Hold on.”

The professor picked up the forceps again and eased them down into the neck of the vase. Concentrating hard, he worked the forceps around for a moment, then withdrew them.

“Wrong tool,” he said. He rummaged around in the tray and found what he was looking for. He held it up.

“Looks like something I saw at my gynecologist’s,” said Peggy uncomfortably. They looked like the surgical version of cooking tongs with blades that locked like vise grips.

“Close,” answered Wanounou. He teased the device down into the vase. “They’re obstetrical forceps for delivery babies.” He used his free hand to lock the smooth steel blades of the forceps in place and then gestured to Holliday. “Hold the vase steady.”

Holliday did as he was told, leaning forward and gripping the vase with both hands. With slow, agonizing care Wanounou slipped the forceps out of the vase, their captured prey in tow.

“It’s a boy,” said Peggy, staring. “Either that or a piece of the muffler from my old Ford Escort.”

“It’s a scroll,” said Wanounou, excitement in his voice.

“I don’t want to say what it looks like,” said Holliday.

“What he means,” said Peggy drily, “is that it looks like a big dookie.”

She was right. The object caught in the locked rounded blades of the forceps was ten inches long, roughly circular, lumpy, dark in color, and with a crusty surface.

“Corrosion,” explained Wanounou. “Silver tarnish taken to its logical conclusion.”

“How do you get it off?” Peggy asked.

“Carefully,” said the professor. “First an electrolytic bath, then run some current through it, and after that give it a few minutes in the megasonic cleaner to shake off anything left.”

“After that?” Peggy asked. “Will you be able to unroll it?”

“Doubtful,” said Wanounou. “It would probably crumble.” He shook his head. “After it’s been cleaned I’ll put the scroll into the laser saw and cut it into strips. If there’s corrosion within the scroll I’ll have to put each strip into the electrolytic bath again. Then I’ll x-ray the strips, photograph them, put them between sheets of inert plastic, and then maybe you can read what’s on it-if anything.”

“So what’s the next step?” Holliday said.

“Go back to your hotel. Have dinner in the old city. Go to a place called Amigo Emil. It’s a little hole-in-the-wall place in the El Khanka Street Bazaar. Tell Emil I sent you. Call me in the morning, and I might have something for you to see. I’ll probably be at this all night.”

“We could hang around,” said Peggy.

“No, we couldn’t,” said Holliday firmly. “Leave the man alone to do his job.”

“Sure you don’t want us to stay?” Peggy said.

“Go, let me work,” said Wanounou. “You’d be bored stiff in half an hour if you stuck around.” He grinned. “Buy a book about the Copper Scroll at the university book store on your way out. There’s lots of them. Educate yourself.”

“All right,” she said.

“Come on,” said Holliday, heading for the door. Peggy followed, but not before she leaned over and gave the startled professor a quick peck on the cheek.