Adam Palmer - The Boudicca Parchments

This time she succeeded, but dropped the key on the floor, unable to support its weight in her fingers. The other scooped it up off the floor.

“Quick we’ve got to find the right key!”

Several of the keys were obviously the wrong size or shape and wouldn’t even fit the lock. Eventually they found one that fit. But it didn’t turn. They tried another, with similar lack of success.

By now the banging and rattling and shouting was becoming so loud that the girls were terrified. They were sure he was going to get out and if he did they didn’t know what he would do, he sounded so angry. Finally the third key went into the lock and turned. They managed to get the door open just as they heard something break in the other room.

Not waiting to discover if that meant that the man had got out, they raced out of the flat, into the corridor and down the stairs. From there they raced into the street, turned one way — without even caring which way it was — and started running down the pavement.

“Stop those girls!” A man’s booming voice called out behind them. They looked back to see the man running after them. Several people looked at them but no one stopped them. Then a man blocked their path and they were filled with terror.

In desperation, the one who was in front darted out into the road. A car screeched to a halt and the driver leaned to shout at them for being so stupid. Ignoring him, the girl waved her arms in the air as if waving at some one in the distance. She turned to her twin who was still on the pavement and called out: “It’s a police man!” Then she turned back the way she had been facing and shouted “over here!”

By the time she looked back to her twin, she saw that the man who had been chasing them had turned round and was now running in the opposite direction.

“Is there not one of you capable of performing a simple task without getting it wrong? You are shamed in the sight of Hashem if you cannot even do one thing write when the survival of the true Jewish people is at stake!”

Once again HaTzadik had been let down by those whom he trusted. And once again he was furious.

“It wasn’t my fault. They were cunning little vixens and they tricked me!”

This did nothing to assuage HaTzadik’s anger.

“Tricked you! Tricked you! They were eight-year-old girls! How could they have tricked you?”

“They lied to us! They promised that they would not try to escape… and then they set a trap for me.”

The man’s tone was pleading. It was not that he feared HaTzadik. He feared only the wrath of God. But he was ashamed. And he wanted to hide his guilt. But he couldn’t blame the others. He was in charge… and he was alone with them at the time.

“Did it not occur to you that little girls might lie ? Especially as they are the daughters of Chilonim .

Chilonim was a term, for non-religious Jews. HaTzadik continued.

“You are an idiot! You knew they weren’t Yiras Shamayim !”

In other words, they were not God-fearing Jews; therefore they couldn’t be trusted.

“I am sorry my teacher, I’m sorry.”

“Just make sure you stay away from the house. The police will come looking. In fact, do go back there and clean out anything that can link them back to us. Do it quickly and then get out of there!”

Shalom Tikva ended the call, his mind in turmoil. This was a bigger failure than those of his son. With his son’s failure, at least there was no trail to follow. He had hired strangers in the attempt to kill Klein and they had ended up dead and thus unable to talk. When he failed to kidnap the youngest of the Sasson girls, at least he had made a clean getaway, unless they got the number of the car and traced the rental back to his son’s name. But aside from that Baruch was now on his way back to Israel and so the British police couldn’t arrest him.

But this failure was different. The girls had run away from a apartnment and they could identify the flat and lead them back there. The one thing he had going for him was that the girls were probably traumatized and so would initially be counselled by psychologists before eventually being asked to help the police find the house. That gave them a window of opportunity. And that was why he had told his follower to go back to the flat and clean it out.

The phone rang again.

What is it this time?

But as he looked at the readout on his mobile phone, he saw that it was a foreign number. It looked vaguely familiar. At the back of the mind he suspected some kind of a trap. But what could they do from the other end of a mobile phone.

“Yes?”

“Hallo…”

The voice spoke in English. But it was not a British accent — it sounded like an American.

“Yes?”

“Is that Shalom Tikva?”

HaTzadik hesitated.

“Who is this?”

“It’s Father Enoch. You remember you asked me to tell you if anyone showed an interest in the Domus Aurea parchment.”

“Yes?” said HaTzadik realizing what he was about to hear.

Over the next few minutes, Enoch told HaTzadik about the visit of Daniel, Ted and Sarit, including their apparently successful decipherment of the manuscript and the fact that they had also found out about a similar document in the Temple Mount tunnels and were coming to Israel to meet the Israeli professor whose team had discovered it.

At the end of the call, HaTzadik thanked Brother Enoch for his assistance and spoke a few pious sounding words about “the brotherhood of our peoples” and the “wickedness of the Zionist impostors who pretend to be Jews.” Then he called an Arab friend. As he waited for an answer, he realized that he now had a perfect opportunity. His grievance was not with the Sasson family, but with Daniel Klein.

And now Daniel was unwittingly about to enter the lion’s den.

“Shahaid, I have a favour to ask of you.”

“This is the most preposterous theory I’ve ever heard.”

Seated in a Jerusalem cafe with her British and Irish guests, Professor Leah Yakarin, didn’t trouble to hide her opinions. In the rough and tumble world of academia, she knew that one had to fight one’s corner with vigour or go down to a tougher slugger. It was like prize-fighting, except that it was usually gloves off and to hell with the Queensbury rules.

“Any more preposterous than the theory that Essenes didn’t really exist?” asked Daniel.

The Essenes were one of three, or possibly four, Jewish factions that existed in Judea in between the second century BCE and the first century CE — the others being the Sadducees, an aristocratic priestly sect notionally descended from Tzadok the first High Priest in Solomon’s temple, and the Pharisees, a sect of learned but humble men. Some scholars, basing their beliefs on the writings of Josephus, also identify a fourth school of thought — the “Sicarii” — whom Josephus distinguished from the Essenes. Both Essenes and Sicarii — so named for the dagger or sica that they carried — are sometimes referred to as zealots. But the Sicarii were believed to be of Galilean origin, whereas the Essenes were identified with Jerusalem,

But Professor Yakarin was one of a small number of academics who argued that the Essenes were real or a figment of the imaginations and propaganda of certain Greco-Roman writers.

“There is no credible evidence that the Essenoi existed,” said Professor Yakarin, using the Greek name by which Josephus had called them. “The Dead Sea Scrolls, which the Essenes supposedly kept and guarded, make no mention of them. The so-called Essenes were former priests who had lost a power struggle. The Biblical scrolls were removed from the Temple… when they were ousted by other factions.”