Adam Palmer: The Boudicca Parchments

“Is it a manuscript?”

This time the reply came even more quickly.

“Yes. Can you come to Ashwell tomorrow morning.”

The guy was a complete pain in the ass.

But then again, Costa had no way of knowing how far away Daniel was. He probably assumed that Daniel was in London. Not that Daniel was inclined to come running just because Costa wanted to meet him, even if he had been in London. Again Daniel texted back quickly.

“Am in America. What is the manuscript and why is it so important for you to meet me?”

An eternity seemed to go by, leading Daniel to believe that he succeeded in giving Costa the brush off. He didn’t know whether to feel regretful or relieved. On the one hand, Costa was a source of trouble and irritation to more or less everyone he came into contact with. On the other hand, there was still that enigmatic, blurred picture of a manuscript. And Daniel wanted to know more.

Just when he had convinced himself that it would be all for the best if Costa took the hint and dropped the matter, another text message came through.

“The manuscript is from a site in England. But look at the writing!”

Of course Daniel couldn’t look at the writing. It was too blurred. He debated asking Costa to send it again. But that would show weakness. On the other hand, how did he know that there was anything in the writing worth seeing? At the moment he only had Costa’s word for that. And Costa’s word didn’t count for much in Daniel’s books.

No, the way Daniel saw it, if Martin Costa wanted to meet him, then it was up to Costa to persuade him. And so far, all he had offered was a blurred manuscript. Daniel decided to lay his cards on the table.

“Picture too blurred couldn’t read a thing.”

He expected Costa to resend the picture. Instead all that came through was a message that chilled Alex to the bone.

“Why would a Romano-British site have a Hebrew manuscript?”

A Hebrew manuscript? In a Romano-British site?

Of course it all depended from what part of the Romano-British period. The period extended from the first to the fifth centuries. And in that time, Christianity had come to England from the Roman province of Judea. Most of the early Church writings were in Latin or Greek. But given the provenance of Christianity, it was not unreasonable that some of the very early writings were in Hebrew or Aramaic. And both languages were written with the Hebrew alphabet!

Could Costa have found an early Anglo-Christian manuscript written in Hebrew or Aramaic?

If he had, it would be something of a coup. For years scholars had speculated about the so-called Q Gospel — the hypothesized original gospel that supposedly supplied the material for Matthew and Luke that was missing from Mark. If such an early gospel existed, it would presumably have been written in one of the local languages of Judea — either Hebrew, the language in which they prayed and studied or Aramaic, the language of everyday speech. Even Mark’s gospel was believed to have been written first in Hebrew before being translated into Greek, even though there were no extant copies of it in Hebrew.

But maybe now there were.

Could Martin Costa have found an original gospel?

Forged one, more like, knowing Costa! And why would it be in England? Could it have been brought there to bring the word to the ancient Britons? A Latin translation would have been more useful. After all many of the Britons spoke Latin by this stage because their conquerors were Roman. And the more educated among them could surely read the language. It would make more sense to translate the gospel into Latin and then bring it to England.

Besides, how would Costa even know that it was Hebrew? His scholarship did not extend that far. He might recognize the alphabet, but he wouldn’t know Hebrew from Aramaic. Maybe it was Aramaic. Or maybe it was Hebrew. Either way, if it was found at a Romano-British site that would be interesting.

Of course Costa could be lying. But what if he was telling the truth? If Costa had found — as distinct from forged — such a manuscript, his only angle would be financial. He would need to have it validated and then sell it to the highest bidder. But to Daniel the value of any such manuscript inhered in the knowledge that it would provide, not its financial value to some wealthy dilettante. Daniel didn’t care who owned the manuscript. It was a valuable chattel, but still — at the end of the day — just a chattel. It was the knowledge that it contained that imparted value to it. And as long as that knowledge was able to enter the public domain, it didn’t matter to Daniel who owned the chattel.

But first, Daniel had to know if Costa was on the level. He texted back.

“Will be back in three days. Cannot meet you till Tuesday.”

This time the wait was long. At the table, the girls were getting fractious and Daniel knew that any minute now, Julia would send them over to him and he would have to give them his undivided attention. Just before that happened, Costa’s next message came through.

“Meet me at the Three Tuns pub in Ashwell, Herts on Tuesday at One O’clock. And make sure you’re not followed.”

The Urim monitoring station in Israel was the equivalent of the US National Security Agency in Maryland or Britain’s GCHQ in Cheltenham. That is to say, it was a vast, all-seeing electronic eye where they monitored vast swathes of telephone, mobile phone and data traffic. It was estimated that they monitored pretty much all transmitted information that went over the air waves whether by satellite or ground station. Even most of the traffic that went by land line could be monitored through a variety of technologies.

But most of this voice traffic never reached a human ear, nor the data traffic a human eye. There was simply too much of it for human analysis. Such information only came before a human being if it fulfilled one of two criteria. The first of these was the keyword test. Both text and speech were analysed by sophisticated algorithms for identifying key words that would flag up the content and trigger human intervention. Contra to what people thought, one couldn’t just rattle off a list of words to force the recording to be brought to the attention of a human analyst. The algorithms were actually quite sophisticated.

But there was another parallel criterion that could take such material from the realm of SigInt into the realm of HumInt . And that was the source or destination of the specific traffic that was being monitored. Certain people’s phone and internet communications were singled out for human monitoring because the people in question were themselves already under suspicion.

And one of these people was a man who called himself “HaTzadik” — The Righteous One. He was on the permanent surveillance list and under the monitoring criteria, all voice and data traffic to and from him, his home, his mobile and his IP address were to be referred automatically to Israel’s Sherutei Bitachon Klali — SHaBaK — or General Security Services. This was the equivalent of Britain’s Security Service — MI5.

And so an encrypted recording of HaTzadik’s nocturnal phone conversation with Sam Morgan was sent to SHaBaK to be analyzed by a human being.

“Everything comfortable?” asked the pretty flight attendant.

Daniel nodded. Of course everything was comfortable. For the first time in ages, he was travelling first class, like he used to in the old days when he was married. Since his divorce he had downgraded to Business Class or even Economy. He was never one for luxuries or even comforts, having grown up on the Regent’s Park council estate in central London. But Charlotte always insisted on First Class. She was used to it and would accept nothing less.