Adam Palmer - The Boudicca Parchments

They started looking round, widening their search in ever increasing circles, but to no avail.

“Where the devil could it be?” asked Daniel, frustrated by this turn of events. Ted looked at him chidingly, putting him on the defensive. “Look I don’t care about the treasure per se, Ted. It wasn’t ours anyway. But the inscription… the fact that the treasure was here.”

“We can still back up our case with the parchments and the translations.”

Daniel knew that Ted was right. Even though the ketuba was lost forever and preserved only as a digital image, without the original parchment — and even without Boudicca’s treasure — they still had the Temple Mount Parchment and the Domus Aurea Parchment. The Vatican would cooperate with them on that. It wasn’t some deep, dark secret that threatened the Roman Catholic faith. And contra to HaTzadik’s paranoid fears, it didn’t threaten the Jewish religion either. Rather, it would add to the sum of human knowledge and spread further light on the history of Judeo-Christian monotheism throughout the west.

Yet it was frustrating. The ketuba and the Boudicca treasure would have completed the picture. But instead, they had been thwarted by the skulduggery of Bar Tikva.

Sensing his mood, Sarit approached Daniel and put a comforting hand on him.

“It isn’t necessarily lost for good. When we do a proper search with metal detectors and gravitometers, it’ll probably show up under a few inches of wind-swept sand. It fell from quite a height don’t forget. It could easily have got embedded below the surface.”

Daniel smiled weakly. He would have preferred to search the area personally until he found the treasure. But that wouldn’t be very practical. Within a short time, a helicopter had landed and Dovi Shamir had turned up at the scene. He gathered Sarit, Daniel and Ted around him and told him that they had to go with him to a secret location to make their formal statements.

“The El Al desk is over there,” said Daniel, pointing.

“You didn’t really have to accompany me,” Ted replied. “Not if you have to stay here.”

“I didn’t really have to stay here at all. I go back to England now and then fly back in a week. But I could do with a rest after all this excitement. My nephew’s swearing in is in a week’s time and I could use the break to catch my breath. I’m thinking of spending the whole week by the Dead Sea.”

“I’d’ve thought you’d be sick of that place.”

“Oh not Masada. I was thinking more of a hotel in Ein Bokek. Floating in the salty water or doing the mud treatment.”

“Enjoy it,” Ted replied with a smile.

“It’s either that or Eilat. I’ll see what Julia’s doing. She’s also staying on for another week. So I thought we might make a family occasion of it. And my brother-in-law Nat is flying in today. In fact after I’ve seen you safely through, I’ll probably go to arrivals and meet him.”

“When does he land?”

Daniel looked at his watch.

“He’s already landed. But with border control and baggage, I reckon he’ll be airside for the next hour at least.”

“Are you two travelling together,” said a pretty woman from flight security.

This was the pre-check-in security check that they use as the first line of defence against terrorists.

“Oh er no,” said Daniel. “I’m not flying today. My friend here is. I’m just here to see him off safely.”

The pretty girl smiled and went through the routine security questions. They sounded banal and some people wondered why asking these questions would catch a real terrorist who was planning something. But these staff were highly trained and they knew exactly what to look out for. They even asked a few questions about Daniel and he answered himself, explaining his own family residential connections to Israel as well as his academic vocation.

A minute later, Ted was putting his suitcase on the X-ray scanner and three minutes later he was checking in at the desk for pre-booked checkins. They went through to the section where the groundside fast food and shops were located. Daniel, who knew Ben-Gurion Airport’s Terminal 3 quite well, was acting as a guide.

“You can get some fast food over there, but it’s not exactly cordon bleu.”

“Fast food never is.”

“Believe me this is worse than fast-food in England. The steak houses here are great, but when they take out franchises with the Big Three, they get it wrong. There’s better food airside.”

“Okay, well I guess this is goodbye for now, or what is it you say in Hebrew?”

“Lehitra’ot.”

“Lehitra’ot. I’ll see you back in England. We have a paper to work on.”

They shook hands and Ted went off through the second security check, the one that would involve metal detectors and ex-ray inspection of hand baggage.

Daniel was quite looking forward to working with Ted on the paper. In the meantime, he walked back, intending to go upstairs to arrivals where he expected to have to wait an hour for his brother-in-law.

However, as he emerged back into the checkin area, he noticed a man who looked terribly familiar walking into the men’s toilet, carrying a rucksack.

It can’t be!

And yet he had just seen it with his own eyes. If he hadn’t, he would never have believed it, But there was no mistaking what he saw. He strode briskly towards the toilet that the man had entered, but by the time he got there, there was no sign of the man. Then he realized why. The man had gone in to a cubicle. So Daniel waited calmly until the man emerged and then he stepped into his path.

Daniel didn’t know this, but the man whom he was confronting had been calling himself Sam Morgan when he had his dealings with Shalom Tikva and Shomrei Ha’ir . But that wasn’t his real name. And that wasn’t the name by which Daniel addressed him now.

“Hallo Costa.”

Martin Costa’s jaw dropped.

“Da… Da… Daniel! What a pleasant surprise.”

He was trying to sound chummy — and he even forced his lips into a false smile to go with it. But the tone of Daniel’s reply was hostile.

“What are you doing here?”

The false smile vanished from Costa’s face.

“What? Oh er I’m here on holiday. Just doing a spot of sightseeing.”

“Pull the other one Costa; it’s got bell’s on.”

“Okay, well. I suppose you know now I’m not dead.”

“I know a lot more than that. If you’re not dead, then you set it up. Set it up to make it look like you were dead. Set it up to make it look like I killed you. Or even set it up to kill me too.”

“Oh no Daniel I’d never do that.”

“The hell you wouldn’t! I barely made it out of that place alive!”

“Oh come, come Daniel. I’m sure you’re exaggerating. A fit, healthy man like you.”

It sounded patronizing. But Daniel would have been angry however Costa had put it.

“I lost consciousness in the smoke! I just about managed to stagger out of there. I could’ve been killed! ”

The anger in Daniel’s eyes was reflected by the fear in Costa’s.

“Well I can assure you that wasn’t my intention.”

“And I suppose you didn’t kill that other guy.”

“Well no er… I mean actually I er did kill him. But it was self-defence.”

“Self defence. The guy was out cold! What did you have to burn him to death for.”

“I didn’t burn him to death Daniel, I swear! He was already dead!”

“Then why the fire? If you weren’t trying to kill me?”

“I was trying to conceal the time of death. And the circumstances. I needed a smokescreen — if you’ll excuse the pun.”