The Moses Stone (41 page)
Conscious that he could only stay submerged for perhaps another twenty seconds, Bronson turned his attention to the wall beside him. Unsurprisingly, it looked very much the same as all the other sections of wall he’d looked at so far. He changed position, pulling himself sideways to look at the next few feet, and then the next. Nothing.
His lungs starting to protest, Bronson released his grip on the rock and allowed himself to start drifting upward. And as he did so, the beam of his flashlight briefly illuminated something different, something he hadn’t seen before. An object that seemed regular in shape, not rounded like the rocky protrusions he’d been using as handholds, but projecting horizontally from the stone wall of the spring.
And then he was past it, heading upward toward the light and the life-giving air.
“The padlock’s been cut off,” Hoxton muttered, shining his flashlight at the broken lock lying on the ground at his feet. “They’ve got here before us.”
They’d driven up to Har Megiddo from Tel Aviv, a noisy journey with Dexter lying across the back seat and moaning about the pain from his broken nose. Baverstock had misread a couple of the road signs outside Haifa, which had delayed their arrival slightly, but they, like Bronson and Angela, had waited until the site closed before they entered it over the boundary fence. They were now standing beside the entrance gate to the water tunnel.
“Good,” Dexter said. “I owe Bronson for what he did to my nose.”
“If it is Bronson,” Hoxton said, “we know how dangerous he can be. So we take it carefully and surprise him. No flashlights, no talking, no noise. It’s three against two, and we’re all armed, so it should be no contest. We’ll make it look like a couple of tragic accidents, or maybe just weigh the bodies down and dump them in the cistern. Understood?”
Dexter and Baverstock nodded.
“We’ve all seen the pictures of the tunnel,” Baverstock told them. “There’s a wooden walkway with handrails either side, so once we’re on that we can feel our way along. Bronson will probably be using a flashlight or lantern and we’ll see the light from that long before we reach them.”
Without another word, the three men moved slowly forward into the underground tunnel. When they stepped onto the wooden walkway, Baverstock stopped them for a few moments to let their eyes adjust to the almost total blackness.
“See that glow?” he whispered, pointing straight ahead. “They’re already at the cistern. No more talking, just walk slowly and carefully, and stop well before the steps at the end.”
Making barely a sound, the three men began moving cautiously toward the dim light at the end of the water tunnel.
Bronson surfaced again and grasped the dangling rope.
“Anything?” Angela asked, more in hope than expectation.
“I think I saw something. I’m going to have one last go.”
Bronson inhaled and exhaled rapidly several times, hyperventilating to purge the carbon dioxide from his lungs, before gulping a huge lungful of air and diving under water again.
He forced himself down into the wider part of the spring, to the area that he’d been searching on his previous dive, trying to spot the object he’d seen before. But once again the stone walls all looked the same, with no obvious differences from one part of the cistern to another. He could feel the pressure to breathe increasing as he swam around, the beam of his flashlight roaming over the rocky walls.
Maybe he’d been mistaken. Maybe his eyes had deceived him, or perhaps he’d simply misinterpreted what he’d seen. He was about to give up when the light suddenly illuminated something a few feet above his head, something with squared edges that seemed to be sticking out of the wall. He’d dived too deep, and had been searching too far down.
Bronson kicked out and rose up, never allowing the beam of the flashlight to waver, keeping its light on the object. Then he was beside it, his lungs bursting, but determined to find out exactly what it was.
It looked almost like a log of wood, but the moment his hand closed around the end of it he knew it was some kind of metal. Bronson tugged at it, but it seemed to be jammed into a natural fissure in the rock. He changed his grip and pulled again, bracing himself against the wall of the cistern with his other hand, his fingers still awkwardly clutching the flashlight.
This time he felt the object move. He pulled again, and in a cloud of debris it suddenly came free.
Bronson kicked out, away from the wall and up toward the surface. As his head popped out of the water he sucked in a long breath, then another.
He passed the flashlight up to Angela and grabbed for the rope.
“What is it?” she asked, her voice high with anxiety.
“I don’t know,” Bronson said, still panting for air. “It was jammed into a crevice in the wall of the spring. I think it’s metal. Here.”
Angela got down on her knees and stretched out both hands to him. Taking the object from him, she placed it carefully on the platform beside her as he began hauling himself up the knotted rope.
The climb wasn’t as bad as Bronson had feared, because he could use his feet on the side of the cistern as well as the rope, and in a few seconds he was standing shivering beside Angela on the platform.
She rummaged in the rucksack and pulled out a towel. Shivering and stamping his feet to get warm, Bronson dried himself and started to get dressed. Then she moved the beam of her flashlight to shine on whatever it was he’d found in the cistern.
“It looks like a sheet of metal, rolled into a cylinder,” she said, her voice husky with emotion, and Bronson could see her beginning to shake too. “It’s covered in algae, but I think I can see marks on it. God, Chris, I think this might be it. I think you’ve found the Silver Scroll.”
73
“And so do I,” said a new voice, somewhere above Bronson and Angela.
Suddenly the darkness was split by a trio of powerful flashlight beams that dazzled them. It was like Hezekiah’s Tunnel all over again, except that this time there was nowhere for them to run to. They were trapped in a dead end, unarmed and helpless.
Bronson and Angela were pinned by the light, standing on the wooden platform and staring up at the men holding flashlights at the top of the final staircase.
Hoxton moved his flashlight backward slightly to illuminate the pistol he held in his right hand.
“As you can see, we’re armed,” he said, “so don’t try anything stupid.”
“What do you want?” Bronson demanded.
“I’d have thought that was obvious,” Baverstock said. “We’re here to take that scroll. Thanks for finding it for us. We didn’t even need to get our feet wet.”
Angela recognized his voice immediately. “Tony? I should have guessed. What are you doing here?”
“The same as you, Lewis. Looking for the treasure the Sicarii hid here two millennia ago. I’m so pleased you’ve found it. This is going to make me very rich.”
“Nonsense,” Angela objected, her tone sharp and angry. “If this is the Silver Scroll, it needs to be properly analyzed and conserved. It must go to a museum.”
“Oh, it’ll end up in a museum eventually, don’t worry about that,” Baverstock assured her. “What you’ve got there is probably the world’s most famous treasure map. And when we’ve translated the text we’ll have access to the greatest collection of buried treasure in history. We’ll spend the next few years digging it all up and carefully selling a few of the best bits on the black market—Dexter here is an expert in that field—and then we can all retire on the proceeds.
Then
I’ll trot back to the British Museum with the scroll. My name will be as famous as Howard Carter’s.”
Then
I’ll trot back to the British Museum with the scroll. My name will be as famous as Howard Carter’s.”
“I always thought you were an academic, Tony,” Angela said, her voice dripping scorn. “But you’re really just a grubby little tomb-robber, aren’t you?”
“I am an academic, but I’ve always been quite happy to do a bit of freelancing on the side. Rather like you, in fact.”
“And if we give you the scroll, you’ll let us go?” Angela asked.
“Don’t be so naïve,” Hoxton snapped. “If we let you live, you’ll tell somebody about this scroll and the Middle East will be full of treasure hunters within a matter of days. Your career, and your life, are going to end right here.”
“I’m a British police officer,” Bronson warned him. “Kill me and you’ll have every copper in Britain looking for you.”
“If we were in a cellar in England, I’d agree with you, but we’re standing underneath a deserted fortress in the middle of Israel. Nobody’s going to know you’re dead; no one will ever know you were even here. Both your bodies will simply vanish. That well behind you is deep enough to hold your bones for all eternity. Now, hand over that scroll.” Hoxton pointed at Baverstock. “Get it, Tony.”
Baverstock took a step toward the staircase leading down to the platform to take the relic, his pistol pointing at Angela, but Bronson had one desperate card left to play. He grabbed the scroll and jumped back, holding the relic directly above the dark water of the well.
“One more step and I’ll drop this,” he threatened. “I’ve no idea how far down this spring goes, but I can promise you it is deep. You’ll need specialist diving equipment to recover it—if you ever do. As you said, this well could hold its secrets for all eternity.”
For several seconds nobody spoke or moved, and then a single shot rang out, the echo crashing and reverberating around the cavern, shockingly loud in the confined space.
And then a man screamed in pain.
74
Dexter tumbled sideways, his pistol clattering to the floor as he grabbed at his leg, the shock of the bullet’s impact momentarily stunning him. Then the pain hit him and he screamed.
Baverstock dived to the ground, trying to roll clear of the line of fire. Hoxton spun around, swinging his flashlight beam back up the tunnel, desperately searching for the origin of the shot as he brought his own pistol to bear. The light flashed over three motionless figures, standing barely twenty feet away.
The moment he heard the shot, Bronson dropped the scroll onto the wooden platform and pushed Angela bodily to one side and down into what cover there was behind the rocks that lined the chamber.
Before Hoxton could bring his weapon up to the aim, he was blinded by two beams of light and heard the sound of a second shot.
He felt a crashing impact in his chest at the same moment, and tumbled backward onto the wooden walkway. Then a numbing, crushing sensation spread across his torso as the lights around him seemed to fade into blackness. And then he felt nothing at all.
The beams of the flashlights shifted, the men holding them looking for new targets. They fixed on Baverstock, cowering at the side of the walkway and clutching a pistol. Two shots echoed round the chamber, so close together that they sounded like a single report, and Baverstock slumped backward, tumbling off the walkway and onto the rocky floor of the tunnel below.
An ominous silence fell as the echoes of the shots died away, and then again someone screamed in pain.
“Jesus, Chris! What the hell’s happening up there?” Angela whispered.
“Keep down. I don’t think anybody’s shooting at us. Not yet, anyway.”
Bronson grabbed the rucksack and reached inside it. He pulled out a crowbar and stood up, tucking the cold steel tool behind him, into the waistband of his trousers. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was all he had. He’d managed with less before, he told himself. Far less.
“Like rats in a trap.” The voice was soft, barely audible over Dexter’s howls of pain.
The three men moved forward cautiously, their flashlight beams dancing on the floor.
One stopped beside Dexter and looked down at the injured man, the beam from his flashlight playing over the widening pool of blood around his shattered thigh.
“Help me, please,” Dexter sobbed, through the agony of his wound. “I need an ambulance or I’ll bleed to death.”
“No you won’t,” the softly spoken man told him, “and you won’t need an ambulance either.”
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