Like Nahman, Ben Halevi worked for the Israel Museum, and was an ancient language specialist and an expert on Jewish history.
“Which words
can
you decipher?” Nahman asked.
Ben Halevi pointed at the newspaper article. “Here, along the bottom line. That word could be ‘altar,’ and I think the second word from the right is ‘scroll’ or perhaps ‘scrolls.’ But the image is very blurred.”
Nahman regarded his friend and colleague keenly. “How confident are you, Yosef?”
“You mean, do I think this tablet
is
one of the four? Perhaps sixty or seventy percent, no higher. We need to see a high-quality picture of the inscription or, better still, actually recover the tablet. Only then can we be certain.”
“That’s my view exactly.” Eli Nahman nodded. “We have to get our hands on that tablet.”
Levi Barak looked at the two academics. “It really
is
that important?”
Nahman nodded. “If it’s what we think it is, then it’s vital we recover it. Make no mistake about this, Levi. What’s written on that tablet could be the final clue we need to locate the Testimony. It could mark the end of a search that’s been running for the last two millennia. Take that to your masters at Glilot and ensure they know just how serious this is.”
“It won’t be easy, and it might not be possible,” Barak pointed out. “Even for the Mossad.”
“Look,” Nahman said, “that tablet exists, and we simply have to find it before anyone else does.”
“Like who?”
“Anyone. Treasure-hunters, obviously, but we can deal with people whose only motivation is money. What worries me are the others—the ones who would be desperate to find the relic so they can destroy it.”
“Muslims?” Barak suggested.
“Yes, but perhaps radical Christians as well. We’ve always been a persecuted minority, but if we could find the lost Testimony it would validate our religion in a way that nothing else ever could. That’s why we simply
must
recover that clay tablet and decipher the text.”
Barak nodded. “We have assets in Rabat and Casablanca. I’ll instruct them to start looking.”
“Not just in Morocco,” Nahman emphasized. “The couple who found it were English, so you should search there as well. Spread your net as wide as possible. Thanks to that newspaper, a lot of people will now know about that clay tablet. Your men are likely to find they’re not the only ones hunting for it.”
“We can take care of ourselves.”
“No doubt. Just make sure you also take care of the tablet. Whatever happens, it mustn’t get damaged or destroyed.”
12
“Thank you for meeting us out here,” Kirsty Philips said, shaking Bronson’s hand. They were sitting in the lounge bar of the Rabat hotel where she and her husband had booked a room. Kirsty’s brown eyes were red-rimmed and her dark hair disheveled, but she seemed to be more or less under control.
“David’s gone over to the British Embassy to sort things out,” she said, “but he shouldn’t be too long. Have a seat here and I’ll order some coffee.”
“Thank you,” Bronson said, though he really didn’t need anything to drink. “That would be very welcome.”
A few minutes later a waiter appeared carrying a tray bearing two cups and saucers, a cafetière, milk and sugar.
“I’m very sorry about the circumstances,” Bronson began, as the waiter walked away.
Kirsty nodded, her lower lip quivering slightly.
“I’ve been discussing what happened with the police out here,” Bronson hurried on, “and it looks as though it was simply a tragic accident. I know it won’t be much consolation, but both your parents died instantly. They didn’t suffer at all.” He paused for a few seconds, looking at the attractive young woman in front of him. “Do you want me to explain what happened?” he asked softly.
Kirsty nodded. “I suppose I’d better know,” she replied, a sob in her voice, “otherwise I’ll always wonder about it.”
Bronson sketched out the circumstances. When he’d finished, Kirsty shook her head.
“I still don’t understand it,” she said. “Dad was such a good driver. He was always cautious, always careful. As far as I know, he’d never even had a parking ticket.”
“But he was driving an unfamiliar car on a road he didn’t know,” Bronson suggested. “We think he failed to anticipate how sharp the bend in the road really was, and unfortunately there were no crash barriers.” Even as he said the words, he knew he didn’t really believe them either.
“Now,” he said, opening his briefcase, “this is a copy of the inventory of your parents’ possessions.”
He passed Kirsty the typed sheets of paper prepared by the Rabat police, and then sat back in his chair.
Kirsty put the papers down on the table in front of her, barely glancing at them. She took another sip of her coffee, then looked across at Bronson.
“It’s such a stupid waste,” she said. “I mean, they’d only recently decided to take proper holidays, to actually start enjoying themselves. They usually went to Spain for a couple of weeks. This was the first time they’d done anything even slightly adventurous. And now this happens.” Her voice broke on the last word, and she began to cry softly.
“They were having a good time out here,” she continued after a minute, blowing her nose. “Or at least my mother was. I don’t think Dad was all that fond of Morocco, but Mum simply loved it.”
“She sent you postcards, I suppose?” Bronson suggested, though he already knew the answer to that question.
Because the Canterbury paper had printed a picture of the tablet, either Margaret or Ralph O’Connor must have had a camera and have e-mailed a copy of the photograph to their daughter. But he also knew that no camera was listed in the inventory the police had given him. And he certainly hadn’t seen one when he’d examined the O’Connors’ possessions.
Talabani had told him that the suitcases had burst open in the accident, so maybe the camera had been flung so far away that the police hadn’t found it when they recovered everything. Or maybe Aziz or somebody else at the scene had picked it up and decided to keep it? On the other hand, modern digital cameras were both tiny and expensive, and he would have expected Margaret O’Connor to have kept hers in her handbag or perhaps in one of her pockets.
Kirsty shook her head. “No. My mother had started using computers when she was still working, and she was heavily into e-mail and the Internet. Their hotel had Internet access, and she would send me a message every evening, telling me what they’d been up to that day.” She tapped the black bag on the ground beside her chair. “I’ve got them all here on my laptop. I was going to print all her messages and give them to her when she came home, and do decent copies of the pictures she’d sent.”
Bronson sat up a little straighter. “Did she take a lot of photographs?” he asked.
“Yes. She had a small digital camera, one of the latest models, and one of those memory stick things that could read the data card. I think she plugged that into one of the hotel computers.”
“May I see the pictures your mother sent you? In fact, could you make me a copy of them? On a CD, perhaps?”
“Yes, of course,” Kirsty said. She picked up the bag, pulled out a Compaq laptop and switched it on. Once the operating system had loaded, she inserted a blank CD into the DVD drive, selected the appropriate directory and started the copying process.
While the CD was being burned, Bronson moved his chair around beside Kirsty’s and stared at the screen as she flipped through some of the pictures. He could see immediately that Margaret O’Connor had not been a photographer. She’d simply pointed the camera at anything that moved, and most things that didn’t, and clicked the shutter release. The images were typical holiday snaps—Ralph at the airport, waiting for their luggage by the carousel; Margaret standing beside their hire car, before they set off on the drive to Rabat; the view through the windscreen as they drove out of Casablanca; that kind of thing—but the images were sharp and clear enough, the high-quality camera compensating for the inadequacies of the person holding it.
“This is the
souk
here in Rabat,” Kirsty said, pointing at the screen. She extracted the CD as the copying process finished, slipped it into a plastic sleeve and passed it to Bronson. “Mum loved going in there. It was one of her favorite places. She said the smells were simply intoxicating, and the goods on display just amazing.”
She clicked the mouse button, cycling through the pictures. Then, in contrast to the earlier footage, Bronson saw a succession of clear but very poorly angled shots, apparently taken almost at random.
“What happened with these?” he asked.
Kirsty smiled slightly. “That was the day before they left Rabat. She told me she was trying to take pictures in the
souk
, but a lot of the traders weren’t keen on being photographed. So she hid the camera beside her handbag and clicked away, hoping that some of the pictures would come out.”
“What’s this?” Bronson pointed to one of the photographs.
“There was some sort of an argument in the
souk
while they were there, and Mum took about a dozen pictures of it.”
“Ah, yes. The story in the Canterbury newspaper. I wish you’d talked to someone about this before you went to the press, Mrs. Philips.”
Kirsty colored slightly, and explained that her husband David had a contact on the local paper and that he’d asked him to write the story.
As she told him what had happened, Bronson realized that not only were Margaret O’Connor’s digital camera and memory stick missing, along with the clay tablet—the finding of which she’d described to her daughter in such breathy and exciting detail in her last but one e-mail—but also her spare data card and card reader.
“My husband’s convinced it wasn’t just a road accident,” Kirsty said. “Of course, if the clay tablet was still in the car after the accident, then obviously he’s got it all wrong.” She looked at Bronson keenly. “So was it?”
“No, it wasn’t,” he admitted, pointing to the inventory on the table in front of them. “I asked the police officer in charge about it myself. I should also tell you that your mother’s camera and one or two other bits are also missing. But they could have been stolen by a pick-pocket on their last day here, and perhaps she decided not to bother bringing the tablet back with her. We’re not necessarily looking at a conspiracy here.”
“I know,” Kirsty Philips sounded resigned, “but I haven’t been able to change David’s mind. Oh, and there’s probably going to be some more press coverage. David’s contact on the Canterbury paper told a
Daily Mail
reporter about the story, and he phoned us here yesterday afternoon to talk about it. I think he’s doing a story on it in today’s edition.”
At that moment a tall, well-built young man with brown curly hair appeared in the lounge and strode straight across to them.
Kirsty stood up to make the introductions. “David, this is Detective Sergeant Bronson.”
Bronson stood up and shook hands. There was a kind of tension in the man in front of him, a sense of suppressed energy, of forces barely contained.
“Let me guess, Sergeant,” Philips said, as he sat down on the sofa, his voice low and angry. “A road accident, right? Just one of those things? A British driver in a foreign country and he just makes a Horlicks of steering his car round a gentle bend? Or maybe he was driving on the wrong side of the road? Something like that?”
“David, please don’t do this.” Kirsty looked close to tears again.
“It wasn’t a gentle bend, actually,” Bronson pointed out. “It was quite sharp, and on a road your father-in-law probably wasn’t familiar with.”
“You’ve been there, right? You’ve seen the place where the accident happened?” Philips demanded.
Bronson nodded.
“Well, so have I. Do you think
you
could have steered a car around that bend without driving into the ravine?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then why do you suppose my father-in-law, who had an unblemished driving record, who was a member of the Institute of Advanced Motorists, and who I think was one of the safest and most competent drivers I’ve ever known, couldn’t manage to do the same?”
Bronson felt torn. He agreed with David—the circumstances of the accident didn’t make sense. But he also knew he had to toe the official line.
“The thing is,” he said, “we have an eyewitness who observed the whole thing. He says he saw the car swerve off the road, hit some rocks and then crash into the ravine, and his testimony has been accepted by the Moroccan police. I sympathize with your misgivings, but there’s really no evidence to suggest that what he described didn’t happen.”
“Well, I don’t believe a single word any of them are saying. Look, I know you’re only doing your job, but there just has to be more to it. I
know
my parents-in-law didn’t die in a simple road accident. And nothing you say will convince me otherwise.”
13