The Moses Legacy - Adam Palmer [127]
‘That’s impossible!’ said Gabrielle. ‘How could he even have got hold of a copy? They only took it out of its hiding place when we persuaded the Samaritans and the Israel Antiquities Authority to let us. And they said it had been kept there for a couple of centuries.’
‘It may have been at that particular hiding place for a couple of centuries, but it had been taken out some time in the last couple of hundred years and copied on to parchment. We know that because your uncle had that parchment copy. We believe that he’d had it for a few decades and that he’d been working on it ever since. But he didn’t have what you and Professor Klein here had to help you.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Gabrielle.
‘I understand from what you told my colleague in Herzliya that you had the benefit of other texts that you could compare to their biblical equivalent. Your uncle didn’t have that. So it obviously took him a lot longer. But he got there first.’
‘Then why didn’t he publish?’ asked Gabrielle.
‘Because of that professor – the one who peer reviewed it. He used his prestige to delay publication.’
‘But if they were anti-Israel why did they want to stop the paper being published?’
‘Because they wanted to draw on the information inside it. The paper revealed the disease that afflicted the Israelites. They figured out from the contents that it was a spore-borne disease. They saw the possibility of getting the spores and using them against Israel, so they bided their time.’
Now Daniel was even more confused. ‘But the information about the plague was in The Book of the Wars of the Lord, not The Book of the Straight. And it was pretty minimalistic information.’
Sarit was shaking her head. ‘It was in The Book of the Straight too – and in far greater detail.’
An uneasy silence settled over them, as Daniel had a deeply discomforting thought.
Chapter 102
‘It says that the crossing is open till eight!’ Goliath was shouting, pointing at the sign.
He was at what the Jordanians call the ‘Sheikh Hussein Crossing’ between Jordan and the north of Israel.
‘You have to arrive an hour before,’ the middle-aged Jordanian official was explaining.
‘But this is an emergency!’ Goliath pleaded, not sure of what he would say if they asked him what he meant. ‘And it’s not like there’s a whole long queue. The hour before is presumably to give you time to do the paperwork.’
Friday is the Islamic day of rest and in Israel everything stops early on Friday in order to enable Jews to prepare for the Jewish day of rest which commences half an hour before sunset on Friday night and carries on until sunset the next day. It was now half past seven and the sun had just set.
‘I could let you through on this side, but the Israelis won’t let you through.’
‘Can’t you at least ask them? My sister is sick. I just had a call from my brother-in-law. I was visiting Petra and I was due back in a few days, but I got a call and he told me to come back. The other bridge was closed so I thought it was better to come this way. I am not even sure if she is in a hospital now because I lost my phone. All I know is—’
‘Wait a minute,’ said the Jordanian official.
He walked off and spoke to a colleague. Then he walked over to the Israeli side and spoke to several of their officials. The talk seemed to last for ages. When the official finally came back he was smiling.
‘Okay. You can go through.’
Chapter 103
‘How far are we?’ asked Daniel.
‘We’re nearly there. When we get to the crossing, let me do the talking.’
‘Is there likely to be a problem?’ asked Daniel.
‘Strictly speaking we’re too late. But leave it to me.’
Daniel noticed that Gabrielle had been strangely silent for most of the journey. It was as if Sarit’s very presence bothered her. And because they were in Sarit’s car, it meant that Sarit was in control.
‘There’s something I don’t understand,’ said Daniel. ‘You said that they knew about the spores from Harrison Carmichael’s translation of the Book of the Straight.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I could understand if you said, The Book of the