by Adam Palmer
Meanwhile, Sarit had kept her cool. With Gabrielle clutching her bloody nose, she was momentarily defenceless. Sarit seized upon the opportunity by forming a double-handed grip and delivering a vicious chop to the side of Gabrielle’s head, sending her reeling.
Quick as a flash, Sarit took two awkward strides through the shallow water and jumped on Gabrielle from behind. Her plan was to get the blonde into some kind of full nelson and hold her face down on the ground. Unfortunately Gabrielle was too quick and managed to twist away, tearing her shirt in the process.
Gabrielle had only been momentarily dazed by Sarit’s unexpectedly effective resistance and now, with renewed strength, she charged at Sarit sending the pair of them reeling and tumbling on to the riverbank where they tore and clawed at each other. Eventually superior strength won out and Gabrielle ended up straddling the hapless Sarit.
Then lights appeared to shine at them out of nowhere.
Gabrielle looked up to see a jeep filled with soldiers. They seemed to be amused by the sight of these two women fighting. Then Sarit took the opportunity to reach up and claw at Gabrielle’s eyes. The bigger woman let out a scream and staggered backwards as Sarit leapt to her feet with the last of her strength and pointed to Gabrielle.
‘Hee mehabelet!’ she shouted, meaning, she’s a terrorist. Unsure of what to do, but hearing no words of dispute from the bigger woman, the soldiers ran towards them to separate them. Sarit, struggling to regain her breath and composure, half-turned and pointed to Daniel and Goliath.
A malicious smile graced Goliath’s lips as he prepared to dive on to Daniel, crushing him beneath his weight. But Daniel had one last trick up his sleeve. His hand groped on the ground for the rock that he had seen nearby. Finally he found it and just as Goliath realized what was happening, Daniel’s hand shot out sending the rock smashing into Goliath’s face with a velocity that Daniel did not think possible.
The big man let out a cry of pain that sounded like thunder in the night and then fell backward, unconscious.
Seconds later, Daniel got to his feet, holding the shroud and praying that it had not got damp during the incident. Sarit and two of the soldiers came running over.
Ignoring the potential danger from the shroud, Sarit approached him.
‘You got it wrong, Daniel. It’s supposed to be David who uses a stone to defeat Goliath, not Daniel.’
He smiled.
‘I guess we’ll have to rewrite the Bible.’
Epilogue
A couple of weeks later, on the morning of 19 May, Daniel was in the Old City of Jerusalem at the Western Wall, celebrating Shavuot, the Jewish festival that commemorates Moses receiving the Torah.
There were several congregations there, each with their own rabbi. The Wall was not a synagogue, but a place where individuals or groups could pray. Anyone can visit the Wall, but once he had put a kippa on his head and a talis round his shoulders, he had effectively identified himself as a Jew and was promptly invited to complete a minyan or quorum of ten men required by Jewish religious law for group prayers.
Sixty feet above them, on what Jews call the Temple Mount and Muslims call Haram ash-Sharif, devout Muslims were praying in the Dome of the Rock and al-Aksa Mosque as well as kneeling on their prayer mats in collective worship all over the site. And in other parts of the Old City, Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians were going to church for the matins. The churches were not quite as busy as they had been six days ago on Ascension Thursday, but they would be busy again next Sunday for Whitsun.
But Daniel – ever the academic – had other things on his mind, such as his forthcoming paper on The Book of the Wars of the Lord as well as his efforts to secure publication of Harrison Carmichael’s paper on The Book of the Straight, a copy of which Audrey Milne had managed to find in Senator Morris’s home. He had been careful in his own paper to acknowledge Carmichael’s prior claim to the decipherment of Proto-Sinaitic script.
The Israelis were still engaged in some delicate negotiations with the Jordanians over ownership of the Book of the Wars of the Lord. There had been threats of official diplomatic complaints and there was even a possibility that the Israelis would return the tablets to Jordan. In a way that would be better for Daniel as he might otherwise find himself persona non grata in a number of Arab countries, not to mention a target for arrest on an international warrant for stealing historical artefacts.
One of the things that pleased him was that Akil Mansoor still wanted to work with him on the paper about the finding of the Mosaic tablets. The self-styled ‘crusty old Egyptian’ had explained to the authorities in his own country how Daniel had tried to help him and nearly got killed because of a big misunderstanding. He knew that he would be going back to Egypt soon, but he felt a tinge of regret about Gabrielle who was now in an Israeli jail.
The health scare had finally abated as Israeli doctors had been able to use the shroud to breed the bacteria en masse from the spores and then irradiate them to produce a vaccine.
Goliath had survived, but Daniel was unable to give them much information other than what they already knew about Senator Morris. All Dov Shamir would tell him was that the conspiracy reached all the way up to the ‘top of the administration.’
Daniel was snapped out of these thoughts by the sound of revelry as a man he didn’t know, but with whom he shared a common bond, raised an open Torah scroll high into the air showing three columns of text. The singing of the congregation had a familiar ring to it.
‘And this is the Torah that Moses placed before the Children of Israel…’
All of a sudden, Daniel’s childhood memories came flooding back to him as he remembered the Hebrew words and added his voice to those of his brothers.
‘From the mouth of the Lord and the hand of Moses.’
About the Author
Adam Palmer is a polymath – well-read in many fields and disciplines. He has studied across a number of subjects ranging from the Sciences to Ancient History. His work experience includes everything from computer software to private investigation. He is British but has lived abroad extensively.
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Copyright
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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THE MOSES LEGACY. Copyright © Adam Palmer 2011. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN-13: 978-1-84756-184-8
EPub Edition © APRIL 2011 ISBN: 978-0-00-735234-0
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