The Solomon Scroll

by Alex Lukeman

"A rope? I don't know. It just doesn't look natural to me."

  "Me neither," Diego said.

  They'd passed the spot before and decided it was solid. "We haven't seen anything else," Nick said. "Let's clear away the greenery."

  They hacked away at the growth until they could get next to the fissure, then began prying out accumulated dirt and debris. A small opening appeared. A dry, dusty odor drifted out of the blackness.

  "I'll be damned," Nick said. "I think we've found it."

  The discovery energized them. Another half-hour and they'd cleared away a narrow passage into the column.

  Nick turned on his flashlight and aimed it into the dark interior.

  "What do you see?" Selena said.

  "Someone widened this passage. I can see tool marks on the rock."

  "Nothing else?"

  "No. We'll have to go inside."

  "There could be spiders. More snakes."

  "I don't see any webs. Anyway, we don't have a choice. Just watch where you step."

  Single file, they followed Nick into the interior. The passage was barely wide enough to let them pass. After a short distance it curved to the right and opened into a large, natural chamber in the center of the rock column. In the middle of the space was an upright stone. Except for the stone, the chamber was empty.

  "I don't see any gold," Diego said.

  "Or Solomon either," Ronnie said. "Just that stone."

  Selena moved her light over the stone. A six pointed star was carved into the hard rock. In the center of the star was something that looked like a flower with eight petals. Within each point of the star was a dot.

  "I think that's the seal of Solomon," Selena said

  "Then we must be in the right place," Nick said.

  "There's something written beneath it." Selena knelt down in front of the stone and aimed her light at it.

  "Biblical Aramaic, like the scroll."

  "What does it say?"

  Selena pursed her lips and stared at the writing. After a few minutes she sighed.

  "It's a riddle. Or a clue, take your pick."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I'll read it to you."

  The soul of wisdom shelters with its consort in the queen's land.

  "The queen's land? What the hell does that mean?"

  "I don't think he's talking about Australia," Ronnie said.

  "What's all that about the soul sheltering?" Diego asked.

  "Soul isn't exactly the right translation," Selena said. "The ancient Hebrews believed some kind of life went on after you died, in a sort of vague limbo. The life essence of a person. There had to be something left of the body or that was the end of you. Bodies were buried and the bones preserved. Nobody cremated their dead in ancient Israel. That would've been a terrible crime."

  "Doesn't sound like much of an afterlife," Diego said. "I like the idea of harps and angels better."

  Ronnie said, "How do you know it's not going to be pitchforks and demons?"

  Diego shrugged. "Couldn't be much worse than Afghanistan."

  Nick said, "Let's think about this. Why would Ephram set this up? Leaving clues about this place in the scroll, only to tell us there's nothing here when we find it?"

  "There's something else here," Selena said.

  She brushed a layer of dirt and dust from the stone.

  "I think it's a map."

  "I can't see that it does us any good."

  "That's because we don't understand it yet. That's Solomon's seal above the writing. It's a riddle you have to figure out if you want to get closer to wisdom. When Ephram writes wisdom, I think he means Solomon. So what the message says is that Solomon is with his consort in the queen's land."

  "Because people associate wisdom and Solomon together?"

  "Yes."

  "Who was Solomon's consort?"

  "He's supposed to have had over a thousand wives."

  "I wonder what he was taking?" Diego said. "We knew that, we'd all get rich."

  Selena ignored him. "The story of Solomon is in the Bible, in Kings. According to that version, the wives were foreigners. God told Solomon not to marry them because they would corrupt him with false gods. Solomon didn't listen. He seems to have been very attached to them. He began worshiping other gods and setting up temples for his wives to their gods. As punishment, God told him his kingdom would be scattered after his death and separated into different tribes."

  "So who was his consort? If he had a thousand wives, how do we know which one the stone is talking about?"

  "We have to think about it. It could be..."

  Nick interrupted her. He held up his hand. "Everybody get quiet. I heard something."

  They listened. "Vehicles," Ronnie said. "More than one."

  "Coming up the valley," Diego said. "Now they're stopping."

  "They'll be down at the foot of the slope" Nick rubbed his chin. "A four wheel drive might make it up here."

  "Who'd know we're here?" Selena asked.

  "Could be an Arab military patrol. Or maybe it's Al-Bayati. Get some pictures while we take a look."

  Selena took out her phone and began taking pictures of the stone.

  "Come on," Nick said.

  They emerged from the darkness of the chamber into late afternoon light. The sun had reached the horizon and the sky was spread wide with red and vermillion streaked with black, as though the world was burning.

  Nick moved with the others through the bushes to the edge of the plateau. They looked down at the valley floor. Six vehicles idled at the base of the slope. Two were pickups with heavy machine guns mounted in the back.

  "That's not an Arab patrol," Ronnie said.

  "They're getting ready to drive up the hill."

  They went back to where Selena waited for them by the column.

  "We have company," Nick said.

  "Arabs?"

  "There are no army markings. The Saudis don't use trucks like that. It has to be Al-Bayati."

  "What do you want to do?"

  "Wait until after it's dark and leave. There's nothing more for us here."

  The trucks began to labor up the hill in low gear.

  "Too late," Diego said. "Here they come."

  CHAPTER 34

  Major Dov Yosef knocked on the open door of Colonel Cohen's office and went in.

  "You wanted to see me?"

  "The Americans are up to something. Sit down, Dov."

  Dov sat. "What are they doing?"

  "I just got a heads up from Mossad. Last night they sent a stealth helicopter into Saudi Arabia from one of their carriers stationed in the Gulf of Aden. It touched down briefly in the Habala Valley near the border with Yemen, then returned to the ship."

  "An insertion," Dov said.

  Cohen nodded in agreement. "Can't be anything else. The question is why insert a team into that part of the country? There's nothing of any importance there."

  "They must be looking for something."

  "I think they're looking for Solomon's tomb and the Temple artifacts."

  "How were they detected?"

  "Luck. We have a Saar 4 surveillance ship observing the American carrier group. They picked it up. Otherwise we'd never have seen it."

  "If there's something there, we can't let them have it. It belongs to Israel. It's our sacred heritage."

  "Yes."

  Cohen paused. Dov waited while his CO thought it through. "Can we put a team on site?"

  "There are no units in that area. We'd have to use an airdrop and it's certain to be detected by the Saudi air defenses. Even with their technology, the Americans were lucky."

  "It would be difficult on such short notice. But we can't let them escape with whatever it is they find."

  "Assuming they find anything."

  "There's another option," Colonel Cohen said.

  "Which is?"

  "Wait until the extraction, intercept their chopper and force them down where we can make sure they're not carrying somethi
ng they shouldn't."

  "Force down an American helicopter? What if they decide to treat us as hostile? It would go badly."

  "That would be a mistake," Cohen said.

  "It wouldn't do us any good to shoot them down. Besides, relations are bad enough with Washington as it is."

  "Politicians never change. It's been that way since the days of the pharaohs."

  "We're still in the days of the pharaohs. They just don't wear fancy headdresses or build pyramids anymore."

  "No, now they build libraries named after them," Cohen said.

  Dov laughed. "What are we going to do about the Americans?"

  "Keep an eye on them. I've already requested that one of our satellites be tasked to observe the area."

  "How soon?"

  Cohen looked at his watch. "It should be coming up now."

  He tapped a key. The satellite picture appeared on his computer screen.

  "There it is. The light's going. We won't be able to see much in another half an hour."

  The light was still good enough for the two Israeli officers to see the Americans. One of them was on top of the hill, next to one of the rock columns. Three more crouched at the edge of the slope, looking down at a half-dozen vehicles below.

  "You said the Americans came in on a helicopter. What are those trucks doing there?"

  "Hang on a minute."

  Cohen entered a few more keystrokes. The picture appeared on a large wall monitor.

  "Mechanicals. Two heavy machine guns," Dov said. "That's not a Saudi patrol. Rebels?"

  "Let me zoom in."

  The camera lens on the satellite bore down on the six trucks and men standing outside the vehicles. The resolution was good. One of the men looked up at the sky as if he could sense the satellite looking back at him.

  Dov swore. "Ben zona! I know him. That's Al-Bayati. He's a puppet for Tehran, one of our problems in Lebanon."

  "He must be after the same thing as the Americans."

  "He's getting back in the truck," Dov said. "They're going to drive up the slope. Go back to the top of the hill."

  The camera zoomed out. They watched the four Americans. Now they were all at the edge of the slope.

  "They're armed," Cohen said. "Looks like MP5s or something similar."

  "They're going to need more than that against those machine guns. What do you want to do?"

  "Do? Nothing, except watch what happens. Maybe they'll do us a favor and take care of our Lebanese friend for us."

  "You don't think we should intervene?"

  "Unless you can get a unit on site in the next five minutes, I don't think we can. Even if we could, it's in Saudi Arabia. That presents a problem."

  "What if they find the tomb?" Dov said.

  "Then they will have saved us a lot of work. If they manage to survive whatever happens, we'll find out who they are. Once we know that, we'll apply pressure until Washington tells us what we need to know."

  "President Rice won't necessarily cooperate."

  "He's been friendly in the past. If he won't, somebody else will."

  CHAPTER 35

  One of the pickups began crawling up the hill. The others started to follow. Selena watched through her binoculars.

  "They'll never make it," she said.

  "What makes you so sure?"

  "I've done a lot of backcountry four wheeling. There's a limit to what any of these machines will do. Those pickups will never make it up here, it's too steep and the rock is loose. The Land Rovers, maybe, if they find another route. Even so I wouldn't bet on it."

  Even as she said it, the first truck churned up over some rocks and began to slip sideways in a quarter circle. Without warning it flipped over on the steep hillside. They heard the man on the gun scream as he disappeared under the truck. The wreckage began rolling down the hill, gathering speed until it smashed against an outcrop of stone at the foot of the slope. The other vehicles halted where they were. Steam rose from the wreck. No one got out.

  "Amateurs," Selena said. "They should've known better."

  "Gives us better odds," Diego said. "We can take these guys."

  Nick took Selena's binoculars and focused on two men getting out of a Land Rover.

  "Well, well. If I'm not mistaken that's Al-Bayati. And the tall guy standing next to him is the same guy that passed us when we were leaving the Museum."

  "Rhoades," Selena said.

  "Yeah, him. He's no amateur."

  "Like we figured," Ronnie said. "They're following up on the scroll, like we are."

  "I wonder if they know we're here?" Selena said.

  Diego gestured down the hill. Men were getting out of the trucks.

  "They're not being very careful about exposing themselves," Diego said. "I don't think they do."

  "I make it a dozen, no, thirteen men, plus Rhoades and Al-Bayati. AKs."

  "Figures."

  "Looks like they're talking it over," Ronnie said. "How you want to handle it?"

  "It'll be night soon," Nick said. "Losing that truck has got to shake them up. I don't think they'll try and come up here in the dark. We've got two choices. The first one is we slip out of here before they know we're around and call for extraction once we're out of the area."

  "And the second choice?"

  "We engage. Ambush them."

  "Al-Bayati is the one who sent those men after Stephanie," Selena said. "We should engage."

  "Do I need to point out that we're outnumbered four to one?"

  "Since when has that made a difference?"

  "Engage," Ronnie said.

  "Let's get the bastard," Diego said.

  Nick thought about it. The smart move was to leave before anyone knew they were there. Then he thought about Stephanie.

  "All right," he said. "We'll take them down."

  They watched as the trucks backed down the slope to the valley floor. Once they were down, Al-Bayati's men started setting up a campsite. One went over to the wrecked truck, leaned down and peered inside the cab. He straightened, looked over at Rhoades and shook his head. Two men began scavenging wood for a fire.

  "They're making camp," Selena said.

  "We'll let them get comfortable and watch them in shifts," Nick said. "Get some food and some sleep. We'll hit them early in the morning."

  They backed away from the edge to the clear area near the column. From below, no one could see them.

  "Let's see what the chef whipped up for dinner." Diego took a food ration from his pack. "Mmmm, MREs for a change. Mexican chicken stew, just like mama used to make. Makes me feel right at home."

  "I've got chicken fajita," Ronnie said. "Want to trade?"

  "Nah. It all tastes lousy whatever you call it."

  "I had a sergeant who loved this stuff," Ronnie said. "He was always scrounging the rations people didn't want. You didn't want to get anywhere near him when his digestion kicked in."

  Nick activated the comm link. In Virginia, it was morning. Elizabeth picked up.

  "I was beginning to wonder. What's your status, Nick?"

  "We found the tomb. There's nothing in it except a stone with an inscription and the seal of Solomon. There's a diagram on it that could be a map."

  "Mm."

  "We have a problem. Al-Bayati and his men showed up about an hour ago. They don't know we're here. Right now they're making camp for the night."

  "One thing at a time. Tell me about the tomb and the stone."

  "The tomb is in a natural cave inside one of those three columns. We were lucky we found it. The entrance was invisible. The stone is a chunk of granite inscribed with the seal of Solomon and a riddle. At least I think it's a riddle."

  "What does it say?"

  "The soul of wisdom shelters with its consort in the queen's land."

  "What about the diagram?"

  "Like I said, it could be a map. That's all I can tell you about it. There's nothing else. The seal on the rock tells us we've have found the place Ephram talked about in the
scroll. There's no sign of Solomon or anything that might have been in the Temple. Just the stone."

  "It must be a clue to the location of the real tomb," Elizabeth said.

  "Selena thinks the word wisdom is a reference to Solomon. I think she's right. We haven't figured out the rest of it. The one thing I'm certain of is that there's nothing else here."

  "You have pictures?"

  "Yes."

  "All right. Send them to me. Then I want you to destroy that stone."

  "Destroy it?"

  "It's the only way to make sure nobody else sees it."

  "The only way to do that is blow it up. It could bring down that column. It looks solid but it's hollow inside and the stone is old and weathered, a little crumbly."

  "Then you'd better make sure it doesn't fall on you," Elizabeth said. "What are you going to do about Al-Bayati?"

  "Hit him when they're all asleep. He sent those people who shot Stephanie."

  "There's no other option?"

  "Not that we want to take. Especially if we destroy the tomb. I don't want him coming after us when we leave."

  Nick waited while Elizabeth paused on the other end of the line. He could hear her pen tapping in the background.

  "All right. Watch yourself," she said. "I'll have extraction standing by. Call when it's done."

  "Copy that."

  "Out."

  Nick turned to the others. "You all heard that?"

  Ronnie rummaged around in his pack and took out a packet of C4. The putty-like explosive could be molded against anything and was safe until detonated with an electrical charge.

  "Yep. This ought to do it."

  "You have timers?"

  "Always."

  "Getting down to that camp in the dark without making noise is going to be tricky," Diego said.

  "How long do you think it will take us to get in position?"

  "At least two hours. Maybe three. Steep slope, loose rocks, all that. Slower is better."

  "That sounds about right. We'll give it plenty of time. Ronnie, set the charges to go off at three. When it blows, we go in."

  "Do we take prisoners?" Selena.

  "Not unless someone surrenders. If anyone does, be careful he doesn't change his mind."

  Diego yawned. "Who's got first watch?"