by Adam Palmer
“Julia,” said Helen with a smile. She wanted to embrace her daughter, but it was hard to when she was being swarmed by the equally loving embrace of her granddaughters. When she finally extricated herself from the zealous affections of the happy threesome, Helen and Julia exchanged a quick hug before Helen exerted her matriarchal authority to restore some discipline to the situation.
“All right girls,” she said firmly, “to the car.”
This produced a quickly scramble back to the luggage trolley which very nearly degenerated into a three-way fight. But Helen made short shrift of this.
“Cut it out girls! No you can’t ride the trolley. You’ll have to learn to walk. You’re not babies.”
Coming from their grandmother, this seemed to work.
It was a long walk to the car, especially in the humid heat. The airport town of Lod was on the coastal strip and on hot days, with the humidity from the sea, it could feel like a sauna. To Helen this was nothing, but neither Julia nor the little ones were used to it. Still, they were troopers and none of them wanted to wilt or succumb to complaining before the others did. Soon they were in the car on the way to Jerusalem, with the air conditioning turned up to high.
Julia thought she noticed a car behind them that had pulled out of the airport car park at the same time as hers. Presumably the driver of the vehicle was going to Jerusalem too, or at least somewhere near Jerusalem. At any rate, she thought nothing more of it.
Chapter 50
“Aristobulos wasn’t just a common name in the Herodian dynasty, Daniel. It was also the name of one of the seventy disciples – the one who went to Britain.”
“What do you mean seventy disciples? I thought there were only twelve.”
Ted replied in his slow, deliberate spoken baritone.
“There were twelve immediate disciples, the ones who were part of Christ’s immediate circle. But in Luke, Chapter 10, it describes how Jesus appointed seventy disciples – or in some traditions seventy two – and sent them out in pairs to spread the word to what it calls ‘every city and place whither he himself was about to come.’ This is generally understood to mean the whole world. In other words, they were sent out to spread the word to the world at large.”
“It just goes to show the gaps in my knowledge,” said Daniel sheepishly. I didn’t know anything about these seventy disciples. Are they called disciples rather than apostles to distinguish them from the original twelve?”
“Oh er no. In fact, the eastern churches call them the Seventy Apostles. But the western churches refer to them as disciples.”
“And Aristobulos was one that he sent to Britain?”
“Yes. According to tradition.”
“But you said Jesus sent them out in pairs”
“That’s right. According to eastern orthodox tradition he was the brother of Barnabus and both he and his brother travelled with Saint Paul.”
“How much of this is known and how much of it is speculation?”
“It’s pretty much all speculation – or let’s call it tradition. But that’s with reference to the origins of Aristobulos. Although there’s no documentary evidence to support it, there is a general acceptance in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches that there was a person called Aristobulos of Britannia who lived, preached and died in Roman Britain in the first century. He is regarded as the first Bishop of Britain and a saint, although the Catholics and Orthodox differ on whether or not he was martyred. The Catholics say yes; the Orthodox say no.”
“But they don’t differ on whether he was one of those seventy disciples or apostles?”
“No, they agree on that. It’s just that apart from the religious tradition itself, there’s no evidence that such a person was ever in Britain.”
“Well this ketuba might just change that – albeit at the price of making him a bit more Jewish than the churches might like.”
“Well let’s not forget that the early Christians basically thought of themselves as messianic Jews.”
“True.”
“There is one other thing, Daniel.”
“Yes.”
“Well you mentioned that the name Aristobulos was common in the Herodian family. It has been speculated – in the Roman Catholic Encyclopaedia no less – that Aristobulos of Brittania was Aristobulos the Minor.”
Daniel recognized the name from his knowledge of Judean history.
“The youngest son of Aristobulos the Fourth?”
“Exactly… and thus a grandson of Herod the Great.”
Daniel thought about this for a long time.
“Very little is known about Aristobulos the Minor, Ted. Unlike some of the Herodian family’s other progeny, he lived a relatively quiet life, except when he chided Caligula for setting up statues of pagan gods in the Temple.”
“A very courageous act, considering Caligula’s paranoid propensities.”
“Yes, but he came through okay because Caligula died in 41 and we know that Aristobulos the Minor outlived his brother, Agrippa the First, who died in the year 44.”
“But of course, we still don’t know when the ketuba was actually from.”
“No we don’t. But like I said I asked my lawyer to get the police to have it carbon dated.”
“If does turn out to be Aristobulos the Minor, then maybe he didn’t live such a quiet life after all.”
The conversation fizzled out at this point.
“Okay Ted, I’ve told you what I’ve got. Now you tell me your big news.”
“We found another piece of parchment, at the dig site. It was inside a clay jar sealed with a cork.”
“And what was on this parchment.”
“It was a map – a map of Europe as envisaged by the Romans In the first century. There were no Americas and the bulk Asia was largely unknown. There was Europe and Africa and the near and middle east. But everything centered around the Mediterranean.”
“But what’s so special about it that it got you so excited?”
“Well firstly the parchment itself didn’t look like any traditional Romano-British parchment. I can show it to you afterwards, but I suspect I know what you’re going to tell me. It’s probably a Jewish-style parchment.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Firstly the type of parchment itself. Secondly, because there’s writing on the map and it isn’t Latin – or even the Roman alphabet. I’ll need to show it to you, but based on what everything we’ve been talking about, I suspect it’s Hebrew or Aramaic.”
“Okay let’s head back to the service station and you can show it to me there.”
“Got that,” said Sarit from the front, pulling into the slow lane, preparing to take the next exit.
“Can I ask you something about those names Daniel?”
“What names?”
“The names on the marriage certificate.”
“Barach and Aristobulos?”
“No, the bride… and her father.”
“Lanevshiah and Farashotagesh?”
“Yes.”
“How certain are you about the pronunciation. I mean you said yourself that foreign names were hard to transliterate.”
“Well first of all it was a complete guess as to where the vowels go. I mean I could have inserted vowels where none were intended or missed out vowels that were supposed to be there. Also like I mentioned, where there’s a Hebrew letter vav it can either be pronounced like the letter V or used as a placeholder for one of two vowels, either oo as in soon or O as box. We can play around with various combinations and see if we can come up with anything that you recognize as a Romano-British name.”
“But you’re sure about the consonants?”
“Most of them yes.”
“Most of them?”
“Well one of them is the Hebrew letter shin which is pronounced like an S-H as in shout of short. But it can also be the Hebrew letter sin which is pronounced like an S. And also, in Farashotagesh, I read the first letter as the Hebrew letter F
ay, which is pronounced like an F. However it could just as easily be read as the Hebrew letter Pay, which is pronounced like a P.”
“So it might actually be Parashtagesh?”
“Exactly. And the daughter could be Lanoosiah.”
For the second time in this car trip, Ted looked like he’d been pole-axed.
“Could it be Lannosea?”
Daniel was encouraged by the surprise and enthusiasm in Ted’s voice.
“It could very well be.”
But before either of them could follow up, their car was viciously side-swiped by a large lorry that had been overtaking them in the middle lane, sending them veering across the hard shoulder and rolling upside down into a ditch, to the loud screeching of metal.
Chapter 51
He kept several cars between them, but the man in the black frock coat continued to follow Julia Sasson and her family up the mountain road that wound its way up to Jerusalem. He had hovered around the arrivals area of the airport and picked up on Julia Sasson both from her description and the presence of the twins and the younger child. It was unlikely that there would be another family with precisely that arrangement and a young woman who matched Julia Sasson’s description.
He felt guilty at the temptation of lust that afflicted him when he looked upon the woman. But he told himself that it was her fault. He would ask his rabbi – HaTzadik – for guidance on this matter.
He would have to be alert now, because they were approaching the entrance to Jerusalem and that meant they could take the Sacharov Gardens entrance on the right that led to the Givat Sha’ul neighbourhood. However, he was not surprised when they passed the entrance and went on instead to the main entrance to the city instead.
Once they were inside the city with its busy traffic, he had to stay alert, because it would be all too easy to lose the car amidst the turnoffs and side streets. So he made sure that this time there was no more than one car between them as he followed through the labyrinthine streets. Jerusalem, the “new” city outside the Old City walls – was no carefully planned metropolis like New York City or the other major cities of the USA. It had grown organically over the course of its 150 year history.
And its rapid growth meant that new roads were constantly being built in the suburbs, while traffic was frequently log-jammed in the city centre. The new tramlink in Jaffa Road, far from alleviating the congestion, had augmented it because now cars, taxis and even buses were rerouted behind the shouk – the market – into a street far too narrow for them to navigate safely.
But the Sassons didn’t take the road behind the shouk. Instead they took another route that led them to an area of south Jerusalem, along a winding road that to its left had a panoramic view of the old city, the sun glinting off the golden Dome of the Rock, built by Muslims on the site where the ancient Jewish temple once stood, and now claimed by Muslims to the exclusion of the Jews.
Not that this bothered the man in the car. He believed that Jews should not enter the Temple Mount because they did not know where the Holy of Holies was situated. And as only the high priest was allowed in the Holy of Holies, it followed that no one – or at least no God-fearing Jew – should enter any part of the Temple Mount.
These thoughts were still with him as he followed the car past the roundabout by the forest just before Government House, the former British High Commissioner’s residence from the days of the British Mandate, now used by the United Nations. The roundabout took him into East Talpiot, a large sprawling neighbourhood with buildings of the ubiquitous near white or cream-coloured Jerusalem stone façade.
He held back as they turned off into another winding road, this one descending down a shallow hill. The reason for holding off was because he suspected that they had no more turnoffs and he didn’t want to make it to obvious that he was keeping them under surveillance.
After a couple of minutes, he went the same way, following the single road’s winding turns. A couple of times, he cast his gaze to the left, as gaps between the buildings gave him a panoramic view of the small valley on the other side of the hill against which these buildings had been built. These buildings were separate houses, attached middle eastern style with some atop one another, but each with a separate entrance from the street. To his right, on the upper part of the hill, were taller buildings containing apartments.
He noticed the car parked outside one of the buildings to his left, but kept his eyes on the road, except when they darted sideways as he passed the car that he had been following. He noticed that a gate was open and the Sassons – mother and children – were carrying suitcase downstairs to the lower house while Julia’s mother locked the car. Although the house was apparently in a basement, when viewed and entered from this side, he knew from the topography of the neighbourhood and the fact that it was against a hill, that it would actually have a panoramic view across the valley on the other side – and probably quite a nice garden.
But more importantly, he knew exactly where it was.
Chapter 52
Like every accident, the noise was followed by an eerie silence. Only after a while did the silence break and the normal background noises return. To some extent this was because of other cars stopping. But then most cars in the slow lane simply steered into the middle lane, even if they did rubberneck as they passed.
For Daniel it was a different story. He was busy unfastening his seat belt from his inverted posture and watching with relief as Ted did the same. But what about Sarit?
For a few seconds, it seemed as if she was not moving. But then she stirred.
“Sarit? Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Then her professionalism took over. “We need to get out of here.”
As they awkwardly clambered out from their inverted postures, they could hear the sound of emergency service sirens in the distance. Daniel, while still on his hands and knees, helped Ted out, after Sarit had ignored his extended hand. But when he tried to stand up himself, he found that he was quite unsteady on his feet, as if his sense of balance had gone, or at least been thrown out of whack temporarily.
For a second they stood there, their clothes in disarray, trying to get their breath back and regain their bearings and sensibilities.
“That was deliberate!” Ted gasped. “Some one was trying to kill us.”
“They were trying to kill me!” said Daniel sharply. He felt, now, the anger that he should have felt when they had a go at his sister and nieces.
“We need to get out of here!” said Sarit with even greater urgency as the sound of the sirens grew nearer.
“Shouldn’t we wait?” said Ted. “We should tell the authorities.”
“If we do, then Daniel is liable to get locked up – and possibly me too. Now I don’t know about you, but I’m out of here.”
And with that she climbed over a fence into a field and then began walking, first normally, then fast and finally running. Ted and Daniel looked at each other and realized that they had no alternative but to follow. For Daniel it made sense, but for Ted it was more a case of follow-my-leader.
But as Daniel looked back to see if Ted was all right, he noticed that the archaeology professor was holding the cardboard tube
“What’s that?”
“That’s what I want to show you.”
“Let’s save it for later,” said Daniel.
For a man of his age, Ted seemed remarkably fit, keeping up with Daniel with no trouble at all. The shortness of breath only showed when he spoke.
“Who’s trying to kill you Daniel?”
“Whoever killed Costa. And whoever took the ketuba from him.”
On the other side of the field, they climbed the fence again to find themselves on a narrow country road, wide enough for cars to pass each other with difficulty, but with no pavement to speak of. But a distance of about a hundred yards, separated Sarit from the men. Only when she had led for a few more minutes did she relent and turn round to see where they were. The distance was too gr
eat to carry their voices and she didn’t want to attract attention, so she waved to them to catch up.
But at that point they heard the thing they most dreaded: a helicopter. They all knew what this meant: the police were on to them. But this did not mean that they knew it was Daniel. Sarit had rented the car and Ted’s car was still at the motorway service station. The police would have had no way to link up the missing accident victims with any wanted persons. All they would know was that the people inside the overturned car had crawled away alive.
Of course leaving the scene of an accident was a crime and the police would certainly be looking for them. But if the police were basing their search on information that there were three people – two men and a woman – then the separation would work to their advantage. Daniel realized that their best bet for avoiding attention was not to be together.
Instinctively they knew what to do. Sarit turned and looked away from them and crossed to the other side of the road, like she had nothing to do with them. Ted and Daniel turned round and started walking back along the road in the opposite direction, so that in effect they would be walking towards the scene of the accident, if not actually following a path that would take them all the way there.
It occurred to Daniel that if anything the helicopter should be on the lookout for the truck. A vehicle fleeing the scene of an accident in which a car had been driven into a ditch was far worse than the passengers making their way away – especially as they might be seeking medical assistance. But maybe they already had the truck and were now free to focus their attention on the occupants.
At any rate, as the helicopter was in the distance when they first turned, they knew that they hadn’t been spotted already. They walked slowly and gesticulated freely, waving their hands in an animated fashion, as if they were not trying in any way to avoid being noticed. Obviously, they could not walk down onto the motorway, so after they were confident that they had been seen and dismissed from the police helicopters reckoning, they turned off into another side street and Daniel called Sarit from his new mobile phone to arrange a rendezvous.
