Mar’Oth. When this unfortunate episode has died down you will then be enrolled at L’Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem where you will complete a doctorate in archaeology. On successful completion of your studies you will be given further instructions. It has come to my attention that this is not the first time you have offended, far from it. In the role I have in mind for you, if your past was ever exposed to the wider public, the damage to the image of the Holy Church would be quite unacceptable. To guard against that you are to be given a new identity. Your papers are in this envelope.’ With that the priest had been dismissed with an icy finality and banished to the village in the Palestinian West Bank. The Vatican had a new priest and, for all intents and purposes, he had a clean record – Father Derek Lonergan. If he was successful in his doctorate Petroni would have in place another building block for dealing with the Dead Sea Scrolls and another strategy to control any rumours that surrounded the Omega Scroll.
In the face of no comment and unable to trace the offender, the media had moved on, as Petroni had predicted they would. The only chance of discovery was a file kept in Petroni’s safe. His strategy had worked brilliantly, and his work had not gone unnoticed by the powerful Curial Cardinals. The young Bishop Petroni’s assignment to the Pontifical Biblical Commission with special responsibility for handling the Vatican’s interests in the Dead Sea Scrolls had been quickly confirmed.
After two years Lonergan had been enrolled for his doctorate and assigned to L’Ecole Biblique and the Rockefeller Museum as the Vatican’s representative and a staunch public advocate for the ‘Consensus’. Had he known what was happening in Lonergan’s favourite bar, Petroni would have been gravely concerned. His plan was starting to unravel.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Jerusalem
T he American Colony Hotel’s Cellar Bar with its hundred-year-old pink stone floor and low stone arches was one of Derek Lonergan’s haunts. An hour ago Derek Lonergan had been holding court with a group of visiting journalists, loudly. Now he was drinking on his own, copiously.
‘Someone overheard you talking about the Dead Sea Scrolls, Monsignor Lonergan. He asked me to give you this,’ Abdullah said quietly. The small, slightly built Arab barman handed over a folded piece of paper. Derek Lonergan squinted blearily at the grubby paper and the even grubbier handwriting. Meet me outside the Damascus Gate at eleven o’clock tonight. I will be wearing a red fez. I have something you and the Vatican want.
Derek Lonergan turned the paper over but there was nothing else on it.
‘Who gave you this?’ he demanded, his words slurred.
Abdullah shrugged inscrutably. ‘I am sorry, Sir, he wouldn’t say. He just said it was important you got the message.’
‘Hrrumph.’ Lonergan snorted and looked at his watch. It was a quarter to the hour. Had he been sober he might have considered such a clandestine meeting more carefully, instead he threw down the rest of his drink and lurched out of the Cellar Bar and into the night. The ancient entrance to the Old City of Jerusalem and the beginning of the road to Damascus, the Damascus Gate, was only a few minutes walk away. When Lonergan reached the gate it was eerily quiet. Only a few people were coming and going under the massive battlements that had protected it over the centuries. It was nearly ten past eleven when a small Turk in a faded red fez approached from the shadows of the old city wall.
‘Monsignor Lonergan?’ the man asked, his coal-like eyes darting.
‘You took your time,’ Lonergan replied thickly, trying to place the accent.
‘You are alone?’
‘Look, whatever your name is…’
‘I asked you a question, Monsignor Lonergan,’ the Turk said, ignoring Lonergan’s comment. ‘I suggest you answer me if you want to see what I have. Otherwise they will be lost to the Vatican for ever, which could be very embarrassing for your Cardinal Petroni.’
At the mention of Petroni’s name Lonergan started sobering up. ‘Yes,’ he said, nodding his head.
‘You will follow me, please.’
The Turk disappeared under the stone ramparts and into the Old City. Derek Lonergan struggled to keep up with the faded red fez as he moved quickly down alleys and through covered streets, and into the Christian Quarter where the Turk disappeared into a dingy narrow stone cul-de-sac, pushed open an old heavy door and beckoned for him to follow.
Struggling for breath and unused to anything more physical than raising his right arm, Derek Lonergan heaved himself up a narrow flight of stone steps, squeezed through a small kitchen and entered an inner sitting room.
‘Was all that necessary?’ Lonergan wheezed, collapsing into a heavy wooden chair.
‘I think when you see what I have, Monsignor Lonergan, you will agree that it would be unwise for either of us to be followed by the authorities or anyone else.’ The Turk lifted some coir matting and prised loose three of the old floorboards. From the cavity in the floor he removed a long olive wood box, leaving another larger box in place. He took out a faded dirty yellow linen roll and placed it on the heavy scarred wooden bench that sat in the middle of the small room.
Derek Lonergan blinked, his memory stirring. He had seen the dirty yellow linen before, around several of the Dead Sea Scrolls that had been brought to the Rockefeller.
‘What do you have there?’ he asked, levering himself out of the chair, his voice hoarse with excitement.
‘A Dead Sea Scroll,’ the Turk replied nonchalantly, noting that the panting of his quarry’s breathing had nothing to do with physical exertion.
‘Where did you get it?’ Lonergan demanded. ‘Let me see.’
The Turk ignored the question, watching while Lonergan unwrapped the priceless two-thousand-year-old artefact. He handed him an old silver magnifying glass that had belonged to his father.
For a long time Derek Lonergan looked at the faded manuscript, his heart thumping against his chest. It was in Koine, and immediately Lonergan knew it meant only one thing. There had only been one Dead Sea Scroll that had been written in the Greek lingua franca of the day, and he checked and re-checked his translation of the ancient script. Stay calm, he told himself, stay calm. On no account must the little Turk twig to what was written on this scroll and he put his hands in his pockets to hide his trembling fingers. The Magdalene Numbers, the Essenes writing on the origin of life, and the warning of the destruction of civilisation at the hands of a new faith. It was nothing short of explosive.
The Turk remained impassive but Monsignor Lonergan’s reaction had not escaped his attention. He could see the astonishment in Lonergan’s eyes.
‘Where did you get this from?’ Derek Lonergan asked again.
‘It came from a place where the sea is low and nothing lives within it,’ the Turk replied cryptically. ‘But measured against what is in this scroll, the exact location of the discovery is not important, Monsignor Lonergan. Fortunately for the Catholic Church, it is for sale.’
‘How much?’ Lonergan asked quickly, too quickly.
The Turk heard the eagerness in his adversary’s voice. ‘Fifty million dollars,’ he answered.
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Lonergan blurted out. ‘Out of the question. It is a minor document. We would pay one million and not a solitary cent more,’ he added pompously, determined not to be cornered by some shifty little backstreet dealer. Lonergan assumed there would not be anyone in the Turk’s circle who could decipher the ancient text. ‘Besides, you are dealing in antiquities, which is illegal.’
‘As you wish, Monsignor Lonergan,’ the Turk responded with a polite smile that held a touch of amusement at Lonergan’s ego and naivety. The Turk’s father had sold a copy of the Omega Scroll for ten million dollars in 1978 and the Church had not blinked. Obviously this buffoon was unaware of that. ‘I apologise for troubling you.’
‘One million dollars is a lot of money,’ Lonergan stated angrily.
‘You and I both know it is worth considerably more to the Catholic Church than fifty million dollars, but for that price I would also throw in the other box.’
‘What’s in that?’ Lonergan asked, his eyes narrowing.
‘Perhaps I should have mentioned it before,’ the Turk said. Had Lonergan accepted the first offer he would
