‘Unfortunately not. Even Audrey Milne doesn’t know it. She thinks that the only person who does is Senator Morris and he’s keeping his cards close to his chest.’
‘You said they operate in cell structure, didn’t you?’
‘That’s right, like all good subversive organizations. Arthur Morris’s cell comprises Morris, Milne and Paul Tomlinson, aka “the professor”.’
‘Plus Goliath.’
‘Goliath is more Morris’s private asset, essentially his attack dog.’
‘But technically part of the cell.’
‘Yes, but if we didn’t know about them already, the only one he could implicate is Morris.’
‘And presumably the others also have their own assets whose identities they don’t give away.’
‘Exactly. Any member of a cell can have a private asset, known only to him. And an asset of one cell member can be the head of his own cell. If his recruiter wants something done, he may call on his asset and the asset in turn is able to call on other members of his cell who are unknown to the recruiter who owns the asset.’
‘So Senator Morris may be an asset of someone in another cell who can call on him to get the kind of results that he specializes in. Morris would either do what he’s asked to do or tell them that he can’t do it.’
‘Exactly. And by the same token, Goliath could have his own cell to help him implement the senator’s wishes. Although I suspect not.’
‘So is it possible that Carmichael was one of Professor Tomlinson’s assets?’
Dov gave this a moment’s thought. ‘It’s unlikely. If it were the case, then the professor wouldn’t have been so anxious to kill him.’
‘Why not? Maybe they saw him as trouble.’
‘Well, it was apparently Carmichael’s research that alerted them to the possibility of using the plague against us.’
‘But doesn’t that prove my point?’
‘Not really. You see, Carmichael didn’t set out to work against us. He just made them aware of the fact that the plague could be revived in certain circumstances. He was a senile old man whose occasional lapses into lucidity gave them a heads-up on a plausible strategy to advance their nefarious agenda.’
‘And it was those same lapses into lucidity that made him a threat to them. In short, he knew too much for his own good.’
‘Exactly. They got some useful info from a paper that he had written and was trying to get published. But at any time he might have realized that he was being played for a sucker and start rocking the boat.’
‘And so they got Goliath to kill him.’
‘Yes.’
‘And they also tried to kill Gusack, Klein and Mansoor.’
‘And damn nearly succeeded. But I think we can rule out Mansoor as the main target. It was Klein and Gusack they wanted to silence.’
‘And now we’re giving them shelter.’
‘Well, there’s no reason not to.’
‘So we’re not worried about all that stuff about Joseph and Moses.’
‘Why should we be? There’s nothing new in it. The theories have been around for ages, and as you said, we can’t bump them off just for challenging the Bible.’
‘Okay, but what about the plague? Any danger that they brought it with them on their clothes?’
‘They arrived in swimsuits that they had just bought in Taba. And before we picked them up, they’d already taken a plunge in the Gulf of Eilat.’
‘So they were in water?’ she asked, nervously.
‘ Salt water. Trust me on this, Sarit: the worst they can manage is to ruffle the feathers of a few religious fundamentalists. They’re not going to bring the walls of Jericho tumbling down.’
Chapter 73
Participating in the open-air Samaritan Passover celebrations on Mount Gerizim was a rare privilege. Ordinary members of the public were not allowed into the fenced-off area – for logistical and security reasons – although several thousand came to witness the event from every vantage point they could find. Apart from the seven- hundred-strong Samaritan community and the police and soldiers on security duty, the only people who were allowed in were invited guests – the media, politicians from both Israel and the Palestinian Authority and people with the right connections.
So Daniel and Gabrielle could consider themselves highly honoured just to be there.
Unlike the Jewish seider in which any type of kosher meat or fish can be eaten, the Samaritan feast consisted of lamb, recalling the paschal lamb that the Israelites slaughtered and ate on the eve of the slaying of the firstborn son and the Exodus.
The celebration commenced in the afternoon, well before sunset, with the Samaritans clad in white robes and white-turbaned red fezzes making fires in eight-feet-deep concrete-lined pits. Each of the five extended families in the Samaritan community had a fire pit for itself, except the largest family, which had two. The fires were fuelled by branches from olive trees, with the foliage still attached.
Even the children were joining in the fun, with boys as young as five dragging olive branches from a huge pile and throwing them into the flaming pits. The boys were dressed in white trousers and shirts rather than traditional robes and their headgear consisted of baseball caps, some of which were reversed, American-style. Even amidst this ancient and most venerable celebration, there were occasional glimpses of modernity.
Off to one side, a trench was filled with a series of barrels lined with plastic bin liners, ready to catch the blood of the slaughtered lambs. When sunset came, the lambs were slaughtered with razor-sharp knives, the entrails removed, the blood washed away with hoses and the lambs skinned and impaled on huge wooden skewers. It was at this point, or shortly before, that some of the children cried, as the lambs had in many cases come to be thought of as ‘companion animals’, more like pets than livestock. But this was a rite of passage that prepared them for the concept of sacrifice to God.
After the slaughter, the skin, fat and entrails of the lambs were salted, placed on an altar of a heavy metal mesh over a fire at the end of the trench and offered up to God as a burnt offering, the Passover sacrifice.
Meanwhile, the lamb carcasses on the stakes were salted in preparation for cooking. But as the tradition was to eat the meat at midnight – when, according to biblical tradition, the Angel of Death appeared – the wooden stakes were not actually placed in the pits just yet.
As invited guests, Daniel and Gabrielle were able to wander freely amongst the crowds. Dov had not gone as far as to arrange an introduction for Daniel to the priests, much less the high priest, but Daniel and Gabrielle had been introduced to Aryeh Tsedaka, a Samaritan rabbi based in the Israeli town of Holon. So they took advantage of the quiet time after the stakes were prepared to sidle up to him. Daniel told Tsedaka about their adventures in Egypt, and his translation of Proto-Sinaitic script and the papyrus they had found in Mansoor’s office in which Ay had expressed his desire to be buried near Mount Gerizim.
‘And you think this man Ay could be the same as Ephraim the son of Joseph?’ asked Tsedaka.
‘Yes,’ Gabrielle cut in. ‘And his brother Anen could be Menasha.’
They were sitting a few yards from one of the fires, warming themselves against the slight chill in the evening air. Daniel looked tensely at Gabrielle. He wanted her to take a backseat role in this discussion, but hadn’t actually told her that in advance. They’d spent the last few days delicately stepping around the tension that hung between them and they had not talked about the events of the eve of Independence Day. It was as if they agreed, by their mutual silence, to treat it as a big mistake, to be filed away and forgotten.
Aryeh Tsedaka sat in silence for a few seconds, weighing up Gabrielle’s speculation. ‘And you bring this to me because the Samaritans are descended from the Joseph tribes of Israel?’
‘Tribe s?’ Gabrielle repeated, picking up on the plural.
Daniel stepped in. ‘My friend here is an Egyptologist. She is not so familiar with Jewish or Samaritan history.’
