The two priests exchanged a glance. Finally the older one spoke.
‘We were listening to the translation, but my young colleague found it a bit stressful so he had to go outside. I followed him to see if he was all right and we stayed outside for a while. When we came back we found you standing over the body.’
‘But you didn’t see the man and the woman leaving?’
‘No.’
‘And you didn’t see a big man with them?’
Again they exchanged a glance. The younger priest shrugged.
‘No.’
Now Sarit understood. She remembered the empty holster of the dead guard outside and that said it all. They were being taken somewhere under duress. But where? She also realized that time was of the essence. With the police on their way, the shit was about to hit the fan.
She took out her mobile phone and called a number. ‘Hallo Dovi. I’ve got a bit of a problem.’
The Samaritan priests and the others who were congregating in the tiny space heard shouting from the other end of the phone, while Sarit tried to answer calmly. Meanwhile, the university’s own security guards had entered and were trying to keep people back.
The last words those who were in close proximity heard the man at the other end of the phone say were: ‘ Ahni baderech.’ Those of them who spoke Hebrew knew that this meant: I’m on my way.
It was evident when Sarit put the phone away that she was far from relieved. If anything, she looked more tense now than she did before the phone call.
She looked down at the body once again, not really knowing why. Was it a sense of regret, knowing that she hadn’t got here soon enough? Was it a sense of guilt that she hadn’t confided her suspicions to Dov as to where the person who killed Aryeh Tsedaka was likely to be going? Or was it a sense of anger at the waste of life and the obvious viciousness of the killer?
She was not supposed to let her emotions get the better of her. In her line of work one had to develop a stomach for blood and suppress one’s emotions if there was even the slightest chance that they would interfere with the job. But still she looked at the body, lying there face down in that pool of blood. She noticed the crooked finger of his extended right arm that reached beyond the pool of blood. And she noticed something else. The finger had blood on it – just the end of the finger, above the last articulation – as if he had been writing with his own blood.
She knew that she shouldn’t interfere with the body until it had been pronounced dead by the coroner and then photographed in situ by the investigating officers. She also knew that to approach the body and touch it would contaminate the crime scene, making it harder for the forensic scientists to obtain useful evidence and making it easier for any defence lawyer to undermine that evidence. But right now the immediate priority was not preserving evidence: it was preserving something infinitely more valuable.
She went up to the body, clambered over to the other side and crouched down, peering at it, as if trying to see what was underneath it. But she couldn’t see clearly and she knew now that time was of the essence. So she inserted both her hands on the underside of the body, palms upward. Then she lifted one side of the body, twisted her hands round and gave an almighty push, rolling the body over on to its back.
Some members of the crowd gasped in surprise but Sarit had no interest in their reaction, nor indeed any in the state of the body. She was only interested in what was underneath the body, and that appeared to be a very specific bloodstain on the floor – too purposeful to be random or accidental. It was an arrow drawn in blood. And the arrow pointed to four Hebrew letters.
She realized now what had happened. In his dying seconds, even as the life drained out of him, he had drawn the arrow and written the letters in the only thing he had available: his own blood. But then, in order to ensure that it wasn’t drowned out by the blood that was gushing from his throat, he covered it with his body and was, in the words of the Bible, gathered to his people.
But it was the letters that interested Sarit now. There were just four of them, and interestingly they were in Hebrew – possibly an indication of who they were intended for. They were the letters Pay, Tet, Reish and Hay. The equivalent of the consonants P-T-R-H.
There was no doubt in her mind what this man was trying to say in his final message. The arrow was an indication that someone was going somewhere. And the letters stood for the name Petra.
Chapter 89
‘There’s something I don’t understand,’ said Goliath as they clambered up the steep slopes and over craggy rocks on their long trek. ‘The Nabateans were in the sixth century BC, but the ancient Israelites were a lot older than that. I think they entered the land of Canaan in something like the twelfth century BC. So why would The Book of the Wars of the Lord be here?’
Sheikh Ibrahim smiled. ‘We’re not actually going to the city of Petra. That’s why we didn’t go through the siq. You have to understand that people lived in this area as nomads as far back as 7,000 years before Jesus. The first people to actually settle here did so around 3,200 years ago.’
‘That was just after the Amarna period,’ Gabrielle proffered. ‘Although I think this place is even mentioned in the Amarna letters.’
‘Exactly,’ said Ibrahim. ‘And this is reflected in some of the names. For example, that is Pharaoh’s Column.’
He pointed to a cylindrical column of red rock in the distance. They looked briefly, but stopping and admiring the scenery was almost as tiring as walking, not physically but psychologically, because it kept them further from their goal. So they trudged on, not fully appreciating the explosion of colour – running the entire gamut of the rainbow – that was written across the landscape in solid rock.
‘We are actually taking the old caravan route that Bedouin and other nomads used to take between Sinai, the Araba valley and Petra itself. There are many shrines and tombs in this area which may be associated with the Israelites. Stations 19 to 26 of the Exodus are in or around the area of Petra. This is also reflected in some of the names of the places here. For example, Wadi Musa means the Valley of Moses. The wind that roars through the valley is sometimes called Aaron’s Trumpet. And of course there is also Jebel Haroun, which means Mount Aaron, where the brother of Moses is believed to be buried.’
‘Is that where we’re going?’ asked Goliath.
‘No, but where we are going is on the road to Aaron’s tomb. It is called the Snake Monument.’
‘But I thought we’d already seen…’ The big man trailed off in a state of confusion.
‘No, that was the Snake Tomb. What you’re going to see soon is the Snake Monument – something very different.’
As they carried on in silence, Daniel wondered what was going on in Gabrielle’s mind. Outwardly she was calm, but he was worried about her. Their abductor had made it clear that she would be the first one to be killed if there was any show of resistance. But would he let them live if they offered no resistance? Could he afford to? He had already shown his true colours; the man was ruthless. Was doing nothing really an option?
As they gained altitude, the colours converged on a kind of pale yellow.
‘There it is!’
From the mountain ridge on which they stood, they found themselves looking across a gulch at a massive square-cut rock upon which stood the lower extremities of a stone snake.
Gabrielle wanted to ask a question, but she found herself struggling to find her voice. ‘That’s not… a natural feature?’
‘Of course not,’ said Sheikh Ibrahim. ‘The base has been cut by the hand of man into a shape resembling a cube. The snake too was carved out of the stone.’
‘It doesn’t look much like a snake,’ said Goliath.
‘That is all that remains. It is believed that it was once a full snake, but it was worn away by the passage of time. Come this way.’
Without waiting for anyone to respond, Ibrahim began scrambling along the rock, using his hands as well as
