microchips that controlled them, and how to get the manufacturer’s secret spare set.
“I’ll have them cracked by tomorrow, okay?”
“I knew we could count on you. How’re Toby and Phin coming along? I heard them practicing their piloting skills on the Xbox.”
“They need a couple more days.”
She shook her head. “The field command center has been set up for weeks. All we need to do is plug in the manpower and the chips. You got the chips, and they’re still not ready?”
“It’s not as easy as it looks, Nev,” Sebastian said. “Lot of things to learn, and it has to be second nature to them, no time to think once they’re moving. They’ve been practicing all day. They need a break.”
“We should go as soon as you’ve cracked the chips. Let’s at least get on-site.”
“Talk to Ben.”
“I don’t need to talk to Ben.”
Sebastian shrugged. “Whatever.”
They stared at each other for a few beats. They both understood the balance of power. Ben was calculating and meticulous; Nevaeh swift and impetuous. Every mission required a mix of both personalities. How much of one or the other depended on a number of factors, such as the levels of risk, covertness, and political sensitivity. Either Ben or Nevaeh would take charge once they’d determined the mix. The Baltimore trip exemplified the concept. Ben had acquired the intel and planned the theft. Once there, however, Nevaeh had pushed them into action and taken care of the guard. Ben was the Tribe’s head; she was its muscle.
No one doubted that this new project’s size and importance-its potential impact-pushed it firmly into Ben’s purview.
She nodded and strode toward the door. “We’d better not miss it,” she said. She turned left into the corridor and stuck her head into the next room. Phin was sitting on his bed, balancing a bottle of whiskey on his knee and moving his head to music she couldn’t hear. When he saw her and plucked out an earbud, she said, “Want to kill someone?”
“Who do you have in mind?”
She pulled a sheet of paper from her back pocket and held it up. “A bad guy, who else?”
[14]
By the time Jagger had reached the first pit, Tyler was running around the next, uppermost dig to reach its shallow end. The boy hopped in and disappeared. Jagger waved to the dozen workers in the first hole. Several nodded in return, their hands occupied by a shovel and a trowel, a wood-framed screen and a camera. He passed Bertha, crossed the ground between the holes, and stopped at the edge of Annabelle’s deep end. Twenty feet below, Oliver, Addison, and Tyler crouched around a small lump protruding from the floor. Oliver brushed at the object while Addison made notes on a clipboard. Tyler was leaning close, as though inspecting a new kind of insect.
“Playing in the dirt again?” Jagger said.
Oliver cranked his neck to look at him and laughed. “In grad school I had a T-shirt with those very words. How’re things, Jag?”
“All quiet on the Middle Eastern front.”
Oliver flashed a big smile. “For now,” he said. He turned back to his brushing.
“Expecting trouble?” Jagger said.
“I hope so,” Oliver said without looking. “When we find what we’re looking for, the looters will descend like vultures. And the anarchists. Then you’ll really earn your keep.” He glanced up. “Not that you don’t now.”
“Something like this?” Tyler said, leaning closer to the protruding clump. “Is it special?”
“Probably not,” Oliver said. “Just a piece of pottery. Not even from the right era.”
“Then why are you being so careful?”
Oliver leaned back onto his heels and sighed. “Because you never know.”
Addison nudged Tyler with her elbow. “Some villagers in Jordan once found what they thought was a headstone,” she said. “They broke it up to sell pieces to tourists. Turns out it was an ancient memorial celebrating a Moabite ruler’s victories over Omri, king of Israel.”
“The stone mentions the House of David and Yahweh, the Jewish name for God,” Oliver added. “It pretty much shut up some groups who said there never was a King David.”
“People said that?” Tyler said.
“Anything to disprove the Bible.”
“But why?”
Addison shrugged. “They think religion is stupid, I guess. They want to live by their own rules, not God’s.”
Jagger squatted at the edge of the hole and set down the lunchbox. “We talked about that, Tyler,” he said. “That’s why Dr. Hoffmann’s digging here.”
Tyler chimed in. “’Cause some people say there was no Moses, right, Ollie?”
“They specifically deny the Exodus, that Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt.”
“Even that the Red Sea parted?” Tyler said.
“Especially the miracles,” Oliver agreed. “Just too crazy for them.”
Tyler looked out of the hole at the mountain rising above them. “Or the Ten Commandments?”
“They don’t believe any of it,” Oliver said. He stood and brushed dust off his khaki trousers. “Thing is, no one has found any proof that the Israelites were ever here, which is sort of amazing, considering how many of them there were.”
“Like… how many?”
“Oh, about two and a half million,” Addison said.
“Or twenty thousand,” Oliver said, “depending on whom you listen to. Either way, it was a lot of people. They should have left some evidence that they were here.”
Tyler stared at the find Oliver had brushed. “Like what?”
“Bones, a gravesite. When Moses came down from the peak with the first tablets God had given him and found the people worshipping a golden calf, he had the Levites kill three thousand people. The bodies have to be somewhere.”
Tyler made a face. “They just killed them?”
“For disobeying God. The rest of them had to wander in the desertthis desert-for forty years, until most of them died off. God wanted their children to inherit the Promised Land, not them.”
“Wow.” Tyler turned a horrified expression toward his father.
Jagger said, “And you think a spanking is bad.”
Oliver continued: “Normally, archaeologists would look some distance away from encampments or settlements for gravesites. But scholars believe Moses would have had the slain buried right here at the base of the mountain, to warn the others of what happens when they sin against God. Plus, here’s where we have the best chance of finding other evidence… like jewelry, lots of it. Moses said they didn’t deserve to be decorated with ornaments, so the Israelites stripped off all their jewelry before leaving this place.”
Tyler started to say something, but Oliver held up his hand to stop him. “Oh, and what if, just what if, we found”-he raised his hands and gaped theatrically at Tyler-“the holy grail of the Old Testament?”
“ What?” Tyler exclaimed. “The real holy grail, like in that old Indiana Jones movie?”
Oliver laughed. “No, no. My holy grail, the greatest discovery I can imagine.”
Tyler just stared.
“A piece of the original tablets,” Oliver said. “A shard of the tablets that Moses broke when he saw the Israelites worshipping the idol. Written in stone by the finger of God himself.”
“Really?” Tyler said. He looked at the walls of the dig. “Here?”
“If anywhere,” Oliver said. “Can you imagine?”
He looked up, and Jagger could see on Oliver’s face the wonderment that children display so easily and adults
