The Moses Stone

department had looked more irritated that usual.

'Something wrong, Roger?' Baverstock had asked.

'It's Angela. She's gone off on another bloody wildgoose chase,' Halliwell had snapped. 'I've only just found out she's been in Morocco for the last couple of days, and now she's taken more leave to run off to Israel to study some Aramaic text. It's not her field, for God's sake. She should stick to what she's good at.'

Baverstock hadn't commented, but suddenly felt sure that somehow Angela must have either found the missing clay tablet or at least got hold of a decent picture of the inscription on it. That had been enough for him to redouble his efforts.

But despite his exhaustive research, he hadn't got his first 'hit' until the next morning. The picture of the tablet was of fairly poor quality, and he spent almost twenty minutes studying the Aramaic inscription before he finally realized that he was looking at the tablet Charlie Hoxton already owned, and which Dexter had 'sourced' from a museum in Cairo.

With a snort of disgust, he closed the window on his computer screen and returned to his search. Two hours later, having changed his search parameters five times in an effort to reduce the sheer number of relics he was having to check out, he found himself looking at the Paris tablet. He printed all the images available in the database on the colour laser in his office, and spent a few minutes studying each of them with his desk magnifier before finally closing the connection to the museum intranet.

Then he locked his office and left the building, telling his assistant he was going away for a few days unexpectedly. He walked down Great Russell Street, stopped at the same public phone he'd used before, and called Hoxton.

'I've spent the last twelve hours looking for these bloody tablets,' he began.

'Did you find anything?' Hoxton demanded.

'I spent half an hour studying your tablet – the one you got me to translate – before I twigged what it was, the photographs were such poor quality. But eventually I got lucky. There's a clay tablet sitting in a storeroom in a museum in Paris that's definitely a part of the set. From the mark in one corner of it, it's the one that goes on the bottom right of the block.'

'Can you translate the text from the pictures?' Hoxton asked.

'There's no need,' Baverstock replied. 'The French have helpfully already translated the Aramaic for us. They translated it into French, of course, but obviously that's not going to be much of a problem. It'll just take me a little while to work out the best equivalent English words.'

'Good,' Hoxton said. 'You're packed, I hope?'

'Of course. I wouldn't miss this trip for the world. We're still booked on the flight this afternoon?'

'Yes. I'll see you at Heathrow as we agreed. Bring all the pictures of the Paris tablet, and the French translation of the Aramaic, as well as your English version. This is going to be the trip of your lifetime.'

Part Three

Israel

46

The flight was no problem, but actually getting into Israel took Bronson and Angela several hours, and that was after they'd disembarked from the aircraft. The problem was the small blue square they each had stamped in their passports with the word 'sortie' printed in a vertical line down the left-hand side, a date in the centre and Arabic script across the top and down the right side – their exit stamps from Morocco.

The Israeli authorities are notably suspicious of travellers arriving at any of their borders who have recently left an Arab country, even one as distant as Morocco. The moment the immigration officer had seen the stamps, he'd pressed a hidden switch and minutes later Bronson and Angela were whisked away into separate interview rooms while their luggage was found and comprehensively searched.

Bronson had anticipated what their reception was likely to be, and they'd taken precautions to ensure that none of the photographs of the clay tablets, or of their translations of the Aramaic text, remained on Angela's laptop, just in case the Israelis wanted to inspect the contents of the hard disk. She had transferred all these files to a couple of highcapacity memory sticks, one of which was tucked away in the pocket of Bronson's jeans and the other hidden in Angela's make-up kit in her handbag. Back in London, they'd gone to Angela's bank, where she had a safety deposit box that held the deeds to her apartment and other important papers, and deposited the clay tablet there, because they didn't want to risk travelling with the relic.

The questioning was thorough, relentless and competent. What had they been doing in Morocco? How long had they been there? Had they been there before? If so, why? All repeated again and again, the questions the same, though the way they were asked changed frequently as the interrogators looked for any discrepancies or alterations in their answers. Bronson, who had considerable experience in sitting on the other side of the table, interviewing suspects, was impressed by their thoroughness. He hoped that his police warrant card and Angela's British Museum identification were helping to establish their bona fides.

Only towards the end of the interviews, when they were apparently satisfied with what they'd been doing in Morocco, did the officials begin asking why they'd come to Israel. Bronson had discussed this with Angela on the flight out, and they'd decided that the only right answer to this question had to be 'holiday'. Any other response would simply cause problems and certainly lead to more questioning.

It was mid evening before they were finally allowed to leave the interview rooms by the unsmiling Israelis.

'I don't mind the security checks they do here,' Angela said. 'At least you can feel fairly safe on an El Al flight.'

'We flew British Airways,' Bronson pointed out.

'I know. I mean, when you're flying out of an Israeli airport, the chances of anyone being able to smuggle a weapon or a bomb on to a departing flight are almost nil. Did you know that all hold luggage is subjected to a pressure drop in a sealed bomb-proof chamber that simulates a high-altitude flight, just in case there's a bomb in a suitcase that's linked to a barometric switch? And that's in addition to everything being X-rayed and passing through explosive sniffers?'

'No,' Bronson admitted, 'I didn't. And that is comforting, especially when you compare it to somewhere as leaky and slapdash as Heathrow. The security there is a joke.'

Angela looked at him with a quizzical expression. 'I'm so glad you didn't tell me that before we took off.'

Ben Gurion International airport is close to the city of Lod, about ten miles to the south-east of Tel Aviv, so the train journey only took a few minutes. The railway line followed the route of the main road into the city – in fact, for some of the distance it ran between the two carriageways – and they got off at HaShalom Station, at the edge of the industrial zone, and almost in the shadow of the hulking Azrieli Centre.

Most of the hotels in Tel Aviv are unsurprisingly strung along the Mediterranean coast, but their prices are fairly high, so Bronson had booked two rooms in a more modest establishment tucked away in the side-streets near Zina Square, not far from a tourist office.

They caught a cab from HaShalom to Zina Square, checked into the hotel and deposited their bags, then walked the short distance to the Lahat Promenade that borders Frishman Beach, found a restaurant and enjoyed a reasonable meal. Bronson wished fleetingly that they were going to return to the same room but he decided not to push this. They were in Israel, working together. This, for the time being, would have to be enough.

The BMI flight had landed at Tel Aviv on time late that afternoon; two of the three passengers travelling together on British passports cleared customs and immigration without any particular delays. The third man,