top of the stone and lever it out of the wall. The stone crashed to the ground with a dull thud. Bronson moved it to one side and then he and Angela peered into the hole it had left.
Disappointingly, there was another stone directly behind the one Bronson had removed.
'I think that's the reason the probe went straight through,' he said, pointing into the hole. 'That corner of the stone I've just shifted lined up almost exactly with the one directly behind it. Everywhere else I tried to run the wire through, it must have been hitting the face of one of the stones in the row behind.'
'Try the probe again,' Angela suggested.
This time, when Bronson slid the thin length of steel into the gaps around the stones of the inner course, it met almost no resistance and clearly entered some kind of a void.
'I'll move another stone from the outer layer,' he said, 'just to give me room to work, then take out a couple from the second course.'
With one stone already removed, shifting a second one was easy. Bronson was concerned about the security of the stones above the hole he'd made in the side of the altar, but they showed no sign of falling out. The inner layers of stones were actually easier to move, because they were slightly smaller, and Bronson quickly pulled out three of them to reveal a small open space.
'Pass me that torch, please,' he muttered, crouching down on his hands and knees to peer into the cavity.
'What can you see?' Angela demanded, her voice quavering with excitement. 'What's in there?'
'It looks to me like it's empty. No, hang on – there's something lying flat on the floor of the cavity. Give me a hand. It looks as if it's quite heavy.'
Bronson eased the thick tablet of stone out of the hole he'd made and with Angela's help rested it against the side of the altar. They both stood back and for a few seconds just looked at it.
'What the hell is it?' Bronson asked. 'And there's another one in there, I think.'
In less than a minute, they'd lifted out the second tablet and placed it gently beside the first one.
'That's it,' he said, then looked back into the hole he'd made, using the beam of the torch to inspect it. 'There's nothing else in the cavity,' he reported, 'except rubble and a lot of dust.'
They both looked intently at the two stone tablets. They were roughly oblong with square bases and rounded tops, maybe an inch thick and perhaps fifteen inches high and nine or ten inches wide. Both surfaces of each slab had been carefully inscribed, and it looked to Bronson as if the two inscriptions were probably written in Aramaic – he'd seen enough of the language lately to be fairly certain he recognized it – and appeared to be identical.
'Dust?' Angela asked after a moment, glancing at him.
'Yes. The dust of two millennia, I suppose.'
Angela pointed at the tablets. 'But there's not a speck of dust on either of these.'
Bronson looked more carefully. 'Maybe I knocked it all off when I dragged them out,' he suggested. 'What are they? The Aramaic could almost be some kind of a list. It looks like a series of individual lines of writing rather than a solid block of text.'
For a few seconds Angela didn't reply, just knelt down and stared at the two tablets, the tips of her fingers gently tracing the Aramaic characters. Then she looked up at him, her face pale.
'I never thought we'd find anything like this,' she said softly. 'I think these could be described as 'the tablets of the Temple of Jerusalem and of Moses'. It looks to me as if these could be early – really early – copies of the Decalogue.'
'The what?' Bronson noticed that Angela seemed almost to be having difficulty breathing.
'I mean the Ten Commandments, the Mosaic Covenant. The tablets God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai. The covenant between God and man, the actual tablets that laid out the rules of the faith.' She paused for a few seconds, then looked at Bronson, her eyes wide, almost scared. 'Forget about the
'Who says they're copies?' asked Baverstock, stepping out from behind them, a pistol in his hand.
76
Angela and Bronson span round to stare at Baverstock, disbelief clouding their eyes. The light from their torches glinted off the barrel of the automatic he was pointing straight at them.
'I thought you were dead,' Bronson muttered.
'That was the idea. I'm sorry about this,' Baverstock said, the tone of his voice giving the lie to the words. 'It might have been better if you'd both died down there in the tunnel. Don't try to dazzle me. Shine the torches at the tablets, or I'll shoot one of you right now.'
Bronson and Angela obediently lowered their hands and aimed the torch beams downwards to illuminate the slabs they'd just recovered from the cavity in the altar. The two ancient stones seemed almost to glow in the light from the torches.
'You can't be serious,' Angela said. 'Are you really suggesting these could be the original Covenant with God that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai? You actually believe these tablets were inscribed by the hand of God?'
'Of course not. Whatever hands carved these, they were made of flesh and blood, but otherwise I'm perfectly serious. There's no doubt that something known as the Mosaic Covenant existed, because the Israelites built the Ark to carry it around. The Ark vanished in about 600 BC when the First Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians, but there are no traditions relating to the stones themselves. Most archaeologists assume that when the Babylonians looted the Temple they stole the Covenant as well as the Ark, but there's nothing in the historical record to confirm this.'
Baverstock stopped talking and stared hungrily at the two slabs of stone that rested against the side of the ancient circular altar.
'So what happens now?' Angela asked. 'We should take these to a museum and get them examined and authenticated.'
Baverstock's chuckle was anything but humorous in the darkness. 'I don't think so, Angela. I've no intention of sharing the glory. The Silver Scroll slipped through my fingers. That's not going to happen with these. I'm going to take them, and you're going to die.'
'So you're prepared to kill the two of us just for your pathetic little fifteen minutes of fame? That's so sad, Tony.'
'It won't just be fifteen minutes, Angela. It'll be a lifetime of glory. And your deaths will just add a little more blood to the thousands of gallons that have already been spilt in this place over the millennia.'
The sudden beam of light from Baverstock's torch dazzled them both, and Bronson saw the pistol in the man's hand as he took aim.
Bronson reacted instantly. He threw his torch straight at Baverstock, the beam playing wildly across the rocky ground, a momentary distraction. Then he started to move. He stepped sideways, pushed Angela down onto the ground, and charged towards Baverstock.
Baverstock dodged to one side, avoiding the flying missile, and swung his weapon back to aim at his target – Angela.
Then Bronson hit him, knocking his right arm sideways just as Baverstock pulled the trigger. The bullet whined harmlessly across the ancient hilltop fort, far into the night. Bronson spun round, slightly off-balance. He reached out to grab the other man's arm, but Baverstock dodged, took a couple of steps backwards and swung his pistol and torch towards him.
For less than a tenth of a second Bronson stared into oblivion, looking straight down the barrel of the other man's automatic, then he threw himself to one side, landing painfully among the sharp-edged rocks.
Baverstock started to turn, to alter his aim and fire again, but suddenly he stopped dead. His head slumped forward and he dropped his arms, the pistol and torch clattering to the ground. Then he clutched at his stomach, lifted his head and screamed, a high, wailing call of utter agony and despair that echoed from the surrounding rocks and stones.
Bronson grabbed his own torch, which had fallen nearby and was still working, and shone it at him. The pointed end of a slim steel blade was protruding grotesquely from Baverstock's midriff. As Bronson watched,
