Donovan didn’t like the way this sounded.
“They’re already here, in the city. When I don’t give them the bones tonight ...”
Adrenaline surged through Donovan and he lunged at Martin, seizing the lapels of his jacket, shaking hard. “You let them in here? Are you insane!”
“It wasn’t only the bones they wanted,” Martin whispered, his body flaccid. “They wanted her too ...Charlotte.”
Stunned, Donovan shoved Martin back against the wall. Wasting no time, he sprang to his feet and raced up the steps into the basilica.
“It’s too late!” Martin screamed after him. “You can’t save her now!” His next words went unheard by Donovan. “God forgive me.”
41
******
Jerusalem
“Why are we going here?” Jules asked as Amit turned the Land Rover off Jaffa Road and its headlights swept across Jerusalem’s Central Bus Station—a modern eight-story pile of Jerusalem stone and glass. “Are we skipping town?”
“I need to check my e-mail,” he told her, “and I’m not about to go to my apartment to do it. Suicide bombers like to target buses. So security here is super tight. Lots of cameras, police, metal detectors.”
“Good idea.”
“Thanks.”
“And you’re still not going to tell me what you’re thinking?” The stubborn Israeli had raced her out of the Old City saying barely a word. And he’d given her no clue as to why the Temple Society’s tribute to the hypothetical Third Temple shrine had spooked him.
“If I tell you what I’m thinking right now, trust me, you’ll think I’m completely nuts,” he told her.
“Too late for that,” she grumbled.
Winding through the underground garage, Amit parked the Land Rover close to the elevator. He waited a good minute with the Jericho grasped firmly in his hand, making sure no one was following them inside. Once he was satisfied that the area was secure, he locked the pistol in the glove box.
“Let’s go,” he said, jumping out. “There’s an Internet cafe upstairs that one of my students told me about.”
Along the shopping concourse, Amit strode quickly to Cafe Net, with Jules double-timing her steps to keep up with him. At the counter, he paid seven shekels for fifteen minutes of Web surfing. While he settled in at a terminal close to the front, Jules perused the pastry and sandwich selections at the display case running along the opposite wall.
By the time Amit had fussed with the access code and gotten the browser up and running, Jules had returned with a tray holding a cafe au lait and omelet ciabatta for each of them.
“Might as well get something to eat while we’re here,” she said. She set a mug and a plated sandwich in front of him.
“Good thinking.” Famished, he immediately went for the sandwich.
“So what exactly are you looking for?” Her tone was more conciliatory now. It was obvious that Amit was putting together the pieces of a very intricate puzzle.
It took him a moment to finish chewing before he said, “Yosi always sends me an advance copy of his transcriptions,” Amit explained. “To keep us both out of trouble, he sends them to my Yahoo account.”
“Sneaky,” Jules said.
“Smart,” Amit corrected. “Yahoo affords some pretty sophisticated firewalls and encryption. Not to mention my name is not attached to my account. So it’s all fairly anonymous.” He clicked on his in-box and the screen filled with unread messages. “And this transcription would have been very easy for Yosi—quick. So if we’re lucky . . .” He cast his eyes heavenward.
She swallowed her first bite of the ciabatta. “Any stuff in there I’m not supposed to see?”
He shook his head.
“How about this one?” she inquired, pointing to a new message with the subject line enlarge your penis—1 inch in 3 days. “Are you sure your account is anonymous?”
Amit chuckled. “I guess the secret’s out,” he said. “Junk mail.” But the smile dissolved quickly when he scrolled down and spotted the message from Yosi, the subject line stating one ominous word in caps: “URGENT.” “Ah. Here we go.”
Jules leaned closer.
“Listen to this.” Amit quietly read aloud Yosi’s message: “ ‘In all my years, I’ve never seen anything like this. So many have tried to extrapolate meanings from the Qumran texts, seeking connections to the Gospels— contradictions, perhaps.’ ” His voice began to waver slightly. “ ‘But as you know, only ambiguous interpretations exist. If these scrolls truly date to the first century, and I have no doubt they do, what you have discovered will’ ”—he had to pause to clear his throat—“ ‘challenge everything we know.’ ” But the last sentence stumped him, because it stopped abruptly.
Jules picked it up for him: “ ‘I fear that such a controversial message might—’ ” And she let her voice break off just as the words had. “What happened there?”
“He obviously sent this in a rush. Didn’t get a chance to finish.” Amit checked the time and date of the transmission. “See here . . . this came yesterday, right before Joshua said Yosi left the museum.”
“You mean when he was talking with that rabbi?”
Amit’s face went pale. “Exactly.” He tried to imagine the timing of it all. “Rabbi Cohen must have interrupted him.” The thought of this troubled him deeply. Cohen was a powerful man.
“Yet he still felt the urge to get the e-mail off to you?”
