in his right hand, paused
. . . then brought his left hand down upon it as a sign to commence the
execution.
The first stone flew through the air and struck bluntly, tearing open the
scalp. Ali teetered severely but remained on his knees, his chant pressing
on in an unrecognizable garble.
Four more stones pummeled the Palestinian, peeling the flesh and
hair clean back from the skull, dropping him to the ground. The prayer
abruptly ceased; the green eyes rolled back into their sockets, so that only
twitching white orbs were visible. Froth bubbled from his lips. Another six stones pulverized his face—the nose flattened, the cheekbones mashed, the jaw snapped inward. Teeth clattered out across the
ground.
Cohen handed the twelfth stone to the gunman, who now stood with
the pistol lowered.
The final bludgeoning strike brought forth brain matter in globules. “Throw the body into the cistern,” Cohen instructed the men. “Then
prepare with haste,” he said, pointing to the breach. “For the time is
upon us.”
49
******
Jerusalem
Since the Shrine of the Book housed the majority of the Dead Sea Scrolls recovered from Qumran, it was Amit’s home away from home. Thus the IA A had granted him his own key, thanks in part to the clout of his late friend, Jozsef Dayan.
Unlocking the glass entry door, he urged Jules into the dim space beyond—a corridor designed to invoke the feeling of spelunking through a cave. Coming in behind her, he led the way to the main gallery, which had been constructed in 1965. American architects Frederick Kiesler and Armand Bartos had designed the Shrine of the Book’s domelike roof to resemble the lid of one of the clay jars in which the ancient scrolls had been stored. Inside, the ceiling rose in concentric coils to a central oculus, lit by a gentle amber light.
Directly below the dome, an elevated platform commanded the center of the circular exhibition hall. There, a meticulous reproduction of the great Isaiah Scroll was displayed in an illuminated glass case that wrapped around a huge podium resembling a scroll handle. Other display cases spread along the room’s circumference featured additional scroll reproductions.
Amit had studied many of the originals, which were stored in an airtight safe beneath the gallery.
“It’s just over here,” Amit said, moving quickly along the looping ambulatory.
He stopped in front of a curved glass display case where faux vellums were laid against a black backdrop, top-lit by dim lights.
“This scroll came from Qumran, Cave Eleven,” he told Jules. “It’s called the Temple Scroll. Nineteen parchments totaling just over eight meters in length. The longest of the Dead Sea Scrolls. See the characters there? That’s Assyrian square script.” He pointed to the scribe’s writings, inked just below horizontal guidelines cut superficially into the parchment with a stylus.
She nodded.
“This was written by an Essene.”
“A follower of Jesus,” Jules proudly replied in a show of solidarity.
He smiled. “The Temple Scroll speaks about a revelation made by God through Moses. God basically explains what the true temple should look like—explicit dimensions, precise layout, how it is to be decorated, you name it. And its design is much grander than what Solomon or Herod built.”
“So what should it have looked like?”
He pointed up to a placard hanging in shadow above the case.
“See there?”
She moved closer, squinting to make out the details.
“The gray area is the Temple Mount that exists today,” he said. “The outermost square would be the footprint of the new and improved Temple Mount—a fivefold expansion to about eighty hectares that would virtually swallow Jerusalem’s Old City and connect the Kidron Valley to the Mount of Olives.”
This was tough for Jules to envision, since at fourteen hectares of surface area, the Temple Mount was already a massive construct, even by modern standards. “That’s a mighty ambitious building project.”
“ ccording to the Temple Scroll, that’s what God specifically commanded. And of course you’ll notice where the temple sanctuary must reside.”
Focusing on the rectangular bull’s-eye inside the squares, she answered, “Directly over the foundation of the Dome of the Rock.”
“ nd does the design of the temple look familiar?”
It did. “Nested courtyards . . . twelve gates . . . ,” she muttered. She blanched. “Same as the model we saw
