Muhammad had acquired a key, though Sean and the others decided it would be best not to ask why. They locked the gate once they were inside and hurried through the passage.
“This doesn’t seem like such a secret,” Tommy commented as he pointed his flashlight around. The beam danced on the curved walls and stretched out ahead of the group as they progressed.
“Most people think it’s a sewage drain,” Muhammad explained. “That keeps many curious eyes away. Only a few people come down here, usually engineers or city planners, and those are few and far between. No one has any reason to try to find this secret entrance.” He made a sharp right and continued down the damp corridor. A rat scurried away, keeping close to the wall as it retreated from the intruders.
“Was it difficult to get dig permits for this?” Tommy asked. He slipped on a wet patch of concrete and nearly fell but caught his balance with an elbow against the wall.
Muhammad laughed. “Permit? This city has so many other things going on, I seriously doubt anyone in the local government would even know where to begin with giving out an excavation permit.”
Sean raised an eyebrow and glanced over at his friend. “So how are you keeping the site secure?”
The group rounded a corner and arrived at another intersection where the paths came to a T. Warning signs hung on the wall to the left. They surrounded a plastic drop cloth hanging from the wall. Some of the signs read in Arabic, Farsi, and English, Danger, keep out; others warned of lethal chemicals, and still more had skulls and crossbones.
Sean nodded, seeing the answer to his question.
“Not exactly subtle,” Adriana said, admiring the handiwork.
“But effective.” Muhammad grinned over his shoulder and pulled back the plastic.
He pointed his flashlight inside the cavity. The light revealed a small generator, floodlights, shovels, picks, brushes, sifting trays, baskets, and several other tools of the archaeological trade.
“Okay,” Tommy said, “I’m impressed.”
They followed their guide into the dig site and closed the drop cloth behind. Muhammad led the way over to the far wall. The visitors’ eyes came to rest upon an incredible find. Aramaic characters were carved into the ancient rock in neat lines from right to left and stretched four feet across in the wall’s center. In the corners above the far edges of the script was a sequence of characters separated by an inch or two of space and barely noticeable seams. As Sean drew closer, he noticed thin lines surrounding the words. Each one was a separate piece of stone cut into the wall.
“They are names,” Muhammad said, answering the unasked question. “Names of Hebrew leaders, priests, prophets, and kings. There are twenty-eight names on those squares.”
“Why are they there?” Tommy asked.
“I assume because Daniel wanted to honor those who had gone before him.”
“How did you find this?” Sean asked, turning to face their guide.
Muhammad shrugged. “I’ve always wondered what was underneath the tomb. Outside the shrine, visitors can stop to pray or pay their respects to the great prophet, but no one is allowed inside. As far as I know, no one has ever seen the actual remains. It would be difficult to determine if it is actually Daniel or not, and I have no intention of doing such research. I simply wanted to know what else was down here and why it was so secretive.”
“Curiosity can be dangerous,” Sean said as he ran his fingers across the letters carved into the smooth stone.
Their guide smiled and lowered his head a moment. He raised it again and said, “I do not believe I have made many enemies in this world.”
“It’s not your enemies you should be worried about. It’s the enemies of your friends you need to be aware of.”
“Speaking of enemies,” Tommy interrupted, “could we hurry this along? Ours could be arriving at any moment.”
“Right,” Sean nodded.
He continued moving his finger across the stone until he felt the thinnest of gaps. He worked his fingernail into it and slid it up and down, confirming what he thought. “We’re going to have to wedge this thing out, which means the wall will be damaged.” He turned to Muhammad. “You okay with that?”
The Iranian took a step back and grabbed a sledgehammer and a metal wedge. He flipped on the generator and hit the start button. The floodlights flickered to life and cast a bright glow throughout the entire area. “I’ve been waiting long enough to see what’s behind this door.”
The other three picked up some crowbars that were leaning against the wall and went to work. They shimmied the sharp edges into the narrow space between the center stone and the wall around it. The work was painstaking and difficult. Every time it seemed they had made progress and the rectangular stone started to slide out a little, it slipped back into place. After twenty minutes of hard effort, the heat and humidity of the space started to take its toll. Beads of sweat rolled down the sides of every face.
Sean took a step back, breathing hard. “Take a break for a second.”
Tommy was the first to obey, grateful for a breather. He slogged over to his gear bag, unzipped it, and pulled out a bottle of cool water. Half of the contents were gone in a matter of seconds as he poured the liquid down his throat.
Adriana leaned her tool against the wall and stared at the engravings.
“It’s an account of the Babylonian captivity the Hebrews endured,” Muhammad informed her. He stood nearby and gazed upon the wall.
Sean eyed the peculiar corners with the names cut into individual squares. He lowered his gaze to the floor and took to a knee near the wall. His fingertips ran across the smooth stone. It was similar to the way the walls had been cut, hewn smooth with a laser-like precision. Something stood out about the floor. Actually, it wasn’t what stood out. It was what was missing.
“This door wasn’t meant to come out this way,” he blurted.
Tommy finished the last drops of his water and tossed the bottle back into the gear bag. “What do you mean? You saying we should push it?”
Sean shook his head. “No. This would have been put here just a shade over two thousand years ago.” He jerked his thumb at the wall. “If whoever put it here slid it into place, we would see signs of scraping on the floor. There might even be some big gouges.”
“Maybe they didn’t slide it across the stone. They could have used mats or some kind of buffer.”
“I don’t think so,” Sean disagreed. “Look at how perfectly flush these seams are. If this is a door, it was cut from the wall itself.”
Muhammad listened to the conversation and jumped in. “How do you think it works then?”
Sean turned to Tommy. “Do you remember studying the layout of the ancient temple in Jerusalem?”
Tommy blinked and rolled his shoulders, nodding. “Yeah. Which part in particular?”
“History suggests that the designers of Solomon’s temple built in safety measures to protect the Ark of the Covenant from falling into the wrong hands.”
The light went on in Tommy’s eyes. “Right. The widely held belief is that there were two pillars standing next to the entrance to the most holy place, a location which only the high priest was allowed to visit once a year.”
“Exactly. From what I remember, those two columns would sink into the ground in the event that the city came under attack. It worked with counterweights and sand.”
“Yeah, but how does that apply to this situation?”
Sean stood and stepped close to the wall once more. He reached up and ran a fingernail under the edge of one of the squares with a name on it. His Aramaic was rusty. He thought he knew what the name was, but he motioned for Adriana to take a look at it. Tommy moved closer as well.