Bronson looked down at the desolate landscape below the plateau, the featureless desert relieved only by occasional patches of green where small groups of trees of some kind barely clung to life. In the middle distance, the Dead Sea was a slash of brilliant blue, a vivid band of colour that hid the desolate reality of the lifeless waters.
'Hell on earth,' he muttered, mopping his brow. 'Why would anyone want to live in a place like this?'
Angela smiled at him. 'At the start of the first millennium, this was an extremely fertile and very prosperous area,' she said. 'You see those trees down there?' She pointed at the scattering of green patches on the desert floor that Bronson had already noticed. 'Those few trees are all that's now left of the old date plantations. History records that in biblical times the entire area stretching from the shores of the Dead Sea all the way up to Jericho and beyond was carpeted with date plantations. Jericho itself was known as the "town of dates", and Judean dates were enormously coveted, both as a foodstuff and for their alleged medicinal properties. In fact, the tree became accepted as a kind of national symbol of Judea. You can see that very easily on the Judea Capta coins the Romans minted after the fall of Jerusalem and the conquest of the country. They all show a date palm as part of the design on the reverse. But it wasn't just dates. This area also produced balsam, apparently the best in the entire region.'
'And balsam is what, exactly?'
'It can be a lot of things, actually, from a flower up to a tree, but in Judea the word referred to a large shrub. It produced a sweet-smelling resin that had numerous applications in the ancient world, everything from medicine to perfume. And the region was also a major source of naturally occurring bitumen. One of the ancient names for the Dead Sea was Lacus Asphaltites, or Lake Aspaltitus, the lake of asphalt. That's a pretty strange name for any body of water, and the reason it was called that was because large clumps of bitumen – also known as asphalt – could be recovered from its waters.'
'You mean bitumen and asphalt as in road-building? The black sticky stuff that holds everything together? What on earth use was that two thousand years ago?'
'For a seafaring nation it was vital, because they could use it to caulk the bottoms of their boats to make them watertight, but the Egyptians were the main customers of Dead Sea bitumen, and they had a very different use for it.'
'What?' Bronson asked.
'As part of the embalming process, the skull was filled with molten bitumen and aromatic resins. Bearing in mind that by about 300 BC the population of Egypt was nudging seven million, there was a lot of embalming going on and the bitumen trade was highly lucrative. Take my word for it, this was a really important part of Judea.'
Bronson looked round at the alien landscape. He found this hard to believe. To his untrained eyes, Qumran looked like nothing more than a confused jumble of stones, only some of which appeared to form walls. He thought of the turbulent history of the region, of the terrible privations the Essenes must have suffered as they tried to cope with the extreme heat, the lack of fresh water, and what had to be one of the most implacably hostile environments on the planet. To him, and despite the brilliant sunshine, Qumran and the whole surrounding area seemed sinister, perhaps even dangerous, in some indefinable way. He shivered slightly despite the baking temperature.
'Well, I'm ready to leave here and get back to the comforts of civilization,' he said.
Angela frowned and put her hand on his arm. 'I know how you feel – I don't like this place very much either. But before we leave here, I would just like to take a quick look in one or two of the caves, if you don't mind.'
'Do we really have to?'
'Look, you could go back to the car and get the air con started if you like, but I'm going on up. I've read about the caves and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and so much of my work has involved this area, but it's the first time I've ever been able to visit an ancient Judean site. We've come all this way, and I'm desperate to have a look inside a couple of them, just to see what they're like. I won't be long, Chris, I promise.'
Bronson sighed. 'I'd forgotten how determined you can be,' he said with a smile. 'I'll come with you. It'll be good to get out of the sun, even if it is only inside a cave for a few minutes.'
53
Yacoub held his mobile phone to his ear and listened as Hassan provided a running commentary while he shadowed Bronson and Angela around the old settlement. Although he was used to the high temperatures in Morocco, Yacoub was finding the heat unbearable, even though he was wearing the lightest jacket and trousers he'd been able to find. He would have preferred a jellaba and keffiyah, but that style of dress would have marked him as an Arab, and in Israel that was something he wanted to avoid, because of the attention he might have attracted.
'They're acting just like tourists,' Hassan reported.
'They've walked around the ruins, but now it looks like they're going to leave.'
There was silence for a few seconds, then the man spoke again. 'No, they're not heading for the car park. It looks as if they're walking up to the caves.'
'Right,' Yacoub said. 'There was a reference to Qumran on my tablet, so it's possible they think the relics are hidden somewhere here. Follow them; try to get close enough to hear what they're saying. If they go into a cave, follow them in unless it's really small. You're just another tourist, and they don't know your face, so there should be no danger.'
'And if they find the relics?'
'That's obvious,' Yacoub said. 'You kill them and then you call me.'
'It's not very deep,' Bronson remarked, as they stood up cautiously just inside the entrance to one of the caves close to the Qumran plateau. 'It's more like a crack in the rock than a cave.'
The entrance was about three feet wide and five high, but the cave itself only extended a matter of perhaps fifteen feet into the rock, and was completely empty.
'No,' Angela agreed, 'but there are some here that are a whole lot bigger than this. Let's take a look in one more, then we'll go.'
'Fine by me,' Bronson said, leading the way out again.
Once they were outside, he looked around, then pointed further up the slope. 'That looks like it could be bigger,' he said, indicating a much wider oval opening in the rock face perhaps eighty yards away. 'Do you want to try that one?'
Angela looked up the hillside, and nodded. They were both finding it hard to talk in the oppressive heat.
As they set off, picking their path slowly and carefully across the hillside, Bronson glanced behind him. A man was making his way up the slope towards them, apparently heading for one of the caves. There were actually numerous people visible at Qumran and on the surrounding hillsides, and nothing in particular to distinguish this lone tourist from any of the others swarming over the site, but the figure still concerned him.
When they'd emerged from the first small cave, the man had been heading directly towards them, or towards the cave itself, but now he had changed direction and was walking towards the larger cave Bronson and Angela were aiming for. Either that, or he was on an intercept course with them. Whichever it was, Bronson decided to watch him.
Angela reached the cave entrance first and stepped inside, Bronson following a few seconds behind, after taking a last glance down the slope. The man was over fifty yards away, still ambling, apparently quite innocently, towards them.
Motioning Angela to keep quiet, Bronson stepped back to the entrance and peered out, being careful to keep himself in the shadows. The approaching figure paused about thirty yards away and, as Bronson watched, he slipped a mobile phone into his jacket pocket.