Joel C. Rosenberg - The Copper Scroll (Political Thrillers Series #4)

Joel Rosenberg - The Copper Scroll

CAST OF CHARACTERS

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

""

. James Mac MacPherson

THE VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

. William Harvard Oaks

THE PRINCIPALS

. Jon Bennett, Former Senior Advisor to the President

. Erin McCoy Bennett, Former CIA Operative

. Natasha Barak, Hebrew University Professor of Near East Archeology SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS

. Marsha Kirkpatrick, National Security Advisor

. Jack Mitchell, Director of Central Intelligence

. Lee James, Secretary of Homeland Security

. Scott Harris, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation

. Bob Corsetti, White House Chief of Staff

. Ken Costello, Senior Advisor to the President

. Indira Rajiv, Director of the NAMESTAN Desk, CIA

. Chuck Murray, White House Press Secretary

ISRAELI LEADERS

. David Doron, Prime Minister of Israel

. Dr. Eliezer Mordechai, Former Head of Mossad

. Avi Zadok, Current Head of Mossad

IRAQI LEADERS

. Mustafa Al-Hassani, President of Iraq

. Khalid Tariq, Chief Political Aide to the President

OTHERS

. Ruth Bennett, Mother of Jon Bennett

. Salvador Lucente, European Union Foreign Minister

. Dr. Yossi Barak, Chief Archeologist of the Israel Museum

. Viggo Mariano, Sicilian Operative

AUTHOR'S NOTE

* * *

The journey that follows is fiction.

The prophecies upon which it is based are true.

In 1947, two Bedouin shepherds tending their flocks in the Judean hills not far from

Jerusalem stumbled upon the greatest archeological discovery of all time. Over the course of the next few years, hundreds of manuscripts and fragmentswhat became known to the world as the Dead Sea Scrol swere found in the caves of Qumran.

Some of the scrolls contained whole books of the Bible, including the oldest known copy of the book of Isaiah, foretelling key details of the coming Messiah.

Other scrolls contained descriptions of religious life in the ancient community of the Essenes, a monastic Jewish sect. Still others foretold a coming "War of Gog and Magog" and the building of a great new Jewish Temple in the earth's last days.

But in 1952 another scroll was found in those same caves, and this one was strangely unlike all the others. It was not, for example, made of sheep-skins or parchments. Instead, the message of the scroll had been engraved on copper, a costly and rare procedure. But why? What mysteries did this scroll possess?

What message could it possibly contain that was more valuable, more worthy of protection, than Isaiah's messianic prophecies or the detailed architectural plans of a future Temple?

Members of a small team of experts entrusted with the scrol 's care were eager to know. But they had a problem. Nearly two thousand years of oxidation had caused the Copper Scrol to become brittle and in danger of disintegration. They could not simply unravel the scroll without risking the very real probability that its precious contents would be lost forever. It took archeologists nearly four years to conceive a method to open the Copper Scroll, and when they did, they were stunned by what they found.

The New York Times broke the story to the world on June 1, 1956: "Dead Sea Scrolls Tell of Treasure."

In a front-page, top-of-the-fold story that captured the imagination of readers around the world, the Times reported that the messages hidden within the Copper Scroll "sound like something that might have been written in blood in the dark of the moon by a character in Treasure Island." Somewhere, hidden in the forbidding hills of the Judean wilderness on the West Bank of the Jordan River, lay a treasure of almost unimaginable pro-portions. "The documents tell of hoards of fabulous value," said the Times. "If the treasure exists, it includes 200 tons of gold and silver," just waiting to be found.

Was it legend, or was it real?

In his groundbreaking 1960 nonfiction book The Treasure of the Copper Scroll,

"'"

Dead Sea Scrol s Tell of Treasure: `Key to Vast Riches Written on Copper Is Deciphered, Stanley

Rowland Jr., New York Times, June 1, 1956, Al. archeologist John Marco Allegroa member of the original team that opened the scrollconcluded that not only was the treasure real, but its importance extended far beyond the wealth it listed. "There is," he wrote, "hardly an aspect of Near Eastern archeology, history, and religion that it does not in some way illumine."

And yet, half a century later, the treasure has never been found, and so many questions remain unanswered. Johns Hopkins University professor P. Kyle McCarter Jr. once told a gathering of archeologists at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington:

The Copper Scroll does not fit into any of the categories customarily included when the Scrol s are discussed It is not in the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem nor in the Shrine of the Book... [I]t is written in a language that is different from the language of any of the other Scrolls. It is written on a material that is different .. and its content has no parallel It does not resemble any of the other Qumran Scrollsor anything else, except pirates' treasure maps in

Hollywood. It is an unusual phenomenon, an anomaly3.

In the summer of 2005, just before the publication of The Ezekiel Option, a colleague

" and I traveled halfway around the world to see this "anomaly for ourselves at the Jordan

Archaeological Museum in Amman. We had the chance to study it up close, to read its text, to compare it with other Dead Sea Scrolls, and to hear whispers of a story that has never been published. Until now.

There are some who believe that the dazzling treasures of the Copper Scrol wil be uncovered in our lifetime, perhaps very soon. What's more, some believe this

"anomaly" of historythis "unusual phenomenon"will lead us to an even greater discovery, to the most important archeological find of al time, one that wil shock the world and in the process trigger the end of days.

Are they correct? Should such whispers be listened to or dismissed as ancient legends and myths? It remains to be seen. But it is here that our story begins.

JOEL C. ROSENBERG

Amman, Jordan

June

John Marco Allegro, The Treasure of the Copper Scroll (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1960),

. Also published in the U.S. by Doubleday.

P. Kyle McCarter Jr., "The Mystery of the Copper Scroll," The Dead Sea Scrol s After Forty Years:

Papers Presented at a Symposium at the Smithsonian Institution, October 27, 1990 (Washington, DC:

The Biblical Archeology Society, 1991, 1992), 1, 45; cited by Dr. Randall Price, Secrets of the Dead Sea

Scrolls (Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House Publishers, 1996), 265.

'

Ezekiels War was over, but the world was still reeling.

In a single day, millions had perished. Entire cities had been laid waste. Even now, many lay smoldering, virtually uninhabitable. The entire geopolitical system had been upended, and an eerie hush seemed to have settled over the world.

Where would the hammer fall next? Could what had happened to Moscow and Tehran and Khartoum and Damascus still happen to Washington or Chicago or Los Angeles?

Some said no. They believed the worst was now behind them, that a new age of peace and prosperity was about to dawn.

It was a tempting premise.

SATURDAY, JANUARY I0 - 12:39 P.M. - WASHINGTON, D.C.

Their eyes locked for only a moment, but in that moment FBI Agent Marcus Santini knew something was terribly wrong.

He had seen that face. He knew that face. But how?

Santini's cab swerved violently to avoid hitting the man who had suddenly stepped into the flow of Washington, D.C., traffic. The man's eyes flashed with fear, but not of dying. He seemed oblivious to the danger of standing in the middle of Massachusetts