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wouldn’t have had Yasmin fetch you from your bunk if I hadn’t been certain.”
    Jack rubbed his gritty eyes, tried to focus on the ancient writing in front of him and ignore Green’s annoyance. It was, after all, past 5 A.M. “I’m glad you did, professor. I was half awake and couldn’t sleep either.”
    Professor Green was a bear of a man, bristling with energy. Distinguished-looking with gray hair, he wore a khaki tropical shirt with epaulettes, one of them hanging loose and missing a button. He removed his half-moon glasses and gave an excited nod. “Okay, go ahead. Translate lines three and four.”
    “Give me a chance, professor. My Aramaic’s pretty basic and not up to your standards, and here and there the writing’s faded.” Jack’s mind felt sluggish, despite his elation. Like most of the other forty-strong crew he had stayed up late, drinking beer to celebrate the scroll’s discovery in one of Qumran’s caves. He’d only climbed into his cot two hours before being woken again by Green’s niece.
    The professor hovered at his shoulder. “Let me tell you again what it says—”
    “It’s okay, I think I’ve got it.” Jack studied the faded parchment symbols and his voice was hoarse with shock. “You’re right. It’s incredible.”
    Green said excitedly, “Of course I’m right. No scroll like this has ever been discovered at Qumran. We both know with absolute certainty that this scroll’s unique.”
    Jack knew that Green was right. In 1947, two hundred yards farther up the valley of Qumran, the first of many hundreds of the famous Dead Sea scrolls had been discovered by Bedouin tribesmen. Most of the finds dated from between 250 B.C. and 70 A.D. and had been hidden by the Essene community. They had remained hidden for thousands of years.
    The discovery was to rock the world.
    The leather parchment, papyrus, and copper scrolls documented the life of the Essenes—an austere Jewish religious group that had been in existence during the time of Jesus Christ. Copies of parts of the Old Testament, as well as unknown New Testament records, were also found.
    The restoration and translation of the scrolls was directed by Father Roland de Vaux, director of the Ecole Biblique, a French-Arab theological school in Jerusalem. Dominated mostly by Catholic priests, the process had taken decades and became mired in controversy.
    It took almost fifty years after the discovery for the Vatican to finally claim that all the contents had been made public. But the slow pace of de Vaux’s work and its extreme secrecy fueled a theory that some senior Vatican churchmen wished to suppress damaging information revealed in the scrolls. The theory was never proven, but the Dead Sea caves produced such a rich mother lode that digs were ongoing, even after more than six decades.
    And now he, Jack Cane, had uncovered another ancient scroll. But one that was very different from all the others that had been discovered.
    Yesterday afternoon, digging in one of the many cave recesses that dotted the Qumran landscape, in the southern part of the location known as Area A, he had found a two-foot-long sealed terra-cotta pot. Breaking the seal, inside the pot he discovered a single rolled leather parchment wrapped in frayed linen. The scroll appeared fragile but reasonably intact. Cane was elated.
    Judging by its material condition and its written language, Aramaic, Jack believed it came from the same period as those already uncovered. When Professor Green unrolled the first two inches of the leather—as much as he dared risk at first without causing damage—they saw that it had already suffered partial destruction.
    Portions of the inked parchment were obliterated, leaving holes and frayed gaps in the parchment. However, it was still possible to decipher several word clusters. Two in particular—faintly visible on the second line—leaped out and made Cane’s pulse race:
    Yeshua HaMeshiah
    Yeshua HaMeshiah— Jesus the Messiah.