The Dead Sea Cipher Read online

  ELIZABETH

  PETERS

  The Dead Sea

  Cipher

  To the members of the “Old Gang”

  Lucy and Bev, Marge and Louise Contents

  One

  “Had I but known,” Dinah said, under her breath.

  1

  Two

  The tour of the most beautiful city of Beirut was…

  37

  Three

  Little rivulets of perspiration trickled down Dinah’s cheeks from under…

  79

  Four

  They found a cafe outside the entrance to the ruins…

  111

  Five

  “You poor girl,” said Mrs. Marks. “Was it very horrible?”

  149

  Six

  They were all up early next morning, eager to begin…

  179

  Seven

  “Drink this,” somebody kept saying. “Come on.

  Drink it.”

  209

  Eight

  They left the cavernous cistern by a tunnel that was…

  237

  Nine

  It seemed a little more real, now that she had… 257

  Ten

  After the priest had gone, Dinah, who had retreated to…

  279

  Eleven

  There was no path, only a ridge, a razorback whose…

  303

  Twelve

  Dinah looked around. The goal of their long, arduous search…

  333

  About the Author

  Praise

  Books by Elizabeth Peters

  Cover

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  ONE

  “Had I but known,” Dinah said, under her breath.

  From the balcony of her hotel room she looked out on a view lovely enough to stir a less romantic heart than hers. The Mediterranean was as calm as a country pond. Separated from her hotel only by the palm-fringed boulevard of the Avenue de Paris, it reflected the splendor of an eastern sunset. The scarlet and gold and copper of the sky were softened in the reflection, which shimmered dreamily as the slow breakers slid in to shore.

  The girl leaned her elbows on the balcony rail, planted her chin firmly on her hands, and went on muttering to herself.

  “If I had known, I wouldn’t have been so excited about coming. That sunset is practically an insult.

  What’s the point of watching a

  1

  2 / ELIZABETH PETERS

  sunset like that by yourself? They say Beirut is the swingingest city east of Suez….”

  The sunset spread itself like a peacock’s tail, luminous and brilliant, across the horizon. Against the tapes-try of light the silhouettes of palms stood out, black and bizarre. Finally Dinah’s face mellowed, like the fading light, and her grumble died into silence. She was given to soliloquizing. Talking to yourself, as other, less sensitive, people called it. The sign of a weak mind.

  Dinah grinned sheepishly. The trouble, dear Horatio, was not in the city, but in herself. Beirut was a marvelous place: romantic, picturesque, colorful. Presumably it also swang, or swung, whatever the past tense of that verb might be. But a respectable young woman, traveling alone, the daughter of a minister, touring the Lands of the Bible under parental auspices, and with parental funds, could not reasonably expect to do much swinging.

  Dinah looked wistfully to her right, where the lamplit Avenue de Paris swung in an arc along the shore. Somewhere down there was the downtown area of Beirut: the glamorous hotels, the famous restaurants and night clubs. She had hoped to stay at the Phoenicia, or one of the other new hotels. From what she had heard, a lot of interesting activities went on there.

  Unfortunately, her father had read the THE DEAD SEA CIPHER / 3

  same guidebooks. He had read all the guidebooks. He was a fanatical armchair traveler, in the saddest sense; for the chair was a wheel-chair, to which he had been confined for almost ten years.

  Dinah’s mobile face changed, her long, expressive mouth drooping poignantly. So much for the Hotel Phoenicia. This trip was not for her; it was for her father. He considered sentimentality an unfair burden on the people he lived with, so his voice had been matter-of-fact when he discussed the trip. But she knew him too well to miss the undertones.

  “Seeing something long desired through another’s eyes is hardly satisfactory,” he said, looking, not at her, but at the travel folders he held in his hands. “That consideration should not influence you in the slightest.

  I thought perhaps…”

  The folders were printed in bright colors, with names out of an antique past: the Holy Land, Jerusalem, Damascus; the Walls of Jericho, “the rose-red city half as old as time.” The thin, blue-veined hands held the circulars spread out, like a deck of cards.

  “Of course I’m dying to go,” Dinah had heard herself saying. “Haven’t you had years in which to indoctrinate me? I’m as crazy as you are.”

  He had dropped the travel folders on his 4 / ELIZABETH PETERS

  desk and looked up, his keen brown eyes searching.

  Then he grinned. The wide, cheeky smile sat incongruously on his ascetic features, but it was an expression of that side of her father she loved best.

  “Fine,” he said briskly. “And don’t bother sending me postcards, will you? Can’t abide the things.”

  “I won’t keep a diary, either,” she promised; and her own grin was a reflection of his.

  The sunset was fading now into a haze of soft lavender. Dinah propped her elbows more firmly on the rail. The tour through the region her father had made his particular study would never have occurred if the miracle hadn’t happened first. Bless Frau Schmidt, or whatever her name was—Frau something, without doubt, for it was the happy consequence of her marital status that had given Dinah the chance so many young singers dreamed of. Not that the local opera house of Hildesberg was Salzburg, or the Met; but it was a beginning, a real professional job. And it could be a stepping-stone to more exciting places.

  Dinah knew she was lucky to have the chance. There weren’t that many openings, and the competition was keen. If her voice teacher hadn’t happened to know the director; if she hadn’t sung for Herr Braun when he was last in the States…He had remembered her when

  THE DEAD SEA CIPHER / 5

  Frau Schmidt discovered, right in the middle of the season, that she was about to become a mother.

  Luckily, motherhood as a cause for retirement had advantages over more abrupt accidents. It would be another month before Frau Schmidt reached such proportions that she couldn’t bow during curtain calls.

  Hildesberg, Germany…Dinah wished, not for the first time, that her German were better. She had the trained ear that a singer must have, and could render Wagner and Weber and The Magic Flute with every umlaut in place; but her vocabulary was limited. The gods of the Nibelungenlied do not come naturally into a conversation. She smiled to herself, recalling the librettos she knew.

  “Zu Hilfe! Zu Hilfe! Sonst bin ich verloren! Derlistigen Schlange zum Opfer erkoren!”

  The opening tenor recitative in her favorite Mozart opera had always struck her as particularly hilarious; now, in the veiling darkness of her balcony, she forgot herself and gave it a little too much Angst. From the next room came a gasp, and a giggle; and Dinah, blushing furiously, retired in haste to her own room.

  She had forgotten that the darkened room next door, whose balcony adjoined hers, might be inhabited. She hoped the inhabitants knew their Mozart. A female voice bellowing about serpents pursuing her would be doubly star

  6 / ELIZABETH PETERS

  tling, out of the dark, if one didn’t know the source.

>   It was frustrating, though, not being able to practice.

  When she let it out, Dinah’s voice was astounding, particularly when emerging from her modest five-foot-two frame. The effect was bad enough at home, where her father averred that it rattled all the glasses in the cupboard. Here, in a hotel whose walls were not of the thickest, it would be cause for expulsion. Even now Dinah could hear a mutter of speech from the next room—not the room she had startled by her anxiety about serpents, but the one on the other side. A man’s voice, this one, speaking so softly that she couldn’t identify the language, except to know that it wasn’t English.

  Dinah pushed her chair back so that her ear rested against the wall. A gargle, a gurgle, and a glottal stop…Arabic. He didn’t seem to be swearing, or praying; since her knowledge of the language was limited to phrases of that sort, plus the essential guidebook inquiries about railroad stations and toilets, she couldn’t understand a word. She reached for the Guide Bleu, which lay on the bedside table. If she couldn’t amuse herself, she might as well improve her mind.

  Before she could open the book, the outer door began to vibrate, and Dinah hurried to answer the impassioned knocking. It sounded THE DEAD SEA CIPHER / 7

  like the fists of an impatient lover who was yearning for the arms of his mistress. But Salwa, as she herself boasted, believed in expressing her feelings without reserve.

  Salwa was the chambermaid. She was also a student at the American University of Beirut, and the daughter of a poor but honest merchant of the city. She was the only friend Dinah had made in Beirut—which was not too bad, considering that her sojourn so far had only lasted a little over twenty-four hours. When Salwa loved, she did so with the impetuosity of a generous heart. She had told Dinah this herself, and proved it by loving Dinah.

  “Ah, you are present,” exclaimed Salwa, darting in.

  “I think you are gone to—to—”

  “…see the town,” Dinah suggested. As Salwa had carefully explained, the chance to practice her languages was the only reason why she had taken a menial job at the Hotel Mediterranee.

  “See the town,” her pupil repeated. “I am come to make of the bed.”

  “Just ‘make the bed.’ The ‘of’ is not necessary.”

  “Vraiment? But it seems that a word before the bed is necessary.” Salwa’s French was much better than her English, and she resorted to it when the other tongue failed. As she spoke she rushed around the room, swabbing aim

  8 / ELIZABETH PETERS

  lessly at the porcelain surfaces in the bathroom, and twitching the bedcovers back. Finding Dinah’s white pajamas under the pillow, she held them up and shook her head.

  “It is not glamorous,” she said sadly.

  “Where did you learn that word?”

  “Screen Stories. Les autres—the other of the same.

  Always I am read these to improve the English. The negligee—the gown of the night—in the Screen Stories it is glamorous, this—the nylon—long, beautiful, it show all, all of the body through…. Une jeune fille, belle et petite, to wear this…”

  Her expression of disgust, as she waved the tailored pajamas, made Dinah laugh.

  “Chacun a son gout,” she said. “I’m afraid you have a very distorted idea about America, Salwa.”

  “Comment?”

  “Never mind. Sit down, if you have a minute.”

  Salwa did. She seemed to have plenty of time. Dinah wondered when she did the work for which she was being paid; but she didn’t really care. Salwa wanted to hear about the United States, and Dinah wanted to talk about life in Lebanon. Frequently the conversation degenerated into laughter and small talk; Salwa was only two or three years younger than Dinah, and her sense of humor was as

  THE DEAD SEA CIPHER / 9

  keen as her snapping black eyes. Dinah was fascinated by the attitudes of the educated young women of these countries, whose mothers and grandmothers for generations back had spent their lives in harems. Salwa tried to teach Dinah some Arabic, in exchange for English lessons, and was delighted at her new friend’s facility.

  Dinah tried to explain that a good ear was part of a singer’s basic equipment, and that she had been trained to imitate sounds; but Salwa, who had tried to teach other visitors, regarded Dinah’s talent as magical. Dinah, who had memorized opera parts in half a dozen languages, found no difficulty in learning the ornate Arabic phrases. Soon the two girls could converse for several minutes in exquisitely phrased sentences, though one of them understood only one word in ten.

  “The old bitch will be chase me when I do not do other rooms,” Salwa said finally, rising with reluctance.

  “That is not a nice word to use,” said Dinah, true to her training. Privately she agreed with the description, having that morning seen the housekeeper in a rage; she was a sharp-nosed, gray-haired Swiss woman, who looked like a witch out of Grimm.

  “No? But a good word. Bonne nuit; good night; schlafen Sie wohl.”

  The room seemed very quiet when she had 10 / ELIZABETH PETERS

  gone, and Dinah went back to her chair and her guidebook with a certain lack of enthusiasm.

  The guide was that excellent volume devoted to the Middle East. Like most excellent guides, it contained every scrap of information that might conceivably interest anyone, which resulted in tiny print and a plethora of dull detail. Dinah plowed doggedly on through the pages on Beirut, and woke up, some time later, to find herself blindly reading a description of the route from Beirut to some unknown town where she had no intention of going. “After 100 kilometers the road to Ra’s al’Ayn branches off to the right.”

  Irritably Dinah slammed the book shut, and then realized what had roused her from her doze. The door to the next room had opened and closed again, not quietly. Another man had entered the room, interrupting the Arabic soliloquy. His voice rose in eloquent comment—also in Arabic. Listening unashamedly, Dinah smiled to herself. Arabic or not, the voice didn’t sound quite sober. Some lucky dog had been out on the town. She wished she had been.

  Yawning, she turned back to her guidebook. Byblos.

  That was where she was going tomorrow, to the ruins of the great commercial city of antiquity, which had traded cedars to the pharaohs of Egypt in return for gold. Since her

  THE DEAD SEA CIPHER / 11

  father was an authority on biblical archaeology, she knew a bit about Byblos, but she wanted to refresh her memory before taking the tour.

  Another yawn nearly split her jaws apart. Byblos could wait. She was falling asleep in her chair, despite the voices from the next room, which were now loud in what sounded like an argument. She hoped they would resolve their differences and go to bed when she did, but she was tired enough to sleep anyhow.

  The hotel was not the best in town, but it had its good points; most of the rooms had private baths.

  They were afterthoughts, added, in pairs, between adjoining rooms. The high ceilings of the original rooms gave the little baths the look of shoe boxes stood on end, and the newer partitions were much thinner than the original walls. As Dinah reached for her toothbrush, she heard the voices from the next room even more clearly. She paused, toothbrush poised, as an inexplicable chill of uneasiness ran through her. Maybe it wasn’t so inexplicable at that. One of the men was drunk, and both were furious; the voices were slightly lower now, but one held a hissing quality that reminded Dinah of a snake. She was alone. The door was locked. Wasn’t it?

  Nonsense, Dinah told herself firmly, and proceeded with her brushing. The door was locked. If the argument got too noisy she 12 / ELIZABETH PETERS

  would call the desk and complain. That was all there was to it.

  Yet she found herself straining to listen, trying to get some hint of meaning from the unintelligible sounds.

  She repeated a phrase under her breath. Too bad she couldn’t use it; from the tone in which it had been uttered, it was probably not the sort of thing a lady should say in public. Then, with the suddenness of a pistol sho
t, a heavy object struck the wall immediately in front of her.

  The mirror shook, and a glass, balanced on the ledge below, fell and shattered in the washbowl. Dinah bounded back, still clutching her toothbrush. The abruptness of the sound set her heart thudding. There was no repetition of it, only odd thumps and scrapes, and a weird voiceless muttering. Dinah’s lips went tight. Enough was enough. Now she would call the desk.

  She had not reached the telephone when another sound reached her ears, a sound scarcely muffled by the partition wall. This noise was even more shocking, for it was in English, and it consisted of the single word “Help!”

  Forgetting telephone, common sense, and the toothbrush, which was still clutched in her fist, Dinah ran to the door and threw it open.

  The normalcy of the scene outside slowed her instinctive response to the urgency of the call. The hour was late. The hotel corridor was THE DEAD SEA CIPHER / 13

  peaceful, lighted only by a dim bulb that shadowed the dingy white plaster of the walls. The silence was absolute. From behind the door to her right came no sound at all.

  Dinah stood staring at the dark, varnished panel, with its brass room number. Twenty-six…Almost she fancied she had imagined the melodramatic cry. No one else appeared to have heard anything; no other door opened. Then she realized that the sounds she had heard might not have been audible to any ears but hers. The remodeling had only affected alternate walls of the hotel—logically enough, since bathrooms were more cheaply added in pairs, side by side. Thus each room had one original, solid wall, and one thinner partition. The occupants on the other side of number 26 would not have heard anything. She herself had heard no clear sounds from 22, on her other side. The balcony doors…Had the doors of 26 been open? She frowned, trying to remember the moments on the balcony at sunset. No, the doors had been closed.

  These thoughts, not so coherently expressed, flashed quickly through her mind. Feeling a little foolish, she tiptoed to the door of 26 and put her ear against the heavy panel.