The door swung open. Carina was surprised to see the glass-enclosed cabinets that lined the walls. “It looks like a library,” she said.

“This room holds the family archives of the Baltazars. These volumes contain our history going back for more than two thousand years. This is a treasure trove of intrigue in Europe and Asia during that time.”

He went to the far end of the library and opened another door. He removed a torch from a wall sconce and lit it with his cigarette lighter. The flare from the torch illuminated the curved stone walls of a circular room. Carina stepped into the room and saw the statue beckoning at her with outstretched arms.

“Dear God! What is that thing?”

“It’s an ancient offering statue. It has been in my family for thousands of years.”

Her eyes took in the pointed nose and chin and the leering mouth, features made even more prominent by the leaping shadows from the fluttering torch.

“It’s hideous.”

“Some people might think so. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It’s not the statue I wanted to show you; it’s this volume.”

Baltazar stuck the torch into a tall metal stand and went up to the altar. He lifted the lid of the gem-studded chest and opened the wooden box inside it. Then he removed the bound sheets of parchment.

Carina didn’t want to satisfy Baltazar by showing interest, but she couldn’t contain her curiosity.

“They look very old,” she said.

“Nearly three thousand years old. The language is Aramaic. The pages were written in the time of King Solomon.”

“Who was the author?” Carina said.

“The founding matriarch of the Baltazar family. Her name is lost in time. She refers to herself, and is referred to by others, as ‘Priestess.’ Would you like to hear what she wrote?”

Carina shrugged. “I have nothing better to do.”

“I can recite the contents by heart. She introduces herself here on the first page. She was a pagan priestess who was a favored concubine to Solomon. They gave birth to a boy child who was named Melqart. As I said before, Solomon was a fickle man. He became smitten with Sheba.”

“My ancestor,” Carina said.

“That’s right. They had a boy whom they named Menelik. Solomon gave the priestess to Sheba to be her handmaiden. She had little choice but to obey. The boys grew up together, but Menelik remained the favored son. When they were teenagers, Melqart, at the bidding of his mother, persuaded his half brother to steal a treasured object from the Temple. Menelik eventually returned it, and both boys were forgiven by their father, but he enlisted them into the Phoenician navy through his friend Hiram.”

“What was this treasured object?”

“The Ark of the Covenant. More important, the original Ten Commandments that were contained in the Ark.”

“The clay tablets Moses brought down from the Mount?”