Another clue alerts Caspar to the fact that not only have directions been reversed but the distances mentioned in the parchment must be halved. This narrows his search to the wilderness area behind the Dead Sea, where the border between Jordan and Israel is imprecisely defined and his search takes him into the rugged terrain on the Jordanian side.
No sooner has he located the crucial third parchment than he is spotted by a border patrol and taken for a narcotics smuggler. Escaping with difficulty over the Dead Sea, he reaches the kibbutz where his friends are camped.