Kitabı oku: «The Exodus Quest»
WILL ADAMS
The Exodus Quest
In fond memory of my friend and cousin Mark Petre
Contents
Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Chapter Thirty-Nine Chapter Forty Chapter Forty-One Chapter Forty-Two Chapter Forty-Three Chapter Forty-Four Chapter Forty-Five Chapter Forty-Six Chapter Forty-Seven Chapter Forty-Eight Chapter Forty-Nine Chapter Fifty Chapter Fifty-One Chapter Fifty-Two Chapter Fifty-Three Chapter Fifty-Four Chapter Fifty-Five Chapter Fifty-Six Chapter Fifty-Seven Epilogue Acknowledgements About the Author Also by Will Adams Copyright About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
The southern shore of Lake Mariut, AD 415
The plaster had dried at last. Marcus scooped up handfuls of dirt and sand from the floor, smeared them across the fresh white surface until it was dulled and dark and virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the wall. He held his oil lamp close to examine it, added more dirt where needed until satisfied, though in truth it needed the eyes of a younger man. A last walk through the old, familiar passages and chambers, bidding farewell to his comrades and ancestors in the catacombs, to a lifetime of memories, then up the steps and out.
Late afternoon already. No time to waste.
He closed the wooden hatch, shovelled sand and stone down on it. The crash and scatter as it landed, the swish of robes, the crunch of his iron-shod spade. He began to hear in these noises the distant chanting of a mob. It grew so strong, so convincing, he paused to listen. But now there was only silence, save for his heavy breathing, the hammer of his heart, the trickle of settling sand.
Nothing but the fears of a solitary old man.
The sun was low in the west, tinting orange. They usually came by night, as evildoers will, though they were growing bolder all the time. He’d seen strange faces in the harbour that morning. One-time friends muttering amongst themselves. People whose diseases he’d treated without thought for his own safety looking at him like contagion.
He began to shovel again, faster and faster, to quell the panic before it could overwhelm him.
He’d thought they’d be able to ride it out. Their community had survived many previous pogroms and wars, after all. He’d imagined, foolishly, that their ideas would prevail in the end because they were so much stronger and more rational than the pious cruel nonsense of the so-called right-thinking. But he’d been wrong. It was human nature, when fears were stirred, that reason lost all power.
Poor Hypatia! That beautiful, wise and gentle woman. They said her lynching had been ordered by Pope Cyril himself. Epiphanes had witnessed the whole thing. A mere boy; too young for such a sight. The mob led by that sanctimonious monster Peter the Reader. No surprise there. They’d torn her from her chariot, stripped her naked, dragged her to their church, cut her flesh from her bones with oyster-shells, then burned her remains.
Men of God they called themselves. How was it possible they couldn’t see what they truly were?
The sun had set. The night began to cool. His pace slowed. He was far from the prime of youth. But he didn’t stop altogether. The quicker he finished, the quicker he could set off, catch up his family and fellows in their quest for sanctuary near Hermopolis or perhaps even Chenoboskion, depending on how far this madness had spread. He’d sent them on ahead with all the scrolls and other treasured possessions they’d been able to carry, the accumulated wisdom of centuries. But he himself had stayed behind. They’d grown lax these past few years. It was no secret they had an underground complex here, he knew; not least because absurd rumours about their wealth and hidden treasures had found their way back to him. If these villains looked hard and long enough, they’d every chance of finding these steps, however well he buried them. That was why he’d plastered up the entrance to the baptism chamber, so that some small fraction of their knowledge might survive even if the underground complex itself was discovered. And maybe one day sanity would return, and they could too. If not himself, then his children or grandchildren. And if not them, then perhaps the people of a future age. A more rational, enlightened age. Maybe they’d appreciate the wisdom of the walls, not hate and vilify it.
He finished filling in the shaft, trod it down until it was hard to see. Time to go. The prospect dismayed him. He was too old for such adventures, too old to start again. All he’d ever sought in life was the peace in which to study his texts, learn the nature of the world. But that was now denied him by these swaggering cruel bullies who’d made it a sin even to think. You could see it in their eyes, the pleasure they took in the wanton exercise of their power. They wallowed in their villainy. They raised their hands up high as though the blood on them shone like virtue.
He was travelling light, just his robes, a small sack of provisions, a few coins in his purse. But he hadn’t walked ten minutes before he saw a glow over the ridge ahead. It meant nothing to him at first, too lost in private thoughts. But then he realized. Torches. Approaching from the harbour. The direction of the breeze changed and then he heard them. Men and women shouting, singing, jubilant in the anticipation of another lynching.
He hurried back the way he’d come, his heart pounding. Their settlement was on a gentle hill overlooking the lake. He reached the crown and saw the glow on every side, like a pyre just lit, flames licking up the tinder. A cry to his right. A rooftop began to blaze. A second and then a third. Their homes! Their lives! The clamour grew louder, closer. That hateful baying! How these people loved their work. He turned this way and that, seeking a path out, but everywhere he went, torches forced him back, penning him into an ever-smaller space.
The cry went up at last. He’d been seen. He turned and fled, but his old legs weren’t up to it, even though he knew the penalty of capture. And then they were all around him, their faces enflamed with bloodlust, and there was nothing more he could do save go with dignity and courage, try to shame them into compassion. Or, failing that, perhaps when they woke in the morning, they’d look back on their work this night with such horror and revulsion that others might be spared.
That would be something.
He fell to his knees on the rocky ground, his whole body trembling uncontrollably. Tears streamed down his cheeks. He began to pray.
ONE
I
Bab Sedra Street, Alexandria
Daniel Knox was walking north along Sharia Bab Sedra when he saw the earthenware bowl on the street-trader’s flapped-out tablecloth. It was filled with matchbooks and packets of white napkins, and it was propping up one end of a line of battered Arabic schoolbooks. His heart gave a little flutter; he suffered a moment’s déjà vu. He’d seen one like it before, he was sure of it. Somewhere interesting, too. For a few seconds he almost had the answer, but then it eluded him, and the feeling slowly faded, leaving him merely uneasy, unsure whether his mind was playing tricks.
He paused, crouched, picked up a garish plastic vase with wilting artificial yellow flowers, then a ragged geography textbook with all its pages falling out, so that out-of-date maps of Egypt’s topography and demographics fanned out over the tablecloth like a deck of cards swept by a magician’s hand.
‘Salaam alekum,’ nodded the trader. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old, made to look even younger by hand-me-down clothes at least two sizes too big.
‘Wa alekum es salaam,’ replied Knox.
‘You like this book, mister? You want to buy?’
Knox shrugged and put it back, then glanced around as though uninterested in anything he saw. But the young hawker only gave a crooked-toothed smile. He wasn’t a fool. Knox grinned self-deprecatingly and touched the earthenware bowl with his finger. ‘What’s this?’ he asked.
‘Sir has a fine eye,’ he said. ‘A wonderful antique from Alexandria’s rich history. The fruit bowl of Alexander the Great himself! Yes! Alexander the Great! No word of a lie.’
‘Alexander the Great?’ said Knox. ‘Surely not?’
‘No word of a lie,’ insisted the young man. ‘They find his body, you know. They find this in his tomb! Yes! The man who find Alexander, he is a man called Daniel Knox, he is my very good friend, he give this to me himself!’
Knox laughed. Since that particular adventure, he’d been everyone’s very good friend. ‘And you’re selling it out here on the street?’ he teased. ‘Surely if it belonged to Alexander, it’s worthy of the Cairo Museum itself!’ He picked it up, again felt that reprise of déjà vu, a curious tingling in his chest, a dryness at the back of his mouth, a slight pressure at the base of his cranium.
He turned the bowl around in his hands, enjoying the sensation of touch. He was no expert on ceramics, but all field archaeologists had a certain knowledge, not least because about nine out of every ten artefacts on any given site were some kind of pottery, a fragment from a plate, cup or jar, a shard from an oil lamp or perfume flask, perhaps even an ostracon, if it was your lucky day.
But this wasn’t broken. It was some seven inches in diameter and three inches deep, with a flat base and curved sides and no rim to speak of, so that you could hold it in both hands and drink directly from it. From the smooth texture, the clay had evidently been well sieved for grit and pebbles before it had been hard-fired. It was pinkish-grey, though coated with a paler wash that gave it a swirling texture, like cream just stirred into coffee. Maybe local provenance; maybe not. He’d need an expert to determine that. He had little more success with the dating. Fine-ware like oil lamps and expensive crockery had changed constantly with prevailing fashions, if only to show off the wealth of their owners; but coarse-ware like this had tended to keep its form, sometimes for centuries. Circa AD 50 at a guess, plus or minus a couple of hundred years. Or a couple of thousand. He put it back down, intending to walk away, but it just wouldn’t let him go. He squatted there, staring at it, rubbing his jaw, trying to read its message, work out how it had put its hook in him.
Knox knew how rare it was to find valuable artefacts in a street market. The hawkers were too shrewd to sell high-quality pieces that way, the antiquities police too observant. And there were artisans in the back streets of Alexandria and Cairo who could knock out convincing replicas in a heartbeat, if they thought they could fool a gullible tourist into parting with their cash. But this particular bowl seemed too dowdy to be worth the effort. ‘How much?’ he asked finally.
‘One thousand US,’ replied the young man without blinking.
Knox laughed again. Egyptians were expert at pricing the buyer, not the piece. Clearly he was looking unusually wealthy today. Wealthy and stupid. Again he made to walk away; again something stopped him. He touched it with his fingertip, reluctant to be drawn into a haggle. Once you started, it was rude not to finish, and Knox wasn’t at all sure he wanted this piece, even if he could get it cheap. If it was a genuine antiquity, after all, then buying it was illegal. If it was fake, then he’d feel annoyed with himself for days at being taken in, especially if his friends and colleagues ever got to hear about it. He shook his head decisively, and this time he did stand up.
‘Five hundred,’ said the young hawker hurriedly, sensing his fat fish slipping through his fingers. ‘I see you before. You a good man. I make you special price. Very special price.’
Knox shook his head. ‘Where did you get it?’ he asked.
‘It is from the tomb of Alexander the Great, I assure you! My friend give it to me because he is a very good—’
‘The truth,’ said Knox. ‘Or I walk away now.’
The boy’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. ‘Why I tell you this?’ he asked. ‘So you call the police?’
Knox fished in his back pocket for some cash, letting him see the banknotes. ‘How can I be confident it’s genuine unless you tell me where you got it?’ he asked.
The trader pulled a face, looked around to make sure he couldn’t be overheard. ‘A friend of my cousin works on an excavation,’ he murmured.
‘Which excavation?’ frowned Knox. ‘Who runs it?’
‘Foreigners.’
‘What kind of foreigners?’
He shrugged indifferently. ‘Foreigners.’
‘Where?’
‘South,’ he waved vaguely. ‘South of Mariut.’
Knox nodded. It made sense. Lake Mariut had been hemmed around by farms and settlements in ancient times, before the inflows from the Nile had silted up and the lake had started to shrink. He counted his money slowly. If this bowl had indeed come from an archaeological site, he had a duty to return it, or at least to let someone there know that they had a security problem. Thirty-five Egyptian pounds. He folded them between his thumb and forefinger. ‘South of the lake, you say?’ he frowned. ‘Where, exactly? I’ll need to know precisely if I’m to buy.’
The young man’s eyes refocused reluctantly from the money to Knox. A bitter expression soured his face, as though he realized he’d said too much already. He muttered an obscenity, gathered the four corners of his tablecloth, hoisted it up so that all his wares clattered together, hurried away. Knox made to follow, but a colossus of a man appeared from nowhere, stepped across his path. Knox tried to go around him, but the man simply moved sideways to block him, arms folded across his chest, a dry smile on his lips, inviting Knox to try something. And then it was too late anyway, the youngster swallowed up by crowds, taking his earthenware bowl with him.
Knox shrugged and let it go. It was almost certainly nothing.
Yes. Almost certainly.
II
The Eastern Desert, Middle Egypt
Police Inspector Naguib Hussein watched the hospital pathologist pull back a flap of the blue tarpaulin to reveal the desiccated body of the girl within. At least, Naguib assumed it was a girl, judging by her diminutive size, long hair, cheap jewellery and clothes, but in truth he couldn’t be sure. She’d been dead too long, buried out here in the baking hot sands of the Eastern Desert, mummified as she’d putrefied, the back of her head broken open and stuck fast by congealed gore to the tarpaulin.
‘Who found her?’ asked the pathologist.
‘One of the guides,’ said Naguib. ‘Apparently some tourists wanted a taste of the real desert.’ He gave an amused grunt. They’d got that, all right.
‘And she was just lying here?’
‘They saw the tarpaulin first. Then her foot. The rest of her was still hidden.’
‘Last night’s windstorm must have uncovered her.’
‘And covered any tracks, too,’ agreed Naguib. He watched with folded arms as the pathologist continued his preliminary assessment, examining her scalp, her eyes, her cheeks and her ears, manipulating her lower jaw back and forth to open her mouth, probing a spatula deep inside, scraping froth and grit and sand from the dried-out membrane of her tongue, cheeks and throat. He closed her mouth again, studied her neck, her collarbones, the bulging, dislocated right shoulder and her arms, folded awkwardly, almost coyly, down by her sides.
‘How old is she?’ asked Naguib.
‘Wait for my report.’
‘Please. I need something to work on.’
The pathologist sighed. ‘Thirteen, fourteen. Something like that. And her right shoulder shows signs of post-mortem dislocation.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Naguib. Out of professional vanity, he wanted the pathologist to know he’d spotted this himself, so he said: ‘I thought perhaps that rigor set in before she could be buried. Perhaps it set in with her arm thrown up above her head. Perhaps whoever buried her dislocated it when they were trying to wrap her up in the tarpaulin.’
‘Perhaps,’ agreed the pathologist. Evidently not a man for uninformed speculation.
‘What time would that give us after death?’
‘That depends,’ said the pathologist. ‘The hotter it is, the quicker rigor sets in, but the quicker it passes, too. And if she’d been running, say, or fighting, then it would be quicker.’
Naguib breathed in deep to quell any hint of impatience. ‘Approximately.’
‘Shoulders are typically the last muscle groups to develop rigor. Onset takes at least three hours, often six or seven. After that …’ He shook his head. ‘It can last for anything from another six hours to two days.’
‘But a minimum of three hours, yes?’
‘Usually. Though there are cases.’
‘There are always cases,’ said Naguib.
‘Yes.’ With his finger, the pathologist tickled out the fragile links of a chain around her neck, a silver charm hanging from it. A Coptic cross. He glanced around at Naguib, the two men no doubt sharing a single thought. Another dead Copt girl. That was all this region needed right now.
‘It’s a nice enough piece,’ muttered the pathologist.
‘Yes,’ agreed Naguib. Which argued against robbery. The pathologist lifted the girl’s skirts, but her underclothes, while ragged, were intact. No sign of sexual assault. No sign of any assault, indeed; except, of course, that the back of her skull had been smashed in. ‘Any indication how long she’s been here?’ he asked.
The pathologist shrugged. ‘I’d be guessing. I’ll need to get her back to base.’
Naguib nodded. That was fair enough. Desert corpses were notoriously tough. A month, a year, a decade; out here they all looked the same. ‘And the cause of death? The blow to her head, yes?’
‘Too early to say.’
Naguib pulled a face. ‘Come on. I won’t hold you to it.’
‘Everyone tells me that. And then they hold me to it.’
‘Okay. If not the blow to her head, maybe her neck was broken?’
The pathologist tapped his thumb against his knee, debating with himself whether to say anything or keep quiet. ‘You really want my best guess?’ he asked finally.
‘Yes.’
‘You won’t like it.’
‘Try me.’
The pathologist stood up. Hands on his hips, he looked around at the arid yellow sands of the Eastern Desert stretching away as far as the eye could see, shimmering with heat, broken only by the rugged Amarna cliffs. ‘Very well, then,’ he smiled, as though aware opportunities like this wouldn’t come his way too often. ‘I rather suspect she drowned.’
III
Knox found Omar Tawfiq kneeling on his office floor, the casing and innards of a computer spread out in front of him, a screwdriver in his hand, a smudge of grease on his cheek. ‘Don’t you already have enough to do?’ he asked.
‘Our computer people won’t come out until tomorrow.’
‘So hire new ones.’
‘New ones will charge more.’
‘Yes. Because they’ll come out when you need them.’
Omar shrugged, as if to accept the truth of this, though Knox doubted he’d act upon it. A young man who looked even younger, he’d recently been promoted interim head of the Supreme Council for Antiquities in Alexandria; but everyone knew that he’d got the job because Yusuf Abbas, the Cairo-based secretary general, wanted someone pliable and disposable he could bully while he manoeuvred one of his own trusted lieutenants into the permanent role. Even Omar knew this, but he was too diffident to resent it. Instead, he spent his time hiding from his bemused staff in his old office, filling his time with comfort-zone tasks like these. He stood, wiped his hands. ‘So what can I do for you, my friend?’
Knox hesitated. ‘I saw an old bowl in the market. Hard-fired. Well-levigated. Pinkish-grey with a white slip. Maybe seven inches in diameter.’
‘That could be anything.’
‘Yes. But it gave me that feeling, you know?’
Omar nodded seriously, as though he had respect for Knox’s feelings. ‘You’re here to check our database?’
‘If that’s possible.’
‘Of course.’ Omar was proud of his database. Building it had been his main responsibility before his unexpected promotion. ‘Use Maha’s office. She’s away today.’
They walked through together. Omar sat at her desk. ‘Give me a minute,’ he said.
Knox nodded and walked to the window, looked down at his Jeep. It had cost him a fortune to have it repaired after the Alexander business, but it had been good to him over the years, and he was glad of his decision.
‘Any word from Gaille?’ asked Omar.
‘No.’
‘Do you know when’s she coming back?’
‘When she’s finished, I imagine.’
Omar’s cheeks reddened. ‘All set,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry,’ sighed Knox. ‘I didn’t mean to snap.’
‘It’s okay.’
‘It’s just, everyone keeps asking, you know?’
‘That’s because we like her so much. Because we like you both.’
‘Thanks,’ said Knox. He began working his way through the database, colour and black-and-white photos of cups, plates, figurines, funerary lamps. Mostly, he flipped past them without a second glance, the old computer groaning and sighing as it strained to keep up. But every so often an image would catch his eye. Yet nothing quite matched. Ancient artefacts were like this. The closer you looked, the more potential points of difference you found.
Omar came back in with a jug of water and two glasses on a tray. ‘Any luck?’
‘Not yet.’ He finished the database. ‘Is that it?’
‘Of local provenance, yes.’
‘And non local?’
Omar sighed. ‘I wrote to a number of museums and universities when I was setting this up. I didn’t get much of a response at the time. Since my recent appointment, however …’
Knox laughed. ‘What a surprise.’
‘But we haven’t entered the data yet. All we have are CDs and paperwork.’
‘May I see?’
Omar opened the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet, pulled out a cardboard box of CDs. ‘They’re not in any order,’ he warned.
‘That’s okay,’ said Knox. He slid one into the computer. The chuntering grew louder. A page of thumbnails appeared. Fragments of papyrus and linen cloth. He clicked to the next page, and then the third. The ceramics, when he found them, were colourful and patterned, nothing like what he was looking for.
‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ said Omar.
‘Thanks.’ The second CD was of Roman-era statuary, the third of jewellery, the fourth corrupt. Knox’s mind began to wander, triggered perhaps by Omar’s earlier question. A sudden memory of Gaille, taking breakfast one morning on the Nile Corniche in Minya: the way she licked her upper lip free of the slight glaze from her pastry, her dark hair spilled forwards, her smile as she caught him watching.
The eighth CD was an anatomy lecture demonstrating how to distinguish manual labourers from the idle rich by bone thickness and spine curvature.
Gaille’s mobile had rung that morning in Minya. She’d checked the number, shifted in her seat, turning herself away from him to hold a stilted conversation that she’d quickly ended by promising to call back later.
‘Who was that?’ he’d asked.
‘No one.’
‘You want to get on to your service provider, if you keep getting calls from people who don’t exist.’
A reluctant sigh. ‘Fatima.’
‘Fatima?’ An unexpected stab of jealousy. Fatima was his friend. He’d introduced the two of them barely a week before. ‘What did she want?’
‘I guess she’d heard about Siwa being postponed.’
‘You guess?’
‘Fine. She’d heard about it.’
‘And she rang to commiserate, did she?’
‘You remember how interested she was in my image software?’
The eleventh CD was of Islamic artefacts. The twelfth was of silver and golden coins.
‘She wants you to go and work for her?’
‘Siwa’s not exactly about to happen, is it?’ Gaille had said. ‘And I hate doing nothing, especially on a salary. I hate being a drain.’
‘You’re not a drain,’ he’d said bleakly. ‘How could you think yourself a drain?’
‘It’s how I feel.’
The thirteenth CD was of pre-dynastic tomb paintings. He started checking the fourteenth on autopilot. He’d got halfway through when he sensed he’d missed something. He paged back to the previous screen, then the one before. And there it was, top right, the twin of the bowl he’d seen, only upside down, resting on its rim. Same shape, same colour, same texture, same patterning. But there was no description of it, only reference numbers.
He fetched Omar, who pulled a ring binder from the filing cabinet. Knox read out the reference numbers while he flipped through the pages, ran his finger down the entries, came to the right one, frowned in puzzlement. ‘But that can’t be right,’ he said. ‘It’s not even a bowl.’
‘What is it, then?’
‘A lid. A storage jar lid.’
Knox grunted. Obvious, now that Omar pointed it out. Not that it helped much. Egypt had been the breadbasket of the ancient world. Huge quantities of produce had passed through Alexandria’s multiple harbours. Making jars to store and transport it had been a vast industry. ‘My mistake,’ he agreed.
His admission did little to mollify Omar. ‘But it’s not from anywhere near here,’ he said. ‘It’s not even from Egypt.’
‘Where, then?’
He squinted at Knox, as though he suspected himself the victim of a bad joke. ‘Qumran,’ he said flatly. ‘It’s what the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in.’
TWO
I
Assiut Railway Station, Middle Egypt
Gaille Bonnard was beginning to regret coming inside the station to meet Charles Stafford and his party. She usually enjoyed crowds, the clamour and camaraderie, especially here in Middle Egypt, with its effusively friendly people, not yet soured by overexposure to tourists. But tensions had grown palpably over recent weeks. A protest march was even taking place that afternoon elsewhere in the city, which presumably explained why she could see only three men from the Central Security Forces on the platform, as opposed to the usual flood of uniforms. To make matters worse, an earlier train had broken down, so twice the usual number of passengers were waiting to board, all girding themselves for the inevitable squabbles over seats.
The tracks started to rattle. Vermin scurried. People manoeuvred for position. The ancient train rolled in, windows already being lowered, doors crashing open, passengers spilling out, laden with belongings, fighting through the scrum. Hawkers walked along the line of windows offering translucent bags of baladi bread, paper cones packed with seeds, sesame bars, sweets and drinks.
Away down the platform, a strikingly good-looking thirty-something man emerged from the first-class carriage. Charles Stafford. Despite his two-day stubble, she recognized him at once from the jacket photographs on the books Fatima had lent her the night before. She’d skimmed through them out of courtesy, though they were the kind of populist history she deplored – wild speculation backed by outrageously selective use of the evidence. Conspiracies everywhere, secret societies, lost treasures waiting beneath every mound; and never a dissenting voice to be heard, unless it could be ridiculed and dismissed.
Stafford paused to put on a pair of mirror shades, then hoisted a black leather laptop case to his shoulder and descended onto the platform. A stumpy young woman in a navy-blue suit came after him, tucking wilful strands of bright-red hair back beneath her floral headscarf. And an Egyptian porter followed behind, struggling beneath mounds of matching brown-leather luggage.
An elderly woman stumbled against Stafford as he pushed his way through the crowd. His laptop swung and clipped a young boy around the ear. The boy saw instantly how wealthy Stafford looked and promptly started bawling. A man in dirty-brown robes said something curt to Stafford, who waved him arrogantly away. The boy bawled even more loudly. Stafford sighed heavily and glanced around at the redhead, evidently expecting her to sort it out. She stooped, examined the boy’s ear, clucked sympathetically, slipped him a banknote. He couldn’t suppress his grin as he danced off. But the man in the brown robes was still feeling stung from Stafford’s dismissal, and the transaction only irritated him further. He declared loudly that foreigners evidently now thought they could batter Egyptian children at will, then pay their way out of it.
The redhead gave an uncertain smile and tried to back away, but the man’s words struck a chord with the crowd, and a cordon formed, trapping them inside, the atmosphere turning ugly. Stafford tried to barge his way out, but someone jolted him hard enough that his shades came off. He grabbed for them but they fell to the ground. A moment later Gaille heard the crunch of glass as they went underfoot. A scornful laugh rang out.
Gaille glanced anxiously over at the three CSF men, but they were walking away into the ticket hall, heads ducked, wanting nothing to do with this. Fear flared hot in her chest as she debated what to do. This wasn’t her problem. No one even knew she was here. Her 4x4 was parked directly outside. She hesitated just a moment longer, then turned and hurried out.
II
‘But it’s just a lid,’ protested Omar, as he hurried down the SCA’s front steps after Knox. ‘There must have been thousands like it. How can you be so certain it came from Qumran?’
Knox unlocked his Jeep, climbed in. ‘Because it’s the only place Dead Sea Scroll jars have ever been found,’ he told Omar. ‘At least, there was one other found in Jericho, just a few miles north, and maybe another at Masada, also close by. Other than that …’
‘But it looked perfectly ordinary.’
‘It may have looked it,’ replied Knox, waiting for a van to pass before pulling out. ‘But you have to understand something. Two thousand years ago, jars were used either for transporting goods or for storing them. Transportation jars were typically amphorae, with big handles to make them easier to heft about, and robust, because they had to withstand a lot of knocks, and cylindrical, because that made them more efficient to stack.’ He turned right at the end of the street, then sharp left. ‘But once the goods reached their final destination, they were decanted into storage jars with rounded bottoms that bedded into sandy floors and were easy to tip whenever people needed to pour out their contents. They also had long necks and narrow mouths so that they could be corked and their contents kept fresh. But the Dead Sea Scroll jars weren’t like that. They had flat bottoms and stubby necks and fat mouths, and there was a very good reason for that.’
‘Which was?’
His brakes sang as he slowed for a tram clanking across the junction ahead. ‘How much do you know about Qumran?’ he asked.
‘It was occupied by the Essenes, wasn’t it?’ said Omar. ‘That Jewish sect. Though haven’t I heard people claim that it was a villa or a fort or something?’
‘They’ve suggested it,’ agreed Knox, who’d been fascinated by the place since a family holiday there as a child. ‘I think they’re wrong, though. I mean, Pliny said that the Essenes lived on the northwest of the Dead Sea. If not Qumran itself, then very close to it, and no one has found a convincing alternative. One expert put it very succinctly: Either Qumran and the scrolls were both Essene, or we have a quite astonishing coincidence: Two major religious communities living almost on top of each other, sharing similar views and rituals, one of which was described by ancient authors yet left no physical traces; while the other was somehow ignored by all our sources but left extensive ruins and documents.’
‘So Qumran was occupied by the Essenes,’ agreed Omar. ‘That doesn’t explain why their jars are unique.’
‘The Essenes were fanatical about ritual purity,’ said Knox. ‘The slightest thing could render a pure receptacle impure. A drop of rain, a tumbling insect, an inappropriate spillage. And if it did, it was a major headache. I mean, if a receptacle became tainted, then obviously anything in it was immediately tainted too, and had to be chucked. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Liquids and grain are poured in a stream, you see, so the real issue was whether the impurity climbed back up that stream and infected the storage jar too. The Pharisees and other Jewish sects took a relaxed view, but the Essenes believed that everything would be contaminated, so they couldn’t risk pouring out contents in a stream. Instead, they’d lift the lid a little, dip in a measuring cup and transfer it that way. And because they no longer had to tip their storage jars, they could have flat bottoms, which made them much more stable; and short necks and fat mouths, too, to make them easier to dip into.’
‘And jars with fat mouths need bowls for lids,’ grinned Omar.
‘Exactly,’ nodded Knox. They were nearing the Desert Road Junction. He hunkered down in his seat to scan the road-signs. A quick review of the records in Omar’s office had shown just four foreign-run sites in the vicinity of Lake Mariut, but there was nothing currently happening at Philoxinite, Taposiris Magna or Abu Mina; which left only one worthwhile candidate: a group called the Texas Society of Biblical Archaeology excavating out near Borg el-Arab.
‘So what would the lid be doing here?’ asked Omar, once Knox had navigated them onto the right road.
‘It may well have come centuries ago,’ shrugged Knox. ‘The Dead Sea Scrolls were known about in antiquity. We have reports from the second, third and fourth centuries of texts being found in Qumran caves. Origen even used them to write his Hexapla.’
‘His what?’
‘The Bible written out six times in parallel columns. The first in Hebrew, the second in Greek, and then a series of edited versions. It helped other scholars compare and contrast the various versions. But the point is, he relied heavily on Dead Sea Scrolls.’
‘And you think they might have been brought here in this jar of yours?’
‘It’s got to be a possibility.’
Omar swallowed audibly. ‘You don’t think we might actually find … scrolls, do you?’
Knox laughed. ‘Don’t get your hopes up. One of the scrolls was inscribed on copper – a treasure map, would you believe? But all the rest were on parchment or papyrus. Alexandria’s climate would have chewed those up centuries ago. Besides, there’s another explanation. A more intriguing one. To me, at least.’
‘Go on.’
‘We’re pretty sure the Essenes didn’t live only in Qumran,’ said Knox. ‘Josephus mentions an Essene Gate in Jerusalem, for example, and several scrolls laid down rules for how Essenes should live outside Qumran. Besides, we know there were several thousand Essenes, whereas Qumran could only hold a few hundred. So obviously there were other communities.’
‘You mean here? In Alexandria?’
Knox grinned. ‘Have you ever heard of the Therapeutae?’ he asked.
III
The Reverend Ernest Peterson surreptitiously dabbed his brow. He didn’t like being seen to sweat. He didn’t like showing any sign of weakness. Fifty-two years old, ramrod straight, grizzled hair, fierce eyes, a hawk’s nose. Never without his copy of the King James Version. Never without his preacher’s livery. A man proud to show through his own unyielding purpose a faint glimmer of the irresistible strength of God. Yet the sweat kept coming. It wasn’t just the humidity in this cramped, dark underground labyrinth. It was the vertiginous sense of what he was on the verge of achieving.
Thirty-odd years before, Peterson had been a punk – a petty thief, always in trouble with the law. Under arrest one night, dozing on a police bench, glancing up at a Heinrich Hofmann print of Christ hanging high up on the wall, his heart suddenly starting to race crazily, like the most violent panic attack, but which suddenly dissolved into the most intense and serene vision of his life, a blinding white light, an epiphany. He’d stumbled from the bench after it was done, searching for a reflective surface in which to see what imprint it had left upon him: bleached hair, charred skin, albino irises. To his astonishment, there’d been no physical change whatsoever. Yet it had changed him, all right. It had transformed him from within. For no man could look upon the face of Christ and remain untouched.
He dabbed his forehead once more, turned to Griffin. ‘Ready?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Then do it.’
He stood back as Griffin and Michael heaved a first block of stone from the false wall to reveal the open space behind that had been indicated by their probes. Griffin reached in his torch, twisted it this way and that, illuminating a large chamber that flickered with shadow and colour, provoking murmurs and gasps from his young students. But Peterson only nodded at Nathan and Michael to continue dismantling the wall.
It said in the Good Book: The Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh upon outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. The Lord had looked upon his heart that night in custody. The Lord had seen something in him that even he hadn’t realized was there.
A sufficient gap had been created for Griffin to step through, but Peterson put a hand on his shoulder. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m going first.’
‘It should be an archaeologist.’
‘I’m going first,’ repeated Peterson. He rested his palm on the rough crumbled mortar, stepped through into the new chamber.
He’d not merely been transformed that night; he’d been given purpose. Of all God’s gifts, perhaps the greatest. It hadn’t been easy. He’d wasted years on the medieval make-believe of the Turin Shroud and the Veil of Veronica. Yet he’d never once doubted or contemplated giving in. The Lord didn’t hand out such missions on a whim. And finally he’d found the right lead, had followed it relentlessly, was now within touching distance. He felt it. He knew it. The time of the light was coming, certain as sunrise.
He shone his torch around the chamber. Thirty paces long, ten wide. Everything covered in dust. A deep bath embedded in the floor, a wide flight of steps leading down into it, divided by a low stone wall, so that community members could descend unclean down one side and emerge purified from the other. Walls plastered and painted in antiquity; pigments dulled by neglect, cobwebs, dirt and wormcasts. He brushed an area with his hand, shone his torch obliquely at the revealed scene. A woman in blue with a child on her lap. He had to blink away tears.
‘Reverend! Look!’
He glanced around to see Marcia shining her torch up at the domed ceiling, painted to represent the sky, a glowing orange sun near its apex, constellations of yellow stars, a creamy full moon, red coals of planets. Day and night together. Joy effervesced in his heart as Peterson stared up. He fell to his knees in gratitude and adoration. ‘Let us give thanks,’ he said. He gazed around until all his young students had fallen to their knees. And then even Griffin had to follow, compelled by the power of the group.
‘I know that my redeemer liveth,’ cried Peterson, his voice reverberating loudly around the chamber. ‘And that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.’
Yes, he exulted. In my flesh shall I see God.
IV
Naguib Hussein was on his way back to the Mallawi police station to make his report when he decided it might be as well to make a detour to Amarna, ask the people there if they’d heard anything about a missing young girl, if only to take the opportunity of introducing himself.
A tourist policeman was fooling around on his motorbike, gunning his engine, braking sharply, spraying huge arcs of dust and sand with his back wheel: entertainment for his officer and two comrades drinking chai on wooden benches beneath a makeshift sunshade. Naguib braced himself. Relations between the services were strained around here, each looking down on the other. He waited for the officer to acknowledge his arrival, but he continued to ignore him until Naguib’s cheeks grew warm. He scowled and walked across the officer’s line of sight, giving him no choice but to notice him, though he still didn’t get up. ‘Yes?’ he asked.
Naguib nodded at the eastern crescent of hills. ‘I’ve just come from the desert,’ he said.
‘If they’ll pay you for it.’
‘One of the guides took some tourists out last night. They found a girl.’
‘A girl?’ frowned the officer. ‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean they found her body. Wrapped in tarpaulin.’
The officer set down his glass, stood up. A tall man, beautifully presented, razor-cut hair, manicured nails, a silken moustache, making the most of his uniform. ‘I hadn’t heard,’ he said, suddenly earnest, offering his hand. ‘Captain Khaled Osman, at your service.’
‘Inspector Naguib Hussein.’
‘Are you new here, Inspector? I don’t recall seeing you before.’
‘Six weeks,’ admitted Naguib. ‘I was in Minya before.’
‘You must have done something pretty bad to get posted here.’
Naguib gave a wry grunt. He’d been investigating military equipment on the black market, hadn’t dropped it even when the trail had led him to the top, not even after he’d been warned off. He hated Egypt’s culture of corruption. ‘They told me it was a promotion,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ agreed Khaled. ‘They told me that, too.’ He glanced around. ‘You’ll join us for some chai?’
Naguib shook his head. ‘I need to get back to the station. I just thought I’d ask if you’d heard anything.’
Khaled shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll ask around, if you like. Keep an ear to the ground.’
‘Thank you,’ said Naguib. ‘I’d be most grateful.’ He returned to his Lada feeling cheered. His wife always said that a drop of courtesy could solve a world of ills. She knew what she was talking about, his wife.
THREE
I
Gaille unlocked the Discovery and climbed inside. She sat there for a moment, breathing hard, studying herself in the rear-view. Her tan, headscarf and local clothes gave her anonymity if she wanted it. She could drive away and no one would ever know. Only that wasn’t quite true. She’d know.
She grabbed her camera from the glove compartment, hurried out and back through the ticket hall where the police were still hiding, her heart pounding, chills fluttering across her skin. Stafford and his companions were still hemmed in on the platform, wrestling for their luggage with two youths. She stepped up onto a bench, wielded her camera like a weapon. ‘CNN!’ she cried out. ‘Al Jazeera!’ Attention shifted instantly to her, a wave of hostility, quickly replaced by fear, people instinctively ducking their faces, not wanting to be captured on film. She panned around to the men from the Central Security Forces. The officer scowled and snapped out orders. His men hurried out, opened a precarious corridor with their batons that Stafford, the redhead and Gaille all hurried down, out to the Discovery.
‘What are you waiting for?’ yelled Stafford, slamming the passenger door behind him. ‘Get us out of here.’
‘What about your porter?’
‘Fuck him,’ snapped Stafford. ‘Just get us out of here, will you?’
‘But—’
‘He’s one of them, isn’t he? He can look after himself.’
The CSF men were waving them away, as though they couldn’t guarantee them protection much longer. Gaille thrust the Discovery into gear, surged away. Traffic was gridlocked the way she wanted to go; she turned left instead. The streets quickly narrowed, aged, turned into a bazaar, forcing her to slow right down, wend her way between irritated shoppers. With all the twists and turns, she quickly became disoriented. She leaned forwards in her seat, scanning the skyline for a familiar landmark by which to navigate.
II
Captain Khaled Osman kept his smile fixed to his lips as he waved off the police inspector. But it vanished when he turned to his men. ‘Time for a patrol, I think,’ he said. ‘Faisal. Nasser. Abdullah. Come with me, please.’
Khaled sat stiffly in the passenger seat as Nasser drove and Abdullah and Faisal cowered in the back. There was silence apart from the blast of the engine. The silence of anger. The silence of fear. They reached the Northern Tombs. Khaled climbed out; his men followed, forming a desultory line, sagging like sacks of rice. He’d done his best to instil some pride of uniform in these men since being forcibly transferred into the tourist police out of the army, but it was futile, they were worthless, all they cared about was gouging baksheesh from the tourists. He walked back and forth in front of them, their heads bowed in shame like the miserable pups they were. ‘One job I give you!’ he spat. ‘One damned job! And you can’t even do that!’
‘But we did exactly what you—’
Khaled slapped Faisal across the cheek, the crack echoing off the cliff walls behind. ‘How could you have done?’ he yelled, saliva spraying over Faisal’s face. ‘They found her, didn’t they?’
A smile tweaked Abdullah’s lips, evidently relieved that Faisal was taking the brunt. Khaled grabbed his collar and clutched it so tightly that his face turned red and he started struggling for breath. ‘If this goes wrong …’ vowed Khaled. ‘If this goes wrong …’
‘We never wanted any part of this, sir,’ protested Faisal. ‘It was all your idea. Now look!’
‘Shut up!’ snarled Khaled, letting go of Abdullah, who gasped for breath, massaged his raw throat. ‘You want to spend your whole life poor? Is that what you want? This is our chance to be rich.’
‘Rich!’ scoffed Faisal.
‘Yes, rich.’
‘There’s nothing there, sir! Haven’t you realized that yet?’
‘You’re wrong,’ insisted Khaled. ‘It’s in there. I can smell it. One more week and it’ll be ours.’ He wagged a finger at them. ‘But no more mistakes. Understand? No more mistakes.’
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