Adam Palmer
The Moses Legacy

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street,

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

THE MOSES LEGACY. Copyright © Adam Palmer 2011. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

Adam Palmer asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Source ISBN: 9781847561848

Ebook Edition © APRIL 2011 ISBN: 9780007352340

Version: 2018-07-03

Dedication

For my cousin Avi, fellow writer and most generous source of encouragement, and to Ira who first put me on to this theme by introducing me to Freud’s theory on Moses and Akhenaten.

But mostly for my father.

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword

Prologue

‘Joshua, my time is coming and the mantle of leadership…

Chapter 1

Khamsin – the hot slow dry wind that blows in…

Chapter 2

‘I got the message at two in the morning,’ said…

Chapter 3

‘It’s a pity you didn’t find the rest,’ said Akil…

Chapter 4

‘This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate…

Chapter 5

‘How many years has it been?’ asked Harrison Carmichael as…

Chapter 6

Akil Mansoor had been true to his word about providing…

Chapter 7

Joel awoke in the men’s communal tent, sweating heavily. He…

Chapter 8

‘It’s definitely Proto-Sinaitic,’ said Daniel, struggling to contain his excitement.

Chapter 9

‘First of all, I have some good news. Carmichael is…

Chapter 10

‘We’re here,’ said Mansoor.

Chapter 11

‘Look, could you at least give me my phone back…

Chapter 12

‘This is where we keep all the artefacts that aren’t…

Chapter 13

‘They’re anti-Semitic, anti-American, anti-British and anti-Western. They’d like to wipe…

Chapter 14

‘You’ve got to be kidding!’

Chapter 15

Goliath was lying on the bed in his hotel room,…

Chapter 16

‘So you admit that you were at the house that…

Chapter 17

‘He was a friend of Lord Byron, you know,’ said…

Chapter 18

Goliath hardly noticed the streets of Cairo sweep by as…

Chapter 19

‘Well, I’m pleased to tell you, Professor Klein, that you…

Chapter 20

Sarit arrived in Cairo from Cyprus, entering the country using…

Chapter 21

‘I still don’t like it,’ said Daniel, feeling self-conscious as…

Chapter 22

The curator was sweating, but it wasn’t just from the…

Chapter 23

‘It couldn’t have come from the Aswan High Dam excavations,’…

Chapter 24

‘What could it possibly be?’ asked the consultant.

Chapter 25

‘“I will sing to Jehovah for he has…” and then…

Chapter 26

Once again, Goliath was afflicted by a feeling of failure.

Chapter 27

‘This is the famous Mernepteh stele,’ said Mansoor. ‘Made of…

Chapter 28

Sarit was back in her hotel room in Cairo, waiting…

Chapter 29

Daniel was hit by an unexpected blast of heat as…

Chapter 30

Goliath was looking at the entrance to the tomb that…

Chapter 31

‘The theory that Yuya was Joseph of the Old Testament…

Chapter 32

The office was busy when a six-page fax arrived at…

Chapter 33

‘It’s known to the locals as the Valley of the…

Chapter 34

Goliath had decided not to take the taxi across the…

Chapter 35

Gabrielle had been the first one to hear something going…

Chapter 36

Sarit had watched Daniel and the others drive across to…

Chapter 37

‘His neck’s been broken,’ said Mansoor. The sorrow in his…

Chapter 38

Driving at night along the Nile Valley was a dangerous…

Chapter 39

Ignoring the blood and struggling desperately not to let the…

Chapter 40

Sarit’s training had involved the advanced driving course, including night…

Chapter 41

‘My name is Daniel Klein!’ Daniel shouted. ‘I’m a British…

Chapter 42

The bitch! thought Goliath. The fucking evil bitch!

Chapter 43

‘It’s just a flesh wound,’ said Gabrielle with a smile,…

Chapter 44

Sarit arrived in Cairo sometime after four in the morning.

Chapter 45

Daniel had let Gabrielle do the talking. After a sleepless…

Chapter 46

‘Can you hear me?’

Chapter 47

On the felucca, the rest of the day drifted by…

Chapter 48

‘These are very serious charges, Miss Stewart,’ the police captain…

Chapter 49

Breakfast on board Walid’s boat was shakshouka – fried eggs…

Chapter 50

‘We thought we should warn you. If she was trying…

Chapter 51

‘I’m telling you – we didn’t have anything to do…

Chapter 52

Sarit was in the Wekalat Al-Balah Bazaar, wearing a jilbab…

Chapter 53

Six days after they had set out, Daniel and Gabrielle…

Chapter 54

He came through for me, Goliath was thinking as he…

Chapter 55

‘We can’t go by bus,’ Gabrielle was saying. ‘They’ll catch…

Chapter 56

‘Passport, please,’ said the Egyptian soldier.

Chapter 57

Mid-April was towards the end of the tourist season, at…

Chapter 58

‘I didn’t actually lose it,’ Sarit was explaining. ‘I just…

Chapter 59

Daniel had initially assumed that Walid was a local Luxor…

Chapter 60

Sarit had been sitting in the waiting area on the…

Chapter 61

‘Are you awake?’ asked Gabrielle.

Chapter 62

‘I’m telling you she’s dangerous.’

Chapter 63

It had taken three days on camels instead of the…

Chapter 64

Goliath was beginning to regret leaving the hospital. The burns…

Chapter 65

A trail of bullets from the Israeli patrol boat raked…

Chapter 66

It took Goliath somewhat longer to get to the Sphinx…

Chapter 67

Captain Ben-Dor had told them very little. Little as in…

Chapter 68

Na’if was struggling frantically for breath. He felt the bandaged…

Chapter 69

Daniel wondered if he should ask for a lawyer, but…

Chapter 70

Back in his cheap hotel room, Goliath was thinking.

Chapter 71

‘So what did he tell you?’ Daniel asked Gabrielle.

Chapter 72

‘So we still haven’t got a fix on Goliath,’ said…

Chapter 73

Participating in the open-air Samaritan Passover celebrations on Mount Gerizim…

Chapter 74

‘So you’re a veteran?’ Goliath said to the brash fifty-something…

Chapter 75

‘I, Joshua, son of Noon, of the tribe of Neferayim,…

Chapter 76

‘I’m looking for some friends of mine,’ said Goliath, holding…

Chapter 77

Daniel looked up from the papyrus at Gabrielle, expectantly. ‘It…

Chapter 78

‘Why did we let them get hold of the manuscript?’…

Chapter 79

‘Shall I wait for them?’ Daniel asked Gabrielle when she…

Chapter 80

‘You have to send me in there,’ Sarit told Dovi.

Chapter 81

‘Look, I know this is painful,’ said Daniel. ‘If you…

Chapter 82

‘Which bus do I need for the Hebrew University?’ Goliath…

Chapter 83

‘Maybe we should wait until they come back,’ said Daniel.

Chapter 84

Sarit never had been one for following orders. Besides, Dov…

Chapter 85

‘I assume you know who I am?’ Goliath said.

Chapter 86

There was an eerie silence in the Conservation Department when…

Chapter 87

‘Do not give him any sign that you are under…

Chapter 88

‘I’m telling you – I didn’t do it!’ Sarit explained…

Chapter 89

‘There’s something I don’t understand,’ said Goliath as they clambered…

Chapter 90

‘What the hell do you think you were playing at?’

Chapter 91

‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ said Daniel, still in a…

Chapter 92

‘Excuse me, I know this is going to sound awfully…

Chapter 93

Daniel had recovered his composure and was reading out loud.

Chapter 94

Finding the Snake Monument and the path leading to it…

Chapter 95

‘Now then,’ said Professor Fikri, ‘what is this fascinating academic…

Chapter 96

Goliath had taken the bus from Petra back to Amman,…

Chapter 97

‘The spores must have got reactivated at Petra and become…

Chapter 98

There was a look of solemnity on the faces of…

Chapter 99

‘What do you mean “an emergency”? Daniel asked, although he…

Chapter 100

Recognizing the encroaching danger in the professor’s approach, Audrey stood…

Chapter 101

‘So what is this organization that hates Israel and the…

Chapter 102

‘It says that the crossing is open till eight!’ Goliath…

Chapter 103

‘How far are we?’ asked Daniel.

Chapter 104

Goliath had made it into Israel and the Sea of…

Chapter 105

While Daniel and Gabrielle remained in the car, Sarit had…

Chapter 106

Goliath pulled up and got out of the car. He…

Epilogue

A couple of weeks later, on the morning of 19…

About the Author

About the Publisher

Foreword

Extensive research went into this book, during the course of which I made some amazing discoveries. The historical references herein are a mixture of known facts, conjecture by Egyptologists and my own fertile imagination. For those who are interested in separating the fact from the fiction, there is a wealth of material on Egyptology and Jewish history available from booksellers and in libraries (if our esteemed politicians can be persuaded to keep them open). I sincerely hope this book piques your interest in the subject.

Prologue

‘Joshua, my time is coming and the mantle of leadership will pass to you.’

The white-haired man was lying down in the cave on a bed of hay, looking at the one whom he had chosen as his successor. The younger man, a dark-haired forty-year-old, had torn his robes in mourning, while the older man yet lived. There were tears of grief in his eyes.

‘I will not leave your side, my teacher.’

Joshua had long known that this day would come, that one day the man who had led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt would be taken to God’s bosom and that he, the loyal disciple, would take over the mantle of leadership from the man to whom he owed so much. Yet he still felt ill-prepared for the duties that would fall upon him. It wasn’t just the fact that this once vibrant man was now reduced to the frail figure before him. It was also the terrifying sight of the red lesions on his mentor’s flesh that looked like fiery snakes.

‘I am not long for this earth, Joshua. When I die, you must bury me here and leave this place forever.’

From the valley below the sound of the murmuring of the people, as they awaited news of their leader, billowed up to the cave on the desert wind.

‘But why must we leave?’ asked Joshua. ‘Why can we not stay here and make peace with the Snake God?’

‘Because the Snake God is false!’ The old man’s voice resonated once again with the strength of his youth. The harsh tone instilled his disciple with fear and joy in equal measure. Despite his age and the ravages of disease, his vitality had not yet deserted him. ‘That is why Jehovah has punished us. It was for our appeasement of the Snake God that we were chastised with disease. Jehovah commanded us to have no other gods before him and yet we built that…’ he waved his arm towards the cave entrance, ‘…that monstrous idol to the Snake God.’

‘Then I shall tear down the monument and show the Snake God that we are loyal only to Jehovah,’ the younger man replied earnestly.

‘That is not enough. This place is cursed. You must lead the people across the river into the Promised Land, the land flowing with milk and honey. Jehovah your God will go with you.’

‘But we are weak. We cannot fight the Canaanites. They are giants and we were like grasshoppers in their eyes.’

A blazing fire lit up the old man’s eyes. ‘Enough! Do you really believe those foolish rantings? Did not Caleb tell us that Jehovah will give us strength to conquer them?’

‘But they are more numerous than we.’

The old man’s voice mellowed again, as if he had spent himself with his wrath and had no more fight left in him. ‘Then live in the hills not in the valleys, and leave them alone until you are ready. Bide your time, Joshua, just as I bided my time.’

Joshua nodded. But the teacher was not finished. Through his frailty, the old man raised his head and shoulders to speak one more time. Joshua leaned forward to place his ear next to the mouth of Moses.

‘Be strong and courageous. Because you will lead the people into the land which Jehovah promised their fathers… and you will make it their legacy.’

Chapter 1

Khamsin – the hot slow dry wind that blows in from the west.

Derived from the Arabic word for ‘fifty’ because according to Arab tradition, it is supposed to blow for fifty days during the course of the year.

The lean nineteen-year-old from West London was sweltering, unaccustomed to these desert conditions. At least the heat was dry, he thought; that made it just about bearable. All he had to do was remember to drink plenty of water. Having holidayed once in Sharm el-Sheikh, he was grateful that it wasn’t humid here like it was on the coast. But even so, it was weather for relaxing by a hotel swimming pool, not for working on an archaeological dig.

Now, in the heat of a morning in late March, over a dozen fit young students worked in their designated areas under the watchful eyes of Egyptian soldiers. Dressed in t-shirts and Bermuda shorts (referred to locally as ‘Islamic shorts’ because of their relative modesty), these enthusiastic volunteers came from all over the world: Egypt, Europe, South America, even Australia and New Zealand. Each volunteer was assigned an area of one metre square, marked out on a grid with flags stating their co-ordinates.

It was painstaking work. Armed with a metal trowel, plastic scoop and small-headed brush for cleaning larger finds, the youth dug out to a depth of six inches below the previous level, put the contents into his bucket and took it over to the two volunteers who operated the sieve screens. The pair were known as JJ because of their initials: Joel and Jane. Though similar in age – he at the end of his teens, she barely out of hers – they were an unlikely team: the wiry, ginger-haired nerd and the bottle blonde with a cheerleader body. But they had been thrown together by chance and now the two of them were inextricably linked by this coincidence of nomenclature.

Joel had been assigned to this relatively simple job because of his lack of experience, but it was a role that carried its fair share of responsibility. And as the volunteer from London turned up at his shoulder with a bucketful of sand and pebbles, Joel sighed – he wasn’t expecting anything to break the monotony of the day.

From a corner of the dig site, the work was being overseen by a blonde woman with a commanding presence and an almost Nordic appearance. She preferred to watch from a distance, because whenever she wandered around the site, people stopped their work to look at her, especially the men.

It was an understandable reaction – she was not a woman whom it was easy to ignore. Her back was both broad and straight, and her well-toned thighs and arms subtly muscular. But her torso was by no means devoid of body fat. In a woman of average height, this combination of muscle and fat would have made her look rather squat, but at five foot eleven she towered over most other women and was perfectly proportioned, especially in the eyes of men.

She was Gabrielle Gusack, a young Viennese archaeologist, and she was looking at the work with a mixture of exhaustion and pride. It had taken a lot of determination and a healthy dose of diplomacy to get this dig approved. The site was in a restricted military area at the foot of Mount Hashem el-Tarif, closely guarded by the Egyptian army due to its proximity to the Israeli border, and for this reason had never been subjected to proper archaeological excavation, despite hints and signs that it might be of historical significance.

After some delicate lobbying, the authorities gave the dig an official green light, albeit with some stringent security conditions attached; no mobile phones or cameras were to be brought to the site and only an official cameraman working for the Supreme Council of Antiquities would be allowed to take pictures. Thus the Egyptian authorities could control the flow of information that came out of the dig.

It was the SCA and its head, Akil Mansoor, that had proved to be the lynchpin of this whole project. Mansoor was not only an enthusiastic supporter of the project, but also Gabrielle’s mentor – she had done her PhD under him at the University of Cairo, and their friendship had proved enduring, if somewhat volatile at times. He was also a friend of her uncle, the much respected British biblical historian, Harrison Carmichael. Perhaps most important of all, he was the Vice Minister of Culture.

But not even he could override security considerations or the wishes of the Egyptian military, and he had been forced to engage in a certain amount of horse-trading as he gingerly tiptoed around the objections and won over the key decision-makers in the political and military hierarchy.

And now with the job of brokering the deal accomplished, he stayed away from the site and let the enthusiastic kids rise to the challenge of ‘painting the fence’ – with his young, attractive protégée playing the role of Tom Sawyer. Of course, if they found anything exciting, he would lose no time in going out there to make the official announcement in front of the cameras.

The volunteer who had just emptied his bucket into the sieve screen that Joel was operating didn’t wait to see the results, he simply returned to his digging. The screen consisted of a four-sided wooden box with a quarter-inch metal mesh ‘floor’ and a pair of handles that could be used to shake it.

Joel shook the screen now to begin the separation process, and as the sand fell away through the mesh, a large number of stone fragments remained. Normally the residue proved to be nothing but desert pebbles, but this time something caught his eye. Mindful of Gabrielle’s instruction to observe the residue before bagging it up, he looked more closely, blinked and then looked again.

It wasn’t that the stones were of any radically different material – quite the contrary: they were typical of the local stone – nor were they any larger than usual. And they certainly didn’t have the glint of noble metals or the crystalline glow of precious stones. No, it was just that these stones, or rather fragments of stone, seemed to have markings on them.

Joel picked one up and held it closer to get a better look. Turning it this way and that, he noticed that on one side it seemed to have some engraved shapes. The shapes were too simple to be hieroglyphics and they looked too unfamiliar to be any alphabet that he knew. But they did look like writing, not merely random markings.

He picked up another and looked at it, then another and then yet another. He noticed some repetition of the symbols, which confirmed his suspicion that there was nothing random about these engravings. They had been made purposively, by a human hand. And that made this a find!

He could just bag it up and mark it, leaving the others to figure out its significance in due course, but something about this discovery appealed to his ego. He wanted some small share of the kudos, even if someone else had dug it up, and someone more knowledgeable than himself would interpret it. And in any case, if it was something important, they would surely want to know about it now.

Joel realized that he had been daydreaming and Jane had noticed that something was up.

‘What?’ she asked, in that ever cheerful way of hers.

He held out one of the stone fragments and let her look at it, making sure that she didn’t actually get her hands on it.

‘Oh… my… God!’ she blurted out.

Fearing that others people would hear and start gathering round before he had had a chance to claim his glory, he threw the fragments into a plastic bag and raced over to Professor Gusack, suppressing the urge to cry out aloud like Archimedes on his homeward sprint from the public bath house.

While Joel was racing off to claim his share of the glory, Jane felt her breath constricting. Unlike Joel, she understood the full significance of what she had just seen. And she had to do something about it.

Mumbling some excuse about a stomach bug, she raced off to the latrines, which were little more than holes in the ground with individual booths around each drop. She closed and bolted the door behind her and whipped out her slender mobile phone from the pocket of her combat trousers. She was supposed to have handed it in to the security people at the entrance to the camp, but she had been forewarned of this in advance, so she had made sure she had two mobiles. The large flashy one she had handed over meekly with a look of disappointment. But this small thin one with its limited features, she had retained. She knew that the male soldiers wouldn’t frisk a woman, and they had no female soldiers at hand to do the job. So her secret was safe.

Safely ensconced in the latrine, she frantically keyed in a message and hit the ‘Send’ button. A minute later her message appeared on another phone six thousand miles away. It said: They found the stones.

Chapter 2

‘I got the message at two in the morning,’ said Arthur Morris.

They were seated round an oval cherrywood table in a small meeting room; two men in their fifties and a woman in her early forties. Morris was practically bald, except for two small, neatly combed patches on either side of the crown that were silver, but with some slight remnant of the brown that it had once been. His eyes were also brown and held just a hint of menace, warning friend and foe alike that he was a man not to be denied his wishes.

Behind him, a 555-foot obelisk glinted in the morning sun, forming a backdrop to their tense gathering.

‘Would they have had time to figure it out yet?’ asked the second man.

He was slightly older than Morris, with a short, neatly-trimmed beard. He was also taller and thinner. But the main contrast between them was the informality of his attire. A pair of light summer trousers and a beige sweater with the word ‘Georgetown’ written across it. Arthur Morris, on the other hand, was impeccably clad in a dark-blue suit. He favoured blue over grey and solid over pinstripe because he had read somewhere that they were signs of political conservatism.

‘She had to be brief in her text message, Professor. But the fact that she sent the message with no qualifications or reservations suggests that they probably did. And even if they didn’t, it won’t take them long. They’re not stupid and we must assume that things will start moving quickly from here on in.’

‘I don’t know how you can use Jane like that,’ said the woman uneasily. ‘She’s just a child.’

Morris thought for a moment before answering slowly and deliberately. ‘She doesn’t need to understand the whys and wherefores.’

‘But if she doesn’t even understand our cause, then how can she support it?’

The woman – Audrey Milne – had once been a trophy wife. Though she had long ceased to be the spring chicken who had once attracted her husband via his libido, she had retained her position in his heart and home by good grooming, a rigorous fitness regime, an adroit and skilful manner in the salon, and most important of all, a readiness to accept her husband’s serial infidelity with stoic equanimity.

Her husband had always known that she would never embarrass him professionally or personally and she knew how to host a dinner party and say the right things to the right people at the right time. With those social skills and her selective blindness to her husband’s extra-curricular activities, there was no need for him to cut her loose. And for her part, she had no reason to break loose. In their relationship, the whole was greater than the sum of the parts.

She was, however, no longer a trophy wife. She was now a trophy widow.

‘Jane understands family loyalty,’ said Morris. ‘That means she’s loyal to me. That’s all that matters.’

‘Carmichael might be a problem,’ said the professor. ‘Once the shit hits the fan.’

‘Why?’ asked Audrey Milne defensively. ‘A befuddled old man suffering from dementia…’

The professor looked at her irritably. He had never really liked her and the only reason she was even at this meeting was because she had inherited proprietorship of a chain of fifteen newspapers from her husband. He had served the cause well, but had died towards the end of the previous year. So now, if their work was to continue unhindered, they needed his widow on-board, or at least access to her newspapers.

The Internet was fine for creating publicity, but what it couldn’t do was create credibility. A prestigious newspaper, on the other hand, lent the imprimatur of its authority to any story that went out under its masthead. That made Audrey Milne a powerful ally in their cause.

‘He’s already getting agitated over the fact that his paper still hasn’t been published.’

‘But the journal is only published once a year.’

‘He knows that, Audrey. But he’s angry that we missed the deadline for the last edition.’

‘So tell him that it took a few months to do a proper peer review. He’s an academic. He’ll understand.’

‘I did that!’ the professor snapped. ‘But he’s still upset about it. At one point he even threatened to pull the plug and send it to another journal.’

Ignoring their bickering, Arthur Morris played with the handle of his walking stick. It was an elaborate, overly ornate affair made of lacquered mahogany topped with a bronze snake head.

‘But if they’ve found the stone fragments,’ said Audrey, ‘then doesn’t that make it irrelevant what Carmichael does?’

Morris looked at Audrey as if trying to weigh up the subtext to what she was saying.

‘Whatever comes out of Egypt, we can control. It may even lead us to solve the questions posed by Carmichael’s research. But Carmichael himself is a problem. He isn’t one of us and he would resent any attempt to recruit him.’

‘He probably wouldn’t even understand it,’ said Audrey, ‘in his mental state.’

‘We can’t take a chance,’ said the professor.

‘I agree.’ This was Morris. And his word on the issue was final.

‘So what are you going to do?’ asked Audrey.

‘We need to send someone to deal with the problem.’

Morris’s mobile beeped. He took it out and cast a quick glance at the message.

Foreign Aid Bill vote 20 mins.

‘Sorry,’ said Senator Morris, ‘we’ll have to cut this short.’

‘Who are you going to send?’ asked Audrey hesitantly.

‘Someone whose loyalty is unwavering and whose talent for doing the work is unequalled.’

Audrey closed her eyes as she uttered the next word. ‘Goliath?’

Chapter 3

‘It’s a pity you didn’t find the rest,’ said Akil Mansoor in a quiet monotone.

‘Assuming there is a “rest”,’ Gabrielle replied.

‘Of course there’s a rest!’

They were in the lab at the University of Cairo that the Supreme Council of Antiquities used for examining ancient Egyptian artefacts. Mansoor was somewhat shorter than Gabrielle and was showing signs of a middle-aged paunch. But his white hair gave him a kind of patrician gravitas that made others around him instantly recognize his academic authority.

‘We branched out radially from the square where it was found,’ Gabrielle explained, ‘stopping at forty-nine square metres.’

The air conditioning had failed again and so Mansoor left three buttons undone on his check shirt and used a handkerchief to wipe the area between his chin and neck. The assembled fragments of stone looked like an incomplete jigsaw puzzle. Mansoor moved to his left, as if to get a better view of the engraved characters on the surface, brushing against Gabrielle in the process. She didn’t say anything, but moved away quietly to the other side of the workbench to give him room to view the stone fragments.

Temporarily distracted from the arrangement of stones, he watched her athletic body, more with a sense of curiosity than outright lust. He remembered that she had been a competitive swimmer, winning a silver medal for Austria in the European Student Games. Even now, in her tight-fitting T-shirt and dark blue jeans, she cut a striking figure.

‘The distribution of fragments was like a V formation from the main group.’ Her words snapped him out of his thoughts. ‘That would suggest that the stones had been dropped or thrown from a certain position and smashed outwardly in the same direction. So working outward radially any further made no sense.’

‘You could have excavated another line of squares on the far side, to follow up your V distribution theory.’ His tone was impatient.

‘We did. And we found another two pieces. But they were both quite small, without any engravings. The only reason we think it might have formed part of the stone or stones is because of the shape. One of the students on the dig is a physics graduate and he said they looked like break lines. He also told us that lighter pieces travel further when they bounce.’

‘And?’ Mansoor prompted.

‘Well, he also said that with stone lighter means smaller, and that meant that if we found any more fragments, they’d be too small to physically handle to put them together.’

Mansoor shook his head. ‘We’ve got people who can do that with tweezers and glue. Besides, nowadays we scan them in 3-D and then examine them on a computer screen. I’m surprised your physics student didn’t tell you that.’

There was more than a hint of mockery in his tone.

‘I thought it was more important to bring back what we already found.’

‘I figured as much when you phoned me on your mad dash to Sharm el-Sheikh Airport.’

‘Well, it’s not as if the remaining stones are going to get up and walk away.’

Mansoor frowned at Gabrielle’s levity. She should have remembered that he was an utterly humourless man, and proud of the fact.

‘We can carry on today. I put the team on standby, waiting for your decision. I’d already pulled them off their regular duties to concentrate on this find. I didn’t want to put them back on the areas they were digging because they’re all too excited about—’

‘You told them your theory?’ he blurted out in a mixture of shock and fear.

‘I didn’t tell them,’ replied Gabrielle. Then after a few seconds she added, ‘But it must have been fairly obvious.’

‘To an overenthusiastic kid, perhaps. Not to a serious scholar.’

‘I think a credible case can be made out.’ Her tone was defensive. She knew that Mansoor was always sceptical about Big Theories.

‘Let’s keep some sense of proportion. So far all we can say is that we have fragments of two stone tablets with an old, somewhat simple linear script with repeated characters engraved on them.’

‘But it is definitely two stones?’ she asked cautiously.

‘We have seven corner pieces. That suggests at least two separate stones.’

‘What’s your assessment of the writing?’

Mansoor peered at it carefully. ‘Well, the style is a bit like hieroglyphics, but only the simplest hieroglyphics. In fact, some of the symbols are quite recognizable – if we can find the right light to view them in.’

‘So it can’t be a diplomatic document or treaty.’

‘If it was, it would be written in Akkadian cuneiform.’

‘And that also rules out Hittite and Sumerian.’

‘Exactly,’ Mansoor confirmed.

‘I’m wondering if this could be our Knossos.’

‘This isn’t Mycenaean or Minoan, Professor Gusack; I can assure you of that!’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ replied Gabrielle irritably. ‘I mean another syllable alphabet, like Linear A or Linear B.’

‘And I suppose you were hoping to be the next Michael Ventris.’

‘Well, it would be nice to follow in the footsteps of the man who rewrote ancient Greek history.’

‘Nice, perhaps. Likely, no.’

‘What makes you so sure?’

Mansoor’s voice took on a dour tone. ‘Well, as far as I can tell, there aren’t enough unique characters for a syllable alphabet.’

‘So it’s… what? A phonetic alphabet?’

‘Precisely. More specifically, an abjad. No vowels – just consonants.’

‘Aramaic? Phoenician?’ She didn’t bother to include Hebrew or Arabic in her question, because both were familiar to her and she could tell immediately that it wasn’t either.

‘It doesn’t look all that much like Aramaic. It might bear some vague comparison to Phoenician.’

‘Vague comparison?’ Gabrielle echoed.

‘It’s hard to tell until we can look at them under the right lighting conditions. I’ll get one of the photo experts to take some pictures and play around with the contrast then we’ll take another look.’

‘But what’s your gut instinct?’

Mansoor looked at Gabrielle with mild irritation. She was being pushy. He decided nevertheless to hazard a preliminary speculation.

‘It reminds me of the Serabit el-Khadim inscriptions.’

‘Proto-Sinaitic?’

‘Yes.’

Proto-Sinaitic was one of the oldest phonetic alphabets ever used – if not the oldest – dating back nearly 4,000 years. The name was derived from the Greek ‘proto’ meaning first and the place where the writings in the alphabet were initially discovered: Sinai. Some thirty engravings of the script had been found in Sinai at the turquoise mines at Serabit el-Khadim, once used as a penal colony by ancient Egypt.

‘Can you translate it?’

Mansoor was amused by Gabrielle’s eagerness.

‘Well, assuming I’m right, we know how it sounds, but not what it means.’

The letters of the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet had been matched to their equivalent letters in all the other main consonant alphabets – like Hebrew and Arabic – so the pronunciation was reasonably certain. But the underlying language was unknown. Was it an ancient form of Hebrew even older than the Bible itself? Some generic Semitic language that later split up into several different languages? Or was the same alphabet used for a whole variety of languages that were already different, and spoken all around the Middle East?

‘Maybe this could be our Rosetta Stone.’

The Rosetta Stone; written in three languages – hieroglyphs, Egyptian demotic script and ancient Greek – had facilitated the deciphering of hieroglyphics by enabling scholars to compare the Greek, which was already understood, to the unknown hieroglyphics and demotics.

‘The problem is that the writing on these fragments appears to be all one language, or at least one alphabet. In order to use it like the Rosetta Stone, we’d need a suitable candidate text in another language to compare it to.’

‘Well, if I’m right, then we already have one.’

Mansoor noticed the look on Gabrielle’s face and realized that she wasn’t backing down.

‘That’s a bit of a quantum leap in logic, Professor Gusack.’

‘Is it really? The site where we found it is a very good candidate for the real Mount Sinai—’

‘In the opinion of some people.’

‘According to the Bible, Moses smashed the original tablets of stone—’

‘If you take the Bible literally.’

‘And now we’ve found fragments of stone with ancient writing on them that appear to have been smashed, quite possibly deliberately.’

‘Well, even if you’re right, my biblical Hebrew isn’t that good. And neither is yours.’

‘Then maybe we should call in someone who has specialized knowledge of biblical languages.’

‘I’m not going to call in anyone from Israel,’ said Mansoor. ‘At least not at this stage. It would just be too controversial.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of an Israeli. The man I have in mind is British.’

‘Who?’

‘Daniel Klein.’

‘Klein?’ said Mansoor, not recognizing the name. ‘That sounds like a…’

‘He was my uncle’s star pupil,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Just like I was yours,’ she added with a twinkle in her eye.

Mansoor was silent for a moment. After a while, he nodded reluctantly. ‘Well, I guess if this Daniel Klein was Harrison Carmichael’s star pupil, then that’s good enough for me.’

‘Shall I call him?’ asked Gabrielle. ‘He knows me.’

‘Okay, you call him and introduce me and then put me on.’ Sensing her excitement, Mansoor added, ‘But let’s not tell him at this stage that we think we’ve found the original Ten Commandments.’

Chapter 4

‘This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt,’ Nathan Greenberg solemnly intoned.

In a house in Golders Green, Nathan Greenberg, father of three, was holding up a plate of three matzos, reciting a paragraph attesting to its significance. Nathan’s own parents and siblings lived in America, but he and his glamorous wife Julia had invited some of Julia’s extended family for the Passover seider.

The seider is a quasi-religious service performed at the dinner table before the festive meal marking the beginning of Passover in which Jewish families retell the story of the Exodus of the Israelite slaves from Egypt. ‘Bread of affliction’ was perhaps a misnomer, because it wasn’t the bread the Israelites ate when they were slaves in Egypt, but rather the bread prepared in haste when they were allowed to leave by the Egyptian Pharaoh whose will had been broken by the Ten Plagues.

But Nathan’s six-year-old daughter May and her twin sister Shari were not looking at the plate with the matzos. Their big, wide eyes were focused squarely on the area of the tablecloth just to the left of their father, under which he had placed half of the middle matzo that he had broken off and wrapped in a serviette less than a minute before. This was the afikoman – from the Greek meaning ‘leave it till later’ – so called because it was to be put aside and eaten at the end of the meal. According to a long-standing tradition, the children are supposed to ‘steal’ the afikoman and use it to bargain for presents and gifts from their beleaguered parents.

However, the twins were sitting too far away from their daddy to get their little hands on the prize, and any attempt to get up from their seats now would merely alert their father to the fact that juvenile intrigue was afoot. This was where Uncle Danny came in.

Daniel Klein, who had recently celebrated his fortieth birthday, was sitting to his brother-in-law’s immediate left. In addition to his ideal position, Daniel also had a background as an amateur magician, so it was only natural that the twins should enlist his aid in this conspiracy to commit grand larceny. However, he set a high price for putting his reputation on the line in such a criminal enterprise.

‘You must ask for a present for your little sister Romy, as well as your own presents.’

Little Romy was less than three and a half, and although she could stick up for herself, she couldn’t always explain what she wanted with quite the same clarity as her older siblings.

‘But she likes different things,’ said May.

‘And what if she wants something that costs too much money,’ said Shari, demonstrating her eminently practical side.

‘Well, why don’t you ask for a toy you can all play with?’ suggested Danny.

The twins rose to the occasion and after putting their heads together for half a minute, came up with the ideal solution.

‘We’ll ask for the play house,’ Shari announced.

The ‘play house’ in question was a colourful, flat-packed, plastic kit that they had seen on a previous visit to a toy shop and it was just the right size for all three of them to play in.

There was no time to waste now because Nathan had come to the end of his recital and was putting down the plate with the matzos, and this was the cue for the twins’ turn in the spotlight. According to an old tradition, the youngest person present at the seider asks the ‘Four Questions’ that kick-start the process of reciting the story of the Exodus. However, Romy was too young to read and so it fell on the twins to sing it as a duet. After a few nervous coughs, a shy exchange of eye contact and a little musical prompting from their mother, the twins started singing in perfect unison.

By the time they had got to the end, Daniel Klein had availed himself of the distraction to draw on his sleight-of-hand skills and take possession of the afikoman on behalf of his nieces. Oblivious to the theft that had taken place under his nose, Nathan graciously responded to his daughters’ ceremonial questions by reciting the reply.

‘We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt…’

The twins, who neither understood Aramaic nor cared for anything other than toys and getting to the food, cast a hopeful glance at Uncle Danny. He responded with a wink, prompting a smile from May and an unsuccessful attempt to wink back by Shari.

‘Al Matzot u’Morerim Yoch-lu-hu!’

They all shouted the last word of the pre-dinner service together because it meant ‘They shall eat.’ It was a desperate cry from a hungry family, anxious to get to the food after the long, drawn-out ceremony that preceded it.

Daniel Klein was starting the meal in the traditional way: dipping an egg in saltwater. The egg, like its Easter counterpart, signified rebirth and renewal – the hallmark of all religious-inspired spring festivals, whether Judeo-Christian or pagan. The saltwater symbolized the tears of the Israelite slaves.

By his own admission, Daniel was a bit of a geek, combining intellect and maturity with a childlike sense of fun. He still had the same curly brown hair that he had had as a kid and had always wanted to straighten. He was of an average height and build, and had recently started working out in the local gym to counter the first onset of middle-aged weight gain. Although he sometimes went abseiling and white-water rafting with his teenage nephews, he spent too long at the writing desk or in the lecture hall, and by his own strict standards and keen eye, his waistline was just beginning to suffer in consequence. Hence his decision – albeit at the suggestion of one of his nephews – to go on a diet and start working out. So far it was having a good effect. After an initial week of aching muscles, he was now starting to feel the benefit.

‘So why were they slaves?’ asked May, tugging at Uncle Danny’s sleeve.

Daniel swallowed and put the egg down before answering. ‘Well, it all started with Joseph’s brothers. You remember Joseph, the son of Jacob – the boy with eleven brothers.’

May nodded.

‘Didn’t he have a coat of many colours?’ asked Shari.

‘That’s right. His daddy gave him a coat of many colours, but that made all his brothers jealous. And also he told them about his dreams that they were all bowing down to him and that made them even more jealous and angry.’

‘So what did they do?’

‘Well, they were so mad with him that one day they sold him to some people as a slave. And then those people sold him to some Egyptians and then he ended up in prison in Egypt.’

‘So did he get out of the prison?’ asked Shari.

‘Well, hold on. Not so fast. When he was in the prison, two of the other prisoners had dreams. And they told Joseph about them and he told them what the dreams meant.’

‘What did they mean?’ Shari pressed him.

‘They predicted the future. He told one of them that he’d be let out of prison and would get his old job back – working as a servant for the pharaoh. And it came true.’

‘What about the other one?’ asked May.

‘Oh, I don’t remember. It’s not important.’ He didn’t want to upset them with the gory details about the baker being hanged and the birds pecking at his flesh.

His sister Julia and mother Helen were bringing in the boiled and fried fishcakes – Danny’s contribution to the meal. Realizing that the Passover seider is not the ideal time for sticking to a diet, Danny took one of each, embellishing the flavour with the horseradish and beetroot sauce that was the traditional accompaniment to the dish. The twins decided to steer clear of the boiled ones altogether and to give the hot sauce a miss. Instead they picked up the fishcakes in their fingers and ate them the way children do.

‘You didn’t tell us how Joseph got out of prison,’ said May.

No peace for the wicked, thought Danny.

‘Ah yes, of course. Well, one day the pharaoh had a dream and in his dream there were seven fat cows and seven thin cows, and the seven thin cows ate the seven fat cows…’

The twins started laughing.

‘It was just a dream,’ Daniel explained to this young pair of sceptics. ‘Anyway, after eating the fat cows, the thin cows didn’t get fat. They stayed just as thin as they were before.’

‘But how could they eat the fat cows and not get fat?’ Shari asked.

Daniel smiled wryly. If he knew the answer to that one, he’d be a billionaire.

‘That’s exactly what the pharaoh wanted to know. So he asked all his advisers what the dream meant and none of them knew. Then the servant who had been in jail told him that there was a man in prison who could interpret dreams. So Pharaoh had Joseph brought to him and Joseph told him what the dream meant.’

‘And what did it mean?’ Shari asked impatiently.

‘It meant that for seven years there would be lots of food. All the crops would grow and they would have more food than they knew what to do with.’

‘Why didn’t they sell it to other people?’ Shari probed.

‘Because they would all have too much food. It wasn’t just in Egypt. All the other countries would have lots of food. But then, Joseph said, after the first seven years there would be another seven years in which there wasn’t enough food. There would be famine and the people would starve.’

‘So why didn’t they save some of the food?’ Shari said.

‘That’s exactly what they did. And that was because Joseph told Pharaoh to do that. He said they should build storehouses for the grain and save it. Then, at the end of the seven years, they would have enough grain not only to feed themselves but also to sell to the people in other countries. And the king was so pleased with Joseph that he made him prime minister.’

The twins started laughing again. Their mirth gave Daniel a chance to tuck into the chicken soup with matzoball dumplings that his sister had just placed before him.

‘And what about his brothers?’ asked May, who was very finicky about details and didn’t like loose ends.

‘Well, when the famine started, they also needed food. So they went down to Egypt to buy grain… I mean, food.’

‘And did Joseph catch them?’

‘Sort of. He saw them and decided to play a trick on them.’

‘What sort of trick?’

‘He sold them the grain and then he put the money back in the sacks with the food.’

‘But why?’ asked May.

‘He was playing a joke on them.’

‘That’s silly,’ said Shari.

May got irritated at this. ‘You mustn’t say that. It’s the Bible.’

‘I can say what I like. It’s a free country.’

‘Shush. There’s no need to fight. Yes, you can say what you like. But don’t fight.’

Shari looked down guiltily. May pressed on with her questions. ‘But you still haven’t told us how the Israelites became slaves.’

‘Okay, let’s move on,’ said Danny. ‘Because of the famine, Joseph’s brothers and their wives and children all came down to Egypt to live as there was more food there. And as time went by they had children and grandchildren and there were more and more of them. But then one day the pharaoh died and a new pharaoh came along. But he didn’t remember Joseph and all the good things he’d done for them. He only saw that there were lots of these Israelites and he was afraid of them because he thought there were too many of them and they were getting too powerful. So he made them slaves.’

‘And then he tried to drown the babies,’ said May.

‘Only the boy babies,’ Danny explained. ‘He said that all new boy babies would be drowned, but not the girls.’

‘But why?’ asked May.

‘Because he thought there were too many of them.’

‘But why not the girls?’

Danny shrugged; he wasn’t sure how to explain a patriarchal society to a six-year-old. ‘Anyway, when Moses was born, his mother wanted to save him. So she put the baby in a basket and hid him in the bulrushes on the River Nile.’

‘What’s bulrushes?’ asked Shari.

‘Just something that grows by the river. Anyway, Pharaoh’s daughter found the basket with the baby in it and she was nice. She didn’t want anyone to kill the baby so she took it home and asked her father if she could adopt it and he said yes. So she adopted the baby and brought him up as an Egyptian prince. In fact she was the one who called him Moses.’

The girls were looking at him in awe, hanging on to every word and desperate to hear more about this fascinating story. But he paused to take a generous helping of roast chicken and potatoes and served the twins who were shy about taking food for themselves. Once the twins started tucking into their food, it gave Danny a chance to enjoy his own, at least for a while.

‘Tell us some more,’ said Shari.

‘Okay, where was I?’

‘You said that Moses was an Egyptian prince.’

‘Oh, yes. Well now, this is where the story gets interesting. One day, when he was grown-up, Moses saw an Egyptian slave master beating an Israelite slave. And he was so angry that he killed the Egyptian slave master. Then, after that, he saw two Israelites having a fight with each other and he stopped them fighting and told them not to fight.’

‘Like you told us,’ said May.

‘Exactly. But when he told them not to fight, one of them got angry and said to him, “Are you going to kill us like you killed that Egyptian?” And when he said that, Moses realized that someone had seen him. And if they’d seen him, then maybe someone else had also seen him, so he was afraid. So he ran away because he knew that the pharaoh would be angry. And then he came to the burning bush.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Shari.

‘It was a bush that was on fire. It was burning and burning, but it didn’t get burned up, it just carried on burning. And then God started talking to him from the bush.’

‘What did he say?’ asked May.

‘He told Moses that he was really an Israelite not an Egyptian and he must become the leader of the Israelites and tell Pharaoh to let them go. So he went to Pharaoh and said to him, “Let my people go.” But Pharaoh said no. So God sent the first plague.’

‘What was the first plague?’ asked May.

‘It was blood,’ said Daniel in his most theatrical tone, causing the girls to giggle. ‘God turned the River Nile into blood, so they couldn’t drink the water. And then when Pharaoh still refused to let the Israelites go free, God sent a plague of frogs. Can you imagine that? Frogs running around all over the place?’

He created a pair of imaginary frogs with his hands and showed them jumping all over the table. As the twins giggled, Daniel and his sister exchanged a smile. It was her quiet way of thanking him for keeping the little ones entertained.

By the time he’d got to the Egyptian army drowning in the Red Sea, Shari had gone off to the couch and fallen asleep and May was finding it hard to keep her eyes open. Julia came over and asked her if she wanted to go to bed. May nodded, gave Daniel a hug and then went off to her room with her mother.

Amidst all the noise and clatter in the room. Daniel almost missed the sound of his mobile phone ringing.

‘Hallo,’ he said, moving to the hallway so that he could conduct a proper conversation without having to strain to hear the other end of the line.

‘Hallo Danny,’ said a woman’s voice faintly.

‘Yes?’

‘It’s Gaby. Gaby Gusack.’ She didn’t normally call herself Gaby. But she made an exception for Danny – sometimes.

‘Oh, hi Gaby.’

Two memories swept over him in quick succession: the almost-forgotten fifteen-year-old girl with a crush on him from his days as a PhD student and the tall, supremely self-confident woman that he had worked with on a recent archaeological dig in Jerusalem.

‘Listen, I’m calling from the University of Cairo. I’m with Professor Akil Mansoor.’

‘The head of the Egyptian Antiquities Authority?’

‘That’s right. He’d like to speak to you.’

Daniel was familiar with some of Mansoor’s statements, as well as his deeds, and he hadn’t exactly warmed to him. But if Mansoor wanted to speak to him, then evidently there must be some matter of mutual interest, and Daniel had no desire to seem rude to anyone, let alone a fellow academic.

There was some movement at the other end and then a man’s voice came down the line.

‘This is Akil Mansoor. The reason I’m calling you is that we have found something out here that may be of interest to you and we’d like to fly you out here to take a look at it. It will all be at our expense of course, and first class, naturally.’

Daniel smiled at the attempt to bribe him with first-class travel. But he was intrigued and wanted to know more.

‘Can you give me some idea of what this is about?’

‘I would prefer to tell you when you get here. But I can promise you that it will be of considerable interest to you.’

Daniel felt awkward. ‘The problem is I have several lectures to give here and I also promised my nieces that I’d take them to Stonehenge as their birthday treat.’

‘It needn’t be a long visit. Possibly even just a day or two. We would be ready to reward you handsomely.’

‘It’s not a matter of money. It’s a matter of time. I mean, I can come, it’s just that it would be a lot easier if it were in a couple of weeks’ time.’

‘Unfortunately, time is of the essence. Besides, I think this is something you’d really be excited about if you saw it. I’d rather not say what it is over the phone, but I can tell you that it appears to be an artefact of considerable interest to Jewish history.’

Daniel sensed the excitement in Mansoor’s tone and he knew that this was a man who wouldn’t take no for an answer. The words could have been hyperbole, but the fact that a man of Mansoor’s position and prestige had called him out of the blue and extended such an invitation was telling in the extreme. And the invitation also had the imprimatur of Gaby behind it. That was the tie-breaker.

‘Okay,’ he said, intrigued.

Chapter 6

Akil Mansoor had been true to his word about providing first-class service to bring Daniel over to Egypt. As an internationally acclaimed scholar, Daniel was accustomed to flying. But he wasn’t used to changing his plans at short notice.

So now, Daniel was trying to relax in the First Class lounge of Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport. Bedazzled by its gold leaf adornments, he considered trying the aromatherapy treatment or shiatsu massage in the travel spa. But there wasn’t going to be enough time before boarding. His normal remedy for stress was a single glass of wine taken slowly and savoured, but he didn’t like drinking before a flight, so he stuck to mango juice.

The boarding call came quite soon after that. He followed the other priority passengers feeling somewhat calmer than he had been when he first arrived at the airport.

He didn’t know why now of all times, he should think of his ex-wife Charlotte. Perhaps because travelling by air reminded him of their near-constant travel between the two worlds of New York and London, bringing back a flood of memories and endless speculations about maybes and might-have-beens.

Once airborne, he decided that he wasn’t really interested in the in-flight entertainment. He always found it hard to follow the plotline of a movie on an aeroplane, but the one thing he could always do on a flight was read. So he took out his widescreen smartphone and carried on reading a legal thriller that he had started a few days ago, set in California but written by his favourite British author.

‘Is that the new one?’ asked the huge, muscular man in the seat next to him. He had piercing eyes that looked at Daniel in a way that was neither hostile nor friendly, but was certainly unwavering. He was going bald, but did not look more than about forty.

‘What, the book?’ asked Daniel, seeking to clarify the man’s question.

‘The reader.’

‘Er, yes,’ said Daniel, hoping to get back to the novel. ‘It’s like a smartphone, only better.’

‘Is it any good?’

‘I’ve only had it a couple of weeks. But it seems okay so far. It’s one of the new 3G ones. You can order the books direct to the reader in over a hundred countries.’

‘I was thinking of getting one myself. Not that I read much of the commercial trash that they’re spewing out these days. I’m more into academic books.’

Daniel wasn’t really interested in prolonging the conversation, but it would have been rude to seem too aloof. ‘What’s your field?’

‘Oh, I don’t really have a field as such. A jack of all trades but a master of none. I’m what would have been called a dilettante in the old days. Anything from the anthropology of the Balinese to Egyptology and ancient hieroglyphics. That’s why I’m off to Egypt, you know. A spot of amateur research. Not for any academic purpose, you understand. Just for fun. A cruise down the Nile, a visit to the Valley of the Kings and all that. I inherited a spot of money from my late aunt and that rather lets me indulge my passion. What about you?’

‘I’m a professor of ancient Semitic languages.’

‘Oh gosh, now I feel awfully embarrassed. Here I am, an enthusiastic amateur and you’re one of the intellectual giants of our time. You must seriously look down on people like me. A little learning is a dangerous thing and all that. The name’s Carter, Wally Carter. Pleased to meet such an eminent scholar.’

Daniel smiled. ‘Daniel Klein. And there’s nothing wrong with being an enthusiastic amateur.’

‘Could I have a look at that phone? Like I said, I’m thinking of getting one.’

Daniel hesitated a moment and then, realizing that this man could hardly run off with it, handed it over. The man appeared to press a few buttons and Daniel was about to say something when the man handed it back.

‘It looks pretty good. How’s the battery life?’

‘Reasonable.’

‘Listen, I know this is very cheeky but do you think I might take your number? I’d love to keep in touch.’

Daniel wasn’t keen but obliged, not wanting to be rude.

‘Well, I should stop bothering you and let you get back to your book.’

Daniel smiled with relief as he took his phone back and turned away. What he didn’t know was that with a few swift movements, the big man had downloaded an application that would enable him to track the phone – and Daniel with it.

Chapter 7

Joel awoke in the men’s communal tent, sweating heavily. He knew that at this time of year even the nights could get hot, but not like this. He was sweltering and itching.

What was it?

His arms, his legs, his torso. He hadn’t felt like this since he had chickenpox as a child. Except that this time it wasn’t just a scratching itch, it was a burning sensation.

He tried to look at his arm, to see what was causing the itch, but it was too dark. He had a torch by his bed, though he wasn’t sure if he should turn it on – it might disturb the others. But he had to know. Finally, plucking up the courage, he switched on the touch and shone it at his forearm.

And when he did so he got the shock of his life!

His arm was covered with boils. But these were not normal round boils. They were long, elongated trails of fiery red-orange on his skin, almost snake-like in appearance. And they were accompanied by a burning sensation. Joel realized that something was seriously amiss. The boils alone were frightening enough, but his head was also aching and his eyes watering. He realized that the sweat was not from the external heat and it was actually rather cool outside. The sweat came from his own body. He was going down with a fever.

He knew that there was a medical officer in the sick bay next to the soldiers’ hut and he decided to go there. Staggering out of bed, he threw on some clothes and began walking. But as he got to the entrance to the tent he fainted, emitting a cry that woke several of the others and raised the alarm.

An hour later, a helicopter arrived to take Joel to a hospital in Cairo. There was talk about a scorpion sting which the commanding officer tried to play down. He told them that according to the medic, Joel had chickenpox and it was more serious because he was an adult. However, he added, if they had already had it as children or been vaccinated against it, they had nothing to worry about.

Jane took advantage of the situation to make another visit to the latrine with her concealed mobile phone. However, instead of texting Senator Morris, this time she decided to call him and tell him what had happened.

‘Okay, now listen carefully,’ said the senator. ‘This is what I want you to do: you need to get a sample of his clothes—’

‘But they’ve flown him out to Cairo,’ Jane rasped into the phone.

‘Did they take all his things with him?’

‘Probably not.’

‘So most of his clothes are still in the tent.’

‘I guess.’

‘Okay. We only need a sample. Preferably something that he wore recently. Put it in a plastic bag and pack it with your things. I’ll give you instructions on how to get it out.’

‘Okay, Dad.’

She put the phone away before stepping out of the latrine… where she was confronted by a soldier.

‘Who were you talking to?’ he demanded.

Jane gasped in fright, fumbling mentally to find the right words to placate his suspicions. Then she noticed the red marks on his cheeks… and the sight made her realize that her own torso was itching.

Chapter 8

‘It’s definitely Proto-Sinaitic,’ said Daniel, struggling to contain his excitement.

Mansoor had pulled out all the stops to make sure that Daniel got the VIP treatment when he arrived at Cairo International Airport. He was fast-tracked through border control and customs at breakneck speed and brought to a luxury Cairo hotel in a stretch limousine. Now, after a good night’s sleep and a Mediterranean breakfast, Daniel was studying the carefully arranged fragments of stone as well as the pictures of them in various lighting conditions.

‘The strange thing, in my opinion, is that these stone fragments have smooth flat backs as well as flat fronts. And the overall thickness is no more than two inches. That suggests that they were small, portable stones and not just broken fragments of a large monument. This is the first time I’ve seen Proto-Sinaitic script on tablets like this. It’s usually found carved on local rocks in short one-line inscriptions, obviously designed to be seen by anyone who passes by. It’s basically a sort of simple graffiti by the untutored and uneducated.’

He looked up at Mansoor. Despite their mutual reservations, they had taken an instant liking to one another. It had been the firmness of the handshake by both men that had cemented the bond of trust between them.

‘Did you find this anywhere near the turquoise mines at Serabit el-Khadim?’

He noticed the fleeting eye contact between Mansoor and Gabrielle.

‘Where the original inscriptions were found, you mean? No. They were found about 130 kilometres east of that.’

‘So that also makes it pretty far from the Temple of Hathor.’

‘Hathor?’ said Gabrielle excitedly. ‘The Egyptian cow goddess? Why do you ask?’

‘I was just thinking about the story of the Golden Calf,’ said Daniel. ‘You know… when Moses went up Mount Sinai and the Israelites got restless and built a golden calf and started worshipping it.’

He noticed that Gabrielle’s excitement was growing. At first he thought she was just happy to be working with him again, but he sensed that there was more to it than that.

‘We were wondering,’ Mansoor asked gingerly, ‘if there was any possibility that this could be an early version of a known Hebrew text.’

Daniel spoke his next words very slowly, sensing what was coming. ‘Which known text?’

There was a long pause before Mansoor replied. ‘The Ten Commandments.’

In the silence that followed, a hundred emotions swept through Daniel’s head. It was as if they were waiting for him to laugh. But laughter was the last thing on his mind. He chose his next words carefully.

‘I noticed the word El several times – that’s the Hebrew word for God. And I also noticed a few instances of the word Yahowa or Yehova – which is now usually read as Jehovah, the sacred name of God in Judeo-Christian religion.’

‘And?’

‘Well, that at least opens the possibility that it’s a text of the early Israelites,’ Daniel concluded.

‘There’s no evidence that the early Israelites worshipped Jehovah,’ said Mansoor. ‘The only ancient group known to worship a god called Jehovah were a nomadic group called the Shasu of Yahowa.’

‘But there is evidence that the Israelites were descended from a larger group called the Habiru,’ said Gabrielle. ‘From whom we get the name Hebrews. And they could be the same people as the Shasu of Yahowa.’

‘The Habiru was a term used for roving bandits,’ said Mansoor. ‘The Shasu were shepherds.’

‘Some people think the names may have been used interchangeably,’ Gabrielle pressed on.

‘But we have graphic depictions of both people,’ Mansoor replied firmly, ‘and they wore different styles of clothes.’

‘That still doesn’t answer the question of whether this could be the Ten Commandments,’ said Daniel, trying to get the discussion back on track. ‘And to answer that I’d need to compare it to the text in a Hebrew copy of the Bible.’

They made their way to the university library where Daniel lost no time in studying a photo of the assembled stones side by side with the Ten Commandments, looking for any signs of the recognizable words El and Jehovah with similar spacings. After a few minutes he looked up, disappointed.

‘I can’t find any sign of a match,’ he said. ‘Although the words El and Jehovah appear in both, they don’t appear in the same places. That proves that the text on the stones is something other than the Ten Commandments.’

He noticed that Gabrielle’s mood mirrored his own. Mansoor on the other hand appeared to take it more philosophically.

‘Oh, well. Back to the drawing board.’

‘Could I ask why you thought it was the Ten Commandments? I mean apart from the fact that it’s fragments from two tablets and they were broken.’

‘Because of—’ Gabrielle started. But she broke off in response to a look from Mansoor. ‘Because of where it was found.’

Daniel was about to ask Gabrielle to explain when Mansoor got a call which interrupted their conversation.

‘Yes?… A mobile phone?… But how did she?… You were supposed to have searched them… No, we don’t want any trouble with the Americans… How many of them?… And the soldiers?… And what does the doctor say?… Quarantine? On whose decision?’

Chapter 9

‘First of all, I have some good news. Carmichael is no longer a problem.’

Senator Morris was addressing the professor and Audrey Milne in their regular meeting room in the Capitol Building.

‘How sure can we be that a copy of his manuscript won’t pop up somewhere down the line?’

‘Goliath didn’t just dispose of Carmichael and the woman, he—’

‘Woman?’ echoed Audrey nervously.

‘He has a maid – had a maid – who apparently doubled as his secretary.’

‘And he killed her too?’

There was a sharp edge in Audrey’s tone. The senator wasn’t sure if it was chiding or fearful. Either way he didn’t like it, but he wanted to keep her onside.

‘She was there at the time. Apparently she was his de facto carer. Also, as I said, she was his secretary. That is, she typed the paper for him. That means she knew about it.’

‘But what about copies?’ the professor reminded him.

‘He wiped the computer and burnt down the house. Unless they sent a copy somewhere else, the only copies left are the ones with you.’

‘But how is this going to help us end the vile dominion of the Semitic interlopers?’ asked the professor.

‘Carmichael’s paper can’t. But what it revealed certainly can. It appears that he was right: the sixth plague can make a resurgence.’

‘What do you mean?’

He told them what Jane had told him about Joel and about his instructions to her to get a sample of his clothes.

‘You don’t really think…’ The professor trailed off.

‘It was an article of faith among the Israelites that they were spared from the plagues,’ said the senator. ‘But after this young man on the dig has become ill, it looks like Carmichael was right. The Israelites were stricken by the plagues too. And we can use that to our advantage.’

Audrey sat there in silence. It wasn’t until the meeting had ended that she made her way to her car and drove safely out of the area before making a phone call. There were three or four rings before it was picked up at the other end.

‘Israeli Embassy.’

Chapter 10

‘We’re here,’ said Mansoor.

They got out near what seemed like an army camp in the middle of nowhere. Daniel looked around. He wasn’t exactly in awe of this environment – he had seen sights far more spectacular than this, both in Egypt and elsewhere. But in the dry desert heat and with the desolate expanses around him, he felt the sense of humility that a harsh or hostile environment can induce in a man.

‘Where are we?’ asked Daniel.

‘We’re at a mountain called Hashem el-Tarif.’

‘Which some people believe to be the real Mount Sinai,’ said Daniel, to show his understanding.

‘Exactly,’ Mansoor confirmed.

They had flown into Sharm el-Sheikh from Cairo International Airport and driven north to this spot near the Israeli border. Now Daniel was looking in the direction of the cordoned-off dig site.

‘And that’s where they found the fragments?’

‘Yes,’ Gabrielle and Mansoor replied in unison.

Gabrielle pointed to the mountain.

‘There’s a cleft over there from which a man’s voice can carry to this whole area – it’s a natural amphitheatre. You could have a group of people down here and a man could speak in a moderately raised voice from up there and be heard by everyone.’

Daniel looked around, trying to imagine the Israelites gathered here, listening to their teacher.

‘And there’s no possibility of being allowed to take a look at the dig site itself?’ asked Daniel.

‘We’re lucky that we can even come here at all.’ Mansoor’s tone had taken on an irascible edge. ‘I had to move heaven and earth to get the Minister of Defence to allow the dig in the first place and then when the food poisoning broke out, the Minister of Health was informed before I was. He contacted the Defence Minister and between them they decided to close it down – at least until we’ve established the cause.’

Daniel wasn’t sure why an outbreak of food poisoning should render the site a no-go area. But he was a guest in this man’s country and one of the things he had learned in his field was to respect the laws and customs of one’s hosts. It was an honour that they had showed him what they thought to be the original Tablets of Stone on which the Ten Commandments may have been written. Now they were showing him, if not the dig site, then at least the surrounding region.

His reason for wanting to see the site was that he thought that it might give him some clues as to what was on the stones. Even if it wasn’t the Ten Commandments, it was the largest single extract of text in the ancient script that he had ever seen. That made it significant whatever it was.

‘Let’s go up the mountain,’ Mansoor suggested.

They walked up a slope to a security checkpoint manned by armed soldiers. It was obvious that the soldiers recognized Mansoor and Gabrielle, but they viewed Daniel with caution if not suspicion. After a few words in Arabic from Mansoor, Daniel was waved through with the others, without so much as a cursory search.

It was a tiring trudge up the mountain, but as they neared the summit, Daniel noticed something else. ‘What are those?’ he asked, pointing to some pits.

Gabrielle nodded approvingly at Daniel’s perspicacity. ‘Those are the remnants of ancient open-pit fires. The sort of fires people might have lit to warm themselves on cold desert nights, or to cook their food. There are also a number of ancient graves and shrines on this site.’

Daniel shook his head. ‘But according to the biblical narrative, only Moses went up the mountain. The rest stayed at the foot, so you wouldn’t expect to find campfires on the mountain, let alone graves and shrines.’

‘That’s only if you take the Bible literally, Daniel.’

He noticed Gabrielle’s cheeky grin when she said this. She’d always had that look when she won a round in their intellectual sparring – even when she was a teenager. And of course she was right. He was supposed to be a serious scholar not a sycophantic follower of religious dogma. Furthermore, the biblical account was certainly confused as to the order of events. In fact…

‘Daniel?’

Gabrielle’s voice cut into his cogitation. There was a note of concern in her tone. He realized that his train of thought had found expression on his face and she was alerted by it.

‘I’ve just had a thought. We may have been looking in the wrong place.’

‘Meaning?’ Mansoor prompted.

‘In the Bible, I mean. About the text on the stones. The story of the Ten Commandments is actually somewhat convoluted. It starts off in Exodus 20 with God giving a series of commandments orally to all the Israelites, amidst smoke and thunder. Those commandments are the ones we all learnt as children. You know, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, etc. You could call them the official Ten Commandments. But in fact nowhere in the Bible does it actually say that those are the Ten Commandments. Then after that, the Bible continues by stating that the Israelites were so afraid of all that smoke and thunder that they pleaded with Moses to go up to the top of the mountain and get the rest of God’s law and bring it down to them. So Moses goes up the mountain and God tells him a whole long list of laws, called the Testament of Moses, which Moses duly writes down on two tablets of stone.’

‘So you’re saying that the tablets of stone might actually contain this Testament of Moses, not the Ten Commandments?’ asked Mansoor.

‘That’s what it says in the Bible. But, there’s a problem with that, because the Testament of Moses is much too long to be written down on a couple of tablets of stone. It would have needed more like a dozen tablets to record that much detail.’

‘Then what could it be?’ asked Mansoor.

‘The clue to that comes from what happened next. According to the Bible, the Israelites were getting restless over the amount of time Moses was spending up the mountain. They thought Jehovah had abandoned them. So they melted down all the gold they had brought with them from Egypt and turned it into the Golden Calf, to worship the cow goddess, a local god of the region. And when Moses finally came down from the mountain, he saw the people worshipping the Golden Calf and blew his top – smashing the tablets in his anger. Then after he calmed down a bit, he got the Israelites to repent for their sins and then he went back up the mountain with another pair of blank stone tablets to get the commandments all over again.’

‘But he didn’t break the second lot of stone tablets,’ said Gabrielle.

‘No, those were the ones that ended up in the temple in Jerusalem. But let’s get back to what happened at Mount Sinai. When Moses went up the mountain a second time, in Exodus 34, he actually got an alternative version of the Ten Commandments. Not completely different: the first and second commandments are the same – and the fourth commandment of the old ones becomes the fifth in the new version. But the others are different.’

‘So are you saying that it’s those alternative commandments that are the real Ten Commandments?’ asked Gabrielle.

Daniel’s eyes were wide with excitement as he spoke. ‘Exactly. The Bible even says that it’s the commandments in Exodus 34 that are the Ten Commandments. Whereas the official Ten Commandments from Exodus 20 were never referred to as such. Also, it says that these alternative Ten Commandments were written on tablets of stone. On the other hand, the official Ten Commandments from Exodus 20 were never written in stone. They were merely spoken out loud by God.’

Mansoor was leaning forward keenly. ‘But if that is the case, then the Ten Commandments that you tried to compare to the stone fragments back in Cairo were the wrong ones.’

‘Exactly. What I should have compared to the stones was the alternative Ten Commandments – the ones in Exodus 34.’

And with that, Daniel opened his bag and took out the copy of the Hebrew Bible that he had brought with him, as well as a photo of the assembled stone fragments. Finding a perch on a large rock, he sat down and began making a comparison while Mansoor and Gabrielle looked on in silence.

‘Ki loh tisht-hazeh le’El aher ki Yehova Qana shemoh El qana hu. “For you shall not bow to another God because Jehovah, jealous is his name, a jealous God is he.” Now, if we look at the first line on one of the stone tablets, which is just about visible, it has the word El, the generic name for God, which we recognize by the symbols for the ox and the shepherd’s crook – that is, a silent placeholder for a vowel and the consonant “L”. Then a few words later we see God’s personal name of Jehovah, shown by the hand symbol, followed by the matchstick man, then the peg symbol, then the matchstick man again. That’s like Y-H-V-H. Then a few words later we see the name El. And the spacings all correspond neatly to the text in the Hebrew Bible.’

‘So it’s a perfect match,’ said Gabrielle excitedly.

‘Let’s not jump to conclusions just yet. Let’s see if we can find anything else. Again, using the two recognized words of El and Jehovah, if we look just above the middle of the second tablet, we see the name Jehovah, the word El and also …’ His inflection was rising as he felt the growing excitement. ‘…the word Yisral, which appears to be an early form of the name Israel.’

By now, even Mansoor’s hitherto sceptical eyes were lit up with the fire of enthusiasm. ‘Does that mean what I think it means?’

Daniel was pleased to hear emotion in Mansoor’s tone for once and he was unable to conceal the passion in his own. ‘It means we’ve gone some way to deciphering Proto-Sinaitic script. But more important than that… it means that what you’ve got back in Cairo are the remnants of the original Mosaic tablets!’

Chapter 11

‘Look, could you at least give me my phone back so that I can call my folks?’

Jane’s tone was like that of a stroppy teenager. She was being held in the isolation wing of a military hospital along with the other volunteers from the dig and also some of the soldiers. They were segregated from each other in order to further reduce the risk of infection.

They had been told very little, beyond the fact that it was a precaution and it was for their own wellbeing.

‘We aren’t allowing phone calls for the time being,’ the man from the Ministry of Health explained to her, in the tone of a kindergarten teacher to a not very bright child.

‘Why not?’

‘We don’t want to start a panic.’

‘You’re probably starting more of a panic by holding us incommunicado like this.’

The man from the Health Ministry, an alumnus of Harvard, looked impressed by Jane’s vocabulary as he thought of her as an empty-headed blonde. She sensed the patronizing attitude from the smile on his face, even though he said nothing.

‘My father’s a United States senator.’

‘I know,’ said the official, still smiling. ‘And this is against your constitutional rights.’

‘Look, it’s not funny!’

‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t laugh. But you have to understand that a panic is the last thing we need. We depend heavily on the tourist industry in this country.’

‘Look, I’m not going to start a panic. Besides, my father already knows.’

The official looked at her blankly and then understood.

‘Oh yes, aren’t you the one who smuggled a phone into the dig?’

She blushed and then smiled, realizing that the look on the health official’s face was actually one of approval.

‘Okay, yes that was me. Look, I know I shouldn’t have done it, but I just didn’t want him to worry.’

She gave the official a seductive smile. He looked at her hesitantly.

‘Okay, one call. And don’t mention that anyone else is in quarantine. You can tell him that you’re okay – and that you’ll be released in two weeks.’

She smiled as he handed his mobile phone through the sliding drawer into the isolation area. Then she took the phone and put in the call.

‘Hallo Dad.’

‘Jane,’ said Senator Morris.

‘Listen, I’ve got some bad news. Because of what happened at the dig with Joel, we’ve been put into quarantine.’

‘What? At the hospital?’ The shock was palpable.

‘Yes, but a different hospital. They’ve said they’ll release me in two weeks, but I’m not allowed to have my phone with me.’

‘Why not?’

She looked at the health official, wondering how much she was free to say.

‘Something about contamination.’

‘Did you manage to get any of Joel’s clothes?’

‘No, I didn’t have a chance.’

‘Okay, well, look… don’t feel bad. You tried your best.’

She did feel bad though, or at least mildly guilty. ‘Thanks, Dad.’

‘Oh, just one thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘You’re sure they don’t know that I told you to get a sample of Joel’s clothes?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Okay, that’s good.’

They said goodbye and Jane handed the phone back to the official through the sliding drawer. He picked it up with an alcohol wipe and cleaned it all over before putting it in his pocket.

Amused as she was by the official’s paranoia, Jane was more concerned by what her father was up to. She could tell from his tone that whatever he was doing, he wasn’t finished yet.

Chapter 12

‘This is where we keep all the artefacts that aren’t on display,’ Mansoor was explaining as he led Daniel and Gabrielle through a labyrinth of corridors in the basement of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities.

Daniel had worked on the details of the translation of the text from the stones on the plane back from Sharm. It was painstaking work, matching the recognized words and then pairing up single words or groups of words from the stones with the counterparts in the Bible. But after a while it had become easier. It was like a crossword puzzle: the more matches he found, the easier it was to find suitable matches for the remainder.

By the time they landed in Cairo, he had finished the translation and created a concordance of some 138 words in the old language and the equivalent in biblical Hebrew.

‘I think we need to agree the terms we’re working on,’ Mansoor had said on the plane. ‘Whilst it’s your translation, Professor Klein, and Gabrielle was in charge of the dig, I am the senior scholar amongst the three of us and I think it should be my name first when we publish our findings.’

This was more than just a wish. It was a firm decision. He couldn’t actually stop Daniel from publishing a paper from memory about the language in abstract, but the finding of the original Mosaic tablets was much bigger news than the mere decipherment of an old script. Mansoor had control over the stone fragments themselves.

Furthermore, as Vice Minister of Culture, he could stop either of them from working in Egypt again. This would have been more of a blow to Gabrielle than to Daniel, but it was Daniel who was the more conciliatory of the two.

‘That’s fine with me. I don’t even mind if my name goes last. I’m just thrilled and honoured to be part of this.’

Mansoor responded to Daniel’s pliant reply by offering him a consolation prize.

‘You do know of course that we have another long document in the ancient script.’

‘What document?’ Gabrielle had asked, taken aback by this revelation.

‘Oh, just a papyrus that’s been lying around in the archives for some time. It was never really given much thought, but in the current light, I think it’s fair to say that it takes on a new importance.’

It was this other document that Mansoor was taking them to see now. He led them into a room full of metal shelves laden with boxes. He went over to a shelf and stood before a brown cardboard box with some Arabic writing on it in thick, black magic marker. Daniel understood the writing, but all it said was ‘Papyrus’ and ‘Clay jar’. Mansoor lifted the box and brought it over to a workbench. He deposited it carefully on one side, while Daniel and Gabrielle stood on the other. Then he opened the box, reached in and produced what looked like a wooden-framed glass box which he also deposited on the table.

Daniel stared at it in awe. What he was looking at, he realized, was a glass-mounted papyrus which contained about fifty lines of writing in Proto-Sinaitic script. Gazing now at the longest piece of text that he had ever seen in this ancient language almost brought tears to his eyes.

The writing was set out horizontally relative to the paper in a single column, running parallel to the shorter side of the papyrus and perpendicular to the longer side. In this respect it differed from, say, a Jewish Torah scroll written in a series of columns, to be unfurled horizontally and read one column at a time.

Daniel stared at it for a long time, taking in the fact that what he had before him was a very ancient papyrus in remarkably good condition. After a while, he looked up at Mansoor. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

Mansoor frowned. ‘That’s what you’re supposed to tell me.’

‘I mean what can you tell me about its provenance?’

‘First of all, can you translate it?’

Daniel sat down, took out his one-page concordance and started looking for words in the papyrus that matched. After some considerable time, he looked up, disappointed.

‘There aren’t enough words matching the concordance. I found nine instances of Jehovah and three variants of El which I assume is a generic reference to God. But there were no other common words.’

He noticed that Gabrielle looked disappointed. He could always tell her mood from her face, even when she tried to hide it. It was harder to tell with Mansoor; Daniel had not known him long enough.

‘But nine instances of Jehovah,’ said the Egyptian contemplatively. ‘What’s your general impression? I mean what sort of a document do you think it is?’

‘Well, my first impression was that it was a proclamation intended to be unfurled vertically and read out loud by a herald to an assembled audience. But then I rejected that because proclamations would more likely be engraved on a stone monument and displayed in public to be seen by one and all.’

‘Not if it were a proclamation to a nomadic people,’ Gabrielle interrupted, picking up the theme of the nomadic Shasu of Yahowa that they had talked about earlier.

Daniel nodded approvingly. ‘True. But then I considered the possibility that it might be a letter or missive to a single individual. I also noticed a peculiarity about the way it was set out: every single line is different in length. That is precisely the way that poetry would be written.’

‘So which is it?’ asked Mansoor. ‘A proclamation to a nomadic people or an ancient poem?’

‘Well, if it weren’t for the presence of the name Jehovah, one might speculate that this was copied or plagiarized from an old Egyptian poem. But Jehovah precludes that.’

‘So it must be a proclamation to the Israelites,’ said Gabrielle.

Daniel wanted to proceed more cautiously. He turned to Mansoor. ‘I’ve told you as much as I can based on looking at it. I might be able to tell you more if you can give me some idea about its origins.’

‘I can tell you that it’s been carbon dated to around 1600 BC,’ said Mansoor.

‘That makes it older than the Bible.’

‘Yes it does. But I can’t tell you when or where it was found.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I don’t know. That is, I can tell you where it was found latterly. But I cannot tell you where it was found originally.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It was found here in one of the storage rooms, when we were in the process of entering all the items in the museum on to our new computer database. But it didn’t have any object card with it, so the provenance is completely unknown. All we found was the clay jar with the papyrus.’

‘Clay jar?’

‘Yes, the papyrus was actually found inside an old clay jar. We only mounted it in glass recently, shortly after finding it. But we haven’t been able to trace the origins of either the papyrus or the jar.’

‘But aren’t they listed in the museum’s register?’

‘We did a thorough search of the register and haven’t found it.’

‘Isn’t that rather… strange?’

‘It’s not suspicious, if that’s what you mean. There are quite a few items in the storage rooms that we haven’t been able to find listed in the register books.’

‘When you say “the register books”… I mean, aren’t the records computerized now?’

‘Actually, we’re still in the process of creating our computerized database of objects and artefacts – with the help of an American non-profit organization. But you have to understand that until 2006 the registration system was entirely manual. We’ve got a quarter of a million objects in this museum, only half of which are in the database. It was when this papyrus and its container were due to be entered into the system, that we discovered it was unlisted.’

‘But how could something like that happen?’ asked Daniel.

‘You have to understand,’ Mansoor continued sheepishly, ‘that due to historic reasons, the manual numbering system is a bit fragmented. We actually have four different numbering systems that developed over time. But unfortunately, different objects were categorized according to the different systems. In fact, some items have numbers in more than one of the numbering systems.’

‘But how could you track so many objects with such a fragmented system?’

‘We couldn’t. It was a real nightmare. And to make matters worse, we didn’t even have anyone specifically trained in archive maintenance. In practice, responsibility for keeping the records was divided between the sections. Each section had responsibility for its own objects and artefacts.’

‘Okay, may I see the clay jar?’

Mansoor put on a pair of latex gloves, reached into the box, pulled aside some padding and then produced the clay jar, carefully depositing it on the workbench in front of them. Daniel put on a similar pair of gloves and gently turned the jar this way and that to get a better look. The outside of the jar looked quite plain. Then a very faint trace of an engraving on the side caught Daniel’s eye.

‘Holy shit!’

‘What?’ asked Mansoor, picking up on Daniel’s excitement.

‘Take a look at that,’ said Daniel, handing the jar over to Mansoor.

The Egyptian held it up to the light and tilted it back and forth to get a better view. His face changed when he saw what Daniel had seen: a barely visible engraving of a serpent coiled around a pole.

‘But that looks like…’

‘The Rod of Asclepius!’

‘But that’s a Greek symbol,’ said Mansoor, lowering the jar and meeting Daniel’s eyes. ‘It didn’t exist at the time when Proto-Sinaitic script was used.’

‘Not under the name Rod of Asclepius,’ said Daniel.

‘Wasn’t Asclepius the Greek god of medicine?’ asked Gabrielle.

‘Exactly,’ said Daniel. ‘And the Rod of Asclepius – the rod with a snake coiled around it – is widely associated with medicine and used by a number of pharmaceutical organizations. Snakes were often associated with medicine as well as illness. Hence snake oil.’

‘Also in ancient Egyptian culture,’ said Mansoor.

‘But not in this specific form,’ Daniel cut in. ‘The snake coiled around a pole, I mean.’

‘That’s true, Professor Klein. But then again there’s a lot of ancient Egypt that remains undiscovered, even today. And much of what we had was lost to theft – both foreign and domestic.’

Daniel was thinking about something Gabrielle had said about the Greek god of medicine. At the back of his mind he was also remembering what Harrison Carmichael had said about fiery snakes, Moses putting a snake on a pole and the possibility of the sixth plague returning. Now the dig had been closed down because of ‘food poisoning’ according to Mansoor. He was turning these thoughts over in his mind, uncertain of what to make of it. For a moment he considered asking Mansoor why the dig was really closed down, but he sensed that if Mansoor was holding out on him, he was unlikely to be more candid and open if pressed. He was more likely to clam up completely.

Daniel decided to test the waters.

‘I wonder if we could get some outside advice on this point. Would it be all right if I called Harrison Carmichael?’

‘Okay,’ said Mansoor. ‘But be discreet.’

Daniel called Carmichael’s number on his mobile, but the voice that answered was not that of Professor Carmichael. ‘Hallo, could I speak to Harrison Carmichael please… Daniel Klein. Yes, he knows me… What?’

Gabrielle was looking at him, concerned.

‘When?… How?… The police?’

‘What is it?’ asked Gabrielle.

When Daniel looked at Gabrielle next, his face had turned to stone.

‘It’s Harrison. He’s dead.’

Chapter 13

‘They’re anti-Semitic, anti-American, anti-British and anti-Western. They’d like to wipe us off the face of the earth.’

Sarit Shalev stared at Dov Shamir, trying to gauge how much of his manner was showmanship for her benefit. It was hard to tell with Dov, or ‘Dovi’ as she called him. Everything about him was uniformly dark – appearance and mood alike – except for the odd flash of excitement. Although he was dressed like a typical casual Israeli in a blue shirt and jeans, he somehow reminded her of Heathcliff – or at least the way she imagined Heathcliff to be when she first read Wuthering Heights as a gangly teenager.

Now a compact but kick-ass fit twenty-four-year-old, she was no longer quite so enamoured by characters in fiction, and thinking about Dov’s appearance, she realized that perhaps ‘dark’ was too strong a word. It was true of his eyes and hair, but applying it to his skin tone was stretching it somewhat. His ancestry was central European, and his skin wasn’t naturally dark, merely tanned by the Mediterranean sun.

‘They sound like the usual crowd of semi-literate rednecks.’

‘Except these guys aren’t semi-literate, Sarit. These are movers and shakers, people with power and influence. These are the people who manipulate the rednecks: the educated people who use pop science to sell people on their crackpot conspiracy theories.’

She was eight years his junior, and in terms of intelligence experience, that difference was vast. But it didn’t restrain her feisty, independent spirit when it came to questioning his judgement as he briefed her on the assignment in this windowless room at Mossad’s headquarters in the coastal town of Herzliya.

‘Why did this Milne woman contact us in the first place?’

‘She first approached us a couple of years ago. Technically she’s been my asset even before she took her husband’s place.’

‘But she initiated contact, not vice versa?’

‘She didn’t like what her husband was doing.’

‘Can we trust her?’

‘Walk-in assets are always potential bait. But we have ways of verifying. Everything she’s told us checked out.’

‘But if she was your asset, why did she have to go through the embassy?’

‘I was treating her as passive. Once we ID’d the key people from her, we maintained silence.’

‘So what’s changed?’

‘They’ve changed. They’re becoming more active… and more dangerous.’

He told her about the murder of Harrison Carmichael and Roksana.

‘Does it check out?’

‘According to the British press and the police statements, yes. The fire, the ante-mortem injuries. They’re planning to do a report about it on a programme called Crimewatch.’

‘And have we passed on any of the information that she gave us?’

‘Not yet. We’re hesitant about passing it on. We don’t want to compromise her position at this stage. We may want to use her more actively, either to flush out more of their members or to disseminate misinformation to them.’

‘So we’re going to let these murders go unpunished?’

‘No, but right now the most urgent priority is tracking down this Goliath. We don’t actually know his real name. And at the moment, we don’t even know where he is.’

‘So what do we know?’

Sarit and Dov went back together some four years, when she was the eager young twenty-year-old immigrant from Ireland, fresh out of her two-year army service. In those days, she was called Siobhan Stewart. At eighteen, she had left her sheltered middle-class life in Cork and volunteered to work in Israel and ended up staying. The trigger for her decision had been a visit to the Holy Land the previous year with her family during which her brother had been killed in a suicide bombing in Jerusalem along with twenty-one other people. She herself had been one of the 135 wounded, albeit comparatively mildly.

After that she had tried to understand both sides in the conflict and not merely jump to a conclusion based on emotions alone. But what she found particularly galling were the one-sided condemnations when Israel retaliated against the organizers and planners of a whole spate of similar suicide bombings that followed.

So the following year, bypassing the more traditional picking-apples-on-a-kibbutz option, she had volunteered for eight weeks of equally menial duty on an Israeli army base under the auspices of an organization called Sar-El. It was soon discovered that she had a sharp mind and was a fast learner and so she ended up being given duties that a foreign volunteer would not normally be trusted with.

This was followed by her bold decision to apply for permanent residence and volunteer for a full two years of service in the Israeli army, much to the horror of her parents. After some gruelling interviews to test her sincerity, and in the face of plaintive appeals to come home, she was accepted by the Israeli army and spent the next two years serving in communications. She also changed her name in that time to the more Israeli-sounding Sarit Shalev.

In the course of her two-year stint, she was based at the Urim monitoring unit in the Negev Desert – a vast array of large satellite dishes that picked up information from telecommunications satellites over the region, covering everything from India and China to Europe. This enabled them to monitor not only cell phones but also intercontinental landlines and shipping. Ultra-fast supercomputers and highly sophisticated software analysed the voice and text messages for keywords and particular phone numbers of interest.

Upon leaving the army, she was planning to go to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to study psychology. But she took the fateful decision of responding to an ad for a job interview involving ‘interesting work abroad’. After passing that interview and several more – where they looked at motivation as well as intelligence – she went through a rigorous initial training course, that was itself part of the selection procedure. Only then was she inducted into the Mossad and the real hard work began.

One of the first lessons she learnt was that the hunter can all too easily become the hunted if alertness flags, even for a moment. This was a lesson that she learnt all too well on one of her training exercises, when her designated target turned the tables on her. She had assumed that she had an advantage, because the targets were not told which of the ‘hunters’ in the exercise had been assigned to them. But he had been alert and set an ingeniously baited trap, making himself look careless so that she made her move with insufficient preparation.

He had punished her for the error by capturing her and then twisted the knife by subjecting her to the embarrassment of being marched hogtied back to the field HQ for the exercise. It was a humiliation that she resolved never to be exposed to again. And she never had. But more than that: it was a humiliation that she was determined to avenge. The problem was, she couldn’t just seek revenge willy-nilly. She had to maintain her professional façade in order to avoid failing the final selection process. But she suspected that her instructors were aware of her intentions and used it to their advantage.

So she waited patiently until she got the chance to get back at the trainee who had sandbagged her, and when it was delivered on a plate, she grabbed it. It took a while, because the exercise assignments were random. But she knew that despite her self-restraint, their instructors had evidently picked up on her competitive spirit, because in the very last exercise, they had made her former nemesis her designated hunter. And she suspected that this assignment had not been as random as it was supposed to be. However, unlike her arch-enemy, she did know who her hunter was, because when he opened the envelope, he had given himself away by the glint in his eye – as powerful a ‘tell’ as any she had seen.

From there it had been easy. Just like he had done in the first exercise, she had used a subterfuge: making it seem like she thought another of the class was her hunter, a nerdy type, smart but socially awkward. When the real hunter closed in for the kill, he avoided the obvious trap that he had set for her – and fell into the subtle one instead.

The trap – the idea for which came from a story she had read – consisted of allowing herself to be captured in her flat. The hunter had persuaded the trainee whom, she appeared to think of as her assigned hunter, to help him. She ‘captured’ the trainee and then her real hunter captured her – or at least thought he had. Certainly he had her tied to a chair, which he meticulously photographed using his still camera and videotaped using hers. But this didn’t surprise her. She knew that he wouldn’t be able to resist rubbing her nose in defeat in a macho display. But the exercise called for her to be ‘delivered’ to their field HQ. Until then, it wasn’t complete.

However, between the moment she had captured the decoy hunter and the real one captured her, she had taken out a bottle of sparkling wine from the fridge and told the decoy hunter that she was going to drink to celebrate her victory and record it on video. The real hunter had picked the lock and pounced before she could open the bottle. But he made the mistake of assuming that an unopened champagne bottle couldn’t be drugged – or more likely he hadn’t thought about it at all.

In fact, it is possible to open the bottle, lace it with Rohypnol or GHB and then reseal it. She had not only done this, she had even carefully preserved the foil and re-covered the plastic stopper. And Mr Macho Israeli couldn’t resist the urge to drink her sparkling wine before her eyes and then pour some over her, accompanied by the crude words: ‘I like you wet.’ (He later explained that this was to ‘toughen’ her up to the real world of espionage and was not in any way a representation of his real self.)

She had wanted to smile, as he had already drunk enough of the drugged sparkling wine. But she held her facial muscles, showing great patience, to maximize her victory. It was only when he held the bottle to her lips and offered her the chance to toast his victory – which she politely declined – that he got his first inkling of what was about to happen.

‘Why don’t you want to be magnanimous in defeat?’ he asked mockingly.

‘You’ve got it wrong,’ she replied. ‘It’s magnanimous in victory; defiant in defeat. Besides, I want to stay awake.’

That was when he realized. But by then it was too late, he was already feeling the lethargy that precedes unconsciousness. So a few hours later, it was the hunter who was deposited bound and gagged on the floor of the field HQ by a triumphant Sarit. Then, after three days, when his sleeping patterns had returned to normal, she was confronted by her ‘victim’ again and told the whole story.

She was led into an office – amidst the utmost solemnity – and found herself facing a tribunal. Her first instinct was panic, assuming that it was some sort of disciplinary tribunal. But that assumption was contradicted by the even more terrifying fact that her deadly foe was on the tribunal. The chairman of the panel introduced him as ‘Dov Shamir’ and explained that he was not a trainee but a long-serving intelligence officer and one of the training team. This in itself was none too reassuring, but what did put her at ease was the fact that Dov was smiling, and it was not a gloating smile, although there was perhaps a hint of mockery about it.

The chairman went on to say that they had identified her early on as a promising recruit for training as a kidon officer. This meant that her job would be assassinations of Israel’s enemies and not merely intelligence gathering like a regular katsa.

Dov had been assigned to bring out the best in her, to put her through her paces and test her to the limit. And she had passed with flying colours. He was to give her one-to-one coaching, and after that they had got on like a house on fire. It was obvious that he respected her – especially after she had turned the tables on him. And it was also obvious that he was attracted to her.

‘What we know is that he’s extremely dangerous,’ he said to Sarit.

‘But why should that concern us?’

‘For several reasons. Apart from anything else, what Daniel Klein is doing involves discovery of old material pertaining to our ancient history and the doctrine that forms our very justification for having a homeland in this part of the world.’

‘So what?’ said Sarit with a cheeky grin. ‘We’re going to execute him for challenging biblical dogma?’

‘We’re not going to execute him at all unless he becomes a threat to us. But you have to understand that we may be facing a much bigger threat here: a threat to our very survival.’

‘What threat?’ she asked, knowing that Dov was not one for idle talk.

He told her the nature of the threat… and she listened with growing alarm.

Chapter 14

‘You’ve got to be kidding!’

‘That’s what he told me, just before I drove to the airport.’

Daniel and Gabrielle were on a plane back to London. Mansoor hadn’t been happy about them flying out like that, when they were supposed to be collaborating on the most important paper of all their careers. But Gabrielle was clearly upset and Daniel had been in shock when he discovered from the police when the fire had occurred.

Daniel realized that it was on the same morning that he had visited Carmichael and he had been racking his brain trying to remember if he had seen anyone at the time.

‘So let me be clear about this. He said that the plagues could recur?’

‘He said the plague in the singular. When I pressed him, he specified the sixth plague.’

‘Which was?’

‘Boils… on the flesh.’

‘Look, I shouldn’t say this about my own uncle, but he was suffering from the early stages of dementia.’

‘I know that.’

‘Then we shouldn’t really be surprised about the fire. It was probably an accident.’

‘That wouldn’t account for the injuries that the post-mortem revealed.’

Gabrielle looked away, blushing.

‘You’re right. I shouldn’t have said that… do the police have any idea who might have done it?’

‘If they did, they didn’t tell me.’

‘Then why are you so sure that his death has anything to do with this nonsense about the sixth plague?’

Daniel thought for a moment.

‘Maybe it’s just the timing. One minute, he’s telling me something that sounds awfully conspiratorial. I dismissed it at the time – for the same reason as you did, because of the dementia. Then, right after that, he dies… in a fire… after both he and Roksana have been subjected to other physical injuries.’

‘Did he say anything else?’

‘He mentioned the incident with the fiery snakes and the bronze snake on a pole.’

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a passage from the Bible,’ said Daniel, rummaging through the light bag he had taken on as hand luggage. He found his copy of the Bible and thumbed through it. ‘Here it is: Numbers 21, verses six to eight.’

And the Lord sent fiery snakes into the people and they bit the people and many of the Israelites died. And the people came to Moses and said ‘We have sinned because we spoke against the Lord and you; pray to the Lord and he will take the snakes from us’ and Moses prayed on behalf of the people. And the Lord said to Moses ‘Make a burning one and put it on a pole and it shall be that all the bitten ones that see it will live.’

‘Burning one?’

‘It’s widely understood to be a bronze or copper snake.’

‘But how does that relate to the plagues suffered by the Egyptians? There wasn’t a plague of snakes, was there?’

‘No. And I wasn’t clear what he meant when he mentioned the sixth plague – which was boils – in the same breath. But it wasn’t so much the fiery snakes I was thinking about. It was the snake that Moses put on the pole to save the Israelites who had been bitten by the snakes. It reminded me of the symbol we saw on that clay jar.’

‘The Rod of Asclepius?’

‘Yes, or some sort of Egyptian precursor to it. I was wondering if that could be some symbol associated with Moses. I think that the association has been suggested in the past.’

‘Maybe it is. But why did Uncle Harrison think the sixth plague could recur?’

‘He never really said. I think it may just have been…’

He didn’t want to say it.

‘A symptom of the dementia.’

Daniel avoided Gabrielle’s eyes.

‘But in that case… why are you worried about it?’

Daniel forced himself to meet her eyes and he chose his next words carefully.

‘Because now I’m not so sure. I was thinking about what Mansoor said about the food poisoning outbreak. Did you see any sign of it when you were there?’

‘No, it happened after I left.’

‘Because I was just wondering if Mansoor’s covering up for something.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, I can understand them closing down the dig because of food poisoning, but why didn’t they allow us to go there?’

Now it was Gabrielle’s turn to think for a moment.

‘You have a point. He did seem a bit cagey.’

A few hours later, when they landed at Heathrow, they found themselves held for a long time while the doors were kept closed and the passengers were told to stay in their seats. Eventually, when they were opened, four uniformed policemen entered the aircraft and made their way straight to Daniel.

‘Daniel Klein?’ said one of them.

‘Yes,’ Daniel replied nervously.

‘I have a warrant for your arrest.’

Chapter 15

Goliath was lying on the bed in his hotel room, thinking about how he had failed his mentor. Arthur Morris had told him to keep track of Daniel Klein. But he had lost sight of him, quite suddenly, and now he was feeling guilty.

When first given the task, he had asked if he was to kill Klein, but Morris told him not to ask questions. He would be told later if anything more was required of him. Right now all he had to do was keep tabs on Klein and report in regularly to tell Morris where he was.

And Senator Morris had always been good to Goliath – even giving him his nickname which he said was a sign of respect. Goliath was the more worthy opponent, the senator had told him once. In a fair fight he would have won against David. He was the victim of Jewish treachery. And contrary to popular mythology, the Philistines were culturally more developed than the Jews. Indeed, after becoming king, David had chosen a personal bodyguard of Philistines because he didn’t trust his own people.

Goliath felt a debt of gratitude towards Senator Morris, because it was Morris who had saved his life – or rather stopped him from taking his own life. In the old days, when Goliath was plain old Wally Carter, his wife had left him for another man and had taken him to the cleaners with the aid of her smooth-talking Jewish shyster. Between them they had played up his size and his occasional tendency to lash out when things did not go the way he wanted. And he had watched as the house was sold from under him and she took most of the money as well as the children. Watching them drive away in the car had been the most painful thing of all.

But when he was about to jump to his death, it was Senator Morris who had stumbled across him by chance and talked to him for three hours, persuading him not to. After he was hospitalized for mental illness, it was Arthur Morris who had provided him with the lawyer and the doctor’s reports that secured his release. It had been Morris who had invited him to his home and treated him like a son and told him that God had a plan for him. It had been Morris who had trained him in various social skills that enabled him to get on with people better than he had in the past and without the former awkwardness that had plagued him. It was Morris who had explained that the social conventions and manners of the upper classes were just a form of acting and it could be learnt like any other role.

For that Wally Carter – now Goliath, the man who walked tall and held his head up high – would do anything to serve Arthur Morris, knowing that in so doing, he was serving God.

Yet now he was miserable, for the trace on Daniel’s phone wasn’t working. It was possible that the phone was switched off or that he was in a tunnel or underground; but whatever the reason, when he logged on to the website and tried to find the phone, it was showing ‘no signal’.

It was just then that Morris phoned. Goliath was fearful of the prospect of having to tell his mentor that he had failed. But he never got the chance, because instead of asking him about the whereabouts of Daniel Klein, Morris launched into a set of rapid-fire instructions, telling Goliath that he was to go to the hospital attached to the Theodor Bilharz Research Institute, locate a patient called Joel Hirsch and get some of his clothes. He was to put them in a bag, seal it up to keep it dry and bring it back to the United States.

And he was not to let anyone see him.

Goliath was about to ask why when he remembered that he was not supposed to ask questions: he was just supposed to do what God requires.

Chapter 16

‘So you admit that you were at the house that morning?’ asked the Detective Chief Inspector.

‘Yes!’ said Daniel for the umpteenth time. ‘I went there to speak to him just before I flew off to Egypt.’

‘And you flew off to Egypt at short notice, at the invitation of the Vice Minister of Culture.’

‘You can call him and verify that yourself.’

‘We will. But perhaps in the meantime you can tell us what you talked to Professor Carmichael about?’

‘It was just a bit of catching up on old times. Nothing special.’

Daniel was aware of how implausible this sounded.

‘You’re about to leave the country at short notice, at the request of the Egyptian Vice Minister of Culture, and take a detour from your drive to the airport to stop off at your old professor’s house for small talk?’

The DCI shot a sceptical glance at his colleague who shrugged his shoulders as if to express his own disbelief of Daniel’s account.

‘He was my mentor,’ Daniel continued. ‘I hadn’t seen him in a while and I was quite surprised at Mansoor’s invitation. So I wanted to ask for his advice.’

‘But how could he advise you, if you didn’t know why you were being invited to Egypt?’

‘That was the point. I figured he might be able to tell me how to play it.’

‘And did he?’

Daniel looked away awkwardly. He had nothing to hide on this point, but the truth made him feel uncomfortable.

‘He was too far gone to help.’

‘Too far gone?’ the DCI echoed.

‘Dementia. I could tell that he wasn’t really with me.’

‘Is it possible that he had something on his mind? Something that might explain why someone would want to kill him?’

Again Daniel lapsed into thought. On this point he did have something to hide. For the next few seconds, he thought carefully about how much he wanted to share with the DCI. Did he want to mention Carmichael’s paranoid claims about his unpublished paper? The belief that the plague of boils could make a resurgence? At the time it had seemed preposterous. But Harrison Carmichael was dead and there was no question that he had been murdered. Even if the fire could be dismissed as an accident, the injuries to Roksana and to Carmichael himself could not.

But did he want to share his suspicions with the police? Would they come over as credible? Did he really have anything to tell them? Certainly nothing that Carmichael had told him amounted to solid information. All Daniel had was a nagging suspicion, but what he really wanted was an explanation and he wasn’t going to get that from the policeman.

Daniel saw no reason to stick his neck out by offering what might come over as a self-serving explanation. So he decided to hold his peace.

‘I can’t think of anything.’

‘Okay, Professor Klein. Interview suspended at 5.45 p.m.’

‘Look, I know you have to investigate thoroughly. But I’ve told you all I know and I’m a very busy man. Is there any possibility that I could be released on bail?’

‘We’re awaiting the results from the forensic team. If we can eliminate you – and assuming that we have no other grounds to hold you – you will be released at that time.’

Daniel didn’t see how the forensic tests would eliminate him. If he had started the fire, he could have taken the clothes he was wearing to Egypt and disposed of them there. They would certainly find his fingerprints and DNA on the garden chair where he had sat and it was unlikely that they would find any of the killer’s DNA in the house, because of the fire. Even if the forensic tests came up negative, he knew that a cloud of suspicion would hang over him until the case was solved.

In the meantime he was going right back to the police cells, to await his fate.

Chapter 17

‘He was a friend of Lord Byron, you know,’ said the curator, a young Indian. ‘They met at Cambridge.’

‘Yes, he was actually two years ahead of Byron, at Trinity,’ said Gabrielle. ‘In many ways he was his mentor, until Byron’s fame left him behind. But they stayed friends.’

Gabrielle was in an office on the top floor of the British Museum, sitting at a large work table with one of the curators of the Egyptian department. The police had told her that she wouldn’t be allowed any contact with Daniel before he was either released or charged. He had chosen not to take a lawyer, so she couldn’t even get a message to him indirectly.

She faced a stark choice. She could either sit around doing nothing except brood about her uncle’s death and Daniel’s fate or she could keep herself occupied, following up on the trail that had started in Egypt. It was ironic that finding the Mosaic tablets had proved to be not the end of the trail, but the start, and had in fact opened the door to other discoveries.

Having her name second or third on a paper about the discovery of the Mosaic tablets was prestigious enough. But after Mansoor had told them about the mysterious papyrus in the Egyptian Museum, it looked like there was a lot more to discover – especially as he had told them that the papyrus was carbon-dated to 1600 BC. That would make it older than the Bible – yet written in the same script as the original Mosaic tablets.

A secret that pre-dated the Bible? And one that must have been related to the Bible because it was written in the same ancient script as the original Ten Commandments!

That was a find well worth pursuing. If the credit for finding the Mosaic tablets would be great, the prestige for revealing older documents relating to the Semitic peoples would be enormous.

But of the three of them, only Daniel could decipher the papyrus. He had made it clear that to have any chance of doing so, he needed some idea of its origins. So now Gabrielle was sitting here with the curator talking about William John Bankes, explorer, artist and Egyptologist. Between 1815 and 1819, Bankes travelled throughout Egypt, Nubia, Palestine and Syria, meticulously recording many of the great sites and artefacts with notes and drawings with a skilled and practised hand in the days before photography.

Several huge ledger-sized folders with cardboard ‘pages’ and heavy covers were stacked up on one side of the table. These were the Bankes archives. Pictures were held between the cardboard sheets, and many had clear plastic or cellophane over them to offer fuller protection of the drawing beneath. Gabrielle turned the pages in awe.

‘It’s amazing,’ she said with a shake of her head, admiring the skill and detail of the drawings.

Through his travels, Bankes had accumulated a substantial portfolio of manuscripts and illustrations of previously unknown historical sites in ancient Egypt and Sudan, preserving the details and imagery of sites that, in some cases, later became lost to vandalism and theft. For while the artefacts plundered by foreign explorers were still extant in Western museums, the spoils taken by local thieves – who were usually looking for gold and didn’t always appreciate the priceless value of knowledge – were in many cases gone for good.

‘So if I’ve understood you correctly,’ said the curator, ‘you don’t actually know where you’re looking, only what you’re looking for.’

‘Exactly,’ said Gabrielle. ‘We have an ancient Egyptian jar that bears a symbol like the Rod of Asclepius. We think it may have some connection with the ancient Israelites, as well as the Egyptians. So what we’re wondering is if there’s anything in the Bankes archives that shows such a symbol in ancient Egypt.’

‘I do actually remember seeing a drawing with that symbol before, in the Bankes collection,’ said the curator. ‘Now let me see.’

He selected one of the folders and started flicking through it.

‘Oh look,’ he said.

He had just stopped at a picture engraved on a rock showing a snake coiled around a pole.

‘It’s at Deir el-Medina,’ said the curator. ‘Literally “monastery of the town”.’

‘The town where the stonemasons, carpenters and scribes who worked on the tombs in the Valley of the Kings lived. Of course in those days, they didn’t speak Arabic.’

‘That’s right,’ said the curator. ‘They called it Set Maat.’

‘“The Place of Truth”.’

‘Precisely.’

Gabrielle was staring at the picture.

‘This would presumably have been before the place was excavated.’

‘Oh, long before,’ the curator acknowledged. ‘The first archaeological excavation was by an Italian called Ernesto Schiaparelli from 1905 to 1909. The second, between 1922 and 1951, was by French archaeologists under the direction of Bernard Bruyère. That one was somewhat more extensive.’

‘That’s about a hundred years after Bankes travelled in Egypt and Nubia,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Why the long wait before they started digging?’

The curator scratched his chin. ‘Well, let me just put that into its proper historical context. The site was known about for some considerable time before that. Indeed, a large number of papyri were found there as far back as the 1840s.’

‘Papyri?’

‘Yes.’

‘Were any of them in Proto-Sinaitic script?’

‘Proto-Sinaitic?’ The curator sounded genuinely surprised. ‘Not as far as I know. But not all the papyri are extant. Some of them were stolen.’

‘And never found?’ asked Gabrielle.

‘Well, a few of them ended up in the village well. Actually, that’s from the second excavation. The Schiaparelli excavation turned up loads of pottery and ostraca but no papyri. The Bruyère excavation, on the other hand, turned up many papyri. But unfortunately it wasn’t administered or controlled all that well. Consequently, something like half the papyri were taken without Bruyère’s consent or even his knowledge. Those were the ones that got stolen.’

‘And do we have any way of knowing how much of it ended up in private collections?’ asked Gabrielle.

‘Probably not.’

‘And by the same token,’ she pressed on, ‘we have no way of knowing what language or writing system they were written in?’

‘Not unless the heirs of those private collectors come forward,’ the curator conceded.

Gabrielle’s mind was racing ahead.

Could the papyrus Mansoor showed us be one of the missing Deir el-Medina papyri? If so, it could be part of a huge collection – and what a story THEY could tell!

Chapter 18

Goliath hardly noticed the streets of Cairo sweep by as he drove his rented car to the Theodor Bilharz Research Institute Hospital. In his head he was turning over the mantra about doing God’s work that gave him solace when times were hard. It was the same thought that had kept him going in prison.

After he had gone to work for Senator Morris, he had been given a difficult assignment. It involved killing a rabbi whom the senator said was part of the Jewish conspiracy to create a New World Order. Goliath had felt uncomfortable about killing. But, as Arthur Morris had told him, it was the will of God.

Only it had gone wrong – horribly wrong. He accomplished the killing all right, but he had got caught. However, Arthur Morris had not abandoned him. He had got him a lawyer who managed to get him off with manslaughter. He learnt an important lesson at the trial, namely that securing the right verdict had less to do with the law or the facts than with getting a sympathetic jury. The lawyer had managed to get the trial relocated to a different venue and had used a lot of so-called ‘peremptory challenges’ to get undesirables off the jury.

However, the judge was angered by the verdict and sentenced him to seven years in prison, of which he had served three and a half. It was a strange experience. He had always heard that prison was a tough place. But most prisoners stayed away from him, especially after he had killed one who tried to steal money off him. Amazingly, although there were several witnesses, they all told the prison guards that they had seen nothing. He was told by one old prisoner that he should do the same if ever he were asked if he had seen anything.

When he arrived at the hospital, he set about finding the patient, Joel Hirsch. Morris had told him not to draw attention to himself so he couldn’t ask at the main desk. Instead, he started walking down the corridor towards the intensive care unit, where Morris had told him Joel would be. He found it by following the path marked on the map at the entrance. When he walked in there was only one nurse on duty. That was good.

‘Excuse me,’ he said in slow English, to make sure that he was understood. ‘I’m looking for a patient called Joel Hirsch.’

The nurse appeared to respond to the name and pointed to a glass-encased unit. Goliath started to walk towards it, but the nurse signalled him to stop with a gesture and the word ‘Lah’.

‘No, you don’t understand. I’m his uncle.’

She made a sign with her hand and said something in Arabic. Then she reached for the phone.

He knew what was happening. She didn’t speak English and she was going to call someone else. If only she had gone to fetch someone, that would have given him time. But instead she was going to stay here and wait until help came. That was no good. He didn’t want to be seen.

There was only one thing to do. He reached out and grabbed her, clamping one hand over her mouth to stop her screaming and encircling her neck with the other. And then with that technique that he was so good at, he snapped her neck and let her body slump to the floor.

But now he was in a panic. If this was the intensive care unit then there would normally be several people on duty and that meant that someone could come back at any minute. He knew that he had to find a sample of Joel’s clothes, but he didn’t know where to look. A patient’s clothes would normally be in a cabinet beside the bed, but in this case, the bed was in an isolated unit. And it was probably locked or at least alarmed.

He looked for some sign on a cabinet or unit next to the room that housed the bed, but there was none. They might have destroyed his clothes or taken them for analysis – he simply had no way of knowing. All he knew was that he could hear voices. That meant that people were approaching. He didn’t want to fail his mentor, especially after he had lost track of that Daniel Klein character. But what other choice did he have?

It was now too late to go back into the main corridor. Instead, he made his way across the unit to the emergency exit and slipped out just as he heard a woman scream.

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