The Exodus Quest Read online

  ‘Car crash,’ slurred Knox. ‘Can’t remember.’

  Augustin looked at him in horror, turned and strode into his bedroom for his jacket. ‘I’m taking you to hospital.’

  ‘No,’ said Knox. ‘Not safe. A man. He put a pillow over my face.’

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘Don’t know. Too dark.’

  ‘I’m calling the police.’

  ‘No! No police. No doctors. Please. Find out what’s going on.’

  Augustin shrugged and helped Knox to his sofa, then went to his kitchen, poured them each a glass of water, swallowed his own in one. ‘Okay,’ he said, wiping his mouth. ‘From the beginning. A car crash. Where?’

  Knox shook his head. ‘Can’t remember. Last thing I remember was coffee with you.’

  ‘But that was the day before yesterday!’ protested Augustin. ‘Do you have any receipts? Any way to work out your movements?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How about your mobile? See who you’ve called.’

  Knox patted his pockets expressively. ‘Lost.’

  ‘Email, then.’ He helped Knox to his breakfast table, set up his laptop, dialled up a connection. Knox logged into his account, found incoming from Gaille.

  Hi Daniel,

  I’ve attached your Therapeutae photos, the ones I could make anything of, at least. The others were too badly lit or blurred for the short time I had, but I’ll keep working. Where did you take them? Are you up to no good again? I’m dying to hear. I’m on taxi-duty in Amarna today but I’ll call tonight.

  I miss you too.

  All my love, Gaille.

  Augustin’s heart thumped as he read the message; he felt the blood draining from his face. ‘Everything okay?’ asked Knox, looking curiously at him.

  ‘Therapeutae photos?’ said Augustin. ‘Where the hell did you take Therapeutae photos?’

  ‘How should I know?’ retorted Knox. ‘Concussion, remember?’

  Augustin nodded. ‘Then download these damned photos, will you? This is getting interesting.’

  III

  The appendices of Stafford’s book included full transcriptions and translations of the Copper Scroll. Gaille and Lily read the translation together. ‘How much did a talent weigh, exactly?’ asked Lily.

  ‘It varied from place to place,’ replied Gaille. ‘Anywhere from twenty to forty kilos.’

  ‘But here’s a cache of nine hundred talents,’ protested Lily. ‘That would be eighteen thousand kilos of gold. That’s not possible, surely.’

  Gaille frowned. Lily was right. The quantities were simply unbelievable. She checked the transcription of the original Hebrew. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘The weights are designated by the letter “k”. That’s been translated as talents, because talents were used by the Jews and in the Bible. But if this was Akhenaten, and the treasure came from Egypt, it would surely have been designated in Eighteenth Dynasty units of weight, and they didn’t use talents, not then, not for gold. They used something called a kite, which was denominated by the letter “k”. And a kite was just a fraction of a talent, only about ten or twelve grams.’

  ‘So these numbers would make more sense?’

  ‘Much more. I mean, it would still make for a huge amount of gold, but plausible, you know. And look at this numbering system. These slashes, this figure ten. That’s classic Eighteenth Dynasty.’

  Lily took a step back, shook her head. ‘But why would Akhenaten’s followers bury their gold? Why not take it with them?’

  ‘Because they couldn’t,’ said Gaille. ‘There was a massive reaction after Akhenaten’s death, remember. The traditionalists took back over, and they stamped down hard. Most Atenists recanted and moved to Thebes, but not all of them. If you’re right about them being the Jews, Exodus says they did a moonlight flit. And you can’t take this much bullion with you on a moonlight flit, it would slow you down too much.’

  ‘So they buried it,’ said Lily. ‘And wrote down the hiding places on a copper scroll.’

  ‘They wouldn’t have been too worried,’ nodded Gaille. ‘After all, this was the One True God’s home on earth, and they were fervent believers. It followed that they’d soon be back, triumphant. But of course it didn’t happen that way. They fled Egypt altogether, settled in Canaan, convinced themselves that was their Promised Land. And when their original Copper Scroll was in danger from oxidation, or perhaps when they couldn’t read Egyptian any more, they made a copy, only in Hebrew this time. And maybe another copy after that. And somehow it ended up in Qumran.’ She frowned at a thought. ‘You’ve heard about the End of Days, right? The great battle at Meggido?’

  ‘Armageddon,’ said Lily.

  ‘Exactly. Afterwards, God is supposed to reign from a New Jerusalem, a city described in Ezekiel and the Book of Revelations. They found a different “New Jerusalem” scroll at Qumran. Six copies of it, in fact, which suggests it meant a lot to the Essenes. The city’s layout is given in precise detail. Size, orientation, roads, houses, temples, water, everything. And it maps onto one particular ancient city with quite startling accuracy.’

  ‘Which city?’ asked Lily, though she must have suspected the answer.

  ‘This one,’ replied Gaille, spreading her hands. ‘Amarna.’

  IV

  Knox clicked through Gaille’s photographs in stunned silence. A half-excavated grave, a statuette of Harpocrates, catacombs, mummified human remains, a box of severed human ears. ‘Good Christ!’ he muttered, when he brought up the mosaic.

  Augustin tapped the screen. ‘You know what this reminds me of?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ever heard of Eliphas Lévi? A French occultist, like Aleister Crowley, only earlier. He created a famous image of an obscure Templar deity called Baphomet that became the model for modern iconography of the Devil. It showed him in this same posture, legs crossed, right hand pointing up. And he had the same look too. That long chin, those stretched eyes, those accentuated cheekbones. See what I’m saying?’

  ‘Slow down a bit,’ said Knox, gesturing at his banged-up forehead.

  ‘No one’s quite sure where Baphomet came from,’ nodded Augustin. ‘Some claim his name was a corruption of Mahomet. Others that it came from the Greek Baphe Meti, baptism of wisdom. But there’s another theory, based on the Atbash cipher, a Jewish transliteration code that swaps A for Z, B for Y and so on.’

  ‘I know it,’ said Knox. ‘The Essenes used it.’

  ‘Exactly. Which makes sense if this place belonged to the Therapeutae. Anyway, if you put Baphomet through the Atbash, you get Sophia, Greek goddess of wisdom, firstborn of God. Sophia was female, of course, but Lévi made Baphomet a hermaphrodite with breasts, rather like the figure in the mosaic.’

  Knox peered closer. He hadn’t picked it up before, but Augustin was right. The figure in the mosaic looked masculine, yet was clearly depicted with breasts.

  ‘Hermaphrodites were sacred back then,’ said Augustin. ‘The Greeks considered them theoeides, divine of form. The Orphics believed that the universe began when Eros hatched as an hermaphrodite from an egg. After all, it’s easier to imagine that one thing came out of the void, rather than multiple things. And when everything starts from one thing, that one thing must be both male and female.’

  ‘Like Atum,’ said Knox. In Egyptian mythology, Atum had arisen from the primordial soup, created only by himself. Feeling lonely, he’d masturbated into his hand, a representation of the female reproductive organs, giving birth to Shu and Tefnut, beginning the cascade of life.

  ‘Precisely. In fact, that’s almost certainly where the Orphics got the idea from, though divine hermaphrodites crop up everywhere. Hebraic angels were hermaphroditic, did you know? And Qabbala souls are just like that famous wheel in Plato, hermaphrodites divided into their male and female aspects before entering the world, fated to search the earth for their other half. Even Adam was an hermaphrodite, according to some traditions. “Male and female He created them, and He called their name Adam
.” That was what Jesus was talking about when he said: “Therefore now are they not two, but one flesh.” And Gnosticism is full of it. It’s even in the Sophia itself, now that I think of it.’

  ‘How do you know all this stuff?’

  ‘I wrote a piece for one of the papers a couple of years back. They lap up this kind of shit. I got most of it from Kostas.’

  Knox nodded. Kostas was an elderly Greek friend of theirs, a font of knowledge on the Gnostics and Alexandria’s church fathers. ‘Maybe we should give him a call.’

  ‘Let’s see what else we have first.’ He took control of the mouse, clicked through the remaining photographs. Heavenly bodies on the ceiling, young men and women kneeling on dust sheets cleaning walls. A mural of a figure in blue kneeling before two men at the mouth of a cave, the Greek subscript just about legible. Augustin zoomed in then squinted at the screen. ‘“Son of David, have mercy on me”,’ he translated. ‘Mean anything to you?’

  ‘No.’ Knox sat back. ‘Have you seen any of this before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you would have, yes? I mean, if a reputable crew had found anything like this round here, you’d know, right? Even if they’d kept it secret from the hoi polloi like me, you’d have heard about it?’

  ‘I’d like to think so,’ said Augustin. ‘But this is Egypt, remember. Maybe I should give Omar a call.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  There was no answer on Omar’s mobile. Augustin tried his office instead. Knox watched in puzzlement as he turned pale, his expression increasingly bleak. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  Augustin ended the call, turned dazed to Knox. ‘Omar’s dead,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘And they’re saying that you killed him.’

  NINETEEN

  I

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ asked Knox, horrified. ‘You don’t think … you can’t think I killed Omar?’

  Augustin put his hand on Knox’s shoulder. ‘Of course not, my friend. But we must face facts. Omar’s dead. And you said yourself that you were in a car crash, you can’t remember anything about it.’ He grabbed his jacket, pocketed his wallet, mobile and keys. ‘I’ll go to the hospital and the SCA, see what I can find out. You stay here. Get some rest. That’s often the best way to get your memory back. And don’t worry. We’ll sort this out.’ And he pulled the door closed behind him, locking it on the latch.

  II

  Lily looked a little dizzily down at the ground beneath her feet. ‘You don’t suppose … I mean, it’s not possible that any of these treasures are still here?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Gaille. ‘This place has been pretty well searched over the years. Nothing much has been found. Some Nefertiti jewellery back in the eighteen hundreds. Some bronze temple vessels. I guess they might have been part of it. And there was something called the Crock of Gold too, a jar half-filled with ingots. They used to make them by digging grooves in the sand with their finger, then pouring molten gold into them to set. I’ve always thought that was most likely someone’s life-savings or a goldsmith’s stash of raw material, but I suppose it could be part of this.’

  ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘Not that I know of. But then you wouldn’t expect to find much. Remember, this whole city was completely dismantled after Akhenaten died.’ Gaille gave a dry laugh. ‘In fact, maybe that’s why it was dismantled, not simply demolished or abandoned. Think about it. If the new authorities realised what the Atenists had done, maybe because they found a cache or two, or because someone talked …’

  Lily nodded vigorously. ‘They’d have taken the place apart brick by brick until they’d found the lot.’ She touched Stafford’s book. ‘Does it say where these things were buried?’

  Sunlight glared upon the white paper. They turned their backs until it was in shadow. ‘In the fortress in the Vale of Achor,’ murmured Gaille. ‘Forty cubits under the eastern steps. In the Sepulchral Monument. In the third course of stones. In the Great Cistern in the Court of the Peristyle, concealed in a hole in the floor.’

  Lily wrinkled her nose. ‘Pretty vague, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’d expect it to be,’ replied Gaille. ‘If we’re right, the Atenists would have believed their eviction only a temporary setback. They didn’t need precise directions, only an aide-mémoire.’

  ‘What about these place names? Secacah, Mount Gezirim, the Vale of Achor?’

  ‘They’re all near Jerusalem,’ admitted Gaille. ‘But maybe that’s not so surprising, either. I mean, if our theory’s right, this is at least a double translation. Egyptian into Hebrew then Hebrew into English. And these places would only originally have been designated by a series of consonants, because neither Egyptian nor Hebrew had vowels. So when the translators came across place names that didn’t quite fit their preconceptions, wouldn’t it have been natural for them to tweak them until they did? I mean, take the Royal Wadi here. It used to be known as “Vale of the Horizon”, or “Vale of Akhet” in Egyptian. Is it really too great a stretch to imagine that being translated as the Vale of Achor? Or that Secacah might originally have been Saqqara?’

  ‘I thought Saqqara was near Cairo?’

  ‘Yes, but it got its name from Sokar, a god of the dead worshipped throughout Egypt. Burial grounds were often—’

  Footsteps crunched the crusted sand behind her. She snapped the book closed, whirled around to see Stafford approaching, camera bags hoisted over his shoulder. ‘Can’t put it down, eh?’ he asked complacently.

  ‘No,’ agreed Gaille. ‘It’s quite extraordinary.’

  ‘That’s why I wrote it.’ He checked his watch, nodded at the Discovery. ‘Whenever you’re ready,’ he said, heaving the camera onto the back seat. ‘We are on a schedule, you know.’

  III

  Peterson was still on watch outside Augustin Pascal’s apartment block when a pair of sixth-floor balcony doors opened abruptly and Knox walked out, looking weary and dismayed, as though he’d just had bad news. The building’s front doors banged open a few moments later and a man in jeans and a leather jacket emerged. Pascal. It had to be. Pascal took a deep drag from his cigarette, flicked it away across the concrete, then straddled a black-and-chrome motorbike, raising an arm in acknowledgement to Knox as he pulled away.

  Knox leaned far out over the balcony railing to wave him off. Watching him, Peterson experienced a most intense waking dream: Knox overbalancing, trying vainly to claw himself back, plunging to his death. Such visions weren’t new to Peterson. He took them with great seriousness. Faithless people and the weak of spirit considered prayer as their way to beseech the Lord to give them things they coveted. But true prayer wasn’t like that. True prayer was how the faithful found out what the Lord wanted from them.

  A man overwrought by the death of a close friend, a death for which he blamed himself. Yes. People would understand if such a man threw himself to his own destruction.

  He waited for Knox to go back inside the apartment, then got out of his Toyota and walked calmly over to the front doors.

  He always felt calm when he had the Lord’s work to do.

  IV

  ‘I thought you people weren’t in a rush,’ remarked the pathologist, leading Naguib through gloomy hospital corridors to his small office.

  ‘Is that what you heard?’

  ‘Yes. That’s what I heard.’

  Naguib shrugged. ‘My boss thinks this isn’t the best moment for an investigation like this.’

  ‘You don’t agree with him?’

  ‘I have a daughter.’

  The pathologist nodded seriously. ‘So do I.’

  ‘Have you … begun yet?’

  ‘She’s scheduled for this afternoon. I could bring her forward if you wish.’

  ‘I’d be grateful.’

  ‘There is one thing,’ said the pathologist. ‘Not related to cause of death, but you may find it interesting.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘My assistant found it whi
le he was bringing her in. A pouch on a string around her neck.’

  ‘A pouch?’ frowned Naguib. ‘Anything inside?’

  ‘A small statuette,’ nodded the pathologist. ‘You can take it with you if you like.’

  TWENTY

  I

  Knox caught a whiff of himself as he came in from the balcony. Not a pleasant experience. He went into the bathroom, stripped off. His bandages were looking tired and grey, much how he felt. He washed around them with soap and a flannel, flinching every few moments, less from pain so much as from the dreadful news about Omar.

  He went back out. He’d slept here a hundred times, after late nights putting the world to rights, and had never thought twice about borrowing a clean shirt in the morning. But Augustin’s bedroom door was closed. And now that Knox thought about it, he recalled how Augustin had stopped on his way out of the apartment, turned back, vanished into his room for a minute, and how he’d closed his door carefully again after he’d emerged. So maybe he had someone in there. He often did. And while Augustin wasn’t coy about such things, maybe the person in there was.

  Knox hesitated, unwilling to intrude. But then he remembered how bad his shirt had smelled. No way was he putting that back on. He knocked gently. No answer. He knocked louder, called out. Still nothing. He opened the door a short way, peeked inside, pushed it wide open and stood there in surprise. Augustin’s flat had always been a tip, particularly his bedroom. Somewhere to bring women back to, as he put it, not somewhere they’d want to stay. It wasn’t like that any more. Morning sunlight poured through dazzling clean windows onto deep-pile maroon carpet and a gleaming new brass, king-sized bed. The walls had been stripped of their ragged wallpaper, beautifully refinished and painted royal blue. Lithographs of Egypt’s great monuments on the walls. Cornices, skirting and ceiling glowing white. A fitted wardrobe of gleaming mahogany. A matching dressing table and chair. And now that he’d noticed the bedroom, he belatedly realized the main room had been redecorated and re-carpeted too, though less extravagantly. He’d simply been too disorientated to notice before.