The Exodus Quest Read online

  The right-hand column bore titles like The Cancer of Liberalism and The Sin of Sodom. Augustin clicked on The Abominators Agenda. An inset screen appeared, Peterson mouthing silently at the camera. He turned on the volume, had to sit back at the torrent of anger and hate that poured forth. He clicked a different link, all by itself, and entitled ‘The Face Of Christ’. Peterson again, but his tone completely different. Emollient. Transcendent. ‘You ask how I came to God,’ he said. ‘Let me tell you how I came to God. I was a wretched sinner. A thief, a drinker, a man of dishonesty and violence, well known to our police, though still but a youth. And I came to God because one day, my lowest day, in His infinite mercy He sent His Son to bring me to Him. A vision of His Son. And I tell you this: no man can look upon the face of Christ and not believe. And that is the mission God gave me for my time upon this earth: to bring the face of Christ to the whole world. Make it your mission too and together we will surely—’

  The door opened behind him. He looked around to see a policeman standing there. ‘Doctor Augustin, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m Detective Inspector Farooq. Your colleague Doctor Mansoor suggested you would be good enough to come to Borg el-Arab with me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Excellent. Are you ready?’

  Augustin nodded. He closed down the browser with a little shudder, got to his feet. ‘Let’s do it,’ he said.

  IV

  Peterson drove back to the excavation site as quickly as prudence would allow, stopping only to hurl Knox’s laptop and mobile phone into the reed-fringed waters of Lake Mariut, watching with satisfaction as they splashed and sank.

  Claire came out of the office to greet him. An awkward young woman, all elbows and knees, yet with a certain steeliness too. He’d have done without her if he could, but her medical know-how and fluent Arabic were too useful. ‘Are those men okay?’ she asked, her arms folded.

  ‘What men?’

  ‘Nathan told me about them last night. He was in a terrible state.’

  ‘They’re fine,’ Peterson assured her. ‘They’re in the Lord’s hands.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘We’re all in the Lord’s hands, Sister Claire. Or perhaps you think differently?’

  ‘Of course not, Reverend. But I’d still like to—’

  ‘Later, Sister Claire. Later. Right now, I have urgent business with Brother Griffin. Do you know where he is?’

  ‘In the cemetery. But I—’

  ‘Then if you’ll excuse me,’ he said, striding off.

  Griffin must have heard his car, because he met him halfway to the cemetery. ‘What the hell happened last night?’ he demanded.

  ‘In good time,’ said Peterson. ‘First, have you done everything I told you to do?’

  Griffin nodded. ‘You want to see?’

  ‘Indeed, Brother Griffin.’

  They visited the emptied magazine, then the shaft. To Peterson’s surprise, he had a hard time spotting where it had been, even standing right beside it. ‘I suppose it will do,’ he said. His greatest worry now was that someone might shoot their mouth off. Specifically, Griffin or Claire. He glanced back towards the office. ‘I don’t want Claire here should the police or the SCA turn up. Take her back to the hotel. Keep her out of sight.’

  ‘But what will I tell her?’

  ‘Tell her you need to talk to the hotel people about something, and you need a translator.’

  ‘But they speak English at the hotel.’

  ‘Then think of something else,’ snapped Peterson. He watched Griffin traipse away, then headed to the cemetery. The authorities were certain to visit sooner or later. His students needed to know what to tell them.

  V

  Captain Khaled Osman felt uncharacteristically anxious as Nasser drove him and his men out along the Royal Wadi road. He didn’t like visiting the tomb before dark, but Faisal had insisted he needed some natural light to work by. It should be safe enough, he told himself. No tourists ever arrived this late; Amarna was simply too big to see in less than half a day. And he’d made it quite clear to the locals that they were not to come down here any more.

  They parked behind the generator building. Abdullah walked back a little way along the road to stand sentry just in case, while he, Faisal and Nasser traded their uniforms for old shirts and trousers. It was dirty work, what lay ahead. He’d have let Faisal and Nasser handle it themselves, but he didn’t trust them to do good work if they weren’t supervised. Besides, he felt the need for one last look.

  He belted his holster back on. He felt naked without his Walther, his pride and joy, an unofficial memento of his army days that he’d taken along with an AK-47 and a box of grenades for fishing with. Decent kit too, not like the Egyptian-made pieces-of-shit his men had to put up with. They crossed the drainage channel, picked their way across boulders and scree.

  ‘These damned boots!’ muttered Faisal, who always got agitated near where they’d found the girl.

  The easiest way to reach the tomb mouth was to walk beyond it, climb the side of the wadi, then cut back across the top to a thin ledge. Faisal led the way. The man was a mountain goat. He reached the mouth, pulled back the sackcloth curtain, invisible from more than a few paces. Dust and grit sprinkled Khaled’s hair as he followed him inside. ‘How long do you need?’ he asked.

  ‘That depends, sir,’ said Faisal.

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On how much help I get.’

  Khaled stood there uncertainly. There was something about this place that seemed to incite insubordination. ‘One last look,’ he said, picking up a torch. ‘You never know.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Faisal. ‘You never know.’

  Khaled headed along the passage to the burial chamber, still fuming. Who did Faisal think he was? But he put it from his mind in the greater frustration of his failure in this place. Their first visit here, they’d found three statue fragments in the debris, a scarab and a silver amulet. He’d truly believed it was the start of great things. But the finds had dried up, and they’d only fetched a fraction of what he’d hoped because no one believed they were genuine. He hadn’t even got enough for them to share anything with his men. It was a paltry return for so much work. Whole sections of ceiling had caved in over the centuries, so that the whole place had been choked with sand and rubble. They couldn’t dump it out the mouth, or someone would soon notice, so they’d shifted it from area to area instead, like cleaning house. And all by night, too, their only free time. They’d grown increasingly weary and irritable, yet had never quite been able to give up. That was the cruelty of hope.

  There was a sump in front of the burial chamber, just like in the Royal Tomb. So much sand and rubble had fallen down it over the millennia that at first they hadn’t even realized it was there. But it was there all right, the full width of the passage. And deep! Once they’d checked everywhere else, they’d turned their attention to it, removing basket after basket, digging ever deeper, until they’d had to bring in a rope ladder to climb down to the foot, and then tie lengths of rope to their baskets so that one of them could stay at the bottom to fill them while the others hauled them to the top for sieving and disposal.

  He climbed down the rope ladder for one last look. But his torch lit nothing save their own detritus: empty water bottles, discarded food wrappings, the stub of a candle, a book of matches. Discipline had been an early casualty of failure. Six metres deep already, and still they hadn’t reached the foot! Six metres! He shook his head at the absurdity of the ancients. So much effort! And so pointless too.

  After all, who on earth needed a sump six metres deep?

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I

  Knox had drifted off into a restorative sleep in the Latin Cemeteries. He woke to footsteps slapping the paving slabs outside. For a moment he feared he was bound to be discovered, but the footsteps passed by without changing cadence. He waited for silence, pushed himself grimacing to his feet,
his body stiff. He hobbled out of the cemetery, bought a Menatel card from a general store, then found a secluded phone-kiosk from which to call Augustin.

  ‘Cedric, mon cher ami!’ boomed Augustin, the moment he recognized Knox’s voice.

  Knox picked up his cue at once, switched smoothly to French. ‘There are people with you?’

  ‘A fine officer of the law. He speaks some English but I think we’re okay in French. Hang on a second.’ Knox heard some muttering, Augustin’s hand clamped over the mouthpiece. Then he came back on. ‘We’re fine,’ he said. ‘I just called his mother a fat sow. Not a flicker.’

  Knox laughed. ‘What are you doing with the police?’

  ‘On our way to Borg.’ He gave a quick rundown of what he’d learned about the Texas Society of Biblical Archaeology, their links to UMC, their excavations in Cephallonia. Then Knox filled Augustin in on his mystery assailant, and how he’d made off with his laptop.

  ‘Shit!’ exclaimed Augustin. ‘I only just bought the damned thing. But you’re okay, yes?’

  ‘I’m fine. But I need somewhere to hide out. I thought maybe Kostas. Pick his brains while I’m there. But I can’t remember his address.’

  ‘Sharia Muharram Bey. Number fifty-five. Third floor. And tell him I want my copy of Lucretius back. Bastard’s had it for months now.’

  ‘Will do,’ said Knox.

  II

  This was the time to visit the desert, the late afternoon sun coaxing sharp contrasts from the same cliffs that had earlier seemed a flat monochrome, tinting the western sky fruit-bowl colours. Gaille cut out past the southern tip of the Amarna cliffs then circled north to the eastern end of the Royal Wadi. She pointed away across the sands. ‘The desert road’s about five kilometres that way.’

  ‘And it runs all the way down to Assiut, right?’ asked Lily.

  ‘Yes.’ The car ferries would stop running after dark; they needed to head south on this side of the Nile. She turned into the wadi. There was no sealed road this end, just a rock-strewn floor. Gaille navigated it cautiously, while Stafford sat beside her, his arms pointedly folded, sighing every few seconds, until they reached an impassable barrier of scree.

  ‘I thought you knew the way,’ he said.

  ‘You can walk from here. It’s straight ahead. Only a couple of kilometres.’

  ‘Two kilometres!’

  ‘Then we’d better set off now, don’t you think?’ said Lily. ‘Unless you don’t want this scene any more?’ Stafford threw her a caustic look, but got out and strode off down the wadi. ‘That’s right,’ muttered Lily. ‘Don’t help carry the equipment.’

  ‘What a prick!’ said Gaille. ‘How do you put up with him?’

  ‘It’s just for a couple more days,’ said Lily, getting out. She turned back to Gaille, still sitting there. ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  ‘I’d better stay with the Discovery. Just in case.’

  ‘Sure. I bet this place is just crawling with car thieves.’ She tipped her head onto one side. ‘Please. I can’t take him alone.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Gaille, just about managing a smile. She climbed out of the Discovery and locked it behind her.

  III

  Augustin was growing bored on the drive out to Borg. Farooq was hardly the world’s greatest conversationalist. A few blunt questions about Omar and Knox that Augustin had managed to deflect easily enough, then a slump into almost complete silence. He got out his cigarettes, offered them across.

  ‘Thanks,’ grunted Farooq, taking one.

  Augustin lit his own, passed his lighter to Farooq, then lowered his window, cupping a hand to catch the passing air. A white pick-up was coming towards them, sunlight reflecting off its dusty windscreen in such a way that it was only when they were passing that he saw the driver and his passenger, a young woman with long fair hair, whose eye Augustin caught for the briefest of moments.

  They took a sharp right a kilometre further on, headed down a long lane, then turned left over an earthen bridge across an irrigation channel, pulling up to speak to a security guard. They’d just missed Griffin, apparently. That must have been him with the blonde in the pick-up. But Peterson was on site. The guard sent them in to wait by the office. They’d only been there a minute when Peterson arrived. ‘Detective Inspector Farooq,’ he said. ‘An unexpected pleasure. What can we do for you?’

  ‘Just one or two details to clear up. You know Doctor Augustin Pascal?’

  ‘By reputation,’ said Peterson.

  ‘He’s offered to help me. Explain archaeological terms, that kind of thing.’

  ‘How good of him.’

  Farooq nodded, took out his mobile. ‘If you gentlemen will excuse me. I need to check in.’

  Augustin and Peterson locked gazes as Farooq walked off, sizing each other up, neither backing down. It was a good minute before Farooq came back to join them, looking rather pleased with himself. ‘Well,’ he said, rubbing his hands vigorously. ‘Perhaps we could get started.’

  ‘On what, exactly?’ asked Peterson.

  ‘I’d like to speak to your people. Find out what they saw.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Peterson. ‘Follow me.’

  ‘Thank you,’ nodded Farooq, as they set off across the broken ground. ‘You told me last night that Knox and Tawfiq visited you yesterday after noon. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did they say why?’

  ‘Perhaps you should ask Knox.’

  ‘We will,’ promised Farooq. ‘The moment we find him.’

  ‘You’ve lost him?’ frowned Peterson. ‘How could you have lost him? The man was half dead.’

  ‘Never you mind,’ scowled Farooq. ‘And I’d like to hear your version anyway.’

  ‘He’d seen some kind of artefact in Alexandria. A jar lid, as I recall. We told him they made jars all around Lake Mariut, so there was no reason to suspect it came from here.’

  ‘And then they left?’

  ‘Yes. We thought no more about it until we had an intruder. In fact, not even then. We had no idea it was them. We just assumed it was some petty thief.’

  ‘I understood this was a training excavation,’ murmured Augustin. ‘Are you finding things of value here?’

  ‘Not of intrinsic value, no. But the locals don’t know that. So there’s always a danger they’ll trespass and contaminate our data. Surely you appreciate that, Doctor Pascal?’

  ‘So you chased them off.’

  ‘It was just as I told you last night, Detective Inspector. Nothing has changed.’ They reached the cemetery, dusty young excavators exhuming two graves. ‘You want to speak to my team,’ he said, spreading his hands. ‘Well, here they are.’

  TWENTY-SIX

  I

  Gaille’s thighs were burning by the time they’d walked along the wadi and climbed the hillside close to the Royal Tomb. They all fell silent without being told, aware that they’d have a terrible time explaining their presence should they meet anyone. But the door of the Royal Tomb was emphatically closed, and the road deserted. Gaille grinned at Lily in unspoken relief.

  ‘We’re only just in time,’ said Stafford, nodding at the sun, low on the western horizon.

  ‘Then you’d better get started,’ suggested Gaille.

  ‘If you’ll get out of my eye-line.’

  She turned and walked off, not trusting herself to speak. But it wasn’t easy to get away. To her left was a deep cleft in the hilltop, as though one of Egypt’s gods had attacked it with an axe. And to her right was the cliff’s edge itself, and a vertiginous drop down to the wadi floor. But at least that way was out of Stafford’s line of sight, so she inched as close to it as she dared, saw to her surprise what looked like a ledge a few feet below, a boot-print clearly visible in the dust.

  She went a little further along the edge, found a way down onto it. Lily and Stafford were still setting up. They’d be a few minutes yet. Her toes tingled as she started out, but her curiosity proved stronger than her
fear of heights, so she steeled herself and pressed on.

  II

  Kostas always took his own good time answering his front door, blaming either his failing hearing or his failing legs. He took it as a privilege of age to make people wait. But eventually he arrived, patting down his wreath of tangled, snowy hair, producing a pair of half-moon spectacles from his jacket pocket, then peering over the top of them. ‘My dear Knox!’ he exclaimed. ‘What a delightful surprise.’ But then he blinked and took half a pace back. ‘My! You have been in the wars.’

  ‘That bad, is it?’ grimaced Knox. ‘I couldn’t use your bathroom, could I?’

  ‘Of course. Of course. Come in.’ Kostas shuffled along his obstacle course of a hallway, using his cane as a white stick to help him navigate between the dusty high stacks of academic tomes and packing chests of exotic artefacts, making the place feel more like a bric-a-brac store than a home. His walls were just as cluttered, a collage of astral charts, lurid occult posters, his own watercolours of herbs and other medicinal plants, framed frontispieces of arcane works and yellowed press clippings of himself in the news.

  Knox examined himself in the washbasin mirror. A sight indeed: dried blood on his scalp and forehead, his face haggard, his hair prematurely aged with dust. He lathered up some soap, cleaned himself as best he could. A line of Greek text across the top of the mirror made him smile: NIΨONANOMHMATAMHMONANOΨIN. One of the earliest known palindromes: Wash your iniquities not just your face. He dried himself with a hand-towel, turning it an ugly brown, then went back out.