The Exodus Quest Page 3

  ‘You mean here? In Alexandria?’

  Knox grinned. ‘Have you ever heard of the Therapeutae?’ he asked.

  III

  The Reverend Ernest Peterson surreptitiously dabbed his brow. He didn’t like being seen to sweat. He didn’t like showing any sign of weakness. Fifty-two years old, ramrod straight, grizzled hair, fierce eyes, a hawk’s nose. Never without his copy of the King James Version. Never without his preacher’s livery. A man proud to show through his own unyielding purpose a faint glimmer of the irresistible strength of God. Yet the sweat kept coming. It wasn’t just the humidity in this cramped, dark underground labyrinth. It was the vertiginous sense of what he was on the verge of achieving.

  Thirty-odd years before, Peterson had been a punk – a petty thief, always in trouble with the law. Under arrest one night, dozing on a police bench, glancing up at a Heinrich Hofmann print of Christ hanging high up on the wall, his heart suddenly starting to race crazily, like the most violent panic attack, but which suddenly dissolved into the most intense and serene vision of his life, a blinding white light, an epiphany. He’d stumbled from the bench after it was done, searching for a reflective surface in which to see what imprint it had left upon him: bleached hair, charred skin, albino irises. To his astonishment, there’d been no physical change whatsoever. Yet it had changed him, all right. It had transformed him from within. For no man could look upon the face of Christ and remain untouched.

  He dabbed his forehead once more, turned to Griffin. ‘Ready?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then do it.’

  He stood back as Griffin and Michael heaved a first block of stone from the false wall to reveal the open space behind that had been indicated by their probes. Griffin reached in his torch, twisted it this way and that, illuminating a large chamber that flickered with shadow and colour, provoking murmurs and gasps from his young students. But Peterson only nodded at Nathan and Michael to continue dismantling the wall.

  It said in the Good Book: The Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh upon outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. The Lord had looked upon his heart that night in custody. The Lord had seen something in him that even he hadn’t realized was there.

  A sufficient gap had been created for Griffin to step through, but Peterson put a hand on his shoulder. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m going first.’

  ‘It should be an archaeologist.’

  ‘I’m going first,’ repeated Peterson. He rested his palm on the rough crumbled mortar, stepped through into the new chamber.

  He’d not merely been transformed that night; he’d been given purpose. Of all God’s gifts, perhaps the greatest. It hadn’t been easy. He’d wasted years on the medieval make-believe of the Turin Shroud and the Veil of Veronica. Yet he’d never once doubted or contemplated giving in. The Lord didn’t hand out such missions on a whim. And finally he’d found the right lead, had followed it relentlessly, was now within touching distance. He felt it. He knew it. The time of the light was coming, certain as sunrise.

  He shone his torch around the chamber. Thirty paces long, ten wide. Everything covered in dust. A deep bath embedded in the floor, a wide flight of steps leading down into it, divided by a low stone wall, so that community members could descend unclean down one side and emerge purified from the other. Walls plastered and painted in antiquity; pigments dulled by neglect, cobwebs, dirt and wormcasts. He brushed an area with his hand, shone his torch obliquely at the revealed scene. A woman in blue with a child on her lap. He had to blink away tears.

  ‘Reverend! Look!’

  He glanced around to see Marcia shining her torch up at the domed ceiling, painted to represent the sky, a glowing orange sun near its apex, constellations of yellow stars, a creamy full moon, red coals of planets. Day and night together. Joy effervesced in his heart as Peterson stared up. He fell to his knees in gratitude and adoration. ‘Let us give thanks,’ he said. He gazed around until all his young students had fallen to their knees. And then even Griffin had to follow, compelled by the power of the group.

  ‘I know that my redeemer liveth,’ cried Peterson, his voice reverberating loudly around the chamber. ‘And that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.’

  Yes, he exulted. In my flesh shall I see God.

  IV

  Naguib Hussein was on his way back to the Mallawi police station to make his report when he decided it might be as well to make a detour to Amarna, ask the people there if they’d heard anything about a missing young girl, if only to take the opportunity of introducing himself.

  A tourist policeman was fooling around on his motorbike, gunning his engine, braking sharply, spraying huge arcs of dust and sand with his back wheel: entertainment for his officer and two comrades drinking chai on wooden benches beneath a makeshift sunshade. Naguib braced himself. Relations between the services were strained around here, each looking down on the other. He waited for the officer to acknowledge his arrival, but he continued to ignore him until Naguib’s cheeks grew warm. He scowled and walked across the officer’s line of sight, giving him no choice but to notice him, though he still didn’t get up. ‘Yes?’ he asked.

  Naguib nodded at the eastern crescent of hills. ‘I’ve just come from the desert,’ he said.

  ‘If they’ll pay you for it.’

  ‘One of the guides took some tourists out last night. They found a girl.’

  ‘A girl?’ frowned the officer. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I mean they found her body. Wrapped in tarpaulin.’

  The officer set down his glass, stood up. A tall man, beautifully presented, razor-cut hair, manicured nails, a silken moustache, making the most of his uniform. ‘I hadn’t heard,’ he said, suddenly earnest, offering his hand. ‘Captain Khaled Osman, at your service.’

  ‘Inspector Naguib Hussein.’

  ‘Are you new here, Inspector? I don’t recall seeing you before.’

  ‘Six weeks,’ admitted Naguib. ‘I was in Minya before.’

  ‘You must have done something pretty bad to get posted here.’

  Naguib gave a wry grunt. He’d been investigating military equipment on the black market, hadn’t dropped it even when the trail had led him to the top, not even after he’d been warned off. He hated Egypt’s culture of corruption. ‘They told me it was a promotion,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Khaled. ‘They told me that, too.’ He glanced around. ‘You’ll join us for some chai?’

  Naguib shook his head. ‘I need to get back to the station. I just thought I’d ask if you’d heard anything.’

  Khaled shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll ask around, if you like. Keep an ear to the ground.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Naguib. ‘I’d be most grateful.’ He returned to his Lada feeling cheered. His wife always said that a drop of courtesy could solve a world of ills. She knew what she was talking about, his wife.

  THREE

  I

  Gaille unlocked the Discovery and climbed inside. She sat there for a moment, breathing hard, studying herself in the rear-view. Her tan, headscarf and local clothes gave her anonymity if she wanted it. She could drive away and no one would ever know. Only that wasn’t quite true. She’d know.

  She grabbed her camera from the glove compartment, hurried out and back through the ticket hall where the police were still hiding, her heart pounding, chills fluttering across her skin. Stafford and his companions were still hemmed in on the platform, wrestling for their luggage with two youths. She stepped up onto a bench, wielded her camera like a weapon. ‘CNN!’ she cried out. ‘Al Jazeera!’ Attention shifted instantly to her, a wave of hostility, quickly replaced by fear, people instinctively ducking their faces, not wanting to be captured on film. She panned around to the men from the Central Security Forces. The officer scowled and snapped out orders. His men hurried out, opened a precarious corridor with their batons that Stafford, the redhead
and Gaille all hurried down, out to the Discovery.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ yelled Stafford, slamming the passenger door behind him. ‘Get us out of here.’

  ‘What about your porter?’

  ‘Fuck him,’ snapped Stafford. ‘Just get us out of here, will you?’

  ‘But—’

  ‘He’s one of them, isn’t he? He can look after himself.’

  The CSF men were waving them away, as though they couldn’t guarantee them protection much longer. Gaille thrust the Discovery into gear, surged away. Traffic was gridlocked the way she wanted to go; she turned left instead. The streets quickly narrowed, aged, turned into a bazaar, forcing her to slow right down, wend her way between irritated shoppers. With all the twists and turns, she quickly became disoriented. She leaned forwards in her seat, scanning the skyline for a familiar landmark by which to navigate.

  II

  Captain Khaled Osman kept his smile fixed to his lips as he waved off the police inspector. But it vanished when he turned to his men. ‘Time for a patrol, I think,’ he said. ‘Faisal. Nasser. Abdullah. Come with me, please.’

  Khaled sat stiffly in the passenger seat as Nasser drove and Abdullah and Faisal cowered in the back. There was silence apart from the blast of the engine. The silence of anger. The silence of fear. They reached the Northern Tombs. Khaled climbed out; his men followed, forming a desultory line, sagging like sacks of rice. He’d done his best to instil some pride of uniform in these men since being forcibly transferred into the tourist police out of the army, but it was futile, they were worthless, all they cared about was gouging baksheesh from the tourists. He walked back and forth in front of them, their heads bowed in shame like the miserable pups they were. ‘One job I give you!’ he spat. ‘One damned job! And you can’t even do that!’

  ‘But we did exactly what you—’

  Khaled slapped Faisal across the cheek, the crack echoing off the cliff walls behind. ‘How could you have done?’ he yelled, saliva spraying over Faisal’s face. ‘They found her, didn’t they?’

  A smile tweaked Abdullah’s lips, evidently relieved that Faisal was taking the brunt. Khaled grabbed his collar and clutched it so tightly that his face turned red and he started struggling for breath. ‘If this goes wrong …’ vowed Khaled. ‘If this goes wrong …’

  ‘We never wanted any part of this, sir,’ protested Faisal. ‘It was all your idea. Now look!’

  ‘Shut up!’ snarled Khaled, letting go of Abdullah, who gasped for breath, massaged his raw throat. ‘You want to spend your whole life poor? Is that what you want? This is our chance to be rich.’

  ‘Rich!’ scoffed Faisal.

  ‘Yes, rich.’

  ‘There’s nothing there, sir! Haven’t you realized that yet?’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ insisted Khaled. ‘It’s in there. I can smell it. One more week and it’ll be ours.’ He wagged a finger at them. ‘But no more mistakes. Understand? No more mistakes.’

  III

  Knox drove west out along the new Desert Road into a palette of extraordinary colours, the ice-packs of the salt farms dazzling white to his right, the chemical sheen of Lake Mariut glowing almost purple to his left, and, up above, the wisps of late-afternoon cloud making for a Jackson Pollock sky.

  ‘The Therapeutae?’ frowned Omar. ‘Weren’t they early Christians?’

  Knox shook his head. ‘They had Christian attitudes and practices, and they were claimed as Christians by certain early church fathers, and it’s even possible they became Christians. But they can’t have started out as Christians, not least because they were living in and around Alexandria before Christ started preaching. No, they were Jews, all right. Philo admired them so much he almost joined them, after all, and he was certainly Jewish. What’s more, he implied a very strong connection between them and the Essenes. The Therapeutae were his ideal of the contemplative life, the Essenes of the active life. But their beliefs and practices were otherwise virtually indistinguishable.’

  ‘In what ways?’

  ‘Both were extremely ascetic,’ said Knox, scratching the resinous scab of a mosquito bite on his forearm. ‘It’s commonplace now, but no one used to think there was much virtue in poverty before the Essenes. Their initiates had to hand over most of their worldly belongings when they joined, as did new Therapeutae. Both rejected slavery and considered it an honour to serve others. Both held their elders in great esteem. Both were vegetarian and disapproved of animal sacrifice, perhaps because both believed in reincarnation. Both dressed in white linen. Both were renowned for their medical skill. Some argue that the words Essene and Therapeutae actually derived from Aramaic and Greek for healers, though it’s more probable they both meant “servants of God”.’ He turned south onto the low causeway across Lake Mariut, where a few fishermen were idling away their day on the rocky verges. ‘Purification rituals mattered hugely to both. Both were largely or completely celibate, sustaining their numbers through recruitment rather than procreation. Both sang antiphonal chants. In fact, some Passover hymns found at Qumran might well have been composed by the Therapeutae. Both used a solar calendar, as opposed to the usual Jewish lunar calendar. And both had a ritual three hundred and sixty four days to their year, even though they knew the real figure.’

  They arrived south of the lake, a barren landscape of Bedouin farms, vast industrial complexes, expensive verdant villas and large stretches of rocky waste-ground that no one had yet found a use for. Knox pulled into the side to consult their map. A grey heron looked quizzically at him from a reed-bed. He winked at it and it flapped leisurely away.

  ‘The Essenes and the Therapeutae,’ prompted Omar.

  ‘Yes,’ nodded Knox, pulling away again, turning west, the map open on his lap, keeping as close to the lake as the roads allowed. ‘Both were keenly interested in the hidden meanings of the scriptures. Both knew secrets they couldn’t divulge to outsiders, such as the names of angels. Geometry, numerology, anagrams and word-plays held special meaning to both, as did jubilees. The Therapeutae held a feast every seven days, a more important one every fifty days. Fifty was a very special number, you see, because it was the sum of three squared plus four squared plus five squared; and any triangle with the lengths of its sides in the ratio of three, four, five is a right-angled triangle, which they held to be the building-block of the universe.’

  ‘Right-angled triangles? Isn’t that more Greek than Jewish?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ agreed Knox, turning left down a narrow lane, flat tilled fields to their right, bare limestone bedrock to their left. ‘They had an amazing amount in common with the Pythagoreans. Diet, calendar, rituals, beliefs. All the things I just mentioned. And clear traces of sun-worship too. Ancient Alexandrians actually claimed that Pythagoras derived all his knowledge from Moses, that his religion was essentially Egyptian. He did spend twenty years here, after all. So maybe he got it all from the same place as the Therapeutae.’

  An irrigation canal ran along the left-hand side of the road, its banks grazed by goats. This whole area was a lattice of channels distributing fresh water from the Nile. By his reckoning, the excavation should be somewhere the other side. He kept going until he saw an earthen bridge ahead, guarded by two men in uniform playing backgammon on a wooden trestle table. He turned left over the bridge, pulled to a stop beside them. ‘Is this the Texas Society dig?’ he asked.

  ‘What do you want?’ asked the elder of the guards.

  ‘To talk to the chief archaeologist.’

  ‘You mean Mister Griffin?’

  ‘If that’s his name.’

  ‘You have an appointment?’

  ‘This is Mr Tawfiq,’ said Knox, nodding at Omar. ‘He’s head of the Supreme Council in Alexandria, and he wants to speak to the chief archaeologist. I suggest you let him know we’re here.’

  The guard held Knox’s eye, but when Knox didn’t look away, he stood, turned his back, held a muttered conversation on his walkie-talkie. ‘Very well,’ he said gruffly, o
nce he was done. ‘Follow this track to the end. Wait by the cabin. Mister Griffin will meet you there.’

  ‘So?’ asked Omar. ‘Do we know where these Therapeutae of yours lived?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ admitted Knox. ‘Philo did give us some clues, though. For example, he said that their settlement was on a slightly raised plain within reach of the sea breezes. And that they were close enough together to defend each other from attack, yet far enough apart to be alone with their thoughts. Oh, yes, and he told us one other thing.’

  ‘Which was?’

  The two men topped a small rise. A wooden cabin with a canvas extension came into view, two battered white pick-ups and a 4x4 parked outside. And, in the distance, the flat blue sheen of Alexandria’s great lake. Knox turned to Omar with a slight smile. ‘That their settlement was on the southern bank of Lake Mariut,’ he said.

  FOUR

  I

  Lily Auster stared bleakly out the window of the Discovery as Gaille drove them slowly through the narrow wending alleys of the Assiut bazaar. Two days into her first proper overseas assignment, already a train wreck. She clenched her fist until her nails dug pale crescents in her palm. Get a grip, girl, she told herself. A setback, that’s all. It was her job to deal with setbacks and then move on. If she couldn’t deal with such things, she should find a new career. She forced a smile first onto her lips and then up into her eyes and leaned forwards between the front seats. ‘So you’re Gaille Bonnard, yes?’ she asked with all the brightness she could muster.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Gaille.