The Exodus Quest dk-2 Read online

  An old engine roared. Knox turned to see the Jeep bumping towards him, Omar at the wheel, its passenger door already flapping open. Knox ran to meet it, tumbled inside, slammed and locked the door even as his pursuers made a last effort to catch him, surrounding the Jeep, pounding on the windows, faces ugly with frustration as Omar swung the wheel around, crunching up through the gears as they jolted their escape across the field.

  III

  Peterson gripped his King James Version tight as he stared at the painted section of wall that had been drawn to his attention by Michael just before Knox had been discovered. The distilled water had cleaned off the thick coat of dirt, and revived the underlying pigments too, so that the mural glowed clearly: two men in white robes emerging from a cave, a figure in blue kneeling before them, a single line of text beneath.

  Peterson had come late to languages, but his Greek was good enough for this, not least because the phrase had showed up in his nightmares this past decade, ever since he'd first encountered the Carpocratians.

  Son of David, have mercy on me.

  The blood rushed from his head, leaving him so dizzy that he had to put a hand against the wall to steady himself.

  Son of David, have mercy on me.

  And Knox had had a camera! Of all people! Knox! A heavy dull thumping in his chest, like a distant steel-press. What had he done? He looked around. Everyone else had chased off after Knox, leaving him alone. That was something. He picked up a rock hammer and attacked the wall furiously, venting his rage and fear on it, hacking wildly at the plaster until it lay in dust and fragments on the floor. He leaned against the wall, breathing heavily, before sensing he had company. He turned to see Griffin staring horrified at him, at what he'd done.

  'Well?' demanded Peterson, turning defence into attack. 'Did you catch him?'

  Griffin shook his head. 'Tawfiq was waiting in the fields.'

  'You let them get away? Don't you know what damage they can do?'

  'They can't get far. The only way out of those fields is by that old bridge. Nathan's gone to wait there.'

  He nodded. That was something. But this was now too delicate a situation to leave to anyone else. He needed to take personal command. 'Close this site up,' he ordered Griffin. 'I don't want to see a trace of it when I come back. Understand?'

  'Yes.'

  Peterson tossed the rock hammer negligently away into the corner, as though it were nothing, what he'd just done to the wall. Then he checked his pockets for his car keys and strode towards the hole in the wall with such purpose that Griffin had to jump back out of his way.

  ELEVEN

  I

  'Monotheism,' declared Stafford.

  'I beg your pardon,' frowned Fatima.

  'Monotheism. That's the key. Moses was the original champion of the One True God. "Thou shalt have no other gods but me." And what sets Akhenaten apart from any other pharaoh?'

  'Monotheism?' suggested Fatima.

  'Exactly. Monotheism. Before him, Egypt had always had a multitude of gods. But under Akhenaten, everything changed. For him, there was only one God. The sun disc. The Aten. All others were fabrications of the human mind and the craftsman's art. And he did more than pay lip service to this idea. He acted upon it. He closed the temples of rival gods, particularly those of Amun, the Aten's chief rival. In fact, he had Amun's name excised from monuments all over Egypt. You'll acknowledge that much, I trust?'

  'Acknowledge it? I wrote a book on the subject.'

  'Good. Now, Manetho – he who claimed that Osarseph was Moses – based his history on the records of the Temple of Amun in Heliopolis. And what do you imagine the priests of Amun would have thought of Akhenaten, the man who'd closed down their temples and excised their God's name across the land? Do you not think they'd have considered him an interloper? His supporters lepers?' He took another swallow of wine then wiped his mouth, smearing dark hairs against his wrist. 'Good,' he said, taking silence for assent. 'Now, let's take another look at Moses. A Hebrew child, we are told, set upon the Nile in a basket of rushes, rescued by the pharaoh's daughter who gave him the name Moses because it was Hebrew for "drawn out". But that whole tale has the ring of folklore, doesn't it? Why would a pharaoh's daughter give a foundling a Hebrew name, after all? She wouldn't have known he was Hebrew, for one thing. Nor would she have spoken Hebrew, not least because it didn't exist back then. No. The true explanation is simple. Moses means "son" in Egyptian, and it's a common part of pharaonic names, as in Tutmosis, son of Thoth, or Ramesses, son of Ra. The foundling myth was merely a retrospective attempt to claim Moses as a born Jew; but the truth is that he was born an Egyptian prince.'

  'The Bible says he murdered an Egyptian soldier, doesn't it?' frowned Fatima. 'And that he fled to the land of Kush. I can't recall Akhenaten doing that.'

  'You're never going to get a perfect match,' said Stafford. 'The question is whether the fit's close enough. It clearly is. And that's without even going into the remarkable parallels between the doctrines of Akhenaten and Moses.'

  'Which parallels are those exactly?'

  'I'll tell you, if you give me a chance.'

  'Please,' said Fatima. 'Be my guest.'

  'I already am your guest,' observed Stafford, gesturing grandly with his glass, slopping wine like blood onto his borrowed galabaya. He brushed the droplets irritably away, then composed himself to complete his thesis.

  II

  Inspector Naguib Hussein was usually good at forgetting his police work once he'd closed his front door for the night. Normally, his wife and daughter were a tonic to his spirits. But not tonight, not even as he stooped low for Husniyah to throw her arms around his neck so that he could lift her up. He tried not to let her see his anxiety, however, as he carried her through the bead curtain into their kitchen, kissing her surreptitiously on her crown, noting with a warm stab of pain and pride how springy and black her hair was, the thin pale valley of scalp that showed through beneath.

  Yasmine looked up from her cooking, eyes tired, complexion shiny with vapours. 'That smells good,' he said. He tried to pinch a morsel from the pot, but she smacked his hand and made him drop it. They shared a smile. Thirteen years of marriage, and still he could be surprised by the freshness of their affection. Husniyah sat cross-legged on the floor, a pad of paper on her lap, drawing pictures of animals and trees and houses. He watched over her shoulder, praising her skill, asking questions. But soon he fell into a reverie, brooding on the evils of the world, and it was only when Yasmine touched his shoulder that he realized she'd been talking to him. He shook his head to clear it, mustered the warmest smile he could. 'Yes?' he asked.

  'Something's on your mind,' she said.

  'Nothing particular.' But he couldn't prevent his eyes from swivelling to his daughter.

  'Husniyah, beloved,' said Yasmine gently. 'Could you please leave us a moment?' Husniyah looked up, puzzled; but she'd been brought up to be obedient, so she gathered her things and left without a word. 'Well?' asked Yasmine.

  Naguib sighed. Sometimes he wished his wife didn't know him so well. 'We found a body today,' he admitted.

  'A body?'

  'A young woman. A girl.'

  Yasmine's eyes flashed instinctively to the bead curtain. 'A girl. How old?'

  'Thirteen. Maybe fourteen.'

  It took Yasmine an effort to get her next question out. 'And she was… murdered?'

  'It's too early to be sure,' answered Naguib. 'But probably. Yes.'

  'That makes three in a month.'

  'The other two were down in Assiut.'

  'So? Maybe they moved here because things were getting too hot down there.'

  'We don't know how long this one has been there. There's no reason to suspect the cases are connected.'

  'Yet you do suspect it, don't you?'

  'It's possible.'

  'What are you doing about it?'

  'Not much,' he confessed. 'Gamal has other priorities.'

  'Priorities that come before
finding the murderer of three young girls?'

  'With all this tension and everything, he doesn't think this is the right time…' Naguib drifted lamely to a halt. The other side of the curtain, Husniyah started singing, ostensibly to herself, but actually so that her parents could hear her, be aware of her, protect her.

  'Tell me you're going to go after whoever did this,' said Yasmine fiercely. 'Tell me you're going to catch them before they kill again.'

  For a moment, that wretched mummified mess reappeared in Naguib's mind, still wrapped in her tarpaulin shroud. Who knew whose face he'd find next time? He met his wife's eyes directly, as he always did on the important matters, when he needed her to know she could trust him. 'Yes,' he promised. 'I am.'

  III

  'Any good?' asked Omar, leaning over from the driver's seat to check Knox's photographs on the screen of his camera-phone.

  'Just watch what you're doing, will you?' said Knox, as Omar crunched the Jeep's gears again.

  'Huh!' said Omar. 'They're pretty dark, aren't they?'

  'Maybe I should send them to Gaille,' said Knox. 'She'll be able to make something of them, if anyone can.'

  'She'd better. We need more than that to show the police.'

  'Says the man who didn't think we needed photographs at all.' He started composing a text message, not easy as they bumped across the field, without even a seat belt to hold him in place. Took the attached at poss Therapeutae site! Light terrible. Can you help? All speed appreciated! Love, Daniel. He frowned in dissatisfaction, replaced Love with Much love then All love and finally All my love. None felt right. Everyone protested their love these days. The word had been cheapened into meaninglessness. He sat there feeling ridiculous. This was scarcely the time to fret over such things, after all. Yet he fretted all the same. He stabbed out some other words with his index finger, stared down at them for several seconds, unnerved by how plaintive they sounded. But he'd already wasted too much time, so he attached the photographs and sent them on their way before he could change his mind.

  Omar muttered a curse, slowed, came to a halt. Knox looked up to see headlights crisscrossing a main road a kilometre away. 'What's the matter?' he asked.

  'Down there.'

  Now Knox saw it, moonlight glowing on a pickup parked by the wooden bridge. 'Bollocks,' he muttered.

  'What now?'

  'There has to be another way out. Let's keep looking.'

  The engine screeched as Omar tried to force it into gear. 'Mine's an automatic,' he said with a wince.

  'You want me to drive?'

  'It might be best.'

  They switched seats. Knox belted up, thrust the Jeep into gear, headed off in search of another way out. The pick-up lumbered after them, obviously wanting to keep them in sight, but staying a wary distance behind, between them and the bridge.

  Knox crossed a rise, swung around. The moment the pick-up reappeared, he floored the pedal, accelerated towards it, jolting violently over the rutted ground. Omar clutched the door-handle, stamped on imaginary brakes. But Knox kept his foot to the floor. The pick-up swung round, aware it was a race for the bridge. He sped past it, but it quickly caught up, its engine newer and more powerful.

  'We'll never get away,' cried Omar.

  'Hold tight,' said Knox, weaving back and forth to prevent the pick-up from pulling alongside, wheels spitting clods of mud. He swung out wide then turned sharply back towards the bridge. He was almost there when a 4x4 surged out of the darkness on the far side, its headlights springing on full and dazzling, so that Knox had to throw up a hand to shield his eyes, slam on the brakes, but too late, tyres losing grip, slithering sideways, missing the bridge and hurtling instead into the irrigation channel, flinging out his arm in an instinctive effort to pin Omar in his seat, their bonnet smashing into the opposite bank, metal crumpling, windscreen exploding in a great cacophony of glass, hurling him against his seat belt, his head snapping violently back, something crashing into the back of his skull, and everything going black.

  TWELVE

  I

  Lily put her hand surreptitiously on Stafford's arm, an effort to calm him down a little, but he merely shrugged her off, refilled his wineglass, and continued. 'People have Judaism all wrong,' he declared. 'They read about Abraham, Noah, Jacob and all those other patriarchs, and assume that the Jews arrived in Egypt with their beliefs and practices fully formed, that they retained them during their sojourn, then left without being one whit influenced. But it can't have been like that. It wasn't like that. Look dispassionately at Judaism and you'll see that its roots lie in Egypt, specifically in the monotheism of Akhenaten.'

  'That's quite a claim,' said Fatima.

  'Just look at the creation account in Genesis, if you don't believe me. The notion that everything came from the void was an Egyptian conceit, as was the idea of mankind as God's flock, crafted in His image, for whom He made heaven and earth. There are countless passages in the Bible stolen virtually verbatim from Egypt. Take the Negative Confessions of the Book of the Dead. "I have not reviled the God. I have not sinned against anyone. I have not killed. I have not copulated illicitly." Replace "I have not" with "Thou shalt not" and you have the Ten Commandments. Psalm Thirty-four is based on an Amarna inscription; Psalm One hundred and four is a rewrite of Akhenaten's Hymn of the Aten.'

  'A rewrite!' frowned Fatima. 'They have a few images in common, that's all.'

  'A few images!' scoffed Stafford. 'It's word for word in places. But even if you won't allow me that, you surely can't dispute the similarity of the Bible's Proverbs to Egypt's Wisdom texts; or that the so-called "Thirty Sayings" are nothing but a rehash of Amenemope's "Thirty Chapters". Granted, on their own, each might conceivably be coincidence. But they aren't on their own. They're part of a pattern. The very name Hebrew is a corruption of the Egyptian word 'Ipiru, people who've stepped outside the law. Jewish priestly robes are virtual replicas of the costumes of Eighteenth Dynasty pharaohs. The Ark of the Covenant is almost identical to an ark found in Tutankhamun's tomb. And, speaking of the Ark, during the Exodus the Jews housed it in a great tent called the Tabernacle, just like the tent Akhenaten lived in when he first settled in Amarna. Tithes were an Egyptian practice taken up by the Jews. Magic likewise. Did you know that Egyptians wrote down their spells, soaked them in water, and drank the resulting brew, precisely as advocated in the Book of Numbers? Egyptian voodoo dolls are mentioned in the Psalms. And circumcision wasn't originally a Jewish practice, you realize? It was Egyptian; they even found a clay model of a circumcised penis in Akhenaten's tomb. "They are in all respects much more pious than other peoples," claimed Herodotus. "They are also distinguished from them by many of their customs, such as circumcision, which for reasons of cleanliness they introduced before others; further, by their horror of swine. In haughty narrowness they looked down on the other peoples who were unclean and not so near to the god as they were." Was he talking about the Jews? No, the Egyptians.'

  'The best part of a millennium later.'

  'Atenism was sun-worship,' asserted Stafford, barely breaking stride. 'So was early Judaism. Ezekiel, chapter eight, talks bluntly about worshippers in the Temple of the Lord adoring the rising sun. On Mount Sinai, Moses' God describes himself by the Tetragrammaton YHWH: "I am who I am." The Egyptian Prisse Papyrus describes an Egyptian God as "nk pu nk". You know what that translates as? Yes. "I am who I am."'

  'The Prisse Papyrus was-'

  'Everywhere you look, there's compelling evidence that Judaism was originally Egyptian, derived from Akhenaten's monotheism. But do you know what the smoking gun is? The absolute, incontrovertible proof?'

  'Go on, then.'

  'The Hebrews called the Lord their God Adonai. But in ancient Hebrew the "d" was pronounced "t", the suffix "ai" was optional. Yes. That's right. The Hebrews worshipped a God called Aten, which means that Moses' admonition to his people Shema Yisrael Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad translates as "Hear, O Israel, the Aten is the only God." Refute that, P
rofessor. Refute that.'

  II

  'Oh Lord,' muttered Nathan feebly, getting out of the pick-up, staring white-faced down at the creaking, lurching wreckage of the Jeep, the motionless body of the passenger, flung through the windscreen and now lying on the far bank. 'Oh heaven.'

  'Pull yourself together,' scowled Peterson.

  'Good grief. Good grief. What did you do that for? You made them crash.'

  'They made themselves crash,' snapped Peterson. 'You understand? Anything that happened here, these people did to themselves.'

  Nathan pulled his mobile from his pocket. 'How do I get an ambulance?'

  'Are you crazy?' demanded Peterson. He slapped Nathan stingingly across his cheek, turned him to face him. 'Listen,' he said. 'Forget ambulances. It's too late for ambulances.'

  'But I-'

  'I said listen to me. You're to do exactly what I tell you. No more, no less. Understand?'

  'Yes, Reverend, but-'

  'Be quiet and listen,' yelled Peterson. 'This is a heathen country. The people here are heathens. Don't you understand? The police here are heathens. The judges. All of them, all heathens. They'll revel in the opportunity to smear the name of Christ, because that's what heathens do. They smear the name of Christ. Do you want to help heathens smear the name of Christ? Is that truly what you want?'

  'No, Reverend. Of course not.'

  'Good. Now listen. No one needs to know what happened here. It was an accident, that's all. Foolish people driving too fast through fields at night. What else did they expect?'

  'Yes, Reverend.'