Pyramid: A Novel (Jack Howard Series Book 8) (10 page)

Jack stood up and put his hands on his hips. “All right. Lanowski first, then Cairo. And then we’ll see what happens. We could be back to
Seaquest
for another dive to a thousand meters in a submersible.”

“I’m good with that,” Costas enthused. “
Very
good.”

Aysha checked her phone. “I’m going ahead to Cairo. Before you think of planning ahead, wait until you see what Maria and I have to show you. Your quest for Akhenaten’s City of Light might not be over just yet, inshallah.”

Jack glanced at Costas. “Let’s move.”

“Roger that.”

J
ack and Costas made their way along the lower floor of the institute to the director’s office, its door slightly ajar. Hiebermeyer preferred the workroom where they had met him, so he usually lent his office to a visiting scholar, and there was one in there now. Costas had wanted to capture an image of Lanowski hard at work for the IMU Facebook page, and had his phone at the ready as he gently pushed the door open.

Lanowski was occupying Hiebermeyer’s desk. More accurately, he was perched on it, legs crossed, arms resting on his knees in the lotus position, eyes tightly shut, humming to himself and occasionally uttering a surprised chortle, as if in a state of constant revelation.

Costas took a picture. “Look, Jack,” he whispered. “He’s gone archaeologist.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ever since we let him take these little sabbaticals out of the lab, he’s tried to become one of us. Check out the boots and shorts. He’s copying Maurice. Sweet, isn’t it?”

Jack scratched his chin, trying to keep a straight face. “Doesn’t really work, does it?” He stared at Lanowski, at the long, lank hair hanging over the little round glasses, the mouth in a half smile of apparently joyous discovery, seemingly oblivious to them. Lanowski
had looked exactly the same since they had poached him twelve years earlier from MIT to help Costas develop strengthened polymer materials for submersibles casings. Since then he had become IMU’s all-round genius, with a particular knack for computer-generated imagery, or CGI. He was here because a childhood fascination with the mathematics and geometry of ancient Egypt had led him to work closely with Hiebermeyer, a relationship that Jack had been happy to foster and that seemed all the more precious now that the institute was threatened with imminent closure.

Costas coughed, and tapped the door. “Jacob, what are you doing?” There was no response, so he tried again, louder this time. “Ground control to Dr. Lanowski. Come in.”

“I’m conducting a thought experiment,” Lanowski replied quietly, his eyes still shut. “Come, take a voyage in my mind.”

“You must be joking,” Costas exclaimed. “Real life with IMU is enough of a trip as it is.”

“A
thought experiment
,” Jack said.

“Like Einstein,” Lanowski replied. “He used to spend hours imagining he was sitting on a particle of light flying through the universe.”

“The theory of relativity?” Costas said. “Are you developing a better one?”

Lanowski suddenly opened his eyes, stared at them, and threw himself off the desk, stumbling toward the computer workstation on the far side of the room. He pulled up the chair and began working the keyboard with one hand, the other hand clicking the mouse. “I wasn’t riding a particle of light,” he said, his eyes darting over the CGI image he was creating. “I was riding a chariot. To be precise, an ancient Egyptian chariot, at thirty miles an hour on the desert beside the Gulf of Suez, on the twenty-second of March 1343
BC
at 0645 hours. The year is a best-fit during Akhenaten’s reign; the month seems plausible, before the hot season, and the time of day just after dawn is right for an attack.”
He glanced at Costas, who had come up alongside and was staring at the screen. “The only part that’s complete guesswork is the day of the month, and to conduct a thought experiment in the past you need a precise day and time.”

Costas nodded thoughtfully. “I get that.”

Jack came up on the other side. “I gather Maurice has told you about our discovery.”

Lanowski stopped typing and punched the air. “I’ve got it.”

“Got what?” Costas asked.

“Solved the Bible.”

“Solved the Bible?”

“Book of Exodus, chapter fourteen. ‘And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left.’ That’s the King James Version, right? Well, I’ve checked the original Greek with your old mentor at Cambridge, Professor Dillen, and he thinks it allows for some latitude in translation. I know Aysha’s been talking to you about the Cairo Geniza, Jack, because she told me what she has in store for you. Dillen also brought up the Geniza when we talked about the problems of translation. One of the greatest discoveries in the Geniza has been original Hebrew pages of the Ben Sira, the Book of Wisdom from the second century
BC
previously known only from its Greek translation. He said that seeing those original pages and then comparing the Greek, the Latin, and the English versions has made him think again about the huge problem of conveying exact meaning through languages that simply don’t have the appropriate words or expressions, resulting in translations that are either inaccurate or too obscure to understand without a mediator. He thinks the original Hebrew of the scriptures was meant to be clear and precise and to not require a priestly interpreter, and that the development of a priestly class was actually a consequence of the written word becoming too baffling in its transmission for people to understand.”

Jack nodded. “He’s been developing that idea since looking at the foundation of organized religion in the early Neolithic, when religion became a tool of control for the first priest-kings. Go on.”

“Your discovery in the Gulf of Suez makes it absolutely certain that this event took place where the sea could have been parted only by a supernatural occurrence rather than, say, a marsh or a lake where the Israelites could have crossed some kind of shallow causeway that was then flooded.”

“That would be fine with most believers,” Costas said. “God through Moses caused the sea to be parted.”

“Sure. But let’s look at the hard evidence. That says to me that those chariots weren’t there because Moses parted the sea and they were swallowed up. They were there because someone ordered the charioteers to ride at full speed toward the cliff top, which then collapsed as they flew over it, causing them to be submerged in the sea and also to be buried in the resulting landslide.”

“That was our theory too,” Jack said. “We think the Israelite encampment was right on the edge of the cliff. Go on.”

“It’s about thinking laterally, Jack. Or I should say at right angles. If we assume that the Israelites could never have walked across the seafloor, then they must have gone along the edge. So instead of going east across the sea, they went north up the western shore. The biblical reference to the ‘wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left’ therefore means not walls of water within the sea, but the walls of the sea itself—that is, the western and eastern shores of the Gulf of Suez. Professor Dillen thinks the Greek allows for that. Now take a look at my CGI. I’ve exaggerated the height of the cliffs for effect, but you can see what I mean. And to cap it all, look at this.”

A close-up satellite image of a beach appeared on the screen. Costas peered at it. “I recognize those rocks. That’s where I had my lunch two days ago between dives.”

“Look closer. With the wide-brimmed hat, sitting with his feet dangling in the water. Almost as if he’s on holiday.”

Costas peered again. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Yep,” Lanowski beamed. “I can follow your every move. If you won’t let me join in the fun, at least I can watch it and imagine myself there.”

“I thought the Egyptians had cut off Maurice’s access to their live-stream satellite imagery, as well as to every other foreign project in the country.”

“This isn’t through the institute. It’s Landsat, U.S. military. I’ve got a friend in the CIA who owes me a favor after I did the math in his PhD for him.”

“You’re a useful man to have around, Jacob,” Jack said.

“Glad you noticed.”

“The new translation makes sense. A
lot
of sense. Anything else?”

“Of course.” He dragged the mouse, and the image zoomed out. “Aysha told me about her discovery of the First World War diary that led you to that spot, the account of the crates of arms lost overboard, and that officer finding the ancient Egyptian sword. Well, she and I read through several previous entries in the diary last night. They showed that the British had developed a ruse in case they were spied on in the desert. Instead of driving the camels with the crates to a point on the cliff directly above the rendezvous point with the dhow, they off-loaded them several miles to the south and used a hidden track just below the cliff top known to local tribesmen to carry the crates out of view of the desert above. Captain Edmondson, the diarist, was also an archaeologist, and he mentioned how he thought the trackway was probably millennia old based on the number of rock slides and mud falls they had to negotiate on the way.”

“And then they came down to that beach where I had lunch,” Costas said. “Just above the spot where we
found the rifles and ammunition underwater, and then the chariots.”

“Right. And just
above
that, the Landsat image shows a concavity in the line of the cliff where there’s a break in the path. I’m convinced that the concavity is evidence of the ancient cliff fall caused by the massed chariot charge, and I’m also convinced that Moses used that path to lead away the Israelites right under the noses of the Egyptians, leaving an empty encampment. The path continues for miles up the coast, so it would have been a viable escape route. What do you think, Jack? Bingo. Case closed.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Jack said, staring in fascination at the image. “I think you might just have earned your pay, Jacob.”

“I’m not the first one to have these ideas. You ever heard of Hiwi al-Bakhi?”

Jack was glued to the screen, but nodded. “His name means the Bactrian Heretic, a medieval Jewish dissenter from ancient Bactria, modern Afghanistan. He openly criticized the Hebrew Bible for lack of clarity and contradictions, and for representing God as inconsistent and capricious. His writing was another great discovery in the Cairo Geniza.”

“Well, he also tried to debunk the supernatural. For him, the parting of the Red Sea was a matter of the water ebbing and flowing, something he’s probably seen in the huge tidal flows on the shores of the Indian Ocean. He wasn’t to know that the Gulf of Suez doesn’t have much tide, nor does it have tidal flats like those he might have seen off India, but I like his way of thinking.”

“A rationalist like you, Jacob.”

“There’s something else that’s very interesting about Hiwi, Jack. Dillen and I talked about it too. His sect was so intent on cleansing Jewish religion and starting afresh that they wanted to change the Sabbath from Sunday to Wednesday, the day in Genesis when the sun was created. The
sun
, Jack. Does that ring any bells? We thought of Akhenaten and Moses together in the desert, and the
revelation of the one god, the Aten. Akhenaten too was seeking a cleansing of the old religions, a return to a purer notion of deity, a rejection of gods who had become too anthropomorphic and displayed the human traits that Hiwi lamented in the God of the Bible. Maybe we should expect these periodic attempts at cleansing in the history of religion, but maybe too we should be looking for continuity, for a memory preserved even in Hiwi’s time of that foundation event in the desert almost two thousand years before. Egypt has had its takeovers—the Greeks, the Romans, the Muslims—and cultural destruction like the loss of the Alexandria library, but it never suffered the utter devastation of so many other regions, the sweeping away of its culture and people. And for the Jewish people, their history is all about maintenance of the tradition, isn’t it? That’s the biggest lesson of the Cairo Geniza, that it’s about continuity, not change.”

Jack nodded. “Even dissent like Hiwi’s became part of the Jewish intellectual tradition, one of debate rather than persecution, ensuring that inquiring minds were not stifled in the way they have been in so many other religions.”

Costas looked at Lanoswki. “I’d no idea you were also something of a rabbi, Jacob. A real multitasker.”

“ ‘Happy is the man who meditates on wisdom and occupies himself with understanding.’ That’s from Ben Ezra. My parents were Ukrainian Jews who were smuggled out of Europe just before the Second World War. All the rest of my family—my grandparents, my uncles and aunts—died in the Holocaust. Both my grandfathers had been rabbinical scholars, and my parents hoped that I’d follow the same route.”

“Is that how you got interested in Egyptology?” Jack asked.

Lanowski nodded. “I always wanted to know the specific identity of Pharaoh in the Bible. It annoyed me that he was unnamed, as if he’s the one and only pharaoh, but then I realized there was something special about
him. Being part of your team in the quest for Akhenaten is fulfilling a childhood dream, Jack. I’m grateful to you.”

“We’ve got a good way to go yet.”

Lanowski turned to Costas. “And now about the theory of relativity. Funny you should mention that. As it happens, I do have a niggle with the space-time continuum model. It’s…well,” he chuckled, “wrong.” He suddenly looked deadly serious. “I mean,
wrong
.” He whipped his portable blackboard from beside the desk, picked up a piece of chalk, and scribbled a formula. “It’s like this.”

Costas immediately took Lanowski’s hand and steered the board back down to the floor. “Not now, Jacob. That’s too big even for IMU. Save it for the Nobel Prize committee. Jack has got to go. He’s meeting Aysha and Maria in Cairo this evening. And I need to get back on the phone to Macalister on
Seaquest
.”

Lanowski looked crestfallen, but then brightened up. “Anything comes up out there, you let me know.”

“Come again?”

“Boots on the ground. Jack and Costas stuff.” He pointed meaningfully at his gear. “You need help, I’m good to go.”

Costas nodded slowly. “I can see that. Good to go.”

Jack stared at him. “Thanks for the offer, Jacob. We’ll let you know. Meanwhile, get this written up so I can send it to the board along with Costas’ photos of the chariots for the press release. It’ll make a fantastic mix of hard data and speculation.”

Lanowski looked dumbfounded. “Where’s the speculation, Jack? From where I see it, there’s only hard data.”