The Exodus Quest (24 page)

FORTY-FOUR

I

Smoke from the policeman’s cigarette put a tickle in Knox’s throat; he had to fight his urge to cough. More footsteps approached outside. ‘Get up, you lazy so-and-so. We’re to do a full search.’

‘Yes, and I’m searching this bit.’

‘That’s what you want me to tell Gamal?’

‘Very well,’ he sighed. He pinched out his half-smoked cigarette, replaced it in his pack, lumbered away.

Knox waited for silence before he emerged from hiding. He was barely out when he saw the flashlight return. ‘I told you it was the other way,’ said one, turning the corner. A moment of complete stillness as they stared at each other. Then one yelled for backup while his colleague grabbed for his gun.

Knox fled into the dark, guessing at every junction, left, right, right, the sounds of chase all around, managing to avoid it until he reached a dead end, the passage ahead choked with sand. Torches coming up fast behind. No going back. He clambered the mound, a few inches of headroom between the top and the ceiling, enough to wriggle through, the laptop dragging like an anchor. A strobe of light ahead, followed by a crash of thunder. A ventilation shaft.

The sand grew waterlogged as he squeezed towards it, then up and out into the storm once more, straddling a safety rope, splashing across the sand, his breath coming fast. A flutter of distant lightning illuminated the landscape; he looked for cover, saw only a white-painted bench in a ring of date palms. He ran towards it, glancing around as the first policeman emerged from the shaft, waving his torch the wrong way, chasing off after shadows.

Knox’s spirits lifted, he was going to get away. But then a branch snapped in front of him, he looked ahead, saw a man standing there, flung up his hands. Too late. A fist smacked his cheek, dazzling stars from his eyes, sending him staggering onto his backside. Peterson, fists bunched, teeth bared, mucus trailing from his left nostril, mania in his eyes. ‘You!’ he muttered in disbelief. ‘How did you get here? Satan brought you, didn’t he?’

‘You’re mad,’ said Knox, scrambling away, fearful not just of Peterson but also that the commotion would attract the police.

‘Sodomite!’ spat Peterson. ‘Abominator! Agent of Satan!’

‘You’re fucking crazy.’

‘The day of reckoning is at hand,’ he cried. ‘Don’t you understand? The rapture is finally upon us. The world is about to look upon the face of Christ! Upon His grace. His infinite mercy. Mankind will fall to its knees in worship. To its knees! That’s what has your Master so scared, isn’t it? That’s why he sent you to stop me. You filthy creature of Satan. The great battle is starting, the Lord is set to triumph, there’s nothing you can do. It’s written! It’s written!’ He crawled astride Knox. Knox kicked up at his groin, but to little effect. He scrambled away, but Peterson jumped on his back, his knee on Knox’s nape, grabbing the laptop strap, hauling it against his throat, choking him. ‘Your Master has no power any more. You hear? The Reign of the Beast is at an end. The victory of the Lord is at hand. Can’t you see it? The Lord is with me, and He’s mightier than armies.’ He gave another heave; the strap bit like a garrotte into Knox’s windpipe. ‘At the time that I visit them they shall be cast down, says the Lord,’ exulted Peterson. ‘I will fight them with my outstretched hand and my strong arm, even in anger and fury and great wrath.’

Knox had both hands on the strap, but Peterson was too strong. Knox couldn’t breathe, his lungs were straining for air. He pushed himself to his feet, Peterson clinging to his back, staggered over to the bench, climbed up onto the seat then hurled himself backwards so that Peterson hit the ground hard, car keys and other belongings spilling from his pockets, jogging his grip for just long enough for Knox to twist free, scramble away, heaving in high-pitched whines of air, both hands nursing his raw throat.

‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord,’ cried Peterson, getting back on to his feet. ‘I am the One who comes from all eternity. My name is Vengeance. I am the Destroyer.’

A shout across the sands, a torch-beam picked out Peterson. He turned to see four policemen splashing through the rain. Knox crouched, hurried for the thin cover of the trees, dropped flat. Behind him, Peterson seemed torn, eyes flickering between the policemen, Knox, the laptop, his scattered car keys and wallet. But finally he decided on what was most important. He unzipped the laptop from its case, opened it up, picked up a whitewashed limestone brick and crunched it down on the keyboard. Letter keys and shards of broken plastic sprang off in all directions.

‘Stop!’ yelled a policeman.

‘And they shall go forth,’ shouted Peterson. ‘And they shall look upon the carcasses of men that have transgressed against me.’ He brought the stone down again, smashing through the casing into its wired heart. ‘Their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched. They shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.’

Lightning showed his frenzied eyes, serpents of long silver hair slithering over his face, spittle on his chain, enough to persuade the first policeman to wait for his comrades. ‘The time of the Lord is upon us! You hear? Get down on your knees, you filthy heathens. You are not worthy.’ He brought the brick down again.

A second and third policemen arrived. They jumped Peterson together. He stood up from the mud with them clinging to his arms, strong as Samson. He staggered a short distance, trying to shake them off. But then the fourth policeman arrived, and he clubbed Peterson on his temple with the butt of his gun until Peterson collapsed to his knees and then slumped face-first into the mud.

The policemen stood around his prostrate form, hands on their knees, breathing hard. One gave Peterson a vengeful kick in the ribs; but another rolled him onto his side to clear his mouth away from the water, while a third cuffed his wrists behind his back.

‘There were two of them,’ panted one. ‘They were fighting.’ He gestured vaguely towards where Knox was lying with his cheek pressed into the waterlogged sand.

Torch-beams flared half-heartedly his way, then disappeared again. ‘I vote we take this one to Gamal,’ grunted one.

‘It’s about time the others did something,’ agreed another. They lifted Peterson up by his arms and dragged him back towards the compound.

II

Claire led Augustin across the broken ground. Two construction workers in hard hats were standing beside a yellow mechanical digger. ‘They’ve been laying a pipeline next door,’ explained Claire. ‘I asked them if they wouldn’t mind earning a little overtime.’

Augustin laughed appreciatively. ‘You’re quite something, Claire.’

She ducked her head to hide how pleased she was, walked on a few metres, stamped the loose earth beneath her feet. ‘Here,’ she told them. ‘Dig here.’

‘You’re sure about this?’ asked Augustin.

‘I’m sure.’

‘And that this is the right place?’

‘Yes.’

He pulled out his mobile, held it up for her to see. ‘I need to make a phone call. A friend of mine at the SCA. We can trust him.’

She hesitated, but then nodded. ‘Yes.’

He dialled Mansoor’s number. ‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘I’m at Peterson’s site. You need to come out here.’

‘But I’m in the middle of—’

‘Now,’ said Augustin. ‘And bring some security with you, if you can. We need to put this place under guard.’

III

‘Found your killer yet?’

Farooq scowled at his smirking colleague. ‘You shut up,’ he warned. ‘You just shut up.’

His face was burning as he wrote out his report. Hatred for Knox dripped like acid in his heart. He’d had people out looking all across Alexandria, but the man had simply vanished from sight. He didn’t know how it was possible. A humiliation that would take years to live down. His phone began to ring. Maybe it was news. ‘This is Farooq,’ he said, snatching it up.

‘Gamal here. From Mallawi, remember? We spoke earlier.’

Farooq sat up in his chair. ‘You have news for me?’

‘Maybe. We think your man was here.’

‘You think? How do you mean, you
think
?’

‘He got away.’

‘I don’t believe this! How could he get away?’

‘We’ll get him, I promise you. It’s just a matter of time. And he wouldn’t have got away at all if you’d warned us there’d be two of them.’

‘Two of them? How do you mean?’

‘He had an accomplice. He gave us the slip, but we’ve got him now.’

Farooq scowled darkly. Augustin! ‘A Frenchman, yes?’

‘Can’t say. He’s not talking. Won’t be for a while yet, either. Resisting arrest, if you know what I mean. But a foreigner, certainly. Maybe early fifties, tall and strong. Long hair with streaks of grey. And he’s wearing a collar, a white collar. You know, like those Christian preachers do.’

‘A dog collar?’

‘Yes. Exactly. Does that make sense?’

‘Yes.’ Not Augustin after all. Peterson.

‘What’s going on, then?’ asked Gamal.

‘I don’t know,’ said Farooq grimly, getting to his feet. ‘But I promise you this. I’m going to find out.’

FORTY-FIVE

I

Augustin watched raptly as the scoop of the mechanical digger munched great mouthfuls out of the earth. He turned to say something to Claire but she’d moved off a little way, hands clasped in front, fingers twining, nervous of her ordeals ahead. He walked across, wanting to reassure her, but not knowing quite how. ‘Do you know what Peterson was after?’ he asked gently.

She shook her head. ‘He never really included me in that side of things.’

‘Did he ever mention the Carpocratians?’

‘Once or twice,’ she nodded. ‘Why? Who were they?’

‘A Gnostic sect. Founded in Alexandria. Based here and in Cephallonia. They were reputed to own an artefact that your reverend craved. A portrait of Jesus Christ, the only one credibly attested before the relic boom of the Middle Ages.’

Claire gave a grunt. ‘I suppose it had to be something like that.’ She turned to him. ‘Did he find it, then? Is that what sparked all this off?’

‘No. He found something else.’

‘What?’

‘There’s a text called the Secret Gospel of Mark. At least, there isn’t, but some people fear there might be.’ He gave her a precis of what Kostas had told him: how the letter had been repudiated as a forgery, but how Peterson had found something on the walls of this place that had made him worry that maybe the secret gospel had existed after all. A mural depicting Jesus and another man emerging from a cave, while a kneeling figure implored: ‘Son of David, have mercy on me’.

‘So?’ asked Claire.

‘The Secret Gospel described precisely such an incident. This mural is proof that this incident really happened, and therefore is strong evidence that the Secret Gospel is authentic after all.’

‘But why couldn’t the mural simply be depicting a similar incident?’ she frowned. ‘Like with Bartimaeus, for instance?’

‘Bartimaeus?’

‘You must have heard of him. The blind man who pleaded with Jesus to heal him. He used those exact words. It’s in the Gospel of Mark, I’m sure. And in Matthew too.’

It was Augustin’s turn to frown. He’d been certain of his reasoning. But then he saw the answer, and it made him laugh. ‘I’m not the only one who didn’t know that story. Your reverend didn’t know it either.’

‘Of course he did,’ protested Claire. ‘He’s a preacher.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Augustin. ‘But an Old Testament one. Fire and brimstone, not love and forgiveness. Have you ever seen his website? On and on about the word of Christ, but all the references are actually to Deuteronomy, Leviticus and Numbers, never to the New Testament, never to Christ himself.’

‘You can’t be serious.’

‘Tell me, then. You must have heard him preaching. Can you ever remember him citing Christ?’

The digger’s scoop scraped something solid at that moment, saving her from having to answer. The driver stopped and reversed away, allowing Augustin to scramble down into the pit. He cleared the hatch with his foot, lifted it up to reveal the steps beneath. His heart swelled with unfamiliar sensations as he nodded up at Claire. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

II

Knox retrieved Peterson’s car keys from the wet sand, his wallet and mobile too. There had to be a good chance the police had found the Toyota, were waiting in ambush, but he had little choice other than to chance it, and luck was with him. He turned on the ignition, peered through the misted windscreen into the dark night, unable to see a thing, yet not wanting to risk his lights. A distant shudder of lightning gave him a snapshot of the open sands, enough to drive blind across them until a second shudder gave him another glimpse. When he’d put some distance between himself and the compound, he turned on his lights, reached the line of trees that marked the border between desert and cultivated land, trundled on to a field of sugar cane, pushed on inside, hiding himself behind a wall of stalks, facing outwards should he need to run for it. Then he switched off his lights again, turned on his heaters instead.

Now what?

Gaille was in Assiut, some seventy kilometres south. No chance of getting there on the main roads, not with the police out hunting. And not even a 4x4 would make it across the desert in this weather. Not that it mattered anyway. By destroying the laptop and his photos, Peterson had denied him any chance of deciphering Gaille’s message.

It was only then that he remembered the remote-controlled aircraft flying over Borg. He grabbed Peterson’s mobile, punched in Augustin’s number. It kicked into voicemail. He composed and sent a text message instead, asking his friend to call back the very moment he got it. Then he settled down to wait.

III

Farooq arrived at Peterson’s Borg el-Arab site to find the security guards gone, the office deserted. But away to his right he could see a mechanical digger with its lights on, a car parked next to it, two navvies chatting with a burly security guard. He drove over. There was a great mound of earth and fill next to a huge pit in the ground, stone steps leading down into an underground chamber, a generator muttering away at the foot.

‘How about that, boss,’ said Hosni cheerfully. ‘There was something here after all.’

Farooq gave him a look fit to cook a kebab as he got out and strode across. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.

‘Restricted area,’ said the guard. ‘SCA jurisdiction.’

‘Murder investigation,’ snapped back Farooq. ‘My jurisdiction.’ He pushed his way past the guard, hurried down the steps, anger seething in his heart. The sound of voices led him along a passage to a chamber where Pascal was photographing a mosaic while Mansoor and a young fair-headed woman looked on. ‘What the hell is this?’ he cried.

‘What does it look like?’ retorted Augustin.

‘How dare you come down here without me? This is a crime scene. I’m in charge! Me! I make the decisions. No one does anything without my—’

‘Haven’t you caused enough fucking trouble?’

‘Who do you think you’re talking to?’

‘You’ve made a fugitive of my best friend,’ snarled Augustin. ‘Sort that out or I’ll talk to you any fucking way I choose.’

‘Where’s Peterson?’ demanded Farooq. ‘Where’s Griffin?’ The woman took a step back into the shadows. Farooq whirled on her. ‘And who’s
she
?’

‘A colleague,’ said Augustin. ‘From the SCA.’

‘Is that right?’ asked Farooq, turning on Mansoor. ‘She’s one of yours?’

‘I… ah… that is…’

‘She’s one of them, isn’t she?’ exulted Farooq. He turned to Hosni. ‘Arrest her. Take her to the station. I don’t care what you have to do to her, just make her talk.’

‘Don’t you dare!’ shouted Augustin, stepping in front of her. ‘Leave her alone.’

But Farooq drew his gun and levelled it with such intent at Augustin that he moved reluctantly aside. ‘Obstructing the police,’ he gloated, as Hosni led Claire away. ‘Be careful or I’ll have you too.’

IV

‘You look worried,’ said Yasmine, greeting Naguib at the door.

‘I’m fine,’ he assured her, taking off his soaking jacket, picking up Husniyah, carrying her through to the kitchen. ‘That smells good,’ he said, nodding at the pot.

She draped his jacket against the stove, the better to dry. ‘Tell me about your day,’ she prompted. He didn’t reply, just stood there staring blankly at the wall. She touched his arm. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

He gave a loud sigh. ‘An Englishman called Daniel Knox,’ he said. ‘The guys across the river are out looking for him. I’ve been listening in on the radio.’

‘So?’

‘Wasn’t he the other person at that press conference? The one at which they announced finding Alexander’s tomb, I mean. With the secretary general and the hostage girl?’

‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘Daniel Knox. I think you’re right.’

‘They’re saying he’s a killer.’

‘He didn’t look like a killer.’

‘No,’ agreed Naguib.

‘He looked nice.’

‘So you kept saying,’ scowled Naguib. ‘But the question is, what’s he doing down here?’

‘What are you getting at?’

‘A killer on the run runs
away
from trouble. This one’s running into it. Why? Because of the hostage woman, I’m sure of it. He knows something, and it’s leading him here.’

‘Have something to eat. Worry about it tomorrow.’

‘Something’s going on in Amarna, my love. I’m not sure what, yet, but it’s got to do with those tourist police.’

‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘Not this again.’ She glanced at Husniyah. ‘We’ve only just got settled here. If you lose your job…’

‘Tell me not to pursue it, I won’t pursue it.’

‘You know I won’t do that. But what about your colleagues? Won’t they back you up?’

He shook his head. ‘I asked Gamal. He told me to drop it. But I can’t.’

Yasmine was silent a moment. Then she took a breath. ‘Do what you have to do. Husniyah and I will stick by you always, you know that.’

His eyes glittered as he pushed himself to his feet. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘Just don’t do anything crazy. That’s all I ask.’

He nodded as he pulled on his jacket. ‘I’ll be back before you know it.’