There was room for almost two hundred passengers on board the Boeing, but it was less than half full. Peter’s fellow travellers seemed to be mostly Egyptian, probably people who lived here or who had come for a holiday. There was also a group of men who were obviously travelling together. The moment the aircraft had levelled out after take-off, a few them had unbuckled their seatbelts and congregated in the aisle next to the other seated members of their group, all holding cans of beer that they seemed to have acquired almost magically. Despite the heat, they were impeccably dressed in suits and ties. Peter predicted that they would take their ties off the second they left the aircraft and entered the searing heat of the Sinai desert. They appeared to be businessmen, perhaps people with interests in one of the many hotels along the coast that now stood empty.
Tourism in the area had declined heavily since Al Qaida and other fundamentalist groups affiliated with the Islamic State had started to appear in the Sinai Peninsula. There had been fighting between these loosely organised factions and the Egyptian army. There had been attacks on army bases too, sometimes resulting in many deaths. At the end of October 2015, ISIS had claimed responsibility for a bomb attack on a passenger plane that had blown up over Sinai, killing all two hundred and seventeen of the mostly Russian passengers and the seven crew members on board.
While it was easy to assume that it would be simple to track down these militant groups in the desert, it was a vast area – twenty-five times the size of the Netherlands – with geographical features like canyons and caverns that offered more hiding places than one might expect. Moreover, it was impossible to tell from an airborne drone whether a group of men sitting around a tent were terrorists or just members of the Bedouin tribes who had lived in this area for centuries.
The handful of western tourists who joined Peter when he stepped out into the blistering desert heat – it felt like walking fully clothed into an infrared sauna – were all young, and they happily accepted the heat as part of their holiday experience.
They walked in a long line to the terminal where their passports were given cursory glances by the border officials. Inside the terminal building, even away from direct heat and blinding light of the sun, it was still very warm.
Soon a baggage tug arrived, pulling a convoy of open cages full of suitcases and backpacks that the baggage handlers dumped in a large pile next to a broken carousel.
Peter picked up his suitcase and was about to head towards the exit when a young couple caught his eye. They were friendly-looking twenty-somethings who gave the impression that they were somewhat overwhelmed by the adventure they had embarked upon. They were both dressed in the universal hippy uniform of baggy trousers and colourful shirts faded by bright sunshine and overwashing. The young man’s cheerful face was framed by curly hair that reached his shoulders, and he had a two-day growth of stubble that made him look scruffy and unkempt. The girl with him had dreadlocked hair pulled back with a red scarf.
Peter decided to offer to share his taxi with them. He remembered how lost he’d felt at their age whenever he got off a plane, bus or train and entered a strange new world. The no-budget nature of his travels had always meant that he’d never been able to afford the luxury of just jumping in a cab.
‘Would you like to share a taxi?’ he asked them, forgoing the polite introductions.
The delighted reactions told him that his suggestion had hit the mark.
The young German man launched into a story about a man they had met at their hotel in Cairo. He’d seemed very nice at first and had offered to arrange cheap flights to Sharm el-Sheik for them. They had accepted his offer, but when they got to the airport, the same nice man had suddenly demanded more money. He’d threatened to call the police and tell them that the young pair had refused to pay him at all. ‘I have many friends here,’ he’d said menacingly. Naturally, they had handed over the extra money, but it had almost completely wiped out their funds. Since they already had the now very expensive tickets in their pockets, they had decided to go to Sharm el-Sheikh anyway, intending to live as cheaply as possible for the next few days, perhaps by sleeping on the beach.
Peter offered to pay for the taxi. The girl flung her arms around his neck, while the young man clapped him heartily on the back.
The man, who was called Melchior, sat next to the taxi driver with his little backpack perched on his knee. Peter shared the back seat with Katja. As they left the airport’s grounds, Katja grabbed Peter’s hand and didn’t let go until the taxi dropped them off on a street that ran parallel to the shore. On the beach, there was a colourful collection of small thatched huts with clothes pegged out on washing lines strung between them.
When they pulled up, Peter paid the driver, and Katja hugged him again. Melchior shook his hand profusely. They were both clearly relieved to have been helped out of their predicament.
‘In the guidebook it says that there are places where you can sleep on the beach without anyone bothering you,’ Melchior said. ‘And everything is cheap here, so I think we’ll be able to manage for the next five days.’
‘Good luck!’ said Peter.
‘We really want to visit Saint Catherine’s Monastery and climb Mount Sinai,’ Katja went on. ‘That’s why we accepted that man’s offer in the first place. Getting there is going to cost us most of the money we have left.’
Peter had been hoping to avoid having to deal with other tourists by taking a taxi to the monastery as early as he could the next morning, so he judiciously chose to remain tight-lipped about his plans.
He would have preferred to leave for the monastery straight away, but the man sitting next to him on his flight had advised him that he would have trouble finding a driver willing to make the trip so late in the afternoon. By six o’clock, it would be completely dark, and considering recent events, everyone tended to avoid the empty desert roads at night because you had no idea what sort of people you might run into.
Peter said goodbye to Katja and Melchior and made his way to the first hotel that he saw, more or less exactly where the taxi had dropped them off.
When he left the bright sunlight outside and stepped into the lobby, it took some time for his eyes to adjust enough for him to be able to make out his surroundings. But once they did, there was no one to be seen.
He pressed the reception bell a few times until a young man jumped up from underneath the desk. He had clearly been taking a nap on a mattress on the floor, and he looked at Peter sleepily. He leafed through a large book to see if there were any rooms available, but Peter could see from the rows of keys hanging on the board behind him that this was purely for show.
While the young man copied his passport details into the ledger, Peter looked around him. There were no lights on in the lobby, but he could see that there were rugs on the floor and paintings made on papyrus hanging on the walls. It looked like it had been decorated by someone with great taste and an eye for authentic Egyptian details once upon a time, but now it looked shabby and neglected. When his eyes had adapted to the gloom, he saw couches arranged in a U-shape around a coffee table with people lying on them, all asleep. A fan turned above their heads, but too slowly to cool the air at all.
The room that Peter was given, however, was spotlessly clean and smelled fresh, with white bed linen that looked like it had just been changed.
When he tried to plug in his phone to charge it, he discovered that the charger he had brought with him didn’t fit in the Egyptian socket. Then he realised that the travel adaptor he’d bought at Schiphol was still plugged into the socket in Judith’s Harvard apartment.
What an idiot. I’ll see if I can buy one somewhere. I doubt I’m the first foreigner here to be caught out like this.
Even the shower worked perfectly, he realised with relief when he stood under its warm jet to wash away the dust and sweat of travelling. The muscles in his neck, back and shoulders relaxed as the hot water flowed over his body.
He put on a loose cotton shirt and long Be
rmuda shorts. When he went back outside, it was still very warm, and he almost felt like he was on holiday. The lights of the seafront bars twinkled invitingly in the twilight, and the waves washed gently over the sand.
The atmosphere in the shop next to the hotel was as languid as the lobby had been. The shopkeeper gave the impression of having given up all hope and sat watching a football match on a small television with the sound turned off.
When Peter showed him his mobile phone cable, the man sprang into action. He strode purposefully to one of the shelves and came back with a universal adaptor plug.
‘Dollar?’ Peter asked.
The shopkeeper held up both hands. He waggled all ten fingers and grinned horribly, revealing a nearly toothless mouth.
Peter paid him with a crisp, new ten-dollar note that he’d withdrawn from a cash machine at Boston Logan shortly before his flight.
The shopkeeper handed him the plug, and then patted his chest with his hand, saying, ‘Shukran, shukran.’ Thank you, thank you.
Peter went back to his hotel room where he ‘put his phone to the teat’ as Fay so amusingly liked to put it. He realised straight away that he had no network coverage at all here. Maybe he could find an internet café with Wi-Fi later.
At the airport in New York, he had texted Fay to tell her that there had been a change of plan and that he had decided, on a whim, to fulfil a long-held dream of going to Sharm el-Sheikh. He hadn’t even been lying.
Saint Catherine’s.
Now he was certain that the little circle on the tattoo was a reference to the monastery. The outer triangle represented the Sinai Peninsula, the inner lines stood for the route the Israelites had taken. Now that he could see it, it was inconceivable that he hadn’t realised it before.
If he was right, that was.
In any case, Tony hadn’t seen it. Otherwise, he would have come here long ago.
The monastery held a collection of thousands of manuscripts that were so unique as to be genuinely priceless.
Even if it was likely to be useless, his phone was at least charging up now.
Peter left the hotel and went to a deserted bar on the beach. It was little more than a few tables and chairs arranged on a wooden deck with a narrow bar running along its length. The four men standing behind it were visibly bored. He ordered a beer and took it to one of the chairs closest to the water’s edge. Droplets of condensation ran down the bottle, leaving trails that looked like little rivers on a glassy landscape. He took a couple of long, satisfying swigs of the cold beer.
It’s not really surprising that nobody ever considered Tony Vanderhoop as a possible suspect, Peter thought. He’s a nice enough guy, and he seemed to be as shocked as everyone else about what had happened. And he was literally out of the picture in Leiden because his delegation had gone back the USA.
The day before Yona Falaina was murdered.
He was a man with a mission who had granted himself a licence to kill. A consummate actor, a conman who managed to pull the wool over my – and everyone else’s – eyes.
Could he really have drowned? Had he really been swallowed up by the ocean’s cold, black depths? How ironic … To meet the same fate he’d inflicted on Sam and George.
Peter had been nervous when he’d boarded the plane at Boston Logan airport, inwardly cursing the pilot when the aircraft was kept standing at the gate. When the flight from New York’s JFK had been delayed too, Peter had been convinced that a team of heavily armed police was going to storm the plane and arrest him for murder. And even when the plane’s wheels had left American soil, he’d still been unable to completely relax. When the plane banked to change direction for the first time, Peter had been sure that it was about to take him back to New York where he’d be thrown straight into an American jail cell.
It wasn’t until the screens in the cabin had shown that the aircraft was flying far from the coast that he had finally dared to think he was safe.
This must be how Tony felt when he was on his flight from Amsterdam to Boston.
Peter finished his beer in no time at all and motioned to one of the men at the bar who hurried over with another bottle.
He saw two people walking along the shoreline and recognised them as Melchior and Katja. He beckoned them over, and they veered away from the path they had been taking along the water’s edge and headed towards him. Katja flung her arms around him like a long-lost friend and planted a warm, slightly wet kiss on his neck. Melchior embraced him in a strong, brotherly hug.
‘Come and sit down,’ Peter said. ‘Do you want a beer?’ They hesitated, and Peter remembered their precarious financial situation. ‘My treat. Let’s have something to eat, too.’
‘No, no, Peter,’ Melchior protested earnestly and held up his hands in polite refusal. He spoke English with a typically German accent. ‘We wouldn’t want to take advantage of your kindness.’
‘Listen,’ Peter said adamantly. ‘You had a bad experience with that man in Cairo. Let me restore your faith in humanity by buying you a meal and a few drinks. You can repay me by sitting with me and telling me your stories. I’m all alone here, and I could do with some company.’
Ultimately, their objections were no match for how hungry and thirsty they were, and they gave in.
Without having to be asked, the barman brought over two more bottles of beer. They ordered extra-large portions of shawarma and salad.
‘What are you doing all alone in a place like this?’ Katja wanted to know.
‘I teach history at Leiden University,’ Peter told her truthfully. ‘I’ve always wanted to visit Saint Catherine’s Monastery. I was taking a week off anyway, and I thought …’
‘It’s now or never,’ Katja said.
‘Yes, something like that,’ Peter said. ‘My …’ He hesitated and found his own hesitation troubling, like he wanted to deny Fay’s existence.
‘My partner, my girlfriend, had other commitments, so she couldn’t come with me. She has a young daughter too, so it’s not easy for her to get away from home.’
It was a watertight story, almost without a word of a lie. You could have a memory like a sieve if you always told the truth: you just had to keep telling your story exactly as it had happened. Only liars needed to have perfect recall.
Katja told him that she and Melchior – not her boyfriend but a fellow student – were both studying Egyptology. They had been on a dig for six weeks in Saqqara, a village about thirty kilometres from Cairo. The University of Leiden had led digs there every March and April since 1975. Peter even knew some of the people Melchior and Katja had been working with. When that year’s Saqqara excavation project had ended, they’d decided to go travelling together, but then they’d ended up being tricked by the villain in Cairo.
As the plates of food and more bottles of beer were brought to the table, they told Peter about how wonderful it had been to start work early each morning, excavating Egypt’s history centimetre by centimetre the old-fashioned way with a trowel, bucket, sieve and brush. They’d been happy to work for long hours because they knew that at any moment, they might uncover a find, the sort of discovery that they’d dreamed of since they were children. When they looked up from their work and gazed at the horizon, their view had been of Pharaoh Djoser’s famous step pyramid. It was such a fantastic place to work! And so many spectacular finds had been made at the site, like the double statue of the high priest Meryneith and his wife Aniuia that had been found there in 2001. Katja and Melchior had seen it in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The desert near the village of Saqqara had been used as a burial ground for senior Egyptian officials and other important people in Ancient Egypt for thousands of years.
‘Personally, I’m most interested in Pharaoh Akhenaten’s period,’ said Melchior brightly, clearly revived by the food and beer. ‘I’m hoping to make it the subject of my thesis, maybe even a PhD, if I can.’ He paused as if this was a confession that he suddenly regretted, as if speaking the wish out loud might spoil his chan
ces of making it come true.
After a moment, he continued. ‘Akhenaten was the pharaoh who tried to transform religion in Egypt. He wanted to replace its traditional polytheism with a religion that worshipped only one god, the sun god Aten. It’s incredibly interesting.’
Of course, Peter had heard of this pharaoh and his attempts to reform the Egyptian religion, but he didn’t know much about the finer details. He did know about the theories that suggested that the pursuit of monotheism during this period had influenced the change to monotheism in Judaism, which originally had many gods.
In fact, there were still references to multiple gods in the Bible that had never been removed, particularly in the Psalms. For example, in Psalm 88, David sings: ‘There is none like you among the gods, O Lord.’ Or in Psalm 82, where Asaph writes: ‘God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.’ Centuries later, the storm god Yahweh won the battle for pre-eminence and was promoted to supreme deity.
‘My thesis focuses on the “Great Hymn to the Aten”,’ Melchior went on. ‘Do you know it?’
Peter shook his head.
‘You should look it up when you get home,’ Katja said, joining the conversation again. ‘The text was found on the wall of the tomb of the courtier Ay. He was the father of Akhenaten’s wife, Queen Nefertiti. It’s really fascinating. It says: “How manifold it is, what thou hast made! They are hidden from the face of man. O sole god, like whom there is no other! Thou didst create the world according to thy desire.”’
‘And when you compare it with Psalm 104,’ Melchior said, taking over from her, ‘you see that both the “Great Hymn to the Aten” and the Psalm proclaim the glory of God’s creation with a sense of ecstatic joy and wonder. The whole cosmos basks in divine light. They describe a world of abundance and order where man and beast are engaged in a sort of adoration of what God has made. There’s an obvious and deeply felt feeling of religious awe at the heart of the hymn.’
The Pilgrim Conspiracy Page 41
