The Pilgrim Conspiracy

by Jeroen Windmeijer

  Dair Sānt Kātarīn

  Km 40

  Either the camels had been walking faster than Peter had thought, or he had been dumped closer to Saint Catherine than he thought. Or maybe they had just been able to take a big shortcut through the desert.

  We could be there in less than two hours, before it gets dark.

  The camels set off again at a brisk trot, moving faster than they had done before. It took a great deal of effort and considerable strength to keep his balance, but the thought that they would be at the monastery within an hour and a half at this speed gave Peter renewed energy. His knuckles were white from gripping the reins so tightly, the muscles on his inner thighs ached, and he could feel another headache coming on.

  About an hour later or perhaps even as little as three-quarters of an hour – in any case, much sooner than he had expected – they passed a sign that said the monastery was only twenty kilometres away.

  The light was fading almost imperceptibly, and every few minutes, Peter found himself having to squint a little less. The sun was close to the horizon now, and it was noticeably less hot. He had heard that the desert could be freezing cold after the sun went down, and now he realised that the clothes the Bedouins wore during the day could serve as warm blankets at night.

  He heard a car coming up behind them. The driver beeped his horn a couple of times to make sure they had heard him.

  The yellow taxi passed them at high speed at first, but then abruptly skidded to a stop about a hundred metres away. The car reversed and came to a standstill about twenty metres from them.

  The driver got out and yelled something at Bilal, who shook his head in reply. He started to get back into the car, but then changed his mind, slammed the door shut, and walked over to Peter.

  ‘As-salamu alaykum,’ the man greeted him in a manner that was much more friendly than the way he had spoken to Bilal.

  ‘Wa alaykum al-salaam,’ Peter replied, which was about the full extent of his knowledge of Arabic. The man fired some questions at him – or at least, Peter assumed they were questions – and Peter shook his head.

  The man narrowed his eyes as if he was squinting at the sun. He came a few steps closer. His face radiated anger and suspicion, and he motioned aggressively at Peter to take off his head covering.

  What’s going on?

  The man stood on his tiptoes and grabbed Peter’s arm.

  ‘Scarf!’ he screamed.

  Well, he’s at least worked out that I don’t understand Arabic.

  ‘Put away. Scarf,’ the man hissed.

  Peter was about to heed his command when Bilal shouted something at them. Then he nimbly turned his camel around and, in a flash, he had manoeuvred it between Peter and the taxi driver.

  Even for someone who didn’t know a word of Arabic, it was clear that the two men were not engaged in small talk about the weather or the price of bread.

  The man tried to walk around Bilal’s camel, but before he even got halfway, Bilal reached out with his foot and kicked him hard in the chest. As the man fell backwards, Bilal snatched Peter’s reins, urged his own camel forward, and they took off at full speed.

  Bewildered by what had just happened, Peter looked behind him. The man scrambled to his feet and ran back to the taxi. The passenger door opened. A man got out and stood next to the car. He shaded his hand with his eyes and stared at Peter and Bilal.

  Peter recognised him immediately. His height gave him away. And so did his red baseball cap.

  Chapter 37

  Terrified, Peter took another look behind him, but his camel was swaying violently from side to side, and he needed to focus his attention on staying in the saddle. When he looked back a few moments later, he saw that the taxi was moving again. Even the fastest camel stood no chance of outrunning a car.

  Bilal seemed to realise this too. As soon as they reached a point where the sand dunes were lower, he steered his camel away from the road. He had let go of the reins of Peter’s camel now, and after a few attempts, Peter managed to grab hold of them again, which helped him to sit in the saddle more securely.

  They galloped on for what felt like a long time, even after they had reached safer terrain where no car could follow. Eventually, they slowed down to a gentler trot, and Bilal came and rode next to him. Peter wanted to ask a thousand questions, but that was impossible without speaking Bilal’s language.

  ‘Not good,’ Bilal said, perfectly summing up the situation.

  ‘Not good?’

  ‘Bad man. Not good,’ Bilal said again.

  He seemed to have plenty of questions too. He stared into Peter’s face as if he hoped he might be able to fathom the answers by reading his mind.

  ‘Katrîne?’ Peter asked hopefully, pointing at the horizon. He was afraid that Bilal wouldn’t want to continue after such an alarming encounter.

  ‘Katrîne,’ Bilal confirmed, and Peter could hear the grim determination in his voice. He spread out the fingers on both hands and showed them to Peter. Peter couldn’t tell if he meant ten minutes or ten kilometres.

  As they made their way across the sand, Peter wondered if it hadn’t just been the stress of the day’s events that had made him think he’d seen Tony in the figure staring back at them.

  Was it really Tony? Yes, it had to be. The same height, that ever-present baseball cap. And who else would be coming after me? Nobody except Fay even knows I’m here. But then, how the hell did he survive in the ocean? I know he said, ‘I’m an excellent swimmer,’ but I was sure he hadn’t come back up to the surface.

  Peter was convinced that he had definitely just seen Tony. He must have managed to get back to the shore somehow.

  After that, it would have been easy for him to watch me and follow me to the airport. That nutjob was convinced I was an undercover agent who had come to America to expose him. As if I would be able to go after him on my own … But how did he get past the border when I didn’t even manage to check in unnoticed myself?

  Peter shook his head in the vain hope that he could erase the mental image of a resurrected Tony.

  He looked around. The afterglow of the setting sun had provided some light for a while, but now it too had disappeared. It wasn’t as dark as he had expected, and he could already see the first stars.

  According to the Bible, when the Israelites travelled through the desert, they were guided by a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day. This had led many writers to suggest that the Exodus had taken place in the Minoan era between 1650 and 1600 BCE, the time of a massive volcanic eruption on the island of Thera in the Mediterranean – one of the largest volcanic eruptions ever recorded on earth. The resulting tsunami was more than twenty-eight metres high and reached as far as Crete, where it caused tremendous devastation. The evidence that half of Thera had been blasted away by the volcanic eruption can still be seen today; the island, now called Santorini, is shaped like a crescent moon.

  From a distance, the tower of ash and smoke from the eruption would have been clearly visible during the day, and at night, the molten lava would have given off an intense glow.

  Mark had once explained to Peter how the smoke and ash from the volcano could have caused the Ten Plagues of Egypt. The ash cloud would have prevented rainfall and turned the Nile into a foul, slow-moving river of mud in which algae would thrive. Pollution would eventually have caused the abundant algae to die off, turning the water red. This could also have driven the frogs out of the water to the safety of dry land. They would have died very quickly in the arid desert, and the absence of this natural predator probably allowed flies and lice to multiply unabated, spreading diseases that were fatal to cattle. People would have been bitten and stung on a massive scale; scratching the bites would have led to open sores. The ash in the air collided with thunderstorms, and the resulting hail pelted the earth. This would have created a humid climate in which locusts could breed more rapidly. The ash particles blotted out the sun, plunging the land into darkness. Because of t
he humidity, the Egyptians’ food would have begun to rot; the grain grew mould. According to Egyptian custom, the eldest child in a family was always the first to be given the newly harvested grain to eat, and this would have brought about the deaths of all the first-born children.

  This still assumes that the events in Exodus actually took place, Peter thought, but for different reasons. So while a volcanic eruption could explain the stories of the Ten Plagues and the pillars of cloud and fire that the Israelites saw, in the Bible’s version of the story, Egypt was blighted by disaster because God wanted to punish the pharaoh for refusing to let the Israelites go. And afterwards, He took on the forms of smoke and fire to lead His people through the desert.

  They rode on for another half hour or so, and then Bilal stopped and held up his arm, like a commanding officer on a mission giving his troops an order to halt. He told the camels to kneel so that he and Peter could dismount.

  Peter was so stiff and tired from the bumpy ride over rough terrain that he sank to his knees too.

  Bilal knotted the camels’ reins together so that they wouldn’t run off during his brief absence. He patted their rumps and whispered softly to them.

  ‘Katrîne,’ he said to Peter.

  They climbed to the top of a rocky hill, and at last, Peter saw Saint Catherine’s Monastery. It looked like they were approaching the rear of the building rather than the front. In the distance, Peter could vaguely make out a large area that was dotted with parked cars. The moonlight glistered on their metal and glass.

  If this was a film, Peter thought, I would be shouting at the screen: ‘Don’t go inside! Go to the airport and take the first flight home!’ Tony must have been on his way to the monastery. Because where else would I have been going? He knows. Does he know what the tattoo on his chest means now too? I just need to get inside the monastery. I can’t go back to Sharm el-Sheikh. Tony might have paid people to keep an eye out for me there. Just as he must have paid Melchior and Katja. And I’m so close now! The safest place for me is in the monastery. The monks will protect me. The law of the desert says to offer hospitality and protection to anyone who knocks at your door. And if the secret manuscript has to be found by someone, please don’t let it be Tony!

  The monastery was surrounded by a tall wall that was at least twenty-five or thirty metres high in places.

  Peter and Bilal headed directly for it. When they reached the monastery, they went left, skirting around the perimeter. Peter held onto the wall, trailing his hand over the rough stones as they went. Just as they were about to turn left again, Bilal, who had so far remained silent, stopped. He stuck his head around the corner, then decided that the coast was clear enough for them to go further.

  Peter couldn’t see a taxi in the car park, although that didn’t necessarily mean that Tony wasn’t hiding here somewhere. It was very likely that he had arrived before them; it was probably no more than a fifteen-minute drive.

  Tony could be hiding behind the rocks right now, watching us.

  As they walked across the open space of the car park towards the entrance, Peter suddenly felt very, very vulnerable.

  The entrance door was made of thick oak with ironwork fittings. It was closed. Bilal knocked on it a few times. Seconds later, a little hatch opened, and the bearded face of a monk appeared.

  Peter knew that Saint Catherine’s Monastery was one of the oldest in the world and that it had remained almost unchanged since it was built. It belonged to the Greek Orthodox Church, and its monks had always been of mostly Greek origin. This particular monk apparently also had a good command of Arabic because, after a short, whispered explanation from Bilal, Peter heard bolts sliding and the sound of keys being turned in various locks.

  When the door opened, Bilal stepped aside and invited Peter to go in. As he was about to step over the threshold, Bilal grabbed his arm. He shook Peter’s hand, and they embraced each other. The smell of sweat, cigarette smoke and camel assaulted Peter’s nose. It all happened so quickly that Peter could only mumble, ‘Thank you, thank you.’ Before he knew it, Bilal had turned around and was gone.

  Peter went inside, and the monk locked and bolted the door again. Peter unwound the scarf from around his head and removed the heavy clothing. He wouldn’t need them here.

  The monk spoke good English, which made the conversation much easier.

  ‘Come, come. I’m Brother Antonius. Let’s get you registered. It’s required of every guest who stays here.’

  Brother Antonius led him down a wide, well-lit corridor and stopped in front of an open door. The walls of the room beyond it were lined with bookcases crammed full of books, maps and bundles of paper. It looked like they were all covered in a thick layer of dust.

  Peter sat down, and Brother Antonius gave him an English-language leaflet about the monastery. Peter read the front page while the monk was busy with his paperwork.

  Saint Catherine’s Monastery lies at the foot of Mount Sinai and was built between AD 548 and AD 565 by Emperor Justinian I. The monastery was built around the traditional site of the Burning Bush.

  The monastery’s library is home to one of the largest and most important collections of holy manuscripts in the world – only outnumbered by the Vatican Library. The library preserves approximately 4,500 religious, scientific, medical and other documents in Greek, Coptic, Arabic, Armenian, Hebrew, Slavic, Syrian, Georgian and other languages.

  Saint Catherine’s Monastery is the oldest working Christian monastery in the world and is also the smallest diocese in the world. The Chapel of the Burning Bush was originally commissioned somewhere around AD 330 by Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great. The monastery itself was built in the sixth century by Emperor Justinian to protect the monks and glorify the site of the Burning Bush. Five hundred years later, monks discovered Saint Catherine’s remains on the mountain that now bears her name. Her body was believed to have been transported to Mount Catherine by angels. The relics of Saint Catherine are kept in a marble reliquary in the monastery’s basilica.

  Until the twentieth century, the only access to the monastery was via a small door set into the wall at a height of nine metres to which provisions and people were hoisted up via a pulley system.

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked Antonius, who was finished with his paperwork. A huge book was open on the table in front of him, and his pen hovered over a page that was divided into columns. He noticed Peter’s reluctance to answer his simple question. ‘We register all visitors who spend the night with us,’ he said encouragingly. ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Leiden, the Netherlands. L-e-i-d-e-n,’ Peter said.

  Brother Antonius wrote this down and then looked at Peter gravely.

  Is something wrong?

  ‘And your name?’

  ‘Peter …’ he said hesitantly.

  It can’t do much harm to give away my first name, Peter thought. And if I use a made-up name, I might forget to listen out for someone calling me by it.

  ‘De Rots. Peter de Rots,’ he said, but as he spelled out the letters of this invented surname, he realised that a monk who worked in a multilingual library was very likely to know how to say a name as significant as ‘Peter the Rock’ in several languages and recognise it as an invention. He decided to keep talking. ‘I teach. At a university.’

  Antonius tutted approvingly as he wrote down these details in a beautiful, neat hand.

  ‘Do you have many guests here?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Some. Not many. A few people stay here on a long-term basis to learn, to study the manuscripts. But it’s not like it used to be,’ the monk said, clapping the book closed.

  Fay said that Coen had been here many times on retreat. It’s the perfect place to hide away and devote yourself to learning. Or to hide secrets.

  ‘Tourists came here by the coachload at one time. They’d climb to the top of the mountain at two in the morning to see the sunrise. It’s very beautiful. Would you like to do that?’

 
; Peter hesitated.

  ‘It really is beautiful. I could arrange a guide for you if you like, someone who’ll go with you as far as the steps.’

  ‘Isn’t it dangerous?’

  ‘Dangerous? No, why would it be?’ Antonius asked, and waved his hand dismissively. ‘They leave us in peace here. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been to the top. You could go up on your own. There’s only one path, so it’s impossible to get lost.’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ Peter said. ‘Have any other guests arrived today?’

  ‘No, you’re the first we’ve had in weeks.’

  ‘Okay,’ Peter said with relief.

  I made it. I’m safe.

  For now.

  ‘Come. I’ll show you to your room,’ Antonius said. ‘Then you can have something to eat. If you’d like to climb the mountain tonight and need a guide, just let me know.’

  They left the office, but halfway down the corridor, Peter realised that he had forgotten to pick up the clothing he had borrowed from Bilal.

  How stupid of me not to have taken it all off while he was still here so I could give it straight back to him. I don’t think I’d be able to find the exact location of his camp again, even if he and his family are still in the same place.

  Back in Brother Antonius’s office, he hurried over to the desk to look in the big book. He flipped anxiously through it until he got to the page where the monk had recorded his details.

  The only name next to today’s date was his own, and the previous entry had been made five or six weeks earlier.

  For now, he was safe.

  Chapter 38

  Dear God, what’s just happened?

  Peter stared at his bloody hand in shock. He leaned his back against the massive oak door as if not even the combination of its cast-iron lock and large bolt were secure enough.

  The gentle flame of a large candle cast a soft glow evenly around the room. The spartan monk’s cell would have made a beautifully atmospheric photograph: the simple bed with its thin mattress and rough woollen blanket, the wooden table and chair, the writing implements and paper on the tabletop, the ceramic water jug and mug. In a small niche in the wall was a simple statue of the Virgin Mary with an infant Jesus in her arms.