field, I was invited to head up the Iraqi UNESCO taskforce to trace the tens of thousands of artefacts looted from the National Museum of Iraq during the war.”
She paused, looking across at Hunter to see if he wanted more detail.
“Baghdad’s a dangerous place for a civilian working outside the Green Zone.”
The unexpected comment came from the athletic man to Hunter’s left. His accent was British. Although not in uniform, he looked windswept and tanned from an active outdoor lifestyle. She guessed he was in his mid-thirties.
She glanced at the identity tag hanging round his neck. It simply read:
David Ferguson
No other details.
Ferguson’s interruption had been a statement not a question. He was now looking at her closely with none of Hunter’s affability. She met his gaze, wondering what he meant, but his expression told her nothing.
She ignored the comment and turned back to Hunter. “My task is to spearhead reassembling the museum’s decimated collections. It’s going to take decades. We’re finding looted artefacts as far away as Peru.”
Hunter’s expression changed. For a split second she thought she saw a flash of remorse, then it was gone. “We dropped the ball on that one, Dr Curzon. We know that now. The chain of command just didn’t appreciate how important the museum was.”
“Yes you did,” she replied, anger flaring briefly. “You just had other priorities.” Her eyes flicked to the screen showing the real-time oil price.
She knew that for weeks before the hostilities began, the coalition’s assault armies had been begged by diplomatic channels to protect the museum and its unique holdings. She knew because she had been tasked with coordinating a briefing paper for the military high command. In it, she had painstakingly explained that the collection was priceless, unique, and irreplaceable—as important to cataloguing human history as the holdings of the British Museum, the Vatican, or the Louvre.
But in April 2003, as the street-by-street artillery battle raged furiously in Baghdad’s al-Karkh district around the museum complex and the neighbouring Special Republican Guard base, the pleas for the museum’s security were ignored. Unguarded and vulnerable, tens of thousands of its priceless artefacts disappeared into the dark Iraqi night. Some went into pockets and underneath flapping dishdashas, while others were strapped onto borrowed and stolen flatbed trucks.
International newspapers quickly began to talk of the unprecedented rape of the world’s heritage. They reported that over one hundred and seventy thousand of humanity’s earliest records of writing, literature, maths, science, sculpture, and art were all gone—stolen, destroyed, or lost.
Ten years on, it still made her furious. It had been a completely preventable catastrophe. But for whatever reason, the coalition military staff had taken the operational decision to sacrifice the museum.
She had no words to describe how angry it made her.
Ferguson interrupted her thoughts. “You were telling us about your experience?”
She nodded, pulling herself back to the present. “My published work deals mainly with the countries of this region’s fertile crescent. My specialism is the Bronze Age.” She smiled. “To most people that means I do the archaeology of the Old Testament period of the Bible.”
Ferguson looked up from the file, making direct eye contact this time. “It says here you had trouble fitting in at school.”
Ava wondered if she had heard correctly.
What sort of a question was that?
She had assumed she was there to help, not to be insulted.
She looked at the files the three of them were leafing through.
Were they personnel files? On her?
She stared back at him.
Was this some kind of test?
He continued. “And that aged sixteen, you broke out of your boarding school in England. You found an African tourist company on the Earls Court Road in London, and impressed them so much with your knowledge of east African languages that you talked your way into a job as a tour guide on a Blue Nile Sudan cruise from Sannar. Once they’d flown you there and you’d completed the job, you made your own way cross-country into Ethiopia, back to your family home in Addis Ababa, where your father had been on the British embassy’s staff for many years.” He glanced up at her. “That’s very impressive for a future academic.”
Ava could feel her blood rising.
Was he purposefully trying to provoke her?
Hunter intervened with a slight smile. “Dr Curzon, let me assure you you’re among friends here.” He tapped the DIA file. “We know you followed in your father’s footsteps, and that after graduating you worked for a number of years with the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6.”
Ava could feel the tension in the room mounting.
Was that what this was about?
“I’m not allowed to talk about it,” she replied. Despite the unwanted memories, her voice stayed calm. “And I don’t particularly want to either.”
There was an uneasy silence.
“You were top of your intake.” It was Ferguson again. “I see you were the first ever female MI6 officer to work in theatre on an operation with the Increment. That’s also very impressive.” There was a look of genuine curiosity on his face. “Why did you leave?”
She shook her head. “I said I can’t talk about it. Let’s just say I’d had enough.” It was more than she wanted to say, but it was the truth.
“So you returned to your first love,” he continued. “Archaeology?”
She nodded.
The woman to Hunter’s left cleared her throat. Looking over at her, Ava realized for the first time how tall she was, even sitting down.
“Dr Curzon, my name is Anna Prince,” the woman began. “I’m with the US Defense Intelligence Agency in DC. We’d like you to have a look at this.” Her accent was east coast—calm and precise.
The lighting above them dimmed, and the squat projector in the middle of the table hummed into life, throwing a dusty tunnel of light onto the far wall.
The projected image was of a golden box, about the size of a packing trunk.
Ava looked at it with professional interest, but it only took her a few milliseconds to recognize it.
“It’s a model of the Ark of the Covenant,” she said, feeling a bit absurd. She had not been flown to the largest American military base in the world outside the US just to tell them that. Most of the GIs within its razor-wired perimeter could have said as much.
“What can you tell us about it?” Prince asked.
Ava looked at the picture more closely. “It’s a photograph of a model—an artist’s impression of what the Ark of the Covenant might have looked like.”
“Why just an impression?” Hunter asked, frowning. “What does the real one look like?”
Ava shook her head. “No one knows. There are no carvings, sculptures, or paintings. All recreations are just informed guesswork based on a brief description in the Bible.”
“What can you tell us about this particular model?” Prince asked. “Is there anything that jumps out?”
Ava looked back at the image glowing on the wall. “It’s hard to judge the scale, but it looks perhaps a bit larger than normal. More unusual, too. Most of today’s models are broadly similar, but I haven’t seen one quite like this before.” She picked up the laser pointer on the table. “May I?”
Hunter nodded.
Ava aimed the pinprick of light at the two winged statues dominating the Ark’s golden lid.
“From an artistic point of view, this model has some unique features. For instance, the angels on the lid, called cherubim, are atypical. It’s a poor quality photograph, and I can’t see them clearly because their wings are in the way, but it looks like there’s a hint of something Egyptian there.”
“Egyptian?” Prince asked, frowning. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” Ava replied, “the artist is a clear thinker, and not someone who sheepishly
follows the crowd. Most people depict the cherubim as Christian angels—like on greetings cards and in church windows. But, of course, according to the legend, the Hebrews built the Ark in the desert on their return from a hundred years of slavery in Egypt. So it would be logical for the Ark to have Egyptian influences—especially because, as far as we know, the ancient Hebrews didn’t have their own artistic style.”
Ava put the laser pointer down, not really sure what they wanted her to say.
“Legend?” Prince asked. Unless Ava was misreading it, there was a note of surprise in her voice. “You said the Exodus, when the Hebrews wandered in the desert and built the Ark, was a legend?”
Ava nodded. She knew this was a sensitive topic for many people.
“The truth is,” she answered, “no one knows for sure. The vast majority of events in the Bible are uncorroborated by independent texts or archaeological evidence. Scholars are divided on whether the adventures of the ancient Hebrews chronicled in the Bible ever really happened—whether figures like Abraham, Moses, David, or Solomon ever existed in the way they’re described, or at all. Even King Solomon’s Temple is not universally accepted, as no evidence of it has ever been found.”
“The Bible stories never happened?” Hunter asked, unable to mask his curiosity.
“Not necessarily,” Ava replied. “For instance, each story may contain an embedded trace element of an ancient historical event, but over time it has been so interwoven and embroidered with the heroic and the supernatural that it’s no longer recognizable. It’s not an uncommon process. We
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