by James Becker
When he walked out of the alleyway moments later, he looked different in almost every way.
39
When Angela checked her emails later that afternoon, she was surprised to see two from Ali Mohammed. She read the first message with a growing sense of disappointment. Yet again he told her that he felt any further investigation of the mysterious parchment was not a good idea because of the potential dangers that were very obviously linked to the relic, and he reaffirmed his belief that she should just forget all about it. In view of his previous message, that was not entirely unexpected, but still, her heart plummeted.
But when she opened the second message, which had been sent only a few minutes after the first, she discovered that for some reason he’d had an almost immediate change of heart. Angela couldn’t suppress a small grin. He’d explained what little he knew about the finding of the relic, and had attached copies of all the photographs he had taken of the parchment, so that she could study it for herself. But he had again reinforced his warning not to publicize anything about it.
When she eagerly looked at the attached images on the screen of her laptop, she immediately came to the same conclusion Ali Mohammed had reached: she needed to print them. It would need many hours of work with a magnifying glass before she’d be able to read much of the text, and even with the photographs there were going to be a lot of words, and maybe whole sentences, that she still wouldn’t be able to decipher. What she really needed was access to the parchment itself.
There was a colour laser printer in her office, and a monochrome unit as well, and she decided that monochrome would probably be better, because it would perhaps be a little clearer. She selected the highest possible resolution, then busied herself making another pot of coffee while she waited for the laser to finish.
Then she took her cup over to her desk, with the stack of printed images and a powerful magnifying glass, and began to examine what she’d been sent.
Some of the photos looked a little odd, perhaps because they’d been taken by the Egyptian scientist using a special camera sensitive to either infrared or ultraviolet light, or maybe just by a normal camera while the parchment was being irradiated by one type of light source or another. But however Mohammed had done it, the images were reasonably good, some parts of the text showing up quite well. As far as she could tell from her quick survey, she might possibly be able to decipher perhaps a quarter of the writing. It was better than nothing.
She toyed with the idea of sending Ali an email to thank him, but she decided a phone call would be more appropriate, and more personal.
She checked his email on her laptop — he’d included his work number as part of the signature at the end of each message — and dialled the number in Cairo.
It rang several times before it was answered, and when it was, it was quickly apparent that the recipient wasn’t Ali Mohammed. She heard a couple of harsh Arabic phrases uttered by a male voice, and replied in slow and clear English.
‘Good afternoon. I want to speak with Ali Mohammed, please.’
Immediately the man switched to English, a language in which he was apparently fluent.
‘Dr Mohammed is unavailable at the moment. Who’s calling?’
‘My name is Angela Lewis. When will he be there, please?’
There was a slight pause before the man answered her question.
‘What is your business with Dr Mohammed?’
Angela hadn’t expected the third-degree: she’d only rung up to thank the scientist for what he’d done. And something about the situation concerned her, so she decided that she wouldn’t explain to this unidentified man exactly what she was calling about.
‘I’m a colleague from London, but this was just a social call.’
‘From London?’ the man queried.
‘Yes. Look, it’s not important. I’ll ring him later.’
And before the man could reply, she ended the call.
That, she thought, was rather peculiar. Presumably Ali had been in his office earlier in the day, because he’d sent her the two emails and the photographs, which he probably wouldn’t have been able to do if he had been at home.
The other thing was the tone of the man’s voice. It had sounded official, authoritative. Perhaps Ali was in trouble? Perhaps the owner of the parchment had found out that he’d been communicating with her about it and had complained to the authorities in the museum? That might explain both his unavailability and the attitude of the man who’d answered the phone. She’d leave it for a couple of days, she decided, and then call again. In the meantime, she’d just send a short email to thank him for his help, but without mentioning either the parchment or the photographs.
Decision made, she again turned her attention to the photographs, and began transcribing some of the Latin words from the images onto a sheet of paper. She hadn’t the time or the patience to do the whole thing in one go — all she really wanted to do at that stage was find out if her deduction about the partial name ef bar he was correct. If she could confirm that, it would be an important step forward.
She scanned the photographs until she found the group of letters she was looking for, and then nodded in satisfaction. The written name was what she had thought: Yusef bar Heli was written perfectly clearly, and that alone made the parchment valuable. Of course, she was very aware that Yusef wasn’t that unusual a name in first-century Judaea, but Heli was far less common, and the juxtaposition of the two names at least suggested that the parchment did refer to the man who was perhaps the most shadowy and least understood — yet at the same time enormously important — figure from that period.
40
Angela spent another ten minutes studying the pictures, picking out a number of other Latin words which she noted down, and did a quick and dirty translation of what she’d managed to read. Then she allowed herself another cup of coffee as a cheap and inadequate celebration, because it looked as if she’d been right. What she’d guessed about the parchment, what she’d deduced simply from the handful of words that could be seen by the naked eye, was now supported by her new and fuller translation of one particular section of the text. It almost certainly did refer to the Yusef bar Heli she had hoped it did, not some other man bearing the same name, and that meant the document was most likely of incalculable and international importance.
Of course, that conclusion assumed that the relic was genuine, and not some kind of elaborate forgery. To clarify that, she would need to see it for herself, along with experts in ancient documents who would be able to analyse the parchment. And, most probably, a small section of the relic would need to be sacrificed and sent for radiocarbon testing.
Angela was very familiar with the technique, which was simple enough in theory. All living things are made from carbon, the vast majority of it — approximately 99 per cent — being carbon-12. There are two other isotopes, roughly one per cent being stable carbon-13, and the remainder being trace quantities of the radioactive isotope carbon-14. Throughout their life, plants absorb carbon-14 through photosynthesis, and this is then passed up through the food chain to herbivorous animals and ultimately to predators, including human beings. On the death of any living thing, no more carbon-14 can be absorbed, obviously, and what is present in the body then begins to decay.
Carbon-14 decays into nitrogen-14, and has a half-life of roughly 5,700 years. By comparing the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 left in an organic sample, the age of the plant or animal can be estimated with a fair degree of accuracy. The dating method can be used for samples up to about 60,000 years old, but is most accurate for material created in the last 26,000 years. It was radiocarbon dating which had conclusively proved that the Shroud of Turin was a medieval forgery, the material dating, with an accuracy of 95 per cent, to between AD 1260 and 1390.
Radiocarbon dating of the parchment, Angela was certain, would be a quick, easy and conclusive way of establishing its age with a high degree of accuracy, and would go a long way towards confirming the
authenticity of the text written on it.
But before that could be done, she had to get her hands on the relic, and at that moment she had no idea how she was going to achieve that. Her only real hope was that Ali Mohammed might have managed to convince the owner that it was valuable, and that he might either hand it over to a museum somewhere for analysis or, perhaps more likely, offer it for sale on the open market.
She thought for a few moments, and then sent out a brief and very general email to all the museums in her database, couching her message in the vaguest of terms, but suggesting that the British Museum was interested in obtaining copies of early parchments, and especially those believed to date from around the first century AD, and originating from in or near ancient Judaea. That was all she could do officially, and without making it quite obvious what she was looking for.
Apart from that, and unless Ali Mohammed contacted her again, she was just going to have to keep her ear to the ground.
Before she left her office, she put the photographs in her laptop case along with her computer, then glanced at her watch. It was just before six, which meant she was in good time to meet Chris outside the museum.
41
Abdul had expected that Jalal Khusad would be pleased to learn that he’d eliminated Ali Mohammed when he rang his number late that evening, but the man seemed to be more interested in the relic itself.
‘I have the man’s laptop, and the photographs he took of the object,’ Abdul said.
‘Congratulations. So now you have a free computer. Shred the photographs or, better still, burn them. They’re of no interest to me.’
That wasn’t the response Abdul had been expecting.
‘But there might be useful information on the laptop. Maybe the target sent copies of the pictures to other people as well.’
‘I hope for your sake that he didn’t. You told me he’d only been in contact with this woman in London.’
‘That was what he said,’ Abdul agreed, ‘but he could have been lying. Surely it’s worth checking his emails, just to make sure.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. You’re right. Check the hard drive yourself — I assume you’re capable of that — and let me know if you find anything. When you’re certain you’ve checked everything and identified everybody the man had been in contact with over this matter, destroy the computer. I don’t want any other images of the relic to survive.’
Then another thought struck Khusad.
‘What about the camera the man used to take the pictures?’ he demanded. ‘Did you get that as well? Or take the data-card out of it?’
‘I covered that,’ Abdul replied. ‘There were three cameras in the man’s office and I took the data-cards out of all of them.’
‘So at least you got that bit right. I suppose that’s something. But we must find this relic as quickly as possible, and the other man, the man in the middle of all this, still needs to be taken care of. And this time can you try to do it a bit more discreetly. I understand that the Cairo Museum is now swarming with police. That’s the second time you’ve drawn attention to yourself.’
‘There wasn’t any alternative. I couldn’t afford to wait until he left work. And I can promise you that nobody would recognize me again. As for the relic and the man, find one and you find the other. The problem is that I have no idea where he might be. I think there’s a good chance that he’s probably left Cairo by now. He’ll have taken a train or bus or a plane somewhere, and I don’t have the resources to track him if he’s done that.’
‘Then it’s lucky that I have,’ Khusad replied. ‘And I have also obtained a photograph of the man, which I’ll send to you.’
‘OK. There’s also the matter of my fee.’
There was a short silence before Khusad replied.
‘Very well. I’ll authorize another transfer to your offshore account for the work you’ve done so far, but I have been instructed to make no further payments to you until this matter is resolved. Keep your mobile switched on, and start looking for your target here in Cairo. As soon as we receive any indication of his whereabouts through his credit card usage or tracking him through his passport if he decides to travel, I’ll contact you. In the meantime, assume he’s still in the city somewhere.’
Abdul pondered the situation. The resources and global reach that Khusad’s organization could command were impressive. He knew that for a police force or anti-terrorist group or any other law enforcement operation, monitoring the use of either a credit card or a passport was comparatively straightforward, and a very basic procedure when trying to track a suspect. But he also knew that it was almost impossible for any private individual to achieve the same level of access. Who were these people?
42
About seventy yards down the street from the main entrance to an Ealing Broadway apartment block, a lone man sat in a nondescript saloon car, the radio playing softly in the background. His eyes were fixed on the front door of the block, and lying on the passenger seat beside him was a rather grainy photograph showing the face of an elegant-looking woman with long blonde hair. The man had been stationed there for almost two hours, studying everyone who either went into or came out of the building, but so far he had seen nobody who resembled his target.
However, the picture he was using was a few years old, and was an enlargement of a much smaller image, which would make a positive identification even more difficult. The lighting around the entrance lobby of the apartment building was less than ideal, and he was so far away that using binoculars — he had a very compact but powerful set — was essential. And he knew that making a positive identification of any woman could be difficult because, unlike men, women often changed their style of hair and make-up, and that could change their appearance dramatically.
But despite all these factors, when two people approached the lobby of the building hand in hand, and the external security light flared into life, he identified the woman. He watched as she opened the door, inputting a series of numbers into the external security keypad, and held the binoculars to his eyes until she and her companion had vanished inside the building.
Only when they were no longer visible did he drop the binoculars onto the passenger seat of the car and pick up his mobile. He dialled a number from memory. In his business, he never used stored telephone numbers because if the phone was lost or stolen those numbers could compromise both him and the people he had called. His menu system was also set up so that the phone never kept a record of calls made and received. He made sure his own number was never disclosed to the people he called, and was changed on a weekly basis.
The call was answered on the fourth ring.
‘Yes?’ the quiet voice said.
‘It’s Jeff,’ the man replied. ‘I’m outside the building and she’s just come back. But she’s not alone. There’s a man with her.’
‘Describe him.’
‘Big guy, dark hair. He’s certainly over six feet tall and heavily built — muscle, not fat. He looks as if he could be quite handy in a scrap.’
There was a short pause while the man at the other end of the line digested this piece of unwelcome information.
‘That complicates things,’ he said. ‘I had hoped she would be alone tonight. Do nothing for the moment. Wait there and see if he leaves. If he does, you can carry on as planned.’
The man in the car shrugged.
‘You’re paying the bill,’ he said, ‘so it’s your call, but I can handle him, no problem. Get the job done in half an hour.’
‘Definitely not. You only go in if the man leaves the building. Understood?’
‘Got it. So do you want me to stay here all night?’
‘If this man hasn’t come out again by, say, one in the morning, I think we can assume that he’s staying the night. If he does that, you can try tomorrow night instead. And remember, this has to look like a burglary gone bad.’
‘I know what you want done and how to do it. Don’t you worry.’
43
Angela decided to ring Ali again at lunchtime. But this time there was no answer at all, and eventually the call went through to voicemail. She tried twice more over the next half-hour, with the same result. There wasn’t much else she could do.
Then a thought struck her. Egypt, she knew, was still quite volatile, with occasional riots and other forms of civil disturbance. Maybe something had happened in Cairo which could have prevented him getting to work that day. She hadn’t been near a TV or radio since yesterday. She opened her web browser and typed ‘Cairo news’ into the search field.
The results were disappointing, or encouraging, depending on your point of view. As far as she could tell, there had been no riots or any other significant happenings in the city.
Then another result, towards the bottom of the screen, caught her eye. It was headlined ‘Savage murder of museum worker’, and the moment she saw that she felt a sudden sense of foreboding. With trepidation, she clicked the headline and watched as the story loaded.
Savage murder of museum worker
A manhunt is under way across Cairo today following the discovery of a murder victim at the Egyptian Museum. Police were called to the building after a member of the administrative staff found the body of Dr Ali Mohammed, a specialist in ancient documents, lying in his office. It is understood that he had been killed with a knife. The reason he was murdered is uncertain and, although his personal laptop was missing, a police spokesman stated that robbery seemed an unlikely motive.
It has been established that Mr Mohammed received a visitor that afternoon shortly before he was murdered, a man who claimed to be a police officer and who showed a form of identification to security staff at the museum to gain entrance. It is now known that this identification was a forgery, and a description of the alleged perpetrator has been circulated to all police stations and military units in and around the city. Members of the public are urged not to approach this man under any circumstances, but to call the police immediately.
