The Ghost Reapers

by Jackie Ferris

  “Answers are not found by simply examining the evidence. To find explanations, we must examine how evidence is presented. Francisco locates dark matter by understanding how our visual universe behaves. The patterns of the universe only make sense with the existence of dark matter. In the absence of more advanced technology, it is the only way in which he can know that it exists. Science seeks truth through patterns. They can tell us everything.

  My dearest Jazz, I am a ghost of the man I once was. Soon that is all I will be, a ghost of a memory in my son’s life. You can make me more than that by bringing my memory to life, by redeeming my reputation and yours. I have evidence which only you will understand.”

  Jazz stopped reading as she waved the paper in the air, while fighting back her tears, along with her guilt.

  “This is another of his stories. He destroyed my life once, I won’t let him do it again.” Her words resonated off the walls into an ocean of silence.

  Chapter Eight

  Francisco let the silence wash between them, remembering his own feelings when he had discovered he had a half-sister. His scars proved that truth wasn’t merely about fact: it was about feeling. He wondered if Jazz had got that as she stared at the letter.

  “Jazz will fail,

  Dad’s in jail.”

  The taunting rhyme echoed in her head; even from the grave he could hurt her. Finally she looked up; trying to adjust to a new father she could never really know.

  “Do you know what this evidence is?”

  He pursed his lips. “He kept his papers in a safety deposit box in a bank in Cairo.”

  “It could be lies.”

  “I was with him when he deposited the papers. I don’t know what is in them, but I don’t think it’s lies.”

  “Okay, so let’s start with truths: do you work for the Ghost Stealers?”

  “It’s Dad’s name. Nommo, the company I work for, is involved in some pretty technical research regarding dark matter.”

  “Dark matter.” She had laughed the last time he brought it up.

  “NASA figured there was something strange going on in the universe when the Hubble Space Telescope discovered a distant supernova. Using its data, they calculated that the universe was expanding more slowly in the distant past than it is now.”

  “And?” She tried not to look confused.

  “According to Einstein, gravity pulls matter together. The universe’s expansion rate should be slowing, not accelerating.”

  “Maybe Einstein got it wrong?”

  “No one is discounting it yet.” He shrugged. “The most likely explanation is the dark matter theory. The universe’s expansion rate means that approximately seventy per cent of the universe is dark energy. Twenty-five per cent is dark matter. Only five per cent is matter.” He looked at her to check that she understood. “Matter is the stuff we see.”

  She rolled her green eyes. “Actually, matter and I are quite well acquainted.” She pulled the skin on her arm to confirm it. “Unlike dark energy, it sounds like something out of science fiction.”

  “Science fact. Most of the universe is made out of something we can’t see. We have very little idea of how it works. Dad was convinced the real truth about history was hidden beneath the accepted historical version. When I learned about dark energy I figured he might be right.”

  “You mean if dark energy exists, then off-the-wall theories must too? Cogito, ergo sum, with a twist?”

  “Dad’s theories are no more off-the-wall than your ideas about the Shroud.”

  She swallowed. “Okay, even if I accept the existence of dark matter and Dad’s take on history, I still don’t know why you’re here.”

  He pulled a face. “We have a lot of dark holes in our family. It’s not just dad’s letter; I wanted to see you, Jazz. I’m thirty-eight years old. You are all the family I have.”

  “Not married, then?”

  He ran his hand down his chin. “A couple of close shaves, but I have never really found someone I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, at least not yet.”

  The sense of relief surging through her was disconcerting.

  “That makes two of us.”

  “Finally, we agree on something.” He stood up to refill their glasses. “Dad’s letter must be a hell of a shock. How are you feeling?”

  She wanted to say that she felt like she had been hit by a truck at a hundred miles an hour; instead, she sipped the wine, rolling the flavours in her mouth. They were buttery, with a hint of melon and gooseberries. Her eyes drifted to the computer screen. Francisco had been there for almost two hours; in that time her past had shifted.

  “This is crazy. You turn up here out of the blue and expect me to believe this.” She waved the letter in the air.

  “Everything we know about our past is a lie.”

  “This is not our historical past; it’s mine, up close and personal.”

  “Creating monsters is a great way of not facing up to the truth.”

  She pulled a face as he continued. “Your mum made dad a monster. He simply wanted to help you. Let’s face it, Jazz, you need help.”

  “You think you can help me?”

  “Dad did.”

  “He ended up in jail.”

  “People were trying to silence him. They made a good job of it. Surely you know how it feels to be silenced?”

  She pushed more of the cartons together, then squashed an empty one between her hands.

  “I want to help you. Dad did too. You can call him Dad, Jazz.”

  The intimacy in his voice was disconcerting; she needed to focus on something less personal. “This company you work for, what did you say it was called?”

  “Nommo… The company believes that the more we learn about dark energy, the more we can understand our world.”

  “It sounds harmless enough. Why did he think your company was dangerous?”

  “Dad was a lot like you.”

  “Me!”

  “He was great at making connections others could not see. The section of the company I work for is interested in dark energy and matter, nothing more.”

  “If what you say is true… it makes him wrong.”

  “Dad?” Francisco stroked his chin. “Not exactly”

  She threw up her hands. “Everything you say is a riddle.”

  “Sorry, I don’t mean to be so oblique. Anyone can read about dark energy and dark matter on the internet. Nommo’s concern with security does not justify their behaviour, given that dark energy isn’t secret.”

  “So, based on increased security, he decided that your company was dangerous?”

  “There is more to it.”

  She nodded. “I hope so.”

  The company is extremely generous to the Catholic Church and Egyptian Antiquities.”

  Her eyes widened. “I wouldn’t have factored the two together, but it’s hardly mysterious.”

  “The founder of the company is a relative of Lord Carnarvon’s.”

  “He funded Howard Carter’s archaeological discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, didn’t he?” Jazz sighed. “Each piece of new information runs off on a different tangent.”

  Francisco smiled. “History paints Carnarvon as obsessed with finding an unopened tomb. His actions indicate that he was searching for a specific tomb.”

  “Surely he was looking for treasures, hence the desire to find an unopened tomb. By the time Carter found Tut’s tomb, Carnarvon was almost bankrupt.”

  “Tutankhamun’s tomb was opened before Carter and Carnarvon went in.”

  “Is this a wind-up?” Jazz demanded. “An opened tomb means looted treasure.”

  “False blocking of the doorways of Egyptian tombs was designed to protect the sanctity of the tomb. The false doorways were opened before Carter went in. The second door was re-plastered and resealed in antiquity without the tomb being looted.”

  “Interesting. Very interesting.”

  “Dad thought so. When Carter entered the tomb, it was
overflowing with treasure. The resealing of the second door means that someone entered the tomb in antiquity to put something in it, not take something out.”

  “Strange.”

  “Totally weird; it is a documented fact that Carnarvon sold off many treasures, perhaps too well documented.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Dad thought the publicity was a smoke screen. He believed that Carnarvon kept some treasures secret, or that he knew that something else was in the tomb.”

  “Did Dad know what Carnarvon was hiding?”

  Francisco smiled; she had used the word Dad again. “If only. Even so the patterns and the circumstantial evidence are compelling. After Carnarvon’s death from a mosquito bite, the huge story about the curse of the mummy was bloated out of proportion to what happened.”

  “Someone put a spin on it?”

  “Dad thought that people with a vested interest wanted to mask what they had really found in the tomb. Shortly after that, Lord Carnarvon’s second cousin set up the subsidiary company I work for. The main company is concerned with the preservation of Egyptian Antiquities within Egypt.”

  “Antiquities to dark energy is a huge leap.”

  “The official story is that the parent company was interested in antiquities. It evolved into other areas.” He shrugged. “It happens in a lot of big corporations. It’s the link to dark matter and antiquities which is tantalising, given Dad’s beliefs.”

  “Did Dad know about the company before you joined?”

  He shook his head.

  “Any suspicions?” She picked up a piece of nan bread and chewed on it absentmindedly.

  “Not until he told me what to look out for.”

  “You could argue he was leading you on.”

  “You could, but I won’t. Each of the company share-holders wears a ring.”

  “A ring!” She pulled a face.

  “Don’t be facetious, it doesn’t suit you. The rings are identical: shaped like the Seal of Solomon.”

  “You work for a Jewish company. The Star of David is a common symbol.” She put the nan bread back down. It was impossible to eat and talk.

  “Not David: the Seal of Solomon has interwoven pyramid shapes. The Star of David has overlapping pyramids. Neither symbol started off life as Jewish. Solomon’s seal was an Ancient Egyptian symbol for Saturn.”

  She scrunched her face tighter. “One riddle too far?”

  “It’s true. The symbol first appeared in ring form during the time of Nefertiti, well before Solomon is purported to have lived. Solomon turned away from Yahweh, the Jewish omnipotent God. He may or may not have built the First Temple. If he did, it was probably not dedicated to Yahweh: Solomon worshipped a number of pagan gods.

  “The Egyptians claim that the ring represents the sun disks of Saturn; yet they tried to discredit Nefertiti by claiming it was the sol disc, Aten. Something about the ring does not stack up.

  “The Jews finally absorbed the ancient symbol into their culture as the Zionist symbol in 1897.”

  Jazz looked at him thoughtfully. “How do you know this? I’m the religious teacher, not you. I had forgotten about the Congress which adopted the symbol.”

  “It became a Jewish icon because of Disraeli and Hitler. Dad had what he believed was an actual ring worn in the court of Nefertiti.”

  Jazz watched dumbfounded as he pulled a ring box from an inside pocket of his jacket. Its battered red leather covering could have graced an Edwardian gentleman’s dresser. He handed it to her. “Take a look.”

  The gold-plated box hinges were well worn. She opened it carefully. A ring shaped in a familiar mould glinted back at her. Her face clouded in puzzlement.

  “Gold can’t be carbon dated. You can’t attribute it to Nefertiti.”

  “There were organic fibres trapped in the ring. I dated them to within a hundred years of her reign.”

  “You dated it!” she snapped back.

  “No one else could be trusted; besides the carbon dating is not the only evidence. There are hieroglyphics on the underside of the ring which refer to Nefertiti.”

  Jazz turned it upside down. The markings were too uniform to be scratches. “They look Egyptian… they could be anything; I have no idea what they mean. Who did Dad get it from?” She put the ring back in its box but left it open.

  “A dealer in Cairo; it has good provenance.”

  “The dealer could have said anything to make a sale.”

  Francisco studied Jazz. The interested expression on her face was enough to make him continue. “The dealer claimed the ring came from Tutankhamun’s tomb.”

  Jazz stared at him wide-eyed as he continued. “The trader was killed in a road accident shortly after he gave Dad the ring. Not entirely uncommon in the streets of Cairo, granted, but the timing was curious. Soon afterwards the authorities accused Dad of faking the papers.

  “No one but you knows about it. Dad was not a man to make enemies. Someone at the Cairo Museum asked him to take some artefacts he had unearthed from a dig to be carbon dated.

  “Dad had no idea the papyrus was in there when he handed the artefacts over to the Museum. He would have noticed a piece of white A4 paper, purporting to be papyrus. Someone from the Museum made it up.”

  “Didn’t he tell the court that?”

  “The Museum denied having asked him to have anything carbon dated.

  “Dad was a respected professor, yet his credibility was systematically destroyed. People produced anecdotal evidence of his obsession with Nefertiti. They said he wanted to prove she was Tutankhamun’s mother at any cost – it was a stupid claim even first graders knew she wasn’t. The made-up circumstantial evidence, combined with the Museum’s claim, nailed him.”

  Jazz blew into her cheeks, trying to wrestle this new past against her old, more trusted version. “I’m starting to believe you.”

  “Good.” He smiled, flashing his white teeth.

  “Am I really the only other person who knows about this?” She looked at the ring again.

  “The dealer told Dad he had not spoken to anyone, although some people suspected Dad had artefacts. His apartment was searched by so-called police shortly after his arrest. They found nothing, except a receipt from the man Dad had supposedly paid to forge the papyrus.” Francisco ran his hand along the tip of his black leather boots, which were a perfect colour match to his jeans. “As if someone would get a receipt from a forger, let alone keep it.”

  Jazz made a mental check list of the new evidence, then glanced at the computer. There were probably more than a hundred unread tweets waiting for her. She turned her attention back to him. “My own past, the one I believed in since I was a kid, is probably a lie. What scares me more, though, is uncertainty. I need to find out what Dad was really like.”

  “You will be in danger.” Francisco rubbed his hand on his knee.

  She shrugged. “According to the hate trolls I already am. If I keep my head down, the fuss will die down in a few days. No one will be interested in me after that.”

  “Wrong: people are very interested in you, Jazz.”

  She crossed her legs, feeling suddenly uncomfortable. “I assume, given your powers of persuasion, you have our tickets booked for Cairo? Dad said in his letter he wanted me to go there.”

  He shook his head. “My boss thinks I’m a workaholic. I don’t want to raise suspicions any more than I have to. I’m going back to work. You are booked on a flight to Cairo on Thursday. Mum’s sister died six years ago; she had two children, both archaeologists. Hannah is a Professor, lecturing in New York. Hassid works for the Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo. You can stay with him and his wife.

  “He will be waiting for you at the meeting point in the arrivals lounge when you get there.”

  He handed her a clear plastic wallet with a ticket inside. “We are holding a memorial service for Dad. No one will think it’s odd if you stay with them. It’s natural to want to spend time with family members, now that we ar
e reunited following Dad’s death.”

  “Why go back to work? Wouldn’t you want to spend time with me?” Suspicion clouded her face.

  “My superiors gave me compassionate leave. I’m expected back tomorrow afternoon. I’m booked on the red eye out of Heathrow in the early hours of tomorrow morning.”

  He looked at his watch, and then stood up. “Don’t try to contact me except to talk about the memorial. Hassid will give you my number if you need it. Remember, I won’t be the only one listening to your call.” He glanced at the cartons half-filled with food on the coffee table. “I hate to leave you with this mess.”

  Jazz smiled, knowing the cartons were easily cleared; but she felt as if he had just steam-rolled through her life. The fractured pieces could never be reinstated. It was stupid to shake hands or air kiss. Moving away from him, she stared as he grabbed his coat from the hook and then closed the door softly. It was like watching a stranger.

  The only evidence that he’d been there was the food and a faint smell of his musk cologne. She shook her head, knowing that that was not true. The smell of cologne would soon go, but her emotional turmoil would take much longer to clear away. Whatever the future held, she knew her past had changed irrevocably. She picked up the empty cartons and squashed them as she glanced at her laptop. It was streaming: ‘once a faker always a faker…’

  Chapter Nine

  Vatican City 27th March 2013

  The new pope’s public inauguration, in five days’ time, meant that the bureaucratic bubble of the Vatican City was inflating into egotistical hyperbole and making Id despair.

  An aide rushed into his reading room. “Cardinal Thomas, we need you for another photo-shoot. I want to paste you next to the new pope so we can get the image out in the Catholic newspapers on Sunday. It will go viral. We will capture the hearts of every Latino and Africana with both of you on the front covers.”

  Id looked up from his notes about inauguration etiquette, wondering what the pope-elect would think about being called a Latino. He picked up his mobile. There was a message: Husani. Picturing the young boy he knew from his fleeting visits to Africa, he was reminded of the boy he used to be. He grimaced; young or old, they were shadows haunting a world of injustice. Different times, same victims.