The Lost Testament

by James Becker

  A tall and excessively thin Arab, his face burned almost black by the sun and wearing a white thawb, the long tunic that is the traditional dress for Arab men, approached their table, a grubby white cloth held in his left hand. Husani and Mohammed both ordered coffee and glasses of water, Mohammed a small selection of sweet cakes, and the waiter retreated.

  ‘So what have you found?’

  ‘First, I need to explain a little about the parchment itself,’ Mohammed said.

  Husani stifled his impatience. Although he knew that time was crucial, he also needed to hear everything that the scientist could tell him about the relic.

  ‘You probably noticed,’ Mohammed began, ‘that the parchment is dark brown in colour. That’s an indication of its age, because when it’s freshly prepared parchment is almost pure white. Unfortunately, simply looking at the colour does not enable a researcher to estimate the likely age of the object, because the speed of the colour change depends upon the conditions in which the parchment has been kept. The temperature, the humidity, amount of sunlight and so on. It will last longest if it is stored in a dark and very dry place and at a fairly constant temperature, although the temperature is not as important as the relative humidity.

  ‘The colour change of the parchment is one factor, and the ink is the second. Although the writing on the object now looks brownish in colour, originally it would have been a deep black, and very easy to read against the white parchment. Because the writing is obviously Latin, it’s reasonable to assume that the text was written by a Roman or perhaps by a scribe employed by the Romans, and so the ink used would most probably have been a form of atramentum.’

  Mohammed raised his hand to forestall Husani’s obvious question.

  ‘That isn’t actually any one particular type of substance,’ he said. ‘The Latin word simply means a black-coloured medium, so in Roman times an atramentum could be produced from cuttlefish ink, for example, or soot from a chimney or charcoal from a fire, the pigment then being mixed with water. Using soot or charcoal gave rise to a type of ink known as carbon black, for obvious reasons. Different sorts of atramentum could be used for other purposes, not just writing, such as dyeing leather or in painting, but the type used for writing became known as atramentum librarium.’

  ‘Presumably that was the origin of the English word “library”?’ Husani asked, pleased to have some faintly intelligent comment, however oblique, to add to the discussion.

  ‘Yes, though indirectly. In Latin, librarium came to mean a “chest of books or scrolls”, and the word was then absorbed into Old French in about the fourteenth century as librairie, meaning a “collection of books”.’

  ‘So is the type of ink important?’ Husani asked, eager to get the explanation back on track.

  Mohammed nodded decisively.

  ‘Yes, because of how you should then treat the parchment or material. A later type of ink was known as iron gall ink, which was made from entirely different materials, and because the two inks have very different characteristics and origins it’s important to establish which type has been used, so that the correct conservation methods can be employed. I’m quite sure that in the case of this piece of parchment, because of its age and because of the use of Latin on it, that the writing was done with a form of atramentum, an ink made from some type of carbon.

  ‘The other good thing about this parchment is that it looks as if it was only used once, which is actually slightly unusual. Preparing parchment from the skin of an animal, usually a sheep or a goat, was quite a long and complicated process, and it was very common in ancient times for a parchment to be used multiple times. When this was done, the parchment was known as a palimpsest.’

  ‘How did they rub out the original writing?’ Husani asked.

  ‘The method used is actually hinted at by the name, because it’s derived from two Greek words which mean “scraped again”. The parchment would be rubbed smooth to remove as much of the old ink as possible, and to prepare the surface to be written on again. And although this process appears to completely erase the original writing, at least to the naked eye, traces of it usually remain and can be seen when the relic is examined in a laboratory. The original letters can serve to partially obliterate the later writing.’

  ‘You mean that one set of words that you can’t read can obscure another set that you also possibly can’t read?’

  Mohammed nodded.

  ‘That’s a somewhat crude way of putting it, but it’s a reasonably accurate statement. But in the case of your parchment, that’s not a problem. The difficulty with this relic is much simpler. It’s a matter of trying to decipher the faded and dark brown letters that have been written on a piece of parchment that has now aged to virtually the same colour.

  ‘Fortunately, we have a couple of tools that can help us in our quest. We’ve known for a long time that shining an ultraviolet light on the parchment and then photographing it with a high-resolution camera can reveal erased or hidden letters. The ultraviolet light makes the parchment fluoresce – it actually emits a bluish light – and that contrast enables us to make out the words. And particularly with inks derived from some form of carbon, we’ve found that photographing the relic using infrared light can also work well.’

  ‘And so that’s what you did?’ Husani asked, feeling some relief that the lecture appeared to be approaching its conclusion.

  ‘That is indeed what I did,’ Mohammed confirmed. ‘I used both techniques, in fact, and both produced positive results. I won’t get them out of the briefcase to show you, because the parchment is delicate and shouldn’t be exposed to bright sunlight. And you really need to study the photographs using a magnifying glass to be able to decipher the text. I haven’t tried to read it myself – I had only just completed taking the photographs when you rang, and I only had time to print copies of them before coming out to meet you – but quite clearly more of the words are visible in the pictures than we could see on the parchment itself, though by no means all of them. Hopefully you’ll be able to decipher enough of it to work out what the text is describing.’

  Husani nodded his thanks and slid an envelope containing a number of banknotes across the table to the scientist.

  ‘Thanks a lot, Ali,’ he said. ‘Can I take the briefcase as well?’

  Mohammed nodded.

  ‘I expected that you would want to do that, so I brought one of my old ones.’

  Husani took the briefcase from his companion and placed it on his lap. Then he made a decision, leaned forward and gestured for Mohammed to do the same.

  ‘I suggest,’ he said, in a quiet but forceful voice, ‘that you forget all about me and this parchment. You may have heard about the murder of a market trader here in Cairo, a man named Mahmoud Kassim.’

  Mohammed nodded again. It seemed as if Husani had actually been one of the last people in the city to learn about the man’s death.

  ‘I bought the parchment from him, and I think it’s most likely that he was tortured to make him reveal where it was. The man I believe killed him broke into my house less than an hour ago, and I only just managed to get away from him. That’s why I’m leaving Cairo today, as soon as I can, and that’s why you shouldn’t tell a living soul that you’ve even seen the relic, and certainly don’t admit to anyone that you did any work on it.’

  Beneath his tan, Mohammed had turned pale, and almost immediately glanced nervously around him, as if expecting to see knife-wielding murderers emerging from the crowd on all sides.

  ‘I knew nothing of this when I handed you the relic,’ Husani insisted, ‘and I only heard about the killing this morning. I will tell nobody that you have had anything to do with it, but please be careful and watch your back for the next few days. I’m getting out of the city as quickly as I can.’

  Mohammed suddenly looked extremely uncomfortable, his glance sliding past his companion rather than looking him in the face, and Husani picked up on it immediately.

  ‘What is it?’ he d
emanded. ‘Who have you told?’

  ‘It was just a professional inquiry,’ Mohammed stammered. ‘I sent an email to somebody I know at the British Museum in London, just asking about the proper names I could read.’

  ‘Did you tell him what the relic was, that it was an ancient parchment?’

  ‘It’s a “her”, actually, not a “him”, and I did explain something about it. I don’t think it’s important, though, and when Angela replied she said that the names didn’t mean anything to her.’

  Husani nodded.

  ‘If this woman contacts you again, I suggest you tell her nothing, just say the relic was removed by the owner, or that you could read nothing else on it, something like that. The fewer people who know about this object the better, at least until I find out what’s really going on.’

  ‘And how will you achieve that?’ Mohammed asked.

  ‘That should be easy,’ Husani replied. ‘It’s not the parchment itself that is important. That’s just an old piece of animal skin. It has to be what’s written on it, and thanks to you I should now be able to read a lot more of it. Once I’ve managed to decipher and translate the text, I’ll have a much better idea of why somebody decided poor Mohammed had to die.’

  33

  Before she continued with the jigsaw reassembly of what seemed like a million broken pottery vessels, Angela made herself a cup of coffee. She’d decided a while ago that the only way she could guarantee a decent cup, apart from visiting one of the cafés in and around Great Russell Street, was to have her own coffee-maker and buy her own beans.

  The routine of grinding the beans in the small electrical gadget beside the filter machine and the pleasurable aroma the whole operation created were things she really looked forward to. The process helped her unwind each morning after the usually fraught journey on the packed Central and Northern lines from Ealing Broadway into central London.

  As usual, she ground the beans – that day she had chosen a Blue Mountain roast – and started the water dripping through the loaded filter as soon as she’d closed her office door. Then she opened up her laptop and plugged it in. While she sipped her coffee, she wrote an email to Ali Mohammed, explaining what she thought was the significance of the fragment of the Hebrew name, and asking him to confirm the provenance of the parchment he was working on. She also suggested that the British Museum would probably be interested in acquiring it, should it bear up to expert analysis.

  Before she sent the message, she checked the local time in Cairo. Because of the two-hour difference, in Egypt it was just after eleven thirty, so Ali Mohammed should certainly be in his office by that time. She sent the email, then savoured the rest of her drink, made herself another cup, and walked out of her office and into the workroom where the boxes of potsherds awaited her attention.

  Trying to assemble broken sections of pottery was both mentally and physically tiring. The edges of the fragments only rarely matched exactly because of other damage and there was, of course, never any guarantee that all the parts of a particular vessel were present in the box of bits, so a search for one missing piece could easily be a complete waste of time. She found that her eyes ached if she did the work for more than about two hours at a stretch, so at eleven thirty London time she abandoned her bench for a while and returned to her office, hoping that Ali would already have replied.

  He had, but the contents of the message he’d sent were nothing like what she’d expected. The email was short, but she read it twice, with increasing confusion and irritation.

  Good morning, Angela

  I am so sorry about the parchment. It was a mistake to have contacted you and the owner has now taken it away from me. Please do not concern yourself any more with the matter.

  Regards, Ali

  What was going on? She looked again at the message she had sent to Cairo, to ensure that she had made her position clear, that she had emphasized the possible importance of the text on the piece of parchment. Had Ali conveyed any of that to the owner of the relic?

  She certainly wasn’t going to simply let it go.

  She composed another message to the Egyptian, marked it high priority and sent it immediately. Then she made herself another cup of coffee and sat in her chair while she waited for him to reply.

  It didn’t take long.

  Hullo again, Angela

  I will not get the chance to explain to the owner what you told me, because I had already returned the relic to him before I read your email. But I doubt if it would have made any difference. There are other forces at work here, and already one man has been killed over this parchment. I am only telling you this so that you will appreciate the seriousness of the matter and please, I beg of you, do not pursue this any further. I have been sworn to secrecy, and I dare not continue this correspondence. Both the owner of the relic and I myself fear for our lives if our involvement becomes known.

  Ali

  That was hardly the response Angela had been expecting.

  She opened up her web browser and typed ‘Cairo murder’ in the search field. That produced over eighteen million results, but the news item she was looking for occurred right at the top of the list. There were five different reports from a selection of English-language newspapers, and she glanced at all of them before reading the longest and most comprehensive article in full, though the information supplied even by that report was noticeably sparse.

  Brutal slaying in Cairo suburb

  Yesterday police were called to a house on the outskirts of the city in response to an emergency call. A cleaner who worked at the property, owned by a dealer in antiquities named Mahmoud Kassim, had discovered the dead body of her employer when she arrived there that morning.

  The property was immediately sealed off by the police while the scene was examined for clues to the perpetrator of the crime. In an initial statement, the chief investigating officer, Inspector Malanwi, explained that they had found one body in the property and that they were treating the death as suspicious.

  In an exclusive interview for this newspaper, the cleaner, who wishes to remain anonymous, told our reporters that she had found the body of Mr Kassim in the bedroom. The corpse was lying in the bed, and he had apparently been attacked during the night. The cleaner stated that he had the most appalling wounds, and she believed they had been inflicted with a knife.

  Mr Kassim was a well-known dealer in antiques and antiquities, and operated his business from a shop in the Khan el-Khalili souk.

  That was little enough to go on, but if nothing else the man’s profession suggested that at least Angela was reading the right news item. She looked back at the other reports, but they added little fresh information.

  As she read it again, she realized one other fact: Ali said that he’d returned the parchment to the owner on the day after the killing, so it can’t have been this Mahmoud Kassim. The relic was still out there, somewhere.

  There was one more thing she could do. She knew a bit about Ali Mohammed’s work, and she could guess exactly how he’d handled the parchment when it had been given to him.

  She thought carefully for a few minutes, then wrote another email to the Egyptian scientist, read it through to ensure she’d got the right tone, and then sent it.

  Five minutes after that, she was back among the potsherds, her actions mechanical and slow, her thoughts thousands of miles and two millennia away.

  34

  For the first time in his career, Abdul was beginning to doubt if he would be able to fulfil the contract he had accepted. What made it infinitely worse was that both of the targets he had needed to eliminate were amateurs – just two ordinary market traders. Finding and killing the first man hadn’t been difficult, just rather messy. But the second target, Anum Husani, had simply slipped away from him.

  With hindsight, he knew it was his own fault, because his tactics had been wrong. When he’d found that the street door of the house was bolted on the inside, he should have only pretended to go around the back of
the property, and that would have forced Husani to open the front door to make his escape. But Abdul had thought he could break into the house from the rear so quickly that the other man wouldn’t have time to get away. That had been a mistake.

  The other fact Abdul hadn’t bargained for was that the trader would be armed. That had been an extremely unpleasant surprise. From the sight of the weapon and the sound and impact of the shots against the walls of the houses in the street, Abdul guessed it was a very small-calibre pistol, probably a .22 or perhaps a .25, but even such a small bullet could maim or kill. It had thrown him off balance, and then the man had used his knowledge of the souk to make good his escape.

  He had not the slightest idea where Husani was, whether he’d gone to ground somewhere in the city, at the house of a friend or acquaintance, perhaps, or was still out on the streets somewhere. Maybe he’d even taken a train or an aircraft out of Cairo and was already miles away. Abdul simply had no way of knowing, or of finding out.

  Actually, that wasn’t strictly true. He did have one lead he could follow: Ali Mohammed, the man who worked at the Cairo Museum, if the information Jalal Khusad had passed on to him was accurate.

  So now Ali Mohammed was the next man on his list.

  35

  Abdul sat outside a small café on one side of Tahrir Square, near the centre of the city on the east bank of the Nile and looked across at his next objective. Over a coffee and a sweet cake, he glanced through the guidebook he’d picked up and considered the potential problems the museum posed for him.

  The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, more commonly known as the Egyptian Museum or sometimes just the Cairo Museum, is the largest museum in Egypt and one of the most popular in the country. The guide claimed that it was visited by over one and half million tourists every year, as well as about half a million Egyptians, the main attraction being the Tutankhamun exhibition, especially the celebrated death mask of the boy-king, an image which has become virtually synonymous with the glory days of Ancient Egypt. This exquisitely fashioned solid gold mask, arguably the most beautiful ancient treasure ever recovered, weighs almost twenty-five pounds, and was placed on Tutankhamun’s shoulders almost three and a half millennia ago, before his corpse was conveyed to its final resting place in the Valley of the Kings. The tomb had been discovered in 1922 by Howard Carter and the Earl of Carnarvon, and the array of treasures and artefacts, relics of incalculable value and outstanding historic importance, have since then resided in their new home on the upper floor of the Cairo Museum.