The Messiah Secret cb-3

by James Becker

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I was doing research at the museum a few months ago and I came across a fragment that had been attributed to Hillel, and which included that same expression — “the treasure of the world”. It stuck in my mind because I’d never heard it before. The problem was, though, it was only a fragment of text, just a few disconnected phrases. This was one of them, and it’s the only one that I can remember. I’ll need to go back to London, to the museum, and check it out.’

  ‘Haven’t you got to finish up here first? The cataloguing, I mean?’

  Angela nodded. ‘Yes, but there’s not that much more to do, unless any more bits of china turn up. Basically, the proto-Corinthian olpe you found plus a few bits of decent English slipware are the only pieces of any value. I can have it all finished today, I should think.’

  ‘So you can be back at the museum tomorrow morning. And what then?’

  ‘Well, research, obviously. I’ll need to take another look at the Hillel fragment and translate the other words on it, just to see if any of that helps.’

  ‘But what sort of thing are you looking for?’

  ‘Difficult to say, but it has to be something quite significant. If you look at other ancient references to hidden treasure, the writings usually describe it quite specifically — the “treasure of the temple” or the “gold of Carthage”, that kind of thing. The “treasure of the world” strikes me as rather odd, because it manages to be both vague and specific at the same time. The expression suggests a vast, or at least a very valuable, hoard, but the name gives no clue at all about its origin, where the treasure came from or what it consists of — and that’s unusual.’

  ‘What worries me is that if Jonathan Carfax was right,’ Bronson said, frowning, ‘the fragment of text that Bartholomew found was about two thousand years old, which raises at least one obvious question.’

  Angela nodded. ‘I know. Surely somebody would have found what it refers to some time during the last two millennia.’

  ‘Exactly. Well, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘It’s not that simple. History is littered with tales of lost or hidden riches. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of lost relics that were known to exist because of contemporary accounts, but which then simply vanished.’

  Bronson looked thoughtful. ‘OK, but even if half of them had been dug up since, that still leaves a lot of buried treasure waiting to be found. And Bartholomew’s document was written in Persian, wasn’t it? I reckon getting permission to tramp round Iran carrying a metal detector and a few shovels might prove a lot more difficult than actually finding the treasure itself.’

  Angela sighed. ‘You’re missing the point. Just because that fragment was written in an early Persian script doesn’t mean that the treasure is now, or ever was, in Persia. In the first century AD, there wasn’t a lot of written material available, and texts were routinely copied, and also translated from one language into another. It’s quite possible that the fragment of Persian and the Hebrew reference I saw that was attributed to Hillel were both copies of the same text, either one translated from the other, or that they were both translated from an earlier source document written in a third language.’

  ‘So what you mean is that there might be another reference out there somewhere, a reference that will narrow down the search, or at least tell you what it is you’re looking for?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘You’re determined to follow this trail, aren’t you?’ Bronson said, smiling. ‘When I first arrived here, you seemed pretty nervous. But now I can see that familiar glint in your eyes.’

  Angela leaned forward and took his hand. ‘You’re right. There’s something about Carfax Hall that I really don’t like, and I’ll be pleased to leave it. But a hunt for a treasure that’s been lost for two millennia — that’s quite different.’ She looked into his eyes. ‘Will you help me?’

  21

  The following morning found Angela at her desk in the British Museum. She hadn’t expected her search would be easy, or yield any useful results quickly.

  Using her desktop computer to access the museum’s internal database, she input the name ‘Hillel’ and scanned the results displayed on her screen. The description showed both the Anglicized name ‘Hillel’ as well as, the Hebrew equivalent.

  There were about twenty references listed, but she quickly found the one she was looking for. The entry read: ‘Hillel (attrib) — fragment. Uncatalogued. Possibly part of unknown interpretative text.’

  Most of Hillel’s known works contained interpretations of various religious matters or analyses of Jewish law, so the listing made sense and, from what Angela remembered, it was such a small fragment of text that the description was as likely an explanation as any other. Anyway, she’d take another look at it herself, and just see if any of it matched the piece of Persian script that had sent Bartholomew Wendell-Carfax out to the Middle East in his fruitless search for the lost treasure.

  Ten minutes later, she had the Hillel fragment in her hands. Or, to be exact, she had the small sealed glass-topped box that contained the Hillel fragment sitting on her desk. Like most ancient pieces of papyrus or parchment, the normal procedure was to handle it as little as possible, and only ever while wearing cotton gloves, because of the damage that the moisture present on a person’s bare hands could do to ancient relics over time.

  But Angela didn’t need to touch it, only to read the translation of the Hebrew text, which didn’t take long, because the fragment was so small. Roughly triangular in shape, it contained only four partial lines on one side of the papyrus and a mere three words, two of them incomplete, on separate lines on the reverse. She looked at the translation of those words first.

  (Ju?)dea

  (Hi?)llel

  temple

  When she looked at the translation again, it was immediately clear that its authorship was uncertain, that the incomplete second word had simply been assumed to be a part of the proper name Hillel, and that name had then been used to identify the fragment. None of that mattered, of course — it was the writing on the other side of the papyrus that she was interested in.

  It had been common practice to write on both sides of papyrus and parchment, so there was no reason to suppose that those three words had anything to do with the text on the reverse. Then she read the translation of that text, the longer piece of Hebrew on the other side of the fragment, which included the phrase that had stuck in her mind:

  from whence

  followers into the valley of flowers

  (hid?)den the treasure of the world for

  Angela nodded in satisfaction. She had remembered that phrase correctly. She opened her handbag, pulled out the thirty-year-old guidebook she’d taken from Carfax Hall and flicked through its yellowed pages until she found the one she was looking for, the section of the text that described ‘Bartholomew’s Folly’ in tones that still reeked of bitterness at the old man’s apparent foolishness. She skimmed through the closely typed paragraphs until she found the translation of the Persian text:

  with his trusted followers into the

  valley of flowers and there fashioned

  with their own hands a place of stone

  where they together concealed and made

  hidden the treasure of the world for all

  Angela smiled again. She’d been right. There were enough points of comparison to show that the Bartholomew’s Folly text, as she’d mentally labelled it, had been derived from the same source as the Hillel fragment. It was just possible that one had been copied from the other, but it was much more likely that both were versions of an earlier and separate source document.

  It also meant that the British Museum’s description of the Hillel fragment was inaccurate, though that wasn’t any concern of hers. That particular piece of text — at least the last two lines of it and most probably the whole thing — wasn’t interpretative, but was simply a copy of a part of a separate document. It was plausible that Hillel — i
f he really had been the author — might have then gone on to comment on some aspect of the text, but they’d never know that unless another part of the fragment turned up.

  It was a start, of sorts. Angela thought for a few moments, looking at the Bartholomew’s Folly text. She could only hazard a guess at the two sections of missing text. Before the expression ‘with his trusted followers’ there was probably a phrase something like ‘journeyed in company’ or ‘travelled along’. After the end of the text, following the phrase ‘world for all’, about all she could suggest was either ‘time’ or perhaps ‘eternity’. And if that deduction was correct, then it might mean that the hiding place of the ‘treasure of the world’ was somewhere fairly secure. The fact that it was buried in ‘a place of stone’ and that the burial was intended to last ‘for all time’ suggested both a permanent and a properly concealed hiding place.

  And that could mean the treasure, whatever it was, was still buried out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered.

  22

  Angela had decided to start her search by researching references to ‘the Valley of the Flowers,’ but this had soon proved frustrating — there seemed to be flower-filled valleys almost everywhere, in virtually every country. But finding places that were known by that name in the first century AD had proved to be considerably more difficult.

  She sighed and stretched her back to ease the tension she was feeling. She had found three locations in ancient Persia that more or less fitted the bill. None of them, as far as she could tell, had actually been called the ‘Valley of the Flowers’, but all three had names that included the word ‘flowers’ or a synonym. The best match was a place called the ‘gorge of blossoms’, if her translation of the old Persian name was correct, and she guessed that it was one of the locations Bartholomew Wendell-Carfax had investigated because she’d found two references in the museum records to surveys being carried out there in the first half of the twentieth century by teams from Britain.

  There were no indications of the identity of the sponsors of those teams, or the names of any of those involved, and of course the word ‘survey’ could cover almost any type of investigation, but Angela reckoned it was a fair bet that old Bartholomew had been there. However, it also meant he hadn’t found what he was looking for.

  What she didn’t know was how thorough he’d been. Had he and his men just ambled up and down the gorge looking for the ‘place of stone’, or had they done a proper, in-depth survey, checking for hidden caves and underground chambers?

  The Persian text stated that the people who’d buried the treasure had fashioned the hiding place with their own hands. Angela didn’t have a date when this was done, but the age of the Hillel fragment meant it had to have been no later than the first century AD, and that in turn meant the hiding place was probably a fairly simple structure. Unless the ‘trusted followers’ included a large slave-labour force, skilled masons and a lot of equipment, the ‘place of stone’ had to be reasonably basic, and would probably have made use of some natural feature — a cave or something like that. And as it was a place of concealment, a location where the treasure was intended to remain securely hidden for all eternity, if her guess at one of the missing words was correct, it would by definition not be easy to detect. So just how thorough had Bartholomew been?

  There was, of course, a more important question: had he been looking in the right valley? Or even in the right country? She looked again at the search results for the whole of the Middle East. Altogether, she’d identified almost fifty locations spanning countries from Turkey to India. Any one of them could be the place she was looking for, which meant she had no real idea where to start. If this was going to work, she’d have to find some way of narrowing the search parameters.

  It was time she tried to track down the other reference — to the ‘treasure of the world’.

  23

  Richard Mayhew was actually quite glad that Angela Lewis and her irritating ex-husband had left the team. She had a way of getting his back up, of usurping his authority, and she was one of those people who always thought they were right. What made it particularly galling for Mayhew — who shared this trait with her — was that she usually was right.

  She’d correctly guessed that there had been a burglar at Carfax Hall, and had then managed to persuade her ex-husband to frighten him off. Mayhew wasn’t entirely sure how he’d done that, although there was an air of menace about Chris Bronson that Mayhew found disturbing. He guessed he was a good police officer, because he could be very intimidating. Mayhew, a man of delicate sensibilities, thought that Bronson was a brute.

  Anyway, they’d both gone, which suited him fine. And their work at the Hall was now complete. The individual specialists had prepared their inventories, listing all the items they’d assessed, their historical importance, and where possible their likely commercial value. All he had to do now was collate their data, write a covering letter with his overall assessment of the collections and present the final report to his superior at the British Museum. Then he could get back to his regular work.

  But, he reflected, as he stepped outside the Hall for the last time on that Friday evening and looked up at the crumbling masonry of the old building, it hadn’t been an entirely unpleasant interlude. A week in the country, all expenses paid, engaged on what amounted to an academic treasure hunt — there were definitely much worse ways to spend one’s time.

  These pleasant thoughts were interrupted by a brisk tap on his shoulder. Mayhew jumped — the rest of the team had left about a quarter of an hour earlier, and he knew he was alone at the building.

  He spun round, and came face to face with one of his personal nightmares.

  The man standing in front of him was shorter than Mayhew, perhaps five feet six, and stocky, with the solid bulk that comes from hard physical exercise. A bandage covered his left ear and that side of his face, and his dark unblinking eyes seemed to sear into Mayhew’s soul.

  The man’s physical appearance was disturbing enough, but what Mayhew found alarmingly difficult to reconcile was the clerical collar the stranger wore at the neck of his black shirt, and the pistol in his right hand, a pistol that was aimed directly at him.

  Mayhew caught his breath. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’

  ‘One question at a time, fat boy,’ the man said, his voice quiet and measured, his accent American and the words simple but delivered with such menace that Mayhew felt his bowels loosening.

  ‘I’ve got no money,’ he stammered.

  ‘I don’t want your money. I just want you. Open the door you’ve just locked and get back inside the building.’

  Mayhew looked around him frantically. He needed help.

  The stranger chuckled softly. ‘There’s nobody here but us. Just get that through your thick skull. I could kill you right here, right now, and nobody would even hear the shot. So move before I do just that.’

  Mayhew’s hands were trembling so much that it took him three tries before he got the key into the lock.

  ‘Get a move on,’ the man snapped, poking his gun into Mayhew’s back.

  Finally the door swung open. Mayhew staggered as a powerful hand shoved him forwards, almost fell, then regained his footing as the door slammed behind him. Turning back he saw the American gangster — despite the clerical collar, what else could the man be? — putting the key into his pocket.

  ‘Go into the kitchen,’ the man said, pointing towards the back of the house.

  Mayhew nodded dumbly and led the way. It never occurred to him to wonder how the man could possibly know where the kitchen was located.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ Mayhew asked again, once he was in the kitchen.

  The man ignored his question, gesturing with his pistol to a wooden armchair standing in one corner of the room. ‘Take off your jacket, then go and sit down.’

  Mayhew placed his jacket on the table, then walked across to the chair.

  The man followed him, pulled a handf
ul of plastic cable ties from his pocket and tossed one to Mayhew. ‘Put that around your right wrist and pull it tight,’ he ordered, and watched closely as Mayhew obeyed him. ‘That’s good,’ he said, stepping closer and securing Mayhew’s left wrist to the other arm of the chair. Then he drew a small pair of pliers from his pocket and pulled both cable ties tight.

  Mayhew grimaced as the thin plastic cut into the flesh of his wrists.

  The man pulled another chair across and sat down opposite him, laying the pistol on the kitchen table. From one of the inside pockets of his jacket he drew a leather whip with multiple steel-tipped thongs and placed it beside the automatic.

  Gulping for air, Mayhew watched his actions with increasing trepidation.

  ‘This is a scourge,’ the man said conversationally, looking down at the whip. ‘It’s one of the oldest implements of chastisement, used for both punishment and persuasion, and even for self-flagellation. The name is derived from the Latin excoriare, meaning “to flay” and corium, “skin”, and it was used by the Romans to punish offenders. It’s been used through the ages in monastic orders around the world, and I’ll introduce you to it in a moment. Then I’m going to ask you some questions. I suggest you answer them as quickly, fully and accurately as you can.’

  The man removed his jacket, picked up the scourge and stepped towards the wooden armchair.

  ‘No, wait,’ Mayhew shouted desperately. ‘I’ll tell you anything I can.’

  ‘I know you will. There’s not the slightest doubt about that.’

  ‘No. Please — please wait-’

  ‘Be silent. Remember that our Lord Jesus Christ endured a scourging during His Passion, before He was made to carry His cross to Calvary. This holy instrument will simply encourage your cooperation and ensure your recollections are accurate.’