The Sword of Moses

by Dominic Selwood

  When she again choked in a fit of racking coughs, he placed his thumb over the bottle’s open neck and drizzled a few splashes over her collar and dress front—enough to leave the impression she was sufficiently tipsy to have missed her mouth a few times.

  He sloshed a little of the drink onto her right sleeve, then took her head between his hands.

  Looking into her terrified wide eyes, he offered a quiet prayer, “Ecce mitto angelum meum ante faciem tuam, qui praeparabit viam meam.”6

  It was the last thing Frau Hahn ever heard, as with a quick brutal twist, he snapped her neck cleanly.

  Hoisting the frail body onto his shoulder, he carried her down the stairs, putting the nearly-empty bottle of spirits on the hall table next to her glass.

  He carried her through to the simple neat kitchen, where the food he had not eaten that day was laid out in a bowl covered with a tea-towel.

  Spying the narrow white cellar door, he flipped its small latch and pushed it open with his foot, before pulling the cord to turn on the naked bulb that lit the narrow stairs.

  Seeing a red plastic basket of washing nearby, he kicked it hard down the cellar steps, watching with satisfaction as the clothing sprayed out over the steps and floor at the bottom. The basket rolled for a moment, then came to a halt a few yards from the foot of the stairs.

  Taking the lifeless body of Frau Hahn off his shoulder and standing her upright at the top of the stairs, he leaned her slightly forward, then let go.

  He watched with fascination as the still-warm body crumpled, then gravity pulled it tumbling down the cellar steps with a series of sickening cracks and wet thumps, bringing it to rest on the cold cellar floor, the head twisted at an unnatural angle.

  Malchus looked critically over the scene. Satisfied it looked like a tragic drunken accident, he took the bowl of food and scraped its contents into the bin, before placing the bowl carefully in the sink.

  Back in the hall, he picked up the nearly empty bottle of Jägermeister and the half-full glass and moved them into the parlour, setting them on the faded lace cloth covering the wooden side-table next to Frau Hahn’s saggy television armchair.

  Returning upstairs, he swiftly washed the bloody star off his forehead and dressed, before packing his things away and meticulously tidying the room.

  He took the sheets he had lain on and stuffed them into his bag, before finding a cloth in the adjoining kitchenette and dusting down the room’s hard surfaces to remove any finger prints. He had not left any elsewhere in the house. It was a habit of his to be cautious.

  Once he was satisfied he had removed all traces of his visit, he picked up his bag and the silver flight case, and padded down the stairs and along the main hall.

  Clicking the front door quietly closed behind him, he slipped out of the house, and into the night.

  DAY THREE

  ——————— ◆ ———————

  22

  National Museum of Iraq

  Baghdad

  The Republic of Iraq

  Fifty miles north of Babylon, Ava walked through the Ishtar Gate.

  Even though it was not the real one from ancient Babylon, it still made her smile. She pictured in her mind’s eye the spectacular original with its glazed blue tiles studded with rows of golden animals—a design so beautiful it had drawn ancient travellers from the ends of the earth, lured by its renown as one of the wonders of the world.

  Emerging from the shade of the arched gateway, she squinted at the heavy artillery damage to the museum compound’s walls. The jagged pockmarks had weathered in the intervening ten years, but remained a clear reminder of the ferocity of the urban battle that had raged around the area.

  She nodded to the sleepy security guard as she sauntered into the main building. Its long polished corridors were eerily empty—closed to the public since the war had decimated the museum’s priceless holdings.

  She opened her office door, and glanced around the familiar sight of her home-from-home.

  It was a large high-ceilinged airy room—its polished floorboards strewn with faded oriental rugs. She had furnished it comfortably with a desk, a pair of map tables, filing cabinets, and a sofa area around a low wide coffee table inlaid with pearl and exotic woods.

  The shelves running around its walls were lined with books, catalogues, pamphlets, folders, and piles of papers in English, French, Arabic, Hebrew, and a range of current and ancient regional languages and dialects. Arranged among them on the shelves were artefacts she had collected over the years—busts, figurines, carvings, terracotta oil lamps, and a variety of other small pieces.

  Behind the desk was a small photograph of a woman in early 1900s clothing. She was one of Ava's inspirations: Gertrude Bell—archaeologist, explorer, diplomat, spy, architect of modern Iraq, and founder of the museum.

  On the long wall, a large map of the world bristled with a rainbow of pins, photographs, and strands of coloured cotton showing where many of the museum’s thousands of stolen artefacts were believed to be.

  Ava had been very happy in the office for the last five years. It was as big as her entire apartment in Baghdad, and in many ways more comfortable.

  After leaving MI6, she had first spent three years working for the British Museum—much of it conducting fieldwork in the Middle East. Then, with only the briefest period of notice, she had been seconded to the National Archaeological Museum in Amman for two years.

  Altogether, it had been an adrenaline-filled transition from MI6 back into the real world.

  She had revelled in again being part of the colourful chaos of the Middle East—bumping across the hot and dusty country to map, catalogue, photograph, and dig archaeological sites. And she had been delighted to be free of the issues that had led to her resignation from the Firm.

  She had handed in her notice at MI6 three months after her father died. It was not just that she had been appalled at how badly the service had managed his death, although that was part of it—the whole experience had left her with a bad taste in her mouth.

  But she had begun to have serious doubts, and started seeing things from a different perspective, feeling increasingly alienated from the government community she had been told many times would always be there for her.

  She had tried to focus on her work, yet it started to throw up more problems than solutions.

  She saw the growing number of reports over the winter of 2002 detailing the selective targeting of Iraqi military installations, along with the other combat activities of western covert forces already on the ground in Iraq since the summer.

  She listened with increasing disbelief as the politicians talked publicly of peace, while she knew the ground war was already fully under way.

  She helped write numerous reports setting out assessments of the potentially disastrous regional consequences of war. But somehow the Joint Intelligence Committee, which funnelled all such concerns to the Prime Minister, did not speak up loudly enough.

  When, in March 2003, the world’s media finally showed the futuristic sleek black F-117 Nighthawk stealth bombers dropping two-thousand-pound laser-guided bunker busters on Baghdad, she resigned, disillusioned—unable to recognize the organization she had once been so excited to join.

  Shaking off the memories, she stepped into her office and walked over to the desk, collapsing onto the worn Turkish cushion strapped to the creaky wooden swivel chair beside it.

  Powering up the laptop on her desk, she turned to the small pile of envelopes in front of her.

  There was a letter from a laboratory with analysis results on a medieval textile, a request for cooperation in mapping some ancient mud brick foundations the coalition forces had uncovered while building a helipad, and the usual museum industry literature.

  Only when she had finished going through the letters and looked up did she see the small brown package no bigger than a cigarette packet.

  Picking it up, she was surprised by how heavy it was. It was also strange th
at it was addressed to her personally, but with no postmark, stamp, or any indication where it had come from.

  Security was a constant priority, and she was not expecting a package. Putting it down, she punched the mailroom’s extension into her desk phone.

  The man who answered confirmed that an elderly gentleman had dropped the packet off earlier by hand. The mailroom security team had scanned it for explosives and other harmful agents, but finding nothing, had delivered it to her desk.

  Ava turned the package over in her hands. It was not unusual for people to return looted artefacts to the museum anonymously—it saved embarrassing questions about how they came to have them.

  But she was curious that the packet was addressed to her personally, as her name was not widely known outside the museum.

  She slit open the brown paper carefully and peeled it off to reveal a blue-grey round-cornered ribbed steel box. It looked like a case for photographic equipment, only on a miniature scale.

  Snapping the box open, she saw it was lined with plump deep red velvet.

  But what caught her eyes immediately was the object the box and velvet were protecting.

  As she realized what it was, her eyes widened and she gasped in surprise, instantly sure that what she was looking at had never belonged to the museum. If it had, it would have been one of its most outstanding exhibits.

  She gazed at it, spellbound.

  It was an oval of green jasper, about two inches long. On the front was the unmistakable portrait of Alexander the Great. On the back was the bizarre image of a man with a cockerel’s head and feet made of curling snakes. He was holding a whip in an upraised hand, and defending himself with a shield. Around him were seven stars, and a scorpion nestled by his feet above the inscribed words:

  Iησουσ Xριστοσ

  The writing was easy to identify—koine Greek, the language of the Church in the first few centuries.

  The words were also not difficult to translate. But she could feel her heart beginning to race as she considered the implications of what they were doing on the object.

  She read the words aloud: “Iesous Christos.”

  Jesus Christ.

  Without consulting any books, she knew exactly what the object was, and when it dated from.

  Her excitement mounting, she pulled a magnifying loupe out of the desk drawer and examined the amulet more closely.

  The jasper was the right size and colour for the region. The writing was higgledy-piggledy, as she would have expected, and the individual letters were the correct shapes for the period.

  She held it under her desk lamp, peering at it closely. Turning it carefully, there were no marks indicating it had been made with the help of machines, and it was appropriately worn for something of its age.

  She sat back, her mind whirring.

  If the amulet was what she thought it was—and she would stake her career on the fact it was—then she was holding one of only a few such objects ever found. She had only heard of them in the Vatican collections.

  She turned the ancient green stone over in her hands again.

  Despite the fact she touched ancient objects every day, the more extraordinary ones still sent a shiver of electricity jolting through her.

  She did not need a second opinion on this one.

  What she was holding was a direct connection back to the complex beliefs of the second and third centuries AD, when Middle-Eastern Christians still clung onto their old gods as well as their new one, and their evolving ideas of Christianity swirled in a cocktail of older magical beliefs.

  The portrait of Alexander the Great was not an unusual image. He regularly featured on religious artefacts—widely worshipped for centuries as a sun god, the new Apollo.

  But it was what was on the other side that made it so rare. Turning it over, she could not for the moment remember the name of the magical cockerel god with the snakes and scorpion. But he had been popular among Gnostic Christians, and to see him along with the words Jesus Christ made the amulet a piece with undoubted global historical significance.

  She turned to the laptop beside her, and pulled up an internet search page to look up the strange god’s name—but was distracted by a winking envelope at the bottom right of her screen indicating she had e-mail.

  She clicked on the little yellow rectangle, and a message instantly popped up.

  I HOPE YOU LIKE THE AMULET? IT’S THIRD CENTURY, PROBABLY SYRIAN. THINK OF IT AS A FIRST GIFT TO THE MUSEUM. I TRUST YOU CAN FIND A PLACE FOR IT.

  YOURS, E.S.

  Stunned, she checked the time the e-mail had been sent.

  One minute ago.

  For the second time that morning she felt the wind knocked out of her sails.

  How on earth … ?

  She looked toward the window.

  Was she being watched?

  On her guard now, she wondered how the sender had got hold of her personal e-mail address. Old habits died hard, and she always kept her internet identity closely protected.

  The sender’s initials, E.S., meant nothing to her. Nor did his e-mail address, es@trample.net.

  She quickly typed ‘www.trample.net’ into the address line on her browser.

  It returned nothing—a cyber void. The e-mail address was a meaningless placeholder.

  She still had friends who would do her a favour and trace the servers E.S. was bouncing through, but she instinctively knew it would be a pointless exercise. If E.S. was any good—and he or she did seem to be—the entire trail would have been thoroughly anonymized.

  Her curiosity piqued, she quickly typed a reply.

  DO I KNOW YOU?

  In less than a minute, the envelope icon winked again.

  She opened the e-mail.

  I HAVE OTHER ARTEFACTS I MAY LIKE TO DONATE FOR DISPLAY IN YOUR MUSEUM. I’LL BE AT THE ABBASID PALACE FOR THE NEXT HOUR ONLY.

  YOURS, E.S.

  E.S. was not lacking in confidence, she had to give him or her that. Baghdad was not a city in which people met up with strangers. Kidnappings were a daily reality. She was required to brief her staff regularly on the risks.

  Thinking quickly, she typed a reply:

  WHY WOULD I TRUST YOU?

  An answer came back in under a minute.

  I HAVE TRUSTED YOU WITH AN IMMENSELY VALUABLE ARTEFACT. NOBODY KNOWS YOU HAVE IT. IF IT NEVER APPEARED IN THE MUSEUM, ONLY YOU AND I WOULD EVER KNOW. IF I WANTED TO DO YOU HARM, THERE WOULD BE EASIER WAYS. IF YOU’RE WORRIED ABOUT SAFETY, BRING SECURITY. I’LL BE WEARING A LIGHT GREY SUIT AND IVORY TIE.

  YOURS, E.S.

  Ava sat back.

  So, it was a man.

  They were not young men’s clothes or colours, so it was quite possibly the old man who had dropped the package off.

  It was not much to go on. But it was a start.

  She looked down at the amulet again. It was exquisite. The museum had nothing like it.

  As she felt its smooth surface, her mind buzzed with questions. Lost in thought, she turned her chair and stared at the photograph of Gertrude Bell.

  Reaching a decision, she flicked off the computer and stood up. She put the amulet back in its steel case, and locked it in the safe behind her desk. Slipping her phone into a pocket, she left the office, pulling the door shut behind her.

  On her way out, she stopped at the large desk in the echoing front hall and called round one of the pool cars.

  She had already decided she would not take security. She knew how to look after herself, and could not afford to lose the time it would take to book a minder. She had no idea how heavy the traffic would be, and she did not want to miss the window to meet E.S.

  She had a hunch the meeting was going to be very worth attending.

  ——————— ◆ ———————

  23

  Undisclosed location

  Identity theft.

  Malchus loved the whole idea. It was so easy.

  He wondered why, in this day and age, anyone still di
d it the old-fashioned way—spending weeks setting up a fake identity with forged passports and complex alibis.

  These days it was so much simpler—there were thousands of lives on the internet just there for the taking.

  He had quickly found out that the old adage was correct—truth was indeed much stranger than fiction.

  People's desire for publicity meant the internet warehoused all sorts of quirky and unexpected details about their otherwise anonymous lives. The result was a treasure-chest of off-the-peg identities—infinitely more colourful, textured, and credible than anything he could have invented.

  He looked out of the window at the vast expanse of deep blue water stretching ahead of him in the valley below, ringed by the blues and greens of the spectacular low mountains all around.

  It was the perfect spot. But then he always knew it would be, all those years ago when he had first come here. Since then, it had never disappointed.

  It was His. He had been here. The rooms were still filled with His presence.

  Malchus walked through into the clean white Bauhaus-style study, and sat down at the taut white leather and metal desk.

  After a few hours hunched over his laptop, he was done.

  It was child’s play.

  It had not taken him long trawling the backwaters of cyberspace to find his man—Professor Erik Schottmüller of the University of Vienna.

  Professor Schottmüller was ideal—a German-speaking specialist in the early-modern history of central Europe. He was exactly who Malchus needed to be. And there was more information on him than Malchus would ever need.

  The professor’s biography page on the university’s website gave his full curriculum vitae, research interests, the courses he taught, the location of his office, a full list of all his published books and articles, and even the hours he was available to students.