James Becker - The Messiah Secret

(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 — if 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.

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’.

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.