James Becker - The Messiah Secret

‘How do you know my name?’ she stammered.

‘Just give me that,’ he snapped, grabbing for the leather-bound box of papers Angela had removed from Carfax Hall.

But Angela didn’t let go. Instead, she pulled back, trying to wrench the box from his hand, and herself out of the man’s grasp.

The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a switchblade knife and pressed the button. The ‘snick’ of the five-inch blade snapping open was ominously loud in the quiet street. He drew back his arm and then swung the knife forward in a vicious under-arm blow aimed directly at Angela’s stomach.

Bronson pulled out his mobile phone, cancelled the triple nine that was displayed on the screen and dialled Angela’s phone. There was no answer.

In that instant he guessed that something was wrong. Stuffing the mobile in his pocket, he ran out of the flat, ignoring the lift and pounding down the stairs towards the ground floor.

The moment she saw the knife swinging towards her, Angela reacted instinctively. Grasping the leather-bound box with both hands, she slammed it downwards to meet the blade.

She felt a sudden blow as the switchblade slammed into the wood and staggered with the force of the impact. She looked down. The blade had penetrated both sides, and a couple of inches of it were sticking out.

The man tugged on the knife, trying to pull it free, but the blade was stuck fast.

Angela wrestled the box from side to side, but couldn’t loosen the man’s grip on it. So she did the next best thing. She kicked upwards, as hard and as accurately as she could, and felt her foot connect firmly with her attacker’s groin.

He grunted in shock and his eyes clouded with pain, and for a moment it seemed as if he might let go of the knife. But then he tightened his grip on the weapon and pulled back his left arm to punch Angela in the face.

She did the only thing she could. The instant he released his grip on her shoulder, she let go of the leather-bound box and dodged away from him, ducking under his outstretched arm. And then she ran away — ran for her life — up the street towards safety.

* * *

Running as fast as he could, Bronson reached the corner of the street where he had parked his car and turned into it. She had to be down there somewhere.

He’d barely made ten yards down the street when he saw her, dishevelled, panting and running hard in the opposite direction.

‘Angela!’ he yelled, and ran across to her.

She slumped to a stop and collapsed into his arms, gasping for air and trembling with exertion.

‘What happened?’ Bronson demanded. As he held her, he scanned the street behind her. It was deserted.

For several seconds Angela couldn’t speak. Finally, she gasped out a single sentence.

‘He knew my name, Chris.’ She flung out an arm and pointed down the street behind her. ‘The priest,’ she said, ‘down there.’

But apart from a couple of girls who’d just appeared from a side street about a hundred yards away, there was nobody in sight.

‘Thank God for that,’ she whispered.

‘What happened?’ Bronson asked again, holding Angela hard against his chest.

In short, breathless sentences, Angela explained what had happened to her since they’d separated outside her apartment building.

‘And you thought he was a priest?’ Bronson asked.

Angela shook her head. ‘I meant he looked like one. He was wearing a black suit and a clerical collar.’

‘Would you recognize him if you saw him again?’

Angela nodded decisively. ‘Absolutely. I’ll never forget those cold, dead eyes. And I left him a souvenir.’ She held up her hand and Bronson saw the blood under her fingernails.

‘Good for you,’ he said, hugging her.

She pushed herself back, her hands on Bronson’s shoulders. ‘He called me “Angela”, but I’ve never seen him before in my life. He wanted the box of papers and I’m afraid he got it. But it saved my life. If I hadn’t jammed it down when he swung the knife at me, I’d be dead by now.’ She turned and looked towards the end of the street.

‘What happened to the flat?’

‘You’ve been burgled,’ Bronson stated flatly. ‘You’d better check and see what’s been taken.’

‘Oh, shit,’ Angela said, her old spirit returning. ‘Why the hell is it always my place that gets robbed?’

As Angela looked around her flat, Bronson found a couple of long screws in the small toolbox she kept under the sink and replaced the lock assembly on the main door of the apartment.

‘You’ll need to get that door fixed properly,’ he warned her, ‘but that should hold it for a day or two. And there is some good news.’

‘Like what?’

‘Whoever did this was a professional, not some hyped-up junkie looking for something to sell so he could buy his next fix.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘Those drawers over there.’ Bronson pointed at the sideboard. ‘Amateurs usually start searching in the top drawer, but that means they have to close it afterwards so they can look in the one below it. Professional searchers — or professional thieves — always start with the bottom drawer and work their way up. That way they can leave each drawer open when they’ve finished.’

Angela straightened up, and put her hands on her hips. ‘That makes me feel a lot better.’

‘Actually, it should. The other trick amateur burglars are fond of pulling is to take a dump on the floor, preferably in the middle of the carpet, before they leave the place. They seem to think it leaves all the bad luck in the property, and means they won’t get caught.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Absolutely. So what’s been taken?’

‘Just my laptop and the broken pottery vessel from Carfax Hall. The laptop wasn’t an expensive model, and those broken pottery shards are worthless from a commercial point of view.’

‘So whoever took them was clearly looking for those and nothing else.’

Angela nodded. ‘Odd, isn’t it? Especially as there are lots more valuable things around.’

‘It’s pretty clear what happened,’ Bronson said. ‘The man who attacked you broke in here first and took those bits. Then he waited for you down on the street. And that begs another question.’

Angela nodded grimly. ‘Yes. Somebody must have told him what I look like.’

‘We’ve been here before, Angela,’ Bronson said slowly. ‘Somebody else is obviously searching for this “treasure of the world”, and we’ve no idea who it is, or why they’re looking for it.’

‘If I’m right and it is the Ark of the Covenant, the “why” is a very easy question to answer: the value of that relic is incalculable. I mean, you’d certainly be talking tens of millions of pounds, maybe even hundreds of millions.’

‘High stakes, and that means high risk. And now you’ve lost all your research notes and the box of papers, I suppose we’re pretty poorly placed to keep searching?’

Angela shook her head firmly. ‘Of course not. What was on the laptop is duplicated on my desktop computer at the museum, and I’ve got a full back-up of the data on a memory stick in my handbag. I duplicate everything . And even losing the papers isn’t important, because I scanned everything as soon as I got to the museum this morning.’ She stopped and smiled for the first time since she’d escaped from the man on the street. ‘That bastard might think he’s one step ahead of us, but he’s not. However, he now has exactly the same information, and he’ll probably eventually make the same connection, so we have to get there first.’

‘Get where?’ Bronson looked confused.

‘Egypt, to see a man named Hassan al-Sahid, and also to visit el-Hiba and the temple of Amun-Great-of-Roarings. Let me just grab my overnight bag. We leave in five minutes.’