James Becker - The Messiah Secret

‘Unless Rehoboam’s priests had managed to hide it somewhere else, yes. And if they’d managed to hide the Ark, why didn’t they also hide the other Temple treasures, which were known to have been seized by Shishaq?’

‘I see what you mean.’

Angela nodded. ‘The counter-argument, if you like, is that the Second Book of Chronicles states that the Ark was present in the Temple of Jerusalem in the reign of Josiah, between about six hundred and forty BC and six hundred and nine BC.’

‘So if you follow this line of reasoning, the story in the Bible about the Ark being seized and hidden in Tanis by Shishaq must be wrong?’

‘Not necessarily. The Bible is inaccurate about almost everything, but especially dates and anything that resembles an historical fact.’

‘So how do you know that the stuff about Shishaq is accurate?’

Angela smiled and sat back. ‘Simple. It’s not just in the Bible. The Egyptians were compulsive record-keepers, and Shishaq’s conquest of Judah is recorded there as well. What we have to do as a first step is to go and check on the only relevant primary sources that I know of. Untranslated primary sources, I mean.’

Their flight was being called, and Bronson stood up. ‘And where are these untranslated primary sources?’

‘The place I mentioned back in my flat: the bas-relief carvings in a small temple dedicated to Amun-Great-of-Roarings at el-Hiba. If I don’t find anything definite there, we may also have to trek a long way south to look at the Shishaq Relief on the Bubastis Portal. That’s outside the Temple of Amun at Karnak. But first, we must track down the man who has the paintings — Hassan al-Sahid.’

As Bronson and Angela vanished from sight, a tall dark-haired man stood up from his seat on the opposite side of the departure lounge. He strode across to the ground stewardess at the barrier and joined the end of the queue. When his turn came, he showed her his passport and handed over his boarding card. She tore off one section, handed the remainder back to him, and wished him a pleasant flight.

The man nodded and smiled at her, then followed the last of the passengers down the ramp and on to the aircraft.

Cairo airport had been a surprise. Bronson had been expecting a dusty, crowded and inefficient place, probably fairly ramshackle, but actually it was gleaming and ultramodern, a high-tech steel and glass cathedral dedicated to the needs of the international traveller.

Like all non-Egyptian nationals, they’d needed entry visas but had obviously not had enough time to obtain these before they left the UK. Fortunately, after a few minutes spent queuing at a booth in the terminal building, they were each sold a couple of stamps — entry and exit — that were then applied to a page in their passports. Then they queued again, at a different booth, to get the ‘entry’ visa stamped. That entitled them to fourteen days’ residence in Egypt.

After a short taxi ride they’d checked in to their hotel in the Heliopolis district on the north-eastern side of the city, not too far from the airport, grabbed a late snack at a local restaurant that was still serving food and then fallen into bed.

First thing the following morning Bronson borrowed a copy of the Cairo telephone directory from the reception desk and started looking for Hassan al-Sahid, only to find that al-Sahid was a fairly common name in the area, with about forty or fifty entries in the directory listings.

‘We need to narrow this down a bit,’ he observed. ‘Was there any indication in the stuff you got from Carfax Hall where al-Sahid might live?’

‘Hang on a second.’ Angela put her laptop — she’d bought a new machine at Heathrow and had transferred all her stored files and programs on to it while they’d waited for their flight to depart — on the table and switched it on. Then she flicked through the scanned images until she found the bill of sale for the paintings and magnified the appropriate section of it.

‘Here we are. It’s hand-written, so the address isn’t that clear, but I think it says he lives in Al-Gabal el-Ahmar, which I presume is a Cairo district or suburb.’

Angela spelt out the name and Bronson ran his finger down the appropriate page in the telephone directory.

‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘no listings at all. Oh, just a second. Could it be spelt Al- Gebel a l-Ahmar, not Al- Gabal el -Ahmar?’

Angela looked carefully at the image on her laptop. ‘It’s a bit blurred, but I suppose it could be.’

‘Right. If it is, then there are three al-Sahids there, one actually called Hassan, the second just with the initial “M” and the third named Suleiman.’ Bronson copied down their numbers and addresses, then closed the directory. ‘What we don’t know, of course, is whether Hassan al-Sahid is even alive after all this time, or whether he still lives in the same house. Do you want to telephone, or just turn up at the door?’

‘We’ll go there, I think. There can’t be that many Egyptians who would have spent most of their working lives escorting English archaeologists around sites in the country. Don’t forget Al-Sahid didn’t just work for Bartholomew — he was a professional gang master.’ She got up and turned off her laptop. ‘At the very least we might find someone who remembers him.’

Ten minutes later, they stepped out on to the street. The heat was brutal — Bronson guessed it was probably already in the high twenties — and the traffic driving past the hotel was heavy, horns sounding a discordant melody, dust and smoke billowing everywhere.

The receptionist had told him where the nearest car hire agency was located, and it was only a fairly short walk from the hotel. The only feature the hire car absolutely had to have, as far as Bronson was concerned, was air conditioning, but in fact every vehicle available was equipped either with that or with climate control, so eventually he settled on a white — all the cars at the agency were white — Peugeot 309.

There was a map of Alexandria and Cairo in the glove box, and another route-planning map that covered the whole of Egypt. While he sat in the driver’s seat, both doors wide open, waiting for the air con to haul the internal temperature down to a bearable level, Bronson looked at the latter. Compared to most whole-country charts, it was an unusual map, because almost all the roads, towns and cities were clustered in a fairly narrow T-shape, the top of which ran along the Mediterranean coast from the Libyan border east to Alexandria and then across to the border with Israel. The ‘leg’ of the T then followed the mighty Nile River all the way down to Sudan. To the west of the Nile there was just a vast empty expanse of desert, studded with the occasional settlement, and even the odd airfield. To the east of the Nile, between the river and the Red Sea, lay a ribbon of roads and settlements, but most of the built-up areas were in the north, where the Nile met the Mediterranean, in a rough ‘V’ that encompassed Alexandria, Port Said and Cairo itself.

He switched his attention to the Cairo map and fairly quickly found Al-Gebel al-Ahmar. ‘It’s here,’ he said, pointing to an area on the east side of the city, just east of the Northern Cemetery. ‘Not too far away. Can you navigate?’

‘Of course,’ Angela said briskly.

Bronson closed his door, buckled his seat belt, pulled out of the car hire agency parking lot and tried to turn into the street.

‘Tried’ was the operative word. The traffic was chaotic. Cars, coaches and vans were everywhere, their drivers grimly determined never to give way, never to allow a fellow driver the chance to get in front of them or pass. Bronson looked at the stream of vehicles for a couple of minutes, then decided the only way to beat them was to join them.