David Gibbins - Pyramid

“David Ben-Gurion’s team is the best there is. They’re all ex — Israeli special forces surveillance experts, several of them Palestinian Arabs who know how to blend in.”

“Not very well if Abdullah knew about your guy.”

“David would have wanted them to see him. Abdullah can puff himself up like a caliph, but he knows perfectly well that with any hint of trouble, David could shut down his entire business. He’s allowed to carry on only because there’s a delicate balance to be maintained. The authorities stand back from business activities that they know are shady but have been part of the culture of this place for hundreds of years. And what Abdullah didn’t know is that three of the Arabs squatting in the street outside were David’s men. David had guessed where you’d be taking me from his earlier surveillance and had provided me with a phone with an emergency beacon. If I’d activated it, the response would have been instantaneous.”

Rebecca looked away. “I just wish you’d told me.”

“That would have defeated the purpose, wouldn’t it? You would have tried to shake him. That’s probably what I would have done at your age.”

“The difference between us is that my mother was from one of the oldest Camorra families in Naples. I know how to handle myself with these kinds of people. Remember how my mother died? They thought she was about to shop them to the police, and she suddenly became one family member too many. I know about boundaries and what happens if you cross them.”

Jeremy coughed. “It’s a pity we don’t have photos of that artifact.”

Rebecca sighed, dug in her trousers pocket, and pulled out her phone and held it up so they could see as she scrolled through a series of images that showed the golden sheet from numerous angles in close-up. “You didn’t think I was going to leave without that, did you? As Abdullah said, he’s the father of four daughters, and I know how to tug on those strings. During my previous visit, I told him I felt faint and asked for a glass of water. His son wasn’t at his beck and call because he was at school, so Abdullah left me alone in the storeroom for a few minutes.”

Jeremy gave Jack a rueful glance. “Nice one, Rebecca.”

She held the phone up to Jack. “Well? What do you really think?”

Jack’s mind had been in a tumult since they had left Abdullah’s lair. “The last time I saw anything like that was on the floor of the Red Sea with Costas five days ago.”

“You’re certain it’s genuine?” Jeremy asked.

Jack nodded. “Absolutely. And more than that, I’m sure that Maurice would confirm that it comes from the golden facing of an Egyptian war chariot. After our find in the Red Sea, I spent enough time looking at the chariot fragments and depictions with Maurice to be certain of it.”

“Any theories?”

“About how a piece of a chariot of Akhenaten mentioning the Israelites ends up in Jerusalem?” Jack ducked sideways under an awning to avoid a passing army patrol, and the other two stopped beside him. “Well, it’s most likely to have been contemporary, brought here at the time of Akhenaten’s reign or soon afterward. Maurice told me that a pharaoh’s cartouche and any other identifying features were often beaten out of armor and other military embellishments after his death, to be replaced by those of his successor. The one way you might expect an artifact like this to survive is on the battlefield, as a consequence of an Egyptian defeat where the spoils were picked up by the victor. Akhenaten wasn’t a great campaigning pharaoh, and in fact we know of only one major set-piece encounter, though it is one that can be counted as a resounding defeat, perhaps the worst disaster an Egyptian army ever suffered.”

“The loss of the chariot army in the Red Sea,” Jeremy said.

“It’s the only plausible scenario.”

“But if the Israelites had already fled from their cliff-top encampment, how do you account for the recovery of this object?”

“Somebody stayed behind to watch,” Jack said. “Moses would have wanted confirmation that the deed was done, that his people could continue their trek northeast toward the Holy Land without the risk of further Egyptian attack. We know there must have been Israelite eyewitnesses because of the account of the destruction of the chariot army in the Book of Exodus, something we now know is based closely on fact. Lanowski’s study of the Landsat imagery suggests that there could have been an old path leading down to the beach that Costas and I explored between our dives, immediately below the point where the chariot army had careered off the cliff and brought down a landslide with it. Imagine a couple of Israelite spies making their way down among the carnage afterward and finding a decorated wrecked chariot in the shallows, maybe that of a general. They could have recognized a hieroglyphic reference to the Israelites and wrenched that off to take back to Moses as evidence, an artifact that might later have been treasured as one of the small number of objects brought from Egypt to the Holy Land.”

“Where it remained secretly buried somewhere until Wilson got his hands on it,” Jeremy said.

Jack turned to Rebecca. “Did he tell you anything more about its source?”

Rebecca shook her head. “One of Mamma’s uncles told me that in the antiquities black market, asking any kind of question about artifact origins is a big taboo and will see you ending up like she did with a bullet in the back of your head. But I believe Abdullah’s story. I’ve studied Gordon’s Reflections in Palestine . He spent the best part of a year here in 1883, carrying out some very exacting exploration in and around Jerusalem but also undergoing something of a religious epiphany. He’d resigned from his governorship in the Sudan in a state of dismay about the lack of government support for his initiatives to help the people there. He never suspected that he’d be invited back the following year or end up where history has immortalized him. He was a close friend of Wilson, of Warren, and of the young Kitchener and the other British engineer officers who had worked on the survey of Palestine. I believe that this artifact might have been one of a number that he collected from them to take back to Jerusalem as part of his attempt to unlock the mysteries of this place, a project he could immerse himself in after his perceived failure in Sudan. I believe that following his abrupt recall to Sudan, he may have entrusted them to someone here, and after his death with nobody to claim them they were dispersed and sold. This one ended up in the hands of Abdullah’s great-grandfather, also an antiquities dealer.”

“Then how come he still has it?” Jeremy said. “It’s a long time for a dealer to sit on something that would have considerable value, even as gold bullion.”

“That happens,” Rebecca replied. “In Naples, artifacts are sometimes cached away for years, even decades, waiting for the right time for a sale, for the right person or an upturn in the market.”

“Abdullah may have been waiting for something more,” Jack said pensively, looking at Rebecca. “He may have been waiting to dangle it in front of someone who might be tempted to go where he was unable to go, to find the place where Wilson had actually discovered the artifact and to see what else might lie there.”

Rebecca suddenly seemed distracted, and looked back down the alley. “Are we still being followed?”

Jack nodded. “By David’s men, and probably Abdullah’s. Everyone’s always watching everyone else here. It’s a place you can’t disappear into, unless you really know where you’re going.”

“Underground,” Rebecca said. “That’s where you need to go. Everything’s just under the surface here: war, the truth behind religion, the reality of history. Jerusalem’s riddled with natural caves and man-made tunnels, a honeycomb beneath your feet almost everywhere you step. Some archaeologists I’ve spoken to say there’s nothing more to be found here, that every last fissure has been scraped clean by treasure hunters over the centuries. Others believe that the ban by the mosque authorities on exploration beneath Temple Mount has concealed untold treasures, the sacred relics of the temple and much else besides.”