Exodus (4 page)
She smiled. “OK, come on then. Show me the amulet.”
Martin led her over to a lab bench where a turquoise scarab beetle the size of a man's palm lay on glass over a mirror so that the underside could be seen clearly. Its surface had been cleaned and there were hieroglyphics inscribed on the base.
“Obviously scarabs are quite common as they were used in funerary wrappings for mummies,” Martin explained. “But this one is different. It’s from the time of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, when he gave up the other gods and converted Egypt to monotheism for a period. He worshipped the Aten, portrayed as a great sun disc but it was a deeply unpopular change with the people. In fact, Pharaoh had to move his court to the city of Amarna, which is where this was from.”
Morgan looked puzzled. “You’re ahead of me Martin. How is this connected to the murder in the Museum?”
Martin picked up his pointer and stood at the wall screen, his demeanor changing to that of a professor giving a lecture. Morgan felt the pain in her side throbbing, but she also felt the buzz of interest, her mind sharpening as she considered the problem. This was what she loved about working with ARKANE, the constant new challenges, secrets they could find that she could never have been able to discover on her own.
Martin clicked his remote mouse and the screen changed to show security footage of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities as an agonized scream rang out. Martin flinched as black and white grainy film showed a man spread-eagled between two statues. Martin looked away as the man was tortured but Morgan forced herself to watch the violence unfold.
Martin’s voice was matter of fact, trying hard to be removed from the sounds of the horror on screen. “You can see that the torturers wore head-dresses of ancient Egyptian gods. They are cult masks and from what I have been able to glean from the images, they are extremely well-made, indicating that they could be used for religious ritual and not just for this murder.”
“Who is the victim?” Morgan asked, her voice sober in the face of his death.
“Dr Abasi Gamal. He is - was - the curator of the Amarna Period section of the Museum. He's written several books and a multitude of scholarly articles about the time and how monotheism spread in Egypt.”
Morgan watched as the curator was tied to the sarcophagus and the knife plunged into the man's side. Even though she could only see the masks of the perpetrators, she knew that the falcon headed god Horus was Natasha El-Behery. She had seen the woman kill before and there was no hesitation, no flinching as she thrust in the knife.
I’m coming for you
, Morgan thought, studying the way the figure moved, etching it into her memory.
“Does this specific torture method mean anything?” she asked, trying to separate the gruesome images from understanding why the event had occurred.
“It’s the start of the mummification ritual,” Martin explained. “But of course, it was never meant to be done on a live human. The organs were extracted from within the body cavity and then replaced with linen and fragrant spices. The heart, liver, lungs and stomach were put into separate canopic jars, stoppered with the heads of the gods you see this group wearing as masks. The brain was extracted through the nose but as you can see, they didn't get that far.”
Morgan watched, bile rising in her throat as the final chisel thrust burst out of the top of the man's head. The masks obstructed the face of the murderer but she knew Natasha’s eyes would be hard, without a trace of empathy. Morgan watched the scene to its end, for she would not turn away from the murder, nor would she turn from the task ahead of her. Finally, it finished and the screen went black. There was silence for a moment.
“What have you found out about Natasha El-Behery?” Morgan finally asked.
Martin brought up the files and Natasha’s striking face filled the wall screen. She had the looks of a supermodel, but her eyes were as dead as a mannequin in a shop window.
“Her family are Egyptian aristocracy,” Martin said. “Her grandfather even provided men for digs alongside Howard Carter, the archaeologist of Tutankhamun’s tomb. Unofficially, her grandfather lined his pockets with the sale of antiquities to the West, stripping the tombs for artifacts that he sold to collectors.” Morgan raised an eyebrow. That was some heritage.
“Natasha’s father later became a great benefactor,” Martin continued, “restoring the ancient heritage of Egypt and piling money into attracting tourists even with the escalation in political difficulties. But we suspect the funding for his business came from shadier dealings, a global expansion in antiquity smuggling. There’s evidence to suggest he was one of the consortium that broke up the assets of the Baghdad museum after the invasion and arranged theft for hire on specific antiquities. He died five years ago and after his death, Natasha moved to Europe, breaking all ties with her family. Eventually she emerged as a key part of Milan Noble’s Thanatos movement and you know well how that ended.”
The screen faded into a picture of Natasha with Milan Noble in resplendent black tie against a backdrop of the Vienna State Opera House. They made a gorgeous couple, but Morgan couldn’t shake the image of the twisted demonic figure that Milan had become in the last hour of his cursed life.
“Now there’s chatter that Natasha has become a gun-for-hire,” Martin said, “a freelancer with ties into the underworld of terrorism and antiquities smuggling.”
Morgan nodded. “With her background and contacts, she’d make an excellent choice.” Her eyes narrowed in determination. “I want to bring her in, Martin. She’s the last of the links to what happened to Jake, and I know what she’s capable of doing. What did they take from the museum after the murder?”
Martin flicked the screen back to the photos from the murder. “They took everything from Gamal’s study including the curator’s notes and some of his books.”
Morgan pointed to where the body was shown in graphic detail on the blood-stained floor.
“There are footprints and the chisel is coated with blood,” she said. “They left a clear trail of evidence and there must be fingerprints, so who’s officially investigating this?”
“The Egyptian police,” Martin said. “But they have already blamed it on the fundamentalist unrest that is sweeping the country. The investigation won’t get far in a climate of political upheaval because the police are struggling to keep control and don’t much care about the murder of an obscure academic.”
Morgan frowned, puzzling over how to proceed. “OK, so why did they want this information?”
“That’s the intriguing thing,” Martin said. “Dr Abasi Gamal has written books on Akhenaten and the origin of Moses and the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt.” Martin tapped on his laptop again. “But the murder in Cairo is just one piece of the puzzle,” he said, bringing up a montage of images: the severed head and the bloody words in Washington, then the website countdown and image of the Ark. “Your friend Lior forwarded these to us just an hour ago.”
Morgan felt a brief pang of loss at Lior’s name, for they had been good friends when Elian was alive. But after she had left her life in Israel behind, she had lost touch with many of her old friends. A brief meeting after the bombing in Jerusalem last month had rekindled their friendship, but she knew they had a long way to go to rebuild their trust. She leaned in to examine the images more closely.
“These have to be connected, but let me guess,” Morgan said. “No one wants to admit they are concerned about something so inflammatory as the Ark of the Covenant during the week of the Peace Accords. On the one hand, the secular press will have a field day with the ancient myth, and on the other the religious right will be inflamed with fervor at the possibility.”
Martin nodded. “Exactly, so we have to tread a fine line to make sure this stays well below the radar of any press in preparation for the Jerusalem summit, but also to track the potential location of the Ark so we can stay ahead of Natasha.”
Morgan gazed thoughtfully at the image of the Ark as it was marched around Jericho, aware that when the walls fell before the power of the Ark, it sparked a massacre of the inhabitants. Every living thing inside was slaughtered in the name of God. Her mind was reeling, for this was no longer just a simple mission for her to avenge Jake’s injury. Israel was her country, her blood was in the land and she knew she would do anything to protect it from this extremist madness.
“Jerusalem has always lived on the edge of violence,” she said quietly. “It ripples with extremism and something like this, even a hoax, could easily spark an eruption. The Israeli Army have stopped fundamentalist Jews storming the Temple Mount before, knowing it would spark extreme violence. While the Arab nations fight amongst themselves, Israel is safe enough, but if they had a common goal, to defend or avenge the Temple Mount, I can see how this could end in war.”
Martin nodded. “That’s what Director Marietti thinks as well, which is why you’re on a plane in two hours, heading for Egypt.”
DAY 2
Kiryat Malahi, Israel. 6.08am
The early morning sun shone weakly down on the homes of the Falasha Jews in the settlement of Kiryat Malahi. The place would be described as a shanty town in any other part of the world, but people were shy of calling places in Israel by such third world names, even though the inhabitants were Africans airlifted out of Ethiopia in the 1990s. Avi Kabede sat in one of the basic rooms tapping on a slim laptop, his powerful smartphone a portable wifi hotspot, as he listened to the rhythmic swish of his mother’s broom on the concrete floor.
She swept the meager property daily before preparing a simple meal for the men who had left before dawn to find work. Mostly they wouldn’t have found anything, but they still tried for the rare laboring jobs, attempting to earn a few shekels for the family.
It was pathetic, Avi thought, but soon the Falasha would rise again and his brothers would have the prosperity they deserved. Once Ethiopia had been a rich country, a great and powerful nation, their kings descended from the union of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon. Theirs was a noble nation brought low and Avi was determined to hasten the return of pride to his people, his methods based on stealth and terror.
This morning he was hacking into a news site, getting ready to leak the images of the Washington murder online. It had been easy enough to organize through contacts in the USA, but the resulting news story had been covered up. It was time to stoke the extremist flames.
Avi wore a traditional robe, his dark skin a contrast to the brilliant white his mother scrubbed so diligently of the ever-present dust. It was cool, but the garment was also a respectful way to honor his culture and the past. Avi had been just a young boy when the Ethiopian Jews had been airlifted out of their homeland for a new future in Israel, the promised land of milk and honey, a biblical paradise. After centuries of worshipping far from Jerusalem, they would be able to see the places written of in scripture.
Avi didn’t remember life before Israel, but the twenty years since had seen the lot of Ethiopian Jews steadily worsen in their adopted country. They had never been able to claw their way into a society that saw them as so different. Ashkenazi Jews were recognizable for their white European heritage, Sephardi Jews for their Mediterranean looks, but the black skin of Ethiopia didn’t fit. Avi had watched his community broken by murder suicides as hopeless men had taken their families with them to the next life, exhausted by the desperation in this one. Uprooted from the past, with no discernible future, some people just couldn’t cope. It seemed that the racial nature of skin color would always separate the Ethiopian Jews from others. Equally, the tribal nature of religion would always separate the Falasha from the other African nations. So they had ended up here, but for what, Avi thought.
The revving of a vehicle from further down the road interrupted his thoughts. Avi stood to look out the window as it screeched to a halt at the boundary of the settlement, hip hop music blaring at full volume. A young man jumped out of the passenger side, running around to the trunk of the car. He popped it open and then hauled a body out, dumping it on the dusty ground. Avi reached for his smartphone, quickly activating the camera. He zoomed it at the car, clicking away as the young man jumped back in, barely closing the door before it sped off away from the settlement.
A scream went up from a nearby house as a Falasha woman ran to the body, her weeping echoing through the streets as people began to gather around. There had been other violent episodes like this recently, but the police largely ignored the poor black community. They were mostly out of work and subsisting on state benefits with no political power to change things. But not for much longer, Avi swore to himself.
He checked the images. The license plate was partially obscured but definitely traceable. He immediately began the protocols to route his back door access into the surveillance databases around the world, skills taught to him by clandestine hacker groups in China. Whoever those men were, they would be dead before the end of the day and the weeping of their own women would echo the cries he heard now. For the internet had become Avi’s world, and online he could be whoever he wanted with power that most could only dream of.