The Exodus Quest

‘And more. Much more.’

‘How?’

‘He’s suggesting Akhenaten had a disease,’ volunteered Lily from the back.

‘Oh,’ said Gaille, disappointed, as she turned left off the main Nile road onto a narrow country lane. The grotesque images of Akhenaten and his family were one of the most fiercely debated aspects of the Amarna era. He himself had often been portrayed with a swollen skull, protruding jaw, slanted eyes, fleshy lips, narrow shoulders, wide hips, pronounced breasts, a potbelly, fat thighs and spindly calves. Hardly the heroic picture of manhood that most pharaohs had aspired to. His daughters, too, were typically shown with almond skulls, elongated limbs, spidery fingers and toes. Some believed that this had simply been the prevailing artistic style. But others, like Stafford it seemed, argued that it portrayed the ravages of some vicious disease. ‘Which are you going with?’ she asked. ‘Marfan’s Syndrome? Frohlich’s?’

‘Scarcely Frohlich’s,’ sniffed Stafford. ‘It causes sterility. And Akhenaten had six daughters, you know.’

‘Yes,’ said Gaille, who’d worked on her father’s excavation in Amarna for two seasons while still a teenager, and who’d studied the Eighteenth Dynasty for three years at the Sorbonne. ‘I did.’ Even so, there was only so much of the relentless ‘child of his loins, his alone, no one else’s, just his’ inscriptions that you could read before wondering whether someone wasn’t protesting a mite too much.

‘We spoke to a specialist before coming out,’ said Lily. ‘He reckoned Marfan’s Syndrome was the most likely candidate. But he did suggest others too. Ehler’s-Danlos. Klinefelter’s.’

‘It was Marfan’s,’ asserted Stafford. ‘It’s autosomal dominant, you see. That’s to say, if a child inherits the relevant gene from either parent, they’ll inherit the syndrome, too. Look at the daughters; all portrayed with classic Marfan’s symptoms. The odds against that happening unless the condition was autosomal dominant are enormous.’

‘What do you think, Gaille?’ asked Lily.

She slowed to bump her way across a thick carpet of sugar-cane husks laid out to dry in the sun, fuel for the furnaces of the black-honey factories, their thick black smoke still visible despite the growing late-afternoon gloom. ‘It’s certainly plausible,’ she agreed. ‘But it’s not exactly new.’

‘Yes,’ smiled Stafford. ‘But then you haven’t heard the groundbreaking bit yet.’

III

‘This is bad,’ muttered Griffin, whey-faced, hurrying after Peterson. ‘This is a disaster.’

‘Cleave ye unto the Lord thy God, Brother Griffin,’ said Peterson. ‘No man will be able to resist you.’ The visit of Knox and Tawfiq had, in truth, exhilarated him. For was not Daniel Knox a one-time protégé of that shameless abominator Richard Mitchell? Which made him an abominator himself, a servant of the Devil. And if the Devil was sending his emissaries on such missions, it could only mean he was worried. Which in turn was proof that Peterson was close to fulfilling his purpose.

‘What if they come back?’ protested Griffin. ‘What if they bring the police?’

‘That’s what we pay your friends in Cairo for, isn’t it?’

‘We’ll need to hide the shaft,’ said Griffin, holding his belly as if he had a stomach ache. ‘And the magazine! Good grief. If they find those artefacts …’

‘Stop panicking, will you?’

‘How can you be so calm?’

‘Because we have the Lord on our side, Brother Griffin. That’s how.’

‘But don’t you realize—?’

‘Listen,’ said Peterson. ‘Do as I tell you and everything will be fine. First, go and talk to our Egyptian crew. One of them stole that lid. Demand his colleagues give him up.’

‘They never will.’

‘Of course not. But use it as an excuse to send them all home until your investigation is complete. We need them off the site.’

‘Oh. Good thinking.’

‘Then call Cairo. Let your friends know our situation, that we need their support. Remind them that if there’s any kind of enquiry, we might not be able to prevent their names from coming up. Then move anything that could cause us a problem out of the magazine and back underground. Store it in the catacombs for the moment.’

‘And you? What are you going to do?’

‘The Lord’s work, Brother Griffin. The Lord’s work.’

Griffin paled. ‘You’re not seriously planning to go on with this?’

‘Have you forgotten why we’re here, Brother Griffin?’

‘No, Reverend.’

‘Then what are you waiting for?’ Peterson watched disdainfully as Griffin slouched away. A man of terrible weak faith; but you had to use the tools to hand when you did the Lord’s work. He strode up a hummock of rock, relishing the tightness in his hams and calves, the burnish of the setting sun upon his nape, the long sharp shadow he cut in the sand. He’d never for one moment imagined he’d feel such affinity for Egypt, away from his church and flock and home. Yet there was a quality to the light here, as though it too had suffered in the flames and been purified.

He breathed in deeply, filling his lungs. The earliest Christian monks had chosen this place to answer God’s call. Peterson had always imagined that an accident of history and geography; but he’d soon realized that there was more to it than that. This was a profoundly spiritual place, all the more so the further you ventured into the desert. You felt it in the blazing sun, in the sweat and ache of labour, in the way water splashed gloriously over your parched skin and lips. You glimpsed it in the voluptuous golden lines of the dunes and the shimmering blue skies. You heard it in the silence.

He paused, looked around to make sure no one could see him, then went down into the slight dip in which they’d found the mouth of the shaft two years before. That first season, and the next, he’d allowed himself to be constrained by Griffin’s anxieties, excavating the cemetery and old buildings during the day, only going about their true business once their Egyptian crew had left for the night. But his patience had finally run out. He was an Old Testament preacher by temperament, scornful of the divine social worker championed by so many modern religious leaders. His God was a jealous God, a stern and demanding God: a God of love and forgiveness to those who submitted utterly to him; but a God of furious wrath and vengeance to His enemies and to those who let Him down.

Peterson had no intention of letting his God down. He had one night to complete his sacred mission. He intended to make the most of it.

SIX

I

‘The groundbreaking bit?’ asked Gaille.

Stafford hesitated, but he was clearly proud of his ideas and wanted to impress her: the maverick historian showing up the establishment academic. ‘I’ll not tell you everything,’ he said. ‘But I’ll say this much. Yes, nearly every modern work on Akhenaten mentions the possibility of some disease or other. But as an adjunct, you know. A sidebar. They get it out of the way and then move on. But I don’t think you can get it out the way and move on. If it’s true, after all, it would have had the most profound impact. Think about it. A young man suddenly developing a bewildering, disfiguring and incurable disease. And no ordinary young man, but one of almost unlimited power, viewed as a living God by his sycophantic court. Can’t you see how that would be a catalyst for all kinds of new thinking? Priests devising new theologies to explain his ravages as blessings not curses; artists striving to represent disfigurement as beauty. Akhenaten was constantly pledging never to leave Amarna because it was the spiritual home of his new God, the Aten. But actually his vows sound much more like the wheedling of a frightened young man finding excuses to stay home. Amarna was sanctuary. People here knew better than to make him feel a freak.’

‘Maybe,’ said Gaille.

‘There’s no maybe about it,’ said Stafford. ‘Disease explains so much. His children all died young, you know.’

They’d reached the last of the cultivated fields, and now passed between a thin line of trees out shockingly into the raw desert, nothing but dunes between them and the high ridge of sandstone cliffs ahead. ‘Christ!’ muttered Lily from the back.

‘Quite a sight, isn’t it,’ agreed Gaille. It felt like true border territory this, the tall grey water towers every kilometre or two resembling nothing quite so much as guard-posts struggling to keep the hostile desert at bay. She pointed through her windscreen. ‘See that walled compound with the trees in front? That’s where we’re going. It used to be the local power station, but they abandoned it for a new one further south, so Fatima took it over. It’s almost exactly halfway between Hermopolis and Tuna el-Gabel, which puts us right in the—’

‘I’m sorry you find my theories so boring,’ said Stafford.

‘I don’t at all,’ protested Gaille. ‘You were telling us about how all Akhenaten’s children died young.’

‘Yes,’ said Stafford, a little mollified. ‘His six daughters certainly, and Smenkhkare and the famous Tutankhamun too, if they were his sons, as some scholars suggest. Marfan’s Syndrome drastically reduces life expectancy. Aortic dissection mostly. Pregnancy is a particularly dangerous time because of the additional pressures on the heart. At least two of Akhenaten’s daughters died in childbirth.’

‘So did a lot of women back then,’ pointed out Gaille. Life expectancy for women had been less than thirty years, significantly less than for men, largely because of the dangers of pregnancy.

‘And Akhenaten is often criticized for letting his empire fall apart while he lazed around worshipping the Aten. Marfan’s causes extreme fatigue. Maybe that’s why he’s never portrayed doing anything energetic, except riding his chariot. And it would explain his love of the sun too. Marfan’s sufferers really feel the cold, you know. And their eyesight is afflicted, so that they need good light to see anything.’

‘Quite a risk, isn’t it? Basing your whole thesis on such a speculation.’

‘You academics!’ snorted Stafford. ‘Always so frightened of being proved wrong. You’ve lost your nerve; you hedge everything. But I’m not wrong. My theory explains Akhenaten perfectly. Can you offer another theory that even comes close?’

‘How about the opium-den theory?’

Stafford slid her a glance. ‘I beg your pardon?’

Gaille nodded. ‘You know they’ve got the mummy of Akhenaten’s father, Amenhotep III, in the vaults of the Cairo Museum?’

‘So?’

‘It’s been examined by palaeopathologists. His teeth were in a wretched state, apparently.’ She glanced around at Lily. ‘They used to grind up their grain with stone,’ she said. ‘Little bits of grit were always getting in the mix. Like eating sandpaper. All Egyptians of a certain age had worn-down teeth, but Amenhotep particularly so. He must have been constantly plagued by abscesses. Have you ever had a tooth abscess?’

Lily winced sympathetically, touched a hand to her cheek. ‘Once,’ she said.

‘Then you’ll know just how much pain he’d have been in. No antibiotics, of course. You just had to wait it out. He’d almost certainly have drunk to numb the pain. Wine, mostly, though the Egyptians loved their beer. But there’s another possibility. According to something called the Ebers Papyrus, opium was well known to Eighteenth Dynasty medics. They imported it from Cyprus, made it into a paste and spread it as an analgesic over the sore area: the gums in Amenhotep’s case. Is it really too much of a stretch to imagine doctors prescribing opium for Akhenaten too, particularly if he was suffering from some disease, as you claim?’

They reached the outside of Fatima’s compound. The gates were closed, so Gaille gave a short squirt of horn. ‘Maybe he got the taste for it. Opium was certainly used at Amarna. We’ve found poppy-shaped juglets there, with traces of opiates inside. The Minoans used opium to induce religious ecstasy and inspire their art. Isn’t it possible that Akhenaten and his courtiers did the same? I mean, there’s something rather hallucinogenic about the whole Amarna period, isn’t there? The art, the court, the religion, the hapless foreign policy?’

Lily laughed. ‘You’re saying Akhenaten was a junkie?’

‘I’m saying it’s a theory that explains the Amarna era. One of several. As to whether it’s right or not …’

‘I’ve never heard it before,’ said Stafford. ‘Has anyone published on it?’

‘A couple of articles in the journals,’ said Gaille, as the front gates finally swung open. ‘But nothing major.’

‘Interesting,’ murmured Stafford. ‘Most interesting.’

II

‘They’ve found something,’ said Knox, as he drove away from the Texas Society site. ‘They’re hiding it from us.’

‘What makes you think that?’ frowned Omar.

‘Didn’t you notice how their hair was matted with cobwebs and dust? You only get that when you’ve found something underground.’

‘Oh,’ said Omar gloomily. ‘But they’re archaeologists. They wouldn’t have been awarded the concession if they couldn’t be trusted.’

Knox gave an eloquent snort. ‘Sure! Because no one ever took baksheesh in this country. Besides, didn’t you see the way that preacher glared at me?’

‘It was like he knew you from somewhere,’ nodded Omar. ‘Have you met him before?’

‘Not that I can remember. But I recognize that look. You remember Richard Mitchell, my old mentor?’

‘Gaille’s father?’ asked Omar. ‘Of course. I never got to meet him, but I heard plenty of stories.’

‘I’ll bet,’ laughed Knox. ‘You heard he was homosexual?’

Omar coloured. ‘I assumed that was just malicious gossip. I mean, he was Gaille’s father, after all.’

‘The two aren’t incompatible, you know. And just because gossip is malicious, doesn’t make it wrong.’

‘Oh.’

‘The thing is, because I worked with him so closely, lots of people assumed I was his boy, you know. I never bothered to put them right. Let them think what they want, right? Anyway, most people in our business don’t much care. But a few do. You soon get to recognize a certain look in their eye.’

‘You think Peterson’s like that?’

‘The Bible’s pretty intolerant of homosexuality,’ nodded Knox. ‘People try to gloss it over, but it’s there all right. And some Christians exult in the opportunity to be spiteful in the name of God. That’s fine, up to a point. They’re entitled to their opinion. It’s just, if I’ve learned one thing in archaeology, it’s never to entrust a sensitive site to anyone who’s convinced of the truth before they start. It’s too easy for them to fit the evidence to their theories, rather than the other way around.’

‘I’ll call Cairo first thing in the morning. We’ll come straight back out.’

‘That will still leave them all night.’

‘Then what do you suggest?’

‘We go back now. We look around.’

‘Are you crazy?’ protested Omar. ‘I’m head of the SCA in Alexandria! I can’t go sneaking around archaeological sites at night. How would it look if we were caught?’

‘Like you were doing your job.’

Omar’s cheeks flamed, but then he sighed and bowed his head. ‘I hate this kind of thing! I’m no damned good at it. Why on earth did Yusuf Abbas appoint me?’

‘Maybe because he knew you wouldn’t cause him any trouble,’ said Knox ruthlessly.

A dark scowl flickered like a passing cloud across Omar’s face. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it.’

III

Gaille showed Stafford and Lily to their rooms, then went in search of Fatima. No surprise, she was at her desk, swaddled in blankets, looking cadaverous with exhaustion beneath her shawl. It was sometimes hard for Gaille to believe that so frail and shrunken a frame could house so formidable an intellect. Born just east of here, she’d discovered her passion for Ancient Egypt young, had won a scholarship to Leiden University in Holland before becoming a lecturer there, returning to Egypt each year to excavate at Berenike. But her illness had drawn her back here, close to her family, her roots. ‘I saw you were back,’ she smiled. ‘Thank you.’

Gaille put her hand upon her shoulder. ‘I was glad to help.’

‘What did you make of our friend Mister Stafford?’

‘Oh. I really didn’t have much of a chance to get to know him.’

Fatima allowed herself a rare laugh. ‘That bad?’

‘He’s not my kind of historian.’

‘Mine, neither.’

‘Then why invite him?’

‘Because we need funds, my dear,’ said Fatima. ‘And, for that, we first need publicity.’ She clenched her eyes and produced a blood-red handkerchief, the inevitable prelude to one of her violent coughing fits.

Gaille waited patiently until she was recovered. ‘There must be other ways,’ she said, as the handkerchief vanished once more beneath Fatima’s robes.

‘I wish there were.’ But they both knew the reality. Most of the SCA’s constrained budget went to Giza, Saqqara, Luxor and the other landmark sites. So few people ever visited this stretch of Middle Egypt, it wasn’t considered an attractive investment, despite its beauty, friendliness and historical significance.

‘I don’t see how having Stafford here will help,’ said Gaille mulishly.

‘People read his books,’ replied Fatima.

‘His books are nonsense.’

‘I know they are. But people still read them. And they watch his programmes too. And some of them will no doubt be prompted to learn more, maybe even come here to find the truth for themselves. All we need is enough traffic to support a tourist infrastructure.’

‘They said something about me going with them to Amarna tomorrow.’

Fatima nodded. ‘I’m sorry to land that on you,’ she said. ‘But my doctor came today. He’s not happy with my … prognosis.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Gaille wretchedly. ‘Oh, Fatima.’

‘I’m not looking for sympathy,’ she said sharply. ‘I’m explaining the situation. He’s ordered me to hospital tomorrow for tests. So I won’t be able to accompany Stafford as I’d promised. Someone must take my place. I’ve already banked my fee and I assure you I’m not paying it back.’

‘Why not one of the others?’ asked Gaille. ‘They know more than I do.’

‘No they don’t. You spent two seasons excavating Amarna with your father, didn’t you?’

‘I was only a teenager. It was over a decade ago.’

‘So? None of my people have spent anything like that much time there. And you studied the Eighteenth Dynasty at the Sorbonne, didn’t you? And haven’t you just been back there with Knox? Besides, we both know that Western audiences will respond more positively to a Western face, a Western voice.’

‘He’ll make it seem like I’m endorsing his ideas.’

‘You won’t be.’

‘I know I won’t be. But that’s how he’ll make it look. He’ll take what he needs and ignore everything else. He’ll make me a laughing stock.’

‘Please.’ Fatima touched her wrist. ‘You don’t know how tight our budget is. Once I’m gone—’

Gaille winced. ‘Don’t talk like that.’

‘It’s the truth, my dear. I need to leave this project in good financial health. It’s my legacy. And that means raising the profile of this region. I’m asking you to help. If you feel you can’t, I suppose I could always postpone my tests.’

Gaille blinked and clenched her jaw. ‘That’s unfair, Fatima.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed.

The wall-clock ticked away the seconds. Gaille finally let out her breath. ‘Fine,’ she sighed. ‘You win. What exactly do you want me to do?’

‘Just be helpful. That’s all. Help them make a good programme. And I want you to show them the talatat too.’

‘No!’ cried Gaille. ‘You can’t be serious.’

‘Can you think of a better way to generate publicity?’

‘It’s too early. We can’t be anything like sure. If it turns out we’re wrong—’

Fatima nodded. ‘Just show them the place, then. Explain how your image software works, how you recreate those old scenes after all these centuries. Leave everything else to me. My doctor insists I eat, after all. I’ll join you for dinner tonight. That way, if anyone’s made a laughing stock over this, it’ll be me.’

SEVEN

I

Night fell as Knox and Omar headed back towards the excavation site, avoiding the route they’d taken before, wary of being spotted. They took farm tracks instead, crossing a wooden bridge over another irrigation channel into a field, then navigating by moonlight until their further progress was balked by a high stone wall. By his reckoning, the Texas Society site lay across a lane just the other side. He trundled on a short distance until he spotted a padlocked steel gate, rolled to a stop.

His white shirt glowed treacherously in the moonlight when he got out of the Jeep, so he rummaged in the back for a dark polo-neck jersey for himself, found a jacket for Omar too. Then he patted his pockets to make sure he had his camera-phone, and set off. A bird hooted and flapped lazily away as they climbed the gate. They crossed the lane, reached the irrigation channel. Knox grinned at Omar, enjoying himself, but Omar only grimaced in response, his discomfort clear.

Knox clambered down the near bank, taking a cascade of earth and stone with him, stepped across the dank ribbon of water at its foot, scrambled up the far bank on his palms and knees, peered cautiously over the top. The landscape was flat and featureless, making it hard to get a fix. He waited for Omar to arrive then crouched low and headed on in. He’d barely gone fifty metres before he trod on a fat stone and turned his ankle, stumbling to the ground. There were many such stones, he now saw, pale-grey and rounded, some even arranged in rough cairns, all aligned in the same direction. He came across a tent of translucent plastic sheeting, pulled it back to expose a pit beneath, a crumbled wall of ancient bricks at its foot, filtered moonlight glowing on a domed skull, thin curved ribs and long bones. ‘Neat rows of white stones,’ he murmured, taking a photograph, though without his flash attachment he wasn’t sure quite what would show up. ‘Just like the cemetery at Qumran. Skeletons pointing south, their faces turned to the rising sun. And see how the bones are tinted slightly purple?’

‘So?’

‘The Essenes used to drink a juice made from madder root. It stains bones red, if you drink enough of it. And didn’t Griffin say they used to grow madder around here?’

‘You think your lid came from one of these graves?’

‘It’s possible.’

‘Then can we leave now?’

‘Not yet. We still need to see—’

A snarl behind them. Knox whirled around to see a mangy dog, ribs showing through its flanks, moonlight reflecting brightly from its black eyes and silvery slobber. Ancient Egyptian cemeteries had typically been sited on desert fringes; good quality farmland had been too valuable to waste. They’d consequently become the haunts of scavengers, one reason why the jackal-god Anubis had been so closely associated with death. Knox hissed and waved. But it only growled louder, bared its fangs, its territory infringed.

‘Make it go away,’ said Omar.

‘I’m trying,’ said Knox.

Torchlight flared away to their left, vanished then came back, stronger and nearer. A security guard on his rounds, swinging his torch back and forth, painting yellow ellipses on the ground that came perilously close. They ducked down behind the plastic tent, allowing the dog to approach to within a few feet, snarling and sniffing. Omar jabbed a finger back the way they’d come, but it was too late, the security guard was almost upon them. Knox gestured for Omar to crouch low, hold his nerve.