The Moses Legacy (18 page)

He came through for me
, Goliath was thinking as he wandered aimlessly after leaving the hospital.
Once again, he came through.

Goliath couldn't imagine what strings Senator Morris had pulled to get the police off his back, but whatever it was he had done it. He had known for some time that the senator chaired several powerful committees and that this gave him an enormous amount of influence on Capitol Hill. Some of these committees dealt with foreign affairs so that no doubt gave him a certain amount of clout with foreign governments.

But it was still an awesome feeling, knowing that he had a man with so much power behind him, giving him both guidance and support. It was like having one's own pit bull. Except that this was a pit bull of international proportions.

Yet the intense pleasure of this feeling was dampened by the sobering thought that once again he had failed. Time after time on this sacred mission, he had tried to serve his mentor, and each time he seemed to be failing ever more spectacularly. It was as if God was punishing him for some unspecified sin, instead of rewarding him for his loyalty and devotion. He knew that good works did not in themselves make him one of God's Elect. That was in the gift of God alone.

But God chose his elect by looking into their hearts and choosing them for their sincerity. If God was now spurning his efforts, did that mean that he was not sincere? Did it mean that his motives were tainted by impurity? He had killed the wicked – and those who stood in the way of God's work. That was surely no sin, and even if he had faltered, he had never once thought of personal gain.

And yet now, once again, he had failed. Mansoor and the others were not dead. Daniel Klein and Gabrielle Gusack were not only alive but free and on the run. Their whereabouts were unknown not only to him, but also to the police.

And who was that woman on the road who had thrown the petrol bomb into the jeep? Was she trying to kill him? Or had she thought that he was Daniel or the Egyptian? Was she trying to kill them too?

A thousand questions and no answers. Still he had failed. He hadn't even managed to get a sample of their clothing and that had been his main task. Killing them had been secondary. He didn't even know
why
Morris wanted him to get the clothing. All he knew was that it was God's will. And although they had left their travel bags in the jeep, the jeep had gone up in flames, taking their belongings with it, including the clothes that he had intended to take in accordance with Senator Morris's instructions.

But how could he do it now that Daniel and the others had escaped? Did Senator Morris still want him to? Or had the plan been overtaken by events?

He had just purchased a smartphone with Internet capability, like Daniel's, and thought about contacting the senator to ask him. But that might not be wise. The fact that the senator had intervened on his behalf did not mean that he had done so openly. He might have pulled strings
behind the scenes or called in favours from others. The senator had once told him not to mention his name. That probably meant that he operated through third parties and did not like to expose his involvement directly. If Goliath now blew the cover of his patron and mentor might that not be yet another failure? Another breach of his duty? Another mistake?

No, he had to assume that Arthur Morris still wanted him to do what he had told him to do before. And that meant he had to find Daniel Klein and Gabrielle Gusack. As to the other woman – the one who had tried to kill him – he would deal with her later. They had told him her name when they came to warn him that she had escaped: Siobhan Stewart. So at least he had something to work with when the time came. For now, he had to concentrate on finding Klein and Gusack. But how?

He remembered the tracer program that he had planted in Daniel Klein's phone. Was it still working? Easy enough to find out.

He switched on his newly-purchased smartphone and logged on to the search site with his UserID and password. It gave the ‘last known location' of Daniel's phone as the Nile Valley, near Luxor. That made perfect sense. If Daniel was trying to avoid being found by the Egyptian authorities, then he would keep his cell phone switched off. Everyone knew that people can be traced by their cell phones. When a man knows that he is wanted by the police then that is the time to switch off his phone or even get rid of it. As long as Daniel didn't know he was being tracked, it was not a problem; but now that he was on the run from the Egyptian police, Daniel was presumably taking elementary precautions. And those precautions would also stop Goliath from doing a live trace.

But then Goliath had another idea. A man on the run wouldn't want to be completely cut off. Of course, he might buy a new cell phone, as Goliath had. But maybe – just maybe – Daniel was switching on his phone temporarily in order to retrieve his messages? That in itself might facilitate tracking by way of giving updated last known locations.

That also afforded another opportunity. It meant that Daniel Klein could be reached. And maybe there was a way of getting through to him. What if that fear could be turned to Goliath's advantage? What if he could prey upon that fear to lure Daniel into a trap?

He knew now what he had to do.

He called Daniel using his new smartphone and heard a standard message for voicemail. He deduced from this that Daniel was one of those people who was too lazy to create a personalized message: the proverbial absent-minded professor.

‘Hallo, Professor Klein… this is Mr Carter, the man you met on the aeroplane, the rather talkative man as you probably remember me. I've just seen a report about you on television, effectively accusing you of all manner of crimes and misdemeanours; and I have to say, having met you, that it sounds like a load of baloney! I'm sure this is all a misunderstanding and I'd like to help you. I am, as you know, a man who is not without means, and I would like to put those means at your disposal. If you could contact me as soon as possible, I can go about arranging lawyers for you both locally and in Britain. My number is…'

When he rang off, he was confident that he had baited the trap. How could a desperate man without a friend in the world, not respond to an offer to help like that one?

‘We can't go by bus,' Gabrielle was saying. ‘They'll catch us at the checkpoints.'

‘There are checkpoints at the borders too,' Daniel replied. ‘Any way you look at it we're going to have to cross a border checkpoint. But I'd've thought that with the buses it wouldn't be as intense as it is at the airports.'

They were in a café by the Nile in a small village outside Cairo, discussing their next move.

‘You have to understand, Daniel, that with the bus it isn't just
one
checkpoint. It can be any number. In some ways it's worse than an airport because at an airport you go through passport control and then you're through. They only look at your passport when boarding to match it up to your boarding pass. But with the bus, because it stops at several places on the way, there are several checkpoints. And a checkpoint can be wherever an Egyptian army commander chooses to put one.'

‘Well, there's no way we can use the airport. They're bound to be watching that.'

‘Okay, so let's say we find a way of getting to one of the borders. Why does it have to be the Israeli border? Wouldn't that be the one they watch most closely?'

‘You tell me, Gaby. Do you think the security will be more lax at the Gaza border? Or the Libyan border?'

‘We could try and make it to Jordan.'

‘We could. But we'd still have to get to Taba in Sinai – even if we wanted to make it across to Aqaba. And besides… it's Israel that we need to get to.'

‘Why?'

‘Because we need to talk to the Samaritans.'

‘The Samaritans?'

‘Yes.'

‘Why in God's name do you want to talk to them?'

‘Because I want to show them those copies of the papyri that we took from Mansoor's office. The one that appeared to be written by Ay, whom you think –
we
think – may have been Ephraim, the son of Joseph.'

‘Why do you want to show it to them?'

‘Because I think they may be able to shed some light on it.'

‘Would you care to elaborate?'

‘You remember what it said? The author expressed his wish that his bones be returned to Mount Gerizim?'

‘Yes, and you said that the valley nearby is the traditional resting place of Joseph and his sons.'

‘Yes. But the thing is, although the valley nearby has that tradition, the mountain itself has no major significance to the Jews.
But it is regarded as the most sacred place in the world to the Samaritans
. They even claim that it was the place where Abraham, the Israelite patriarch, was going to sacrifice his son Isaac, until an angel stopped him. And they also claim that it was the site where God told the Israelites to build the temple.'

‘But how do you propose to get their co-operation? Are you just going to go up to their leaders, as a complete stranger, and flash this copy of the papyrus and tell them that you've translated it and ask them to share their secrets with you?'

‘Basically, yes.'

‘Great. So now all we've got to do is
get
there.'

‘If we can make it to Taba, I have a plan for getting to Israel. But it's risky.'

‘It's also going to be risky getting to Taba, with all those checkpoints in the Sinai Desert.'

‘Daniel!'

They both spun round at the familiar voice.

‘My old friend. How are you?'

It was Walid. He was smiling that constant smile of his. Daniel just wished he hadn't called his name out loud.

‘I'm fine,' said Daniel, signalling Walid to join them at the table, preferring to converse with him in muted voices than shouting across a distance of a few feet.

Walid switched to Arabic. ‘Have you solved your problems?'

Daniel hesitated. Walid was trustworthy, but Daniel wasn't sure how ongoing the duty of silence was. Technically he was no longer in Walid's ‘tent'.

‘I need to get to Taba,' Daniel explained.

‘You can go by bus across Sinai,' Walid explained. ‘Or you can fly to Sharm and then drive north from there. Or you can even drive from here. But it is a long journey.'

Daniel wasn't worried about the length of the trip, only about the prospect of having to show documentation when he hired a car.

‘We need to get there quietly… without anyone noticing.'

He was about to say that he and Gabrielle had lost their passports, but he didn't want to lie to Walid again. It would be dishonourable, and honour was a very important thing in local culture.

‘We can't hire a car, because we daren't identify ourselves.
It could lead to problems. But if you know someone who can drive us… we are ready to pay good money.'

Walid thought for a few seconds. ‘I do not know anyone who can drive you, but I know a group of Bedouin who are going that way on camels.'

‘Passport, please,' said the Egyptian soldier.

The checkpoint was at the entrance to the Ahmed Hamdi Tunnel, just north of Suez. The mile-long, two-lane tunnel would take them under the Suez Canal into Sinai. But first, the pair of soldiers who had boarded the night bus had to earn their keep. Like the threesome who had searched the bus at the earlier checkpoint, they walked up and down, selecting a few people at random for an ID check. This time, however, Sarit just happened to be one of them.

For locals all they had to produce was an ID card, but for tourists it meant a passport. This might have been worrying, but the fact that it was random meant that they were not looking for Sarit in particular. And the fact that they didn't have any computer terminal for checking meant that they could only check the passport against the face, not against background information such as a report about a wanted person or a lost passport. But then again, this was only an
inland
checkpoint, not border control.

She wasn't too worried about getting to Taba. The hard part would be when she had to cross the border into Israel. She knew that the passport would pass a cursory inspection at least. In the old days it used to be easy to tamper with a passport to make it usable by prising open the plastic, taking
out the photograph and carefully inserting a new one before resealing it. Even copying the quadra-circle of the ink stamp by hand with the felt tip was relatively straightforward to someone with a steady hand and a good eye for detail.

But now they had holograms, special sealing plastic and a whole host of other technologies designed to prevent tampering. However, Sarit attacked the problem from the other end,
adapting her appearance to the passport
. Most modern women know how to change their appearance in a variety of ways and Sarit's training had augmented this ability considerably. Also, she had selected a target who was in her age range to begin with. Everything else could be changed: hair colour and style, skin tone, even eye colour. In a cosmopolitan city like Cairo, the wherewithal for such a metamorphosis was readily available.

Aside from that, most people don't look anything like their passport picture and are not even expected to. And most of the border officials in Egypt were men – less perspicacious than women at the best of times and brought up in a culture where the very act of looking at women was discouraged!

So as the night bus sped its way across the Sinai Peninsula, Sarit tried to relax as the bus continued on its night-time drive.

When they arrived at Taba, just before dawn, the driver had done the usual trick of offering to take them the extra six hundred yards to the checkpoint into Israel, for a mere five Egyptian pounds. But like the others on the bus, Sarit had refused. She had no particular desire to be first. She was quite happy to be somewhere in the middle, so that the official who inspected her passport would be tired from the ones he had seen already and yet faced with many more in the queue behind her.

But when she got to her turn things did not go as smoothly as she expected.

‘Miss Harker?' said the man studying her passport.

‘Yes?'

‘It says here that your passport was reported stolen yesterday.'