The Moses Legacy. Adam Palmer

it?’

      ‘If they did, they didn’t tell me.’

      ‘Then why are you so sure that his death has anything to do with this nonsense about the sixth plague?’

      Daniel thought for a moment.

      ‘Maybe it’s just the timing. One minute, he’s telling me something that sounds awfully conspiratorial. I dismissed it at the time – for the same reason as you did, because of the dementia. Then, right after that, he dies… in a fire… after both he and Roksana have been subjected to other physical injuries.’

      ‘Did he say anything else?’

      ‘He mentioned the incident with the fiery snakes and the bronze snake on a pole.’

      ‘What’s that?’

      ‘It’s a passage from the Bible,’ said Daniel, rummaging through the light bag he had taken on as hand luggage. He found his copy of the Bible and thumbed through it. ‘Here it is: Numbers 21, verses six to eight.’

      And the Lord sent fiery snakes into the people and they bit the people and many of the Israelites died. And the people came to Moses and said ‘We have sinned because we spoke against the Lord and you; pray to the Lord and he will take the snakes from us’ and Moses prayed on behalf of the people. And the Lord said to Moses ‘Make a burning one and put it on a pole and it shall be that all the bitten ones that see it will live.’

      ‘Burning one?’

      ‘It’s widely understood to be a bronze or copper snake.’

      ‘But how does that relate to the plagues suffered by the Egyptians? There wasn’t a plague of snakes, was there?’

      ‘No. And I wasn’t clear what he meant when he mentioned the sixth plague – which was boils – in the same breath. But it wasn’t so much the fiery snakes I was thinking about. It was the snake that Moses put on the pole to save the Israelites who had been bitten by the snakes. It reminded me of the symbol we saw on that clay jar.’

      ‘The Rod of Asclepius?’

      ‘Yes, or some sort of Egyptian precursor to it. I was wondering if that could be some symbol associated with Moses. I think that the association has been suggested in the past.’

      ‘Maybe it is. But why did Uncle Harrison think the sixth plague could recur?’

      ‘He never really said. I think it may just have been…’

      He didn’t want to say it.

      ‘A symptom of the dementia.’

      Daniel avoided Gabrielle’s eyes.

      ‘But in that case… why are you worried about it?’

      Daniel forced himself to meet her eyes and he chose his next words carefully.

      ‘Because now I’m not so sure. I was thinking about what Mansoor said about the food poisoning outbreak. Did you see any sign of it when you were there?’

      ‘No, it happened after I left.’

      ‘Because I was just wondering if Mansoor’s covering up for something.’

      ‘How do you mean?’

      ‘Well, I can understand them closing down the dig because of food poisoning, but why didn’t they allow us to go there?’

      Now it was Gabrielle’s turn to think for a moment.

      ‘You have a point. He did seem a bit cagey.’

      A few hours later, when they landed at Heathrow, they found themselves held for a long time while the doors were kept closed and the passengers were told to stay in their seats. Eventually, when they were opened, four uniformed policemen entered the aircraft and made their way straight to Daniel.

      ‘Daniel Klein?’ said one of them.

      ‘Yes,’ Daniel replied nervously.

      ‘I have a warrant for your arrest.’

      Chapter 15

      Goliath was lying on the bed in his hotel room, thinking about how he had failed his mentor. Arthur Morris had told him to keep track of Daniel Klein. But he had lost sight of him, quite suddenly, and now he was feeling guilty.

      When first given the task, he had asked if he was to kill Klein, but Morris told him not to ask questions. He would be told later if anything more was required of him. Right now all he had to do was keep tabs on Klein and report in regularly to tell Morris where he was.

      And Senator Morris had always been good to Goliath – even giving him his nickname which he said was a sign of respect. Goliath was the more worthy opponent, the senator had told him once. In a fair fight he would have won against David. He was the victim of Jewish treachery. And contrary to popular mythology, the Philistines were culturally more developed than the Jews. Indeed, after becoming king, David had chosen a personal bodyguard of Philistines because he didn’t trust his own people.

      Goliath felt a debt of gratitude towards Senator Morris, because it was Morris who had saved his life – or rather stopped him from taking his own life. In the old days, when Goliath was plain old Wally Carter, his wife had left him for another man and had taken him to the cleaners with the aid of her smooth-talking Jewish shyster. Between them they had played up his size and his occasional tendency to lash out when things did not go the way he wanted. And he had watched as the house was sold from under him and she took most of the money as well as the children. Watching them drive away in the car had been the most painful thing of all.

      But when he was about to jump to his death, it was Senator Morris who had stumbled across him by chance and talked to him for three hours, persuading him not to. After he was hospitalized for mental illness, it was Arthur Morris who had provided him with the lawyer and the doctor’s reports that secured his release. It had been Morris who had invited him to his home and treated him like a son and told him that God had a plan for him. It had been Morris who had trained him in various social skills that enabled him to get on with people better than he had in the past and without the former awkwardness that had plagued him. It was Morris who had explained that the social conventions and manners of the upper classes were just a form of acting and it could be learnt like any other role.

      For that Wally Carter – now Goliath, the man who walked tall and held his head up high – would do anything to serve Arthur Morris, knowing that in so doing, he was serving God.

      Yet now he was miserable, for the trace on Daniel’s phone wasn’t working. It was possible that the phone was switched off or that he was in a tunnel or underground; but whatever the reason, when he logged on to the website and tried to find the phone, it was showing ‘no signal’.

      It was just then that Morris phoned. Goliath was fearful of the prospect of having to tell his mentor that he had failed. But he never got the chance, because instead of asking him about the whereabouts of Daniel Klein, Morris launched into a set of rapid-fire instructions, telling Goliath that he was to go to the hospital attached to the Theodor Bilharz Research Institute, locate a patient called Joel Hirsch and get some of his clothes. He was to put them in a bag, seal it up to keep it dry and bring it back to the United States.

      And he was not to let anyone see him.

      Goliath was about to ask why when he remembered that he was not supposed to ask questions: he was just supposed to do what God requires.

      Chapter 16

      ‘So you admit that you were at the house that morning?’ asked the Detective Chief Inspector.

      ‘Yes!’ said Daniel for the umpteenth time. ‘I went there to speak to him just before I flew off to Egypt.’

      ‘And you flew off to Egypt at short notice, at the invitation of the Vice Minister of Culture.’

      ‘You can call him and verify that yourself.’

      ‘We