The Exodus Quest. Will Adams

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