The Exodus Quest. Will Adams

finger and began to scream.

      II

      Meals with Fatima were notoriously frugal affairs usually, but tonight the table was laden with a colourful and fragrant spread of dishes in honour of Stafford and Lily: ta’amiyya, fu’ul, hoummos, beans, tahina, a salad of chopped tomatoes and cucumber seasoned with oil and garlic, stuffed aubergines, chicken dressed in vine leaves, all looking succulent in the rippling candlelight. There were even two bottles of red wine, from which Stafford poured himself a liberal glass that he drained and immediately refilled. For all Gaille’s dislike of him, she had to admit he was looking rather dashing, wearing a borrowed galabaya while his own clothes were being washed in readiness for the morning.

      Lily was looking nervously at the food, as though apprehensive both of local etiquette and cuisine. Gaille gave her a reassuring nod and helped herself to some of the safer dishes, allowing Lily to emulate her, which she did with a grateful smile.

      ‘Will you be in Egypt long?’ asked Fatima, as Stafford sat next to her.

      ‘Amarna tomorrow, then Assiut the day after for an interview. Then off to the States.’

      ‘You’re packing an awful lot in to two days, aren’t you?’

      ‘We were supposed to be here for the best part of a week,’ he shrugged. ‘But then my agent got me on the morning shows. I could hardly turn that down, could I?’

      ‘No. I suppose not.’

      ‘It’s the only market, the States. If you’re not big there, forget about it. Anyway, we’re only filming a short section here. We’re coming back later in the year to film in …’ He caught himself on the verge of his indiscretion, smiled as though she’d almost wheedled great secrets out of him. ‘For the other sections of my programme.’

      ‘Your programme, yes. Won’t you tell me a little more about it?’

      He took another swallow of wine as he considered this. ‘Will you give me your word that you won’t repeat what I tell you?’

      ‘Of course. I wouldn’t dream of telling anyone your theories, believe me.’

      ‘Because it’s explosive, I assure you.’

      ‘It always is.’

      Stafford’s cheeks pinked, as though he’d only just realized she’d been having a little sport with him. He lifted his chin high, giving himself a swan-neck for a moment. ‘Very well, then,’ he said. He waited for silence to fall around the table, for them all to be still. Then he waited a little longer, building the suspense. An old storyteller’s trick, yet effective all the same. When finally he had their complete attention, he leaned forward into the candlelight. ‘I intend to prove that Akhenaten wasn’t just another Eighteenth Dynasty pharaoh,’ he said. ‘I intend to prove he was also founder of modern Israel. That’s right. I intend to prove beyond doubt or argument that Akhenaten was Moses, the man who led the Jews out of Egypt and into the Promised Land.’

      III

      Heads swivelled to see what had made the woman cry out. A shocked and frozen silence fell as they saw Knox crouching there in the baptismal bath, camera-phone in his hand. But it was Knox who acted first. He raced up the steps, dived headlong through the hole in the wall, crashed onto the passage floor outside.

      ‘Stop him!’ thundered Peterson. ‘Bring him back!’

      Up to his feet, sprinting through islands of lamplight, yells behind, Knox glanced around as an athletic young man, face contorted with the joy of duty, flung himself into a tackle, taking his legs. He went down hard, grazing his palm and elbow on the rough stone, wind punched from his lungs, but twisting around, throwing the young man off, up and away towards the atrium.

      Griffin and one of the young men appeared in the doorway ahead, standing shoulder-to-shoulder to block his escape. No way could he fight past both of them. He reached down and yanked the electrical flex from the generator, plunging the passage into sudden darkness, then shoulder-charged Griffin flat onto his back, fought his way through his flailing arms into the atrium then up the steps. The two other young men were coming across, summoned by the commotion. Knox cut the other way, over a low ridge, running headlong until he crashed into the wire-mesh fence of the neighbouring power station.

      He ran alongside it for a couple of hundred metres, trying to work out where he was, how best to get back to Omar and the Jeep. But his efforts were taking their toll, a stitch worsening in his side, his breath coming short and fast. He glanced back, silhouettes all around, shouting exhortations and instructions to each other, the moonlight too strong and the terrain too bare for him to go to ground. He gritted his teeth and kicked again. But his legs were growing heavy and his pursuers were gaining all the time.

       TEN

      I

      ‘Ah,’ sighed Fatima. ‘Akhenaten as Moses. That old chestnut. I can’t tell you how many first-year students of mine have come to the same conclusion.’

      ‘Perhaps for a very good reason,’ said Stafford tightly. ‘Perhaps because it’s true.’

      ‘And you have evidence to support such a bold claim, I assume?’

      ‘As it happens.’

      ‘Won’t you share it with us?’

      Lily bowed her head and looked uncomfortably down at her plate. This wasn’t the first time she’d been ringside when Stafford had launched into one of his lectures. She hated it, not least because it always seemed to be down to her to smooth things over once he was done.

      ‘It’s not so much that I’ve discovered anything new,’ he acknowledged. ‘It’s just that no one else has put the pieces together in quite the right way before. After all, even you have to admit some link between Akhenaten and the Jews, if you’re honest with yourself.’

      ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’

      ‘Everyone knows that Egyptologists have their heads buried in the sand when it comes to the Exodus. It’s too sensitive an issue for a Muslim country in this day and age. I’m not criticizing you for this—’

      ‘It sounds that way to me.’

      ‘I’m only saying I understand why you’d look the other way.’

      ‘Quite a feat, what with my head already buried in the sand.’

      ‘You know what I mean.’

      ‘Yes,’ said Fatima. ‘You believe I’d distort the archaeological record for personal convenience or professional advancement.’

      ‘Forgive us,’ said Lily hurriedly. ‘Charles didn’t mean that. Did you, Charles?’

      ‘Of course not,’ said Stafford. ‘I was talking about the establishment in general. So-called Egypt experts who refuse even to consider that the Bible might have light to shed upon Egyptian history.’

      ‘Which people are these?’ asked Fatima. ‘I’ve never met any.’

      ‘I don’t suggest for a moment that the Bible is strictly factual,’ continued Stafford. ‘But clearly it’s by far our best account of Judaism’s origins. Who can doubt, for example, that a slave population later known as the Jews were present in Egypt in large numbers sometime during the second millennium BC? And who can doubt that they came into conflict with their Egyptian masters and fled in a mass exodus, led by a man they called Moses? Or that they stormed and destroyed Jericho and other cities before settling in and around Jerusalem. That’s the skeleton of what happened. Our job as historians is to flesh those bones out as best we can.’

      ‘Oh,’