The Exodus Quest

EPILOGUE

It was the worst part of Knox's day, arriving at the hospital without knowing whether Gaille's night had gone well or badly. His heart began to pound as he pushed through the double doors into reception, his mouth drying unpleasantly. But a nurse leaning against the counter saw him and nodded genially. 'She's awake,' he said.

'Awake?'

'Just after you left last night.'

'What?' he protested. 'Why didn't someone call me?'

The nurse gave a 'not-my-business' kind of shrug. Knox had to hide his exasperation. There were times when Egypt drove him crazy. But then relief took over; he was too glad to be indignant. He took the steps three at a time as he hurried up to the second floor, bumped into a doctor coming out of her room.

'How is she?'

'She's fine,' he smiled. 'She's going to be just fine. She's been asking for you.'

He went inside, half expecting to find her sitting up in bed, smiling brightly, bruises healed, bandages removed. It wasn't like that, of course. Her black-ringed eyes slid to the side to see who'd just entered, she managed a smile. He showed her the flowers and fruit he'd bought, made space for them on the windowsill. Then he kissed her forehead and sat down. 'You look terrific,' he told her.

'They told me what you did,' she slurred. 'I can't believe it.'

'Nor should you,' he agreed. 'I paid them a fortune.'

A little laugh; a wince of pain. 'Thanks,' she said.

'It was nothing,' he assured her, covering her hand with his. 'Now close your eyes and get some rest.'

'Tell me first.'

'Tell you what?'

'Everything.'

He nodded, sat back, composed his thoughts. So much had been happening, it was hard to know where to start. 'Lily sends her love,' he said. She'd flown back home with Stafford's body, but there was no need to go into that just yet. 'And we've been on TV a fair bit.' A contender for understatement of the year, that. It had been pandemonium since that night, everyone wanting to take credit for the discovery of Akhenaten's tomb, while simultaneously distancing themselves from the mayhem that had surrounded it. Knox had been happy to let them fight between themselves. All he'd cared about was getting Gaille to the nearest decent hospital. The fear had been eating at him ever since, that he'd got to her too late; a fear so intense it had forced him to acknowledge to himself how much deeper his feelings for her ran than ordinary friendship.

But once he'd seen her – and Lily too – safely into the hands of competent and motivated doctors, he'd done his best to answer the questions the police and the SCA had thrown at him. He'd told them about the Therapeutae and the Carpocratians, their Borg el-Arab site, the figure in the mosaic and the Greek letters that spelled out Akhenaten's name. He'd told them his theories about the Exodus and, when the tiredness had got too much for him, he'd foolishly shared his wilder ideas about Amarna and the Garden of Eden.

He'd woken, the following morning, to a media firestorm. The tomb of Akhenaten and Nefertiti was by itself quite enough to draw all the world's major networks; but someone had leaked his theories too, and that had taken the story to another level. Reputable journalists were excitably reporting as fact that Akhenaten and Nefertiti had been Adam and Eve, for how else could details of their last resting place have been described so precisely in the Book of the Cave of Treasures. And they were claiming that the riddle of the Exodus was conclusively solved too: that the Jews had been Amarna's monotheists forced to flee Egypt by Akhenaten's reactionary successors.

But the backlash had started at once, historians mocking the putative link between Amarna and Eden, claiming that the Book of the Cave of Treasures had been written two millennia after Akhenaten, making any connection purely coincidental. And religious scholars had weighed in too, ridiculing the notion that Adam, Abraham, Joseph and the other patriarchs had all been Akhenaten, pointing out the Creation and Flood accounts predated Amarna, insisting that Genesis wasn't a concertina simply to be squeezed that way.

But it was Yusuf Abbas, secretary general of the Supreme Council for Antiquities, who'd had the most sobering effect. First, he'd dismissed Knox as a glory-hunting sensationalist, not a serious archaeologist. Then he'd observed that the Amarna tombs had been inhabited by pioneering Christian monks in the early centuries AD, making them a far more plausible conduit for any knowledge of Akhenaten held by the Gnostics of Borg el-Arab. And once you took their mosaic out of the equation, everything else was mere speculation. Even Knox had to acknowledge it was a plausible explanation. And, just like that, what had briefly seemed clear was opaque once more, fertile territory for academics to squabble over for the next hundred years.

As for the Reverend Ernest Peterson, one night in custody had done for him. According to Naguib, he'd not so much confessed to his crimes as boasted about them, bragging of his sacred mission to find the face of Christ and bring the world to the light. He'd admitted responsibility for Omar's death, and told how he'd tried to kill Knox again and again. How he'd gladly do it all over. A Soldier of the Lord, he called himself. A Soldier of the Lord who was about to spend the rest of his life in an Egyptian gaol. Knox wasn't a vindictive man, but there were times he had to laugh.

Augustin had visited the afternoon before. He hadn't stayed long; he'd needed to get his new girlfriend Claire back to Alexandria. Knox had taken to her at once. Tall and gentle and shy, yet with an inner strength, a million miles from the glamour of Augustin's usual conquests. Yet in all the years he'd known him, he'd never seen his French friend so obviously smitten, so proud of another person.

Gaille's eyes had closed. He watched her for a while, thinking she'd fallen asleep. But then she suddenly opened them again and reached out a hand. 'Don't leave me,' she said.

'No.'

She closed her eyes again. She looked at peace. She looked beautiful. He checked his watch. He had a full day on. The police wanted to talk to him again. Yusuf Abbas had summoned him to the SCA's Cairo HQ to explain himself. And rival newspaper groups from around the world had been calling non-stop, bidding eye-watering amounts for his exclusive.

Let them bid.

He pulled a paperback from his pocket and settled down to read.