The Exodus Quest

ONE
I

Bab Sedra Street, Alexandria Daniel Knox was walking north along Sharia Bab Sedra when he saw the earthenware bowl on the street-trader's flapped-out tablecloth. It was filled with matchbooks and packets of white napkins, and it was propping up one end of a line of battered Arabic schoolbooks. His heart gave a little flutter; he suffered a moment's deja vu. He'd seen one like it before, he was sure of it. Somewhere interesting, too. For a few seconds he almost had the answer, but then it eluded him, and the feeling slowly faded, leaving him merely uneasy, unsure whether his mind was playing tricks.

He paused, crouched, picked up a garish plastic vase with wilting artificial yellow flowers, then a ragged geography textbook with all its pages falling out, so that out-of-date maps of Egypt's topography and demographics fanned out over the tablecloth like a deck of cards swept by a magician's hand.

'Salaam alekum,' nodded the trader. He couldn't have been more than fifteen years old, made to look even younger by hand-me-down clothes at least two sizes too big.

'Wa alekum es salaam,' replied Knox.

'You like this book, mister? You want to buy?'

Knox shrugged and put it back, then glanced around as though uninterested in anything he saw. But the young hawker only gave a crooked-toothed smile. He wasn't a fool. Knox grinned self-deprecatingly and touched the earthenware bowl with his finger. 'What's this?' he asked.

'Sir has a fine eye,' he said. 'A wonderful antique from Alexandria's rich history. The fruit bowl of Alexander the Great himself! Yes! Alexander the Great! No word of a lie.'

'Alexander the Great?' said Knox. 'Surely not?'

'No word of a lie,' insisted the young man. 'They find his body, you know. They find this in his tomb! Yes! The man who find Alexander, he is a man called Daniel Knox, he is my very good friend, he give this to me himself!'

Knox laughed. Since that particular adventure, he'd been everyone's very good friend. 'And you're selling it out here on the street?' he teased. 'Surely if it belonged to Alexander, it's worthy of the Cairo Museum itself!' He picked it up, again felt that reprise of deja vu, a curious tingling in his chest, a dryness at the back of his mouth, a slight pressure at the base of his cranium.

He turned the bowl around in his hands, enjoying the sensation of touch. He was no expert on ceramics, but all field archaeologists had a certain knowledge, not least because about nine out of every ten artefacts on any given site were some kind of pottery, a fragment from a plate, cup or jar, a shard from an oil lamp or perfume flask, perhaps even an ostracon, if it was your lucky day.

But this wasn't broken. It was some seven inches in diameter and three inches deep, with a flat base and curved sides and no rim to speak of, so that you could hold it in both hands and drink directly from it. From the smooth texture, the clay had evidently been well sieved for grit and pebbles before it had been hard-fired. It was pinkish-grey, though coated with a paler wash that gave it a swirling texture, like cream just stirred into coffee. Maybe local provenance; maybe not. He'd need an expert to determine that. He had little more success with the dating. Fine-ware like oil lamps and expensive crockery had changed constantly with prevailing fashions, if only to show off the wealth of their owners; but coarse-ware like this had tended to keep its form, sometimes for centuries. Circa AD 50 at a guess, plus or minus a couple of hundred years. Or a couple of thousand. He put it back down, intending to walk away, but it just wouldn't let him go. He squatted there, staring at it, rubbing his jaw, trying to read its message, work out how it had put its hook in him.

Knox knew how rare it was to find valuable artefacts in a street market. The hawkers were too shrewd to sell high-quality pieces that way, the antiquities police too observant. And there were artisans in the back streets of Alexandria and Cairo who could knock out convincing replicas in a heartbeat, if they thought they could fool a gullible tourist into parting with their cash. But this particular bowl seemed too dowdy to be worth the effort. 'How much?' he asked finally.

'One thousand US,' replied the young man without blinking.

Knox laughed again. Egyptians were expert at pricing the buyer, not the piece. Clearly he was looking unusually wealthy today. Wealthy and stupid. Again he made to walk away; again something stopped him. He touched it with his fingertip, reluctant to be drawn into a haggle. Once you started, it was rude not to finish, and Knox wasn't at all sure he wanted this piece, even if he could get it cheap. If it was a genuine antiquity, after all, then buying it was illegal. If it was fake, then he'd feel annoyed with himself for days at being taken in, especially if his friends and colleagues ever got to hear about it. He shook his head decisively, and this time he did stand up.

'Five hundred,' said the young hawker hurriedly, sensing his fat fish slipping through his fingers. 'I see you before. You a good man. I make you special price. Very special price.'

Knox shook his head. 'Where did you get it?' he asked.

'It is from the tomb of Alexander the Great, I assure you! My friend give it to me because he is a very good-'

'The truth,' said Knox. 'Or I walk away now.'

The boy's eyes narrowed shrewdly. 'Why I tell you this?' he asked. 'So you call the police?'

Knox fished in his back pocket for some cash, letting him see the banknotes. 'How can I be confident it's genuine unless you tell me where you got it?' he asked.

The trader pulled a face, looked around to make sure he couldn't be overheard. 'A friend of my cousin works on an excavation,' he murmured.

'Which excavation?' frowned Knox. 'Who runs it?'

'Foreigners.'

'What kind of foreigners?'

He shrugged indifferently. 'Foreigners.'

'Where?'

'South,' he waved vaguely. 'South of Mariut.'

Knox nodded. It made sense. Lake Mariut had been hemmed around by farms and settlements in ancient times, before the inflows from the Nile had silted up and the lake had started to shrink. He counted his money slowly. If this bowl had indeed come from an archaeological site, he had a duty to return it, or at least to let someone there know that they had a security problem. Thirty-five Egyptian pounds. He folded them between his thumb and forefinger. 'South of the lake, you say?' he frowned. 'Where, exactly? I'll need to know precisely if I'm to buy.'

The young man's eyes refocused reluctantly from the money to Knox. A bitter expression soured his face, as though he realized he'd said too much already. He muttered an obscenity, gathered the four corners of his tablecloth, hoisted it up so that all his wares clattered together, hurried away. Knox made to follow, but a colossus of a man appeared from nowhere, stepped across his path. Knox tried to go around him, but the man simply moved sideways to block him, arms folded across his chest, a dry smile on his lips, inviting Knox to try something. And then it was too late anyway, the youngster swallowed up by crowds, taking his earthenware bowl with him.

Knox shrugged and let it go. It was almost certainly nothing.

Yes. Almost certainly.