The Exodus Quest

III

Knox found Omar Tawfiq kneeling on his office floor, the casing and innards of a computer spread out in front of him, a screwdriver in his hand, a smudge of grease on his cheek. 'Don't you already have enough to do?' he asked.

'Our computer people won't come out until tomorrow.'

'So hire new ones.'

'New ones will charge more.'

'Yes. Because they'll come out when you need them.'

Omar shrugged, as if to accept the truth of this, though Knox doubted he'd act upon it. A young man who looked even younger, he'd recently been promoted interim head of the Supreme Council for Antiquities in Alexandria; but everyone knew that he'd got the job because Yusuf Abbas, the Cairo-based secretary general, wanted someone pliable and disposable he could bully while he manoeuvred one of his own trusted lieutenants into the permanent role. Even Omar knew this, but he was too diffident to resent it. Instead, he spent his time hiding from his bemused staff in his old office, filling his time with comfort-zone tasks like these. He stood, wiped his hands. 'So what can I do for you, my friend?'

Knox hesitated. 'I saw an old bowl in the market. Hard-fired. Well-levigated. Pinkish-grey with a white slip. Maybe seven inches in diameter.'

'That could be anything.'

'Yes. But it gave me that feeling, you know?'

Omar nodded seriously, as though he had respect for Knox's feelings. 'You're here to check our database?'

'If that's possible.'

'Of course.' Omar was proud of his database. Building it had been his main responsibility before his unexpected promotion. 'Use Maha's office. She's away today.'

They walked through together. Omar sat at her desk. 'Give me a minute,' he said.

Knox nodded and walked to the window, looked down at his Jeep. It had cost him a fortune to have it repaired after the Alexander business, but it had been good to him over the years, and he was glad of his decision.

'Any word from Gaille?' asked Omar.

'No.'

'Do you know when's she coming back?'

'When she's finished, I imagine.'

Omar's cheeks reddened. 'All set,' he said.

'I'm sorry,' sighed Knox. 'I didn't mean to snap.'

'It's okay.'

'It's just, everyone keeps asking, you know?'

'That's because we like her so much. Because we like you both.'

'Thanks,' said Knox. He began working his way through the database, colour and black-and-white photos of cups, plates, figurines, funerary lamps. Mostly, he flipped past them without a second glance, the old computer groaning and sighing as it strained to keep up. But every so often an image would catch his eye. Yet nothing quite matched. Ancient artefacts were like this. The closer you looked, the more potential points of difference you found.

Omar came back in with a jug of water and two glasses on a tray. 'Any luck?'

'Not yet.' He finished the database. 'Is that it?'

'Of local provenance, yes.'

'And non local?'

Omar sighed. 'I wrote to a number of museums and universities when I was setting this up. I didn't get much of a response at the time. Since my recent appointment, however…'

Knox laughed. 'What a surprise.'

'But we haven't entered the data yet. All we have are CDs and paperwork.'

'May I see?'

Omar opened the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet, pulled out a cardboard box of CDs. 'They're not in any order,' he warned.

'That's okay,' said Knox. He slid one into the computer. The chuntering grew louder. A page of thumbnails appeared. Fragments of papyrus and linen cloth. He clicked to the next page, and then the third. The ceramics, when he found them, were colourful and patterned, nothing like what he was looking for.

'I'll leave you to it, then,' said Omar.

'Thanks.' The second CD was of Roman-era statuary, the third of jewellery, the fourth corrupt. Knox's mind began to wander, triggered perhaps by Omar's earlier question. A sudden memory of Gaille, taking breakfast one morning on the Nile Corniche in Minya: the way she licked her upper lip free of the slight glaze from her pastry, her dark hair spilled forwards, her smile as she caught him watching.

The eighth CD was an anatomy lecture demonstrating how to distinguish manual labourers from the idle rich by bone thickness and spine curvature.

Gaille's mobile had rung that morning in Minya. She'd checked the number, shifted in her seat, turning herself away from him to hold a stilted conversation that she'd quickly ended by promising to call back later.

'Who was that?' he'd asked.

'No one.'

'You want to get on to your service provider, if you keep getting calls from people who don't exist.'

A reluctant sigh. 'Fatima.'

'Fatima?' An unexpected stab of jealousy. Fatima was his friend. He'd introduced the two of them barely a week before. 'What did she want?'

'I guess she'd heard about Siwa being postponed.'

'You guess?'

'Fine. She'd heard about it.'

'And she rang to commiserate, did she?'

'You remember how interested she was in my image software?'

The eleventh CD was of Islamic artefacts. The twelfth was of silver and golden coins.

'She wants you to go and work for her?'

'Siwa's not exactly about to happen, is it?' Gaille had said. 'And I hate doing nothing, especially on a salary. I hate being a drain.'

'You're not a drain,' he'd said bleakly. 'How could you think yourself a drain?'

'It's how I feel.'

The thirteenth CD was of pre-dynastic tomb paintings. He started checking the fourteenth on autopilot. He'd got halfway through when he sensed he'd missed something. He paged back to the previous screen, then the one before. And there it was, top right, the twin of the bowl he'd seen, only upside down, resting on its rim. Same shape, same colour, same texture, same patterning. But there was no description of it, only reference numbers.

He fetched Omar, who pulled a ring binder from the filing cabinet. Knox read out the reference numbers while he flipped through the pages, ran his finger down the entries, came to the right one, frowned in puzzlement. 'But that can't be right,' he said. 'It's not even a bowl.'

'What is it, then?'

'A lid. A storage jar lid.'

Knox grunted. Obvious, now that Omar pointed it out. Not that it helped much. Egypt had been the breadbasket of the ancient world. Huge quantities of produce had passed through Alexandria's multiple harbours. Making jars to store and transport it had been a vast industry. 'My mistake,' he agreed.

His admission did little to mollify Omar. 'But it's not from anywhere near here,' he said. 'It's not even from Egypt.'

'Where, then?'

He squinted at Knox, as though he suspected himself the victim of a bad joke. 'Qumran,' he said flatly. 'It's what the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in.'