The Lost Testament

38

Desperately, Mohammed grabbed for the telephone, but the other man moved like a striking snake, leaping out of his chair and pinning his arm to the desk while with his other hand he pulled out a lethal-looking knife, the blade a strange shade of off-white.

Mohammed saw the knife and knew he had bare seconds to live. He opened his mouth to scream, but before he could utter a single sound the knife slammed into the left side of his torso, just below his ribs, and a surge of agony swept through him. He gasped for air and his world collapsed into waves of unbearable pain as his killer twisted the knife in the wound.

Mohammed fell backwards, but his attacker followed him, leaping nimbly over the desk as the scientist crashed to the ground. He felt another searing pain as the knife was pulled out of his body, and stared up into the man’s dark, almost black, eyes.

‘Death improves a lot of people,’ the killer said, his tone light and conversational, ‘and I think you’re one of them.’

Less than a second later, the man slid the point of his ceramic knife into the side of Mohammed’s neck and drove it home, slicing through the arteries and oesophagus. A huge gout of blood spurted out of the fatal wound.

As the light faded from Mohammed’s eyes, the man stood up and inspected himself critically. There was a fair amount of blood on his right arm and hand — it was almost inevitable given what he had just done — but nothing anywhere on his clothing. That was why he’d removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves as soon as he’d entered the office. He’d known from the start exactly the way the interview was going to end, and had made his preparations accordingly. And at least he hadn’t had to torture or threaten the man to obtain the information he needed. His deception had worked perfectly. He’d extracted all the man’s knowledge of the parchment, and he would take the photographs of the relic, and the laptop, with him when he left the office. Another loose end had been snipped off.

Somebody else would need to deal with the woman at the British Museum.

The only downside was that he still had no idea where he could find Anum Husani and the parchment.

There was a small sink in one corner of the room. Abdul stepped over to it, washed his hands and arms, and the ceramic knife, and dried both himself and the weapon thoroughly. Then he re-sheathed the knife, pulled on his jacket, and walked back behind the desk to look down at Mohammed.

Abdul bent down and seized the dead man’s legs, moving the body slightly so that it was invisible from the doorway. Anyone looking into the office would probably just assume that the scientist was somewhere else in the building.

Then he extracted the data-cards from three digital cameras that were lined up on a shelf behind the desk, picked up Mohammed’s laptop and charger and slipped everything into a computer bag he found leaning against the wall behind the desk. He slid the colour photographs into a side pocket of the bag and left the office, pulling the door closed behind him.

Three minutes later, he walked out of the museum into Tahrir Square and strolled away. As soon as he found a quiet side street, he walked down it and, when he was sure he was unobserved, pulled off his jacket and reversed it, turning the white jacket into a dark blue one. He took a wide-brimmed floppy hat from his jacket pocket and put it on his head and then, after another glance around him, pulled off the fake moustache he had been wearing and removed the soft plastic cheek pieces he’d inserted inside his mouth to change the shape of his face.

When he walked out of the alleyway moments later, he looked different in almost every way.