The Lost Testament

39

When Angela checked her emails later that afternoon, she was surprised to see two from Ali Mohammed. She read the first message with a growing sense of disappointment. Yet again he told her that he felt any further investigation of the mysterious parchment was not a good idea because of the potential dangers that were very obviously linked to the relic, and he reaffirmed his belief that she should just forget all about it. In view of his previous message, that was not entirely unexpected, but still, her heart plummeted.

But when she opened the second message, which had been sent only a few minutes after the first, she discovered that for some reason he’d had an almost immediate change of heart. Angela couldn’t suppress a small grin. He’d explained what little he knew about the finding of the relic, and had attached copies of all the photographs he had taken of the parchment, so that she could study it for herself. But he had again reinforced his warning not to publicize anything about it.

When she eagerly looked at the attached images on the screen of her laptop, she immediately came to the same conclusion Ali Mohammed had reached: she needed to print them. It would need many hours of work with a magnifying glass before she’d be able to read much of the text, and even with the photographs there were going to be a lot of words, and maybe whole sentences, that she still wouldn’t be able to decipher. What she really needed was access to the parchment itself.

There was a colour laser printer in her office, and a monochrome unit as well, and she decided that monochrome would probably be better, because it would perhaps be a little clearer. She selected the highest possible resolution, then busied herself making another pot of coffee while she waited for the laser to finish.

Then she took her cup over to her desk, with the stack of printed images and a powerful magnifying glass, and began to examine what she’d been sent.

Some of the photos looked a little odd, perhaps because they’d been taken by the Egyptian scientist using a special camera sensitive to either infrared or ultraviolet light, or maybe just by a normal camera while the parchment was being irradiated by one type of light source or another. But however Mohammed had done it, the images were reasonably good, some parts of the text showing up quite well. As far as she could tell from her quick survey, she might possibly be able to decipher perhaps a quarter of the writing. It was better than nothing.

She toyed with the idea of sending Ali an email to thank him, but she decided a phone call would be more appropriate, and more personal.

She checked his email on her laptop — he’d included his work number as part of the signature at the end of each message — and dialled the number in Cairo.

It rang several times before it was answered, and when it was, it was quickly apparent that the recipient wasn’t Ali Mohammed. She heard a couple of harsh Arabic phrases uttered by a male voice, and replied in slow and clear English.

‘Good afternoon. I want to speak with Ali Mohammed, please.’

Immediately the man switched to English, a language in which he was apparently fluent.

‘Dr Mohammed is unavailable at the moment. Who’s calling?’

‘My name is Angela Lewis. When will he be there, please?’

There was a slight pause before the man answered her question.

‘What is your business with Dr Mohammed?’

Angela hadn’t expected the third-degree: she’d only rung up to thank the scientist for what he’d done. And something about the situation concerned her, so she decided that she wouldn’t explain to this unidentified man exactly what she was calling about.

‘I’m a colleague from London, but this was just a social call.’

‘From London?’ the man queried.

‘Yes. Look, it’s not important. I’ll ring him later.’

And before the man could reply, she ended the call.

That, she thought, was rather peculiar. Presumably Ali had been in his office earlier in the day, because he’d sent her the two emails and the photographs, which he probably wouldn’t have been able to do if he had been at home.

The other thing was the tone of the man’s voice. It had sounded official, authoritative. Perhaps Ali was in trouble? Perhaps the owner of the parchment had found out that he’d been communicating with her about it and had complained to the authorities in the museum? That might explain both his unavailability and the attitude of the man who’d answered the phone. She’d leave it for a couple of days, she decided, and then call again. In the meantime, she’d just send a short email to thank him for his help, but without mentioning either the parchment or the photographs.

Decision made, she again turned her attention to the photographs, and began transcribing some of the Latin words from the images onto a sheet of paper. She hadn’t the time or the patience to do the whole thing in one go — all she really wanted to do at that stage was find out if her deduction about the partial name ef bar he was correct. If she could confirm that, it would be an important step forward.

She scanned the photographs until she found the group of letters she was looking for, and then nodded in satisfaction. The written name was what she had thought: Yusef bar Heli was written perfectly clearly, and that alone made the parchment valuable. Of course, she was very aware that Yusef wasn’t that unusual a name in first-century Judaea, but Heli was far less common, and the juxtaposition of the two names at least suggested that the parchment did refer to the man who was perhaps the most shadowy and least understood — yet at the same time enormously important — figure from that period.