The Lost Testament

64

Angela had seen the man walking towards the café, and had half guessed — both from his appearance and from his manner — that he was the person she was expecting. When he came to a halt beside her table, she looked up at him and smiled in a friendly manner. Then she stood up to greet him.

‘Mr Husani?’ she asked, and the man nodded. ‘Why don’t you sit down and we can talk. Can I get you a drink?’

‘Thank you. Coffee, please, strong black.’ He seemed extremely nervous, constantly looking around and tapping his fingers against the briefcase.

They sat down as a waiter approached the table, and Angela relayed Husani’s order in her best schoolgirl Spanish. The waiter nodded in a disinterested manner, turned and disappeared inside the café.

‘We wait for drink, then talk. OK?’ Husani said.

‘Whatever you want,’ Angela agreed.

The waiter reappeared with a small tray on which was a small cup of black coffee, a tiny china milk jug, the contents of which steamed slightly, and two wraps of sugar.

As soon as the waiter had moved out of earshot, Angela spoke.

‘My name is Angela Lewis,’ she began. ‘The email that you sent to the British Museum was given to me. I sent you the reply. And now we are here at the time and at the place you chose.’

She paused for a moment to ensure that she wasn’t speaking too fast and that Husani had understood what she said. He looked comfortable enough, so she continued.

‘The British Museum is very interested in acquiring the relic that you are offering for sale. But before we can discuss the price, obviously I will need to see it to make sure that it is genuine.’

Husani nodded.

‘I expect that,’ he said, ‘but object is real. That why people killed in Cairo.’

For Angela, that fact was one of the most compelling arguments to support the contention that the parchment was genuine, but obviously that wouldn’t be enough for the British Museum.

‘I understand that, and I am sure that the relic is exactly what you claim it to be. But I will still need to look at it before I can offer to buy it from you.’

Husani nodded again, cleared a space on the table and then lifted up his briefcase.

‘That why I bring it with me,’ he said. ‘Parchment in this case. This very, very expensive case. Man in shop tell me it bulletproof. Steel inside it, and kelvin.’

For a moment, Angela didn’t understand what he meant, what the reference was to the name she normally associated with a temperature scale, and then she twigged.

‘You mean Kevlar?’ she said.

‘Probably, yes. Anyway, case really strong.’

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small but complex-looking key, which he inserted in turn in the two locks on the side of the case. Then he clicked the catches and lifted the lid.

He turned the case slightly on the table so that Angela could see inside it. Several glossy colour photographs were visible, and something else underneath them.

‘You have seen pictures, yes? Pictures friend Ali sent you?’

‘Yes,’ Angela replied. ‘I saw those pictures. And he was my friend too,’ she added.

‘Good. Now this is relic.’

Husani lifted the photographs out of the case and then reached into the case to remove another object which looked like a folder made of thin cardboard and designed to contain unbound leaves of paper. He placed this carefully on the table in front of Angela.

She reached out for it, opening the flap of the folder and peered inside, but didn’t touch the relic that it contained. Almost as she’d expected, the sight of the parchment was disappointing. It was a rough and slightly irregular oblong of brownish cured animal skin, with here and there a handful of letters and words, some obviously written in Latin, the ink having faded to almost the same colour as the parchment, and all the writing barely visible.

She wished George Stebbins had had the courage to come along to the meeting, because as she stared down at the ancient relic, she was very conscious that she was essentially unqualified to make a judgement on the object. It looked old, certainly, but that didn’t mean it was old. Angela was very well aware that there were hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of highly competent forgers working in Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt who would be perfectly capable of producing an object of this type.

But she also knew that those forgers would not have been capable of fabricating a piece of parchment containing text that could only be read in a scientific laboratory. That was completely beyond them. And most forgers, quite understandably, produced relics on which the lettering was readable, because that was the major selling point for them. Her only real concern about the parchment was whether or not it was the same relic that Ali Mohammed had examined. At least she could do something to check that.

‘May I?’ she asked, gesturing towards the sheaf of photographs which Husani had lifted out of the steel-lined case.

‘Of course.’

She selected the picture which showed the parchment in full colour, when it had been photographed under normal lighting conditions. Yes. She was quite certain that these pictures were precisely the same as those which she had received. She then compared the photo to the object in the folder. Unless Husani had managed to find somebody of enormous skill who could work incredibly quickly, she knew that she was looking at precisely the same object.

Angela handed back the photograph and closed the folder containing the parchment. Husani replaced everything in the briefcase, snapping the catches closed but not turning the key in the locks, presumably in case he or Angela needed to look at either the relic or the pictures again.

‘Now you make offer?’ Husani asked.

And that was the question Angela had been dreading. When it came to guessing the value of something like the parchment, she really had very little idea of its proper worth. In the end, she decided she needed two things — more time and another opinion — and that meant somehow getting George Stebbins out of his hotel room.

‘It is not quite that simple,’ she said slowly. ‘I am satisfied that the parchment is genuine, but I need to show it to my colleague who is an expert before I can make you an offer.’

Husani didn’t look very impressed.

‘There other buyers interest,’ he said. ‘Your colleague is man in car, yes? Show it him now?’

‘No,’ Angela replied. ‘He is just a friend. My colleague is in a hotel near here. Can we take the parchment to him so he can see it?’

She could almost see Husani’s lips forming the word ‘no’ when she heard the sudden blare of a car horn, then the roar of an engine. She span round to see Bronson powering the hire car out of the parking space, the front tyres smoking and screaming as they scrabbled for grip.

She turned back to Husani, but the Arab had disappeared. Then she saw that he had fallen backwards, out of his chair, the front of his white shirt a mass of crimson.

Angela choked back a scream. Instinctively she grabbed the steel-lined briefcase that had cost Anum Husani so much money. As she wheeled round and looked back towards the road, she saw a black-clad figure standing just a few yards away. He was staring straight at her, and looking down the barrel of a long and strangely shaped pistol.

The open space of the café was a cliché come hideously to life: there really was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

She heard the increasing bellow from the engine of Bronson’s car, but she knew he was too far away to help her. Then she saw a faint puff of flame from the end of the weapon, and felt in that same instant a sudden, terrible, searing pain in her chest, and an impact that knocked her flying.

She tumbled backwards, losing her grip on the briefcase. Then the back of her head hit the concrete floor — hard — and instantly her world went black.