The Messiah Secret

by James Becker

  ‘My father bought this dining set in England,’ Suleiman said. ‘It’s not to my taste, but he loved the British way of life. And those are the paintings.’ He pointed at the wall opposite the doorway, where two oils were hanging.

  The priest smiled. ‘I’ve been asked to collect these two paintings ready for Oliver Wendell-Carfax when he arrives here in Cairo to start his expedition. Did he advise you that I was coming?’

  A shadow of doubt crept suddenly across Suleiman’s face, and he shook his head. ‘No. In fact, in his last message to me he specifically told me he would be arriving here in person to inspect the paintings. He also said that under no circumstances was I to release them to any third party.’

  The priest looked puzzled. ‘How strange. I have a letter here’ – he reached into his pocket and pulled out a creased and folded sheet of paper – ‘in which he has authorized me to take possession of them.’

  He passed the paper to Suleiman. But as Suleiman reached out to take it, the priest moved with fluid, well-practised ease, seizing Suleiman’s right wrist and dragging him towards him, pulling him off-balance. Then he swung his right fist, hard, into Suleiman’s stomach.

  The unexpectedness of the attack caught Suleiman by surprise, but he was a young and strong man and the blow rocked, rather than incapacitated, him. He straightened up and danced backwards, moving away from his attacker, and brought up his fists to ward off any further blows.

  But the priest still had the advantage of surprise, and he, too, was very strong, and a trained fighter. He powered forwards, knocking Suleiman’s arms aside, and landing two more hard punches on his stomach.

  Suleiman swung wildly, one fist catching his attacker on the left side of his head.

  The priest howled in pain as the blow slammed into his ruined ear, reopening the wound and sending a throb of agony searing right across his skull. For an instant his vision clouded and he lifted his left arm high to prevent Suleiman following up with another punch.

  Suleiman realized instantly his best chance of defeating the priest was to target his head again – the man’s reaction to his lucky blow had been extreme. He swung his right fist once more, aiming for the now bloodstained plaster on the left side of the priest’s head.

  If the punch had landed, that might have been enough, but the priest saw it coming. He expertly blocked the blow with his left hand and swung his right straight into Suleiman’s jaw.

  Suleiman’s head snapped up and he stumbled back, crashing into one of the chairs that lined the dining table. He shook his head, trying to clear the fog that had descended over his vision. But the priest didn’t give him the chance. He stepped forwards and slammed two more blows into his face, opening deep cuts on his lips and breaking blood vessels in his nose.

  Suleiman lifted his arms weakly to try to ward off the attack, but the priest finished it with two more hard punches to his face. Then he grabbed Suleiman’s shirt, hauled him upright, spun his limp body round and slammed his forehead into the edge of the dining table. The Egyptian crashed to the floor, unconscious.

  Killian stood looking down at the man for a couple of seconds, then raised his left hand and carefully felt his injured ear. The plaster seemed to be intact, but blood was flowing from the open wound at the top of the ear, and he knew he’d have to change the dressing. But that could wait. He had more important things to do. He kicked Suleiman hard in the ribs, then turned away.

  He walked across to the wall where the paintings were hanging and swiftly lifted them both off their hooks. He didn’t know where the parchment had been concealed in them, but he guessed it was probably hidden in a secret compartment in the frame. He would need time to inspect them thoroughly.

  Killian carried both paintings out into the hall. He opened the front door of the house, checked in both directions, saw nobody, then walked across the kerb to his hire car, opened the boot and slid them inside.

  He looked back at the house, wondering if he should just drive away. Then he shrugged and retraced his steps. Better to finish the job properly.

  ‘I have never heard of anybody called Wendell-Carfax,’ the elderly Egyptian man said, his tone polite but with an underlying edge to it.

  Bronson and Angela were standing outside a small white house on a side street at the northern edge of Al-Gebel al-Ahmar. They’d received no reply at the first property they’d tried, the one listed as the residence of Hassan al-Sahid in the phone directory, so they’d moved on to the second address, the home of one ‘M. al-Sahid’. The man’s first name had turned out to be Mahmoud, and he obviously wasn’t pleased at the interruption to his day.

  ‘I am sorry we have disturbed you,’ Bronson said, speaking slowly and clearly. Mahmoud al-Sahid’s English was far from fluent, his accent thick and heavy. ‘Obviously you are not the person we are looking for. Our apologies. You do not, I suppose, know where Hassan al-Sahid lives?’

  ‘Hassan al-Sahid is dead, as I told the other man. But his son – his name is Suleiman – still lives in his father’s house.’

  ‘What other man?’ Bronson asked, alarm bells suddenly ringing.

  ‘The priest,’ the elderly man said. ‘The priest was also looking for Hassan al-Sahid.’

  Angela clutched Bronson’s arm. ‘A priest?’ she echoed.

  ‘Where does Suleiman al-Sahid live?’ Bronson demanded.

  Back inside the house, Killian opened the large suitcase he’d brought with him. Inside were three two-gallon cans of petrol, all full of fuel. He picked up the first one, twisted off the cap and tossed it away.

  He looked round, choosing where to spread the accelerant. There was a lot of wood in the house, so he guessed it probably wouldn’t matter too much where he put it – the place would burn anyway. He walked across to where Suleiman al-Sahid still lay unconscious, looked down at the man and crossed himself. Then he splashed petrol over his shirt and trousers, spread it out all around him and poured out still more in a trail that led to the door of the room. He continued laying a river of fuel out into the hall, then closed and locked the dining-room door from the outside.

  Killian hoped Suleiman would come round before the flames reached him, and he spent a few moments imagining the look of terror on the man’s face as the trail of fire swept under the door and headed straight for him across the floor. Killian knew it would be a painful and protracted, but ultimately cleansing, death. The Church had always believed that fire cleansed even the most unrepentant sinner or heretic, and had used the flames of sacred fires to save the souls of thousands from eternal damnation during the various Inquisitions across Europe.

  He splashed the contents of the other two cans liberally around the ground floor of the house, finishing just inside the front door. Then he took a small plastic bag from his pocket, and extracted a stubby candle through which he’d bored a hole from one side to the other about an eighth of an inch below the wick. Then he took a short length of twine which he’d soaked in paraffin and fed that through the hole. He positioned one end of the twine in a pool of petrol and placed the candle a few inches away. He’d experimented with different types of candles and knew that the wick would burn down to the twine in about five minutes, which would give him ample time to get clear of the area before the accelerant blew.

  Killian lit the candle, made sure it was burning properly, then strode across to the front door and left the house.

  * * *

  ‘Where the hell is it?’ Bronson demanded, looking frantically for a street sign – any street sign – that would tell them where they were in the maze of roads that made up Al-Gebel al-Ahmar.

  ‘Stop,’ Angela yelled, pointing. ‘There’s a sign.’

  Bronson braked hard, slewing the car sideways, then reversed back up about twenty feet so Angela could see the sign clearly.

  She read the letters, checked the map and then pointed ahead. ‘Keep going down this road,’ she instructed, ‘and take the second turning on the left.’

  In the hall of Suleiman al-Sah
id’s house the candle flame burnt steadily, the flame flickering slightly in the erratic air currents that worked their way under the front door. Four minutes after Killian had applied his lighter to the candle wick, the flame reached the length of twine. There was a sharp fizzing from the twine as it ignited, and then the flame started burning its way down it towards the petrol.

  Killian had chosen paraffin for his fuse because it would burn more slowly. Even so, the flame reached the pool of petrol in less than thirty seconds. The moment it did so, there was the sound of a dull ‘whump’, and in an instant the hall was ablaze, the tendrils of burning petrol spreading out in all directions.

  * * *

  ‘Are you sure this is the right address?’ Bronson asked. ‘It all looks really peaceful here at the moment.’ He switched off the car engine and opened the door. For a moment he just looked at the whitewashed property in front of them. Then he sniffed.

  ‘Do you smell burning?’ he asked.

  Before Angela could reply, there was a thump from inside the house, and the first tongues of flame licked under the front door, bubbling the paint as the old wood caught fire.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ Bronson muttered, then started to run towards the house. ‘Call the fire brigade,’ he shouted.

  Behind him, Angela yelled out in alarm. ‘Chris, don’t. Come back.’

  Bronson knew something about fires and the way they spread. If he opened the front door, he would probably be immediately engulfed in flames. But there had to be a back door, some other way in to the house. He wasn’t bothered about the paintings – they would either survive the blaze or not – but he was worried about anyone inside the property. He didn’t know if Suleiman al-Sahid or his family were in there, but he was going to do his best to check out the house before the fire took hold everywhere.

  Bronson ran around the side of the house, stopping at every window and peering inside. But he saw nothing until he looked in through the glass panel of a wooden door at the rear of the property and caught sight of the body of a man lying motionless on the floor.

  He wrenched on the handle, but the door was locked.

  There’s a technique to kicking down a door. Charging at it almost never works, despite the way TV detectives always seem to do it. Instead, the energy has to be concentrated, focused, as near to the lock – the weakest part of any door – as possible.

  Bronson took a step back and kicked out, the sole of his foot connecting with the door right beside the lock. It didn’t budge, and felt as if it never would. The door was absolutely solid.

  He looked around desperately, searching for anything he could use to break it down. On one side of the garden were some lumps of masonry, perhaps left over from some repair work. He ran over, grabbed the biggest lump of stone he thought he could handle, then crossed back to the locked door. Gripping the stone firmly in both hands, he swung it as hard as he could, smashing it straight into the door next to the lock.

  The wood splintered and cracked, but the door still held. He glanced back into the room. As he did so, he noticed the man on the floor move slightly, little more than a twitch of his leg, but it proved that he was still alive. Bronson redoubled his efforts, swinging the stone as hard as he could.

  On the third impact, the door finally gave, crashing back on its hinges, and Bronson immediately smelt the petrol. The sudden rush of air into the room seemed to act like the bellows in a furnace, fuelling the fire. A tongue of flame crawled up the inside surface of the interior door opposite, followed almost immediately by a river of fire that snaked across the room, arrow-straight towards the inert figure.

  Bronson dropped the stone and raced inside, getting to the unconscious man a bare second before the burning petrol reached him. He grabbed him by the arm and dragged him bodily away from the flames, heading towards the door to the garden.

  But even as he hauled him across the floor, the end of the man’s trousers brushed against one of the flaming pools of petrol, and instantly caught fire.

  Bronson heard a sudden gasp of pain from the man he was trying to rescue, and looked down. Dropping his arm, he wrenched off his jacket and flung it on to the man’s lower legs, pressing it down hard to smother the flames. Then he grabbed his shoulders and dragged him as quickly as he could to the door and out of the blazing room, the flames licking behind them all the way.

  Outside, Bronson paused for breath, then bent down and lifted the man to his feet, draping his arm over his shoulder to support him.

  ‘Do you speak English?’ he asked, as he half-dragged, half-carried, the man out to the road.

  ‘Yes,’ he gasped. ‘My legs—’

  ‘You were burnt,’ Bronson said flatly, ‘and your clothes are soaked with petrol. Somebody tried to kill you, and they very nearly succeeded. Is there anyone else in the house?’

  ‘No. Nobody.’

  ‘Chris!’ Angela cried, running over to him. ‘Oh, thank God you’re alive!’ The smell of petrol was strong. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I think so,’ he said, leaning the man against the side of the car. ‘Did you call the fire people?’

  Angela nodded, and pointed across the road, where an Egyptian couple stood outside the house watching the fire. ‘I got them to call,’ she said.

  Bronson turned back to the man. ‘Can you talk?’ he asked.

  Suleiman nodded, shakily. ‘Yes. Thank you,’ he said. ‘I owe you my life.’

  ‘I take it you are Suleiman al-Sahid?’ Angela said. ‘You look terrible. Why don’t you sit down here on the kerb, so we can take a look at your leg.’

  Al-Sahid obediently sat down, and Bronson rolled up his trouser leg, the material badly singed. The burn ran most of the way up his shin, but Bronson had obviously killed the flames before there was any serious tissue damage.

  ‘That’s not too bad,’ Bronson said, and turned his attention to Al-Sahid’s head injuries. ‘You’ve got a split lip and you took a punch on the nose, by the looks of it, and that’s a nasty bump on your forehead, but I don’t think there’s any lasting damage. Head and face injuries always bleed a lot and look worse than they really are.’

  A sudden roar from the house caught their attention. The roof had just caved in and, even if the fire brigade appeared immediately, it looked to Bronson as if the house was going to be a total loss.

  Al-Sahid stared at the doomed building.

  ‘I grew up there,’ he said, a catch in his voice, ‘and it was my father’s house before me. He and my mother died in there.’

  ‘And today you nearly joined them,’ Bronson said softly. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Was the fire anything to do with a priest?’ Angela asked.

  Suleiman’s head snapped round. ‘How did you know that?’ he demanded.

  ‘I know about the priest,’ Angela said simply, ‘because he tried to kill me as well, back in Britain.’

  Suleiman shivered. ‘He looked like a priest, and he was smiling and friendly until he got inside the house. But his eyes – I’ll never forget his black eyes. But who are you?’

  ‘Chris here is a British police officer, and I’m a kind of archaeologist. We got involved with the Wendell-Carfax family by accident, and we’re trying to follow the clues Bartholomew left. You knew about his expeditions out here, I suppose?’

  Suleiman nodded. ‘My father was Bartholomew’s gang master.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘You probably won’t thank me for saying this, but you’re almost certainly wasting your time. My father tried to persuade Bartholomew to give up his expeditions, to stop wasting his money, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He remained convinced that the treasure was almost within his grasp, and that he’d find it on the very next expedition, or on the one after that.’

  They all turned as two fire engines announced their noisy presence and headed straight towards them. A crowd was starting to gather, people staring at the burning building.

  ‘The paintings?’ Bronson asked.

  Suleiman nodded. ‘My father agreed to store them here for Ba
rtholomew. He told my father that the clues to the location of the treasure were hidden in the paintings. I actually looked for hidden compartments, where he might have tucked away a copy of that old parchment, but I never found anything, so I’ve always wondered if they were just another one of Bartholomew’s eccentricities. But they were all that priest was interested in.’

  ‘Did he take them?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. We were in the dining room when he attacked me. I tried fighting back, but it was no use. Finally, he slammed my head into the side of the table and I blacked out. I assume he did take them.’

  ‘If he didn’t,’ Bronson said, looking at the house, ‘they’re totally destroyed now.’

  ‘What treasure did Bartholomew think he was looking for?’ Angela asked.

  Suleiman shrugged. ‘Only the biggest and most famous of them all. He was convinced he was on the trail of the Jews’ Ark, the Ark of the Covenant.’

  Angela glanced at Bronson. ‘And where was he searching?’

  ‘Various places, because he kept on interpreting the clues slightly differently, which led him to different locations each time. My father never knew what those clues were because Bartholomew always kept that information to himself, but he did at least know the starting point of each search Bartholomew conducted, because it was always the same – Moalla.’

  Suleiman smiled slightly at Bronson’s puzzled expression. ‘He was convinced that the Pharaoh Shishaq had seized the Ark when he invaded Judea, and had brought it back to Egypt as one of the spoils of war. He believed that later in his reign Shishaq ordered the treasure to be hidden a long way up the Nile, in a secret valley, where it would remain for all time. According to Bartholomew, the clues he’d found stated that the treasure convoy had started its journey from Moalla, so that’s where he always based his searches.’

  Angela’s face suddenly lightened. ‘He must mean el-Moalla,’ she said.

  ‘Which is where?’ Bronson asked.

  ‘On the east bank of the Nile, about twenty miles south of Luxor. It’s a very ancient cemetery,’ Suleiman said. He glanced across the road to where the firemen were tackling the blaze. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I need to go and talk to the fire chief. Is there anything else you need from me?’