The Ghost Reapers

by Jackie Ferris

  “People aren’t computers, thank goodness.” Annabel made a mental note to book an appointment with her surgeon for facial reconstruction and neck realignment as soon as the meeting had concluded. She could feel the wrinkles on her neck getting bigger.

  “None the less, Abe has a point; Francisco may have contacted Jazz for another reason.”

  “Like?”

  “Evidence.”

  “During Marcos’s imprisonment no evidence was found in his house that he had any knowledge of the secret. Marcos was clean.” Larry was imagining an eagle putt on the eighteenth, followed by a mimosa.

  “Perhaps the lack of evidence is more compelling.”

  Larry’s confused look prompted Alistair to continue. “No one mentions the pyramids or the Sphinx in the Bible, even though the Israelites were excellent at referencing landmarks in other countries. Because we didn’t find anything it does not mean Marcos did not have it, although he clearly could not interpret it. Francisco has given us an opportunity to recover and destroy incriminating evidence if he leads us to it.”

  Larry shook his head. “How? Francisco must have been aware of this so-called evidence for years. Why do something now?”

  “Jazz; ridiculous as her conclusions on the Shroud are, there is a grain of truth there. She asks annoying questions. She will make Francisco do the same. If Francisco had not contacted her I would not have given her a second thought. Why did he? He could have informed her of Marcos’s death by an email or a phone call, or not at all, yet he chose to go to her in England. Now she is in Cairo, supposedly for her late father’s memorial. It does not make sense, unless he knows something we don’t.”

  Jody glanced at the clock on the wall. There was still time to make Tiffany’s for the spritzer lunch she had promised her daughter, if she hurried.

  “Succinctly put, Alistair, sanction whatever you want. If everyone agrees, I, for one, am ready to vote on it.”

  Josh’s eyes spilled with gratitude. “As always, Alistair, you have my vote.” He looked around at everyone else. “I take it we are in agreement. Do whatever is necessary to protect the past.”

  They put their hands together as Alistair nodded his thanks. He watched them leave, and then opened his fob watch. Inside the golden lid was a painting of James Cougar. He was also a man who could read the future. None of the others considered the future of the organisation. The business front of Nommo was secure, but the continuation of the Reformers, its first line of defence was unlikely. As yet, Alistair had not initiated his son, and neither had the others. Soon the Reformers would be extinct, like Hawwa.

  Akhoum felt the vibration in his pocket. He eased his mobile out of his blue jeans. Even in the Hummer, his six three frame was a tight fit.

  He pressed the flashing green light.

  “Continue to follow Jazz,” Alistair’s voice rasped in his ear.

  “Why do you think I am parked outside Hassid’s house?” Akhoum twisted in the leather seat. “What I don’t get is why? Cara told you Francisco was on his way with evidence from his father. I listened in to her calls. What more do you want?”

  “No more loose ends; even after Marcos’s incarceration, there were still loose ends. This time it has to be different.”

  “This time I’m in control; sit back and enjoy your pretzels. Nothing will get past me.”

  “It is not you I am worried about, it’s Cara. This is against my better judgement but you have to speak with her.”

  “Why? Everything is under control.”

  “Nothing is under control with Cara. Speak to her. I need a handle on where she is with this. I don’t want her too involved. You can’t mess things up with her and Hassid. We need that relationship, at least for now.”

  “Take care of your roses, boss. Cara is history. Talking to her will change nothing.” Akhoum swallowed hard.

  “Be sure she is history, Akhoum. Preparing this cluster has taken years; I don’t want your dick ruining it.”

  Akhoum glanced up at the window. The trouble with history was that the present kept reinventing it. He hoped Alistair had forgotten that.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Thursday evening, 28th March, Cairo

  Cara’s head ached as she buried it in the soft downy pillow. Hassid had astonished her tonight.

  “I can’t believe Jazz is actually here.” He wrapped a towel around his tanned midriff as he strode into the room. He was handsome, if you liked pretty boys with muscles.

  She returned his smile. “Can’t you dry yourself properly when you get out of the shower? The water droplets stain the wood floor.”

  “Ouch!” He threw the wet towel at her and laughed. “You sound like an old married woman.”

  “Less of the old; but we are married.” She threw the towel back at him.

  “Almost four years; maybe Jazz will stay for our anniversary.”

  “Come on Hass, it’s more than a month away.” His disappointed look made her add: “You really like her, don’t you?”

  He shrugged. “Jazz hovered over our lives like a ghost when we were kids. Having her here confirms her existence.”

  “Did you doubt it?” She threw him a puzzled look.

  “There was always a blur between truth and fantasy with Marcos.”

  “You mean the conspiratorial company - what did Jazz call them, the Ghost Stealers?”

  “She got that from Francisco. He needs to believe Marcos was wrongly imprisoned, otherwise his life is based on a lie.” He rubbed his chest with the towel. “I don’t imagine for a moment there is real evidence. The reality check will be a tough call for both of them.”

  “Can’t you give it a rest? I feel like I’ve sat through a twenty-four-hour lecture. It’s after midnight. I have to be at work early in the morning, which is later today. You can’t make everything right, some things you have to let happen.”

  “Sorry, I know I went on a bit, but it helped to crystallise my thoughts. The existence of an all-powerful god who fashioned humans in his likeness precludes aliens. If you accept God, you can’t have aliens. It’s an important point—the exclusion of one or the other means that the collective memory could have created gods to eradicate aliens.”

  “Could have, should have, would have. If we both get some sleep, you might dream about aliens with fish bodies and human heads, or was it the other way around? Before that, dry yourself properly and not with that towel, it’s soaking. There are fresh towels in the cupboard. It’s the one in the bathroom that you never go into. Things just appear magically out of it.”

  She watched him close the bathroom door, then slipped out of the bed, heading for the window on tiptoes. Blindly, she peered into the darkness as the clouds hid the stars.

  Akhoum would have followed Jazz from the airport. There was no one better at surveillance. He had probably listened into her calls to Alistair. Tomorrow they had to talk; everything was moving too quickly. She had almost given it away herself over dinner.

  The Egyptians’ use of mathematics was rudimentary. They had introduced the earliest fully-developed base 10 numeration systems around 2,700 BCE. Numbers were written as strokes for units; a heel-bone symbolised tens, a coil of rope hundreds and a lotus plant, thousands. Other hieroglyphic symbols were used for higher powers of ten up to a million. There was no concept of place value, making larger numbers unwieldy; a million minus one required fifty-four characters. It was inconceivable that a nation with such rudimentary knowledge of math and geometry could have built a building as precise as the Great Pyramid.

  Akhoum held his breath as he caught sight of her silhouette at the window. The curve of her back was so familiar. He could almost drink in her smell, yet it was years since they had separated. Then it had all been about the Reformers. He pushed his head back into the hard leather of the headrest. Cara won every time.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Cairo, Friday early afternoon 29th March

  Francisco stuck to the plastic seat as he tried to get out
of the taxi. Cairo was unseasonably hot for March. The cacophony of sound and aromas which greeted him when he finally stepped on to the cracked and dusty pavement made him smile. The smell of flatbread rising on the makeshift barbeques mingled with the faint fragrance of lemon blossom, from the few trees struggling for life on the Cairo streets. It smelt of home, which was a comforting distraction.

  Dale had occupied most of his attention on the transatlantic flight. His yearly bonus bore no relation to his research results. The money had to be payment in kind for supporting the company, the real company - the Ghost Stealers. Yesterday’s conversations had confirmed his suspicions.

  Telling Dale about Jazz was a win-win situation. Dale would have reported back to his superiors. It was something they already knew. He was followed to Newcastle. His ruse of sending Jazz to Cairo for the memorial was a mistake. It would not stand up to scrutiny. All he could do was gain them time.

  He briefly appraised the edifice of nineteenth-century power in front of him. The words ‘Banque du Caire’ screamed from its rooftop. It was the sort of structure colonialists had built to ward off the troublesome natives, which was why the banks had moved into them. He ran up the white marble steps and swung open the glass door, entering into cathedral-sized columns of red-veined marble. The polished white marble floor recorded every step as he strolled to the under-manager’s desk.

  He smiled at the youngish man, with oily slicked-back hair, who stared back at him. “Can I help you, sir?”

  “I have a box here. I would like to see it.”

  “And the name, sir?”

  “Sotans, Jasmine Sotans.”

  The man peered at Francisco with renewed interest. “And do you have ID, Jasmine?”

  “Jasmine is the name that the box was registered in. My papers prove the box is mine. I also have the computer code to open it.”

  He retrieved the documents from his jacket pocket and handed them to his questioner, who studied the papers.

  “I see, sir; everything appears to be in order. If you would like to go into that room we will bring the box to you.” He pointed to one of the Lebanese oak doors to his right. “Would you care for some tea? We have mint and jasmine.” He spoke with the officious English accent predominant in England in the 1920s.

  “Thank you; under the circumstances, jasmine seems appropriate.” Francisco smiled. It was getting late, but there were still crowds of people waiting to do business before the bank closed. Anyone of them could be watching him. He sauntered towards the room which the under-manager had indicated.

  The white plasterboard walls with dropped ceilings bore no resemblance to the opulence of the main foyer. Their anonymity suited him. On his previous visit with his father, they had been ushered into one of the lower vaults. His father had placed three air-tight cylinders in the box. He had hoped that one day they would lead to the evidence he sought.

  Doubts crept in as he waited for it to arrive. What if the cylinders were not airtight? A leak meant that whatever was in there would be ruined.

  “Your box, sir. And I hope the jasmine tea is to your liking.” A young man, around eighteen, placed the steel box on the glass table before handing him a china cup. “I will be outside. Ring the bell when you are ready.” He pointed to the brass bell.

  “I will only be a few minutes.”

  Francisco sipped the tea, waiting for the young man to leave. As the door closed he placed the cup on the tray then pulled out a smaller case from his leather briefcase.

  His hands shook as he pressed the numbers 314159, remembering his father’s words, “Do not write the numbers down; remember it - pi without the decimal point.”

  He recalled his father’s tedious explanation. “The concept of pi first appeared in Egyptian writing around 1,650 BC. The Rhind Papyrus was written by a scribe named Ahmes. It was probably copied from a much earlier document. Ahmes wrote, ‘Cut off 1/9 of a diameter and construct a square upon the remainder; this has the same area as the circle.’ In other words, he implied that pi = 4(8/9)2 = 3.16049, which was fairly accurate.”

  Francisco stared at the original wooden box that his father had used to store the cylinders, with the words “fairly accurate” echoing in his head. His father never wasted words and the measurements of the Great Pyramid were anything but fairly accurate.

  He pulled the old copper key from his wallet and inserted it into the lock. The creaking metal proclaimed the reawakening of the past. Momentarily he drank in the musky odour. His father had breathed in that air. Resisting the temptation to reminisce, he took out the three cylinders and laid them on the table. To the naked eye, they appeared air-tight. He popped them into his briefcase, then replaced them with three identical cylinders from his smaller case.

  As he substituted the final cylinder, he noticed a piece of basalt about the size of a credit card, caught in the box’s velvet lining. Its surface was smooth except for a few indecipherable markings cut into the basalt. He slipped it into the pocket of his black jeans, then placed the old box into his bag on top of the original three cylinders before ringing the bell.

  The young man who had served him opened the door. “Can I help you, sir?”

  Francisco shook his head. “I’m done. You can take the steel container away; I won’t need it again.”

  He retrieved his wallet from his jacket and handed him a ten-dollar bill. “I didn’t have time to change money at the airport.”

  “It’s my lucky day, you are the second American to come here today. The dollar is worth more than the Egyptian pound, although not as much as the euro. Once mainland Europe adopted the euro, the French stopped coming here. They were our best customers until then.”

  Francisco nodded, his mind on his forthcoming meeting with Jazz. As he stepped outside, the buzz from his mobile made him start. He grinned; it was probably her.

  He read the caller ID, then frowned; Dale’s wife! That was unusual! He clicked on the message: “Worst news ever: Dale and Salva killed in traffic accident, hit and run.” His heart thumped as he re-read the text. Whatever he was involved in had just got very real.

  He scanned the street, teeming with people. No one stood out, yet he had a feeling that he had been followed from the airport. That was all it was, a feeling. He had not seen anyone, and his taxi had not been followed. It meant nothing. His trackers probably knew where he was headed.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Friday late afternoon, 29th March, Cairo

  Jazz’s unease had little to do with her unfamiliar surroundings. Her newly-adopted bedroom was more welcoming than her austere single bed and charity shop wardrobe in Newcastle. Francisco’s text had disturbed her. He had written several hours previously to say that his plane was on time. Even allowing for the vagaries of Cairo traffic, he should have arrived an hour ago.

  She tried to focus on the research she had done earlier. According to the Oracle – Google - the Dogon tribe’s beliefs were rooted in the Nommo landing. The stories varied. Some said there were lots of aliens, others talked of twins: Nummo and Nommo. Some references even claimed that the Dogon could trace their genealogy to Egyptian descent. Worryingly, there was also a plethora of wrong astrological information, mingled with various other stories about alien landings.

  Hassid’s brief history lesson had proved that there was nothing permanent about a perspective. Everything she thought she believed in had shifted.

  Her father had known this would happen. Cairo, teeming with people and cultures spilling into the present from centuries past, automatically challenged you. It was the reason he had wanted her to come. At least she hoped he had. Cara and Hassid had claimed that Marco’s Alzheimer was genuine. If he had had dementia, he could not have written the letter. If he hadn’t, who had, and why?

  Her attention shifted as a new email popped up on the screen. She read it quickly.

  “If it is written can it be true?

  Nommo or Nemo, phantasia or lie?

  Is Sirius the brightest star? />
  Or just another lie from afar?”

  Jazz checked the address: nameless000@matterless.com.

  She said the words out loud as she watched it disappear from her screen.

  Remembering the address, she typed it in. She wrote “who are you?” then pressed “send”.

  Seconds later the mail server demon responded with “wrong address”.

  Jazz ran the words Nommo and Nemo through her head. Cara had used the word Nemo – was it a coincidence. She stared at the screen: a photograph of her, when she was five, holding her father’s hand, drifted onto the screen. She watched it slowly atrophy.

  She banged on the mouse, but it had gone. How the hell had it got there? It wasn’t a photograph she had on file; it wasn’t even on her computer. The original was languishing in a box she hadn’t opened for years.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Jazz was still transfixed by the empty computer screen when she heard Hassid call her. Visibly shaking, she checked her appearance in the mirror, then pulled a face. Her jeans and T-shirt were too casual. She changed into a long black T-shirt dress and leggings, then fastened a large black belt which emphasised her slim waist. It boosted her confidence as she ran her fingers through her hair.

  On entering the room, she was glad she had changed. Cara’s off-white linen dress accentuated her lightly tanned arms and legs. Jazz was casual-smart, not elegant. She wished she had worn the dress she had been saving for the memorial.

  “Sorry not to see you before I left this morning; I needed to get to work early.” Cara, oblivious to her unease, handed her a glass of wine, along with an apologetic smile.

  “No need to apologise; I was late getting up.” Jazz wondered about saying something about the photograph.

  “After last night’s ET version of history, you needed the rest. You look much more relaxed today.”