The Ghost Reapers

by Jackie Ferris

  Abdul waited but the forthcoming silence forced him to add: “Let people know about the Turin Shroud. The papyri prove what happened. The evidence relating to the Shroud confirms it. We are talking extra-terrestrial – sorry - dimensional. The story about Nommo may not be true, but some sort of dimensional warp happened. I don’t understand it but I believe it. We have a short window. If you don’t act now it will be too late. Our past, our real past will be lost forever.”

  “I heard you.” Idris strode across to his computer and clicked a link. “I have taken precautions. The information has gone viral. There are enormous amounts of instant hits coming from Africa. This isn’t about Egypt, it is about Africa.”

  As Idris hung up he pressed another number. “Zach, it is time.”

  Abdul gestured to Akhoum. “Have you got YouTube?”

  Akhoum nodded back to him.

  “What does it say?”

  “Nothing you would be interested in. - Adele has a new CD coming out.” Akhoum rubbed his eyes. “Wrong… this stuff coming down about the papyri has just gone viral.”

  “Read it,” Abdul snapped back, resisting the temptation to snatch the iPad and read it himself.

  “‘Our past is based on lies: lies from Jerusalem, lies from the Vatican. Another cover up - another mystery, I was intimately involved with both for more than twenty years. The evidence exists to prove it. As you read this helicopters are flying over the village of Al Khalil. People there are taking photographs of the helicopters to prove what I say.

  “‘Cardinal Idris.’”

  “Can anyone see the helicopters?” Abdul shielded his eyes as he looked up. He could not see them but he could hear them.

  Abba Isou pulled out his mobile. “I will tell my father to get the villagers to take photos. Some of them took the plane coming down. Actually I have one.”

  “Great, send it to me. I will stick it on YouTube.” Cara got to her feet. She could hear the helicopters.

  Abba Isou grinned back at Akhoum. “I posted it, along with a selfie of myself with the plane and the villagers.” He spoke in perfect English, much to Jazz’s surprise. “They have to take this seriously.”

  “They will; your photographs will ensure it. Alistair won’t dare strike. The eyes of the world will be on him.”

  Abdul was beginning to relax. Yes, he really might see his wife again.

  Francisco pointed skywards. “Here they come.”

  Everyone held up their mobiles, and snapped the incriminating images.

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Alistair watched the advance guard of helicopters approach the village on his iPad, along with the rest of the world. The internet was haemorrhaging everything he held dear. It was only a matter of time before the secret was revealed. He could not attack the village while people watched it over the internet. Idris’s leak from the Vatican was the most serious. The Vatican’s mafia might shut him up before more got out, but somehow he doubted it. He could suppress one leak; multiple leaks from multiple credible sources were impossible.

  He swallowed hard as the final betrayal emerged on the screen. “I, Rabbi Zachary Kramer, hereby attest that Moses did not lead the Hebrews out of Egypt. It was Nefertiti, an Egyptian queen, who led her people into a new land. Her knowledge about our ancient past has remained hidden from mankind for more than ten thousand years, perhaps longer. It is not up to me to reveal the secret. That must come from others. I can say that the Moses legend was created by Egyptians. It was elaborated on by men who did not want it to be known that a woman led them out of Egypt. They knew nothing of the truth; they had only their need to distance themselves from Egypt, a fear which Nefertiti had sown in them. The evidence exists to prove my claims.”

  Alistair moaned as he felt the dead rose petal in his waistcoat pocket. The waistcoat was hot even in the air-conditioned cabin of the helicopter, but he had worn it for comfort.

  “The Third Temple has fallen. Call the helicopters off.”

  “Sir, are you okay? There is no Third Temple. The Jews had two temples, not three. The last one fell shortly after Christ was crucified.”

  “The Third Temple is not a physical structure, it lives in the hearts and minds of Jews everywhere. That life is now extinguished. My mother was a Jew. My father refused to allow her to practice: even so, my mother read me Bible stories when I was young. I loved the story of the baby Moses.

  “Of course I later learned the truth… but truth and belief are worlds apart. When I was young, I believed.”

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  An hour later

  Jazz sat next to the others in Abba Isou’s house. His wife had served them mint tea and delicious honey biscuits. Everyone ate, but their attention was on the elephant in the room.

  It was almost an hour since the helicopters had beaten a retreat. Statements were ripping through cyberspace about the validity or otherwise of Idris and Zach’s claims. There were massive counter-claims from the authorities. Akhoum and Cara were streaming YouTube and Twitter, but everyone’s thoughts were on the unopened jar.

  “Are we going to break it open, or just stare at it?” Francisco’s impatience finally spilled over.

  “We must. Even if it destroys the evidence, we need to know what’s in there.” Cara glanced at Abdul, who was rubbing his stomach, trying not to return her questioning gaze. He was half thinking of the lamb dinner he would eat tonight. His son’s death would not be in vain. His wife would know that. “Open the seal and then we will have the last tangible link with the past.”

  “What about the treasures hidden under the Sphinx? The last papyrus claimed there were a lot.” Jazz was reluctant to break the spell of the jar and the mystery of what it might hold.

  “The Ancient Egyptians destroyed everything, millennia before Nefertiti was born. Alistair’s documents, which relate to the contents of the Sphinx’s chamber, are copies of copies. Hawwa’s documents would have been destroyed in the bombing of the bookshop. Alistair did not care about my son. Perhaps he will now.”

  “So what we have here is the only evidence we can show?” Jazz could not hide her disappointment as she pointed to the jar. “They’ll ridicule it, just like they did with the Shroud. Someone will carbon date it and say it’s only a 1,000 years old.”

  Francisco pulled a face. “We have the Great Pyramid. The mountain of circumstantial evidence will become significant in the light of the new revelations.” His passionate retort made her wonder who he was trying to convince.

  “People will claim that Nefertiti made up the Nommo story, even if they carbon date the papyrus to her time. It was made up to explain the unexplained. Once the experts find that out, everything else will fall apart. Crystal skull gazers have talked about the Pyramid and the facts associated with it for years. No one pays any attention. Our evidence will domino into oblivion.” Abdul grimaced.

  “How can it? You just have to look at the Great Pyramid.” Jazz swallowed, trying to repress her nagging doubts.

  “It’s a crumbling edifice, drowning in a necropolis of tomb theories from Egyptologists. A couple of papyri will not change the weight of Jewish, Christian and Islamic belief. People have too much invested in it.”

  “Hawwa has evidence.” Francisco gave Abdul a searching look.

  “Did have. Everything was destroyed when the shop went up in flames. We kept the information in a vault under the floor. If anything was left, Alistair’s minions would have swept it clean. Everything else is in the hands of the Vatican, some Jews and a few Islamic clerics. Not forgetting the information Alistair holds. Even if we had access to it, none of it predates Nefertiti.”

  “What about the geometry argument?” Cara asked.

  “Most of that is on the internet. People have them down as cranks. A lot is resting on what’s in this jar.” Abdul nodded towards it, as Cara picked up her iPad and aimed it at the pottery. “Then we need to record this. We need all the evidence we can get. That is, if someone is going to break the seal.”
/>   They looked at one another. “I’ll do it.” Jazz stared pointedly at Francisco as she added, “Dad would want me to.”

  She stepped forward, then stopped, wondering how she would open it.

  “This should do it.” Abba Isou pulled a dagger from beneath his robe “Hit it hard with the blunt end. It is made of ebony, so it won’t break.” He gestured, showing her how to do it.

  As the seal ripped, she pulled her head back, trying to escape the stale air of millennia that filled her nostrils.

  “What’s in it?” Akhoum spoke for everyone.

  Her silence prompted Francisco to take the jar from her. He lifted it, then half-turned it upside down.

  A rolled up cloth, yellow with age, slid on to the terracotta tiled floor.

  Jazz held it up to the light.

  “Why would anyone put an old bit of cloth in a jar with nothing on it?” She spread it on the sofa so they could inspect it as Cara snapped photographs.

  “Is there nothing else in the jar?”

  Francisco answered Akhoum by tipping the jar upside down. A tablet of clay about the size of a desk calculator fell out. He twisted to catch it, and winced as pain from the burnt skin on his back tore into him.

  “It’s written by an Essene.”

  “Read it.” Abdul demanded.

  “Give me a second to translate. I’m a little rusty.” He stared at it; the pain from the burns was affecting his concentration. “Okay, here goes. ‘He who looks with the eye sees nothing’.”

  “What does it mean?” Cara turned away from the cloth towards Akhoum, who had half an eye on YouTube.

  Jazz swallowed hard, hoping it wasn’t something her father had written. Doubts were suffocating her. She asked herself why he would do something like that when he was right about everything else. A minute ago the evidence was overwhelming; now it was slipping away from them.

  “If an Essene wrote it, it’s not that old.” Akhoum’s response added to the general gloom descending on everyone. “Second or third century BC; it has nothing to with the Egyptians.”

  Abdul shook his head. “Some people believe one of the Essene sects was a derivative group from Nefertiti. Nefertiti knew about the Nommo story, ergo others must have before her. The cloth could be much older than the tablet. An Essene could have added the inscription so that others knew what it was.” Abdul tried to stay positive, hoping that his son had not died for a blank piece of cloth.

  “Why? Anyone can see what it is: an old piece of cloth with nothing on it.” Cara voiced everyone’s fears.

  “Why put the tablet with it? Why would an Essene make the inscription? They wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls. In case anyone needs reminding, they validated the Jewish religion.” Jazz’s frustrations, along with her doubts, were multiplying.

  “Popular belief credits the Essenes with authorship of the Scrolls. Until they were discovered in 1947, the oldest Hebrew texts dated back to the ninth century AD. I imagine the Scrolls were well hidden for a reason. It is not only the ancient Egyptians who were guilty of a cover-up.”

  Jazz smiled; a kernel of an idea was sprouting as Abdul continued to explain.

  “Officially the Scrolls date from a few centuries BC to 68 AD. None of them predates Israel’s sojourn in Babylon. The only Scroll which throws up questions about the Israelis version of their past is the Copper Scroll. Discovered in Cave Three in 1952, it remains an enigma to this day.

  The copper is almost pure: 99.9%, with minute traces of tin, iron and arsenic. The composition is pretty much identical to the copper used during the eighteenth dynasty in Egypt. In those days only the Egyptians knew how to write on copper. It was an extremely valuable commodity.”

  “Meaning that the content of scroll is really important?”

  Abdul nodded to Jazz. “It is a list of treasure. Taken literally, the amount of gold and silver listed is a quarter of the total gold smelted until the first century AD.”

  “That can’t be right.” Francisco rubbed his chin. “Yet why make it up and write it on something so valuable?”

  Abdul nodded, warming to his captivated audience. “Unlike most scholars, who believe the ‘K’ means ca, and refers to the Biblical Hebrew talent, the British metallurgist Robert Feather thought the units of measurement were Egyptian. The ancient Egyptians developed a system of weights specifically for precious metals, based on the kite, or qedet. In today’s measures it has an equivalent weight of nine to ten grams. The Israeli ca is around thirty-five kilograms, almost four times that of the Egyptian measure. If the Ancient Egyptian measure is used, the inventory adds up to twenty-six kilograms (fifty-seven pounds) of gold and fourteen kilograms (thirty pounds) of silver – a far more reasonable, yet still substantial, amount of money. In today’s market it’s around a million dollars’ worth of gold and ten thousand dollars’ worth of silver.

  “If Feather is correct, the Scroll, which dates to 150 BC and 70 AD, must be a copy of an earlier document written by an Egyptian.”

  “The Moses story mentions a golden calf. It could be a reference to the amount of treasure Nefertiti brought out of Egypt.”

  “Nice theory; unfortunately we have no proof.” Francisco gritted his teeth; the pain in his back was getting worse.

  “Proof is an ambiguous chameleon. When the Copper Scroll first came to light, many Jewish people were afraid that connections to Egypt would be made. John Allegro, a researcher at Oxford University, was given the job of translation. When he tried to publish his findings, the Israelis forbade it. In 1960, eight years after the Scroll was discovered, Allegro broke with protocol and published. His superiors, Roland de Vaux and Józef Milik, denounced the translation, although, eventually, they published it.

  “Jews insist the Scroll refers to buried treasure under the First Temple. That is possible, although highly unlikely. It is debatable whether the First Temple ever existed. On top of that, the Jewish measurement for the gold makes the amount absurd.” Abdul wiped the sweat from his brow.

  “Are you claiming that the Copper Scroll is independent evidence that the Essenes could trace their roots back to Nefertiti?” Francisco demanded. ‘Because if you are that’s impossible –they were a Jewish sect.’

  “The Jews can trace their origins back to Nefertiti, Francisco. Their names may have changed through the millennia but I will tell anyone who wants to listen that they were Nefertiti’s descendants.”

  Jazz glanced at the cloth, then looked at Cara. “You took a photograph?”

  “Two or three; they aren’t that good. The light was an issue.”

  “Do you mind showing them to us?”

  Cara flicked the iPad. “It’s a blank piece of cloth; there’s nothing on it.”

  “In the fourteenth century, no one could see the double negative on the Turin Shroud. The inscription said our eyes could not see what is hidden. I was hoping the camera might have turned up something. I was wrong.” She was deflated.

  “No you weren’t, Jazz, you are brilliant: everything, as always, is not what it seems.” Francisco took out a camera from his jacket pocket. It was the size of a small credit card.

  “Sometimes researching dark matter comes in useful.”

  “Hold the cloth up, Dad would like that.”

  Francisco clicked away as she held it, then looked at the camera before he sent it to Cara’s iPad. “We are in this together. Would you like to show everyone the attachment, Cara?”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh my God, just look at this.” She held up the screen.

  “People can argue about the validity of the papyri, they can’t argue with this.” Akhoum was the first to speak.

  “An image of the Sphinx, the Pyramid, a black man and a reptilian man-beast surrounded by water.” Jazz voiced what they were staring at.

  “It’s Kasha and Nommo; look, there are no other pyramids. This was made thousands of years before the other pyramids were built. No one can argue with this. The images are impregnated onto the cloth.” Abdul was beginning to see
a future.

  Jazz shook her head. “We can’t go that far; we can’t say its Kasha and Nommo.”

  “Why not?” Francisco demanded.

  “If you didn’t know Christ existed, you wouldn’t know who the image on the Turin Shroud was.”

  Francisco was puzzled. “I thought Nommo and Kasha did not exist. I believed they were manifestations of the dimensional warp, to help people explain what they could not understand. Yet this shroud is proof that they did.”

  “Not necessarily, it merely proves that something extra- dimensional happened.” Jazz winked.

  Abdul pulled a face. “Jazz is right, their existence is insignificant; but the shroud proves that extra-dimensional material exists; these are echoes, ghost echoes.”

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  One day later

  The hotel room’s nondescript yellow walls were adorned with paintings of flowers. The commercial artist had attempted to make them float in the air. The result was a slightly alien feel. Under the circumstances, Jazz thought it appropriate.

  Before going to bed a few hours earlier she had switched off anything that looked like a communication device, to ensure she slept. Now wide awake, she had turned on the TV, to see the Vatican issuing all kind of denials about Idris and Zach’s allegations.

  They had agreed that Abdul would make their first statement about the Pyramid Shroud. He would also talk about Hawwa and Nommo, naming names in both organisations.

  Cara and Akhoum had no desire to be involved further, and had left for the airport as soon as they reached Cairo. Abdul had briefly considered telling Cara who her father was, then decided some secrets were best kept as secrets. He had no idea that she already knew.

  Jazz looked up from her seat as she heard the knock. Francisco smiled as she opened the door. “I ordered room service: croissants, coffee, bagels and fresh orange juice. It should be here any minute, just in time to hear Abdul speak.”