by Will Adams
He'd woken, the following morning, to a media firestorm. The tomb of Akhenaten and Nefertiti was by itself quite enough to draw all the world's major networks; but someone had leaked his theories too, and that had taken the story to another level. Reputable journalists were excitably reporting as fact that Akhenaten and Nefertiti had been Adam and Eve, for how else could details of their last resting place have been described so precisely in the Book of the Cave of Treasures. And they were claiming that the riddle of the Exodus was conclusively solved too: that the Jews had been Amarna's monotheists forced to flee Egypt by Akhenaten's reactionary successors.
But the backlash had started at once, historians mocking the putative link between Amarna and Eden, claiming that the Book of the Cave of Treasures had been written two millennia after Akhenaten, making any connection purely coincidental. And religious scholars had weighed in too, ridiculing the notion that Adam, Abraham, Joseph and the other patriarchs had all been Akhenaten, pointing out the Creation and Flood accounts predated Amarna, insisting that Genesis wasn't a concertina simply to be squeezed that way.
But it was Yusuf Abbas, secretary general of the Supreme Council for Antiquities, who'd had the most sobering effect. First, he'd dismissed Knox as a glory-hunting sensationalist, not a serious archaeologist. Then he'd observed that the Amarna tombs had been inhabited by pioneering Christian monks in the early centuries AD, making them a far more plausible conduit for any knowledge of Akhenaten held by the Gnostics of Borg el-Arab. And once you took their mosaic out of the equation, everything else was mere speculation. Even Knox had to acknowledge it was a plausible explanation. And, just like that, what had briefly seemed clear was opaque once more, fertile territory for academics to squabble over for the next hundred years.
As for the Reverend Ernest Peterson, one night in custody had done for him. According to Naguib, he'd not so much confessed to his crimes as boasted about them, bragging of his sacred mission to find the face of Christ and bring the world to the light. He'd admitted responsibility for Omar's death, and told how he'd tried to kill Knox again and again. How he'd gladly do it all over. A Soldier of the Lord, he called himself. A Soldier of the Lord who was about to spend the rest of his life in an Egyptian gaol. Knox wasn't a vindictive man, but there were times he had to laugh.
Augustin had visited the afternoon before. He hadn't stayed long; he'd needed to get his new girlfriend Claire back to Alexandria. Knox had taken to her at once. Tall and gentle and shy, yet with an inner strength, a million miles from the glamour of Augustin's usual conquests. Yet in all the years he'd known him, he'd never seen his French friend so obviously smitten, so proud of another person.
Gaille's eyes had closed. He watched her for a while, thinking she'd fallen asleep. But then she suddenly opened them again and reached out a hand. 'Don't leave me,' she said.
'No.'
She closed her eyes again. She looked at peace. She looked beautiful. He checked his watch. He had a full day on. The police wanted to talk to him again. Yusuf Abbas had summoned him to the SCA's Cairo HQ to explain himself. And rival newspaper groups from around the world had been calling non-stop, bidding eye-watering amounts for his exclusive.
Let them bid.
He pulled a paperback from his pocket and settled down to read.
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