‘Them?’ Ben said. ‘They came to kill us. We don’t owe them anything.’
Overhead, the burning fuel had sent a pall of black smoke into the air that had started to bleed across the sky in a long, and very distinctive, trail.
‘And thanks to that,’ he pointed up, ‘we don’t have any time to waste. It may as well be a neon sign in the sky signalling where we are. If anyone else is trying to find us, it’s going to make their job that much easier.’
Ben felt the weight of the keystone in his backpack as he edged through the corridor leading into the mountain. He’d convinced Ilhan to wait outside in case something went wrong.
The walls seemed to press in on him. He tried to keep his breathing under control; if there was one thing in particular that bothered him, it was confined spaces. That, alone, was the reason his archaeological interests had veered away from the ancient history of Egypt; he couldn’t bear the thought of pursuing a career that required navigation of the cramped tunnels and shafts that were, more often than not, the only access points to the tombs carved out of the Egyptian landscape. He could keep his natural responses in check for a short amount of time, but to do it for extended periods would have made his mind snap.
He suspected it was only his imagination, but with just the feeble light of his torch to see by it seemed the height of the roof was dropping as he moved through the dark. The other, unhelpful, function of the artificial light was to create long and rather ominous shadows on the uneven walls. Ben knew it was nothing, but it put his nerves further on edge. Adrenalin surged in his blood, an irrational quavering at the back of his mind telling him to turn and head back out to the open air. But he forced himself to push forward.
Ahead, he dared to hope he saw the torchlight diffusing in open space. He gritted his teeth and rushed through the last few feet of the tunnel, stumbling into an open cavern.
‘Ben? Are you all right?’ called Ilhan.
Looking back, Ben could see his friend silhouetted against the sky. ‘Yes! Everything’s fine! You can follow me in . . . and bring the lantern!’
Heart pounding, Ben spun slowly around, raking the light of his torch across the walls of the cavern. A long stone bench had been chipped out of the wall, and there was the remains of a hearth. A hermit found his way here – perhaps an early Christian monk, he thought. There’ll be water in wells about the base of the mountain. No reason someone shouldn’t survive out here in the wilderness by himself for a while. ‘Forty days and forty nights, even,’ he murmured. He still wasn’t allowing himself to entertain the thought that he might well have found the last resting place of the alchemist, Balinas, and his Emerald Tablet.
As Ilhan progressed along the tunnel, the brighter light of the kerosene lamp began to wash into the cavern. Ben saw scattered sherds of broken pottery and finely worked stone tools on the ground, but nothing resembling a dead alchemist, or his treasure.
It was only when Ilhan entered the cave and illuminated the enclosed space properly that Ben saw it. Chiselled into the wall immediately ahead of him were the four symbols. A horned staff. A serpent. A circle. And a crescent moon.
But it was the crescent that made his heart leap. Unlike the other shapes, which had been made by carving the outlines of the abstract forms into the wall, the entire crescent had been chipped out of the stone.
He could scarcely believe what he was seeing. Taking off his backpack, he removed the keystone.
This is it, he thought.
‘Is that what we’re looking for, Ben?’ Ilhan asked.
‘Could be,’ he replied, his voice shaking. He held the white stone up to the void in the wall. It was exactly the same size and exactly the same shape. He ran his fingers across the surface. ‘Ilhan – bring the lantern here, would you?’
Something was wrong. Ben bent and picked up one of the stone tools lying on the floor and scraped its sharp edge along what he’d at first assumed to be one of the four stone walls of the cavern.
‘Christ!’ he exclaimed.
‘What?’ Ilhan asked.
‘Clay. This is clay. Not stone. Look!’ He picked up a larger stone and smashed it against the wall. A large chunk broke off. Ben picked it up and crumbled it between his fingers. ‘Clay. This surface has been made out of clay. It’s an artificial wall.’
And, Ben thought, heart pounding, the only reason to build a false wall is if you want to hide something behind it.
As the Turk held the light closer, Ben saw that what he’d thought at first was just a natural fissure in the surface was, in fact, something else. Two narrow, parallel breaches ran vertically upwards from the ground to join in an arch overhead, enclosing the engraved shapes.
Ben bent forward and blew a stream of air into the crack. An ancient accumulation of dust was dislodged, and the breach became even more obvious. ‘This is a door!’
‘What? Where?’ asked Ilhan incredulously. ‘I don’t see anything!’
Ben could hardly believe it himself. ‘I’m sure it is. And I think I know how to open it.’
He took the white stone crescent and gently slid it into the void that appeared to be made to measure.
There was a slight resistance as Ben fitted the keystone into the slot. He pushed on it gently. The cavern was filled with the gratingly loud sound of two hard surfaces grinding together, followed by a muffled thump.
‘What on earth was that?’ shouted Ilhan, alarmed.
‘A latch. I think.’ Ben pressed his shoulder into the stone and pushed, his boots skidding on the gravelly floor. He felt it begin to give way. ‘Give me a hand!’
‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’ Ilhan asked nervously as he joined Ben.
‘Yes. Kind of. I think so. Here . . . help me push.’
The two men grunted as they laid into the door. It shifted imperceptibly. ‘I don’t think we can do this on our own,’ Ilhan said.
‘Yes! Yes we can!’ Ben cried. ‘Again!’
Once more they pushed with all their might, and once again it moved, but only a frustratingly small amount.
‘OK. Different approach!’ Ben put his back to the door and braced his feet against the floor. Ilhan followed his lead. ‘Now, PUSH!’
He bellowed as he shoved backwards with all the strength of his legs, his thigh muscles burning. The rough surface dug into his back and the tendons in his neck strained as he kept up the pressure. Legs quaking, Ben thought he was going to have to give up when he felt it begin to yield. ‘Quick!’ he shouted, grabbing Ilhan’s arm. ‘It’s giving way! Get back!’
The two men tumbled towards the back wall of the cavern as the clay door swung open, revealing the hidden room beyond. Ben and Ilhan buried their faces in the crooks of their arms as the cavern filled with a dense cloud of fine dust.
As the haze began to dissipate, Ben looked up.
37
Sinai Peninsula, Egypt
As soon as the ink-black night began to lighten with the pearly grey of early dawn, Essie rose from the cocoon she’d made for herself under a pile of canvas sheeting she’d found folded in the corner of the helicopter’s cabin. The sub-zero temperatures of the desert at night had turned the metal fuselage into an icebox, and although she knew it would have been much more comfortable – and warmer – if she’d slept by the fire, minor discomfort was preferable to a night spent in close proximity to Adam.
She stoked the fire and brewed herself a cup of tea as the three men roused themselves.
‘Did you get what we need?’ asked Garvé, his eyes bleary with sleep.
‘Yes – I think so,’ she replied. ‘Won’t know until we get up there. Captain Knight?’
‘Ma’am?’ the airman responded jocularly.
‘Are you planning to stay here to guard the helicopter again today?’
‘Actually,’ Garvé interjected, casting a sharp glance in Essie’s direction. ‘I insist you stay. We can’t risk losing our only way out of this place.’
‘Quite right,’ Knight said.
‘I’ll stay put here. You can call out if you need me. It’s so still and quiet, my guess is we could have a conversation from one side of this valley to the other without raising our voices.’
‘Fine. Then, Josef, I’ll need to ask you and Adam to please help bring the excavation equipment up the mountain. I’ll take what I can. But once you’re done with breakfast, meet me at the chapel. I’m going back there now to take some elevations and see if I can spot the cave.’
‘So you think we’ll need to dig for it?’
‘I don’t know. But I’d rather be prepared than not.’ She stood and hoisted a khaki backpack onto her shoulders.
‘Not staying for breakfast?’ Knight raised the pot he was stirring on the fire. ‘More baked beans!’
‘Not for me, thanks,’ said Essie. She held up what remained of the unleavened bread the Bedouin woman had brought her the night before. It was a bit dry and rubbery, but still delicious. ‘This’ll do me fine.’
He shrugged. ‘Your funeral!’
Endowed as she was with a generally sceptical outlook on most things in life, the ease with which Essie spotted the entrance to the cave through the theodolite’s viewfinder planted a seed of doubt in her mind.
It had aligned perfectly with the measurements she’d taken of the three stars in Orion’s Belt the night before. But it was so clearly visible, even to the naked eye, that she couldn’t believe that Balinas would have chosen a hiding place that could be so readily found.
The reason she didn’t dismiss it outright was that she knew the mountains around the monastery were riddled with caves and retreats used for millennia by hermits and ascetics. As far as anyone else was concerned, the one she’d identified had nothing to distinguish it from the hundreds of other caverns on the mountain.
But as she trudged up the slope, the nagging voice in her head bothered her. The massive peak of Mt Sinai had been attracting pilgrims for thousands of years and many of the holy people who’d sought refuge in the Sinai had been canonised. If the cavern she’d identified had been home to one of these now venerated Christians, there would have been the remote region’s equivalent of tour groups arriving regularly to worship there. Any remains left behind by Balinas would be long gone.
As they grew closer, her optimism was buoyed by the fact that there was no obvious path leading to the cave; if it had been visited over the years, it hadn’t been done with a regularity that had left a mark on the mountain slope, unlike the route snaking up Mt Sinai to the small chapel at its summit, which was significant enough to be visible from where Essie was – at least half a mile away.
She reached the entrance to the cavern long before her two companions, who were trudging up the mountain in her wake.
Essie peered inside. Beyond the narrow entrance, the cavern opened out into a high-ceilinged space that was roughly circular, with the exception of a single, flat-faced aspect immediately opposite the entrance. Along one wall was a rough bench hewn out of the rock, with a charred patch on the wall beside it that would have been deposited by a small cooking fire. Although the light in the cave was dim, in places she could see that the walls had been painted with Greek script and naive depictions of Biblical stories; no doubt the work of the holy men or women who’d chosen this place as a sanctuary.
‘Anything there?’ puffed Garvé from further back down the slope.
There was nothing to indicate the cave had also, at one point or another, accommodated an ancient alchemist. ‘Nothing yet,’ she shouted over her shoulder as she ventured further into the cave.
She put the kerosene lamp down on the floor and struck a match to light it. As the wick caught the flame, the cave was illuminated with a warm light.
That’s odd.
The flat wall facing the entrance was intersected by a large crack running from the ceiling to the floor. That wasn’t what caught her eye, though. It wasn’t unusual to see fissures in stone. But the edges of the opening she was looking at were crumbly, like stale cake, and the wall’s surface appeared strangely powdery.
She touched it with her fingertips. That’s not stone, she thought. It’s clay!
She held up the lantern and inspected the wall in more detail. There was something else that was peculiar – something she hadn’t noticed when she’d first entered the cavern. A collection of abstract shapes had been carved into the clay. She recognised them immediately – the circle, staff, serpent and crescent she’d been pursuing since Topkapı. Of the four, three were rendered in outline only. Just the crescent shape had been chiselled out in its entirety.
She heard laboured breathing behind her as Garvé and Penney entered the cave. ‘Is that it?’ the Frenchman asked.
‘Possibly,’ Essie responded. Although she didn’t want to sound too hopeful, her heart was racing.
With shaking hands, she took the keystone out of her backpack and pressed it into the inscribed shape. It was a perfect fit. She pushed a little harder, and with a grinding sound, the clay wall moved.
Garvé and Penney joined her. ‘Come on, help me push! One, two, three . . .’ she said. They pushed together and the panel crashed and tumbled into the room beyond.
Coughing, Essie covered her mouth and nose with her sleeve and stumbled across the fallen rubble.
The air cleared, and she saw what lay in the hidden room beyond.
38
Sinai Peninsula, Egypt
She wasn’t sure what, exactly, she’d been expecting. But it certainly hadn’t been this.
Nothing.
No dead alchemist. And, most importantly, no Emerald Tablet.
Essie’s head was spinning. She felt as if she was going to faint.
‘What? What’s in there?’ gabbled Penney. ‘Tell me!’
‘Not a thing,’ replied Garvé, who was standing at Essie’s shoulder.
‘No! That can’t be right!’ the Englishman howled, stumbling into the open space. ‘There’s got to be something. What about that?’ he asked, pointing at the back wall of the hidden room.
The rough stone had been ground down to a flat surface engraved with a neatly carved inscription in Greek text.
‘What does it say? Quickly!’ Penney snapped.
Essie gathered herself, the shock transforming into a spinning ball of anxiety in her gut. Stay calm. He’s right. Perhaps it points us somewhere else. It’s not hopeless. Yet. ‘Judging by the letter forms, it’s Byzantine,’ she said. She ran her finger across the symbols, her lips moving as she translated the text in her head.
When she reached the end, she released the breath she’d been holding in with an explosive sigh. ‘Well, I’m afraid that’s it. It’s not here.’
‘What? No! That can’t be right!’ whined Penney.
‘What does it say?’ asked Garvé in a chill monotone.
‘We’ve been deceived. Or, I should say, I’ve been deceived.’ She translated the inscription aloud.
By the grace of thrice great Hermes,
and those who seek to learn from the seat of knowledge,
Balinas, master of the wise and foremost of the prophets,
was blessed with a greater gift of God and of Wisdom
than all those who came after Hermes.
Those true disciples who seek that gift will find truth.
But those who seek with eyes that are blinded by earthly desires
here will find only an empty tomb.
By the orders of Justinian the Great, the vessel was drained,
its blessings carried by angels to the one, true, holy mountain.
The two men were silent. ‘So, that’s it,’ she said. ‘If it ever was here, it’s long gone.’
Penney’s eyes bulged out of their sockets as his rage fought to find an outlet. He rounded on Essie. ‘You STUPID BITCH!’ he shrieked.
‘Adam! That’s enough!’ Garvé ordered.
‘I’m ruined! My uncle only backed me on this because he thought you knew what you were doing! Now it’s all fucked! And all because we put our fate
in the hands of a jumped-up secretary!’
‘I said, that’s enough!’
‘I didn’t do anything wrong,’ said Essie quietly. ‘I didn’t make any mistakes. I just followed the leads that were left to send us in the wrong direction.’
It didn’t make her feel any better, but as she sifted through what had happened, it began to make sense. Justinian had been Emperor of Byzantium, and it was on his orders that the monastery had been built at the foot of Jebel Musa. That ensured the mountain would forever be identified with the Biblical Mt Sinai. As the capital of Byzantium was Constantinople and Topkapı his palace, Justinian would have known of Balinas and his secrets. And as a vigorous defender of the Christian faith, he believed alchemy to be a threat to the orthodox beliefs he championed. In 529 AD he abolished the study of all the ancient sciences and embarked on a campaign of persecution of all faiths other than Nicaean Christianity. Essie could imagine him agreeing to cooperate with a plot to hide Balinas and his legacy.
I guess I can take some small comfort in the knowledge that I’m the first person since then to crack the code and take it far enough to find the red herring Justinian left here. Operative word there being ‘small’, she thought. But there was no way of sugar-coating it – Essie’s failure made her feel ill. ‘Unfortunately it leaves us at a dead end.’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Garvé. ‘Essie – you’ve known me long enough now that you should know I rarely embark on something like this without a backup plan.’
39
Negev Desert, Israel
Ben couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
The room glowed green as if cast in light shining through a stained-glass window.
The Emerald Tablet Page 26