by Chloe Palov
‘Which begs the question, where did Moses learn such a feat? I have long suspected that Moses was not only an Egyptian, but a trained magician at the pharaoh’s court.’
‘Moses, the guy who led the Jews out of bondage and commanded the ragtag Hebrew tribes as they wandered the wilderness for forty years, that Moses was an Egyptian magician?’
He nodded.
‘You know what I think, Mr Cædmon Aisquith? I think you’ve had way too much gin. For starters, the Egyptians were a bunch of pagans. They had – what – like a couple hundred gods.’
‘Not nearly as many as all that,’ he quietly corrected, well aware that the theory he was about to propose would scandalize many a churchgoer. ‘Would it surprise you to learn that the ancient Egyptians were the first people to practise monotheism? Known as Atenism, for several decades it was the state religion, the pharaoh Akhenaton officially declaring that Aten was the only god in the heavens.’ Leaning forward, he propped his forearms on his thighs, the point he was about to make key to his argument. ‘Aten was not the supreme god; Aten was the only god. Furthermore, I believe that Moses, or Tuthmos as he was known at the Egyptian court, was not only an avid follower of Atenism, but he also fused his beliefs into those of the fledgling Hebrew faith.’
Edie stared at him, saucer-eyed. ‘What are you saying – that Yahweh and the Egyptian god Aten were one and the same?’
21
Unwilling to penetrate the murky depths, Cædmon purposefully equivocated. ‘I am merely saying that there are areas of overlap between the two religions.’
‘Such as… ?’
‘Such as the Ten Commandments, which are suspiciously similar to the behavioural mandates set out in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a work that predates the biblical Exodus. And let us not forget circumcision, an unusual practice to say the least. Did you know that circumcision was a ritual procedure amongst the Egyptian royal family and their courtiers? Other similarities include the stricture against graven images, a hereditary priesthood, the sacrifice of animals and the use of a golden ark to contain the might and majesty of what can only be called a very jealous god.’ His case made, Cædmon folded his arms across his chest. ‘Would you not agree that such similarities give one pause?’
‘Yeah, well… Right now I need to pause and catch my breath because I’m still grappling with Moses being an Egyptian magician.’ Edie took a noisy slurp of her G and T, loudly chomping on an ice cube. ‘I’m sorry, Cædmon, but I’m having a hard time accepting that Judaism descended from some long-lost Egyptian religion.’
‘I’m not speaking of Judaism as it is practised today, that being a religion primarily created in the sixth century BC during the Babylonian Captivity. I’m speaking of the Hebrew religion as it was practised from the time of the Exodus up until the Babylonian Captivity, a span of roughly seven hundred years.’
‘So, which came first, the worship of Aten or the worship of Yahweh?’
‘Ah, the chicken-and-egg conundrum. In the same way that Roman religious practices influenced early Christianity, I believe that the enslaved Jews in Egypt influenced, and perhaps even inspired, the worship of Aten. The Old Testament makes mention of Moses having been instructed in “all the wisdom of the Egyptians”.’
‘What exactly does that mean, “all the wisdom of the Egyptians”?’
The question immense in its scope, Cædmon considered his reply. ‘The prescribed Egyptian education included the study of crystals and metals, necromancy and the art of divination, knowledge that Moses put to good use when creating the fabled Stones of Fire.’
‘But I saw the breastplate with my own eyes. It was just –’ she shrugged ‘– twelve jewels and some bits of old gold.’
‘Yes, but it’s those very jewels that give the Stones of Fire its immense power.’
‘Okay, I’ll nibble. What’s so special about those twelve jewels?’
‘Allow me to preface my answer by saying that gemstones are not the inert, inanimate objects that most people assume them to be. Indeed, gemstones, as well as crystals, are energy conduits. In Asian cultures such energy is known as chi.’
‘I have a girlfriend who’s into crystals. She swears that if you hold a crystal long enough in your hand you’ll feel a vibratory pulse. Personally, I consider that awfully New Agey.’
‘Not if you consider the fact that crystals are used to boost radio waves in a process known as piezoelectricity. In a similar process, the ancients used gemstones and crystals to both generate and enhance energy. A high priest steeped in the mysteries of ancient Egypt, Moses used his vast knowledge of gems and crystals when creating the Stones of Fire. I would even go so far as to say that the breastplate is nothing less than a form of ancient technology, each stone specifically selected for its unique vibratory properties.’
Edie snorted. ‘You’re kidding, right? I’d hardly call an old breastplate a technological wonder.’
‘Ah, but that’s exactly what the breastplate was, and perhaps still is. Because SONY isn’t stamped on it, that doesn’t make it any less sophisticated than the mobile phone in my breast pocket,’ he countered, patting said pocket. ‘The Stones of Fire, even by twenty-first-century standards, is state-of-the-art.’
She mulled that over for a paltry half-second before uttering a non-committal ‘Huh.’
Reaching across to the cabinet that separated the two double beds, Edie grabbed a pink and white bag of Oreo cookies. Using both hands, she ripped it open, slid free a tray of factory-packed, chemical-laced brown biscuits and offered him one.
‘No, thank you,’ he politely demurred
Her lips curled in a come-hither smile. ‘Ah, come on, Cædmon. Try it, you’ll like it.’
Realizing how easily Adam had been swayed, he took a creme-filled biscuit.
‘Quite tasty,’ he remarked a few seconds later.
With a twist of her wrists, Edie unscrewed the two halves of her biscuit. To his lurid fascination, she proceeded to lap at the white creme with her tongue. ‘OK, let’s suppose for argument’s sake that Moses was a member of the Egyptian priesthood. Why would he lead a bunch of Hebrew slaves out of Egypt?’
‘Your question presumes that the Jews, and only the Jews, left Egypt.’
‘Well, who else would have gone with them?’
‘All those in grave danger of losing their lives.’ He let that sink in a moment before saying, ‘Specifically, the entire court of Akhenaton.’
She lowered her cookie. ‘Come again?’
‘What you must understand is that when the pharaoh Akhenaton imposed a monotheistic faith upon the inhabitants of Egypt, it was nothing short of a religious revolution. Not unlike the furore that ensued when Martin Luther put nail to paper. Suddenly, overnight, the pantheon of familiar gods and goddesses – Isis, Set, Osiris – was null and void.’
‘I’m guessing that what some considered a new religion, others considered out ’n’ out heresy,’ Edie correctly surmised.
‘Indeed. When Akhenaton died, the practitioners of the old religion swooped down upon the royal court. And with a vengeance, I might add. Virtually all traces of Akhenaton and Aten were wiped from the annals of Egyptian history.’
‘What happened to those Egyptians who still believed in Aten?’
‘They fled Egypt in the dead of night. A vast migration of slaves and nobility.’
‘Well, that would explain the passage in the Book of Exodus where the Hebrew slaves supposedly took “jewels of silver and jewels of gold” with them when they fled Egypt. I mean how the heck did a bunch of slaves get that kind of treasure?’
He nodded, surprised that she was so well-versed in scripture. ‘In truth, it was not the Hebrew slaves who possessed such wealth, but rather the Egyptian nobility who accompanied them on their flight.’
‘Moses leading the way to the land of Canaan.’
‘So I believe.’
‘While it makes for the greatest story never told, I still need more proof before I chuck away
years of Sunday-school indoctrination.’ She glanced at the electric alarm clock on the cabinet. ‘Time for the six o’clock newscast,’ she announced, lunging off the bed.
Aiming the remote at the TV, she hit the ‘Power’ button. A suited woman sporting a blond bob appeared on the screen.
‘In a scene reminiscent of the pandemonium that struck Washington in the wake of 9/11, museum goers at the National Gallery of Art came under terrorist fire earlier today, a gunman shooting into the underground concourse area.’
As the talking head read her script, a grainy video of the ‘pandemonium’ appeared on the screen, the footage clearly shot by an amateur hand. And a shaking hand at that, there being a decidedly frenetic quality to the images. To Cædmon’s relief, neither he nor Edie was visible in the video.
Slack-jawed, Edie turned to him. ‘They’ve got it all wrong. It wasn’t a terrorist attack.’ Reaching for the remote, she quickly changed channels.
‘The shooting spree in the museum’s concourse was part of a well-coordinated terrorist attack, a car bomb detonating yards away from the 4th Street entrance. No fatal casualties were reported, although several emergency workers suffered severe burns.’
‘Oh God,’ she murmured as she watched the accompanying video of the smouldering blast site. Then, her eyes filling with tears, she turned to him. ‘That’s the Jeep. The same Jeep I wanted us to –’
‘Don’t say it,’ he roughly ordered, equally shocked by the charred wreckage on the screen. ‘By a fortuitous stroke of luck, we escape the demon.’
‘That’s crap, and you know it! They’re not going to stop until they find us.’ She shoved a balled fist into her mouth, her eyes glued to the television screen.
In silence, they watched the remainder of the news, Edie muting the volume when the sports came on.
‘Don’t you think it’s odd there was no mention of Padgham’s murder? There are three dead bodies at the Hopkins Museum, yet there’s no mention of it on the nightly news.’
‘I presume the bodies haven’t been discovered.’
She shook her head. ‘On Mondays the cleaning crew arrives at four o’clock. Why didn’t they –’ She gasped. ‘Oh God! Maybe they killed the cleaning crew.’ Spinning on her heel, she made a grab for the telephone. ‘I’m going to make an anonymous call to the DC police and inform them that Dr Padgham and the two security guards were –’
Cædmon yanked the phone out of her hand.
‘What are you doing?’
‘In this day and age, it’s impossible to be truly anonymous,’ he matter-of-factly informed her. ‘We already know that the local police force has been infiltrated. If you contact the authorities, you may inadvertently lead our adversaries –’
‘Right to us.’ Grim-faced, Edie sank to the bed.
‘I have a far better suggestion.’
‘Unless it involves a magic wand, I don’t know how you’re going to make things better.’
Knowing its source, he ignored the sarcasm. ‘I propose we do a bit of cyber-sleuthing. High time we met the enemy.’ He removed his jacket from the back of the wingback chair.
‘But we don’t have a computer.’
‘True, but the bloke downstairs at the front desk seemed amiable enough.’
22
‘Boy, you don’t know your dick from a stick!’ Stanford MacFarlane railed at his subordinate.
Just like Custis. Had he lived, his son Custis would be twenty-eight years old this month. But Custis was dead, the weak-kneed snot having –
MacFarlane shoved the thought to the back of his mind.
The framed photographs had been removed, the name Custis Lee MacFarlane stricken from the family Bible. No sense regurgitating the past. It was over and done with. Mortal man could affect nothing save the here and now. And then only if it was God’s wish that he should do so.
‘What was running through your gourd, Gunny, detonating that wad of C4 without the Miller woman being in the vehicle? This operation was supposed to have been swift and silent, not a blind-man’s game of grab-ass.’
‘Sir, the explosives were rigged to go off when the engine was started. I had no way of knowing the C4 would detonate when the tow truck hooked the –’
‘Well, you should have known! And how is it that Aisquith and Miller eluded six – count ’em – six men trained in urban warfare.’
‘I don’t know how they got the slip on us, sir.’
MacFarlane was sorely tempted to ram his knee into his subordinate’s crotch. Penance for his sins. Instead, he strode over to his desk. A hardback book, Isis Revealed, lay in plain sight on top of his in tray. He grabbed the book, waving it in front of the gunny’s face.
‘Are you saying that the man who wrote this pack of lies outsmarted six of Rosemont’s finest?’ He’d earlier had one of his assistants purchase the book, a hunter needing to know the nature of the beast before he laid his traps.
‘He’s good, sir. That’s all I know. Riggins is fairly certain they slipped through the 7th Street exit.’
MacFarlane wasn’t fooled by the Brit’s bravado. No doubt, Aisquith and the Miller woman were holed up somewhere, trying to figure out their next move. They were afraid, uncertain who they could trust. He had carefully cultivated that mistrust when he had spoken to the woman. The mess at the Hopkins Museum had been swept clean and the fiasco at the National Gallery of Art attributed to a rogue terrorist. But all that could change if Ms Miller gave a statement to the police.
He dismissively tossed the book aside, his gaze momentarily landing on the jacket photograph of a red-haired man in a tweed sports jacket. There is a special place in hell for men who blaspheme the teachings of the one true God. Soon enough, the ex-intelligence operative turned faux historian would know the meaning of terror, Aisquith playing with a fire that could not be extinguished.
As the silent seconds ticked past, Boyd Braxton wordlessly stared at him, a ‘Help me, I’m drowning’ look on his broad face. It put the colonel in mind of the night that the gunny murdered his wife and child. A mistake committed in a moment of unchecked rage, MacFarlane had used the calamitous event to bring the sobbing, baby-faced gunnery sergeant to God. He’d done good work that night, having made a promise not to turn his back on the man who now stood before him.
Ass-chewing administered, Stanford MacFarlane pointed to the parquet floor. ‘On your knees, boy. It’s time you begged the Almighty’s forgiveness.’
A look of relief on his face, Braxton obediently dropped to his knees, his head bowed in prayer. Glancing down, MacFarlane could see the crisscrossed scars that marred his subordinate’s skull. Souvenirs of a sinner’s life, the scars were undoubtedly the result of a broken beer bottle making contact with Braxton’s head.
Stepping back, giving the other man the space he needed to make his peace with God, MacFarlane walked over to a box on the other side of the room, the Stones of Fire packed and ready for transport. Acquiring the breastplate had been the preliminary to a much larger operation. A means to an end. The end being the cleansing of all perversion, all licentiousness.
Like ancient Egypt, America was headed down the path of destruction, the world no different now than it had been in the days of the pharaoh. Plague upon plague had been visited upon the godless pagans, none immune save the God-fearing Moses and his Hebrews. So, too, this epoch would see God’s might as never before, his terrible swift sword striking down the false prophets, the feel-good TV shrinks, the prosperity gurus. Those who do not heed the warnings of the Old Testament prophets would discover first hand how God judged sin.
With so little time left, America must have a revival of repentance, the nation having strayed from the tenets of God’s word as transcribed by the prophets. A course correction was needed. Holy warriors were needed.
MacFarlane walked over to the framed map that hung behind his desk. Starting at Washington DC, he cast his gaze due east. To Jerusalem.
‘O holy city of Zion, God’s glittering jewel,’ he mur
mured, ‘God said the Temple shall be rebuilt… and so it shall.’ Rejuvenated, he turned away from the map. ‘Rise to your feet, boy, and start acting like the man of God that you are.’
As Braxton shoved himself upright, a disembodied voice came over the telephone intercom. ‘They just brought Eliot Hopkins into the waiting room, sir.’
Pleased, MacFarlane turned to his subordinate. ‘Show the museum director into the office. And make sure you give him a hearty Rosemont welcome.’
23
‘How is it you know so much about Moses and his Egyptian roots?’ Edie enquired as she and Cædmon waited for the computer to boot up.
The hotel night porter, a good-natured student at the nearby George Mason School of Law, had given them access to a computer in the back office. More a storage alcove, the room was stacked with plastic bins and boxes. Sitting side by side at the computer, Cædmon in the lone swivel chair, Edie perched on a bin, they were there to cyber-sleuth. Although what Cædmon thought he’d find was a mystery to her.
‘For a brief time I dabbled in Egyptology while an undergraduate at Oxford,’ Cædmon said in response to her question. ‘That was before I became thoroughly infatuated with the Knights Templar and jumped ship, as you Yanks say.’
‘The Knights Templar? Yeah, I can see that.’ Volunteering a personal titbit of her own, she said, ‘I’ve got a masters degree in women’s studies.’
Grinning, Cædmon winked at her. ‘Nearly as obscure a course of study as medieval history. And taking digital photographs at the Hopkins Museum?’
‘A girl’s got to make a living somehow.’
Enjoying the flirtatious banter, she wondered if anything would come of it. Because of the near-miss at the National Gallery, they’d decided against separate rooms. Would he make a move once the bed covers were turned down? Imagining what that might be like, she stared at his hands, admiring the raised pattern of veins. She’d seen those hands before. In Florence on Michelangelo’s David.