The tracks started to rattle. Vermin scurried. People manoeuvred for position. The ancient train rolled in, windows already being lowered, doors crashing open, passengers spilling out, laden with belongings, fighting through the scrum. Hawkers walked along the line of windows offering translucent bags of baladi bread, paper cones packed with seeds, sesame bars, sweets and drinks.
Away down the platform, a strikingly good-looking thirty-something man emerged from the first-class carriage. Charles Stafford. Despite his two-day stubble, she recognized him at once from the jacket photographs on the books Fatima had lent her the night before. She’d skimmed through them out of courtesy, though they were the kind of populist history she deplored – wild speculation backed by outrageously selective use of the evidence. Conspiracies everywhere, secret societies, lost treasures waiting beneath every mound; and never a dissenting voice to be heard, unless it could be ridiculed and dismissed.
Stafford paused to put on a pair of mirror shades, then hoisted a black leather laptop case to his shoulder and descended onto the platform. A stumpy young woman in a navy-blue suit came after him, tucking wilful strands of bright-red hair back beneath her floral headscarf. And an Egyptian porter followed behind, struggling beneath mounds of matching brown-leather luggage.
An elderly woman stumbled against Stafford as he pushed his way through the crowd. His laptop swung and clipped a young boy around the ear. The boy saw instantly how wealthy Stafford looked and promptly started bawling. A man in dirty-brown robes said something curt to Stafford, who waved him arrogantly away. The boy bawled even more loudly. Stafford sighed heavily and glanced around at the redhead, evidently expecting her to sort it out. She stooped, examined the boy’s ear, clucked sympathetically, slipped him a banknote. He couldn’t suppress his grin as he danced off. But the man in the brown robes was still feeling stung from Stafford’s dismissal, and the transaction only irritated him further. He declared loudly that foreigners evidently now thought they could batter Egyptian children at will, then pay their way out of it.
The redhead gave an uncertain smile and tried to back away, but the man’s words struck a chord with the crowd, and a cordon formed, trapping them inside, the atmosphere turning ugly. Stafford tried to barge his way out, but someone jolted him hard enough that his shades came off. He grabbed for them but they fell to the ground. A moment later Gaille heard the crunch of glass as they went underfoot. A scornful laugh rang out.
Gaille glanced anxiously over at the three CSF men, but they were walking away into the ticket hall, heads ducked, wanting nothing to do with this. Fear flared hot in her chest as she debated what to do. This wasn’t her problem. No one even knew she was here. Her 4x4 was parked directly outside. She hesitated just a moment longer, then turned and hurried out.
II
‘But it’s just a lid,’ protested Omar, as he hurried down the SCA’s front steps after Knox. ‘There must have been thousands like it. How can you be so certain it came from Qumran?’
Knox unlocked his Jeep, climbed in. ‘Because it’s the only place Dead Sea Scroll jars have ever been found,’ he told Omar. ‘At least, there was one other found in Jericho, just a few miles north, and maybe another at Masada, also close by. Other than that …’
‘But it looked perfectly ordinary.’
‘It may have looked it,’ replied Knox, waiting for a van to pass before pulling out. ‘But you have to understand something. Two thousand years ago, jars were used either for transporting goods or for storing them. Transportation jars were typically amphorae, with big handles to make them easier to heft about, and robust, because they had to withstand a lot of knocks, and cylindrical, because that made them more efficient to stack.’ He turned right at the end of the street, then sharp left. ‘But once the goods reached their final destination, they were decanted into storage jars with rounded bottoms that bedded into sandy floors and were easy to tip whenever people needed to pour out their contents. They also had long necks and narrow mouths so that they could be corked and their contents kept fresh. But the Dead Sea Scroll jars weren’t like that. They had flat bottoms and stubby necks and fat mouths, and there was a very good reason for that.’
‘Which was?’
His brakes sang as he slowed for a tram clanking across the junction ahead. ‘How much do you know about Qumran?’ he asked.
‘It was occupied by the Essenes, wasn’t it?’ said Omar. ‘That Jewish sect. Though haven’t I heard people claim that it was a villa or a fort or something?’
‘They’ve suggested it,’ agreed Knox, who’d been fascinated by the place since a family holiday there as a child. ‘I think they’re wrong, though. I mean, Pliny said that the Essenes lived on the northwest of the Dead Sea. If not Qumran itself, then very close to it, and no one has found a convincing alternative. One expert put it very succinctly: Either Qumran and the scrolls were both Essene, or we have a quite astonishing coincidence: Two major religious communities living almost on top of each other, sharing similar views and rituals, one of which was described by ancient authors yet left no physical traces; while the other was somehow ignored by all our sources but left extensive ruins and documents.’
‘So Qumran was occupied by the Essenes,’ agreed Omar. ‘That doesn’t explain why their jars are unique.’
‘The Essenes were fanatical about ritual purity,’ said Knox. ‘The slightest thing could render a pure receptacle impure. A drop of rain, a tumbling insect, an inappropriate spillage. And if it did, it was a major headache. I mean, if a receptacle became tainted, then obviously anything in it was immediately tainted too, and had to be chucked. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Liquids and grain are poured in a stream, you see, so the real issue was whether the impurity climbed back up that stream and infected the storage jar too. The Pharisees and other Jewish sects took a relaxed view, but the Essenes believed that everything would be contaminated, so they couldn’t risk pouring out contents in a stream. Instead, they’d lift the lid a little, dip in a measuring cup and transfer it that way. And because they no longer had to tip their storage jars, they could have flat bottoms, which made them much more stable; and short necks and fat mouths, too, to make them easier to dip into.’
‘And jars with fat mouths need bowls for lids,’ grinned Omar.
‘Exactly,’ nodded Knox. They were nearing the Desert Road Junction. He hunkered down in his seat to scan the road-signs. A quick review of the records in Omar’s office had shown just four foreign-run sites in the vicinity of Lake Mariut, but there was nothing currently happening at Philoxinite, Taposiris Magna or Abu Mina; which left only one worthwhile candidate: a group called the Texas Society of Biblical Archaeology excavating out near Borg el-Arab.
‘So what would the lid be doing here?’ asked Omar, once Knox had navigated them onto the right road.
‘It may well have come centuries ago,’ shrugged Knox. ‘The Dead Sea Scrolls were known about in antiquity. We have reports from the second, third and fourth centuries of texts being found in Qumran caves. Origen even used them to write his Hexapla.’
‘His what?’
‘The Bible written out six times in parallel columns. The first in Hebrew, the second in Greek, and then a series of edited versions. It helped other scholars compare and contrast the various versions. But the point is, he relied heavily on Dead Sea Scrolls.’
‘And you think they might have been brought here in this jar of yours?’
‘It’s got to be a possibility.’
Omar swallowed audibly. ‘You don’t think we might actually find … scrolls, do you?’
Knox laughed. ‘Don’t get your hopes up. One of the scrolls was inscribed on copper – a treasure map, would you believe? But all the rest were on parchment or papyrus. Alexandria’s climate would have chewed those up centuries ago. Besides,