Ark of Blood

Chapter 6

6

Oxford, England. 11.13am

Limping slightly and favoring her uninjured side, Morgan walked through the muted light of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History.

The neo-Gothic arched ceiling let in the sun through panes of glass, but even though it was summer, the light was dim. The skeletons of dinosaurs were thronged with children, their fingers caressing the bones of the long dead, chattering voices excited at their finds. The cathedral to science was ringed by statues carved from Normandy limestone, each supporting a pillar that stretched high into the vault. Here was Hippocrates, Galileo, Newton and Darwin, along with luminaries from down the centuries, fitting guardians of this cavernous hall of knowledge.

Morgan continued into the darkened atmosphere of the Pitt Rivers, a separate area of the museum. Torches were provided so patrons could see into dense cabinets, as the electric lights degraded the exhibits. The flickering beams of the occasional explorer could be seen between the high glass cases, giving the room a feeling of intimate secrecy.

Here were treasures of evolutionary anthropology and archaeology, brought back from distant lands in the nineteenth century, when fewer questions were asked about provenance. Morgan entered the maze of cases and although she wasn’t here to look at the exhibits, they still drew her eyes.

A squeal sounded behind her as a group of children discovered the shrunken heads. She smiled, grateful that a fascination with the macabre wasn’t hers alone.

At the back of the museum, she pushed open a nondescript door which led into what looked to a casual observer like an unused store-cupboard. As soon as she was inside, lights flashed on, pulsed and began to move down her body in a full body scan.

After a moment, the scanner bleeped and the false back of the room slid open.

Morgan stood at the top of a staircase looking down at the ARKANE base beneath the Pitt Rivers. From the central lightwell, five levels could be seen below, with glimpses of labs and investigative teams working on ancient and occult objects.

ARKANE had taken the expansion of the nearby Bodleian Library as an opportunity and extended the subterranean tunnels up the road under the National History Museum for this hub base where they could take advantage of the vast knowledge and resources held by the University of Oxford. Morgan thought back to when she had seen this place for the first time, only a few months ago.

Then, she had stood here with Jake, but now she was back on her own and everything had changed.

“Morgan, you're here. Come on down,” a voice called up to her. She looked over the edge of the staircase to see Martin Klein waving up at her. He was ARKANE’s designated librarian, a brilliant archivist, although what he truly did defied a job title. He took the secret knowledge of the world and mapped it into databases, then created algorithms to find patterns in the chaos and understanding in the void.

“I’ll be right there, Martin,” Morgan called as he ducked his head back into one of the labs and she limped down the stairs to meet him on the second floor down.

As she walked into the lab, Martin jostled over, enthusiasm bubbling, his blond hair spiked in a curious fashion where he’d been pulling at it. He pushed his wire-rim glasses up his nose as he beamed at her.

“You have to come and look at this,” he said, beginning to walk away. “The amulet has a totally different inscription from what we normally see in the polytheism of ancient Egypt. Akhenaten is the key to this, I’m sure of it.”

Morgan put her hands up in surrender. “Slow down Martin, I have some catching up to do. I'm fine, thank you, but Jake's still in Intensive Care.”

“Of course, of course.” Martin bobbed up and down on the balls of his feet, eyes focusing on the middle distance.

Morgan knew that he wasn’t so good at revealing his feelings, but she also knew that Martin cared deeply about her ARKANE partner. With Jake’s absence, Martin was playing a more active role in the investigation, stepping outside his comfort zone of research, and Morgan knew his motives were similar to her own in trying to find Natasha.

She smiled. “OK, come on then. Show me the amulet.”

Martin led her over to a lab bench where a turquoise scarab beetle the size of a man's palm lay on glass over a mirror so that the underside could be seen clearly. Its surface had been cleaned and there were hieroglyphics inscribed on the base.

“Obviously scarabs are quite common as they were used in funerary wrappings for mummies,” Martin explained. “But this one is different. It’s from the time of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, when he gave up the other gods and converted Egypt to monotheism for a period. He worshipped the Aten, portrayed as a great sun disc but it was a deeply unpopular change with the people. In fact, Pharaoh had to move his court to the city of Amarna, which is where this was from.”

Morgan looked puzzled. “You’re ahead of me Martin. How is this connected to the murder in the Museum?”

Martin picked up his pointer and stood at the wall screen, his demeanor changing to that of a professor giving a lecture. Morgan felt the pain in her side throbbing, but she also felt the buzz of interest, her mind sharpening as she considered the problem. This was what she loved about working with ARKANE, the constant new challenges, secrets they could find that she could never have been able to discover on her own.

Martin clicked his remote mouse and the screen changed to show security footage of the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities as an agonized scream rang out. Martin flinched as black and white grainy film showed a man spread-eagled between two statues. He looked away as the man was tortured but Morgan forced herself to watch the violence unfold.

Martin’s voice was matter of fact, trying hard to be removed from the sounds of the horror on screen.

“You can see that the torturers wore head-dresses of ancient Egyptian gods. They are cult masks and from what I have been able to glean from the images, they are extremely well-made, indicating that they could be used for religious ritual and not just for this murder.”

“Who is the victim?” Morgan asked, her voice sober in the face of his death.

“Dr Abasi Gamal. He is - was - the curator of the Amarna Period section of the Museum. He's written several books and a multitude of scholarly articles about the time and how monotheism spread in Egypt.”

Morgan watched as the curator was tied to the sarcophagus and the knife plunged into the man's side.

Even though she could only see the masks of the perpetrators, she knew that the falcon headed god Horus was Natasha El-Behery. She had seen the woman kill before and there was no hesitation, no flinching as she thrust in the knife. I’m coming for you, Morgan thought, studying the way the figure moved, etching it into her memory.

“Does this specific torture method mean anything?” she asked, trying to separate the gruesome images from understanding why the event had occurred.

“It’s the start of the mummification ritual,” Martin explained. “But of course, it was never meant to be done on a live human. The organs were extracted from within the body cavity and then replaced with linen and fragrant spices. The heart, liver, lungs and stomach were put into separate canopic jars, stoppered with the heads of the gods you see this group wearing as masks. The brain was extracted through the nose but as you can see, they didn't get that far.”

Morgan watched, bile rising in her throat as the final chisel thrust burst out of the top of the man's head. The masks obstructed the face of the murderer but she knew Natasha’s eyes would be hard, without a trace of empathy. She watched the scene to its end, for she would not turn away from the murder, nor would she turn from the task ahead of her.

Finally, it finished and the screen went black. There was silence for a moment.

“What have you found out about Natasha El-Behery?” Morgan finally asked.

Martin brought up the files and Natasha’s striking face filled the wall screen. She had the looks of a supermodel, but her eyes were as dead as a mannequin in a shop window.

“Her family are Egyptian aristocracy,” Martin said. “Her grandfather even provided men for digs alongside Howard Carter, the archaeologist of Tutankhamun’s tomb. Unofficially, her grandfather lined his pockets with the sale of antiquities to the West, stripping the tombs for artifacts that he sold to collectors.” Morgan raised an eyebrow. That was some heritage.

“Natasha’s father later became a great benefactor,” Martin continued, “restoring the ancient heritage of Egypt and piling money into attracting tourists even with the escalation in political difficulties. But we suspect the funding for his business came from shadier dealings, a global expansion in antiquity smuggling. There’s evidence to suggest he was one of the consortium that broke up the assets of the Baghdad museum after the invasion and arranged theft for hire on specific antiquities. He died five years ago and after his death, Natasha moved to Europe, breaking all ties with her family. Eventually she emerged as a key part of Milan Noble’s Thanatos movement and you know well how that ended.”

The screen faded into a picture of Natasha with Milan Noble in resplendent black tie against a backdrop of the Vienna State Opera House. They made a gorgeous couple, but Morgan couldn’t shake the image of the twisted demonic figure that Milan had become in the last hour of his cursed life.

“Now there’s chatter that Natasha has become a gun-for-hire,” Martin said, “a freelancer with ties into the underworld of terrorism and antiquities smuggling.”

Morgan nodded. “With her background and contacts, she’d make an excellent choice.” Her eyes narrowed in determination. “I want to bring her in, Martin. She’s the last of the links to what happened to Jake, and I know what she’s capable of doing. What did they take from the museum after the murder?”

Martin flicked the screen back to the photos from the murder. “They took everything from Gamal’s study including the curator’s notes and some of his books.”

Morgan pointed to where the body was shown in graphic detail on the blood-stained floor.

“There are footprints and the chisel is coated with blood,” she said. “They left a clear trail of evidence and there must be fingerprints, so who’s officially investigating this?”

“The Egyptian police,” Martin said. “But they have already blamed it on the fundamentalist unrest that is sweeping the country. The investigation won’t get far in a climate of political upheaval because the police are struggling to keep control and don’t much care about the murder of an obscure academic.”

Morgan frowned, puzzling over how to proceed. “OK, so why did they want this information?”

“That’s the intriguing thing,” Martin said. “Dr Abasi Gamal has written books on Akhenaten and the origin of Moses and the Exodus of the Jews from Egypt.”

Martin tapped on his laptop again. “But the murder in Cairo is just one piece of the puzzle,” he said, bringing up a montage of images: the severed head and the bloody words in Washington, then the website countdown and image of the Ark. “Your friend Lior forwarded these to us just an hour ago.”

Morgan felt a brief pang of loss at Lior’s name, for they had been good friends when Elian was alive. But after she had left her life in Israel behind, she had lost touch with many of her old friends. A brief meeting after the bombing in Jerusalem last month had rekindled their friendship, but she knew they had a long way to go to rebuild their trust.

She leaned in to examine the images more closely.

“These have to be connected, but let me guess,” Morgan said. “No one wants to admit they are concerned about something so inflammatory as the Ark of the Covenant during the week of the Peace Accords. On the one hand, the secular press will have a field day with the ancient myth, and on the other the religious right will be inflamed with fervor at the possibility.”

Martin nodded. “Exactly, so we have to tread a fine line to make sure this stays well below the radar of any press in preparation for the Jerusalem summit, but also to track the potential location of the Ark so we can stay ahead of Natasha.”

Morgan gazed thoughtfully at the image of the Ark as it was marched around Jericho, aware that when the walls fell before the power of the Ark, it sparked a m******e of the inhabitants.

Every living thing inside was slaughtered in the name of God.

Her mind was reeling, for this was no longer just a simple mission for her to avenge Jake’s injury. Israel was her country, her blood was in the land and she knew she would do anything to protect it from this extremist madness.

“Jerusalem has always lived on the edge of violence,” she said quietly. “It ripples with extremism and something like this, even a hoax, could easily spark an eruption. The Israeli Army have stopped fundamentalist Jews storming the Temple Mount before, knowing it would spark extreme violence. While the Arab nations fight amongst themselves, Israel is safe enough, but if they had a common goal, to defend or avenge the Temple Mount, I can see how this could end in war.”

Martin nodded. “That’s what Director Marietti thinks as well, which is why you’re on a plane in two hours, heading for Egypt.”