inside.
And what she saw was a bloody mess.
On the far side of the cave a man lay covered in blood. That, she realized, was Sheikh Ibrahim. She approached him cautiously.
‘What happened?’
‘He shot me.’ The voice was still weak. This was no act. The man was clinging on to life by a precarious thread.
‘ Who shot you?’
‘The big man.’
‘What happened to the others?’ she asked. ‘The other man and the woman? Did he take them with him?’
‘No.’
She was nervous when she asked the next question.
‘Did he kill them?’
‘No. He took the shroud and left.’
‘The shroud?’
‘The shroud that the tablets were wrapped in.’
She realized what this meant.
‘And where are the man and the woman? Did they go to get help?’
‘No… they thought I was dead.’
Looking down at him, she realized how close to death he was.
‘Listen, I’ll go and get help.’
‘No. You must stop him.’
He grabbed her arm, as if to emphasize the seriousness of the situation. ‘He has taken the shroud!’
‘I’ll go for help,’ she said.
But as she looked down at him now, she saw that he was beyond help. She knew that she had to find Goliath and stop him. But how? And where were Daniel and Gabrielle?
It was then that she saw the gun.
Was that the gun that he used to kill Sheikh Ibrahim?
She noticed that it was jammed. But firearms had been part of her Mossad training and she had learnt several methods of clearing a jammed cartridge from the chamber of a semi-automatic. The quickest method was known as tap-rack-bang.
Running on adrenalin as she followed her training to the letter, she tapped the base of the magazine with the palm of her left hand, to make sure it was firmly in place, then racked the slider back in a fast snapping motion to discharge the empty cartridge. There was no need for the bang as she had no reason to fire. But she felt safer having a weapon.
‘Goliath! Are you there?’
Sarit froze. It was a man’s voice, but there was a strange paradox in the sound. It sounded like the man was shouting, and yet the volume was muted. It was tinny and muffled. And it was coming from inside the cave.
‘Goliath!’
No! It was coming from inside Ibrahim’s body.
She looked at him in the dim light of the cave, trying to understand. Then she noticed the strange glow coming from beneath his body.
That was when she realized.
She reached under his torso, forcing her hand in deeper against the weight of his body. She had to use her other hand to lift him slightly before she was able to extricate the mobile phone that he had fallen on.
She raised the phone to her ear.
‘Goliath!’ the voice said again.
‘Hallo,’ she replied.
‘Who is this?’
‘My name is Siobhan. Who are you?’
The line went silent. She looked at the phone and saw that the battery was down to 3% – too little to make a call. Any minute it would die completely. But before it did, she checked the number: +1 202…
She didn’t know all the US regional phone codes, but there were a few that stuck in her memory. 212 – New York City, or at least Manhattan. 213 – Los Angeles. And 202 – Washington DC.
Senator Morris. It had to be.
She would have liked to follow it up, but right now she didn’t have time to find out. She had urgent business to attend to.
Chapter 95
‘Now then,’ said Professor Fikri, ‘what is this fascinating academic matter that you wanted to talk about?’
They were in the office of Hakim Fikri at the University of Jordan, sitting opposite the man who had been entrusted with the task of examining the bones found in the cave at the Snake Monument. A man of average height and build in his forties with a dark, neatly trimmed beard, he had agreed to see them at short notice because of their academic credentials: the world’s foremost expert on Semitic languages and a leading Egyptologist who worked closely with Akil Mansoor. They had only revealed this when they arrived at the reception desk, not before. But they had not told him what they wanted to talk about.
‘We met a man called Talal Ibrahim,’ said Daniel. ‘Sheikh Ibrahim.’
Daniel was studying Professor Fikri’s face for signs of recognition. There was a slight flicker, but no more than that.
‘Oh, yes, Talal. How is he?’
Daniel felt his face flushing. He didn’t know what to say.
‘He’s fine,’ said Gabrielle, stepping in to fill the silence. ‘He sends his regards.’
‘I’ll come straight to the point, Professor,’ said Daniel. ‘The reason we’re here is because we wanted to ask about the bones.’
This time it was Fikri’s face that flushed. ‘Bones?’
‘We understand that some bones found in Petra were brought here for you to study.’
‘Well, quite a number of bones and skeletal remains have been brought here for study,’ said Fikri, ‘especially from Petra.’
Daniel nodded. ‘I know. It’s a site of great archaeological importance, and there’s a considerable necropolis there. But the bones we’re thinking of were found at one particular cave, overlooking the Snake Monument.’
Fikri swallowed nervously and appeared to be looking around the room, almost as if he wanted to run out.
‘There are so many cases I deal with. I’d have to look it up. I can’t remember that one. I’m sure it can’t have been anything special otherwise I would have done.’
Daniel knew that he was lying. Even apart from his manner it made no sense. An academic would love to make a big find and publish a major paper on the subject. And Sheikh Ibrahim had told them of how cagey Fikri had become.
But what was he afraid of?
Daniel decided to help the professor to open up by asking a few leading questions.
‘Presumably you were going to conduct radiocarbon tests to date the bones, DNA tests to determine the ethnicity and maybe a magnetic imaging scan to determine possible causes of death?’
‘I think you’ve been reading too many thrillers,’ said Fikri with a forced smile. ‘An NMR scan can only reveal physical and anatomical characteristics. Unless the cause of death was violence or injury such tests are pretty much useless.’
