The Moses Stone

clicked on another link. 'This is the original Aramaic inscription,' he said, as the screen changed to show two blocks of text, 'and below that is the French translation of what it says. We should make a copy of this.'

'Absolutely,' Angela replied, and swiftly copied an image of the web page on her hard drive. 'What does the French translation say? A lot of those words look like they're repeated to me.'

'They are. There are some duplicates, and the words look as if they've been selected almost at random. It has to be part of the same set. Is it worth going to the museum to see it?'

'Hang on a second,' Angela said, and clicked the mouse button to return to the 'description' page. 'Let's see if it's actually on display. What does that say?'

Bronson peered at the screen. 'It says: 'In storage. May be accessed by accredited and approved researchers upon submission of written requests giving a minimum of two weeks' notice.' Then it tells you who to write to if you're interested and what credentials are acceptable to the museum.' He sighed. 'Well, that's it then, isn't it? I guess we won't be going to Paris any time soon.'

28

The calm, measured voice on his mobile was instantly recognizable to Jalal Talabani.

'How can I help you?' he asked, checking that none of his colleagues in the Rabat police station were within earshot.

'Two of my men followed the English detective – the man Bronson – to Casablanca airport yesterday evening. He met a woman who had arrived on a flight from London. We assumed she might be his wife, but one of my associates ran a check on her and her name is Angela Lewis. But she is staying with him at his new hotel in Rabat. Find out who she is and get back to me.'

There was a pause, and Talabani waited. He knew his caller didn't like to be hurried.

'You have three hours,' the voice said, and the line went dead.

Bronson had had enough. They'd spent the last hour and a half staring at drawings and translations and pictures of tablets from museums around the world. Some of the images were sharp and clear, some were so blurred and out of focus as to be almost useless, but after ninety minutes of looking at the never-ending sequence of pictures on the computer screen, he was about ready to quit.

'God, I need a drink,' he muttered, leaning back and stretching his arms above his head. 'I really don't know how you do it, Angela. Doesn't this just bore you rigid?'

She glanced at him and grinned. 'This is how I spend my life. I'm not bored – I'm fascinated. And particularly by this tablet,' she added.

'What?' Bronson said, returning his gaze to the Vaio's screen.

The picture showed a tablet that looked almost identical to the one Margaret O'Connor had picked up in the souk. But this one was listed as being stolen, along with a number of other relics, from a storeroom at a museum in Cairo. There'd been no trace of it since then. The tablet had been photographed as a matter of routine when the museum had acquired it, but no translation of the inscription – again a piece of Aramaic text – had been attempted either at the time or since.

'I wonder if that's the tablet Margaret O'Connor found in the souk,' Bronson muttered, rubbing his eyes and sitting up straighter. 'If it was stolen, that might explain why the owner – whoever it is – was so keen to get it back.'

'Hang on a second,' Angela said. She selected one of the pictures from the CD Bronson had given her, and then displayed the photograph of the stolen tablet right beside it on the screen.

'It's different,' Bronson said. 'I don't read Aramaic – obviously – but even I can see that the top lines are different lengths on those two tablets.'

Angela nodded agreement. 'Yes,' she said, 'and there's something else I've just noticed. I think there are only four tablets in the set.'

'How do you work that out?'

'Here.' Angela pointed at the right-hand image. 'See that short diagonal line, right at the corner of the tablet?'

Bronson nodded.

'Now look at the other photograph. There's a similar line in the corner of that one as well.' She flicked rapidly back to the picture of the tablet held in the Paris museum. 'And on this one, just there.'

Angela sat back from the laptop and looked at Bronson with a kind of triumph. 'I still don't know what the hell this is all about, but I think I can tell you how these tablets were made. Whoever prepared these inscribed a small diagonal cross in the centre of an oblong block of clay, then they cut that block into four quarters and fired them. What we've been looking at are three of those four quarters. Each of the lines in the corners of the tablets is one arm of that original cross.'

'And the idea of the cross is to tell us exactly how the four tablets are supposed to line up,' Bronson said, 'so that we can read the words in the correct order.'

Discovering Angela Lewis's identity took less time than Jalal Talabani had expected. First, he called the hotel where the two English guests were staying and talked to the manager. The man had actually been behind the reception desk both when Bronson made the booking for her, and when Angela Lewis had checked in the previous evening.

'She's his former wife,' the manager said, 'and I think she works in London at a museum.'

'Which one?' Talabani asked.

'I don't know,' the manager replied. 'It was just that when she checked in she was talking to Mr Bronson about her work and mentioned a museum. Is it important?'

'No, not really. Thank you for that,' Talabani said, and ended the call.

He turned to his computer, input a search string into Google and opened the 'Britain Express' website's list of the museums of London. The sheer number both surprised and dismayed him, but he printed the list and started at the top. He put a line through the details of the small and highly specialized establishments, but began calling each of the others in turn and asking to speak to Angela Lewis.

The seventh number he tried was the switchboard at the British Museum. Two minutes later he not only knew that Angela Lewis was employed there, but also which department she worked in, and that she was away on leave.

And five minutes after that, the man with the calm, measured voice knew this too.

29

Tony Baverstock had been at work for a little over an hour when he took a call from the switchboard. A member of the public had telephoned the museum with a question about a piece of pottery they'd found, apparently bearing part of an inscription.

It was the kind of call the museum got all the time, and almost invariably the object turned out to be completely worthless. Baverstock vividly remembered one elderly lady from Kent who'd actually brought along the alleged relic for inspection. It was the grubby remains of a small china cup she'd dug up in her garden, and had borne the partial inscription '1066' and 'le of Hastin' in a kind of Gothic script on one side.

The woman had been convinced she'd found something of national importance, a relic dating from nearly a thousand years earlier and a crucial reminder of one of the most significant events in England's turbulent past, and refused to believe it when Baverstock told her it was rubbish. It was only when he turned the cup over, cleaned the dirt off it and pointed to the other, complete, inscription on the base of the vessel that he'd been able to convince her that she was mistaken. That piece of text, in very small letters, had read 'Dishwasher safe'.

'Not my field,' Baverstock snapped, when the switchboard girl described what the caller had apparently found. 'Try Angela Lewis.'

'I already have,' the telephonist replied, just as irritated, 'but she's taken some leave.'

Five minutes later he had convinced the caller, who lived in Suffolk, that the best place to have his find examined was the local museum in Bury St Edmunds. Let somebody else have their time wasted, Baverstock