The Messiah Secret

Bronson shook his head. ‘I don’t think he did anything so complicated. I think he decided to hide it in plain sight. Look at the picture. You’ll see a young man wearing a highly embroidered Indian-style tunic. But look closely at the collar and the lapels. It might look like a random pattern, but I don’t think it is, because it’s not symmetrical. I think that’s a form of writing, a form that most people simply wouldn’t recognize as being writing.’

For a few moments, Angela stared at the image displayed on the screen of her computer.

‘My God, Chris, I think you might be right,’ she said slowly. ‘Now that I know what I’m looking for, it doesn’t seem to be a random pattern. In fact, I think I can make out several individual letters here.’ She looked across at her ex-husband. ‘You are brilliant – do you know that?’

Bronson smiled. It had been an educated guess, but a good one.

‘And the painting of Bartholomew wearing a Red Indian outfit,’ she said, finding the appropriate picture. ‘I suppose it’s in the band of this headdress that goes around his forehead?’

Bronson looked at the screen and nodded. ‘And perhaps running down the front of the tunic as well. Can you read the script?’

‘I hope so. The photographs Bartholomew had taken were done professionally, as far as I can see, and my guess is that he would have insisted that the lettering be readable on them. Otherwise, what would be the point in having the pictures taken at all? Then he sent the paintings to Cairo for safe keeping. If you’re right, and I think you are, these two photographs would have been his personal record of the Persian text, there for all to see, but only if you knew exactly what you were looking for.’

‘What about your scans? Did you lose any of the details of the photographs when you did them?’

‘Maybe a tiny bit, but nothing significant. These scans are probably just as good as having the original photographs, and we also have an advantage – using the computer, I can enlarge the areas we’re interested in and keep them displayed on the screen, which is a lot easier than trying do the same thing with a magnifying glass standing in front of a canvas hanging on a wall.’

Angela leaned over and gave Bronson a kiss.

‘Let’s get back to the hotel as quickly as possible. I’ll have to transcribe the letters and then find an on-line Persian translation program to sort out what the text says. With any luck, I might be able to do all that today.’

She looked at Bronson, her eyes shining with excitement.

‘We’re getting closer, Chris. I can feel it. By this evening, we might have a very good idea where the Ark of the Covenant is buried.’

40

Nearing the centre of Cairo, Bronson indicated left and pulled the hire car over towards the middle of the road, looking for a gap in the oncoming traffic. Nobody seemed particularly inclined to give way, so he eased over further, forcing his way into the traffic stream until a couple of vehicles finally and reluctantly slowed enough to let him swing across in front of them.

‘I’ll never get used to the way they drive over here,’ Angela muttered as Bronson straightened up and headed down the street towards their hotel.

Fifty yards ahead of Bronson’s car, Killian tossed the binoculars aside, reached down and twisted the key in the ignition. The engine sprang to life immediately. As the Peugeot approached him, Killian engaged first gear and accelerated hard, powering it out of the vacant lot and aiming for the side of Bronson’s vehicle.

* * *

‘Look out!’ Angela yelled, as she saw another car lurch into motion just beside them, the driver apparently not having seen them.

Bronson registered the other car at the same instant and reacted the way he’d been trained, turning the wheel away from the impending collision and accelerating hard to get clear of the path of the other vehicle.

Angela looked more closely at the driver and registered the bandaged ear, pale skin and dark, almost black, eyes of the man behind the wheel.

‘It’s that priest!’ she shouted. ‘He’s trying to kill us.’

Bronson glanced to his right, but his concentration was on the traffic, not on the driver of the other vehicle.

His options were limited. There was a line of vehicles – cars and light vans – heading towards them, but only a couple of cars in their lane ahead of them. No side streets, or not for about a hundred yards, and all the side turnings Bronson could see were dead ends. The last thing he wanted to do was get trapped somewhere that the priest could attack them. He didn’t know if the priest was armed, and had no desire to find out.

But a car is a weapon. A ton or so of metal able to travel at high speed, and in skilled hands – perhaps even more so in unskilled hands – can be lethal. He had to keep moving, keep them ahead of the other car.

He accelerated hard down the road. The single ace he held was that his car had already been in motion, and this gave him a tiny speed advantage.