The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET (124 page)

‘Fine. Now tell me what you know.’

‘I need a drink,’ Kirby said. ‘There’s a pub another mile up this road. Get me a drink, and I’ll tell you everything.’

The road twisted downwards until they came to a coastal village. A cobbled street led to a harbour where small fishing vessels drifted and bumped on the tide, flanked on three sides by an ancient stone dock and a rocky beach. Lobster creels and salt-crusted nets lay piled on the pier, and in the falling dusk the lights from the huddled cottages on the sea front threw a golden, shimmering glow out across the water.

Ben parked the car and he and Kirby walked down a cobbled slope to a long, low pub with a weathered sign that said ‘The Whey Pat’. Inside, the décor looked as though it hadn’t been touched in centuries. A pitted old bar, some spartan benches and a couple of bare tables. No paper napkins or place mats on the tables, no chalkboard menus on the wall, just a well-used dartboard for the men who came in here to drink and nothing else. Ben wouldn’t have been surprised to see sawdust on the floor.

There were a few locals at the bar. The hum of conversation paused a beat as Ben and Kirby walked
in, and one or two stares landed on Kirby before people looked away and the chatter picked up again.

‘Seems you’re popular round here,’ Ben said as he guided Kirby towards the empty far end of the pub. They grabbed a table near the fire, where a couple of logs were crackling and spitting. Ben went over to the bar and ordered two double Scotches. He didn’t know if Kirby drank whisky normally, and he didn’t care. If the guy wanted a drink, he was going to get him one that would loosen him up as fast as possible. There wasn’t much time to mess about, and beer was just too slow. He took a fistful of change from his pocket and fed it into the CD jukebox in the corner, selecting a bunch of noisy rock tracks that would allow them to talk without being overheard.

Back at the table, he slid Kirby’s glass over to him. He took out his Zippo and his last few Gauloises, and lit one up.

‘You can’t do that in here,’ Kirby said. ‘It’s illegal.’

Ben glanced up towards the bar. It wasn’t the kind of establishment where anyone seemed to give a damn, and he didn’t care if they did. ‘So is murder,’ he said. ‘And you’ve got two dead bodies at your place. Now drink that and start talking. The Akhenaten Project. Facts, figures, details, the works. Now.’

Kirby peered down at the glass, looked as if he were about to complain, then thought better of it. He picked it up, closed his eyes and knocked it back like medicine. When he put his glass down, his face had lost some of its pallor. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

‘Backstory first,’ he said. ‘You need it, to understand the rest.’

‘OK, but keep it short.’

‘Akhenaten was a pharaoh,’ Kirby said. ‘He reigned during the Eighteenth Dynasty, 1353 to 1336 BC. His real name was—’

‘Amenhotep IV,’ Ben cut in.

Kirby stared, arching an eyebrow. ‘I didn’t take you for an Egyptologist.’

‘I’m not. Theology at Oxford, years ago. But I still remember a few things.’

‘You said you were a soldier.’

‘I was. But we’re not here to discuss the story of my life.’

‘Army Theology. Kind of a culture clash, wouldn’t you say?’

Ben just stared at him.

Kirby shrugged. ‘OK. Whatever. Where was I?’

‘Akhenaten.’

‘Right. So maybe you know that Akhenaten was a little unusual. In fact, he was totally unique in the whole history of ancient Egypt.’

‘I know that he was the first king of Egypt to worship a single god.’

Kirby nodded. The whisky seemed to be relaxing him. ‘Aten. Otherwise known as the sun god, symbolised by the sun disc that Akhenaten instituted as a national icon. That was the guy’s whole crusade, to wipe out the old polytheistic religion, do away with all the traditional gods that Egyptians had venerated for thousands of years, and introduce this radical new
thing that he called Atenism. It’s the first time in recorded history that anyone tried to implement a monotheistic state religion. To some historians he’s the precursor to Jesus Christ, to others he’s just a radical crackpot.’ Kirby finished his drink, gazed a little wistfully at the empty glass. ‘Can I get another drink?’

‘In a minute.’ Ben slid his own glass under the historian’s nose. ‘Have this in the meantime.’

‘Thanks. I need it.’

‘Let’s cut to the chase. I know about Atenism. And I know that Akhenaten was called a heretic for his religious reforms. But what’s this got to do with Morgan Paxton? I’m not seeing the connection here.’

Kirby picked up Ben’s glass. ‘Let me go on. You wanted to hear this, didn’t you? All the background stuff’s really important. Otherwise you won’t—’

‘OK, go on then,’ Ben snapped.

‘This pharaoh was only a young man when he took over from his father Amenhotep III,’ Kirby went on. ‘But he’d always been a little weird. Even physically weird, misshapen. All kinds of peculiarities about him. And soon after he took power, he started implementing this incredible, unthinkable plan. In the fifth year of his reign he adopted the name Akhenaten, which means “glorious spirit of the Aten”. That was the first sign of trouble. The crunch came when, in his ninth year, he basically abolished all of the old gods. We’re talking about a gigantic revolution, a total reorganisation of the whole foundation of the society. Figures like Anubis, the jackal-headed god. Osiris, ruler of the Underworld. Amun, big cheese of the whole lot.
Akhenaten just swiped them away.’ Kirby gestured with his arm. ‘Just like that. All the people were left with was this very exclusive compulsory state religion, Atenism. Meanwhile, Akhenaten and his royal retinue abandoned the state capital of Thebes and went off to found a new city called Akhetaten, meaning “horizon of the Aten,” better known as Amarna.’ Kirby had finished Ben’s glass. He looked at him expectantly.

‘Same again?’ Ben asked, pointing at the empty glasses.

‘Why the hell not?’ Kirby replied.

Ben got up, strode over to the bar and came back with two more doubles. He slammed them down on the table. ‘Right. Keep talking.’

Kirby drank, seemed to lose his thread for a second, then continued. ‘OK, this is coming up to the important bit. While this crazy pharaoh is living it up in his own private paradise, worshipping his god like some new-age California hippie, the whole country’s going to the dogs. He basically didn’t give a toss what happened to the economy, to state security, or to the people. It all started crumbling away to shit. He was bringing Egypt to its knees.’ He paused for another long sip. His cheeks were rosy now, and his eyes were brightening steadily. ‘So, as you can imagine, a lot of people were terribly unhappy with Akhenaten. The temples played a very important role in the economic and social life of the community, and he’d destroyed all that. Meanwhile, the level of state censorship was pretty much on a par with the Nazi book-burning frenzy in pre-war Germany. Akhenaten ordered the
destruction of vast hoards of treasures that had been created in veneration of the old gods. Everything from the biggest statue to the smallest amulet-if it depicted the old polytheistic order in any way, he wanted it suppressed. The gold was to be melted down and turned into Aten idols. The temples were all closed up. A whole profession of craftsmen, masons, sculptors, scribes, were suddenly forbidden from carrying out the trade they’d been practising all their lives. And the high priests were basically redundant. In short, just about everyone was seriously upset with this crazy pharaoh they regarded as a troublemaker. Worse than that. A heretic.’

Kirby paused. And now we come to the legend. The old, old myth of the heretic’s treasure, which tells that someone may or may not have managed to rescue a gigantic quantity of precious religious artefacts from destruction by Akhenaten’s agents.’

‘Who?’

‘They don’t call it a myth for nothing,’ Kirby said. ‘The fact is, nobody has ever known who, or how, or whether it even happened. It’s just one of those camp-fire tales that have been rolling around for millennia, and which nobody has taken seriously for centuries.’

Ben could feel his muscles tightening. ‘So this is all just hearsay. No substance to it whatsoever. This is what I’m wasting my time on.’ He was on the brink of walking out of the pub. Despair was beginning to well up inside him again. Why was he here? Why hadn’t he tried to follow Paxton’s traces back in Paris?

Kirby seemed to sense his mood. ‘Hold on.
I haven’t finished. What I’m about to tell you changes everything.’

‘It had better be extremely good,’ Ben said.

‘It is. Here’s where the legend ends and reality begins. Morgan’s and my involvement with this kicked off with a chance discovery in Antakya, Turkey. Which at one time was the site of the ancient Syrian city of Antioch.’

Ben knew the name from his theology studies. Antioch was where the followers of Jesus had been called Christians for the first time. A city ravaged by centuries of wars and sieges, crusades and earthquakes. It had passed through the hands of the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans. But that still didn’t tell him much.

‘A couple of years ago, Morgan was there on holiday,’ Kirby explained. ‘He always liked browsing around in little antique shops, street markets. Most of what you find in those places is fake trash. Ancient papyri that are really last year’s banana leaves with a bit of paint on them. Any old bit of bone that’s been carved, fed to turkeys so that the gastric juices make them look all ancient, then passed off as precious artefacts. But then, on his last day before he was due to fly back home, among all the crap Morgan found something special.’

‘What was it?’

‘A small casket,’ Kirby said. ‘All eaten away with age. The vendor said it had been dug up near the ruins of the Antioch ramparts. Must have thought it was just junk. Morgan snapped it up right away, took it home and spent half the night opening it up. Inside it was a papyrus.’

‘Not last year’s banana leaf?’

‘No way. This was the real deal. It was written in authentic hieratic script, which was a simplified, abbreviated form of hieroglyphics used for writing letters.’

‘I know what hieratic script was,’ Ben said. ‘Go on.’

‘It was an unfinished letter, written by a resident of Antioch around 1335 BC, sometime after the death of the pharaoh Akhenaten. The author introduced himself as Diodore of Heraclea, a very sick old man with something important to say.’

‘For God’s sake, Kirby. I haven’t got time for all this.’

Kirby held up a finger. ‘Bear with me. This is where it gets exciting. Because the letter was addressed to Sanep, the High Priest of Thebes, and in it Diodore revealed an amazing secret. He was confessing, openly and willingly, to one of the biggest heists in the history of Egypt. But it wasn’t a crime he was ashamed of, or that he’d be punished for. In fact, if the letter had ever been finished and reached its destination, he would have been brought back to Egypt and paraded through the streets as a hero. Let me tell you why.’

Ben didn’t reply. Waited for the rest. Maybe, just maybe, this was getting interesting.

‘You need to flash back a few years,’ Kirby continued. ‘To when Diodore wasn’t Diodore at all. His real name was Wenkaura and he was Egyptian, born in Thebes. He’d been one of the city’s most revered and influential High Priests, and in those days Sanep was his young novice. Now, in the letter Wenkaura describes how, back in the year 1344 BC, he and two of his fellow clergymen, Katep and Menamun, had all decided they
had to do something to prevent the disaster that Akhenaten was bringing down on their country and their religion.’

Ben was listening now. ‘Do what?’

‘Well, imagine the situation. All this is happening around you. Everyone’s convinced that the king is batshit-mad. He’s threatening the very survival of the state with his cultural revolution and this nutcase sun cult. Destroying all these magnificent treasures, priceless even at the time, and everything you believe in. The situation isn’t going to get better on its own. What would
you
do? What would you
have
to do? Think about it.’

Ben already knew the answer.

Kirby grinned at the look on his face. ‘Right. One option they had was to conspire to have the bastard assassinated. I’m sure they must have thought about it. But a murder plot was too risky-he had agents and informants everywhere. Nobody could be trusted. So they decided to wait it out, in the hope that once this reign of madness was over, normality would be restored. It was only a question of time.’

‘So they decided to hide the treasure for posterity,’ Ben said. ‘Hoping that one day, it could be returned to its rightful place.’

Kirby nodded enthusiastically as he took another gulp of whisky. ‘Wenkaura, Katep and Menamun didn’t want the treasure for themselves. They saw themselves as its stewards, its protectors. So they used their influence to salvage all they could over a period of several months, maybe a year, and stored it up in a secret
location in Thebes. Bit by bit, they started stashing it away, somewhere it could never be found, using what power they still had to keep the operation secret. But it was a wildly risky thing to do. Suicidal. Sooner or later the pharaoh’s agents were bound to get wise, and they did. Informants talked, people were tortured. Suddenly the priests were marked men, and it became impossible for them to keep shifting treasure the way they’d been doing. They stashed the last of it wherever they could, somewhere out in the desert. Wenkaura described how he was able to smuggle himself out of Thebes safely by stowing away on board a merchant vessel. He only heard later what became of Katep and Menamun. Rather than be captured and tortured, they’d committed suicide by drinking poison.’

‘Wenkaura fled to Syria?’

‘A resourceful guy, clearly. He got himself a job as a private tutor to a rich man’s son, assumed his new identity and became Diodore. Years went by. Then one day he heard the news. Akhenaten had died. Maybe assassinated, nobody knows. Suddenly the old order was being restored, Akhenaten’s reforms and his name were stamped in the dirt, and his successor, Tutankhamun, reinstated the old religion with Amun as head of the gods. It was Wenkaura’s dream come true. He was old and sick by then, and scared that if he didn’t act soon, the secret of the treasure would go to his grave with him. He sat down and started writing his letter. Sadly, or perhaps not so sadly, it was never sent. We never knew why. Maybe he died before he got the chance to finish it. Maybe he had second thoughts.
Who knows? Who cares? What matters is, we found it. And that treasure is still out there, just waiting.’