The Moses Stone (17 page)
“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 thought. Then he placed an internal call to Angela Lewis’s superior.
“Roger, it’s Tony. I was just looking for Angela, but she doesn’t seem to be at work. Any idea where she is?”
“Yes.” Roger Halliwell sounded somewhat harassed. “She’s taken some leave. At pretty short notice, actually. She rang yesterday afternoon—some domestic crisis, I gather.”
“When will she be back?”
“She didn’t say—which is all pretty inconvenient. Anything I can help you with?”
Baverstock thanked him and replaced the receiver. Now that’s interesting, he thought. Very interesting indeed.
30
“So there were originally four tablets, and together they formed a larger oblong?”
“Exactly,” Angela said. “And we’ve identified three of them, but we’ve only got a clear photographic image of one—an image clear enough to read the inscription on it, I mean. The other problem is that we don’t have the fourth tablet, and that means we’re completely missing a quarter of the inscription.”
“You can’t do anything with the three we’ve located?”
“Not a lot,” Angela replied. “We’ll need to buy or maybe download an Aramaic-English dictionary before we can even start doing any work on the inscriptions. The bigger problem is that the pictures of these two tablets”—she pointed—“simply aren’t good enough to allow us to translate more than the odd word. Most of them are blurred and out of focus, and to translate Aramaic you need a clear image of the original, because several of the letters are very similar in appearance.”
“But it’s still worth trying, especially as we’ve got a complete translation of the Paris tablet.”
Angela nodded. “Yes, assuming I can find a suitable dictionary. Let’s see what the web can offer.”
She opened Google, typed “Aramaic dictionary” in the search field and hit the return key.
The two of them leaned forward and peered at the screen of Angela’s laptop.
“Over a hundred thousand hits,” Bronson muttered. “
Somewhere
in that lot there must be a dictionary that we can use.”
Somewhere
in that lot there must be a dictionary that we can use.”
“There is,” Angela said. “The very first entry, in fact.” She double-clicked the listing in Google and checked the screen. “This site offers translations both ways—to and from Aramaic—for single words. It even includes a downloadable font that we’ll need to use for the Aramaic text. Aramaic is an
abjad
, a consonantal alphabet, with only twenty-two letters, and in appearance it’s very similar to Hebrew. So we need a font like this one—this is called Estrangelo—to display it, so that the dictionary can recognize the words.”
abjad
, a consonantal alphabet, with only twenty-two letters, and in appearance it’s very similar to Hebrew. So we need a font like this one—this is called Estrangelo—to display it, so that the dictionary can recognize the words.”
Angela downloaded and installed the font, then opened a new document in her word processor, selected the Estrangelo font and carefully wrote out one of the words from the clay tablet Margaret O’Connor had found in the
souk
.
souk
.
“This is one of the words Tony couldn’t translate,” she said. “He told me it wasn’t clear enough.”
When she was satisfied that she’d got it as accurate as possible, she copied the word into the on-line dictionary and pressed the “search” button.
“That’s not a good start,” she muttered, looking at the screen. The message “word not recognized” was displayed under the search field. “It looks like Tony was right about this word, at least.”
“Maybe one of the characters you’ve used isn’t exactly right,” Bronson suggested. “It
is
pretty blurred in that photograph. Why don’t you try a different word?”
is
pretty blurred in that photograph. Why don’t you try a different word?”
“OK. This is what Tony translated as ‘tablet,’ and it’s one of the words I checked earlier. Let’s see what the system makes of this.”
She prepared the Aramaic characters and copied the word into the search field. Immediately the system returned the English translation as “tablet.”
“That worked,” she said. “Let’s try this one.”
She carefully composed a different set of characters——and input that. The system correctly translated the Aramaic word as “cubit.”
“OK, now we’re cooking,” she looked up at Bronson and smiled. “Let’s make a start on the Cairo tablet.”
31
“Did you get it?” Alexander Dexter asked, as Izzat Zebari—now wearing Western-style clothes instead of his usual
jellaba
—sat down opposite him in the lounge of the midpriced hotel near the center of Casablanca. It was early evening. Dexter had flown from London to Rabat that morning, and then driven down to the city in response to Zebari’s summons.
jellaba
—sat down opposite him in the lounge of the midpriced hotel near the center of Casablanca. It was early evening. Dexter had flown from London to Rabat that morning, and then driven down to the city in response to Zebari’s summons.
It had been a blisteringly hot day and the evening wasn’t much cooler. Dexter wished he’d thought to bring even lighter-weight clothes than the jacket and slacks he was wearing.
Zebari glanced around the room at the handful of other residents and guests. Then he looked back at Dexter.
“No, my friend, I did not get it.”
Apart from the unwelcome news that he had failed to achieve his objective, something else in Zebari’s voice and manner bothered Dexter.
“There’s a ‘but,’ isn’t there?” he asked.
Zebari nodded. “Yes, there is a ‘but,’ as you put it. A big ‘but.’ The cost of trying to recover the object was much higher than I had expected.”
“How much higher?” Dexter asked, guessing that Zebari might be trying a serious shake-down, even though he’d failed in his mission.
“Probably more than you can afford. The man with me was shot down and captured as we tried to escape. I think we can assume that his subsequent death—and I’ve no doubt that he is dead—was neither quick nor painless.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Dexter muttered. He knew the world of stolen and smuggled antiques was pretty rough, but he hadn’t expected anything like that. “All you had to do was steal a bloody clay tablet. How could you possibly screw that up so badly?”
Zebari’s voice was ice cold. “One of the problems we faced, Dexter, was that the man who possessed the tablet pretends to be a businessman, but in reality he’s nothing more than a gangster. His house was fitted with alarms, which we disabled, but he’d installed an infrared sensor inside the display cabinet, and we didn’t see that until I reached inside it. And by then, of course, the alarms had gone off. I managed to scramble over the wall and get away, but my companion wasn’t so lucky. His name, should you be interested, was Amer Hammad. He was a man I’ve known and worked with for over ten years, and I called him a friend.”
“But you didn’t get the tablet? You know I don’t pay for failure.”
“You’re not listening, Dexter. I told you that I didn’t get it, simply because it wasn’t there. And there are other . . . complications. Quite apart from Hammad’s death, that is.”
“Like what?” Dexter demanded.
“The man who owned the tablet has very good contacts inside the Moroccan police force. A number of officers are believed to be on his payroll.”
“So?”
“So it probably won’t take him too long to discover Hammad’s identity.”
“What will happen to his body?” Dexter asked.
“He’ll probably stick it in the back of a Jeep, drive a few miles out into the desert and dump it. The jackals and the vultures will take care of it. But whatever method of disposal he chooses, Hammad’s corpse will simply vanish. The point is that if this man manages to identify me as the other burglar, I’ve got real problems.”
“So that’s why we’re meeting here in Casablanca instead of up in Rabat?”
“Exactly. I need to get out of Morocco, quickly, and for at least a year. And that costs money, serious money.”
“OK, I understand the position you’re in, and I’m sorry. But I told you I don’t pay for failure.”
Dexter shifted slightly in his seat, as if preparing to stand up and leave, but Zebari stilled him with a gesture.
“We did get something,” he said. “A piece of card.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes, but it has a good picture of the tablet on it, and the story of its origins. Does your client want the tablet itself, or just a copy of the inscription that’s on it?”
Dexter looked at him appraisingly. “What do you mean?”
“What I say. Some people talk, other people listen. The word is that this clay tablet is worthless, but the inscription on it is priceless. It’s a kind of treasure map, or a part of one, anyway. Now, if your client really just wants this lump of fired clay for his collection of relics, our conversation here is probably over. But if all he wants is a picture of the inscription—a much better picture than the one you sent me—then I hope he has deep pockets, because it’s going to cost him plenty to get his hands on the card.”
Dexter sighed. “OK, let’s cut to the chase. How much do you want?”
Zebari took a slip of paper out of his pocket and passed it across the table.
Dexter picked it up and looked at the number written on it. “Ten thousand? Ten thousand pounds?” he asked, keeping his voice low, and Zebari nodded. “You have just
got
to be joking. Ten grand for a picture of a clay tablet? My client will never agree.”
got
to be joking. Ten grand for a picture of a clay tablet? My client will never agree.”
“Then neither you nor your client will ever see the card. It’s your choice, Dexter. I’ve given you my first, last and totally nonnegotiable offer. If you don’t agree, I’ll walk out of here and you’ll never see me again. I have friends who’ll help me.”
For a few seconds the two men stared at each other; then Dexter nodded. “Wait here. I’ll call my client and see what he wants to do. I’ll need a few minutes.”
“Make it quick, Dexter. I’m running out of time.”
Dexter left the hotel, walked a short distance down the street, then pulled out his mobile phone. He relayed to Charlie Hoxton what Zebari had told him, and finished by telling him the price the Moroccan was demanding. Or, to be completely accurate, he told him Zebari wanted fifteen thousand pounds for the card—he had his commission to think of, after all.
When he told Hoxton the price, Dexter held the phone away from his ear, which was just as well. The stream of invective being emitted at full volume from the earpiece might have damaged his hearing. When the tirade had diminished, he cautiously replaced the phone.
“So I’ll tell him it’s no deal then?”
“I didn’t say that, Dexter. Will he negotiate?”
“He told me he wouldn’t, and I believe him. He’s deep in the shit because of what happened, and selling this picture of the tablet is about the only way he has of getting out. And he wants to know right now. When I go back into the hotel, either it’s a deal at fifteen or he walks. Those are our choices.”
“Thieving bastard,” Hoxton said angrily. “He does know the price he’s demanding is totally bloody extortionate, doesn’t he?”
“Oh, yes, definitely. He also told me that the inscription on the tablet appeared to be part of a treasure map.”
Hoxton was quiet for a few seconds, then spoke again. “OK. Tell him it’s a deal. I’ve already wired money to the account we arranged in Rabat. I’ll authorize you to draw fifteen grand from it tomorrow.”
Slightly surprised by Hoxton’s response, Dexter slipped the phone into his pocket and walked back into the hotel lounge.
“Will you take eight?” he asked. There was no harm in trying a little haggling.
Zebari shook his head and stood up.
“OK, OK,” Dexter said. “We’ll buy the card for ten. The money will be in Rabat tomorrow. I presume you’ll want it in cash? In dirhams?”
“Of course I want it in dirhams. Do you think I’m some kind of idiot? Call me on this after nine tomorrow”—he wrote a mobile number on the piece of paper he’d given to Dexter—“when you’ve got the money. Then we’ll meet somewhere and do the exchange.”
Without another word, Zebari stood up and walked out of the hotel.
32
At eight thirty the next morning Dexter walked through the doors of the Bank Al-Maghrib on Avenue Mohammed V in Rabat. Fifteen minutes later he left the premises, his transactions concluded. Five thousand pounds of the money Charlie Hoxton had wired to Morocco was on its way to a numbered account in a small and discreet bank in Lichtenstein, where it would earn minimal interest for him but be entirely safe.
The previously smooth line of Dexter’s tweed jacket was now marred by two bulges. The wads of dirham notes in his inside pockets—each the equivalent of five thousand pounds sterling—were bulky, and he wanted to get the meeting with Zebari over with as quickly as possible and get home to the calm and safety of his antique shop in Petworth. He’d never liked Morocco as a country; he liked its inhabitants even less.
He walked briskly along Avenue Mohammed V until he found a café that looked reasonably clean, pulled out a chair from a vacant table and ordered mint tea—Arabic coffee was far too strong and bitter for his taste. He checked his watch: eight fifty.
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