Carbon-14 decays into nitrogen-14, and has a half-life of roughly 5,700 years. By comparing the ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 left in an organic sample, the age of the plant or animal can be estimated with a fair degree of accuracy. The dating method can be used for samples up to about 60,000 years old, but is most accurate for material created in the last 26,000 years. It was radiocarbon dating which had conclusively proved that the Shroud of Turin was a medieval forgery, the material dating, with an accuracy of 95 per cent, to between AD 1260 and 1390.
Radiocarbon dating of the parchment, Angela was certain, would be a quick, easy and conclusive way of establishing its age with a high degree of accuracy, and would go a long way towards confirming the authenticity of the text written on it.
But before that could be done, she had to get her hands on the relic, and at that moment she had no idea how she was going to achieve that. Her only real hope was that Ali Mohammed might have managed to convince the owner that it was valuable, and that he might either hand it over to a museum somewhere for analysis or, perhaps more likely, offer it for sale on the open market.
She thought for a few moments, and then sent out a brief and very general email to all the museums in her database, couching her message in the vaguest of terms, but suggesting that the British Museum was interested in obtaining copies of early parchments, and especially those believed to date from around the first century AD, and originating from in or near ancient Judaea. That was all she could do officially, and without making it quite obvious what she was looking for.
Apart from that, and unless Ali Mohammed contacted her again, she was just going to have to keep her ear to the ground.
Before she left her office, she put the photographs in her laptop case along with her computer, then glanced at her watch. It was just before six, which meant she was in good time to meet Chris outside the museum.
41
Abdul had expected that Jalal Khusad would be pleased to learn that he’d eliminated Ali Mohammed when he rang his number late that evening, but the man seemed to be more interested in the relic itself.
‘I have the man’s laptop, and the photographs he took of the object,’ Abdul said.
‘Congratulations. So now you have a free computer. Shred the photographs or, better still, burn them. They’re of no interest to me.’
That wasn’t the response Abdul had been expecting.
‘But there might be useful information on the laptop. Maybe the target sent copies of the pictures to other people as well.’
‘I hope for your sake that he didn’t. You told me he’d only been in contact with this woman in London.’
‘That was what he said,’ Abdul agreed, ‘but he could have been lying. Surely it’s worth checking his emails, just to make sure.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. You’re right. Check the hard drive yourself — I assume you’re capable of that — and let me know if you find anything. When you’re certain you’ve checked everything and identified everybody the man had been in contact with over this matter, destroy the computer. I don’t want any other images of the relic to survive.’
Then another thought struck Khusad.
‘What about the camera the man used to take the pictures?’ he demanded. ‘Did you get that as well? Or take the data-card out of it?’
‘I covered that,’ Abdul replied. ‘There were three cameras in the man’s office and I took the data-cards out of all of them.’
‘So at least you got that bit right. I suppose that’s something. But we must find this relic as quickly as possible, and the other man, the man in the middle of all this, still needs to be taken care of. And this time can you try to do it a bit more discreetly. I understand that the Cairo Museum is now swarming with police. That’s the second time you’ve drawn attention to yourself.’
‘There wasn’t any alternative. I couldn’t afford to wait until he left work. And I can promise you that nobody would recognize me again. As for the relic and the man, find one and you find the other. The problem is that I have no idea where he might be. I think there’s a good chance that he’s probably left Cairo by now. He’ll have taken a train or bus or a plane somewhere, and I don’t have the resources to track him if he’s done that.’
‘Then it’s lucky that I have,’ Khusad replied. ‘And I have also obtained a photograph of the man, which I’ll send to you.’
‘OK. There’s also the matter of my fee.’
There was a short silence before Khusad replied.
‘Very well. I’ll authorize another transfer to your offshore account for the work you’ve done so far, but I have been instructed to make no further payments to you until this matter is resolved. Keep your mobile switched on, and start looking for your target here in Cairo. As soon as we receive any indication of his whereabouts through his credit card usage or tracking him through his passport if he decides to travel, I’ll contact you. In the meantime, assume he’s still in the city somewhere.’
Abdul pondered the situation. The resources and global reach that Khusad’s organization could command were impressive. He knew that for a police force or anti-terrorist group or any other law enforcement operation, monitoring the use of either a credit card or a passport was comparatively straightforward, and a very basic procedure when trying to track a suspect. But he also knew that it was almost impossible for any private individual to achieve the same level of access. Who were these people?
42
About seventy yards down the street from the main entrance to an Ealing Broadway apartment block, a lone man sat in a nondescript saloon car, the radio playing softly in the background. His eyes were fixed on the front door of the block, and lying on the passenger seat beside him was a rather grainy photograph showing the face of an elegant-looking woman with long blonde hair. The man had been stationed there for almost two hours, studying everyone who either went into or came out of the building, but so far he had seen nobody who resembled his target.
However, the picture he was using was a few years old, and was an enlargement of a much smaller image, which would make a positive identification even more difficult. The lighting around the entrance lobby of the apartment building was less than ideal, and he was so far away that using binoculars — he had a very compact but powerful set — was essential. And he knew that making a positive identification of any woman could be difficult because, unlike men, women often changed their style of hair and make-up, and that could change their appearance dramatically.
But despite all these factors, when two people approached the lobby of the building hand in hand, and the external security light flared into life, he identified the woman. He watched as she opened the door, inputting a series of numbers into the external security keypad, and held the binoculars to his eyes until she and her companion had vanished inside the building.
Only when they were no longer visible did he drop the binoculars onto the passenger seat of the car and pick up his mobile. He dialled a number from memory. In his business, he never used stored telephone numbers because if the phone was lost or stolen those numbers could compromise both him and the people he had called. His menu system was also set up so that the phone never kept a record of calls made and received. He made sure his own number was never disclosed to the people he called, and was changed on a weekly basis.
The call was answered on the fourth ring.