The Messiah Secret - James Becker [119]
‘We really thought we were looking for the Ark of the Covenant,’ he said, placing a restraining hand on Angela’s arm. ‘At first, all the clues seemed to point to that.’
‘So that explains your trip to Egypt,’ Donovan said, looking satisfied. ‘You thought the Pharaoh Shoshenq might have seized it from the Temple of Jerusalem and taken it to Tanis? But why in hell did you think you were looking for the Ark?’
Whoever the man was, it was immediately clear that he knew what he was talking about.
Angela relaxed very slightly. ‘I found a reference in a grimoire,’ she said.
‘Which one?’
‘The Liber Juratus or Liber Sacratus,’ Angela replied. ‘It dates from the thirteenth century,’ she added.
Donovan nodded. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘The Sworne Booke of Honorius, also known as the Liber Sacer.’
‘So you do know what might be in this cave?’ Angela asked.
‘Absolutely,’ Donovan said, smiling. ‘That’s why we’re here now.’
The armed man at the back of the cave – John Cross – shuffled his feet in irritation. ‘Will somebody here just tell me what the hell this is all about?’ he muttered.
Angela looked at him, then switched her gaze back to Donovan. ‘You haven’t told them?’ she demanded.
Donovan shook his head. ‘What convinced you that you weren’t on the trail of the Ark?’
‘Two things,’ Angela said tightly. ‘The first was the expression “the light which had become / the treasure”. Making that fit the Ark of the Covenant was a stretch, though we tried. But if the “treasure” becomes the “light”, as the Persian text says, then everything changes. The phrase “the treasure of the world” is one thing, but “the light of the world” means something completely different. And then there was a statement about the relic being removed from Mohalla.’
She paused and looked expectantly at Donovan, who just shook his head.
‘There’s a reference to it in the Quran,’ Angela added. ‘The full name of the place is Mohalla Anzimarah. Does that help?’
Again Donovan shook his head.
‘Anzimarah is in the Kashmir, in the old town district of Srinigar, in the Khanjar quarter. There’s a building there called the “Rozabal”, an abbreviation of Rauza Bal. The word rauza means “the tomb of the prophet”. Inside the building there are two tombs, and two gravestones. One of them is the grave of the Islamic saint Syed Nasir-ud-Din, who was buried there in the fifth century. The second, larger gravestone is for another man. Right now, Srinigar’s effectively in the middle of a war zone, but the Rozabal was investigated by several people a few years back, and details about the building are fairly well established.’
Angela took a breath. Still no one interrupted her. ‘Both the gravestones point north-south, in accordance with Muslim custom, but the actual graves are located in a crypt under the floor of the building. In the crypt, the sarcophagus of Syed Nasir-ud-Din also points north-south, as you’d expect, but the other tomb is aligned east-west, which signifies that the occupant was neither an Islamic saint nor a Hindu. Aligning a grave east-west is actually a Jewish custom. In other words, its occupant would have been a follower of Moses.’
She looked at Bronson who nodded for her to continue. ‘The name on the second tomb is Yuz Asaf, but he was also known as Yus Asaph, which translates as the “leader of the purified”, and that specifically refers to lepers who’d been cured of the disease. The first few lines of the Persian text explained how the son of “Yus of the purified” ordered that the “light which had become the treasure” was to be removed from Mohalla and taken back to the place it had come from. I assumed that meant that the light or the treasure had been located somewhere here, in this valley. The next section