The Moses Legacy - Adam Palmer [40]
It wasn’t that he blamed the lawyer for his imprisonment. His lawyer had in fact done very well to get him off with manslaughter. But he was Jewish and he was a parasite, making his money off other people’s misery. It was only because of money that the lawyer had represented him in the first place.
The lawyer was no different from a hooker: he went with anyone as long as he was paid. Today it might be Goliath, tomorrow it might be some crooked Jewish banker who had embezzled billions of other people’s money. To the lawyer, it was all the same.
So Goliath had had no qualms about killing him. He wasn’t even troubled by the fact that he had killed him in front of his five-year-old son. The kid would probably grow up just like his father. He had intended to kill the kid too, but the kid had screamed and that alerted other people. He had to flee before any witnesses saw him. Just as he had to flee from the hospital. Witnesses could land him in prison.
His thoughts were interrupted by the phone.
‘Hallo.’
It was the senator.
‘Can you talk?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve just heard a news item from England about a curator at the British Museum.’
‘What?’ asked Goliath, confused.
‘Never mind. The point is, it’s given me another idea. It still involves getting a sample of clothes, but from Daniel Klein and the Gusack woman.’
He explained the details. When he had finished, Goliath asked a question.
‘What should I do with the people, once I’ve got the clothes?’
‘Kill them.’
Chapter 27
‘This is the famous Mernepteh stele,’ said Mansoor. ‘Made of granite, it was by far the largest inscribed stone ever found, not just by Flinders Petrie, but by anyone. The stone was actually stolen by Mernepteh from the mortuary temple of another pharaoh who had already used the other side. But it was the proclamation that Mernepteh inscribed on it that makes it one of the most famous monuments of ancient Egypt.’
Daniel stood there staring at the huge stone monument in awe, flanked by Mansoor and Gabrielle. His lips moved, but no words came out of his mouth. It was as if there were no words that could describe the magnificence of what he beheld. Lit by special lighting in an otherwise dark area of the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities, it stood more than ten feet high and five feet wide, dwarfing those who stood in its imposing presence.
Daniel craned his neck to look up to the graphic image at the top. It showed the pharaoh and his consort standing with various others in attendance.
‘You feel it, don’t you?’ said Mansoor.
Daniel saw a mocking smile on the Egyptian’s face and he knew exactly what he meant.
‘Yes,’ said Daniel, subconsciously muting his voice in token of the humility that he felt before this imposing monument.
‘Mernepteh used this stone to proclaim his victories over Libya.’
‘Or his father’s victories,’ Gabrielle added.
‘True,’ Mansoor confirmed. ‘Considering that his father, Ramesses the Second, ruled for sixty-six years and lived for ninety, it’s far more likely that the father was the architect of the victories commemorated in this stele than his son, who ruled for no more than ten.’
Mansoor started reading out loud.
‘He drove back the Libyans who walked in Egypt,
Fear of Egypt is great in their hearts…
Their best fighters were left abandoned,
Their legs made no stand except to flee,
Their bowmen abandoned their bows.’
‘I notice it’s written right to left,’ said Daniel.
The normal way to write hieroglyphics was left to right, but they could be written either way.
‘I didn’t know you could read them,’ said Mansoor.
‘I can’t. But I can tell from the way the figures are facing.’
Mansoor nodded approvingly. Hieroglyphic animals and human forms always face the beginning of the line.
‘And