The Genesis Secret: (8 page)

It was just getting dark by the time they climbed into Christine’s Land Rover. Rush hour. Within a few hundred metres the car had come to complete stop. Stuck in gridlock.

Christine leaned back, and sighed. She turned the radio on, and then off. Then looked at Rob. ’Tell me more about Robert Luttrell.’

‘Such as?’

‘Job. Life. You know…’

‘It’s not that interesting.’

‘Try me.’

He gave her a brief résumé of the last decade. The way he and Sally had rushed into marriage and parenthood; the discovery she was having an affair; the ensuing and inevitable divorce.

Christine listened, keenly. ‘Are you still angry about it?’

‘No. It was me, as well. I mean-it was partly my fault. I was always away. And she got lonely…And I still admire her, kind of.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Sally,’ he said. ‘She’s training to be a lawyer. That takes guts. As well as brains. To change your career in your thirties. I admire that. So it’s not like I hate her or anything…’ He shrugged. ‘We just…diverged. And married too young.’

Christine nodded, then asked about his American family. He sketched in his Scots-Irish background, the emigration to Utah in the 1880s. The Mormonism.

The Land Rover at last moved forward. Rob looked across at her. ‘And you?’

The traffic was really thinning out. She floored the pedal, accelerated. ‘Jewish French.’

Rob had guessed this by the name. Meyer.

‘Half my family died in the Holocaust. But half didn’t. French Jews did OK, in the war, comparatively.’

‘And your mum and dad?’

Christine explained that her mother was an academic in Paris, her dad a piano tuner. He had died fifteen years back. ‘In fact,’ she added, ‘I’m not sure he did much piano tuning even when he was alive. He just sat around the flat in Paris. Arguing.’

‘Sounds like my dad. Except my dad was a bastard, too.’

Christine glanced over at him. The sky behind her, framed by the car window, was purple and sapphire. A spectacular desert twilight. They were well outside Sanliurfa now. ‘You said your father was a Mormon?’

‘He is.’

‘I went to Salt Lake City once.’

‘Yeah?’

‘When I was in Mexico, working at Teotihuacan, I took a holiday in the States.’

Rob laughed. ‘In Salt Lake City?’

‘Utah.’ She smiled. ‘You know. Canyonlands. Arches Park.’

‘Ah.’ He nodded. ‘That makes more sense.’

‘Marvellous scenery. Anyway we had to fly through SLC…’

‘The most boring big town in America.’

An army truck overtook the Land Rover, with Turkish troops hanging casually out the back, shadowy in the dusk. One of them waved and grinned when he saw Christine, but she ignored him. ‘It wasn’t New York, but I quite liked it.’

Rob thought about Utah, and Salt Lake City. His only memories of SLC were of dreary Sundays, going to the big Mormon cathedral. The Tabernacle.

‘It’s funny,’ Christine added. ‘People laugh at the Mormons. But you know what?’

‘What?’

‘Salt Lake City is the only big town in America where I have felt perfectly safe. You can walk down the street at 5 a.m. and no one’s going to mug you. Mormons don’t mug people. I like that.’

‘But they eat terrible food…and wear polyester slacks.’

‘Yes, yes. And some towns in Utah you can’t even buy coffee. The drink of the devil.’ Christine
quietly smiled. The desert air was warm through the open window of the Land Rover. ‘But I’m serious. Mormons are nice. Friendly. Their religion makes them that way. Why do atheists sneer at people of faith, when faith makes you nicer?’

‘You’re a believer, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m not.’

‘I guessed.’

They laughed.

Rob leaned back, scanning the horizon. They were passing a concrete shack he’d seen before. Plastered with posters of Turkish politicians.

‘Isn’t this near the turning?’

‘Yes. Just up ahead.’

The car slowed as they neared their junction. Rob was thinking about Christine’s belief: Roman Catholicism, she had said. He was still confused by this. He was still confused by a lot of things about Christine Meyer: like her love for Sanliurfa, despite the local, very patriarchal attitude to women.

The Land Rover swerved off the asphalt. Now they were rattling along the rubbled track, in real darkness. The headlights picked out stray bushes, and bare rocks. Maybe a gazelle, skittering into the gloom. A tiny village, illuminated by a few straggly lights, twinkled on the side of a hill. Rob could just make out the spear of a minaret in the shrouding twilight. The moon was just rising.

Rob asked Christine directly: about her attitude
to Islam. She explained that she admired aspects of it. Especially the muezzin.

‘Really?’ Rob said. ‘All that wailing? I sometimes find it intrusive. I mean, I don’t hate it, but still…sometimes…’

‘I think it’s moving. The cry of the soul, imploring God. You should listen more closely!’

They took the second turning past a final, silent Kurdish village. A few more kilometres, and they would see the shallow hills of Gobekli, silhouetted in the moonlight. The Land Rover rumbled as Christine took the ultimate curve. Rob didn’t know what to expect at the dig, following the ‘accident’. Police cars? Barriers? Nothing?

There was indeed a new barrier, set across the track. It said
Police.
And
Keep Out.
In Turkish, and English. Rob got out of the car and pushed the blue barrier aside. Christine drove on and parked.

The site was deserted. Rob felt serious relief. The only indication that the dig was now the scene of a suspicious death was a new tarpaulin, erected over the trench where Franz had been pushed-that and a sense of emptiness in the tented area. Lots of things had been taken away. The big table had been moved, or dismantled. This season’s dig was definitely over.

Rob glanced at the stones. He’d wondered before what it would be like, standing amongst them at night. Now, quite unexpectedly, here he was. They were shadowy in their enclosures. The moon had fully risen and was casting white darkness across
the scene. Rob had an odd desire to go down into the enclosures. Touch the megaliths. Rest his cheek against the coolness of the ancient stones. Run his fingers along the carvings. He’d wanted to do that, in fact, the very first time he’d seen them.

Christine walked up behind him. ‘Everything OK?’

‘Yes!’

‘Come on then. Let’s be quick. This place…rather scares me at night.’

Rob noticed that she was averting her gaze from the trench. The trench where Franz had been killed. He sensed how difficult this visit must be for her.

They walked swiftly over the rise. To the left was a blue plastic cabin: Franz’s personal office. The door was freshly padlocked.

Christine sighed. ‘Damn.’

Rob thought for a second. Then he jogged back to the Land Rover, opened the car’s back door, and fumbled in the darkness. He returned with a tyre jack. The desert breeze was warm and the moonlight glinted on the padlock. He shoved the jack in the lock, twisted, and the padlock snapped open.

Inside, the cabin was small and pretty empty. Christine shone a torch around. A spare set of spectacles sat on an empty shelf. Some textbooks were haphazardly scattered on a desktop thick with dust. The police had taken almost everything.

Christine knelt down, then sighed again. ‘They took the bloody locker.’

‘Really?’

‘It was hidden down here. By the little fridge. It’s gone.’

Rob felt a keen disappointment. ‘So that’s that?’ It was a wasted journey.

Christine looked deeply sad. ‘Come on’, she said. ’Let’s go before someone sees us. We’ve already broken into a murder scene.’

Rob picked up the tyre jack. Again, as he walked to the car, past the shadowy pits, he felt that strange urge to go and touch the stones. To lie down next to them.

Christine opened the driver’s door of the Land Rover. The interior light came on. Simultaneously, Rob opened the back doors to stow the jack. And immediately he saw it: the light was glinting on a shiny little notebook. Nestling on the back seat; black but expensive looking. He picked it up. Opening the cover, he saw the name Franz Breitner-in small, neat handwriting.

Rob paced around the car and leaned in through the passenger door to show Christine his find.

‘Jesus!’ she cried. ‘That’s it! That’s Franz’s notebook! That’s what I was after. That’s where he wrote…everything.’

Rob handed it over. Her face intent, Christine flicked through the pages, muttering: ‘He wrote it all in here. I’d see him doing it. Secretly. This was his big secret. Well done!’

Rob climbed into the passenger seat. ‘But what’s it doing in your car?’ As soon as he asked the
question he felt a little stupid. The answer was obvious. It must have fallen out of Franz’s pocket when Christine was driving him to hospital. Either that, or Franz knew he was dying, as he lay bleeding on the backseat, and took it out of his pocket and left it there. Deliberately. Knowing that Christine would find it.

Rob shook his head. He was turning into a conspiracy theorist. He had to get a grip. Reaching left, he slammed his door, making the car rattle.

‘Whoops,’ said Christine.

‘Sorry.’

‘Something fell.’

‘What?’

‘When you slammed the car door. Something fell out of the notebook.’

Christine was scrabbling on the floor of the foot well, running her hands this way and that beneath the pedals. Then she sat back, holding something in her fingers.

It was a dry stalk of grass. Rob stared at it. ‘Why on earth would Franz preserve that?’

But Christine was gazing at the grass. Intently.

Christine drove even faster than usual back into town. On the outskirts, where the scruffy desert bumped into the first grey concrete apartment blocks, they saw a feeble attempt at a roadside café, with white plastic tables arrayed outside, and a few truck drivers drinking beer. The drivers were drinking with guilty expressions.

‘Beer?’ said Rob.

Christine glanced across. ‘Good idea.’

She turned right and parked. The drivers stared over, as Christine climbed from the car and threaded her way to a table.

It was a warm evening; insects and flies were whirling around the bare bulbs strung outside the cafe. Rob ordered two Efes beers. They talked about Gobekli. Every so often a huge truck would thunder down the road, lights blazing, en route to Damascus or Riyadh or Beirut, drowning out their conversation and making the light bulbs shiver and kick. Christine flicked through the pages
of the notebook. She was rapt, almost feverish. Rob sipped his warm beer from his scratchy glass and let her do her thing.

Now she was flicking this way and that. Unhappily. At length she chucked the book onto the table, and sighed. ‘I don’t know…It’s a mess.’

Rob set down his beer. ‘Sorry?’

‘It’s chaotic.’ She tutted. ‘Which is strange. Because Franz was not messy. He was scrupulous. ’Teutonic efficiency’ he would call it. He was rigorous and exact. Always…always…’ Her brown eyes clouded for a second. She reached firmly for her beer, drank a gulp and said, ‘Take a look for yourself.’

Rob checked the early pages. ‘Seems OK to me.’

‘Here,’ she said, pointing. ‘Yes, it begins very neatly. Diagrams of the excavations. Microliths noted. But here…
look
…’

Rob flicked some more pages until she stopped him.

‘See, from here it falls apart. The handwriting turns into a scrawl. And the drawings and little doodles…chaotic. And here. What are all these numbers?’

Rob looked closely. The writing was nearly all in German. The handwriting at first was very neat; but it did get scrawlier to the end. There was a list of numbers on the last page. Then a line about someone called Orra Keller. Rob remembered a girl he’d known in England called Orra. A Jewish girl. So who was this Orra Keller?
He asked Christine; and she shrugged. He asked her about the numbers. She shrugged again-more emphatically. Rob noted there was also a drawing in the book: a scribbled sketch of a field, and some trees.

He handed the book back to Christine. ‘What does the writing say? I don’t know much German.’

‘Well, most of it is illegible.’ She opened the book towards the end. ‘But he talks about wheat, here. And a river. Turning into more rivers. Here.’

‘Wheat? But why?’

‘God knows. And this drawing seems to be a map. I think. With mountains. It says mountains with a question mark. And rivers. Or maybe they are roads. It really is a mess.’

Rob finished his beer and motioned to the bar owner for two more. Another huge silver lorry thundered down the Damascus road. The sky over Sanliurfa was a dirty orange-black.

‘And what about the grass?’

Christine nodded. ‘Yes, that is weird. Why keep that?’

‘Do you think he was frightened? Is that why the notes are so…messed up?

‘It is possible. Remember the Pulsa Dinura?’

Rob shuddered. ‘Hard to forget. Do you think he knew about that?’

Christine picked an insect off the top of her beer. Then she looked hard at Rob. ‘I think he knew. He must have heard the chanters outside the window. And he was an expert on
Mesopotamian religions. The demons and the curses. It was one of his specialities.’

‘So he was aware he was in danger?’

‘Probably. Which might account for the chaotic state of his notes. Sheer fear. But still…’ She held the book flat in her hands, as if assessing its weight. ’A lifetime’s work…

Rob could sense her sadness.

Christine dropped the book again. ‘This place is horrible. I don’t care if they do serve beer. Can we go?’

‘Gladly.’

Dropping some coins in a saucer, they made for the Land Rover and barrelled off down the road. After a while Christine said, ‘I don’t believe it was just fear, it doesn’t add up.’ She swivelled the wheel so they could overtake a cyclist, an old man in an Arabic cloak. Sitting in front of the bicycling man, athwart the crossbar, was a small dark boy. The boy waved at the Land Rover, grinning at the white western woman.

Rob noticed that Christine was taking side streets. Not an obvious route back to the centre of town.

At last she said, ‘Franz was diligent and thorough. I don’t think a curse would have sent him over the edge. Nothing would have unsettled him like that.’

‘So what was it?’ Rob asked.

They were in a newer part of town now. Almost European looking. Nice clean apartment blocks.
Women were walking the evening streets, not all of them in headscarves. Rob saw a brightly lit supermarket advertising cheese in German as well as Turkish. Next door was an internet café full of shining screens with dark heads silhouetted against them.

‘I think he must have had some theory. He used to get excited by theories.’

‘I saw.’

Christine smiled, staring ahead. ‘I think he had some theory, about Gobekli. That’s what the notes say to me.’

‘A theory to do with what?’

‘Perhaps he had worked out why Gobekli was buried. That is, after all, the big mystery. If he felt he was onto a solution that would get him pretty agitated.’

Rob wasn’t satisfied by this. ‘But why didn’t he just write it down, or tell anyone?’

The car had stopped. Christine pulled the key from the ignition. ‘Good point,’ she said, looking at Rob. ‘A very good point. Let’s go and find out. Come on.’

‘Where?’

‘There’s a friend here. Might be able to help.’

They were parked in front of a new apartment complex with a huge crimson poster advertising Turku Cola on the wall. Christine ran up the steps and pressed a numbered button. They waited, and then they were buzzed in. The lift took them to the tenth floor. They ascended in silence.

A door was already half-open across the landing. Rob followed Christine. He peered into the apartment-then jumped: just inside the door was Ivan the paleobotanist, from the party. Just lurking there.

Ivan nodded politely but his expression was notably unfriendly. Almost suspicious. He showed them into the main room of his flat. It was austere, just a lot of books and some pictures. On a desk a smart laptop computer was showing a screensaver of the Gobekli megaliths. There was one beautiful small stone object on the mantelpiece which looked like one of the Mesopotamian wind demons. Rob found himself wondering if Ivan had stolen it.

They sat down. Wordless. Ivan offered no tea or water but just sat down opposite them, looked hard at Christine and said, ‘Yes?’

She took out the notebook and laid it on the table. Ivan stared at it. He glanced up at Christine. His young Slavic face was a picture of blankness. Like someone suppressing emotion. Or someone used to suppressing emotion.

Then Christine reached in her pocket and took out the grass stalk and laid it very gently on top of the book. All the time Rob watched Ivan’s face. He had no idea what was going on here, but he felt that Ivan’s reaction was crucial. Ivan flinched very slightly when he saw the stalk of grass. Rob couldn’t stand the silence any longer. ‘Guys? Please? What is it? What’s going on?

Christine glanced at him as if to say
be patient.
But Rob didn’t feel like being patient. He wanted to know what was going on. Why had they driven here, late at night? To sit in silence and stare at some piece of grass?

‘Einkorn,’ said Ivan.

Christine smiled. ‘It is, isn’t it? Einkorn wheat. Yes.’

Ivan shook his head. ‘You needed me to tell you this, Christine?’

‘Well…I wasn’t sure. You’re the expert.’

‘So now you are sure. And I am very tired.’

Christine picked up the grass. ‘Thank you, Ivan.’

‘It is nothing.’ He was already standing. ’Goodbye.’

They were escorted briskly to the door. At the threshold Ivan glanced left and right along the landing as if he was expecting to see someone he didn’t want to see. Then he slammed the door shut.

‘Well that was friendly,’ said Rob.

‘But we got what we came for.’

They buzzed the lift and descended. All the mystery was irritating Rob. ‘OK,’ he said as they breathed the warm, dieselly air of the street. ‘Come on, Christine. Einkorn wheat. What the hell?’

Without turning to face him she said, ‘It is the oldest form of wheat in the world. The original wheat, the first ever cereal if you like.’

‘And?’

‘It only grows around here. And it was crucial
to the switch to agriculture. When man started farming.’

‘And?’

Christine turned. Her brown eyes were shining. ’Franz thought it was a clue. I’m sure he thought it was a clue. In which case I think it’s a clue.’

‘A clue to what?’

‘It might tell us why they buried the temple.’

‘But how can a piece of grass do that?’

‘Later. Come on. Let’s go. You saw the way Ivan was watching at the door. Come on. Now.’

‘You think we’re being…followed?’

‘Not followed exactly. Maybe watched. I don’t know. Maybe it’s paranoia.’

Rob remembered Franz, skewered on the pole. He jumped into the car.