In his email to Angela, Husani had instructed her to sit on one of the tables outside, by herself, and order a café con leche and a glass of water. As soon as Bronson was satisfied that there were no potential dangers lurking within the building or anywhere near it, Angela took a seat.
Before he left, Bronson sat down beside her.
‘I’ll be in the car, with the engine running, less than thirty yards away from you. I’ll be watching you and anyone who comes anywhere near you. If there’s anything you’re unhappy about or you feel uncomfortable at any time, just get up and start walking towards me. I’ll pull out of the parking space immediately, and we can be gone from here in ten seconds.’
Angela smiled at him.
‘That sounds like the kind of briefing you’d have given when you were in the Army. Just relax, Chris, and I’m sure it will all work out well. Now go. I’ll be fine.’
Bronson nodded, gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze of encouragement, then walked across the road to the car.
63
Anum Husani had actually arrived at the rendezvous about ten minutes earlier, and had been waiting in a small park down the street, some distance away, watching the activity at the café through a pair of compact but powerful binoculars he had purchased that morning. He’d seen a couple — an attractive blonde woman and a powerfully built, tall man with dark hair — arrive and spend a little time inside the building. Then they’d come out and the woman had sat down at a table. The man had then left her and gone to sit in a car nearby.
He had assumed from the start that there would be at least one other person with Angela Lewis, somebody to give a second opinion on the authenticity of the parchment. But then again, maybe the man was her husband: they certainly seemed to be on very friendly terms.
But whoever he was, he didn’t worry Husani. What bothered him was the possibility that the killer from Cairo, or some other hired assassin, might also know about the rendezvous he had arranged. He wasn’t well versed in the workings of modern technology. He used a computer as a tool to do certain things, but had little or no idea what went on in the background. He had no idea if it was possible for somebody else to intercept his email messages and read them, but he vaguely knew that that method of communication was more secure than using a mobile telephone.
These thoughts ran through his head as he sat on the grass, his back against the trunk of a tree, watching what little activity there was at the café.
The time he had specified for the rendezvous arrived, and still Husani didn’t move, just kept watching. About five minutes later, he saw the woman sitting at the table by herself look across the road towards the parked cars and give a slight shrug. If he needed it, that was confirmation enough. It was time.
Husani glanced round cautiously, but nobody appeared to be paying him — or the blonde woman in the café — any attention. He slid the binoculars into his pocket, picked up the expensive briefcase, then stood up and began slowly walking down the street, alert to any indication of danger.
Nobody approached him as he covered the short distance to the café on the opposite side of the road. When he reached a point almost directly opposite the building, he stopped and looked in both directions, like a cautious pedestrian, before walking to the other side. He weaved his way between the tables until he reached the one where Angela was sitting.
Then he stopped.
64
Angela had seen the man walking towards the café, and had half guessed — both from his appearance and from his manner — that he was the person she was expecting. When he came to a halt beside her table, she looked up at him and smiled in a friendly manner. Then she stood up to greet him.
‘Mr Husani?’ she asked, and the man nodded. ‘Why don’t you sit down and we can talk. Can I get you a drink?’
‘Thank you. Coffee, please, strong black.’ He seemed extremely nervous, constantly looking around and tapping his fingers against the briefcase.
They sat down as a waiter approached the table, and Angela relayed Husani’s order in her best schoolgirl Spanish. The waiter nodded in a disinterested manner, turned and disappeared inside the café.
‘We wait for drink, then talk. OK?’ Husani said.
‘Whatever you want,’ Angela agreed.
The waiter reappeared with a small tray on which was a small cup of black coffee, a tiny china milk jug, the contents of which steamed slightly, and two wraps of sugar.
As soon as the waiter had moved out of earshot, Angela spoke.
‘My name is Angela Lewis,’ she began. ‘The email that you sent to the British Museum was given to me. I sent you the reply. And now we are here at the time and at the place you chose.’
She paused for a moment to ensure that she wasn’t speaking too fast and that Husani had understood what she said. He looked comfortable enough, so she continued.
‘The British Museum is very interested in acquiring the relic that you are offering for sale. But before we can discuss the price, obviously I will need to see it to make sure that it is genuine.’
Husani nodded.
‘I expect that,’ he said, ‘but object is real. That why people killed in Cairo.’
For Angela, that fact was one of the most compelling arguments to support the contention that the parchment was genuine, but obviously that wouldn’t be enough for the British Museum.
‘I understand that, and I am sure that the relic is exactly what you claim it to be. But I will still need to look at it before I can offer to buy it from you.’
Husani nodded again, cleared a space on the table and then lifted up his briefcase.
‘That why I bring it with me,’ he said. ‘Parchment in this case. This very, very expensive case. Man in shop tell me it bulletproof. Steel inside it, and kelvin.’
For a moment, Angela didn’t understand what he meant, what the reference was to the name she normally associated with a temperature scale, and then she twigged.
‘You mean Kevlar?’ she said.
‘Probably, yes. Anyway, case really strong.’
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small but complex-looking key, which he inserted in turn in the two locks on the side of the case. Then he clicked the catches and lifted the lid.
He turned the case slightly on the table so that Angela could see inside it. Several glossy colour photographs were visible, and something else underneath them.
‘You have seen pictures, yes? Pictures friend Ali sent you?’
‘Yes,’ Angela replied. ‘I saw those pictures. And he was my friend too,’ she added.
‘Good. Now this is relic.’
Husani lifted the photographs out of the case and then reached into the case to remove another object which looked like a folder made of thin cardboard and designed to contain unbound leaves of paper. He placed this carefully on the table in front of Angela.
She reached out for it, opening the flap of the folder and peered inside, but didn’t touch the relic that it contained. Almost as she’d expected, the sight of the parchment was disappointing. It was a rough and slightly irregular oblong of brownish cured animal skin, with here and there a handful of letters and words, some obviously written in Latin, the ink having faded to almost the same colour as the parchment, and all the writing barely visible.
She wished George Stebbins had had the courage to come along to the meeting, because as she stared down at the ancient relic, she was very conscious that she was essentially unqualified to make a judgement on the object. It looked old, certainly, but that didn’t mean it was old. Angela was very well aware that there were hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of highly competent forgers working in Cairo and elsewhere in Egypt who would be perfectly capable of producing an object of this type.