Angela glanced back. Her pursuers had stopped on the pavement, staring towards the taxi.
'Friends of yours?' the driver asked.
'God, no. And thank you. Thank you so much.'
'Right, where to, love?'
'Heathrow airport,' Angela said, taking her mobile phone out of her handbag.
For a few moments she looked back through the rear window at her apartment building as the cab accelerated down the road, then she dialled 999. When the operator answered, she asked for the police and told them that her flat was being burgled.
21
Dexter drove away from his shop in Petworth that afternoon and met a man in a café on the outskirts of Crowborough. Once they'd finished their drinks, he slid a sealed envelope across the table. In the car park outside, he removed a cardboard box from the back of the man's small white van and transferred it to the boot of his BMW. Then he drove away.
In Petworth, he carried the box into his storeroom and lifted out the computer. He placed it on the bench that ran down the length of the room, plugged in the peripherals, and switched on. Fifteen minutes later, having connected one of his own printers, he was looking at half a dozen pictures that showed a greyish-brown oblong tablet, covered in a form of writing. They weren't particularly clear, and didn't show the inscription in anything like the detail he had hoped, but they were a lot better than the fuzzy image printed in the newspaper.
He had not the slightest idea what the text meant, or even which language it was written in. He slipped the pictures into a manila envelope, locked the storeroom and returned to his shop. In the office at the back he had a powerful computer of his own, with a massive hard disk that contained images and written descriptions of everything he'd bought and sold over the years through the shop and, in a hidden partition protected by an eight-digit alphanumeric password, full details of all his 'unofficial' private sales as well.
Minutes later, he was comparing the pictures he'd just printed with images of the clay tablet he'd sold to Charlie Hoxton two years before.
He leant back, satisfied. He'd been right. The tablet was part of a set, which made it very important indeed.
22
'So what's the verdict?' Chris Bronson asked, as he recognized Angela's voice.
'It's a virtually worthless clay tablet that probably dates from around the start of the first millennium,' Angela said, 'but that's not why I'm calling.'
Something in her voice registered with Bronson. 'What's wrong?'
She took a deep breath. 'When I came back from lunch today I found someone had searched my office.'
'Are you sure?'
'Quite sure. It wasn't ransacked, nothing like that, but some of the papers and stuff on my desk had definitely been moved and another couple of the photographs you sent me were missing. And my computer screen was on, showing the screen-saver.'
'Which means?'
'The screen-saver starts after five minutes' inactivity and then runs for fifteen minutes. After that, the screen goes blank. I was out of the office for just over an hour.'
'So somebody must have used your computer between five and twenty minutes before you came back. What was on it? Anything confidential?'
'Nothing, as far as I know,' Angela said, 'but my screensaver's password-protected so whoever it was couldn't have accessed it anyway.' She paused, and when she spoke again Bronson could hear the tension in her voice. 'But that's not all.'
'What else?'
'I had a few things to do this afternoon so I left the museum shortly after lunch. A few minutes after I got back to the flat I heard a noise outside the door. When I looked through the spy-hole there were two men standing in the corridor. One of them was holding a jemmy or something like that, and the other one was carrying a gun.'
'Jesus, Angela. Are you OK? Did you call the police? Where are you now?'
'Yes, I called them, and I suppose there's some chance they'll send a bobby round there sometime this week, but I wasn't going to hang around waiting for him to turn up. I ran out of the back door and down the fire escape. And right now I'm heading for Heathrow.'
'Where are you going?' Bronson demanded.
'Casablanca. I'll let you know my flight details when I get to the airport. The flight goes through Paris with a stopover, so I'll be quite late. You will pick me up, won't you?'
'Of course. But why—'
'I'm just like you, Chris. I don't believe in coincidence.
There's something about that clay tablet, or maybe what's written on it, that's dangerous. First my office, then my flat. I want to get out of the way until we find out what's going on. And I'll feel safer with you than I do here in London by myself.'
'Thanks.' For a moment Bronson was lost for words. 'Call me when you know your flight details, Angela. I'll be at Casablanca waiting for you. You know I'll always be waiting for you.'
23
Two men dressed entirely in black lay on the hillside, close to a clump of low bushes, both staring through compact binoculars at the house in the valley below them.
After Dexter had called him, Zebari had spent some time on his mobile, asking questions. The answers had led him here: the clay tablet had been stolen from a wealthy man, and this was where he was known to keep most of his collection. The house was two-storey, with a large roof terrace at the rear overlooking the garden and with views to the hills beyond. At the front was a paved parking area, protected by a pair of large steel gates.
The property was surrounded by high walls – Zebari estimated their height at about three metres – but these wouldn't necessarily prove to be an obstacle. Solid walls could always be climbed. He was more worried about electronic alarms; and the dogs were a nuisance that he'd need to take care of. He could see two big black animals, possibly Dobermanns or similar, prowling restlessly inside the compound and peering through the closed metal gates at the road outside. But they would sleep well with a piece of raw meat each, laced with a cocktail of barbiturates and tranquillizers.
Zebari looked around him, at the stunted bushes and shrubs that covered the top and sides of the sandy hillside he'd chosen as a vantage point. They were perhaps half a kilometre from the house, well out of sight of any guards, and he was quite certain they were unobserved.
He glanced towards the western horizon, where the sun was sinking in a blaze of pinks and blues and purples. Sunsets in Morocco were always spectacular, particularly close to the Atlantic coast, where the clear air and gentle curve of the ocean combined to create a daily kaleidoscopic display that never failed to move him.
'How long?' his companion asked, his voice barely above a whisper, though there was no possibility of them being overheard.
'Another hour,' Zebari murmured. 'We need to see how many people are in the house before we move.'
A few minutes later, the light faded as the sky turned a blackish purple, and then entirely black. And above them the vast unchanging canopy of the universe, studded with the brilliant light of millions of stars, was slowly revealed.
24
Angela Lewis stepped into the arrivals hall at Casablanca's Mohammed V Airport, looked round and spotted Bronson almost immediately. He was a couple of inches taller than most of the locals milling about, but what made him stand out was his obvious European dress – grey slacks, white shirt and light-coloured jacket – and comparatively pale face under his slightly unruly thatch of black hair. That, and his undeniable good looks, which always gave Angela a visceral thrill when she saw him.