“That’s it, boss. The Lalibela cross.” He looked oddly at Dracup. “You all right or what?”
Dracup inched forward. It was the right shape, but there was something missing. And then he realised. There were no inscriptions. The cross was smooth. Beautiful, exquisitely worked, yes, but smooth.
“I don’t understand,” he muttered. “Perhaps the other side—” But then the priest presented the staff to his assistant, who took it and rotated until he faced down the church towards them. Dracup had a 360-degree view. No inscriptions — even at this distance there was no doubt. And another thing — it was whole, complete.
“That’s what you’re after, huh?” Bek asked. “But no writing on it, that’s the problem, yes?”
“Yes.” Dracup was responding automatically to Bek’s verbal spaghetti, like he’d always done when Natasha was little. He’d always had his mind on tomorrow’s lectures, or some research paper. No time for a little girl’s chatter. He pushed the thought aside. No, wait. The boy knows something.
“I’ll tell you more if you want but, you know boss… I can’t tell all of it unless…”
Dracup clicked his fingers. It’s not the real sceptre.
“My mother, you know, she has five of us to feed.”
The Lalibela cross is a replica… of the original sceptre.
“It’s only money, boss, right?”
Dracup turned to Bek, his heart beating with excitement. “You know about this, don’t you? You really do.”
Bek drew him into the shadows of the church. In the background the priests had begun chanting. The building was fragrant with the smell of incense. “Look, boss. It’s a big secret, right. I only found out by accident. If anyone finds out that I know — that I told—”
“I understand. I’ll never breathe a word. Just tell me and you can disappear. Forget you ever saw me.”
“Disappear what? You can’t get to it easy, you know. You need Bek around for a bit at least.”
“How much?” Dracup would have emptied his bank account for the information, but better not let the boy know that…
The deal was renegotiated, and they slipped out of the service into the sunlight. Dracup caught the boy’s arm and held him still. “The cross in the church — it’s a copy, isn’t it?”
Bek nodded and gave an awkward grin.
“But how did you find that out, I wonder?”
“Bek knows stuff. I know Lalibela, okay?”
Dracup watched the boy carefully. There was something in his manner that concerned him. “Bek. What does your mother do to look after you? Does she work in the fields? Help the farmers?” He spoke gently, guessing at the pain lying below the effusive surface.
“Nothing much, boss. She manages good.” He turned away.
“And your father?”
“We don’t talk about him. He’s long gone. And I don’t care.” Bek spat the words.
“It’s pretty hard, isn’t it?” Dracup looked into the boy’s eyes.
Bek looked down, kicked a rock and watched it spinning away. “I need the money, boss. I look out for my mother, so she doesn’t have to—” He broke off, stuffing his hands firmly into the ragged pockets of his shorts.
Bek’s discomfort was painful to watch. Dracup put a hand on his shoulder. “Look, I’ll make sure you’re well rewarded for this. I promise. Now, just tell me where we have to go.”
“No problem, boss. Stick to me and you’ll be fine.”
Dracup grinned at the boy’s resilience. “Your call, then.” Dracup held out his hand. “Pleasure doing business with you.”
“Not like that, boss. Gimme five, okay? Look.” He raised his arm threateningly. Dracup grimaced and received the slap.
“Now you. Come on, boss. You guys invented this.”
“We most certainly did not.” Dracup gingerly patted Bek’s outstretched hand. “It was our friends across the ocean.”
Bek laughed, then looked at him curiously. “You’re a good guy, boss.” He nodded emphatically. “You sure are.”
Bek led Dracup up the plateau and away from the main town. His legs ached. He remembered Yvonne’s words as he trudged along behind Bek. What am I going to tell the police? That you’re chasing off after some archaeological trinket like the British answer to Indiana Jones?
Bek turned and waved. “Almost there, boss.”
“Almost where?”
“At the place. Seriously, boss, you’ll be amazed when you see.”
The vertical face of rock loomed over them, and Dracup could see the spots of darkness upon it that indicated the presence of openings in the mountainside. It was like the pit of Bet Giorgis but on a grander scale. Inanimate but inhabited none the less. Shadows moved within the shadows.
“Who are these people?” Dracup asked.
“Holy men, they live here all the time. Pretty crazy some of them, but they don’t do any harm, boss. No worries there.”
“How do they survive?” Dracup shook his head in wonder.
“Same as all of us, boss. We do it okay, somehow.”
They passed a group of youngsters returning from the mountain. Dracup envied them their youth and tourist status. They were all smiles and “Hi theres” as they passed the boy and his toiling middle-aged charge on the uneven path.
They stopped for a rest. Dracup leaned on an emaciated tree and swigged from his flask. He offered some to Bek, who shook his head emphatically. Dracup hadn’t seen the boy drink anything. He seemed indefatigable.
“The sun’ll be going down soon, Bek — are we going to make it before nightfall?”
“It’s right up this way now. Very close.”
He followed Bek for a further ten minutes until the boy suddenly deviated from the path at a sharp bend in the track. He caught up in time to see Bek squeeze through a gap in two large rock formations into an open area studded with scrub and piles of boulders, haphazardly scattered about as if some giant had pulled pieces off the side of the mountain and dropped them carelessly on his way down. At the far corner of the clearing and set into the side of the rock face was a door, arched and surmounted by roughly hewn pillars. It looked almost natural but for the sculpted appearance of the supports — part of the mountain, yet, like the others, moulded by men into something remarkable.
Dracup wiped his brow and marvelled at the sight. “What on earth? This isn’t one of the eleven—”
Bek was smiling oddly and shaking his head. “No, boss. I told you, didn’t I? This is the twelfth, yah? The one nobody knows about. The twelfth rock church of Lalibela.”
Chapter 24
“Diplomatically unwise? For the love of God, will you tell me what this guy is on?” Potzner threw the receiver at its base unit where it bounced with a dull, plastic crack onto the surface of the desk. “Tell me, Farrell, because I don’t understand how diplomacy takes a higher priority than what we’re trying to achieve here.”
“I guess things are kind of sensitive right now. The President needs to keep the Brits sweet. The PM is a good guy for us — we don’t want to piss him off by muscling in on their internal affairs.”
“Muscling in? Konska spierolina! Unless we muscle in pretty damn quick this is going to slip away from us — possibly for good.”
“It’s a direct order, sir. We can’t approach Moran.”
“Then we’ll be indirect. And as he’s such a busy guy, we won’t trouble the inspector. Yet.”