The Moses Legacy

Chapter 2

‘I got the message at two in the morning,’ said Arthur Morris.

They were seated round an oval cherrywood table in a small meeting room; two men in their fifties and a woman in her early forties. Morris was practically bald, except for two small, neatly combed patches on either side of the crown that were silver, but with some slight remnant of the brown that it had once been. His eyes were also brown and held just a hint of menace, warning friend and foe alike that he was a man not to be denied his wishes.

Behind him, a 555-foot obelisk glinted in the morning sun, forming a backdrop to their tense gathering.

‘Would they have had time to figure it out yet?’ asked the second man.

He was slightly older than Morris, with a short, neatly-trimmed beard. He was also taller and thinner. But the main contrast between them was the informality of his attire. A pair of light summer trousers and a beige sweater with the word ‘Georgetown’ written across it. Arthur Morris, on the other hand, was impeccably clad in a dark-blue suit. He favoured blue over grey and solid over pinstripe because he had read somewhere that they were signs of political conservatism.

‘She had to be brief in her text message, Professor. But the fact that she sent the message with no qualifications or reservations suggests that they probably did. And even if they didn’t, it won’t take them long. They’re not stupid and we must assume that things will start moving quickly from here on in.’

‘I don’t know how you can use Jane like that,’ said the woman uneasily. ‘She’s just a child.’

Morris thought for a moment before answering slowly and deliberately. ‘She doesn’t need to understand the whys and wherefores.’

‘But if she doesn’t even understand our cause, then how can she support it?’

The woman – Audrey Milne – had once been a trophy wife. Though she had long ceased to be the spring chicken who had once attracted her husband via his libido, she had retained her position in his heart and home by good grooming, a rigorous fitness regime, an adroit and skilful manner in the salon, and most important of all, a readiness to accept her husband’s serial infidelity with stoic equanimity.

Her husband had always known that she would never embarrass him professionally or personally and she knew how to host a dinner party and say the right things to the right people at the right time. With those social skills and her selective blindness to her husband’s extra-curricular activities, there was no need for him to cut her loose. And for her part, she had no reason to break loose. In their relationship, the whole was greater than the sum of the parts.

She was, however, no longer a trophy wife. She was now a trophy widow.

‘Jane understands family loyalty,’ said Morris. ‘That means she’s loyal to me. That’s all that matters.’

‘Carmichael might be a problem,’ said the professor. ‘Once the shit hits the fan.’

‘Why?’ asked Audrey Milne defensively. ‘A befuddled old man suffering from dementia…’

The professor looked at her irritably. He had never really liked her and the only reason she was even at this meeting was because she had inherited proprietorship of a chain of fifteen newspapers from her husband. He had served the cause well, but had died towards the end of the previous year. So now, if their work was to continue unhindered, they needed his widow on-board, or at least access to her newspapers.

The Internet was fine for creating publicity, but what it couldn’t do was create credibility. A prestigious newspaper, on the other hand, lent the imprimatur of its authority to any story that went out under its masthead. That made Audrey Milne a powerful ally in their cause.

‘He’s already getting agitated over the fact that his paper still hasn’t been published.’

‘But the journal is only published once a year.’

‘He knows that, Audrey. But he’s angry that we missed the deadline for the last edition.’

‘So tell him that it took a few months to do a proper peer review. He’s an academic. He’ll understand.’

‘I did that!’ the professor snapped. ‘But he’s still upset about it. At one point he even threatened to pull the plug and send it to another journal.’

Ignoring their bickering, Arthur Morris played with the handle of his walking stick. It was an elaborate, overly ornate affair made of lacquered mahogany topped with a bronze snake head.

‘But if they’ve found the stone fragments,’ said Audrey, ‘then doesn’t that make it irrelevant what Carmichael does?’

Morris looked at Audrey as if trying to weigh up the subtext to what she was saying.

‘Whatever comes out of Egypt, we can control. It may even lead us to solve the questions posed by Carmichael’s research. But Carmichael himself is a problem. He isn’t one of us and he would resent any attempt to recruit him.’

‘He probably wouldn’t even understand it,’ said Audrey, ‘in his mental state.’

‘We can’t take a chance,’ said the professor.

‘I agree.’ This was Morris. And his word on the issue was final.

‘So what are you going to do?’ asked Audrey.

‘We need to send someone to deal with the problem.’

Morris’s mobile beeped. He took it out and cast a quick glance at the message.

Foreign Aid Bill vote 20 mins.

‘Sorry,’ said Senator Morris, ‘we’ll have to cut this short.’

‘Who are you going to send?’ asked Audrey hesitantly.

‘Someone whose loyalty is unwavering and whose talent for doing the work is unequalled.’

Audrey closed her eyes as she uttered the next word. ‘Goliath?’

Chapter 3

‘It’s a pity you didn’t find the rest,’ said Akil Mansoor in a quiet monotone.

‘Assuming there is a “rest”,’ Gabrielle replied.

‘Of course there’s a rest!’

They were in the lab at the University of Cairo that the Supreme Council of Antiquities used for examining ancient Egyptian artefacts. Mansoor was somewhat shorter than Gabrielle and was showing signs of a middle-aged paunch. But his white hair gave him a kind of patrician gravitas that made others around him instantly recognize his academic authority.

‘We branched out radially from the square where it was found,’ Gabrielle explained, ‘stopping at forty-nine square metres.’

The air conditioning had failed again and so Mansoor left three buttons undone on his check shirt and used a handkerchief to wipe the area between his chin and neck. The assembled fragments of stone looked like an incomplete jigsaw puzzle. Mansoor moved to his left, as if to get a better view of the engraved characters on the surface, brushing against Gabrielle in the process. She didn’t say anything, but moved away quietly to the other side of the workbench to give him room to view the stone fragments.

Temporarily distracted from the arrangement of stones, he watched her athletic body, more with a sense of curiosity than outright lust. He remembered that she had been a competitive swimmer, winning a silver medal for Austria in the European Student Games. Even now, in her tight-fitting T-shirt and dark blue jeans, she cut a striking figure.

‘The distribution of fragments was like a V formation from the main group.’ Her words snapped him out of his thoughts. ‘That would suggest that the stones had been dropped or thrown from a certain position and smashed outwardly in the same direction. So working outward radially any further made no sense.’

‘You could have excavated another line of squares on the far side, to follow up your V distribution theory.’ His tone was impatient.

‘We did. And we found another two pieces. But they were both quite small, without any engravings. The only reason we think it might have formed part of the stone or stones is because of the shape. One of the students on the dig is a physics graduate and he said they looked like break lines. He also told us that lighter pieces travel further when they bounce.’

‘And?’ Mansoor prompted.

‘Well, he also said that with stone lighter means smaller, and that meant that if we found any more fragments, they’d be too small to physically handle to put them together.’

Mansoor shook his head. ‘We’ve got people who can do that with tweezers and glue. Besides, nowadays we scan them in 3-D and then examine them on a computer screen. I’m surprised your physics student didn’t tell you that.’

There was more than a hint of mockery in his tone.

‘I thought it was more important to bring back what we already found.’

‘I figured as much when you phoned me on your mad dash to Sharm el-Sheikh Airport.’

‘Well, it’s not as if the remaining stones are going to get up and walk away.’

Mansoor frowned at Gabrielle’s levity. She should have remembered that he was an utterly humourless man, and proud of the fact.

‘We can carry on today. I put the team on standby, waiting for your decision. I’d already pulled them off their regular duties to concentrate on this find. I didn’t want to put them back on the areas they were digging because they’re all too excited about—’

‘You told them your theory?’ he blurted out in a mixture of shock and fear.

‘I didn’t tell them,’ replied Gabrielle. Then after a few seconds she added, ‘But it must have been fairly obvious.’

‘To an overenthusiastic kid, perhaps. Not to a serious scholar.’

‘I think a credible case can be made out.’ Her tone was defensive. She knew that Mansoor was always sceptical about Big Theories.

‘Let’s keep some sense of proportion. So far all we can say is that we have fragments of two stone tablets with an old, somewhat simple linear script with repeated characters engraved on them.’

‘But it is definitely two stones?’ she asked cautiously.

‘We have seven corner pieces. That suggests at least two separate stones.’

‘What’s your assessment of the writing?’

Mansoor peered at it carefully. ‘Well, the style is a bit like hieroglyphics, but only the simplest hieroglyphics. In fact, some of the symbols are quite recognizable – if we can find the right light to view them in.’

‘So it can’t be a diplomatic document or treaty.’

‘If it was, it would be written in Akkadian cuneiform.’

‘And that also rules out Hittite and Sumerian.’

‘Exactly,’ Mansoor confirmed.

‘I’m wondering if this could be our Knossos.’

‘This isn’t Mycenaean or Minoan, Professor Gusack; I can assure you of that!’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ replied Gabrielle irritably. ‘I mean another syllable alphabet, like Linear A or Linear B.’

‘And I suppose you were hoping to be the next Michael Ventris.’

‘Well, it would be nice to follow in the footsteps of the man who rewrote ancient Greek history.’

‘Nice, perhaps. Likely, no.’

‘What makes you so sure?’

Mansoor’s voice took on a dour tone. ‘Well, as far as I can tell, there aren’t enough unique characters for a syllable alphabet.’

‘So it’s… what? A phonetic alphabet?’

‘Precisely. More specifically, an abjad. No vowels – just consonants.’

‘Aramaic? Phoenician?’ She didn’t bother to include Hebrew or Arabic in her question, because both were familiar to her and she could tell immediately that it wasn’t either.

‘It doesn’t look all that much like Aramaic. It might bear some vague comparison to Phoenician.’

‘Vague comparison?’ Gabrielle echoed.

‘It’s hard to tell until we can look at them under the right lighting conditions. I’ll get one of the photo experts to take some pictures and play around with the contrast then we’ll take another look.’

‘But what’s your gut instinct?’

Mansoor looked at Gabrielle with mild irritation. She was being pushy. He decided nevertheless to hazard a preliminary speculation.

‘It reminds me of the Serabit el-Khadim inscriptions.’

‘Proto-Sinaitic?’

‘Yes.’

Proto-Sinaitic was one of the oldest phonetic alphabets ever used – if not the oldest – dating back nearly 4,000 years. The name was derived from the Greek ‘proto’ meaning first and the place where the writings in the alphabet were initially discovered: Sinai. Some thirty engravings of the script had been found in Sinai at the turquoise mines at Serabit el-Khadim, once used as a penal colony by ancient Egypt.

‘Can you translate it?’

Mansoor was amused by Gabrielle’s eagerness.

‘Well, assuming I’m right, we know how it sounds, but not what it means.’

The letters of the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet had been matched to their equivalent letters in all the other main consonant alphabets – like Hebrew and Arabic – so the pronunciation was reasonably certain. But the underlying language was unknown. Was it an ancient form of Hebrew even older than the Bible itself? Some generic Semitic language that later split up into several different languages? Or was the same alphabet used for a whole variety of languages that were already different, and spoken all around the Middle East?

‘Maybe this could be our Rosetta Stone.’

The Rosetta Stone; written in three languages – hieroglyphs, Egyptian demotic script and ancient Greek – had facilitated the deciphering of hieroglyphics by enabling scholars to compare the Greek, which was already understood, to the unknown hieroglyphics and demotics.

‘The problem is that the writing on these fragments appears to be all one language, or at least one alphabet. In order to use it like the Rosetta Stone, we’d need a suitable candidate text in another language to compare it to.’

‘Well, if I’m right, then we already have one.’

Mansoor noticed the look on Gabrielle’s face and realized that she wasn’t backing down.

‘That’s a bit of a quantum leap in logic, Professor Gusack.’

‘Is it really? The site where we found it is a very good candidate for the real Mount Sinai—’

‘In the opinion of some people.’

‘According to the Bible, Moses smashed the original tablets of stone—’

‘If you take the Bible literally.’

‘And now we’ve found fragments of stone with ancient writing on them that appear to have been smashed, quite possibly deliberately.’

‘Well, even if you’re right, my biblical Hebrew isn’t that good. And neither is yours.’

‘Then maybe we should call in someone who has specialized knowledge of biblical languages.’

‘I’m not going to call in anyone from Israel,’ said Mansoor. ‘At least not at this stage. It would just be too controversial.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of an Israeli. The man I have in mind is British.’

‘Who?’

‘Daniel Klein.’

‘Klein?’ said Mansoor, not recognizing the name. ‘That sounds like a…’

‘He was my uncle’s star pupil,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Just like I was yours,’ she added with a twinkle in her eye.

Mansoor was silent for a moment. After a while, he nodded reluctantly. ‘Well, I guess if this Daniel Klein was Harrison Carmichael’s star pupil, then that’s good enough for me.’

‘Shall I call him?’ asked Gabrielle. ‘He knows me.’

‘Okay, you call him and introduce me and then put me on.’ Sensing her excitement, Mansoor added, ‘But let’s not tell him at this stage that we think we’ve found the original Ten Commandments.’

Chapter 4

‘This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt,’ Nathan Greenberg solemnly intoned.

In a house in Golders Green, Nathan Greenberg, father of three, was holding up a plate of three matzos, reciting a paragraph attesting to its significance. Nathan’s own parents and siblings lived in America, but he and his glamorous wife Julia had invited some of Julia’s extended family for the Passover seider.

The seider is a quasi-religious service performed at the dinner table before the festive meal marking the beginning of Passover in which Jewish families retell the story of the Exodus of the Israelite slaves from Egypt. ‘Bread of affliction’ was perhaps a misnomer, because it wasn’t the bread the Israelites ate when they were slaves in Egypt, but rather the bread prepared in haste when they were allowed to leave by the Egyptian Pharaoh whose will had been broken by the Ten Plagues.

But Nathan’s six-year-old daughter May and her twin sister Shari were not looking at the plate with the matzos. Their big, wide eyes were focused squarely on the area of the tablecloth just to the left of their father, under which he had placed half of the middle matzo that he had broken off and wrapped in a serviette less than a minute before. This was the afikoman – from the Greek meaning ‘leave it till later’ – so called because it was to be put aside and eaten at the end of the meal. According to a long-standing tradition, the children are supposed to ‘steal’ the afikoman and use it to bargain for presents and gifts from their beleaguered parents.

However, the twins were sitting too far away from their daddy to get their little hands on the prize, and any attempt to get up from their seats now would merely alert their father to the fact that juvenile intrigue was afoot. This was where Uncle Danny came in.

Daniel Klein, who had recently celebrated his fortieth birthday, was sitting to his brother-in-law’s immediate left. In addition to his ideal position, Daniel also had a background as an amateur magician, so it was only natural that the twins should enlist his aid in this conspiracy to commit grand larceny. However, he set a high price for putting his reputation on the line in such a criminal enterprise.

‘You must ask for a present for your little sister Romy, as well as your own presents.’

Little Romy was less than three and a half, and although she could stick up for herself, she couldn’t always explain what she wanted with quite the same clarity as her older siblings.

‘But she likes different things,’ said May.

‘And what if she wants something that costs too much money,’ said Shari, demonstrating her eminently practical side.

‘Well, why don’t you ask for a toy you can all play with?’ suggested Danny.

The twins rose to the occasion and after putting their heads together for half a minute, came up with the ideal solution.

‘We’ll ask for the play house,’ Shari announced.

The ‘play house’ in question was a colourful, flat-packed, plastic kit that they had seen on a previous visit to a toy shop and it was just the right size for all three of them to play in.

There was no time to waste now because Nathan had come to the end of his recital and was putting down the plate with the matzos, and this was the cue for the twins’ turn in the spotlight. According to an old tradition, the youngest person present at the seider asks the ‘Four Questions’ that kick-start the process of reciting the story of the Exodus. However, Romy was too young to read and so it fell on the twins to sing it as a duet. After a few nervous coughs, a shy exchange of eye contact and a little musical prompting from their mother, the twins started singing in perfect unison.

By the time they had got to the end, Daniel Klein had availed himself of the distraction to draw on his sleight-of-hand skills and take possession of the afikoman on behalf of his nieces. Oblivious to the theft that had taken place under his nose, Nathan graciously responded to his daughters’ ceremonial questions by reciting the reply.

‘We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt…’

The twins, who neither understood Aramaic nor cared for anything other than toys and getting to the food, cast a hopeful glance at Uncle Danny. He responded with a wink, prompting a smile from May and an unsuccessful attempt to wink back by Shari.

‘Al Matzot u’Morerim Yoch-lu-hu!’

They all shouted the last word of the pre-dinner service together because it meant ‘They shall eat.’ It was a desperate cry from a hungry family, anxious to get to the food after the long, drawn-out ceremony that preceded it.

Daniel Klein was starting the meal in the traditional way: dipping an egg in saltwater. The egg, like its Easter counterpart, signified rebirth and renewal – the hallmark of all religious-inspired spring festivals, whether Judeo-Christian or pagan. The saltwater symbolized the tears of the Israelite slaves.

By his own admission, Daniel was a bit of a geek, combining intellect and maturity with a childlike sense of fun. He still had the same curly brown hair that he had had as a kid and had always wanted to straighten. He was of an average height and build, and had recently started working out in the local gym to counter the first onset of middle-aged weight gain. Although he sometimes went abseiling and white-water rafting with his teenage nephews, he spent too long at the writing desk or in the lecture hall, and by his own strict standards and keen eye, his waistline was just beginning to suffer in consequence. Hence his decision – albeit at the suggestion of one of his nephews – to go on a diet and start working out. So far it was having a good effect. After an initial week of aching muscles, he was now starting to feel the benefit.

‘So why were they slaves?’ asked May, tugging at Uncle Danny’s sleeve.

Daniel swallowed and put the egg down before answering. ‘Well, it all started with Joseph’s brothers. You remember Joseph, the son of Jacob – the boy with eleven brothers.’

May nodded.

‘Didn’t he have a coat of many colours?’ asked Shari.

‘That’s right. His daddy gave him a coat of many colours, but that made all his brothers jealous. And also he told them about his dreams that they were all bowing down to him and that made them even more jealous and angry.’

‘So what did they do?’

‘Well, they were so mad with him that one day they sold him to some people as a slave. And then those people sold him to some Egyptians and then he ended up in prison in Egypt.’

‘So did he get out of the prison?’ asked Shari.

‘Well, hold on. Not so fast. When he was in the prison, two of the other prisoners had dreams. And they told Joseph about them and he told them what the dreams meant.’

‘What did they mean?’ Shari pressed him.

‘They predicted the future. He told one of them that he’d be let out of prison and would get his old job back – working as a servant for the pharaoh. And it came true.’

‘What about the other one?’ asked May.

‘Oh, I don’t remember. It’s not important.’ He didn’t want to upset them with the gory details about the baker being hanged and the birds pecking at his flesh.

His sister Julia and mother Helen were bringing in the boiled and fried fishcakes – Danny’s contribution to the meal. Realizing that the Passover seider is not the ideal time for sticking to a diet, Danny took one of each, embellishing the flavour with the horseradish and beetroot sauce that was the traditional accompaniment to the dish. The twins decided to steer clear of the boiled ones altogether and to give the hot sauce a miss. Instead they picked up the fishcakes in their fingers and ate them the way children do.

‘You didn’t tell us how Joseph got out of prison,’ said May.

No peace for the wicked, thought Danny.

‘Ah yes, of course. Well, one day the pharaoh had a dream and in his dream there were seven fat cows and seven thin cows, and the seven thin cows ate the seven fat cows…’

The twins started laughing.

‘It was just a dream,’ Daniel explained to this young pair of sceptics. ‘Anyway, after eating the fat cows, the thin cows didn’t get fat. They stayed just as thin as they were before.’

‘But how could they eat the fat cows and not get fat?’ Shari asked.

Daniel smiled wryly. If he knew the answer to that one, he’d be a billionaire.

‘That’s exactly what the pharaoh wanted to know. So he asked all his advisers what the dream meant and none of them knew. Then the servant who had been in jail told him that there was a man in prison who could interpret dreams. So Pharaoh had Joseph brought to him and Joseph told him what the dream meant.’

‘And what did it mean?’ Shari asked impatiently.

‘It meant that for seven years there would be lots of food. All the crops would grow and they would have more food than they knew what to do with.’

‘Why didn’t they sell it to other people?’ Shari probed.

‘Because they would all have too much food. It wasn’t just in Egypt. All the other countries would have lots of food. But then, Joseph said, after the first seven years there would be another seven years in which there wasn’t enough food. There would be famine and the people would starve.’

‘So why didn’t they save some of the food?’ Shari said.

‘That’s exactly what they did. And that was because Joseph told Pharaoh to do that. He said they should build storehouses for the grain and save it. Then, at the end of the seven years, they would have enough grain not only to feed themselves but also to sell to the people in other countries. And the king was so pleased with Joseph that he made him prime minister.’

The twins started laughing again. Their mirth gave Daniel a chance to tuck into the chicken soup with matzoball dumplings that his sister had just placed before him.

‘And what about his brothers?’ asked May, who was very finicky about details and didn’t like loose ends.

‘Well, when the famine started, they also needed food. So they went down to Egypt to buy grain… I mean, food.’

‘And did Joseph catch them?’

‘Sort of. He saw them and decided to play a trick on them.’

‘What sort of trick?’

‘He sold them the grain and then he put the money back in the sacks with the food.’

‘But why?’ asked May.

‘He was playing a joke on them.’

‘That’s silly,’ said Shari.

May got irritated at this. ‘You mustn’t say that. It’s the Bible.’

‘I can say what I like. It’s a free country.’

‘Shush. There’s no need to fight. Yes, you can say what you like. But don’t fight.’

Shari looked down guiltily. May pressed on with her questions. ‘But you still haven’t told us how the Israelites became slaves.’

‘Okay, let’s move on,’ said Danny. ‘Because of the famine, Joseph’s brothers and their wives and children all came down to Egypt to live as there was more food there. And as time went by they had children and grandchildren and there were more and more of them. But then one day the pharaoh died and a new pharaoh came along. But he didn’t remember Joseph and all the good things he’d done for them. He only saw that there were lots of these Israelites and he was afraid of them because he thought there were too many of them and they were getting too powerful. So he made them slaves.’

‘And then he tried to drown the babies,’ said May.

‘Only the boy babies,’ Danny explained. ‘He said that all new boy babies would be drowned, but not the girls.’

‘But why?’ asked May.

‘Because he thought there were too many of them.’

‘But why not the girls?’

Danny shrugged; he wasn’t sure how to explain a patriarchal society to a six-year-old. ‘Anyway, when Moses was born, his mother wanted to save him. So she put the baby in a basket and hid him in the bulrushes on the River Nile.’

‘What’s bulrushes?’ asked Shari.

‘Just something that grows by the river. Anyway, Pharaoh’s daughter found the basket with the baby in it and she was nice. She didn’t want anyone to kill the baby so she took it home and asked her father if she could adopt it and he said yes. So she adopted the baby and brought him up as an Egyptian prince. In fact she was the one who called him Moses.’

The girls were looking at him in awe, hanging on to every word and desperate to hear more about this fascinating story. But he paused to take a generous helping of roast chicken and potatoes and served the twins who were shy about taking food for themselves. Once the twins started tucking into their food, it gave Danny a chance to enjoy his own, at least for a while.

‘Tell us some more,’ said Shari.

‘Okay, where was I?’

‘You said that Moses was an Egyptian prince.’

‘Oh, yes. Well now, this is where the story gets interesting. One day, when he was grown-up, Moses saw an Egyptian slave master beating an Israelite slave. And he was so angry that he killed the Egyptian slave master. Then, after that, he saw two Israelites having a fight with each other and he stopped them fighting and told them not to fight.’

‘Like you told us,’ said May.

‘Exactly. But when he told them not to fight, one of them got angry and said to him, “Are you going to kill us like you killed that Egyptian?” And when he said that, Moses realized that someone had seen him. And if they’d seen him, then maybe someone else had also seen him, so he was afraid. So he ran away because he knew that the pharaoh would be angry. And then he came to the burning bush.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Shari.

‘It was a bush that was on fire. It was burning and burning, but it didn’t get burned up, it just carried on burning. And then God started talking to him from the bush.’

‘What did he say?’ asked May.

‘He told Moses that he was really an Israelite not an Egyptian and he must become the leader of the Israelites and tell Pharaoh to let them go. So he went to Pharaoh and said to him, “Let my people go.” But Pharaoh said no. So God sent the first plague.’

‘What was the first plague?’ asked May.

‘It was blood,’ said Daniel in his most theatrical tone, causing the girls to giggle. ‘God turned the River Nile into blood, so they couldn’t drink the water. And then when Pharaoh still refused to let the Israelites go free, God sent a plague of frogs. Can you imagine that? Frogs running around all over the place?’

He created a pair of imaginary frogs with his hands and showed them jumping all over the table. As the twins giggled, Daniel and his sister exchanged a smile. It was her quiet way of tha