The college scouts were already delivering the prawn cocktail starters to the guests seated at High Table. Crayke stood at ease, surveying Brasenose’s 500-year-old hall until he caught Sir Moses Beerbohm’s restless eye. Smiling broadly, the rotund Nobel Prize-winner summoned Crayke to sit beside him.
‘Ran! Ranald Crayke! My dear chap, how marvellous to see you! Glad to know that Baghdad does let you get away on occasion.’
‘There’s life beyond, dear friend. Do you know Dr Toby Ashe?’
‘Delighted. Didn’t you write a book, Dr Ashe? The Generous…?’
‘Gene. Yes, Sir Moses. All my fault.’
‘Come, come! It wasn’t strictly science, but it wasn’t rubbish either. What is your current field?’
Crayke interjected. ‘For the moment, let’s call it “aspects of Mesopotamian civilisation”. Ancient, mostly. Toby has a question for you.’
Ashe winced at being put on the spot.
‘Don’t let old Crayke take liberties, Ashe. What’s the question?’
Ashe looked at Crayke. Crayke’s eyes widened. ‘What was that extraordinary story you told me? The one about Adam and Eve.’
‘Sounds like Genesis, not genetics, Ran, old boy!’
‘Same concept, surely, Moshe!’
‘Come, come! Must keep science and religion apart.’
Crayke nudged Ashe in the ribs, discreetly.
‘Well, Sir Moses, it’s… it’s about people… a people I’ve been studying. They have this legend about Adam arguing with Eve.’
‘How very true to life!’
‘Eve insists she can have children by herself; she doesn’t need Adam.’
‘Eve – the original feminist!’
‘And Adam says she’s wrong. She needs him.’
‘The original fantasist!’ Beerbohm’s massive frame bobbed with laughter.
‘So, Sir Moses, Adam and Eve decide to test the merits of their convictions by conducting experiments.’
‘I don’t know who these people are, Dr Ashe, but they sound like proper scientists.’
‘So Adam and Eve both place their respective reproductive—’
‘Not over lunch, surely!’
‘Pardon me. They put the product of their fertilities into separate jars and leave them for the prescribed period. After the gestation season, the jars are opened.’
‘Is that the question, Dr Ashe – what was in each jar?’
‘No. That’s been answered. Eve’s jar was opened. Inside they found a putrid mess.’
‘How disappointing for her. And in Adam’s jar?’
‘Two healthy, bouncy children. A boy and a girl.’
‘The question?’
‘What do you think was the story’s original meaning?’
‘Goodness! Well, my dear boy, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say this old tale constituted an ancient insight into the relative significance of X and Y chromosomes. An intuitive realisation that a sperm bearing a Y chromosome makes an embryo into a male. A gene on that chromosome leads the growing embryo on the road to masculinity, regardless of the number of X chromosomes. It’s something in the male’s sperm that does the job.’
Ashe stared at Crayke; Crayke smiled, raising his eyebrows.
‘May I enquire, Dr Ashe, as to the provenance of this mythological titbit?’ Beerbohm picked up a loose prawn, and swallowed it.
‘It’s a Yezidi story, Sir Moses.’
‘Yezidi? Where have I heard that?’
‘From me, you old duffer!’
‘Of course, Ran. Kurds! Northern Iraq. Armenia. Now I remember. Was a time you talked of little else.’
Beerbohm went quiet for a while. Goblets of wine were filled and Dover sole was served.
Ashe could hardly believe his direct hit. He was about to get another.
‘Ran, old boy! Perhaps your friend Ashe here would be interested in some of the latest research concerning the Kurds.’
‘Research?’
‘Their genes, man! Not really my field, but there’s an interesting link between some Jews, and some Kurds and Armenians.’
Ashe slapped his silver cutlery on the polished table.
‘Please, Ashe!’
‘Sorry, sir. Please, Sir Moses. I’d like to know more.’
‘We all would, my dear fellow. That’s why we’re still here. Well, as I recall – and that’s not much – the work in question is being carried out by Michael Hammer, who’s a fine geneticist, and a nephrologist, Karl Skorecki. The team’s been building on a study by Ariella Oppenheim, carried out at the National Academy of Sciences in the USA. Can’t be sure, but I think there was a contribution from my old protégé and plagiarist, Sami al-Qasr.’
The name ‘al-Qasr’ stuck out like a sore thumb. Al-Qasr, the son of the fanatical anti-Semite and anti-Mason; al-Qasr, the beneficiary of Istanbul bomber Razak’s forgery skills. Now, al-Qasr the geneticist, whom Sir Moses accused of stealing ideas! Ashe began to wonder if he had been chasing the wrong fox altogether.
‘Are you there, Dr Ashe?’
‘I’m sorry, Sir Moses. I was just taking in what you were saying about the genetic link.’
‘Between some Jews and Kurds, yes. Well, the team discovered a haplotype.’
‘Haplo…?’
‘Haplotype. Surely you remember? Genetic mutation in the chromosome, or what we call a “marker”. The team called their new one the Cohen Modal Haplotype.’
‘Sounds like a sixties psychedelic band, Sir Moses.’
‘Well, you’ll know more about that sort of thing than I do.’
‘Why the “Cohen” bit?’
‘The Cohen bit, Dr Ashe, comes from a Jewish word for “priest”. It was a fairly common Jewish surname, indicating descendants of Judaean priests of two thousand years ago, when the Jews had their priesthood and temple in Jerusalem. Something like 56 per cent of Sephardic Cohens have the haplotype. Sephardic Jews have ancestors that can be traced to southwest Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Anyhow, a lot of geneticists got quite excited about it. There’s a chap here in Oxford, David Goldstein. He reckoned the chromosomal type was a constituent of the ancestral Hebrew population.’
‘Amazing.’
‘Interesting, certainly. Anyhow, it turns out the Cohen Modal Haplotype was not specific to the descendants of Jews.
‘Dr Levon Yepiskoposyan at Armenia’s Institute of Man in Yerevan found the haplotype in some Armenians. Looking further into the Transcaucasus region, Dr Brinkmann found the haplotype was actually common among Iraqi Kurds. And Ariella Oppenheim found the dominant haplotype of the Iraqi Kurds was only one microsatellite-mutation step away from the Cohen Modal Haplotype. Pretty significant. So, to sum up, the haplotype evidence supports the view that Kurds and Armenians are close relatives of today’s Jews. That probably means the majority of Jews today have paternal ancestry from the northeastern Mediterranean region.’
Ashe could hardly contain his excitement: solid scientific support for his hypothesis. ‘Let me get this right, Sir Moses. You’re saying, in effect, that the Jews and the Kurds are related.’
‘Going on the haplotype evidence, absolutely. A lot of Jews and Kurds are related – distantly anyway.’
‘Could Abraham have come from what is now Kurdistan?’
Sir Moses thought for a moment. A twinkle appeared in his eye. ‘Yes, I suppose he could. And from what I remember of the Bible, that would make sense of a lot of his movements. I don’t know what difference it would make to anyone, but yes, it’s more than possible that ancestors of Jewish people began their existence in an area within or near to Kurdistan. Is that useful at all, gentlemen?’
Two hours later, Ashe and Crayke stood on the step outside the Brasenose gatehouse. Eyes red from drink, their hearts were euphoric.
‘Must be the wine, Ashe. Let’s pull ourselves together. Do you know Lee Kellner?’
‘Director of the Counter Terrorism Centre, CIA.’
‘Right.’
‘Never met him, sir.’
‘Time you did. Zappa’s been trying to wheedle intel from me about Sami al-Qasr. Seems al-Qasr’s disgraced himself again and quit the US. The CTC must be desperate if they’re nudging Zappa in my direction.’ He seized Ashe’s shoulder and whispered, ‘Time’s come to nudge you in theirs.’