Chapter 1: Ayana

London – United Kingdom

“Black coffee... little bit of cream.” Ayana smiled when she heard the lyrics belted out by Canadian rocker Bryan Adams,"Black Pearl."

Of course he was singing about a Deep South Creole girl but the description suited her Ethiopian complexion equally well.

"I'll have to remember that for when I get back home." she told herself in the hotel mirror as she combed the nights kinks from her thick black hair.

She was enjoying her short stay in London but home called. Ethiopia, the ground zero for her research. She had been ruffling a few feathers with her ideas and flying in the face of accepted theories but her belief remained strong, she knew she was on the right track regardless of what the experts and scholars said to her face, and often behind her back.

At the age of twenty nine Ayana was considered too young to be a historian, she hadn't collected enough dust, or at least that was the general opinion in her field. History had never been her favourite subject in school until the day she had been introduced to aspects of her own countries ancient past, the legends and myths. A past that could be traced in a virtually unbroken linage of Emperors for almost three thousand years.

It had all started from the boy child borne to Queen Makeda and King Solomon the Judaean Monarch…

Menelik I.

Emperor Menelik the First of Ethiopia.

Son of the House of David and the Queen of Sheba.

Controversy surrounded her legend - Had Makeda really existed?

Some said there existed no documented evidence. Yet she featured in both the Holy Scriptures and the Quran, surely it was a heresy to question the accuracy of the sacred literature of the Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths?

Yet doubts to her existence did just that.

And Saba, the Kingdom of Sheba which incorporated parts of Ethiopia, Eritrea and the Arabian Peninsula, yet again Saba was disputed.

How could a Solomonic Dynasty exist if the origin was in debate? In her mind it was clear, Solomon and Makeda had produced a son, the first of the Solomonic line, a line recorded through history, Makeda had to exist or the Ethiopian Empire had simply been a sham through the ages; a conclusion that Ayana simply couldn't accept.

Despite being a devout Orthodox Christian Ayana didn't mind sharing Makeda with Islam, in her mind the duality simply corroborated her own convictions and drove her ever forward to discover the truth. She held a driven determined to uncover the evidence that would once and for all end the debates and scepticism.

For years Ayana had worked on her thesis presenting evidence, best guesses and several hypothesis that raised eyebrows for some, but fed the dreams of others. Her thinking - radical and unorthodox, essentially based on the belief that certain historical events had been reality rather than speculation or hoax. To prove her theories correct she knew she had to discover the truth behind a mystery and myth that had driven ambitions and dreams for three millennia. A daunting task, but she had three powerful tools at her disposal… youth, self-belief and a vastly wealthy benefactor.

Far to the north, industrialist Hans Meisner had made his billions in pharmaceuticals patents and controlled his corporate empire with an iron hand, he had led from the front tirelessly and in some cases ruthlessly, expanding his empire before quietly fading into the background to explore the more obscure interests that fed his imagination. His wealth permitted extravagant flights of fancy and no-one within his privileged inner circle would dare to contradict their eccentric patriarch as he poured resources into ever more fanciful quests. As the years rolled by and his health deteriorated his pursuits became ever more focused on the ultimate secret, a quest he shared with a dedicated and driven young Ethiopian researcher.

Ayana would become his most valued tool, and his last great hope to achieve the impossible dream.

In the beginning Ayana had harboured little hope for serious funding to explore her hypothesis and understood her ideas were consideredunlikely(by the