The Sacred Scroll (40 page)

‘DNA?’ said Marlow.

‘As I said, that’ll be a long shot. But we’re working on it.’

‘Thank you. Anything else you get, send to me fast,’ said Marlow.

‘Flying-carpet treatment, dear boy.’

Haki was as good as his word, Marlow thought, when, two hours later, another call came from Istanbul – past midnight by then in the Turkish city.

But it wasn’t Haki’s voice on the line. It was a voice he didn’t recognize. Urgent, bordering on panic.

‘This is Colonel Demir. You won’t be getting that full report you requested soon. There’s been a bomb. Al-Qaeda, we think, but that’s just first indications.’

Marlow went cold. ‘Where?’

‘Car on Defter Emini. Just outside Forensics. Massive explosion.’

‘Casualties?’

‘Three fatalities. Major Haki’s one of them. God knows how they found the location. And why they picked that target. We’ll keep you updated. But terrorists, for sure.’

Marlow, his throat dry, hung up.

He wasn’t so sure.

Constantinople, Year of Our Lord 1204

Geoffrey de Villehardouin listened while his secretary ran over what he had dictated. He wondered how much he should leave in his final, official account. Much had happened. He wanted Doge Dandolo to be happy with what he had written:

After the victory, and the coronation of Emperor Baldwin which followed soon afterwards, came the division of the spoils.

The foul weather which had followed the victory had passed. The ships were no longer battened down, though the camp, where the foot-soldiers still lived, was a mire. But in the city, still wrapped in the remains of its magnificence, despite its rape, the mood was buoyant. Boniface, grim at first at not having been offered the crown, had emerged radiant after a meeting with the doge, and even suggested that he himself should place the imperial cope on Baldwin’s shoulders – the crown, and the orb and sceptre, were to be presented by Dandolo.

 

There were now two armies in the city. Boniface’s, stationed to the south-west by the Golden Gate, was busy with its preparations for departure for Greece,
where a kingdom lay open for the taking. Baldwin’s was occupied with repairing the fortifications they themselves had broken down, and entrenching themselves in readiness for imposing dominion over their leader’s new empire.

 

Pockets of Greek resistance within and around the city had been mercilessly crushed. The main enemy leadership had withdrawn, to Bulgaria, Hungary and Nicea.

 

His secretary stopped reading and Geoffrey sat back, satisfied. But there was much that Geoffrey did not know.

The Venetians had awaited a break in the weather with impatience. They needed to overhaul the fleet.

Dandolo felt the sun on his face, and smiled. Work on the great, secret ocean-going warships would continue now. The secret ships, whose existence was veiled to the eyes of all but a few.

All thought of Jerusalem was forgotten. There were other things to think about now.

Hundreds of works of art had been melted down by the Crusaders and turned into coin to pay the Venetians the balance which was owed, and Leporo was busy, rescuing what remained, supervising their packing and transfer to the transport ships which would return to Venice with them.

‘The religious trophies will provide us with a special glory,’ he reported to Dandolo, on a day when the sun had finally banished the last of the clouds.

‘Good,’ replied the doge, his mind elsewhere. There was no further need to use the power of the tablet on
Leporo. He was already caught in the snare of his own greed. Dandolo was sure of that.

Leporo’s value to him had diminished. Dandolo was thinking now of his conversations with Frid about the great voyage to the country far across the great sea to the west. The land there was wide, and open, and fertile. There would be riches beyond the imaginings of Europe. And God
would
grant him the time to harvest them.

Time. He peered at his hands. He could barely see them, and not at all unless he moved them. In five years, less, those hands would no longer exist. They would be dust. He would have gone. He would have
gone
.

The remains of a man, turned to dust, weigh no more than a new-born baby. Time.

‘Abbot Martin has been collecting in St Pantokrator. And his monks have been busy in the Greek monasteries and churches beyond the city walls.’

‘Excellent,’ Dandolo said.

‘Barely any need to threaten,’ Leporo went on, needing his master’s approval and hating himself for that need. ‘Abbot Martin looks the part – a fellow prelate. The Archimandrite Nicanor at Pantokrator filled sacks for him. There is a reliquary with the very finger Doubting Thomas thrust into the wound of Christ. There is still blood on it.’

‘Have it all shipped. Present the finger to the Vatican, with my humble respects. It will please the idiot who sits on the throne there.’

‘Cardinal Peter is already sending favourable messages ahead.’

‘I am glad of it.’

Leporo watched Dandolo. The
doge was at the window of an opulent room in the Palace of Boucoleon, gazing out across the harbour below, where his great ships were anchored. Only the eyes of the seamen who worked on them, and the eyes of Frid, were not clouded by the power of the tablet. Dandolo had seen to that. Only they could see the true magnificence of those ships. The secret was safe from the others, including Leporo.

But Leporo’s mind was not on the ships. His own eyes roved Dandolo’s office, once a stately conference chamber of the old regime. His eyes wandered keenly over the surfaces of richly carved tables, rested on the handles of drawers and chests, on the dusty wall-hangings and draped silks and brocades still lying where they had fallen in the attacks.

He was taking advantage of the rare absence of Frid. Frid was at the harbour. Frid would have noticed, might even have guessed what he was looking for. Inwardly, Leporo cursed the Viking for the hundredth time, as his mind cast about for a way of bringing him down.

He could see no clue, and he didn’t dare start a search. But he had to make his move before Dandolo sent him back to Venice with the booty. Or before the old man died.

The old man? Leporo was getting old himself. His own time was running out.

He knew Dandolo sometimes left the tablet locked in its box, in a secret drawer, though never for long. It was like a drug to him, though it seemed to Leporo that the doge was afraid it was drawing too much of his own remaining strength, his own will.

Was he carrying it now? Leporo eyed his master and, as he did so, saw the right hand tighten under the sleeve of the robe.

New York City, the Present

Marlow sat on the sofa, his old tweed jacket thrown across its back, across the coffee table from Graves. They were in her apartment. She sat on one of the low easy-chairs. She was wearing a skirt instead of jeans, and now she crossed her legs and leaned back a little. She looked dressed to go out. The grey skirt was close-fitting fine wool, and the black silk roll-neck she wore with it hugged her figure. The two together had cost a fortnight’s salary.

‘The code is the same kind as the one on the key,’ she said, ‘but it’s corrupted somehow, either because whoever wrote it didn’t understand what they were doing as well as they thought they did, or it’s deliberate – as if the person
wanted
to make it impenetrable. There’s a way in, there always is, but it’s like feeling your way in the dark, through a maze.’

‘Then let’s think laterally.’

‘There’s another thing. I have to report to INTERSEC. My absence has been noticed.’

‘You answer to me.’

She shook her head. ‘Sir Richard is concerned. You haven’t reported to him yourself.’

‘That’s where I’m headed now. I can’t risk him alerting Homeland Security. They’ll blow everything.’

Graves recognized the warning note in his voice, but said, ‘He wants to know what’s going on, Jack.’

‘I wonder how much he knows already.’

Graves, thinking of the information Lopez had let slip, nodded.

‘Damage limitation.’ Marlow continued. ‘All we can do.’

‘I’ll give him a progress report. Throw him some candy.’

‘Do that.’ He leafed through Graves’s work on the code, frowning. ‘Don’t tell him we’re on to Yale – why they said they couldn’t translate the writing on the tablet.’

‘If Yale knows – who might they be working for?’

‘The CIA? Homeland? But what would they make of it? Big organizations like that always take time to filter things. And the politicians get underfoot. So we still have time on our side.’

Graves crossed her legs again. ‘Hudson wants me there now. I’ll keep on working on this as soon as I’ve shaken him off.’ She took her papers back from Marlow, accidentally touching his fingers with hers.

‘Good. Keep working on it. I’ll join you again as soon as I can.’ Marlow stood. ‘Let’s go. I’ll give you a lift back to INTERSEC. Need to check with Leon and show my face.’ He paused, though, irritated. ‘Why’s Hudson sticking his oar in now? This is what you should be concentrating on.’ He waved at her dining-table, her laptop an island in a sea of books and papers.

‘Girl’s gotta have a break. Anyway, I’ll work on it tonight.’ A hesitation. ‘Nothing else to do,’ she added; but Marlow wasn’t listening.

She secured the apartment and they left.

There was something new about him, she thought,
watching him. Something had changed, but she couldn’t place what.

She looked at the tattoo on her finger, and caressed it ruefully.

Leon Lopez had made progress. ‘
If
this is what we’re after,’ he said, showing Marlow the webpage. But they’d scarcely entered Room 55 when a call came through from Sir Richard, summoning Graves to his office. Word must have passed immediately from the hotel lobby to his secretary. ‘Do you want to wait for Graves?’

‘Tell her after her audience with Hudson.’

‘OK. This is it.’

The page was from the website of Sotheby’s, New York, and it advertised a forthcoming sale of medieval antiquities. Lot 4249 was the iron box Leon had already identified as a possible candidate. It was described as a ‘(?) jewellery casket or coffer’. The description went on to mention that it was locked and that the key was missing; but there was still a hefty reserve price of $100,000. A small photograph of the box appeared, together with a short note of its provenance, which dated from 1946, with its acquisition by Lightoller and Steeples. Since 1948 it had been in the possession of the Ashworth Foundation, and displayed in its small museum in Pittsburgh. It had been sold when the foundation hit difficulties in the mid-1970s, and had since been part of a private collection owned by the industrialist George M. Bamberger. Bamberger had died the previous year and the collection had been broken up for sale by his two sons.

‘What do you think?’ Lopez asked Marlow. ‘These
things are pretty rare. I haven’t been able to locate a closer match.’

‘When’s the sale?’

‘Friday.’

‘Gives us about a week. We’ll need a budget for this. If the reserve’s $100,000 –’ Marlow thought. ‘Put in for $250,000.’

‘That much?’

‘We can’t let this go.’

‘Can we justify it?’

‘I’ll think of something. In any case,’ Marlow added drily, ‘Sir Richard has found us a new benefactor.’

‘Who?’

‘Rolf Adler. MAXTEL wants to be as closely involved as possible in getting to the bottom of this. MAXPHIL bankrolled the Dandolo Project.’

‘I hope Hudson’s not trading off somehow.’

‘Adler thinks we’re INTERPOL. And don’t forget, he wouldn’t have been able to do this without government approval.’

‘International government approval.’

Marlow shrugged. ‘I don’t like it either, but MAXTEL’s a multinational – and you know what governments are like about money these days. Any source is OK. Everything’s for sale. Not that it’ll do any good. We all know that we’ve already passed the tipping-point. Clearing debts in the West is just a pipedream, now.’

Lopez nodded.

‘Though maybe all that’s about to change,’ said Marlow thoughtfully.

‘The tablet?’

‘Control.’

‘Name of the game.’

‘So who
is
after this tablet?’ asked Lopez.

‘Someone who believes it can be used to put the world to rights? Who knows? Someone with a vision of how to sort things out, if they’re allowed to have their own way.’

‘Order through dictatorship?’

‘Brave New World. It wouldn’t be the first time. Every civilization there’s ever been is based on something similar.’

‘But they’ve always crumbled, and people have survived.’

‘There’s a first time for everything,’ said Marlow.

‘We’ve got to find that tablet!’ Lopez’s mind flashed on Annika, sitting in the coffee-house.
Anything to make amends
, he thought.

‘Find the box, and we’re home. Maybe … You should just catch Accounts today. Spin them whatever line you like. We should be OK with this. We haven’t had to call in the cavalry, and compared with the cost of one Tomahawk, we’re a cheap date.’

‘I’m on to it.’

Auctions are very public affairs, but Marlow intended to bid in person. He wouldn’t use a front. He needed his people to see this through on their own, but he could hardly keep it under wraps, and he wanted Graves to be there with him. ‘Tell Laura. Get her to contact me.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Tell you later.’

‘What about Hudson?’

‘He can wait.’

‘Where can she get you?’

‘Secure cell. But later. There’s something I have to do first.’

Marlow left the building soon afterwards. There was still the other, unfinished business.

He dived into the crowded streets, and made his way to the nearest subway. He took a train to 49th and 7th, and walked the rest of the way from there.