The Sword of Moses (32 page)

Prising it gingerly out of the box, he flipped it over, revealing more carvings on the other side. They were in a completely different style—rougher and cruder. Again, he could not make any sense of them.

He turned the object over in his hands again.

It was quite one of the oddest things he had ever seen.

Startled by a noise behind him, he froze, before a second noise triggered a burst of adrenaline that spun him round to face the door.

His heart was hammering as his eyes scoured the room and the hallway outside for even the smallest clue to what may have made the noise.

But there was nothing there.

He took several deep breaths, continuing to stare at the empty doorway.

Forcing himself to remain calm, he listened acutely. But there was only silence.

Relaxing, he lowered his tense shoulders and reminded himself it was an old house. It made noises. It always had. As a child in bed, he had constantly fought the urge to panic when the floorboards creaked, expanding and contracting as the house settled down each night.

He steeled himself to stop imagining things, and turned back to the desk.

Thinking quickly, he pulled the phone from his jacket pocket, and flipped on the camera.

Holding it a foot above the strange seal, he snapped a photograph of the front, then flipped it over and took one of the reverse.

Peering at the phone’s screen to make sure the pictures had come out, he noted with satisfaction that they had. All the details were clear and crisp.

Laying the seal back on the box’s silk lining, he opened the photographs into an MMS message, and added the telephone number the young woman had given him at his college that morning.

Typing quickly, he wrote her a brief explanation:

ON HIS DESK. MAYBE OF INTEREST TO YOU?

AD

He hit the SEND button, and as he did so another noise from the doorway made his heart skip a beat.

This time there was no mistaking it. He was not imagining things.

There was someone there.

Slipping the phone quickly into his pocket, he turned around slowly to see a figure emerge into the doorway.

A hot flush of sweat broke out over his body as he saw it was Malchus, standing quietly, watching him.

As his tormentor stood there, fixing him with an icy expression, he began to feel a knot of cold fear tightening in the pit of his stomach.

“I was just … . I thought perhaps … ,” Drewitt blustered, struggling to think up any excuse to explain what he was doing in Malchus’s rooms.

He prayed Malchus had not seen him taking the photographs.

“There’s no need to explain,” Malchus replied coldly. “It’s quite clear.”

“No, no … you see,” Drewitt stammered, “I was looking for today’s newspaper. I thought ... I thought perhaps you had brought it upstairs.” He trailed off, aware Malchus had begun walking over towards him.

He winced as he saw Malchus glancing at the disturbed carpet, where it had folded back onto the floor with a visible wrinkle.

As Malchus drew level with the desk, Drewitt noticed with a sickening lurch that the leather case containing the medal was still open, and Malchus was looking directly at it.

Drewitt struggled desperately for something to say.

At first he thought perhaps he should make light of it, but he listened with growing despair as the rushed words came tumbling out of his mouth. “I’m afraid I couldn’t help myself. Academic curiosity, you know. Sorry.” He was rambling. Even as he heard the words, he knew they were hopelessly inadequate.

Malchus carried on staring at the medal.

“As I said, no need to explain,” Malchus answered robotically. “I can see exactly what’s been happening here.”

To Drewitt’s surprise, Malchus put an arm round his shoulder and began steering him towards the door.

“Well, I honestly—” Drewitt began, unsure what to read into Malchus’s reaction. But his thoughts were interrupted by Malchus jabbing his hand into Drewitt’s jacket pocket with lightning speed, and pulling out the phone.

Impulsively, Drewitt lunged to grab it back, but Malchus was too quick, and had already stepped away.

At that moment, the phone emitted two short low chimes.

Drewitt felt sick.

“Your correspondent has replied,” Malchus opened the incoming message.

“Look, I can explain—” Drewitt began, but Malchus again cut him off.

“MANY THANKS FOR THE PHOTOS”

he read out aloud.

“THEY LOOK FASCINATING. I’LL BE IN TOUCH. KEEP IT UP!”

As Malchus scrolled up to read Drewitt’s original message, Drewitt could see the embedded images of the seal’s two faces filling the entire screen.

Malchus clicked the phone off, and slipped it into his pocket.

With no more excuses and nothing to hide or lose any longer, Drewitt gazed defiantly at Malchus.

“This is very … disappointing,” Malchus stared at him. “You’ve violated our arrangement.”

Drewitt glared back, finally making no show of hiding his loathing for him.

“I’m afraid this changes things,” Malchus said quietly, nodding towards the doorway.

As Drewitt’s eyes followed him, he saw one of Malchus’s thugs standing in the hallway outside the room.

“Goodbye, Anselm Drewitt,” Malchus murmured, with no hint of emotion, walking past the bodyguard into the hallway. “We shall not meet again.”

Whatever ambiguity Drewitt felt there may have been in Malchus’s parting words quickly evaporated as the bodyguard pulled a long cut-throat razor from his pocket, and advanced into the room.

——————— ◆ ———————

10b St James’s Gardens

Piccadilly

London SW1

England

The United Kingdom

In her London house, neatly tucked away behind the rush of Piccadilly, Ava’s mobile phone vibrated.

Since arriving back in London from visiting Drewitt in Oxford, she had called Ferguson, and told him to meet her at the house so she could bring him up to speed.

She felt it was the right thing to do.

In the pub the previous evening, he had asked for three days in which to show he could be useful. If he failed, he would go, and take Prince with him.

Ava knew a good deal when she saw one.

So she had decided to enter into the spirit of it properly.

When he arrived, she had briefed him on everything she knew. Fair was fair. She needed to give him the information, otherwise he stood no chance of being useful to her. And she was not risking a lot in telling him what she knew. After all, he was aware of much of it already, or could get it from Prince and DeVere, so she was not giving anything away.

He had listened attentively in silence, and afterwards asked incisive questions, keen to put the pieces of the jigsaw together.

What had she thought General Hunter’s motives were in telling her about Malchus and her father? What had she made of Saxby and his sudden appearance? Who did she think Saxby worked for, and why had he passed her the ticket to the Burj al-Arab auction? Did she have any proof the snatch-squad at the Burj al-Arab had been Malchus’s men? Why did she think Prince had helped her with the flash drive? What did she realistically expect from Drewitt? And a host of other detailed questions, many of which she had been asking herself incessantly over the last few days.

They had finished going over it all, and Ferguson was now sitting at the table in the main room, configuring his laptop for her wi-fi.

Ava was looking at her phone. “It’s from Drewitt,” she called out, dropping down onto the sofa as a snippet of preview text appeared on her screen.

She clicked the message open.

“He hasn’t wasted any time,” Ferguson looked up. “Do you think he’s going to be trustworthy?”

“We’ll soon find out.” Ava had been wondering the same thing herself. “There are some photos coming through. He says they’re of something on Malchus’s desk.”

She scrolled down, as two images appeared on her phone’s screen, one after the other.

Looking at the first photograph, she immediately recognized the central image.

It was the Jewish Menorah—the sacred seven-branched gold candelabrum cast by the Hebrews in the desert along with the Ark, the Altar of Incense, and the Table of Showbread. Together, they made up the sacred objects they kept first in the holy Tabernacle tent, then inside King Solomon’s Temple.

Although it was now famous as a worldwide symbol of Judaism, she knew that replicas of the Menorah were also widely used by Christians—especially in Orthodox and Catholic churches. Yet another reminder, she thought, that Christianity was originally a heretical sect of Judaism.

But as she took in the rest of the photograph, she realized the writing around the Menorah was like nothing she had ever come across before.

She gazed at it with incredulity.

It was quite one of the most extraordinary inscriptions she had ever seen.

She exhaled a long slow breath, and watched as Ferguson walked over and sat down on the sofa beside her. He looked over her shoulder at the phone’s screen, staring at the images for a few moments. “What do you make of it?” he asked.

“I’m really not sure.” She frowned, feeling at something of a loss. “There are a lot of odd contradictions.”

“But you know what it is?” he sounded hopeful.

She did not answer, but peered more closely at the screen, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. “There are two images,” she explained. “The front and back of an object. One side is easy—we don’t have to waste much time on it. But the other is truly bizarre. And together, as two sides of the same piece, they are ... well … I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Intrigued, she sent the photographs to her printer, then stood up and headed across the hall into the study, where she printed them out onto photo paper.

“Fortunately, Drewitt has a decent camera on his phone,” she said, re-entering the sitting room and dropping the large colour photographs down onto the coffee table. “They enlarge pretty well.”

She sat back on the sofa beside Ferguson, poring over the full-size images, trying to reconcile the striking anomalies she was seeing.

“The second one is easy,” she pointed to the picture of the two bearded heads. “It’s unquestionably from an old seal, and its meaning is very straightforward.”

“It is?” Ferguson sounded surprised. “I can’t make head or tail of it.”

She smiled, reminding herself this was not second nature to everyone. “Well, there’s no mystery about what it is. Although what it’s doing here is not at all clear.”

“Go on,” Ferguson was looking at the image closely. “We’re not all ninja archaeologists.”

She smiled. He had been particularly impressed at her description of how she had got away from Malchus’s bodyguard at Drewitt’s country house, wincing as she gave a detailed account of putting two rounds into the thug’s inner thigh.

She pulled the photo of the two faces closer to the front of the table. “This image was traditionally used by popes.”

Ferguson looked surprised. “You can tell that just from the picture?”

Ava nodded. “It’s unmistakeable.”

“To you maybe,” Ferguson murmured.

“It’s the obverse, or front, of a papal bull,” Ava explained—but could instantly see from Ferguson’s expression that she would have to explain further.

“In the olden days,” she continued, “the Vatican sent riders all over Christendom with written orders and letters from the pope. The most important documents were called ‘bulls’.”

“Like the animal?” he asked, surprised.

She nodded. “Except the word comes from the name of the seal attached to the document—the
bulla
, from the Latin word meaning to boil.”

Without pausing, she took a large envelope from the coffee table in front of her and scribbled on one side of it. “Imagine this is the pope’s letter.” She folded the bottom inch of paper forward and over to make a flap.

“Now,” she picked up a pen and poked two holes through the flap and the paper behind it. “They threaded multicoloured silk cords through small slits in the bottom of the document.” She pulled a piece of soft twine off the plant that was sitting in a bowl in the middle of the table and threaded it carefully backwards through the holes so that two equal lengths of twine hung down a few inches below the back of the paper.

“Then they cast the seal around the ends of the cords, so it dangled off the document.” She took a small book of matches from the table and wrapped it around the twine ends so that only half an inch or so of the twine protruded from the bottom of the packet of matches. “That’s how it worked.”

Ferguson looked down at her improvised papal bull, then back up at her. “You’re a bit obsessive about this stuff, aren’t you?”

She felt the colour rise to her cheeks. “No … I just … .” But she knew he was right. She always had been.

“The point is,” she continued, “bulls made papal letters instantly recognizable all over Christendom. So when one arrived at its destination, perhaps thousands of miles from Rome, the recipient immediately knew who had sent it, and just how important it was.”

“So that’s the front of an official papal seal?” Ferguson sounded disappointed. “It doesn’t look very … well … impressive, does it?”

It was true. It was nothing like the grand and elaborate seals used by medieval kings. “Bulls have always been very simple,” she explained. “Something to do with looking humble.”

“And what does that mean?” Ferguson asked, pointing to the writing above the faces.

Ava dismantled the bull she had made. “In medieval times, people almost never wrote things out in full,” she explained. “Like the word ‘Xmas’, for example, derives from a medieval abbreviation for Christmas. The word ‘SPASPE’ here,” she pointed to the writing above the two heads, “is actually two names. SPA is short for
Sanctus Paulus
, or Saint Paul—and SPE is short for
Sanctus Petrus
, or Saint Peter. You can see the relevant letters directly above each of the faces. On the left, Paul has the straight beard, and on the right Peter has the tight curly beard, which is how they were always shown in early art.”

Ferguson looked at the grey colour of the metal in the photos. “What’s it made of? Lead?”

Ava had come to the same conclusion. “Most were simple. Gold was saved for very special occasions.”

He nodded at the other photo. “What about the other image.” He pointed to the first photograph “Why is it baffling if you know this seal is a papal bull?”

It was a good question.

“Four things,” she replied, picking up the first picture and putting it in front of them.

“Just the four?” he asked. She could hear a note of good-natured mockery in his voice.

“I can probably come up with more if you don’t mind waiting.” In fact, the longer she looked at it, the more anomalies she was beginning to see.

“Four’s just fine,” he answered quickly with a smile.

She decided to keep it brief.

“First. If it was a normal bull, the reverse would be totally plain—with just the pope’s name. But this one has text and multiple images—the Menorah, crosses, and stars.”

“Second. There are no silk threads running through the seal. Even if they had been trimmed off, we should still see some remains of them.”

“Third. It’s much too big for a bull. Do you see the pen on Malchus’s desk in the corner of the shot? Its size suggests this seal is about four inches across. That’s over twice the size of a normal bull.”

“So it’s not a bull?” Ferguson sounded deflated.

Ava shook her head. “Not like any I’ve ever seen.” She sat back in the sofa, deep in thought, genuinely mystified by the object. It simply did not fit into any category of artefact she knew. “You see, the fourth problem is the biggest of all. Not only does the first image have a lot of text where it should just be the pope’s name—but it’s in a muddled variety of languages, when it should just be in one: Latin.”

“Seriously?” he asked, picking up the photo and staring at it. “What does it say?”

“That’s just the point,” she answered. “The words are clear enough. But they don’t really mean anything.”

She continued to stare at the strange object, unable to make sense of it.

It had been a long time since an artefact had stumped her quite as completely as this one.

What on earth was it?

She stared at the image of the Menorah and the strange wording around it.

It made no sense.

It was a complete mongrel. Normally the problem she faced with the writing on an ancient artefact was that sections of it were broken off or missing, and she had to reconstruct what the original may have said.

But this was completely intact. There was nothing missing that she could see. Yet it still did not make any sense.

It was a total mystery.

She started running through the options in her mind, trying to find reference points—other artefacts she had seen that had any similar characteristics.

But she was drawing a blank.

There was simply nothing like it. Everything about the design seemed odd. There was nothing ordinary or straightforward … .

Then suddenly an idea hit her.

As she let the thought develop, she shook her head in disbelief.

Could it really be that?

She stared at it, increasingly convinced she was onto something, seeing it in a whole new light.

Was that what this was about?

She could not prevent a broad smile from breaking out across her face.

“What’s the matter?” Ferguson asked. “Is it a trick of some sort? A meaningless modern joke?”

“Quite the opposite,” her face was deadly earnest again.