by Anton Gill
‘Meanwhile, we do have this to go on,’ said Lopez, placing the papers on the desk in front of them. What they had was a set of refined, high-definition prints of the missing key. The inscription along the sides of its shank was now clearly visible, the etching as clear as it had been on the day it was incised.
Marlow took a long, hard look at it.
At eleven the next morning he called a meeting. The three of them went over his findings together.
‘I guessed this was some kind of numerical code,’ Marlow began. Graves was leaning close over him, and her hair brushed his cheek.
‘This is Aramaic script,’ he went on. ‘So it’s either a conscious use of an archaic language, or the key itself is very old indeed. We can’t know that until we have the key and can date it, but Aramaic was being replaced – gradually – by Arabic as the lingua franca of the Middle East by the seventh century after Christ.’
He looked round at them. ‘The history is very important. As I told you, Aramaic’s an old language, dating back to Babylonian times. We don’t know where it came from originally, but the Aramaens were a people who settled in northern Mesopotamia and spread from there, as the old empires of Babylon and Assyria fell into decline.’
Marlow broke off, thinking about the specialities of the scientists involved in the Dandolo Project. Then he realized the others were watching him expectantly.
‘What we’ve got here,’ he continued, ‘is a code based on gematria. It’s an ancient practice of assigning numerals to letters or groups of letters either directly or by association. It can operate on various levels of complexity, but this one isn’t too difficult. What is hard is to make any sense of the meaning of the words the numbers relate to.’
‘And what does it say?’ asked Graves.
‘The first side describes a dark eagle descending on the earth. An eagle, maybe a vulture. Its talons are outstretched to clutch, and its beak is ready to tear, the world. And it cannot be stopped, unless –’
‘Unless what?’
Marlow reached for the second photograph, which showed the other side of the key’s shank.
‘Unless I open the box and you choose to be saved.’
The three of them looked at one another.
41
Jerusalem, the Present
Geoffrey Goldberg stood at the door of his electrical goods shop on Misgav Ladach, a short way west of the al Aqsa mosque. Like everywhere else, business was slow, and he whiled away his time standing in his doorway, watching the world go by.
The young woman had caught his attention two days earlier. At first, he’d taken her for just another Japanese tourist trying to find her way to the old town – either she must have been one of the few independent travellers from that country, or else she’d got separated from her group.
She certainly looked lost.
It was when she passed by the shop for the third time, always dressed the same, gradually becoming more dishevelled, that Geoffrey, a kind man and a pillar of the local Rotarians, began to take more serious notice.
There was a vulnerability about the young woman that tugged at his heartstrings. He was convinced that she was in need of help.
Seeing her pause in the street just opposite his shop, looking wistful and sad as the people bustling by jostled her, Geoffrey’s heart melted.
Crossing the road, he was soon level with her. He was naturally a shy man and once he was close to her he was unsure what to do. But the eyes that met his seemed forlorn and questioning, so he pulled himself together.
‘Can I help you?’ he said in English.
She looked at him blankly. ‘Sorry?’
‘You seem to be – ehrm – in need of help. Can I help you?’
Her mind seemed to engage with the present then, for her eyes lost their blankness and she looked at Geoffrey gratefully. ‘Help me? – Oh, yes please!’
‘Have you lost your way?’
The blank look again.
‘Come over to my shop.’ Geoffrey took her arm and steered her back across the road. Once inside, he sat her in a chair and went behind the counter to the cubby-hole which contained a kitchenette and the means to make coffee.
He handed her a cup and leaned with his own on the counter near her.
‘What seems to be the matter?’ he asked, feeling awkward.
‘I don’t know.’ She was the verge of tears.
‘Have you lost your party?’
‘I don’t know!’ she wailed suddenly. ‘I don’t know where I am! Where am I?’
Geoffrey was surprised. ‘In Jerusalem. The Old City. Near the al Aqsa.’
‘Where?’
‘Jersusalem. In Israel.’
‘Oh –’ But she continued to look confused.
He tried a different tack. ‘What is your name?’ he asked.
She looked at him in wide-eyed panic. ‘My name?’
Geoffrey had realized by now that something was seriously amiss. He saw that the girl had broken into a sweat. Part of him began to wonder if he hadn’t been rash in getting involved, but the woman seemed unfortunate rather than mad. ‘I wonder if you have a passport,’ he said gently.
‘I think so.’ She rummaged in her bag but then let it fall to her lap as she gazed dully into space. ‘I don’t know who I am or where I am or how I got here,’ she said flatly.
But Geoffrey could see the corner of a passport sticking out of an inner compartment of the bag. ‘May I?’ he said.
She didn’t react, and so he delicately extracted the document and opened it. It was an Italian passport, and there was her photograph, date of birth, and name. An unusual name. Su-Lin de Montferrat.
Geoffrey picked up his phone and called the police.
42
Istanbul, AD 1915
General Erich Ludendorff had been very reluctant to undertake this assignment. Germany was a year into a deadlocked war, and he felt that his proper place was in either Berlin or at the Front, not stuck here. Of course he knew that the Fatherland had to maintain a firm controlling influence in the crumbling remains of the Ottoman empire, and that if it didn’t keep a hold on Turkey, the Sick Man of Europe, Russia would fill the gap; but surely that could have been left to the diplomats.
Nevertheless, when the renowned archaeologist, and his fellow-countryman Robert Koldewey had wired news of his findings in the Church of Saint Irina, he obeyed orders to go and evaluate them, as well as providing a bit of military muscle and senior presence to back up the efforts of the German Navy. And the informal request of his friend and superior officer Marshal von Hindenburg had actually been a thinly veiled order as, after thirty-three years in the army, he’d been quick to recognize.
Istanbul – Constantinople, as it was still called by most people – was a jewel a lot of people were interested in; but the British were putting their foot in it, with their usual grandiose we-rule-the-waves high-handedness, and the French were havering about on the sidelines – again, as usual. The Germans, on the other hand, had two battle-cruisers in port, the Goeben and the Breslau, and their own man, Admiral Wilhelm Souchon, in place and ready to become the Ottoman empire’s naval commander-in-chief.
Turkey was in Germany’s pocket, but the Germans trod carefully, deferentially renaming the warships Yavuz Sultan Selim and Midilli. And Souchon wore a fez with his uniform.
Still, it was a balancing act. Everyone knew that the Ottoman empire under Mehmet V was on its last legs, and that there was a powerful nationalist movement, the Young Turks, under a new leader, Kemal Atatürk, waiting impatiently in the wings. And the Germans had to pretend that their military were under Ottoman command.
Ludendorff was a soldier first and last, but he hadn’t risen to number two in the High Command without having learned a few other aspects of the game. If Koldewey had something the Fatherland could use to its advantage, well and good. And it wouldn’t hurt, Hindenburg had suggested as they parted company in Berlin, to play the violin under Atatürk’s window as well.
Koldewey, five months Ludendorff’s junior, carried weight. Grumpy and anti-academic, dour and misogynistic, he’d never held a university position. He’d studied architecture and art history, but hadn’t shone in either. His archaeology was largely self-taught, but his dogged determination when directing a dig had earned him an international reputation, especially for his work in Turkey and those parts of the Ottoman empire defined by the rivers Tigris and Euphrates – ancient Mesopotamia. He’d not only located the famous Hanging Gardens of Babylon, but also the Tower of Babel and the Great Gate of Ishtar, and he also had the ear and the personal support of Kaiser Wilhelm himself.
Ludendorff wasn’t a man to be fazed by others, but he looked forward to his first meeting with the crusty scholar with trepidation. Certainly no one in the world matched Koldewey in knowledge of the most ancient civilization on earth.
Koldewey hadn’t had any problem in persuading the Ottoman administration to let him prod around in Istanbul, and his reading and research had led him to the Church of Saint Irina, where he’d started a careful excavation which uncovered, not the ancient temple he was hoping to find below the church’s foundations, but a tomb of much more recent date. It was here that Ludendorff was bidden after the two men had first met in the smoking room of the Pera Palas Hotel, two days previously.
It was 05.00 hours. Koldewey liked early starts.
The church was surrounded by a military guard, but only Koldewey and five assistants were to be found in its interior.
‘Welcome, Herr General,’ said the archaeologist.
Ludendorff grunted, his eye drawn immediately to a set of sturdy wooden shelves to one side of the large rectangular hole in which Koldewey stood. On them various artefacts had been carefully arranged.
‘We’ll come to those in a moment,’ said Koldewey, following the general’s gaze. ‘First, join me down here and look at this.’
Ludendorff gingerly descended the narrow pine staircase which had been set into one wall of the dig.
In the centre of the excavated grave, an ornate coffin stood on a plinth. Its lid was off, and within Ludendorff could see a richly robed corpse, laid out in great state.
‘Put these on,’ said Koldewey, handing the general a pair of white cotton gloves. ‘We have to be careful not to contaminate anything.’
‘What have you to show me?’
‘This.’ Koldewey bent over the corpse and pointed to something held loosely in the body’s right hand. ‘I wanted to show it to you in situ, as I found it.’ He took a small clay tablet, about the size of a notebook, from the hand. It came away easily. ‘It was held in so tight a grip that I had to break the fingers to prise it loose,’ explained the archaeologist. ‘Not a job I like doing, but it had to be. I didn’t want to risk breaking the tablet. In the event, I needn’t have worried – it’s as hard as basalt. Only a sharp blow with a hammer would shatter this.’
‘What is it?’
Koldewey looked at the general. ‘I came here thinking I might find something under the church’s floor. I’d seen something in the archives in Venice which attracted my attention to the place. But I was expecting a Roman temple, a Temple of Mithras, perhaps, or, if I was lucky, something earlier. There’s been a place of worship here since time immemorial. But this!’
He placed the tablet carefully in the general’s gloved hands.
‘What is it?’ Ludendorff asked again, seeing only a greyish, roughly shaped piece of terracotta, covered with indecipherable markings not unlike the footprints of a small bird.
Koldewey was silent for a long moment before he spoke again. In that silence, Ludendorff sensed something of the man’s excitement – and something else, which he recognized with surprise as – fear.
‘If I’m right, it is the key to a power which, up until now, we have only been able to dream of.’
Ludendorff didn’t understand. What Koldewey had said sounded more than melodramatic, but his tone was deadly serious. ‘Explain yourself, sir,’ he said. He was hot in his uniform, despite the early hour, and he didn’t like this bearish, shirt-sleeved man with his unruly hair and tousled beard.
‘I haven’t yet had time to make a full study of it, but I can read enough to know what the spell encompasses.’
‘Spell?’
‘Incantation, invocation, theorem – tract, maybe. But I’m sure enough already that whoever can comprehend this and interpret it properly –’ Koldewey broke off. ‘It’s too early to say,’ he concluded guardedly, and changing tack.
‘What are these markings?’
‘It’s an ancient script – cuneiform. It was first used five thousand years ago, and I can already tell that this is a very early example. It’s written in the language of Sumer, the most ancient civilization we know.’
‘And it’s important?’
Koldewey’s eyes glittered, and his expression was impatient. What a dolt this general seemed to be! Even so, the archaeologist knew he needed the man’s support if he was to get the tablet back to Germany without anyone else’s knowledge. ‘It’s fortunate that we found it,’ he said tersely, reaching out to take the tablet back.
Once in his own hands, he transferred it to a small calico bag, and from thence to the pocket of the jacket which he now put on. ‘You can take the gloves off now,’ he said. ‘And I’ll show you the other pieces we’ve found.’
Ludendorff took off the gloves with relief. They chafed his hot hands. He threw them to the floor of the tomb irritably, kicking them under the plinth.
43
Among the other objects taken from the tomb and ranged on the shelves there was one other article of significance. A small iron box, highly decorated and locked.
‘We think this was made at a much later date to house the tablet,’ explained Koldewey. ‘But we can’t be sure. And we haven’t been able to find a key, so we can’t open it. We have searched everywhere, but our time here is limited.’ Koldewey shrugged. ‘I think the key is lost for ever.’
‘Force the box open. Blow it open, if necessary.’
Koldewey glared at Ludendorff. ‘We have tried every means of unlocking it without damaging it, but it is as if it were sealed shut. Without the key, there is no chance of getting it open. It’s as tightly closed as an oyster.’
‘You open oysters with a knife.’
‘Do it in the wrong way and you can cut yourself badly. And there are some oysters which will never open.’
‘You haven’t yet told me whose tomb this is. Or how he got hold of this thing.’
‘The first part of your question I can answer. The second, I cannot. But I think he knew what it was. He went to his grave clutching it as if his life depended on it, and that grip hadn’t weakened in seven hundred years.’
That evening, the two men sat over cognac on the terrace of Ambassador Freiherr von Wangenheim’s residence, looking out over the thin mist that clung to the Bosphorus, making the lights of the ships ghostlike and indistinct.
‘Two things,’ said Koldewey.
‘Yes?’
‘We must close the tomb carefully, and we must ensure that it looks as if it had never been opened. All traces of our excavation must be eradicated. No one, ever, must know what we have discovered.’
‘There are the guards, and your assistants.’
‘The guards have no idea what they have been watching over. My assistants … can be dealt with.’
Ludendorff locked his fingers together. ‘And the second?’
‘We must get the tablet – and the box – out of here, to Berlin. I can make a thorough examination there, in peace.’
‘Easy enough.’
‘But the Turks must not know of it. They must think we have taken nothing away. I have made a list of all the artefacts found here, but I have omitted these two.’
‘What’s the great secret?’
The strange look of excitement mingled with fear came into Koldewey’s eyes again. ‘I have told you all I know and all I suspect. You must trust me f
or the rest. Germany must trust me.’
Ludendorff was aware of Koldewey’s standing in the Kaiser’s eyes, and he nodded briskly. ‘When?’
‘Tomorrow at dawn. I will travel with the articles personally.’
‘The Ottomans –’
‘The Ottomans have already been advised that my work here is at an end. They need us. They think we will protect them from the Russians and from their own revolutionaries. They do not present a problem.’
Ludendorff nodded again, finished his cognac, and started to rise. Koldewey stopped him, placing a hand on his sleeve. Ludendorff, hating physical contact, forced himself not to recoil as the archaeologist fixed him with his eyes. ‘Tell no one anything of this. Tell your aides-de-camp only what is necessary for them to make the arrangements.’
‘The secret is safe with me.’
‘It is of paramount importance that it remain secret. Neither Hindenburg, nor even the Kaiser, must know.’
Ludendorff was suspicious, but something in the man’s manner convinced him he was right. ‘What will you do?’
‘Plumb the mystery. I will consult Einstein and Max Planck. I’ll need their expertise, but they won’t have to know the full truth. You and I will meet in Berlin and –’
Koldewey broke off and turned his gaze to the waters which divided Europe from Asia. There were things he knew which it was not yet safe to confide even in Ludendorff – perhaps especially not in the general.
If he was right in his suspicions, a power lay in his hands which other men could only dream of.
44
Venice, Year of Our Lord 1202
Nobody likes to starve.
Doge Enrico Dandolo had just celebrated his ninety-second birthday. It was early summer, and the Army of Pilgrims for Jerusalem had been penned in, on the Island of San Niccolò. The completed fleet rode at anchor down by Castello, and the new ocean-going ships within it were indistinguishable, to the uninitiated eye, from the ordinary galleys, warships and transports which made up the bulk of the vessels. Nobody questioned anything.
