The Sacred Scroll

by Anton Gill

  Paris, the Present

  Ben Duff, the psychologist in charge of Su-Lin’s treatment, met Marlow in the entrance hall of the special flat they’d placed her in.

  The secure apartment INTERSEC maintained was round the corner from HQ, in the rue Pernelle. The glass in the windows was bulletproof. The front door was made of battleship-grade steel. A rear entrance was concealed in the kitchen, and the door to a panic-room set into a wall of the entrance hall was similarly disguised. The place had been designed and modified in the days when INTERSEC still had a grown-up budget.

  ‘It’s going slowly, but not badly,’ Duff told him. ‘I’d have been happy with progress like this if it’d happened a month from now. And we’ve had a breakthrough since we last talked. Overnight, in fact.’

  ‘Good.’ Marlow kept the irritation out of his voice. ‘Slowly’ was not what he wanted to hear, and he was preoccupied with the conversation he’d just had with Sir Richard. The INTERSEC top brass were drumming their fingers.

  ‘There are some aspects that’ll need looking at further, but I think we’re on the right track.’

  ‘I need to talk to her alone.’

  Duff looked doubtful. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘I must be in attendance at this stage.’

  ‘Give me half an hour.’

  ‘Ten minutes. And only if I decide it’s appropriate.’

  But Marlow was impatient to interview the woman without a third party present. He needed to be alone with her to understand her.

  Dr de Montferrat lay on a chaise longue by the shaded window in the living-room. She stirred when the men came in and sat up on its edge, swinging her long legs round with unconscious elegance. INTERSEC had organized a new wardrobe for her, most of which she liked, and now she looked very different from the lost tourist Geoffrey Goldberg had rescued outside his shop in Jerusalem. She was dressed in a close-fitting charcoal silk roll-neck, a matching cashmere suit and black patent-leather shoes with low heels, which increased her height by a couple of centimetres. She’d eaten about half the light meals they’d given her, but she’d put on a little weight since she’d been found, and from Duff’s notes Marlow had seen that she weighed 45kg.

  ‘Light for her height,’ Duff had told him. ‘Could be malnourishment while she was out there.’

  She had a boyish figure; narrow shoulders, neat, perfectly porportioned breasts, slim hips; and her straight black hair was just long enough to frame a pale face which, if you didn’t know anything about her ancestry, you’d have found hard to attach a nationality to. The almond eyes were dark brown, and she had high cheekbones, but her lips were full and generous and her chin strong; her nose was delicate and – Tennyson’s words came to Marlow’s mind – ‘tip-tilted, like a flower’.

  She seemed glad to see the two men, and Marlow noticed that Duff had hit it off with her. An easygoing man whom she found easy to handle, he guessed.

  She looked as if a train of thought had been disturbed by their arrival, though she must have been expecting them.

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ she said. A light voice, attractive. She put as much feeling into her voice as she could. She liked the look of the tall, slightly dishevelled policeman with the dark, troubled eyes who accompanied her doctor.

  The apartment was spacious, the walls painted in light colours; the furniture was modern and finished in white or cream. But the inner courtyards it looked on to on one side crowded out daylight, and most of the lamps were on.

  She gestured them to chairs. ‘Something to drink?’ she asked. ‘Lemon tea?’

  ‘Jack wants to hear your news,’ said Duff. ‘And no lemon tea, thanks.’

  She looked at Marlow; he too shook his head.

  ‘What news there is,’ she said to Duff. Her English accent was virtually faultless. Only variations in inflection and faultless grammar betrayed the fact that she was not a native. ‘Where shall I begin?’

  ‘Tell him about the dream,’ said Duff.

  De Montferrat thought for a moment. ‘I was a little girl again. When I woke up, I wondered where I was. I wondered how I had got here. I seemed to have passed weeks of my life in complete darkness. But it all seemed so real.’

  ‘Ben mentioned that a long blackout period would have been part of your condition,’ said Marlow. He glanced at his watch, hoping this dream story would lead to something concrete.

  She smiled at him shyly, giving him the full benefit of her eyes. ‘I was playing in a garden. Then I went inside and looked at the aquarium I’d been given by my parents a couple of years earlier for my birthday. The pretty gleaming fish under the lights. The sunken castle, the pirate shipwreck. The fronds of the water plants moving in the ripples made by the air bubbles.’ Her tone was unemotional. ‘I thought that I was tired of the fish. I switched the aquarium off. Then days seemed to pass. I went out, I played with my friends. They were all boys. They all admired me. I forgot about the aquarium. Later, I looked at it again. Dark and empty. Some fish had risen, dead, to the surface. I scooped them out and threw them away. I supposed a few might still have been alive in there, somewhere.’

  Marlow wondered if this was a true memory. Few people are capable of such unconscious cruelty, but they do exist.

  ‘Is that the end?’

  ‘Almost. I didn’t think about the fish any more. I went out to play again. There was a pretty garden, and a view over fields and open countryside, with trees, but this time I was alone. All the boys had gone …When I woke up, I was confused. But I know that I questioned my surroundings – these surroundings – for the first time. I was aware of them. And I was aware of myself. I knew who I was.’

  ‘And your memory?’

  She struggled to find the words. Duff came to her rescue. ‘There are still significant gaps,’ he said. ‘No recognition of your parents, for example, is there?’

  ‘I only know they are both dead. I know I grew up in Italy, mostly. But when you showed me photographs of my parents they might as well have been strangers. I have only your word for it that they are the people you tell me they are.’ She paused. ‘All I have of my childhood is that dream, and it doesn’t feel real at all now.’

  ‘What about recent memories?’ asked Marlow, ignoring a warning look from Duff.

  ‘I do remember my work at Venice. I remember all I was taught. I remember all my training. And I remember the Dandolo Project.’

  Marlow locked on to that. ‘When did these memories come back?’ he asked Duff crisply.

  ‘Less than an hour ago,’ said Duff. ‘I needed that time to confirm.’

  ‘But when I talked to you earlier, Dr de Montferrat –’ he started, then interrupted himself. ‘When did you have the dream you told me about?’

  ‘Last night. But everything was still misty this morning. I was frightened that what seemed to be coming back to me was just an illusion. I wanted to wait. I needed to talk to Ben first …’

  She was becoming agitated. Duff put a restraining hand on her arm. She calmed down quickly, but he left his hand there.

  ‘Would you have any objection if we talked alone for a while?’ Marlow asked her.

  Her eyes widened a fraction. ‘No. Not at all.’ But she turned her gaze to Duff.

  ‘OK,’ he agreed reluctantly, frowning at Marlow before turning back to Su-Lin. ‘Relax. Don’t forget what I told you before Jack arrived – you have to be patient with these things. I think we’ve turned a big corner today. But healing takes time; it can’t be hurried.’

  She gave him a sad smile.

  After the door had closed behind him, she leaned back on the chaise longue, and her dark eyes met Marlow’s. ‘What do you want to know?’ she said.

  ‘What you haven’t told Duff.’

  She looked surprised. ‘I have kept nothing from him.’

  ‘What happened after the dig? What happened to the others – Adkins and Taylor?’

  Now she seemed furtive, scared. ‘I don’t know. I would have told Ben.’

  ‘Somethi
ng happened. Something bad. Try to think. Try to remember.’

  ‘I can’t! It’s horrible!’

  ‘What’s horrible? Tell me.’

  He looked at her. She’d sunk back again. She was breathing heavily, holding him with her eyes, but he could read nothing in their depths.

  He waited. Then he said carefully, ‘Let’s start with the Project. How did you become involved with it?’

  ‘You must have checked that. You probably know better than I do.’

  ‘I’d like to hear it from you.’

  She looked thoughtful, questioning herself, but said, ‘I will help you as much as I can. You must be patient with me.’

  ‘Think, then. The lives of your colleagues depend on it.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘What did you find – can you remember that?’ he tried, more gently.

  ‘If I could remember, I’d tell you.’

  ‘Where were you when it happened? In the lab? In the hotel?’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘Maybe the lab?’ Marlow knew that was the more likely place. Harder to get people out of a busy hotel than a quiet university department. It would have happened late in the day … early evening, when the archaeologists would have been packing up for the day.

  Maybe.

  ‘Try!’ he persisted.

  But there was nothing in those enigmatic eyes.

  Marlow looked at her long and hard. If there were anything in those eyes, it was loneliness. Loneliness. That was something he was getting close to becoming an expert on. He thought about that. It was something with which he could empathize. Maybe that would be the way to get through to her.

  It wasn’t in the rule book, but he reached across and took her hand.

  55

  Mid-afternoon, Marlow reappeared in the fourth-floor office.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Graves asked, as he hurried in.

  ‘With Su-Lin? She recognizes where she is and who she is. Our problem is her recent memory field.’

  ‘The one that counts.’

  He ignored that. ‘You?’

  ‘Mixed bag.’ But she was finding it hard to keep the excitement out of her voice.

  ‘Spill.’ Marlow was about to sit down in the chair across from her desk, and she pushed her computer aside, ready to talk. But then his BlackBerry rang. He checked the incoming number before turning aside and leaving the room again.

  Graves watched him go, slipped on her reading glasses, and picked up the file she’d been working on, the one she’d need for the conversation they were about to have. She was looking forward to it.

  She thought about Marlow despite herself. She thought about him too much.

  They’d been working together for weeks. She prided herself on her ability to find out what made a person tick pretty quickly. It made it easier to work with them. Leon Lopez had been a pussy-cat. Easy, friendly, open-hearted to those he trusted, and humorous. It hadn’t taken long for them to get each other’s measure. Since they’d been away from New York, she’d missed Leon.

  Of course, no one ever knows what’s going on in another person’s mind, but you’ve got to recognize where you can repose trust.

  Graves was trained to do that only with extreme caution. Everyone has a chink in their armour, and that can be exploited; but Lopez was a co-worker Graves felt she could lean on.

  Marlow was different. It wasn’t just his reserve. He was a man who kept his gloves up. On the defensive.

  Against what?

  Something must have happened to him to make him like that. Something which had hurt him, or some professional slip, buried in his past, which caused him to build such walls around himself.

  She thought of his dark eyes, and the wariness in their depths.

  She heard him raise his voice slightly, outside in the corridor. What he was saying was indistinct, though she could tell he was speaking French. Then he hung up and there was the sound of his footsteps on the parquet as he returned.

  She shook herself back to reality. She couldn’t deny that her interest was personal, any more than she could deny that she was attracted to him, but anything in that direction would have to wait. There was work to do, and it was nothing short of crazy in their line of work even to think of a personal relationship with a colleague. Death and betrayal were always too close for that.

  But she had something here which she could really impress him with.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he said in a voice which gave nothing away.

  She flipped back into her professional mode without missing an outward beat, and opened the file.

  ‘There’s good news and bad,’ she began.

  ‘Bad first,’ he said, sitting down but not relaxing a muscle, arms forward, leaning lightly on the desk.

  ‘Leon’s back in New York now. Venice turned up some interesting stuff.’

  ‘He’s sent his report in?’

  ‘It’s what I’ve been working on this morning.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘OK – bad news first.’ She looked at him. ‘Leon took a thorough look at the Archivio di Stato in our area of interest. He searched documents dating from 1160 to 1210.’

  ‘Took his time.’

  ‘Those archives go back a thousand years. There’s seventy kilometres of shelves.’

  ‘Point taken. And the bad news is?’

  ‘We know Dandolo became doge in 1192, when he was over eighty, and died in 1205. But he was politically active for years before he took over as leader of the city-state. There’s some minor stuff dealing with him between 1160 and 1169, but after 1170 – nothing.’

  ‘Computer files? Microfilm?’

  ‘Leon was on to that – the cupboard’s bare.’

  ‘Just the material on Dandolo?’

  ‘Just Dandolo.’

  Marlow considered this. ‘Destroyed. Or someone’s taken it.’ He filed the information in his mind.

  Graves gave him a look. ‘How long do you think it’ll take to get anything concrete out of Dr de Montferrat?’

  ‘Duff thinks another five days.’

  ‘Has he drawn any other conclusions about her?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know – anything at all.’ Graves hedged, deciding to keep any reservations she had to herself.

  ‘So – the good news?’ But Marlow’s face remained closed.

  She picked up the file and drew a sheet of paper from it. ‘Look at this.’

  It was a high-definition photocopy of an ancient manuscript, but what was written on it was completely indecipherable. Tiny, crowded-together incisions which looked like the jumbled footprints of small birds. The printing covered a very small physical area – barely larger than the surface of his BlackBerry. The ground was grey; the letters – or symbols – stood out in white. So whatever it was had been printed from something bearing incised markings, not raised ones.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s what I’m working on.’

  ‘Did Leon find it?’

  ‘No – I did.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  She’d been impatient to do so ever since she’d confirmed what she suspected when first examining the document. ‘I don’t suppose anyone’s looked at the original since it was filed in the archive. There was a note attached to it dated 4 February 1849: “Indecipherable. Cuneiform script? Language: Sumerian? Or Akkadian? No date. Possible date: c. 1000BC?” No one’s bothered with it since. And you can imagine how long it took to get the museum officials to authorize a proper copy. French bureaucracy sometimes seems stuck in the nineteenth century itself!’

  ‘What archive?’

  ‘The archive in the Musée de Cluny. Just down the road from here. The Museum of the Middle Ages.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It was a long shot, but while Leon was looking in Venice, I thought, why not look here too? It’s just as well that I did.’

  ‘But why here?’

  ‘Because Bishop Adh
emar was French!’

  56

  Marlow knew immediately that his assistant had made a breakthrough. ‘Begin at the beginning,’ he said.

  ‘OK.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Bishop Adhemar is mentioned in some of the research documents Adkins and his team managed to communicate to Yale before they disappeared. It was Leon who dug him out first. Dandolo mentions him two or three times.’

  ‘So what’s the connection?’

  ‘Adhemar was one of the leaders of the First Crusade, around 1096. Adhemar travelled widely in the Middle East. He even spent time in Constantinople. He died in the Holy Land in 1098.’

  ‘He was in Constantinople, you say?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s his background?’

  ‘He was bishop of Le-Puy-en-Velay. There’re various stories about him, one of which concerns a visit he made to Egypt. Shortly after that trip, he became obsessed with something – something he’d found there, something, the legends say, which had the ability to impart supreme power to anyone who possessed it.’

  ‘Some object?’

  ‘Yes.’ Graves’s eyes gleamed. ‘God knows when this document found its way to the Cluny Museum, but there it is. It wouldn’t have gone to Venice, because, as I said, Adhemar was French.’

  ‘Where is this leading?’ Marlow could already guess.

  ‘Adhemar had a huge influence on the management of the First Crusade, and even after his madness and death many of the rank-and-file soldiers insisted he was still alive, still watching over them, controlling them. There were stories of the bishop walking among them, encouraging them.’

  ‘Don’t waste my time with ghost stories, Laura,’ said Marlow, but he was intrigued.

  ‘Don’t forget that people who lived nine hundred years ago or so were less cynical than we are. They believed literally in the miracles which Holy Relics could work, for example. And if you believe something hard enough, you can make it happen – or at least think you’ve made it happen.’

  ‘And you’re saying that this bishop had found some sort of relic in Egypt?’

  ‘In Alexandria, yes. Except that I don’t think it was a relic.’