The Sacred Scroll

by Anton Gill

  Zwinger and Dels was sandwiched between two concrete blocks and looked as firmly shut up as its two neighbours. The whole of the other side of the street was taken up by the back wall of a much larger concern, punctuated by loading bays, all closed.

  Marlow approached cautiously, making no more noise than a shadow. The streetlights were widely spaced, intervals of twenty metres or so, and the electrical power in this district had been reduced, so the light they gave was feeble, pooling around the bases of the lamps in circles no more than three metres in diameter. Moving in close, Marlow noticed a small door in the huge entry bay which was the only point of access to Zwinger and Dels. There were windows, but high up, over five metres, and the walls of the building were sheer.

  He made sure the PDR was slung safely across his back. One tug of the strap and it would be in his hands. He unclipped the guard on the holster which held the pistol. There were two security locks on the door, oldish-looking Adams Rite cylinder-operated flush bolts. Staying in the shadows, Marlow surveyed the building. No CCTV outside; maybe internal. There’d be an alarm, but he could see no sign of one. A keypad near the door. He’d disable it once he was inside.

  He darted silently to the wall near the door and flattened himself against it. He listened, straining for the slightest noise, against the sound of his own breathing, which he kept shallow and light. He listened for a full minute.

  Nothing.

  He took out the small tool kit in its black case from the bellows pocket on the left thigh of his trousers. The tungsten tools were small, precision, covered in a dark-grey nitrocellulose coating. The locks may have been old but they were top of the range and would take some work to pick. Noise was unavoidable, and there could be movement and vibration sensors. But he had no alternative. Marlow worked swiftly. No reaction. No alarms. The first lock gave after five minutes, the second after three. He tested the door. It swung noiselessly inwards. He listened again. Still nothing.

  The interior was almost pitch dark, but there was enough light to give Marlow the impression of an empty space with the proportions of a small hangar. Steel galleries on two levels flanked three walls, accessible by steel stairways at each corner of the area and halfway down each long side. The central space was occupied by serried ranks of workbenches punctuated by pieces of machinery ranging in size from sewing-machine to small car.

  Hugging the walls, he moved around the room and, looking back, he saw that the area above the main doors, where the windows were, was boxed off, an internal wall with another, narrower gallery running along it, and doors in the wall. There the offices would be.

  A steel spiral staircase led up to them, reaching the gallery at its central point. Marlow made for it, keeping low, crouching as he moved quickly between the workbenches towards his goal. Once, he stumbled over some piece of equipment he hadn’t seen in the dark, and it fell to the floor with a deafening clang. He became a statue, blending with the shadows, and waited. He strained all his senses but no impression came back to him that he was anything other than alone.

  He’d be vulnerable on the staircase. You couldn’t move fast on a spiral, and this one was narrow and caged in. He gripped the rail in a gloved hand, made sure none of his equipment would swing as he moved and, lithely as a cat, took the first few steps. The metal did not creak. Solid. Joints and holding bolts greased or oiled.

  The gallery was narrow and high. Marlow had a choice of five doors. One was immediately at the top of the staircase. The other four, evenly spaced, two on each side, to his right and left. The whole gallery was maybe eighteen metres long.

  He went to the right.

  Both doors were unlocked and gave on to conventional offices: the usual desk – without drawers, however; two chairs, one on either side of the desk; filing cabinets; computer terminals; windows with Roman blinds overlooking the forlorn street outside.

  Marlow checked the unlocked filing cabinets quickly but, as he’d expected, they contained nothing but reports relating to the legitimate business of Zwinger and Dels – orders received, in train, and dispatched; accounts and human resources files. Same on the computers. No trace of anything personal; no hint of the personality of whoever worked there. Not a trace, either, of what he was looking for.

  The central door led to a larger office, the furniture similar but better quality, a carpet that reached the walls, pictures – copies of landscapes by Cuyp and Ruisdael – a cocktail cabinet, and a leather sofa with a coffee table in front of it. No computer here; three phones on the otherwise empty desk. The desk drawers, too, empty of anything but office paraphernalia, albeit of an expensive, even designer, kind. Marlow lifted each of the paintings, but no wall-safe was concealed behind any of them.

  Outside again, Marlow made his way to the door on the extreme left of the gallery. A storeroom: boxes of A4, unused CD-ROMs, cartons of ballpoint pens, yellow pads, invoice forms, envelopes, memo-forms – did people still use those? – and copies of the firm’s catalogue.

  The door to the fifth room was locked. It took Marlow another five minutes to open. He looked at his watch: 1.30 a.m. He’d been inside half an hour. He had to get moving.

  The fifth room was packed with computer equipment, all perhaps a shade more powerful than a modest leatherware company might normally have needed, and there were two fax machines, side by side on heavy steel desks, drawers slung beneath them.

  Behind the drawers, pushed against the wall, were two filing cabinets.

  They were too heavy, too boxed in, to be moved. And they were locked. Marlow worked, straining on account of the difficult, cramped area he had to work in, forcing himself to keep his stress level down, listening keenly above the tiny sounds he was making as he manipulated his precision tools in the locks for noises from the street or from the cavernous space which yawned behind him, beyond the room and the gallery outside it. Another five precious minutes gone.

  At last both cabinets were open. One had a false front, not drawers at all but a door, opening on to a cupboard space containing a new MacBook Pro. The drawers of the other cabinet contained telephone directories, but up to date, covering principal towns in the Baltic States, Colombia, India and China. There was also a directory in an alphabet Marlow recognized as Burmese.

  He lifted out the laptop and opened it. As he’d expected, it demanded a password. He typed in the first word that came to his mind: DANDOLO.

  He tried the numeric values of the letters.

  No time to play games. He’d take the Mac with him. He placed it on top of one of the steel desks and reached into the back of the cabinet he’d removed it from. There could be memory-sticks, CDs perhaps, but he hardly thought it likely.

  His fingers touched something.

  98

  He brought it into view. A plain steel box, slightly smaller than a shoebox. Locked. It was a combination. Built-in digital display, similar to the type used on hotel room-safes.

  Marlow looked at his watch. Time to go. Neither the Mac nor the box was heavy, but he’d have to carry one under each arm, leaving neither hand free to go for a weapon.

  Getting out was the hardest part, like getting down a mountain after you’d reached the summit. Getting out, you were in danger of dropping your guard, relaxing. Getting out was when –

  He was halfway down the spiral staircase when the first burst of rapid fire clanged and sprayed all around him, angry orange flashes spitting up from the bowels of the dark vault below him.

  The caged and narrow staircase made it almost impossible for him to manoeuvre. They’d waited for this moment. He’d walked straight into it. Now he was faced with a lightning choice. The laptop was under his right arm, the metal box under his left. His right flank was turned in the direction of the gunfire when it first started. His right hand was the one he needed to free.

  He had to lose the computer but, even as he reached the decision, another vicious spatter of fire raked across the staircase in a horizontal line, bullets snapping off the high metal walls and
speeding at nine hundred rounds per minute from the Magpul PDRs down there, hidden in the darkness. Some nearly found their mark. As Marlow released his grip on the Mac a burst hit it, smashing it out of his hand and sending it spinning and crashing down.

  If he had let it go a split second earlier, his hip and upper thigh would be a shattered, bloody mess.

  He wrenched his arm back to pull the FN-P90 round and into his grip. He propped the snub barrel between the crosswires of the stairwell’s grille and, bracing himself, swivel-fired down into the void. In the brief pause which followed his counter-attack, he flung himself down the staircase, fighting against the vertigo he felt on moving down the spiral at speed.

  Another burst from the factory floor hammered around him. How many guns? Three? Five? The five Vulcan riders? He paused to fire off an answering volley himself, and heard a scream in the darkness. Then he let the sub go, leaving it to swing from its strap, its light weight not enough to hamper him, and pulled the HK from its holster. He’d have to sacrifice the P90’s 900 rpm for greater freedom of movement.

  He’d almost reached the bottom when the lights flared on. He saw the target he’d hit: black clad; blonde hair clogging in the blood which fountained from her head. The woman’s body writhed in agony, her gloved hands scrabbled to free themselves of the black gun-strap to reach the wound and staunch the flow.

  He sprang down the last three steps and ran for the door, but before he reached it he could see it was shut. He dived for cover behind the nearest workbench as renewed fire battered and smashed around him. But the workbench had a solid metal frame and it was close to the wall behind him.

  He put the box down carefully and knelt, bringing the P90 round again and placing his automatic within close reach. The lights were spots, facing him. He squinted past their piercing beams into the gloom they protected, red blurs in his eyes obscuring his vision as he fought to discern giveaway movement. If they were going to get him, they’d have to close in. On the stairs they’d had a clearer target. Down here, there was machinery in the way.

  They kept up their fire. Marlow counted. Four. They’d try to come up on either side, pin him in. They knew he had only one exit and they’d sealed it.

  If he tried to go for it now, he’d be dead before he got within two metres of it.

  He watched and waited. One minute passed, two. They might have been years.

  Then, movements. Two. Either side, as he’d thought. Shadows flitting. Marlow raised the sub and fired two clinical bursts.

  More screams, louder this time, one a wail of anguish so great it tore a fibre from the brain. Two down, two to go. The agonized screaming went on from the left-hand side. The right was suddenly silent.

  He must have raised his body too far in that fatal moment of relaxation. A single gunshot rang out. Different gun – sniper rifle, must have infra-red sights, he thought before the muscle in his left shoulder ripped painfully and he fell back. He felt the warm blood soak his jacket. Flexed the muscle. Snapped his teeth together to stifle a cry. But the torn muscle still worked, he could still use his left arm. Flexed his left hand. OK. Now he let out a yell. Deliberate this time. And ducked down, grabbing the automatic and holstering it as he did so; and grasping the box. The pain bit hard, but his hold held. He did not dare raise his head again, but now, in the silence which followed the firing, and despite the dulling reverberation the stabbing gunfire had caused in his ears, he heard the two people left standing approach. Cautiously, but less cautiously. That fatal relaxation again. They thought they’d brought him down.

  One of them crashed into something metal and angrily thrust it aside. The sound echoed round the walls.

  They were coming for him.

  99

  Marlow put the steel box down again, carefully.

  He judged them to be about five metres away now. He unclipped and armed both the CS grenades, stood, and pitched them. He dived down, pulling the scarf from the neck of his jacket and tightening it round his mouth and nose. There was nothing he could do about his eyes. But he hadn’t had the CS-gas explode right in his face, as they had.

  In the background, the wailing had become a kind of keening. He became aware of it again as the other sounds, of floundering and crashing, cries of surprise and rage, then choking, mingled with it.

  He scrambled over to the wall, kicking the steel box ahead of him. Then he drew his automatic, and stood. A draught from the door blew the gas away from him. He stopped squinting, and saw his two opponents flailing blindly.

  The lights helped him now. He stepped close enough to get a sure aim, and raised the HK. He fired twice. The bodies flung themselves to the floor.

  Marlow stood over them and fired one more shot into each exposed neck.

  This time there was no screaming. This time the kills had been clean.

  He waited for the gas to clear then looked at the bodies. Both male, one burlier than the other. About twenty-five years old, maybe thirty. He frisked them, found keys on one, holstered his gun and picked up the box.

  The keening had ceased too. He went over in the direction the sound had come from. She lay on her back, eyes open, mouth open, lips drawn back from the teeth, dark hair fanned around the agonized face. His bullets had ripped a line through the middle of her body just above the groin. Young woman, tanned, athletic-looking. Death had rescued her.

  Marlow unlocked the door, and stepped out into what felt like clean air. He made his way back to the Toyota in a dream, only his throbbing shoulder and the now-cold wetness of his jacket reminding him that it was anything but. He slung the steel box on to the passenger seat and drove off. Back to INTERSEC’s garage, where he left the Q-car, signing it in to the night-guards, without explanation.

  He didn’t go up to Room 55. He switched to his own Corvette Z06 and drove home.

  100

  4.15 a.m. Marlow knew that the first priority should be to call an INTERSEC medic, get his shoulder seen to: but that could wait an hour. It was a flesh wound, experience taught him that; no real damage, pain worse than the thing itself.

  He washed the wound, tied a bandage round it and changed into a fresh T-shirt. He badly needed coffee, but he was too impatient. He pulled the steel box towards him. Its combination lock looked complicated. And he wanted someone else in on this. After a moment’s hesitation, he picked up the phone. He had a result now.

  He hoped, though he couldn’t suppress the doubt which, like an unwanted tenant, had lodged in his mind, that his calculations had been right. The ferocity with which his incursion into Zwinger and Dels had been attacked confirmed they had been. But he was the only person able to play the cards in his hand. The decisions lay with him. No need for anyone else to know the details.

  Once he’d sorted this out, he’d deal with the next item on his agenda. His heart wrenched at the thought.

  But this first.

  He tapped in Graves’s number. He’d need her help with tackling the combination lock. Lopez’s expertise in that particular field would have been greater, but Marlow didn’t want to include Lopez, not yet. Graves answered immediately, fully awake. Fifteen minutes later she was there. Marlow used the time to make coffee, a major task, hampered by his shoulder. He wanted her to start work the moment she arrived, but she insisted on looking at his wound and calling a medic. While they were waiting, she interrogated him about Zwinger and Dels. He told her as much as he needed to.

  The medic arrived. Marlow refused point-blank to go anywhere, but he allowed the woman to clean and dress the wound properly, and apply sutures. He was lucky they’d been using hard-nosed bullets, and none had lodged. The medic stayed half an hour, then left, after extracting a promise from Marlow that he’d stop by the clinic before midday.

  Graves, meanwhile, had been addressing the problem of the steel box.

  The lock required a five-digit combination, but the permutations were endless. They started with various possible numeric values of names associated with Enrico Dandolo. The first and th
en the last groups of letters of other names followed. All in vain.

  ‘Maybe we’re looking too hard,’ Marlow said finally.

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘It’d be unusual for anyone to put a code in here that was entirely unrelated to the contents of the box,’ said Marlow.

  Graves looked at him. ‘You took one hell of a risk,’ she said. ‘You could have been killed. Easily.’ A moment passed. ‘With you dead, what would we have done?’

  ‘I assessed the consequences. That’s what you do. And that’s not relevant now.’

  ‘Whoever it was expected you.’

  ‘Or someone else.’

  ‘Anyone at the saleroom likely to have recognized you?’

  ‘My mother wasn’t there.’

  ‘Think.’

  ‘No one.’

  ‘Then we’re back to square one.’

  ‘Unless we try a little more lateral thinking.’

  ‘That requires coffee,’ said Graves, leaving to fetch it.

  Marlow looked at his watch: 5.30. He tried typing in numeric codes relating to the names of the dead archaeologists, and Su-Lin’s name. But the box remained closed.

  Graves appeared with the coffee minutes later, and reapplied herself to her work.

  ‘Here goes nothing,’ she said, and typed in: 13124.

  The mechanism whirred, and the box clicked open.

  ‘What did you set?’ asked Marlow.

  ‘13-1-24.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Simplest thing in the world. You were right. Lateral thinking. All I did was type in the numbers that relate to the position in the alphabet of three letters.’

  ‘That’s …’