The Sacred Scroll

by Anton Gill

  Then strike.

  Everything was in position. The few discreet questions he’d asked her had established that INTERSEC’s adversaries were not in possession of the Babylonian tablet. The questions had not aroused any suspicion. She still thought she was safe, and in control.

  Only Leon knew the whole truth, and he needed Leon. Leon had set up the surveillance and could follow anything that happened from its source to its destination. It was that simple. And he could trust his associate, because Leon was in his debt.

  When he’d told Leon of his suspicions, his friend had been first wary, then shocked. In the telling, Marlow, taking stock of himself, had been shocked too. Out in the open, the truth sounded so naked, so banal.

  Marlow raised himself on one elbow in the bed and looked down at her. Asleep, she looked so delicate, so vulnerable, that he could still hardly bring himself to believe what he knew to be the truth – any more than he could believe that his loneliness and his broken heart could have induced him to such folly. But it was done, it could be corrected, and the bonus was that he could turn it to his advantage.

  Still, he had to tread carefully. The sound of the snapping of the smallest twig underfoot, and the quarry would bolt.

  This wasn’t revenge. Just business. His business. He had no room in his heart for revenge. It was too numb for that.

  She must have sensed his gaze on her, if she had been sleeping, for now she stirred, and her eyes opened. She looked at him with those eyes, which he had, until now, thought enigmatic and charming. He had been blind. Her eyes weren’t enigmatic, but blank; they revealed nothing.

  He wondered if her hand might come up to stroke his cheek, but it stayed where it was, immobile. Hands which could be so voraciously explorative when they were making love were as incapable of tenderness as the eyes. He now faced what he had long realized: no matter how ferocious – even aggressive – her lovemaking had been, there had never been any warmth in it. In fact, they had never made love; they had simply fucked. From her, there had, after all, been no giving, only taking. Only the truly vulnerable would fall for that, and Marlow, seeing that clearly now, as clearly as a drunk emerging from an alcoholic haze looks back on his folly, inwardly cursed himself for the chink in his armour.

  ‘I missed you,’ she said, smiling. The words were inert. The mouth that smiled now had been voracious, too.

  ‘I missed you too,’ Marlow replied, trying to inject some warmth into his voice. What a sham.

  He knew now, of course, why his enemy had been able to keep pace with him. But this time he had fed her – his enemy’s source all along – enough information deliberately. This time she would be tracked. Tracked, and trapped.

  The question remained of not only who she was working with, but why.

  He mustn’t underestimate her intelligence; he had to keep one step ahead. The opposite side had organized everything exquisitely well. Everything, from the sham memory-loss and the pretended vulnerability to his seduction had been done with a ruthless efficiency. Only a consummate actor or a psychopath would have been able to carry it all off so convincingly, and it had been helped by the mock-abduction which had resulted in the murder of Ben Duff. It was clear now that INTERSEC had been allowed to thwart it; it had been stage-managed to allay any ghost of suspicion. Just like the set-up at Zwinger and Dels – a delaying tactic which might have signalled his own death.

  But Marlow had the advantage now. His meeting with Sir Richard had gone well. Hudson, after only the briefest of interrogations, had passed on INTERSEC’s request to his opposite number in the CIA, who had responded with speed, undertaking with Sir Richard to override the usual bureaucracy. Hudson had warned his counterpart of the urgency of the transaction, but Marlow knew that no secret service was ever as efficient in reality as it was in books. Nevertheless, he had extracted an agreement that the Reinhardt letter was to be forwarded directly to him at Room 55. INTERSEC had an internationally backed remit. It was their case. They should have first call on the document.

  The problem was that he knew that, from the moment he had the letter in his hands, he’d be closely watched. If Lopez was right, the Reinhardt letter would give them the location of the tablet.

  But he already had enough information, based on Graves’s deductions, to feed his enemy. He had told Su-Lin just enough, allowing her to coax the information out of him, to whet her appetite – and the appetite of whomever she served.

  If there were a de Montferrat connection with Boniface, Dandolo’s henchman, it would come out now.

  He was taking a risk, and a big one.

  Above all, he mustn’t awaken any suspicion in her. He had to give her time to communicate with her contact before he made his own move. Lull her. Lull her into a sense of security. Keep her thinking she still had the upper hand, even though that meant he couldn’t have her arrested immediately. Therein lay the risk but, without it, he’d never catch the main prey.

  He ran his fingers over her cheek, but her lips didn’t even move to kiss his fingertips. The pity of it, he thought. But his heart hardened. This was no Desdemona.

  ‘I have to go soon,’ he said.

  ‘Must you? I get lonely. Even Ellen doesn’t come to see me every day any more.’

  ‘That’s because you’re cured. We’ll be able to let you go soon.’ Marlow thought of Ellen Shukman, the psychologist who had replaced Dr Duff, and whose own life could well have been in danger – Marlow’s fault, his responsibility, again.

  Her eyes sharpened at his words. ‘What do you mean? You’ll let me go? Back to Venice? Won’t I be in danger?’

  ‘Very soon, there will be no more danger,’ he lied. But he could sense her mind working: has my cover been blown? Was she thinking that? He would have to tread carefully.

  ‘Not until we are absolutely sure,’ he said soothingly. Did she really take him for such a complete fool? Well, she was right to. But now it was his turn, though he had to be careful not to turn this into anything personal. Small danger of that, though. He may have made a bad mistake, but he still knew his business, and now he was wide awake.

  She sat up, smacking him playfully, her delicious breasts swinging seductively, her lithe arms throwing the duvet aside as she swung her legs out to sit on the side of the bed. It all looked too beautiful to be true.

  ‘You raise my hopes, only to dash them,’ she said. ‘I am getting so bored here.’

  ‘Not for much longer, I promise,’ Marlow said. ‘Where are you going now?’

  ‘To make you coffee.’

  ‘Not lemon tea?’

  ‘I know what you like.’

  She smiled at him, but not with her eyes. Never with her eyes.

  106

  Catholic Empire in the East, Year of Our Lord 1205

  Early spring, and the renewed year brought little stability. The rows between the Crusader leaders had held up his plans for the great voyage to the West; he could not leave a volatile situation behind him.

  It came to him that he should have taken the crown himself – but then he could not have undertaken the voyage west, and he had to acknowledge that his own days were numbered and had to be consecrated to what was most important to him. He was ninety-five years old. Boniface was the choice he should have made. Strong and mature, he would have been a worthier heir than the pliant Baldwin, but it was too late. Boniface was engaged in fighting an alliance of the Greeks and the Bulgarians, united in their Eastern Christianity, and they were proving themselves difficult to subdue.

  And Baldwin was dead. After his defeat at the battle of Adrianople, to which he had set out at the head of the finest of the Crusaders, he had been captured.

  Dandolo recalled the report of the captain who had made his way back to Constantinople, leading a ragged and dusty troop of survivors, released by the Bulgarian king, Johanitza, in order to bring back the news and thus lower the morale of his enemies further. The captain and his men had been forced to witness Baldwin’s end. The new emperor had been st
ripped of all but a loincloth and bound loosely at the knees and elbows, allowing him just enough freedom to crawl. Then, with a battleaxe, the victors had roughly severed his hands and feet and thrown him, bleeding, down on to the floor of a rocky gorge a few kilometres from the city of Adrianople itself. There they had left him. His death could not have been quick or kind.

  And Dandolo had not been able either to prevent it or to rally his troops to take an immediate and ruthless vengeance. His strength was waning and, with it, his hold on the tablet of power, though he clutched it ever closer to him in his right hand under his robes, concentrating on the voyage he willed himself to make.

  But a part of his otherwise indomitable spirit – an increasing part – was whispering doubts to him now, and those doubts were growing into certainties with every day that passed. There had been days – three he knew of at least – when he had neglected the tablet. Three days when, suddenly, he was aware that his right hand held nothing in it! True, the tablet returned there, the good Leporo had retrieved it – left, he had reported, on a desk, or in an unlocked drawer. That was cold comfort, though, in the face of the doge’s unwilling acceptance of the fact that his own mind was beginning to fail, just as his flickering eyesight was failing – and failing fast.

  He tried to calculate how long it would be before his left eye gave out for ever and consigned him to eternal darkness, even before death was ready to do the job. Would he see light again after death? Would Christ reach out to him and bid him join the great company of the blessed? Would he be strong-limbed and hawk-eyed once more, in the Elysian Fields? How he would have liked to have clung to that thought, and believed in it. But there was only the here and now. And the here and now brought little comfort. Even if he reached the great land in the West, he doubted if he would see it, see the green fields and the tall trees and the soft, rolling hills which he already saw in his imagination.

  Would the journey itself even be made? his faltering spirit asked him. Yes! It had to be! And there was hope, some hope. Baldwin’s brother, Henry, had taken over as emperor and he was a good and firm administrator. The new empire here and, with it, the interests of Venice, were safe, at any rate for now.

  Should he pass on the secret of the tablet to Henry? Again, Dandolo’s mind misgave him. He needed it for the journey. On the voyage, he would study it harder. He had been too hasty when he drowned the old Armenian who had opened the door of its secrets to him. He wished that old man with him now, but it was too late. Too late, once again. Time had played a skilful game of chess with him, and it looked as if Time had him in check.

  But not checkmate! Not yet! Not yet!

  But what if he died during the voyage? Or before it? Should he entrust the secret to Frid? Could Frid handle it? The Viking’s loyalty was beyond doubt, Dandolo believed. But did Frid possess the mental fortitude to complete the great mission? Had he the strength of will to control such incomparable power?

  As for Brother Leporo, who had been with him for countless years: no. Leporo had not the vision. Leporo was a follower, not a leader. Leporo was too prone to jealousy to embrace a massive destiny, however much he might have thought he had it in him to do so. If the tablet were to fall into his hands, it would be a black day for the world, for he would be within its power, instead of having power over it. That was why Dandolo had been so worried at the temporary loss of the tablet – and so relieved and reassured when Leporo returned it to him. Despite the physical manifestations of its power which the millennia had imbued in the ancient tablet, it was the correct interpretation of what was written on it that gave its owner supremacy. Hadn’t it worked, if only partially, for Bishop Adhemar? And he had made use of a flawed copy! His ‘sacred scroll’!

  So the tablet had better remain safe with him. He would not let it out of his grip again – ever. If its power should slip away from him, he would see to it that no one else would have the opportunity to inherit it. And what if a cautionary voice in one of the backrooms of his mind whispered that the most prudent course would be to destroy it? That he could not do – that would be asking too much. That would be like tearing out his precious left eye. He and the tablet had become one. One power, one destiny. The rolling millennia had decreed that they should be fused together, the right workman with the right tool, and never separated, for all eternity.

  His head cleared. He knew what he would do. He would leave instructions that the tablet should be buried with him. In his grip. And that his grave should be on Holy Ground, but unmarked. Marked, if anywhere – and for a man as important as himself there would have to be a monument – in another place, to throw the curious off the scent. Only Frid and Leporo would be privy to his plan and, as an extra surety, he would place a curse on anyone who had the temerity to try to disturb his bones. There was an afterlife, and his spirit would watch over his dust with a keen eye. A man of God like Leporo and a man of devotion like Frid would heed such a warning, if nothing else.

  Dandolo rose from the table in his rooms in the Palace of Boucoleon where he sat alone. Frid was organizing the finishing touches to the secret fleet; Leporo was supervising the final lading of the transports which would sail on the tide of the following dawn, taking the second consignment of precious and holy artefacts of the great city home to Venice. He looked out of the window and could just make out the four bronze horses, taken from the hippodrome here, on the deck of the largest ship, glinting in the afternoon sun as the deckhands lashed them down.

  He snorted contemptuously. He could still – just – make out the outline of the horses’ backs, see their shape. His left eye would not fail him yet. He was a fool to give in to pessimism. He would win yet – he would win, and his name would go down in history as a conqueror whose might would eclipse that of Alexander and Caesar.

  107

  New York City, the Present

  ‘We’ve got some more on Zwinger and Dels,’ said Lopez.

  ‘Tell me,’ replied Graves, looking up from double-checking the Montserrat family tree. Su-Lin was still getting under her skin. And it irked her that Marlow was keeping her wrapped in cotton wool. As far as she could see, the archaeologist had contributed very little to their work, despite her evident willingness, though Graves had to acknowledge that, from a professional point of view, the pretty academic had to be protected, for her own safety, and for the security of their operation.

  ‘Looks like our little leatherwear company fronted two kinds of distribution network,’ Lopez continued, looking up from his own screen in the main section of the Room 55 suite. ‘Took a hell of a long time to deconstruct their accounting system, but any business, whatever it is, has to have records somewhere. These boys made leatherware all right, and good stuff too – some of their belts retailed for $250, and the legit. turnover at wholesale level ran to a respectable $1 million a year.’

  ‘Still small potatoes.’

  ‘As you say. I’ve had my guys do an inventory of their equipment – not the machinery, that’s OK – but the electronic and software side is way above what they’d have needed. And after Marlow’s own version of the gunfight at the OK Corral the place has been a desert – no employees, no management, nobody. All the birds have flown the coop, and someone wiped most of the slate clean, computer-wise. But I have ways of making computers talk, and one little hard drive on one little laptop kept its neck out of the noose.’

  ‘Keep talking.’

  ‘The big deal was in distribution of snow and smack, on a very ambitious scale, raw produce coming in from Columbia mainly, and really high-quality stuff from, believe it or not, Afghanistan: they had connections with US troop suppliers so import was made easy.’

  ‘But that’s –’

  ‘We’ll get to that. First things first. Processing here, in a plant just outside Baltimore and another in Colorado. Zwinger and Dels was the main clearing-house for distribution throughout the Land of the Free and Western Europe; main shipments to Germany and France. Huge markets in those countries – one thing t
he local geeks aren’t economizing on, it seems. Redistribution centres in Berlin and Marseilles. The other little business they’ve got going is a massive internet-porn interest. So hard-core it’d melt your eyeballs, and all tastes catered for, especially the ones that’d send you straight to jail if you didn’t cover your tracks very carefully.’

  ‘So what else is new?’

  ‘What’s new is the list of directors. Or main shareholders. It’s all very kosher, the way they run these businesses. Pity for them that their technicians aren’t quite as good as ours.’

  ‘So what have you got?’ asked Graves, urgency in her voice now.

  ‘You remember the guy Andrei Borovsky? The guy whom one of the Vulcan 900s was registered to? The getaway vehicles from the attack at Sotheby’s?’

  ‘Of course, the junior partner at Zwinger’s.’

  ‘And remember the name of the other partner we unearthed?’

  Graves thought for a moment. ‘Sergei Konitsev?’

  ‘Sergei Kutuzov. Our guy in the FSB, Colonel Safin, got us some dirt on him. Kutuzov had two identifiable partners, an Indian called Mehta and a Chinese called Chien – they both figure on the board of Zwinger and Dels. Now what on earth do you imagine they’d be doing on the board of a two-bit operation like a leatherworks, even one which sells belts at $250 a bash?’

  ‘I see where you’re going with this.’ Graves reached for the phone.

  ‘What’re you doing?’

  ‘Calling Sir Richard.’

  ‘Why not Jack?’

  ‘He isn’t around right now.’

  ‘Wait up. Mehta and Chien are in on the drugs and porn rackets, sure, and their names are linked to two other tasteful little operations. The human-organ traffic we knew a bit about, but there’s also a very private club here in New York which they have an interest in.’