The Sword of Moses

by Dominic Selwood

  There was nobody about. Most pubs had kicked out their most loyal customers at 11:00 p.m., the late-night kebab shops were closed, and even the stragglers had finished weaving their drunken way home.

  Uri did not pass another soul on the street.

  That was good. Not only for security, but also because he did not want any innocent casualties. Sometimes they were unavoidable, but on this occasion he needed to avoid victims. He did not want the police turning their inevitable investigations into a murder hunt.

  He had done a recce of the bookshop the day after meeting Otto in The Lord Nelson, and he had been pleased with what he found.

  The shop was an old-fashioned design—a small two-storey Victorian building with a pair of large bay windows bulging out of a dark wooden frontage. The black gloss paintwork looked tired, but the bowed windows lent the shop an individual feel among the bland concrete shops on the street.

  The entrance door was set back a little, in between the two windows, at the end of a short porchway decorated with attractive blue and white diagonal floor and wall tiles.

  Uri had been less interested in the architectural features than the security. He had scanned the area carefully, gratified to see that neither the shop nor the street had any visible CCTV cameras.

  Perfect.

  He had not bothered with an elaborate disguise. In his experience they were more trouble than they were worth. A baggy shapeless anorak and a beanie hat were more than enough to make him unrecognizable on any blurry camera footage that might pick him up in the area.

  Checking again there was no one about, he approached the bookshop swiftly, cutting across the car park to avoid the cameras on the roads at either end.

  Arriving in front of it, he bent low by the half-height iron gate drawn across the front door, and quickly slipped the biscuit tin out of his rucksack.

  It was wrapped in a padded brown envelope addressed to the bookshop. If anyone saw the package lying there, they would just figure it was a parcel of books.

  Anyway, it would not be around for long.

  Putting the package gently onto the ground, he pushed it up against the low iron gate so the blast would take down the door as well as the bay windows.

  Standing up, he casually stepped away and back onto the street.

  There was still nobody about.

  Moving briskly, he made his way back into the car park and out over the low wall of The Three Tuns pub. As much as he would like to have stayed around to watch his handiwork, his priority now was to put as much distance between himself and the shop as possible.

  As he walked quickly away, he passed a set of catering bins outside a Chinese restaurant. Pulling off his baggy beige coat, beanie, and rucksack, he dropped them into the bins and went on his way, now a different shape entirely thanks to the tight-fitting light-blue fleece he had been wearing underneath.

  Heading past a closed garage, he found a night-bus stop, and hopped onto a half-empty bus. It did not matter where it was going. He was counting on changing buses several times anyway, to confuse any camera surveillance that might have picked him up.

  As he looked out of the windows at the drizzle beginning to fleck the drab empty streets of the suburbs, he checked his watch periodically to see when ten minutes was up.

  When the minute hand told him it was time, he pulled out his mobile phone, slipped in a pay-as-you-go SIM he had picked up from a charity shop, and called the pager. As he heard it connect, he hung up instantly.

  Three miles away, the pager in the biscuit tin received the signal and lit up, sending an electrical impulse deep into its circuits.

  It was enough.

  The bomb exploded with a savage intensity.

  As the ferocious blast wave rippled out, the front of the shop was vaporized. At the same time, a deep percussive boom tore through the night as neighbouring shop alarms and sprinkler systems began pointlessly to wail and sprinkle water.

  In the comfort of the bus, Uri guessed the owner of the bookshop was going to have a serious shock when he received the inevitable phone call from the police. But it could not be helped. The building and stock were almost certainly insured, and anyway—the owner must have known the shop was a target. It was his choice.

  Uri was home by 5:30 a.m. He got his head down immediately, and when he woke at 9:00, it was all over the local news, exactly as he had hoped.

  That would give Otto and the Skipper something to think about over their breakfast.

  It was by no means the first time his work had hit the headlines. He smiled as he recalled the sudden fatal outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease at the health club in Marrakesh. His superiors had learned the site was being hired for a convention by people whose interests lay very counter to their own. Uri had been proud of the Legionnaires’ disease idea. That had been one of his better ones.

  He got up and took a shower, standing in the bath and spraying himself with lukewarm water from the cheap rubber hose attached to the bath’s taps.

  After towelling himself dry, he put on a clean pair of jeans and a casual shirt, before settling down to wait for Otto’s call.

  ——————— ◆ ———————

  58

  10b St James’s Gardens

  Piccadilly

  London SW1

  England

  The United Kingdom

  Ava awoke in the night.

  She had been dreaming of the strange letters slashed into Drewitt’s chest.

  Something about them was bothering her, but she could not put her finger on it.

  They made her feel uneasy.

  Unable to go back to sleep, she eventually got out of bed and pulled back one of the curtains.

  It was still dark outside, and the street was eerily quiet.

  Slipping on a shirt and jeans, she headed down into the study, where she flicked on a side-lamp and sat at the desk.

  Unlocking her phone, she peered at the glowing screen and pulled up the gruesome photograph of Drewitt—focusing on the crude writing slashed hurriedly into his chest:

  As she stared at the strange letters, she could feel her uneasiness growing.

  Something was not right about the phrase, but she could not tell what.

  She had the strong sense there was an important feature she was overlooking.

  What had she missed?

  She looked closely at each letter, narrowing her eyes in an attempt to focus on every last detail.

  What was it that did not click?

  She gazed at the lines and angles of the cuts, and forced herself to start the process again—to think clearly, taking it one step at a time.

  As she looked at the deep wounds, she felt a wave of revulsion on remembering Ferguson’s suggestion that Drewitt may have been alive when they were carved into him.

  She traced the incisions, imagining exactly how they had been cut, but stopped suddenly at the last letter—the germ of an idea forming.

  Staring hard at it, letting the thought take shape, she felt a prickle of excitement as she realized she had been right to have doubts.

  It was faint, but it was there.

  She had made a mistake the night before.

  And as she looked at it more closely, she could see it had been a big one.

  It was not a letter B at all.

  It was the number eight.

  She peered at it hard.

  Definitely.

  Her subconscious mind had seen it, and had been trying to push it forward into her consciousness. The error had been nagging away in the part of her mind that never slept. But now she could see it clearly.

  It was an easy mistake to make on such a small photograph, especially as the vicious gouges were obscured by the trickles and splashes of blood splattering Drewitt’s chest. But as she looked at it more intently, she was now absolutely sure of it.

  It was indisputably an eight.

  Her mind whirring, it meant she had to go back to square one. If she had been mistaken about t
he final letter, she could equally easily have made an error over any or all of the others.

  Printing the photograph out full size, she peered at the cuts more closely, running through in her mind the many options of what the other letters could be.

  In no time at all, she realized her mistake had been far larger than just the last letter. She had completely misread the entire last word.

  It was not ZOZB or ZOZ8 at all.

  It was her basic assumption that it was a word which was wrong.

  It was not only the last character that was a number and not a letter.

  They all were.

  The second word was a string of numbers.

  The first Z was not a Z at all—it was a two. And the second Z was not a Z either. It was trickier to see, but she could now make out quite clearly it was actually two characters—a seven followed by a dash. It had been done hurriedly, or maybe Drewitt had been moving. Either way, the dash started low and close to the bottom of the seven, pushing the two together, making them look like a Z.

  She could feel her breathing coming more quickly as she looked at the whole phrase.

  It now made total sense to her—conclusive confirmation she had been wrong first time.

  APOC 20 7–8

  With a growing sense of foreboding, she knew exactly where to look.

  Reaching for the large hardback Bible on her reference shelf, she flicked quickly to the very end, to the dark and prophetic Book of the Apocalypse, also known by its more modern name—the Book of Revelation.

  Thumbing her way to chapter 20, she ran her finger down the page until she got to verses 7–8.

  As she read the text quietly in the half-light, she felt herself go cold:

  And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle.

  It was not the words themselves that chilled her. She understood the text for what it was—an unusually vivid and dramatic example of first-century southern Aegean eschatology.

  Its Satanic prophecy held no special fears for her.

  But she was well aware that to men like Malchus it was biblical truth.

  And she was beginning to see what lengths he would go to in its name.

  She could quite believe Malchus thought he was doing preordained work to prepare for an age of darkness—that he saw apocalyptic times ahead, with himself at the centre of his own twisted Armageddon.

  She knew enough about men like him to realize the message was also personal—a taunt, a challenge, maybe even an explicit warning, broadcasting his achievements and plans.

  She had absolutely no doubt he meant the message for her. Why else would he have taken the picture on Drewitt’s telephone and sent it directly to her?

  She stared at the prophetic text.

  Was it a clue about what he was planning?

  About why he wanted the Ark?

  She thought of Israel’s Jezreel Valley, and of the hill of Megiddo, which had given its Greek name to the apocalyptic battle of Armageddon that would mark the end of time.

  Although Megiddo was once an important city state, now it was an unremarkable deserted archaeological site overlooking a kibbutz and not a lot else.

  It had always struck her as a most unlikely place to stage the final war for humanity.

  What was Malchus telling her?

  Turning again to the photographs of the medal on Malchus’s desk, she stared at them, trying to find a connection that would help unlock the medal’s meaning.

  Deep in thought, she lost track of time, until the light began to show around the edges of the window.

  Getting up, she pulled open the heavy curtains and let the weak grey dawn light in.

  As she did so, she thought again of Drewitt.

  Naturally, Ferguson would need to report the murder to Prince, who would decide what to do.

  She was pretty sure Prince would keep the British police away for as long as possible. The Americans did not need the British constabulary getting interested in Malchus and unintentionally jeopardizing the ongoing operation.

  Ava was still contemplating the photographs of the medal and the bloody message when she heard the gentle thunk of an e-mail arriving in her computer’s inbox.

  Waking the screen, she opened the e-mail programme and immediately saw it was from Saxby.

  She had been wondering when he was going to be in touch. After all, he had told her to go to London and wait for him to contact her.

  She clicked open the e-mail, and read it quickly.

  It was short, and to the point:

  BE AT THE ROYAL SOCIETY TODAY AT 9:00 A.M. ASK FOR ME.

  YOURS, E.S.

  Getting to the Royal Society would be no problem. It was less than ten minutes’ walk from her house.

  She closed the e-mail and returned to her thoughts.

  As she gazed out of the glass at the dewy window boxes, she hoped very much that Saxby would be able to clear up one or two things for her.

  She certainly had some questions for him.

  ——————— ◆ ———————

  59

  10b St James’s Gardens

  Piccadilly

  London SW1

  England

  The United Kingdom

  Ava was still in the study when Ferguson emerged from his room several hours later—dressed and ready for the day.

  “Look at this,” she said, calling him over to the desk to share her discovery about the message carved into Drewitt’s chest.

  “So he’s preparing a biblical confrontation?” Ferguson replied when he had read the chilling lines from the Book of the Apocalypse.

  “Whatever he’s up to, it doesn’t sound good.” Ava had been turning the gory message over in her mind, but was still no closer to understanding why Malchus had sent it to her.

  She swivelled the office chair around and looked across at him. “Anyway, while you’ve been taking time out, I’ve come up with a solution to the puzzle on the medal.”

  He looked amused. “How do you expect me to be any use if you don’t leave me anything to do?” He dropped down into the comfortable leather chair opposite her.

  She flicked off her computer screen. “There’s no time to sit around now. We need breakfast, and then I have to meet Saxby.”

  She darted into her room and got dressed, before opening the front door and showing Ferguson out.

  She headed for the French café where Ferguson had followed her two days previously, and made for a quiet table in the corner, away from the queue snaking back from the till.

  “So,” she announced once they were seated and had placed their order with the cheery waitress. “The puzzle says: ‘THE HOLY CHURCH OF ROME, CLEMENT THE THIRD, HOME OF THE HOLY BLOODY BULL, UNDER THE PROTECTION OF THE STARS’. I think I may have made some progress with it.”

  Ferguson was listening attentively.

  “The references in the first two lines to the Church, Rome, and Clement all seem to point strongly to Pope Clement III,” she began. “He was a thoroughbred Roman, who became pope in his late fifties.”

  Ferguson nodded.

  She continued. “Then we have: ‘HOME OF THE HOLY BLOODY BULL’ and ‘UNDER THE PROTECTION OF THE STARS’, which suggests we should be looking for a bull issued by Pope Clement.”

  “But presumably he wrote dozens?” Ferguson objected. “How can we know which one?”

  “Fortunately, the medal gives us a strong clue.” Ava took the phone out of her pocket and opened up the picture Drewitt had sent her, putting it on the table between them. “We’re not after just any bull from Clement. It needs to be holy and bloody.”

  She watched as Ferguson lapsed into thought.

  “The Inquisition?” he suggested. “They were known for their bloody tortures, weren’t they? Maybe Clement condemned a specific group of heretics? Or gave written authority to use a pa
rticularly gory torture?”

  Ava took a bite of the croissant the waitress had put down next to her. “The Inquisition only began a few years before Clement’s reign, and it didn’t really get going for another two hundred years after that. So it’s possible, but not very likely.”

  Ferguson wrinkled his brow, thinking again. “Then what about the whole body and blood thing in the mass? Was that big in Clement’s day? Did he publish any bulls about it?”

  Ava’s eyes widened for a moment.

  It was a good idea.

  “You could be onto something there,” she answered thoughtfully. “The idea that the bread and wine used at the mass becomes the actual flesh and blood of Jesus during the ceremony only really became locked down as the formal Church doctrine of ‘transubstantiation’ in the twelfth century, around the time of Clement. Most people think it started at the Last Supper, but in fact it took over a thousand years to really firm up as a solid Church doctrine. That’s what all the allegorical Holy Grail stories that began to emerge in the twelfth century were all about.” She paused. “We should definitely keep it in mind—Malchus is just the type to have a Grail obsession.”

  Ferguson took a sip of his coffee. “What else? Did you come up with any other solutions?”

  “Not out of ideas already, are you?” Ava asked, feigning disapproval.

  He shook his head in disbelief. “I’m doing pretty well for a man who’s spent more of his life on a firing range than in a library.”

  “I’m not awarding prizes for another couple of days,” she smiled. “You’re doing fine so far.”

  They paused to order a refill of coffee from the waitress who had reappeared beside their table.

  “Maybe we need to think more laterally,” Ava continued. “There’s one other obvious possibility for a holy and bloody bull—and it’s the biggest thing to have happened during Clement’s time as pope.”

  Ferguson looked up at her, inviting her to finish her thought.