The Sword of Moses

by Dominic Selwood

  She could only hope that Malchus’s vanity would rise to the challenge, and he would enjoy telling the service how one of their own senior officers had duped them for so long.

  Failing that, she would have to hope the Firm’s purpose-built ‘interview rooms’ with their trolleys of chemicals in the basement at Legoland would be enough. They were not the squalid torture chambers Malchus had presided over back in Berlin. The British interrogation teams knew how to get what they wanted from people like Malchus in more sophisticated ways. With a prize like him, there would soon be a host of officers lining up after his confessions to forgive his crimes, turn him, and become his new handler. He was too useful to be locked up.

  But she knew they would be wrong to try to run him. He was too skilled at dissembling, and would be back to his usual habits in no time. DeVere’s death would be an inconvenience for him, no doubt, but he would soon convince someone else in the establishment to extend a shield around him. She doubted he would have too much difficulty finding a sympathizer, or someone who could be paid, threatened, or blackmailed to protect him.

  How to deal with him more permanently would be her problem—but one she would have to wait to solve until after she had found his museum of biblical artefacts, and after he had cleared her name.

  All in good time.

  First she had to find him.

  And she had to do it before the authorities found her and Ferguson.

  She now knew for certain his main base was not at Stockbridge House. Drewitt’s home was a convenient secluded spot an hour and a half from London, but there was no evidence he had the Ark and the Menorah there.

  He was plainly keeping them somewhere else.

  The postmark ‘Foyers’ on the letter to Drewitt was more intriguing. But somehow she could not quite see Malchus in Scotland. He was an urban creature—more at home in Dresden, Berlin, or London. She could not imagine what could attract him to the rugged Highlands, miles from his supporters and the action.

  “Are these what you’re looking for?” Cordingly re-entered the room, closing the door behind him. “What’s this all about, anyway? The librarian got quite excited when I said Voynich.”

  He was carrying a pile of books—the largest of which was a glossy hardback, its cover decorated in the same loopy writing as on the letter from Malchus to Drewitt.

  He put them down in front of Ava and pointed to the largest one. “He told me this is a full-size facsimile of the entire manuscript—quite rare, apparently.”

  Ava opened the book and flicked through a few of the two hundred shiny photographs of light brown vellum folios covered in the same strange characters. Most of them also had fantastical illustrations in muted blue, brown, green, red, and yellow inks.

  Ferguson exhaled loudly. “There’s a whole book of that writing?”

  “Do explain,” Cordingly sounded as mystified as Ferguson.

  “It’s the Voynich manuscript,” Ava leafed through the bizarre pages, “and is as unfathomable to today’s cryptologists as prehistoric stone circles are to modern archaeologists.”

  “Don’t governments have departments that can do this sort of thing?” Cordingly looked sceptical. “Surely they could crack it in a jiffy?”

  Ava shook her head. “The world’s top cryptologists have wrestled with it ceaselessly. Everyone has tried, from the best-resourced spy agencies like Bletchley Park, GCHQ, and the NSA all the way to leading professors of mathematics and linguistics using the latest supercomputers. But every single person and team has drawn a blank. No one has ever deciphered a single letter of it.”

  Cordingly looked at her with incredulity. “So what on earth is it? What could be that securely enciphered?”

  Ava shrugged. “No one knows. Its drawings are of plants, herbs, constellations, and miniature people. None of them seem to make any sense. They’re as much of a mystery as the strange alphabet itself.”

  She slid the book across the table to Ferguson, who began turning the pages, gazing at the astonishing folios as they changed from images of phantasmagoric plants to circular groups of naked women wearing crowns and holding stars. As he kept flicking, the theme of the images changed again, with the nude women now pictured standing amid hare-brained laboratory equipment and what looked like engineering pipework.

  “Listen to this,” he announced, reading aloud from the accompanying introductory notes.

  For years, the enigmatic manuscript’s author was assumed to be the medieval English Franciscan friar Roger Bacon (c.1220–92), the undisputed intellectual colossus of the high middle ages, who made gunpowder and described motorized vehicles and flying machines two hundred years before Leonardo da Vinci. His fascination with experimental science was often seen as heretical, and he spent a period in prison for his ‘novelties’. He taught at Oxford and Paris, and was a fierce advocate of knowledge, whether or not it agreed with Christian teaching. He is known to have worked on advanced cryptography, used codes for his research, and specifically referred to using characters not known to anyone.

  Recent scientific analysis, however, has dated the vellum and inks in the Voynich manuscript to the first three decades of the 1400s, and traced its most likely origin to southern Germany or northern Italy.

  “Very interesting,” Cordingly mused. “The early fifteenth century was a relatively peaceful period for free-thinkers. The medieval Inquisition was effectively dead, and no one had yet dreamed of the terrors of the Spanish Inquisition, or the later rigid Roman Inquisition that burned Galileo.” He turned to Ava. “So is the Voynich manuscript Christian or heretical?”

  “I believe on one page there’s a nude female figure holding a cross,” she answered. “But that’s the only Christian imagery in the whole text.”

  “Well, well. A genuinely heretical medieval text. Fascinating,” Cordingly looked delighted.

  Ferguson continued:

  Its first known owner is believed to be Dr John Dee, Elizabethan scientist and notorious magician. He added page numbering to its folios, before selling it to the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II (1552–1612).

  Emperor Rudolf then gave it to his pharmacist, who had cured him of an illness. Fifty years later, it appeared in the hands of an undistinguished alchemist in Prague, before passing via the rector of the city’s Charles University to Athanasius Kircher—the most curious and brilliant mind of the age. Kircher spoke twelve languages, including Aramaic, Persian and Coptic, and was the leading authority on hieroglyphs, as well as author of an encyclopedia on China. He was fascinated by everything from music to botany and geography to engineering. He has been described as ‘the last man who knew everything’.

  Yet even Kircher failed to make any progress with the inscrutable manuscript, and on his death it was handed around a number of Church libraries, until in 1912 the Jesuit college at the Villa Mondragone near Frascati sold it to an ex-Russian-revolutionary turned antiquarian book dealer named Wilfrid Voynich, after whom the tantalizing manuscript has ever since been named.

  “I still find it hard to believe a text from the 1400s can really be so complicated that modern experts and computers can’t crack it.” Cordingly sounded doubtful.

  “Maybe if it seems like nonsense, perhaps it is?” Ferguson suggested. “Who’s to say it isn’t just an elaborate hoax?”

  “Most experts believe it’s real,” Ava countered. “Sophisticated analysis of the patterns and frequency of the characters, syllables, and words shows that the text has all the characteristics of a genuine language. It’s highly unlikely a fifteenth-century forger would want to, or be able to, create a hoax of this technical linguistic skill and complexity.”

  “So people have tried absolutely everything?” Ferguson was shaking his head, mystified.

  Ava nodded. “Pretty much every known theory—from a new language or alphabet to simple and complex substitution ciphers, one-time pads, and steganographic codes. But despite the hundreds of thousands of hours of effort, it has never yielded up a single recognizabl
e word.”

  “I’ve never heard of anything like it,” Cordingly looked bemused. “Why would someone go to all this effort?”

  “In medieval times, knowledge could be dangerous,” Ava explained. “Sometimes people had to hide away their learning. So perhaps it relates to a forbidden subject like alchemy. Or maybe even one of the more occult branches of medicine—some of which were linked to forbidden subjects such as astrology, like when to harvest pharmaceutical plants, or the best time to administer particular remedies.”

  Ferguson caught Ava’s eye, interrupting her thoughts. He nodded towards a flat square briefcase on the table by the window. In it, she could just make out what looked like a white robe, emblazoned with a large red cross patty. Rolled up beside it was a leather belt with a looped frog to hang a sword.

  Cordingly glanced up from the manuscript and noticed where she was looking. He stood up immediately, and walked across to the case, shutting it hastily.

  “I thought it was all aprons and badges, not crusader knights’ uniforms?” Ferguson pointed to the rows of framed photographs on the walls displaying groups of men in dark suits sporting a seemingly infinite variety of elaborate aprons and medals.

  Cordingly shook his head. “As we’re all friends, I can tell you that this building,” he nodded towards the photographs, “is the headquarters of traditional freemasonry. But let’s just say that a lot of things happen beyond these walls. You could say this building is a gateway.”

  “That was the cross of the Knights Templar in your briefcase,” Ava pressed him. “If you’ll forgive me for raising it again, you seemed a little reluctant to talk about them earlier.”

  He gazed solemnly at her. “Some things are better left unsaid, Dr Curzon.”

  The Templars again, and another brick wall.

  Ava turned back to the pile of books he had brought from the library. Aside from the colour facsimile, the others were an assortment of studies and theories about the mysterious manuscript.

  “Do you mind if I keep these for a few days?” she asked, scooping up the pile.

  “Of course not,” Cordingly smiled. “I’m glad to be able to do something for you.”

  Ferguson stood up, and as he did so, Ava saw him slip something into his pocket from a pile of stationery on a side table.

  Cordingly ushered her and Ferguson to the door. “And maybe,” he added with a twinkle, “one day you’ll be able to do something for us.” He paused as he turned the brass handle and showed them back into the elegant shiny corridor. “Who knows,” he smiled enigmatically, “perhaps you already are.”

  ——————— ◆ ———————

  89

  The University of Oxford Botanic Gardens

  Rose Lane

  Oxford OX1

  England

  The United Kingdom

  Malchus headed purposefully down the ancient university city’s High Street.

  It was a warm evening, and young people were beginning to fill the pubs along the narrow side alleys radiating off the medieval thoroughfare.

  He had nothing but disdain for them. At their age, he had already set out on his chosen path.

  Walking briskly, he passed the high-windowed Victorian Examination Schools, and continued on to where he knew the elderly man would be.

  The old professor’s routine was as regular as clockwork.

  As the jumbled architecture became more uniform and the crowds of tourists calmed and thinned out, he drew level with the austere Tudor frontage of Magdalen College.

  Turning right, he passed through a small gate and down a short flight of steps into a tree-covered area. Ahead of him loomed an imposing triumphal stone archway, its bays housing the figures of King Charles I and II implausibly draped in togas.

  He ducked under a doorway in the high wall, and said nothing as he quickly paid his entrance fee.

  Once into the lush green Botanic Gardens, one of the oldest and most varied in the world, he headed down its central path, past the fountains and wooden box-wheelbarrows parked up beside the acres of flowerbeds. He made straight for the end of the ancient ornamental Walled Garden, where he knew the elderly man would be.

  He assumed the ageing professor came here for the tranquil atmosphere—to be surrounded by the wonders of nature’s calming beauty.

  Today would be different, Malchus mused.

  Nature had its dark side, too.

  He carried on to the garden’s far end, passing a vast stone urn set on a pedestal in the middle of the path. It was decorated with large malevolent rams carved on either side, their diabolical horns folding back to serve as handles.

  He smiled to himself.

  It seemed oddly fitting.

  Beyond it, he spotted the professor gazing thoughtfully into the distance, sitting alone on one of a pair of wooden benches in the shade of the spreading trees.

  Malchus could see he had once been a powerfully built man. But now age had rounded his shoulders, and his face had sagged.

  He was wearing a cream linen jacket over a black shirt and trousers. An overly-wide white circular collar announced he was one of Oxford’s many priests of the high tradition in the Church of England.

  Malchus sat down next to him and looked around. Directly ahead was a small pond sheltering an island overtaken by a vast plant with unfurled leaves several yards across. Behind him, the river flowed past lazily.

  Ahead in the distance he could see a tall square bell-tower with delicate octagonal turrets dominating the other side of the river. But he had no interest in what it was. The only thing he wanted in this city was locked inside a different tower.

  “Professor Stone?” he asked, breaking the silence.

  “Do I know you?” The man was softly spoken. There was no suspicion in his voice—just a warm curiosity.

  “I’ve been watching you,” Malchus answered.

  The elderly man was still gazing into the middle distance. “If you’re selling something, I’m afraid you’re wasting your time.” His voice was gentle. There was no reproach.

  “You’ve caused me a lot of trouble,” Malchus continued.

  “Oh?” The elderly man’s voice betrayed only the faintest hint of his childhood Polish.

  “You don’t drink, gamble, whore, or have any vices to blackmail you with. And you don’t have any children to threaten. All of which leaves me with limited options.”

  He had the priest’s attention now. The white-haired man was looking at him in confusion.

  “But what you do have,” Malchus spoke slowly, dropping his voice, “is a sister—whom you visit every Tuesday afternoon at the St Aldate’s nursing home.”

  The old professor was gazing at him in bewilderment.

  “Let me make it simple.” Malchus pulled a photograph out of his pocket, and handed it across.

  The priest’s elderly eyes crinkled as he looked at the image, attempting to make sense of it.

  Malchus glanced around impatiently. He could hear the birds singing, but doubted the old man was listening to them any more. His watery eyes were staring at the photograph, the skin on his face now pale and tight.

  Malchus looked down at the photograph.

  It was rather good, even if he said so himself.

  It showed an elderly woman lying in what appeared to be a raised hospital bed. It was plainly after lights-out in the facility, as the woman was asleep and the room was in shadow.

  The photograph was normal in every way, except for the rough noose of rope looped around the old woman’s neck, with its bulky hangman’s knot lying over her frail chest.

  “I was a little amazed,” Malchus confided, “at the lack of security. But these private care homes watch their profit margins, and I imagine it would be a luxury to have staff supervising each room all night.”

  Malchus took the photograph back, watching as the old man placed his hands on his knees to steady the visible trembling.

  “What do you want?” His soft voice was choked. “Pl
ease God, don’t hurt her.” He looked about wildly—fear evident behind his eyes. When he spoke again, his voice was a whisper. “I’ve no money. I’m nobody.”

  Malchus sneered. “There’s no need for such modesty, professor. Not with me. Others may not share our interests, but your work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, especially the final battle in the War Scroll, is unparalleled.”

  “She’s a good person.” His voice was hoarse.

  “Then this is exactly what you will do.” Malchus handed him an envelope.

  The priest opened it slowly, his hands shaking as he removed the word-processed piece of paper inside.

  Taking a pair of large tortoiseshell reading glasses from his jacket’s outside breast pocket, he read the note slowly.

  When he spoke, his voice was frail. “What makes you think the deity would favour a man like you?”

  Anger exploded inside Malchus with a searing ferocity.

  He thrust his face into the priest’s, and spat out an answer. “You think you’re chosen? Do you suppose the God who led armies in triumphant conquests of bloodletting and skull-crushing cares anything for lace-wearing sycophants like you? Do you imagine the God who slashed and ripped his way through his enemies’ jugulars with a flaming sword of vengeance and retribution is in any way interested in eunuchs bleating hymns?”

  “You’re an obscenity.” The old man’s body shook.

  “Read your Bible,” Malchus snapped. “Didn’t the God of Israel punish those who failed to follow as he commanded? Didn’t he instruct armed men to slaughter the unfaithful, to go throughout Jerusalem and ‘Kill, without showing pity or compassion. Slaughter the old men, the young men and women, the mothers and children. Defile the temple and fill the courts with the slain.’ Ezekiel, chapter nine.”

  The priest shook his head. “That’s the Old Testament. God is love and our redemption. His gift of Christ and the new covenant changed everything.”