by Davis Bunn
Right on time, Harry’s contact appeared at the top of the Guildhall steps. He looked exactly as the Barbados lawyer’s file described: a slender bearded man carrying a red umbrella.
Harry left his alcove, passed through a curtain of rain, climbed the hall’s sweeping stairs, and asked, “You Philip?”
The rain had turned the young man’s hair translucent. “I prefer to be addressed as Dr. Pinter.”
Harry spotted a guard watching them from just inside the tall bronze doors. He drew Philip around a pillar. “You got something to show me?”
“I don’t even know your name.”
“That’s right, Phil. Did Sean’s lawyer tell you my name? No, he did not. But he said I’d be coming. And part of your deal with Sean was you’d show his contact whatever it is you’ve dug up.”
“It’s not that simple anymore. Mr. Syrrell assured me I would be placed in no danger by this association.” Dr. Philip Pinter was delicate in the manner of someone who had never picked up anything heavier than a parchment scroll. His patchy beard trembled as he sought to keep his voice steady. “I’m fairly certain I’m being watched.”
“Where, here at work?”
“Here, on the bus home, at the shops. I’ve seen the same man in different spots. Or think I have. Perhaps I’ve been imagining things. Mr. Syrrell’s demise came as quite a shock.” He removed frameless spectacles and used a poorly knotted tie to dry the lenses. “I don’t see why you need to see the document yourself. I made careful notes. All this could have been taken care of at a much more agreeable location.”
Harry had a serious problem with weak, and his time in prison had only heightened that aversion. Weak people were dangerous people. They weaseled and ratted and squealed and backstabbed and stole. “Phil, look at me.”
“I specifically asked that you call me Dr. Pinter.”
“Who else did you tell?”
The scraggly beard draped around his mouth like moss hanging about a cave. “Whatever gave you that idea?”
“Phil, you just said someone’s been following you. Which means one of three things. Either the opposition has ESP, which is unlikely. Or Sean ratted on us, which is impossible. Or you got greedy. I’m standing here watching you shake, Phil. And my money’s on greed.”
The young man swallowed hard. “You don’t know, you can’t possibly imagine, how hard it is to make tenure these days. My professional life is on the line.”
“Tell me who else knows, Phil.”
“I might have mentioned the fact in passing to a colleague at the Royal Society. But only in the strictest confidence.” Pinter fumbled in his jacket pocket and came out with a clip-on badge marked with a large blue V. He handed it over without meeting Harry’s gaze. “If anyone asks, you’re a visiting scholar. Where should I say you’re from?”
“Barbados.”
“No, no, that’s ridiculous. Houston. You’re on the faculty of Rice University.”
“Whatever. Slow down, Phil. People are watching. We’re going to take it easy. What happens when other people bring in first timers? They get a tour, right?” Harry kept his voice to an easy drone that echoed off the stone walls and high-vaulted ceiling. “So that’s what we’ll do. Tell me what it is I’m seeing.”
“We’re passing through the Guildhall’s main chamber. Ten centuries ago, Britain was ruled by a triad of powers. Balanced against the crown and its knights were the dual forces of the church and the guilds. The church was ruled from Rome, through the mouthpiece of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The guilds were governed by a Council of Masters, who met here. Five hundred years later, Henry the Eighth ended Roman rule over the British church. Slowly, reluctantly, the old guild system also gave way to a new form of power. One that promised a voice to the smallest and weakest of England’s citizens. This new form of earthly power was called Parliament. But in the ninth century, when it came to commerce in the British empire, the guilds ruled supreme.”
This guy was born to lecture. Harry studied the flag-draped hall, sixty yards wide and ninety long, flanked by Corinthian columns thick as redwoods. Each stone pillar supported a huge banner depicting the royal emblem of a medieval guild—goldsmiths, silversmiths, blacksmiths, butchers, wooliers, on and on down both sides of a hall that was only a few degrees warmer than outside.
“Nine years ago, work was begun to shore up the Guildhall’s crumbling foundations. To the restorers’ astonishment, they discovered that this massive structure was built upon the ruins of the original Roman Coliseum, lost now for almost two thousand years. The arena’s ruins are pockmarked by caverns apparently dating from the Guildhall’s earliest days. When the restorers inspected the tombs, they discovered a trove of records and documents which we had long assumed were lost forever.”
Harry counted six guards strolling the premises. And twice that number of cameras. Harry did the tourist thing, linking his hands behind his back and ogling in every direction. If the alarms went, the only way out of here would be in the back of a police van.
Pinter led them toward a narrow set of stairs. The guard studied their badges and opened the barrier. Pinter’s voice echoed as they descended the curved staircase. “The guild masters are a crusty, hypersensitive lot. They live in a past where their strength rivaled the crown. They hoard their treasures and have slowed the examination of these newly discovered documents to a snail’s pace.”
At the foot of the stairs, Harry noticed electronic steel gates poised overhead, ready to slam down at the press of a buzzer. He entered a long room that had clearly served as an underground chapel. The chamber was sectioned off by shoulder-high partitions forming individual workspaces. Almost every cubicle was taken. The atmosphere was intense, the conversation a soft background murmur. As Harry followed Pinter down the central aisle, he counted eighteen cameras monitoring their progress: one in each ceiling corner, four more down the length of the room, ten more scoping the alcoves.
When they were seated in Pinter’s work space, Harry said, “Walk me through what Sean had you checking out.”
Pinter opened his laptop and scrolled through hundreds of photographs and microscope slides and illuminated manuscripts. “Here. This is a letter from a knight of whom we have no official record. One Sir Reginald Furrow, or Furlough, or Furrwelle, depending on how one…” Pinter caught the look Harry gave him. He nervously cleared his throat and resumed. “Sir Reginald thanks the guild masters for backing his endeavors in the Holy Land. Which is utterly fascinating, you see.”
“No, Phil. I don’t.”
“Clearly this crusading knight was financed by the guild masters. Sir Furrow is offering the guild two gold chalices, and in exchange he declares that his debt is paid in full. And we have a drawing of the items here, as you see.” Pinter scrolled down to the charred lower edge, where part of a shallow dish emerged from what looked like burn marks. “Sir Reginald reminds his backers that King Richard the Lionhearted, who conquered Jerusalem in the eleventh century, had ordered him to hunt down temple treasures. We must assume he is speaking of the Second Temple, rebuilt by Herod the Great and destroyed by the Romans in AD 72. Which means we’re speaking of a treasure smuggled out of Jerusalem before the Romans broke through the city walls. This is utterly fascinating, because rumors have swirled for centuries that the Romans only found a small fragment of the temple treasures. I suppose you’ve heard of the Copper Scroll?”
“The name, sure.” But what Harry thought was, Whoa.
Sean had played around with the legends of Jerusalem’s temples for as long as Harry had known him. Not the first one, built by Solomon. The second, started by Judeans returning from the Babylonian diaspora and finished by Herod the Great. All of which Harry knew only because Sean had told him. Not that Sean had said all that much, seeing as how Sean was a miser with words. But every treasure dog Harry knew fixated on some legendary hoard that sparked their late-night musings. It was all part of the game. Harry had spent six years tracking down what most of the treasure wor
ld had called a myth, and had been rewarded for his troubles with seventeen months in a Barbados jail.
And look where Sean’s search had got him.
Pinter was saying, “If the Copper Scroll actually lists treasures from the Second Temple, which is disputed by some experts, it means that there was some cache which the Romans never found. We know what the Romans took away after destroying Jerusalem, because they inscribed their war booty on a triumphant arch that still stands in Rome.” Pinter waved an impatient hand, as though Harry Bennett had voiced an objection Pinter had heard innumerable times before. “Oh, all right, for centuries tales have abounded about some hoard located by the Knights Templar and subsequently lost. But this letter is suggesting the Templars arrived ten centuries too late!”
“I need to see the original.” Harry rose from his chair. “Where do they keep this thing?”
“In the tombs.”
“Come on, you’re going to walk your colleague back and show him what he needs to see, then we’ll be done.”
Pinter led him down the central aisle and across the nave. He nervously told the guard, “My colleague wishes to see the document I’ve been examining.”
The guard noted the numbers on their tags, then motioned them through a steel door set in an ancient stone frame. Pinter scurried down the catacombs’ central aisle, through another cramped doorway, and into a second chamber even smaller than the first. The carved recesses where the masters had formerly been laid were now filled with super-sized filing drawers. From the third on the right, Pinter pulled a document wrapped in clear plastic sheeting. He moved to the far wall and drew out a fold-down shelf. “I can’t possibly imagine what good will come from this.”
“Come stand beside me, Phil.” Harry had not seen an audio feed. Which was not any guarantee, but he thought the system was video only. He traced a finger down the document’s edge. The plastic cover was cool. The parchment beneath was yellowed and scarred. “Tell me what you see here at the bottom.”
“The lower four inches of the document are lost, we suspect from fires that swept through the medieval city. Thankfully the document was stacked in a pile, so tightly compressed the fire didn’t eat any farther inside. But this leading edge is gone.”
Harry pointed at the reason he had come in here. A narrow drawing ran along the bottom right corner and disappeared into the document’s charred edge. “Tell me about this.”
“This?” Pinter squinted. “It looks like a river, or a shoreline with waves breaking on it. I have no idea. It could very well be nothing more than a stain from the fire.”
“Who else has seen this thing?”
“So far as I know, I’m the only person who’s realized what we have here. But it can’t stay secret forever, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Which is why you felt like it was okay to mention what you’d discovered to the folks at the academy, right, Phil?” Harry bent closer still. It wasn’t a stain and it wasn’t a river. It was a treasure hunter’s dream come true. “Give me your pen.”
“My…what?”
“That thing in your pocket. Give it to me. Okay, now I want you to take three steps back. That’s it. Turn to your right. No, Phil. Your other right. Pull out that drawer there. Good. Now take out something and pretend to read. Ten seconds and we’ll be out of here.”
Harry moved fast. Pinter’s position blocked the overhead camera from seeing Harry’s hands. If the guards were alert, they’d already be moving.
Harry peeled away the plastic sheeting. He held the sheeting aloft with his teeth, uncapped the pen, pressed the document hard into the shelf, and began blacking out the drawing.
A horrified voice hissed over his shoulder, “What are you doing?”
Harry bore down hard enough to ensure that not even X-rays would show what had been scripted there.
“Stop that this instant.”
Harry went over the entire segment a second time, then a third. He released the sheeting and flattened it over the document. Sweat from his hand streaked the plastic.
“You have desecrated—”
Harry hissed one word. “Guard.” He spun around and blocked the guard now slipping through the narrow entrance. “A most interesting find. Utterly fascinating. Well. I suppose I’m done here. What about you, Phil?”
“I…that is…”
“Swell.” Harry slipped the document back into the open tray and slid the drawer shut. “Why don’t we call it a day.”
Harry submitted to the search, climbed the stairs, returned his badge, and followed Pinter back down the flag-draped hall.
At the exit Pinter stopped. “I never want to lay eyes on you again.”
“Step outside with me a second.” Harry stepped around to the patio’s far corner. Pinter slowly approached, squinting against more than the swirling mist. “You need to take a vacation, Phil.”
But Pinter’s mind was still encased in what had happened downstairs. “You have destroyed a crucial bit of historical evidence.”
“Listen to what I’m saying. If you hadn’t blabbed, this would be the end of it. Nobody else would ever know. But they do know, Phil. And it’s your fault.”
“You can’t be certain of that!”
“I know Sean is dead, Phil. Somebody might already be looking for this thing. And you’re the key. You hear what I’m saying? Maybe this bogeyman you think is following you really exists. You’re married, right? You got kids?” The way the color drained from Pinter’s face was all the answer Harry needed. “Take a vacation. Don’t tell anybody where you’re going. Do it now.”
“H-how long?”
“Couple of weeks should do. By that time, one way or the other, this will be over and done. You can publish then, Phil. Tell the world everything.” As Pinter turned away, Harry added, “Don’t return back downstairs. Go straight home. Pack up your family. Now. Today.”
Harry turned and trotted down the Guildhall stairs. He crossed the street, half a pace below a jog, scoping the street for a threat. Jail-honed senses told him danger was still there. Not back down in the realm of guards and cameras. Here with him now. This very instant.
On the other side of the street a shop-front window provided Harry with a rain-swept reflection. In the glass he saw Pinter clutch his chest and collapse against a pillar.
Harry raced back across the street. Pinter watched Harry leap up the stairs, his beard framing a mouth unable to scream.
Harry arrived just in time to catch Pinter when his grip on the pillar gave way. “Help!”
He searched for the attacker, but saw no one except for a little tan figure, just another wispy academic. The man was hunched against the rain, clutching a lumpish briefcase to his chest. Pinter gripped Harry’s soaked jacket and dragged his attention back around. Pinter’s face and neck were clenched in the rictus of a heart attack.
“HELP!”
As two guards punched through the Guildhall’s main doors, the little tan man slipped into a taxi and was gone.
FIVE
THE NEXT MORNING, AN UNCOMMON wind blew off the Atlantic. Florida springs normally arrived drenched with the fragrant weight of the tropics. But today was desert dry, the sky overhead a pewter bowl. After a dawn run, Storm unlocked the shop and set on the counter the only item she had taken from the the bank’s vault. It had a zippered binding of red Moroccan leather. At least it had been red, forty years and a million deals ago.
Storm prowled the shop, always returning to the same place. She reached out several times, tracing a finger over the binding. There were a thousand things that needed doing. In two days, the movers would arrive to strip the shop and the apartment and her lifetime dreams. The day after began the Palm Beach Art and Treasures Fair. Storm still had several items to select and carry through the exhibition’s vetting process. And she knew that Claudia was right; she should be putting out feelers, looking for a job.
Instead, Storm wheeled a padded leather stool over to where the leather binder rested upon th
e countertop. Her grandfather’s notebook was famous within the industry. The one time she had asked him about it, Sean had referred to it as his greatest asset. What she now held for the very first time contained her grandfather’s secret contact list, developed and distilled over fifty-two years in the trade. Buyers, sellers, experts; who owned what, who could be trusted, whom to avoid at all costs. A lifetime of wisdom. Now hers.
But as she unzipped the binding, the phone rang. She lifted the receiver and said, “Syrrell’s.”
“This is Detective Mallory of Scotland Yard. With whom am I speaking, please?”
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“Officers of Her Majesty’s police forces are not known for their sense of humor, miss. Might I have your name?”
“Storm Syrrell.”
“Ah. Excellent. Ms. Syrrell, we have a gentleman in custody who claims he is in this country doing research on your behalf. His name is Harry Bennett.”
Storm was launching into denial when her eye fell upon the still unopened notebook.
“Hold just a moment, please. I’ll be right with you.” Storm set down the phone and took a deep breath. She was surprised her fingers didn’t burn from the act of opening the tattered cover.
Harry Bennett’s name was starred. She had no idea what that meant, except that it was the only one on that page to be so adorned.
Storm picked up the phone. “Has Mr. Bennett done something wrong?”
“I am not at liberty to say, miss. Can you please confirm that he is in your employ?”
She touched the star by his name. “Mr. Bennett is a business associate.”
“Can you say what he is working on?”
Storm very much wanted to know the same thing. The problem was, the lines beneath Harry’s name were blank. All the other names on that page had notations about items, last contact, possible values. For Harry Bennett there was not even an address.
