by Glenn Cooper
‘I can pay you very well and fairly, Doctor Dee. Of this you can be sure.’
That night in his bedroom, Kelley wrote a letter while his wife loudly snored. He knew that Francis Walsingham had little interest in small words, so he went straight to the matter at hand and described what he had overheard in the vivid detail he knew the spymaster craved. And now that he had an excuse to write, he decided to play another card he had been withholding for the right moment. Several weeks earlier he had found himself in the chambers of a wealthy Polish count who was interested to hear about the latest alchemical research from the new English arrivals to Krakow. When the count was briefly called away by a servant, Kelley casually opened a box on the man’s desk and saw at least twenty gold pieces. He helped himself to two of them and when his business was done, he left the premises smiling. One coin he kept for his own coffers, the other, he melted down in a crucible and poured the molten metal into a dimple he carved in a flat piece of walnut. Now he intended to include this piece of wood inside the folded letter.
‘Finally, Sir Francis, I would beseech you to present this gift to Her Gracious Majesty. My alchemical experiments have been progressing exceedingly well. I have been able to convert stones from the bladder of an afflicted man into a fine grade of gold, as you can clearly surmise. If Her Majesty could bestow unto me a stipend of 100 pounds to purchase the materials I require to produce larger quantities of gold, I will be able to greatly augment Her royal treasury.’
Francis Walsingham received Kelley’s letter when the first leaves of autumn began fluttering to the ground. He had a stack of correspondence that day, but he opened that letter first. It was the first communication from his spy since he embarked for Poland and the letter was strangely heavy. The heaviness revealed itself as soon as he cracked the seal. A piece of wood inlaid with a glob of gold. He devoured the letter seeking an explanation.
But Kelley’s claims for a breakthrough in alchemy were of less interest to a pragmatist like Walsingham than the name Throckmorton. He had been monitoring the Catholic brothers Francis and Thomas Throckmorton, whom he suspected of plotting to murder Queen Elizabeth to pave the way for her cousin, the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots to take the throne. His web of informants in England, France, and Spain had been feeding him fragments of information that led him to believe that the Throckmortons were acting as go-betweens between Mary, under house arrest in Carlisle Castle, and Bernardino de Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador. The outlines of the plot involved the restoration of a Catholic monarchy brought about by the invasion of England by Henry I, the Duke of Guise, supported by King Philip of Spain and the Vatican. And now it seemed that John Dee might be a supporting character in the tale.
Walsingham showed the letter to his private secretary, Francis Mylles, who asked him what he intended to do about John Dee.
‘I intend to do nothing for the moment. Being an old fool is not a crime. Being a Catholic plotter is quite another thing. Let us see whether he crosses the line. In the meanwhile, Dee will not receive any monies from the Crown. He may starve and wither for all I care.’
‘And what of Edward Kelley’s alchemy? Will you inform the Queen?’
Walsingham used his belt dagger to dig out the gold nugget from the wood. ‘Once a liar and a fraud, always a liar and a fraud.’
He slipped the piece of gold into his pocket and called for the next letter.
TWENTY
The director of the Institute of Archeology was a woman Cal knew only slightly. He had heard Eleanor Cartwright lecture once on her specialty area, pre-Columbian Meso-American archeology, and had met her at a cocktail party in Berlin, as he recalled. She remembered him somewhat better and warmly greeted him and Eve, brushing ringlets of wild red hair away from her eyes.
‘Imagine, coming all this way to see Omar and then this,’ she said. ‘How dreadful for all of us. Did you know him well?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ Cal said. ‘He was a colleague of my father. He did the paleography on his Near Eastern papyri.’
‘He was very eminent in his field,’ she said. ‘Of course, in recent years, he had to slow down on account of his memory issues. Isn’t dementia particularly cruel when a person’s mind is full of a lifetime of learning and expertise?’
Cal admitted that in his brief telephone conversation with Rasouly he hadn’t picked up the extent of his difficulties.
‘And you, Ms Riley, are you an archeologist as well?’
‘I’m not, I’m afraid. I’m not an academic at all.’
Cal stepped in. ‘She’s being modest. Eve is an expert in Elizabethan magic.’
‘Ah, a John Dee disciple,’ Cartwright said.
Eve relaxed at that. ‘That’s right!’
‘I really don’t know what to say about your aborted meeting, Professor Donovan.’
‘Please, Cal.’
‘Yes, of course. Cal. Is there anything I or a member of staff can do to try and salvage your mission?’
‘I was trying to track down the location of an Aramaic papyrus my father found in Iraq in the late 1980s. He sent it to Omar for curation and translation but it’s not clear the work was ever done. My father died in an accident at the dig and the funding for the project died with him.’
‘And you think that he might have been in his office looking for the material when he had his heart attack?’
‘It’s possible.’
Cartwright chewed her lip. ‘I really don’t think I can let you root around in his files. That wouldn’t be appropriate.’
Cal said he understood.
But she added with a wink, ‘But now that the police has taken him away, perhaps we could just pop in and have a quick look on his desk to see if he managed to pull the relevant papers before he succumbed.’
On entering his office, Eve was immediately drawn to the spot on the floor where Rasouly’s body had been found. Cal noticed her melancholy reaction. The carpet wasn’t marked by the police, there were no stains, but Cal had little doubt that her sense of where he died was accurate.
Soon, Cal was drawn to something else. In the center of the desk was a thick folder, its label boldly referring to the Rabban Hurmizd excavation.
‘Perhaps you’re in luck,’ Cartwright said.
Cal leaned over the desk and began flipping through the materials. In many ways they mirrored his father’s own files in Cambridge. When he got to the last page he announced he had found nothing helpful.
‘Are you sure I couldn’t go through his other files?’ he asked.
The director said she really wasn’t comfortable letting an outsider do so but then she added, ‘When are you scheduled to leave London?’
‘Day after tomorrow. Why?’
‘I placed a call to Omar’s son this morning after his father was found. Marc is also on the faculty here, you know. He was in Jordan working on a pottery collection in Amman. He’s returning to London tonight. If he’s happy to let you search his father’s things I certainly would have no objection.’
On the way out, they passed by a knot of female staff members talking among themselves. One of them, a woman in a hijab, was tearful. She saw the director and came over, asking whether she knew anything more about what had happened.
‘I’m afraid not, Nadia. They believe it was a heart attack. It would have happened sometime yesterday.’
‘I may have been the last person to see him alive,’ the woman lamented.
‘I’m sorry,’ Cartwright said, ‘I should make an introduction. Dr Nadia Ansour, please meet Professor Calvin Donovan from Harvard. And this is his friend, Ms Riley.’
Ansour took on a look of utter confusion. ‘I don’t know how to say this politely but are you sure this is Professor Donovan, Eleanor?’
‘I’m pretty sure I am who I think I am,’ Cal said, bemused. ‘Why do you think I’m someone else?’
‘Because yesterday when I saw Omar he was with Calvin Donovan.’
Detective Inspector Proctor from the Metropoli
tan Police set up shop in a small conference room a few doors down from Omar Rasouly’s office. He interviewed Dr Ansour first, followed by Cal and Eve. After he took Cal’s statement he inspected his passport, taking note of the 7:30 a.m. entry stamp at the airport the previous day.
‘Dr Ansour tells me she saw Dr Rasouly near his office at approximately 11:15 a.m. with a man Dr Rasouly claimed was Calvin Donovan. How do you explain that?’
Cal tried hard not to get worked up by Proctor’s officious tone. ‘I don’t think I can. It wasn’t me.’
‘It was certainly possible for you to get to central London from Heathrow by 11:15, isn’t that so?’
‘We got to our hotel before ten, actually.’
‘And you didn’t then come to the Institute?’
‘No, we had a rest, left the hotel midday for lunch then went to the British Museum.’
‘Can you confirm that Professor Donovan was with you the entirety of the morning, Miss Riley?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said meekly. ‘We have separate rooms. We met up for lunch.’
‘So, Professor, you could have come over here at 11:15.’
‘I could have but I didn’t. I’m sure you spoke to Dr Ansour, same as me. Her description of the imposter didn’t match me at all.’
‘Just being thorough, sir.’
‘Look, officer—’
‘Detective.’
‘Sorry, Detective. There’s more to this than meets the eye. Dr Ansour’s description of the guy sounds a lot like a man who killed two people back home and tried to kill me. The FBI is investigating.’
‘And why would this man have come to London to murder an elderly gentleman with dementia?’
‘He was probably after the same thing we are – an ancient papyrus that Dr Rasouly worked on thirty years ago.’
‘And what is the significance of this papyrus?’ He stumbled over the word and asked for the spelling and definition for his notes.
Cal glanced at Eve and sharply raised his eyes in a non-verbal signal for her to follow his lead. This detective wasn’t going to be fertile ground for planting angel magic seeds.
‘I believe it is valuable.’
‘Valuable how?’ the detective asked.
‘Scientifically and financially. It’s the scientific part that’s of interest to me. I want to translate it, analyze it, and publish the findings. And there’s a personal aspect to it also. My father was also an archeologist. He was the one who found it. It’s part of his legacy.’
‘What would this papyrus be worth?’
Cal made up something up. ‘At auction, I’d say hundreds of thousands to the right private collector or museum.’
‘And you, Miss Riley, what’s your interest in this?’
‘The same as Cal’s,’ she said.
‘Are you a scientist too?’
‘Me? I’m more of an amateur.’
Cal tried to cut off further questioning by telling Proctor that he noticed CCTV cameras in the corridor outside Rasouly’s office.
‘You’re quite the Renaissance man, aren’t you, sir. Harvard professor and a detective to boot.’
Cal smiled. ‘I was just going to give you the contact info for Special Agent D’Auria who’s in charge of the case for the FBI. If you get a screen grab of the man who was with Rasouly then maybe the FBI and the Met can work together.’
The detective looked like he’d sucked on a lemon. ‘We endeavor to cooperate with law-enforcement agencies around the world. This case will be no different.’
After they finished at the Institute Cal and Eve felt adrift. They slowly walked back to their hotel and Cal found himself looking over his shoulder in case the large man with a Middle Eastern accent was following. Eve eventually broke their silence.
‘So, you want to tell me about this man?’
He was feeling guilty. ‘Look, Eve. The last thing I wanted to do was expose you to any danger. If I thought for a second that this guy would have followed me to London I wouldn’t have gotten you involved. I feel awful. Honestly, I’ve got no idea how he could have found out about the papyrus. The only people I told were you and Jessica.’
She went quiet.
‘Yeah. Look, I think you should get on the first flight home we can book. I’ll take care of everything.’
‘Maybe you should just tell me what’s going on first.’
He opened up to her. By the time they hit the lobby she knew everything.
‘I’ll go up to my room and sort out flights for you,’ he said.
‘I’m not leaving. I’m going to see this through. Maybe Omar’s son will know where his dad kept the papyrus.’
‘Can I try to change your mind?’
‘Nope. Besides, when am I going to have the chance to be in London again?’
She was a fully informed adult so what could he say? ‘In that case I owe you the Calvin Donovan special one-day VIP tour of London. Put your sneakers on.’
About twelve hours later they hobbled back to the hotel on sore feet. The activity tracker on Cal’s watch showed they had clocked almost ten miles of streets, cathedrals, and museum galleries.
Over a late, boozy dinner at Veeraswamy, his favorite Indian restaurant in the city, he asked her to name the day’s favorite.
‘Let’s see,’ she said dreamily. ‘The kid in me loved the London Eye and the Tower of London, the grown-up me loved Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s, and the person I aspire to be loved the Tate and the National Gallery.’
The lift stopped on her floor.
‘I’ll ring Rasouly’s son first thing in the morning and let you know,’ he said.
‘Could you see me to my door?’ she asked.
She admitted that she had drunk too much and now she was swaying like she was on the deck of a gently rolling ship.
‘You okay?’ he asked, ready to steady her.
‘I’m good. Actually, I’m really good.’
He got that unmistakable feeling he always had when a woman was interested.
‘So, I’m just down there,’ she said pointing her keycard down the hall.
At the door her slightly goofy smile vanished. ‘Can I say something?’
‘Sure.’
‘I like you.’
Here it was.
‘I like you too,’ he said. ‘You’re a fascinating person. Fascinating woman.’
‘Could I ask about Jessica?’
‘We’ve been seeing each other for a couple of years.’
‘Are you engaged?’
‘Engaged?’ He laughed and said no. He told her he wasn’t sure he’d make a reliable husband, not that Jessica was looking for one.
‘Here’s the thing,’ she said, referring to the brand of Indian beer they’d been knocking back. ‘It’s probably the Kingfisher truth serum talking but I’ve never, ever, never once in my life made love to a man I respected.’
This would not be an act of charity. He’d been smelling her black, perfumed hair all evening and having sly thoughts about how she’d look with her clothes on the floor. He briefly, very briefly, thought about his promise to Jessica then settled on a too-clever retort.
‘I’m sorry to hear that. How do you know you’d still respect me in the morning?’
‘We’d have to wait and see.’
When the morning came, they woke up early then made love again. When they were done she laughed and assured him she still did respect him. While she showered he called Marc Rasouly at the number Eleanor Cartwright had given him. When Cal began to introduce himself, Rasouly pre-empted him and told him that Cartwright had told him to expect the call.
‘I’m so very sorry for your loss,’ Cal said. ‘I didn’t know him, but he was a colleague of my father.’
‘I know. They were frequent collaborators. I saw Hiram Donovan’s name on several of my dad’s papers.’
‘This has got to be an awful time for you and your family, but do you think we could get together for a quick coffee to discuss the reason I came to
London to see him?’
‘Yes, of course. Could you come by the Institute in a couple of hours?’
Marc Rasouly’s office was on a different floor to his father’s. Cal and Eve arrived to find a sprig of a man in his late forties with a neat black beard. He was calm and composed and in short order admitted that he had been dreading the day when his father’s dementia progressed to the stage when he’d have to go into a care facility.
‘But I take it you believe my father may not have died of natural causes.’
‘I’m afraid so,’ Cal said.
‘I suggested a post-mortem,’ Rasouly said. ‘I’m not sure they would have sought one if not for your suspicions.’
‘It’s possible the man who was seen with your father near his office was the same man who killed my mother last month.’
The man’s composure broke. He looked aghast. ‘My God, what is this all about? Eleanor said it was an Iraqi papyrus you were looking for? Someone would kill for that? I’m a pottery guy. Etruscan pottery. No one would kill for one of my pots.’
Cal told him about the papyrus. ‘We think it might be a record of an ancient chant, a magical spell, if you will, intended to open up some sort of hidden realm of the heavens.’
‘So what?’ Rasouly said. ‘Ancients believed in all sorts of magic and superstition. Modern, rational men don’t.’ When he saw Eve’s expression he added, ‘Or do they?’
‘There’s a field of magic called Enochian magic,’ she said. ‘And some people absolutely believe in its power to understand the cosmos. I’m one of them. And yes, I can understand why some terrible people might kill to get their hands on it. I think they believe they can make powerful magic with it.’
Rasouly shrugged. ‘Look, put me down in the dyed-in-wool skeptic column. Frankly, I don’t want to engage in a debate on something about which I am wholly ignorant, but you think this papyrus was sent to my father from your father?’
‘Actually, it’s not a single papyrus scroll or sheet. According to my father’s field notes it’s over a hundred fragments discovered during a 1988 excavation at a mediaeval Christian monastery in Iraq. Let me show you the single fragment that somehow didn’t make its way into the assemblage sent to your father.’
