The Silver Scroll

by Jeff Spence

  "Yes sir. No, she's here with him, making coffee I think. … Yes sir." He closed the phone and faded back into the shadow of the wall.

  Greg Bass set the phone down. It seemed that his pet professor was going to do as he was told after all. Good. Cooperation was always less hassle than the alternative, and a lot less… messy. He turned and walked down the glassed-in hall of his Texas ranch-house, seven thousand square feet on seventy-three hundred acres of nothing. It was a far cry from his Manhattan place, but he loved it. No one to bother him. No one to ask any favours of him, or money from him. No, out there he had what he sometimes craved more than anything else his wealth could buy him: privacy. Nothing but him, his minimal staff, and the coyotes… and everyone but Bass himself did their best to stay out of sight when they could.

  He reached the end of the hall and passed through a large library, artefacts and works of art intermingled with the books on the shelves. An educated eye would pick out several items of interest, both among the books and the items peppered around the gaps and tops of shelves. Most were American artefacts, instruments and tools fashioned by the early native peoples of the South West. An ancient blanket hung down from a silver-plated bar along one wall, reputed to have been wrapped around one of Santa Ana’s men at the Alamo, and with a few bullet-holes to lend credence to the story, a dark discolouration still apparent around a couple of them. Below it, a pair of Colt 45’s sat in brass brackets, tilted inward and downward, like the viewer was facing a gunslinger in mid draw. A few stone axes lined the top of a chest-height book case in the middle of the room, the wooden portions replicated and carefully fastened to the shaped stone heads. In all, a dozen rare items decorated the room, each of them tying into the local landscape, a result of careful design and consideration. Nonetheless, Bass paid none of them any heed. His mind was elsewhere, drifting through the Levant, east of the Mediterranean Sea, his mind on what treasures might lie ahead of him there, and on those that, despite the blank wall toward which he walked, lie ahead of him much closer to home.

  He pressed his hand against the narrow, unadorned panel between two cases, and it moved away from him with a faint click, drifting inward until it settled against the side wall of a short passage. At the far end he tapped some numbers into a keypad set into a large steel door. There was a beep, a low hum, and then, with a faint clunk, the door slid back to reveal the true treasure room of his favourite residence.

  Air slid out past him, dry and cool. The pressure inside was always kept higher than that in the outer room. Any air entering through the intake vent was filtered, scrubbed, dried and treated, then gently pumped into the chamber through half a dozen outflow vents. The cases inside were stainless steel frames and thick glass bases. As Bass entered, a warm, yellow glow rose from the ceiling and floor at once, bathing everything in a gentle light.

  He always felt a strong sense of pride in this room. He had designed it, with the aid of an antiquities conservationist and a vault architect, and had overseen the construction himself, educating himself in the process to ensure that it was the best current technology had to offer. It was state of the art, everything regulated, monitored, self-adjusting and each system equipped with a redundant back-up. His house could burn to the sandy ground on a scorching summer’s day, and this room would still be there, cool, dry and secure. A flood could flash through the lowlands around the hilltop house, and even if the waters by some apocalyptic efforts managed to cover over the crest, the vault would remain just where it was, anchored securely on deep pilings, the intake vents automatically sealed against moisture intake until it was safe to restart the flow of dry, treated air. He could sit in the custom leather chair in the centre of the room, throughout any of these calamities, and calmly read through whichever of his rare books took his fancy in the moment, and not have a care in the world. It was his Holy of Holies, and it was perfect.

  When he thought of the antiquities dealer keeping the Temple Scroll in a shoebox under the floorboards of his little shop for several years back in the fifties, his stomach knotted. The item had eventually been taken by force by the Israeli government, then monetary compensation offered to the dealer. A just action. A theft on moral and historical grounds.

  Bass smiled. That was all he did, after all: he acquired items that would otherwise be carelessly kept, and he kept them in the best possible state. He would bring in experts and have the items studied. High-res photographs of everything he owned were stored on a disk in the safe of his Manhattan apartment, and another set in a safe deposit box in Geneva, with a few other important and sensitive items. Everything documented. Everything preserved. The world may not know it, but he was single-handedly securing millions of dollars worth of irreplaceable treasures, for generations to come. An unsung hero, that’s how he saw himself, and someday, he was sure, the rest of the world would see it too. In the meantime he was a secret hero, hiding behind the persona of a regular billionaire. A kind of Batman of the antiquities world. He smiled at the thought, though it was far from a new idea to him.

  He stepped up to one of the cases and held his hand in the warm golden glow of an Anglo-Saxon helmet, dragged his finger down the rim of ancient metal. Though too small for him to try on, it was proudly shaped by skilled hands, and equipped with eye-protectors and long, thin extensions down each cheek. The object was one of his favourites. His imagination felt the cool hardness of the metal against his face, the weight of it on his forehead as he fabricated the actions of the warrior in his mind, swinging his axe and sword against his foes, crushing the skulls of his enemies, those who tried to take what was his, those things he had rightfully won. He remembered too that, in reality, a life had been lost in the process of acquiring this item — perhaps a fitting tribute to the man who had worn it, a toll to the gods of history, or one warrior's gift to the memory of another.

  But Bass saw himself as more than just a warrior, more even than a secret hero who protected priceless things from those without the means to preserve them. No, he had evolved. He saw himself as a lord of the battlefield of his age and of the world of scholarship as well. A self-trained historian, antiquities expert and collector of the rarest of the rare. All of it, all of his success both in business and in this, his other passion, was a result of naked determination. His eyes fell on a simple, dressed stone sitting on a stainless steel shelf along one wall. It had been taken from Masada, the Jewish fortress built by King Herod along the edge of the Dead Sea. There had been, an older fortress on the site, built by Alexander Jannaeus. Antigonus II had tried to take it and failed. A testament to the determination and skill with which it was built. Herod had then improved the site, made it a palace, but even more formidable, more isolated. Impregnable, so it was thought. But then the Romans had come, bloodied and drained from the sacking of Jerusalem and the putting down of the Jewish rebellion. The last of the holdouts fled to Masada, and stood at last there, behind the fortifications, both natural and man-made, that had held so strong, for so many years.

  Lucius Flavius Silva, Roman governor of Judaea, arrived as head of the tenth legion. What he had seen was a fortress built on a pillar of stone, separated from Roman forces by a deep canyon on three sides, and the wide Dead Sea valley on the other. No bridge. No road. No way to cross that topography and attack. Perhaps another man would have given up, or tried to starve them out, but Silva had no time for waiting, and no intention of giving up. If the topography was the problem, he would change it.

  For days, weeks, his soldiers gathered stones and threw them over the side, into the canyon. It must have been a puzzle at first, watched by the men on the walls of Masada, and then a joke. Bass could hear the echoes of the laughter floating across the gap, the mocking words heard not only by Silva, but by his men as well. But he stayed. Continued. His men threw stone after stone over the side. Relentless. Unstopping. And the ravine floor rose.

  Bass smiled as he thought of the laughter dying out on the far side of the chasm. Mockery turned to grim stares, and h
e could imagine a creeping fear welling up in the hearts of those who stared across, into the stoic eyes of the man who stood among his soldiers and watched the imperceptible rise caused by each individual stone. And each day the ravine was shallower. Less formidable.

  When it rose high enough that the weapons of the Jewish holdouts were in range of the soldiers, some Roman lives were lost, but even that did not stop the governor. He ordered Jewish slaves brought forward, and they resumed the work. The men on the far side had a choice then, to kill their own defenceless people, or to watch, as the hands of their kin continued the inevitable advance of their enemies. They chose the latter.

  When at last the rampart was finished, and the Tenth Legion crossed into the fortified palace on the other side of it, they found a silent compound. The soldiers had taken their own lives, rather than give their enemy the satisfaction of doing so. Bass understood though, that Silva would not have missed that satisfaction. He had a victory of his own, not over mere soldiers, but over circumstance itself. He had faced fate, eye to eye, and stared it down.

  For the Silver Scroll, and much more for the Temple Treasure it was said to lead to, Bass was willing to stare down those same kinds of odds, to stand eye to eye with fate and to pay what the ancient lords would pay for their own successes. A warrior is a life who takes a life, but a lord, he is a ruler who moves on a grander scale, and for grander rewards. And for the reward that the scroll promised, Greg Bass would offer many lives if need be.

  Including those of Ben Gela and Marina Saalik, of Bolt, Indiana.

  TWELVE

  Ben had hardly slept. It had started with the stress of the translation work, been ramped up a notch by the beautiful woman sleeping beside him on the sofa, her form clearly visible in the contours of the blanket, then further by feelings of guilt at having another woman in the home where he and Donna had lived out her last two years of life. A year and a half of relative bliss, and then the steep descent of the end. It felt strange to have another woman in that space. Strange, but calming too.

  Then the phone call came.

  It was Joan from the apartment above Ben's. She had seen a man lurking in the darkness across the street, he seemed to be watching Ben's apartment… should she call the police? He had told her "No," that a student had made some threats and the police had stationed the man there for the night, just until they could question the boy. That seemed to settle her a little, but it put Ben on the ceiling.

  He couldn't work that way. He couldn't do this from under the weight of henchmen and threats and danger to his family and… to whatever Marina was. He thought long and hard about what his best move might be. By the time the sun was up and Marina had started to stir, he had made a decision. Over a cup of coffee and split pastry, the last of the food currently in his apartment, he had told Marina of his plan.

  They slipped out through the utility entrance and crept along the hedges for two full blocks before making a run for it and catching the number eight bus to the east end. Nearly an hour later they hopped off at a sheltered spot, grabbed a meal in a Denny's on Ben's credit card, and spent a silent sixty minutes waiting for the mall to open. So there they were, walking into Grayrock Outfitters in the mall, the scroll photographs tucked safely in Marina's handbag.

  "Is this kind of place necessary?" Ben asked, staring at the racks of helmets, boots, ice-axes, and camping gear. “We’re probably going to sit in a hotel room somewhere and order room service.”

  "Yes, it is. Trust me. The clothes and packs are in the back. Follow me."

  "I could have grabbed a few things from home, or bought something at the airport."

  "But we didn't grab anything when we left, we aren't going back, and buying a bunch of clothes at the airport would just draw attention," she grabbed his hand and dragged him toward the rear of the store, "and besides, the thugs watching us, following us, and all the pressure is making this impossible for you to work. If we're going to get through this with any sanity left, we'll need to make it fun if we can, to think of it as an adventure… and adventures need adventure clothing."

  This was her latest method of working through the difficult: make it a game. A challenge.

  Ben gave in. Over the next half hour he tried on various items at her request. Some she kept; others were thrown back. Soon she had a small pile of expensive but — Ben had to admit — great-looking clothing beside her, and he was, head to toe, the likeness of an Indiana Jones for the new millennium. Even the other customers nodded their approval as they came and went, trying on gear and making purchases of their own. Laughing, Marina handed him a helmet and ice-axe and started snapping pictures with her phone.

  "All right, all right," Ben said, after half a dozen of these indignities, "Enough! Let's pay for these and get out of here." He returned to the changing room and Marina browsed the bags while she waited, choosing two mid-sized packs and adding them to the pile. The clerk rang each item through. Then they waited for Ben to return.

  Five minutes passed with no serious concern on Marina's part. She looked around at new products, and picked out a couple of items for herself. She had pay Ben back once she transferred some cash from her savings account. Rainy day money — and it was raining, that was for certain. Then ten minutes were gone and she was beginning to look over her shoulder. She felt exposed. Concerned. Even the regular shoppers, so mundane a few moments before, suddenly seemed to be watching her from the corners of their eyes. Paranoia, that was all it was. Before letting herself get to the point of fear, she smiled at the clerk and nodded toward the back, "I'll go check on him."

  She walked back through the store, past the three-sided mirrors, and down the little hall of changing rooms. Ben had been in the farthest one.

  "Ben? You doing okay in there?" She heard a groan. With one quick motion she pushed open the door and stepped in, her hand drifting to her lower back, to the gun that still sat nestled in her belt. She had expected to see him collapsed on the floor, exhausted, shot, knocked out, or worse. What she saw was quite different.

  The groan had not been Ben's; it was a trick. Ben was held fast, by his neck, under the arm of a hulking man with a flat, crooked nose. Ben was in his regular clothes, his new outfit in a heap on the floor. At her arrival, the man tightened his grip, Ben went purple, and it was obvious that the thug had the power to snap the professor's neck in a moment. Marina let her hand drift back around her hip, making no indication that she was armed.

  "If you want him to live, say nothing and step inside." She did so. "Hello, Miss Saalik, you may call me Mr. Smith. I am here at the request of my employer." He smiled at his own eloquence and eased up on his grip a bit.

  "What do you want?" her voice trembled, but all three of them could hear the anger in it, even more than the fear. It surprised both men.

  "I want no one to get hurt," he continued, "and I want the completion of the work the professor here was hired to do."

  "He can't work like this. Just let us go. We'll do it, we'll find what it is your boss wants and give it to him. All we want is to be left alone."

  "I understand. The pressures of work can sometimes be crippling." He squeezed tighter on Ben's neck again, eliciting a wheeze from his captive's restricted throat and short, ineffective kicks from his feet. "But it is imperative that we all do what it is our part to do. Do you understand?"

  She nodded.

  "Good. Then what I want you to do, is to turn your back to me. Cuddle up close. That's right." With one smooth motion, the man released Ben and instead looped his thick arm around Marina. Ben dropped to his knees, coughed a couple of times, and then leaned against the wall, staring up at the man with hatred.

  Marina stood in the man's powerful grip, smelled the hint of garlic of his sweat, and arched her back, trying to keep the gun from pressing against her captor, revealing its presence.

  "If you hurt her," Ben rasped, "I'll find you and kill you."

  "Please, professor, that's like me threatening to disprove your best theor
ies. Let’s stick to the areas in which we are professionals, shall we? Good. What I don't want to happen is any screaming, or ruckus, or any kind of disturbance. I am willing to kill you both to protect the identity of my employer from official notice, and to ensure my own safety and freedom. If you endanger either of these goals, you are in mortal danger yourselves. I will be gone long before any police can arrive, and video footage will not help them find me. My employer will find another person to do the work, an inconvenience, but nothing more, and life will go on as before — for everyone but you. Do you understand? Good.

  "Now this is what I want to happen. I want you, Professor, to wait in this room while Miss Saalik and I stroll casually from the store. You will then inform the clerk that you have decided against any purchases today. Then you will return to your home, finish the translations without taking a single step outside, and await further directions. Miss Saalik will be safe with me… so long as you cooperate. If you do, at any point, decide to make a problem of yourself… well then things will change."

  As he said this, he pulled her a little closer to him, his arm pressing up underneath her breast, and his wicked smile aimed at Ben with all the sick glee of every bully Ben had ever faced in school playgrounds from kindergarten to grad school. He shook with anger, but what choice did he have?

  He placed his hand on the floor to brace himself before getting up, and as he did so his fingers touched something cold there on the carpet.

  Marina had had enough. She could see that Ben had no choice if they took her, and she had no desire to be in the care of this smooth-talking monster for however long it took to get this thing done. The man's grind against her chest and back had been too much for her to tolerate. With one quick motion, she lifted up on her toes and thrust her head back, feeling the wet smack of her skull on the man's mouth and nose. She then rammed her heel down hard on the foot of her attacker. His grip loosened and she twisted free, just for a moment, and was about to pull the pistol from her belt when her breath was frozen by a sharp krak!