The Last Secret of the Ark

by James Becker

  ‘Probably,’ Dayan replied. Like Chason, he was a short, compact man with a dark Mediterranean complexion and a beard. The pair could almost have been related, except that Dayan favoured more casual clothes than Chason’s trademark black suits. ‘But it’s worth trying this first. The clerk might have removed the password to let the police inspect the computer. If this is the one they used, I mean.’

  The password prompt appeared a few seconds later.

  ‘He didn’t, but no problem,’ Dayan said and powered the system down.

  He took a USB thumb drive from his pocket and inserted it into the system unit, then switched on the computer again. As soon as the screen came alive, he began repeatedly pressing the F12 key to enter the boot menu. When it appeared, he changed the boot sequence so that the USB drive would be accessed first, then pressed the enter key. While he waited for the program on the thumb drive to load, he took a slim but high-capacity external hard disk from his pocket and connected it to another USB socket.

  ‘I’m in,’ he said moments later. ‘Will the file be called “Registre” or something else?’

  Gellerman thought for a moment. ‘Probably, or perhaps “Le Grand Livre”.’

  Dayan scanned the directory structure, finding both Word and Excel files named ‘Registre’. He opened them so they could check the contents, and then started copying them to his external drive.

  ‘How long?’ Gellerman asked, looking at the screen.

  ‘Five minutes, maybe. They’re big files.’

  ‘While it’s running, take a look around the hard disk and see if there’s anything else that might help us.’

  Minutes later, the copying process was complete. The three men slipped out of the office, got back in their hire car and drove out of Limoux, heading towards Toulouse. But their destination wasn’t the airport.

  They didn’t know if they’d been under surveillance during their journey, but their passport details and tickets were now on record with the French authorities, and if they flew back to Jerusalem less than twenty-four hours after arriving in France, that was certain to raise official eyebrows at the very least. So Gellerman had a different plan.

  Just before four in the morning, the men rented three rooms at a hotel near L’Union, to the north of Toulouse. It was a fairly new automated budget establishment, part of a chain, that offered free parking and access to the building at any time using a credit card. They separated at the door, found their rooms, washed and climbed into bed.

  They planned to fly out two days later, and spend the intervening time in France using Dayan’s laptop to analyse the data they’d copied, trying to identify whatever it was that the killers of René Maréchal had been looking for. When they found it, Josef Gellerman hoped their next flight out of Blagnac airport would not be back to Israel but to somewhere closer to their final objective.

  The trail they were following was faint and cold, but it was a long way from being dead.

  Chapter 13

  Auch, Gascony, France

  ‘The satnav says the cathedral is to the east,’ Bronson pointed out, ‘so are you sure you want me to go straight on?’

  ‘Yes,’ Angela said crisply. ‘We need a place to stay, and there’s a halfway decent hotel near the Place de la Libération in front of us. Find somewhere to park, then we’ll get a room and visit the cathedral.’

  Not for the first time, Bronson got the impression that he was just a passenger or perhaps an employee on one of his former wife’s adventures. At least on this occasion he was in a civilised part of the world. The last time they had been involved in a quest together they had started by being chased across the deserts of Iraq by lorryloads of heavily armed terrorists, and ended up in an obscure Templar church facing even more armed men.

  The hotel didn’t have a dedicated car park, but there were several spaces in the Rue d’Etigny, which ran right past it, and within half an hour they had booked in, taken their bags up to a double room on the first floor and were back outside walking past a row of neatly trimmed trees towards the Cathedral of Sainte-Marie. The branches had been cut into squared-off oblong shapes to provide shade in the summer and made an interesting backdrop to the outside tables at a restaurant fronting the Place de la Libération. The cathedral, a huge building with twin towers facing the Place de la République, dominated the view as they approached.

  The ornate front of the building consisted of a portico formed by three stone arches, each guarded by a set of double metal gates surmounted by a gold-coloured scrollwork frame. The central frame was the largest of the three, the decoration terminating in a cross of Lorraine on top of a crown, and with a form of heraldic symbol in an oval shield below that.

  As they approached the entrance, Bronson stopped and pointed up at the scrollwork.

  ‘I recognise the cross of Lorraine, obviously,’ he said. ‘That was the symbol of the Free French in the Second World War. But what’s the device in the shield mean?’

  ‘Not a clue,’ Angela replied. ‘Maybe it’s the coat of arms of Auch, or even something to do with d’Artagnan. They’re big on him down here; there’s a statue of him a few streets away. But the crown might be a clue. There are a dozen or so different styles of French crown, ranging from a baron up to the dauphin, the heir apparent, and the king. None of them have much relevance today, for obvious reasons, but that crown looks to me like that of a duc, a duke, so perhaps the coat of arms is for some local nobleman.’

  The two metal gates in front of them were standing open, as was the door of the cathedral beyond. They stepped inside the building, the almost refrigerator chill of the interior a welcome shock after the heat in the street outside. They waited a few moments until their eyes had adjusted to the relative gloom, and then Angela confidently led the way.

  ‘This is what I wanted you to see,’ she said, and stopped in front of an impressive bas-relief image.

  The gold-coloured carving was an impressive work of art, though not historically accurate. Almost every text that described the Ark of the Covenant emphasised the fact that it always had to be shielded from view. Whenever it was being moved, it was completely shrouded in a cloth so that nobody, not even the priests carrying it, could see it. This was, at least according to some texts, because the Ark had such enormous power that anyone who looked at it could be struck dead by the sight. But the bas-relief in the Cathedral of Sainte-Marie showed the Ark being carried by four priests with the relic in full view.

  ‘Forget the fact that it should be shrouded,’ Angela said, pointing. ‘What you’re looking at is the classical representation of the lid, the two cherubim facing each other and kneeling with their wings extended forwards. And the Ark itself, the box, is really quite plain and simple. No fancy scrollwork or carvings, just the metal loops either side for the poles to go through.’

  Bronson stared at the carving for a few seconds, then started to smile.

  ‘What?’ Angela demanded.

  ‘Have you looked closely at the priest on the right?’ he asked. ‘Give him a pair of cowboy boots, take away the monk’s habit and stick a sequinned jacket on him, and he could pass for Elvis Presley’s double. He’s even got the same haircut.’

  Angela peered at the priest Bronson was staring at, and almost reluctantly nodded. The carved image did look incredibly familiar, and the hairstyle – somewhat unruly, worn long at the back and with a quiff at the front – appeared to be anything but ancient. ‘Okay. I see what you mean. Especially about the hair. And he’s definitely got Presley’s nose and chin.’ She laughed shortly. ‘But I didn’t bring you here so you could mock a monk, or even a carving of a monk.’

  ‘I wasn’t mocking,’ Bronson protested, ‘and I like Elvis’s music. So are we here just so I can see what the Ark of the Covenant looked like?’

  ‘Yes, and to show you how it would normally be carried by four people using wooden poles thrust through the loops on the sides of the box. It’s not very big but it would have been heavy if the stone tablets wer
e inside, and very heavy if the lid really was solid gold. And to go back to the legends surrounding Montségur, it would have been possible for four men to abseil down the mountain carrying something that size, which gives credence to the story.’

  Bronson looked at the bas-relief carving again and nodded.

  ‘We already knew the measurements of the box,’ he said, ‘but seeing it like this does make it seem more tangible. It gives us a better idea of what we’re looking for, so all we need now is a clue to where it might be.’

  ‘Exactly. So let’s walk back to the hotel and crack the coding on that encrypted text. If you think your caffeine level has dropped a bit low, we can stop at the cafe in the square to get you a top-up.’

  ‘It’s a deal,’ Bronson replied, and led the way to the door of the cathedral.

  Chapter 14

  Paris, France

  Modern data systems, directories, encyclopaedias and the like can provide instant answers to almost every question, thanks to the magic of the Internet. These days you can find out nearly everything you need sitting in a cafe and using a smartphone.

  Josef Gellerman had studied the list of entries in the register Dayan had downloaded from the hard drive of the Limoux notary’s computer. Most of the data could be dismissed without even a second look, and they were in any case concentrating on the older papers.

  In the end, they had about sixty sets of documents that looked promising, and Lemuel Dayan took up residence with his laptop in a cyber-cafe near the hotel they’d booked and started researching. Both he and Gellerman were good at spotting links and making connections, and by the end of the first day they’d eliminated all but eight of the names. By noon on the second day the only name left was Hautpoul, because by then Dayan had traced that family’s connections back through the Aniorts and Blancheforts and all the way to the Voisins, and had established their links to the Cathars of Montségur.

  ‘It must be the Hautpoul papers,’ he had said.

  Gellerman had nodded, looking over his shoulder at the screen of the laptop.

  ‘So where are they now?’ he’d asked.

  ‘That’s the tricky bit. The register isn’t complete. It just states they were sent to Paris by courier for research, and that probably means they ended up in a library somewhere, a place where academics would have the opportunity to study them. Either that or a university or college, but I think a library’s more likely. And I’ve already checked. There are fifty-seven libraries in Paris, which isn’t good news.’

  To Dayan’s surprise, Gellerman hadn’t seemed disturbed by this fact.

  ‘That’s less of a problem than you might think,’ he’d replied. ‘Go through the list and eliminate the obvious non-starters – libraries that concentrate on music or some other discipline – and get me the email addresses of the rest. I’ll talk to one of my contacts in Tel Aviv and ask him to help us out here.’

  Getting the result hadn’t taken anything like as long as they had expected. By the time Dayan had produced a list of the libraries, Gellerman’s contact had provided him with an email address belonging to an Israeli academic. He was a man sympathetic to the cause Zeru espoused and would forward whatever responses he received to Dayan’s email account.

  It hadn’t been difficult for Gellerman to compose a suitable message. The information they needed was neither sensitive nor confidential, so he represented himself as an Israeli historian researching aspects of life in southern France in the medieval and post-medieval periods and searching for any sources relating to the Voisin, Aniort, Blanchefort and especially Hautpoul families. The fifth reply he was sent was from the Bibliothèque Serpente. The responder stated that they had general information about the first three names and limited numbers of documents, but that they had recently been sent a fairly complete archive of documents relating to the Hautpoul family.

  Eight hours later, the three members of the Zeru team were in Paris, and had booked rooms in a hotel to the west of the city centre in the Saint-Cloud district. The following morning, Gellerman took the Métro and walked into the Serpente library.

  He found somebody who knew about the emailed request from the Israeli academic and minutes later was sitting at a wide table in a reading room with the documents spread out in front of him. But it was soon clear that the information he had been expecting to find wasn’t there. He was looking at the kind of typical documents any large family would accumulate over the years, a mixture of deeds, grants, mortgages, wills and transfers. That was all.

  ‘Anything of interest?’ an obviously English voice asked from behind him, and Gellerman turned around in his chair to look at him.

  ‘Not much,’ he replied in the same language. ‘I was hoping for something more than deeds and conveyances. Most of this part of the Hautpoul family history I already knew from other sources.’

  ‘My name’s George Anderson,’ the Englishman said, extending his hand. ‘I’m just visiting from London for a few months.’

  ‘Israel Mahler,’ Gellerman said smoothly, the name of one of several aliases in his portfolio of disguises. ‘From Tel Aviv University.’

  ‘Funnily enough, you’re the second visitor in the last few days who’s been interested in the Hautpouls. I didn’t think that particular family would have attracted so much interest, and the papers are really pretty dull. Apart from the encrypted page, that is.’

  ‘Encrypted page,’ Gellerman echoed. ‘What encrypted page?’

  ‘Didn’t you find it?’ Anderson asked, starting to root through the documents on the table.

  A couple of minutes later, he stood back, a puzzled expression on his face.

  ‘How odd. I don’t think anyone else here is looking at it, because we keep all the pages in the folio together.’ He stared at the papers in front of him for a few seconds. ‘I don’t like to cast aspersions,’ he said, ‘but it looks as if the previous viewer of this material may have borrowed that document, which he certainly shouldn’t have done.’

  ‘Who was he?’ Gellerman asked.

  ‘A visiting professor from Italy, from the Università di Bologna, if I remember correctly, but I can’t recall his name.’

  ‘Don’t you make copies of all the documents you receive?’ Gellerman asked.

  Anderson looked at him and made an instant decision.

  ‘Yes, that is the library’s policy,’ he admitted, ‘but there’s always a queue of documents waiting to be put through the scanner, and these papers are so new we haven’t done it yet. What a pity. Do you think that page might have been important to your research?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Gellerman said tightly, ‘because I didn’t get to see it.’

  * * *

  A few minutes after Israel Mahler had left the library empty-handed, George Anderson sat down at one of the terminals and spent a few minutes doing some research of his own, research that was nothing to do with his work at the Sorbonne.

  Then he used his own laptop to compose an email, marked it high importance, and sent it.

  Chapter 15

  Auch, Gascony, France

  In the hotel room, Angela produced the copy of the page of encrypted text that she’d been sent by George Anderson and handed it to Bronson.

  It was exactly as she’d described, written in what looked like an educated hand with the ‘A. D. A.’ heading at the top of the page. The text consisted of about forty lines of apparently random characters printed without any breaks or punctuation marks, and at the bottom was a small rough sketch showing what looked like a box with a lid.

  ‘You’re right,’ Bronson agreed. ‘This does look like the Ark of the Covenant, and it’s difficult to think of any other object it could be intended to represent. So how far have you got with deciphering the text? What have you tried?’

  ‘I did some research and started with single substitution ciphers, Caesar and Atbash, just replacing one letter of the alphabet with another. That method of encryption always produces gibberish, which is what the text on tha
t page looks like, so I thought it was a good place to begin.’

  ‘Virtually all encryption methods produce gibberish,’ Bronson pointed out, ‘but I take your point.’

  ‘The other thing about single substitution ciphers is that because each plaintext letter is always replaced by the same ciphertext letter, you can run frequency analysis on the text. In the English language the six commonest letters, in order, are E T A O I N, but as everything else George sent me was in French, and the origin of the documents was France, I assumed the encrypted text was also written in French, or just maybe in Occitan.’

  ‘Can’t fault that logic,’ Bronson said.

  ‘Thank you. So in French, and ignoring accented characters, the six commonest letters are E A S T I R, a completely different sequence to English. I assumed that whatever letter appeared most often would be the ciphertext for E, the second commonest would represent A, and so on for the rest of the alphabet. Well, it wasn’t. Doing the substitution – which took hours, by the way – just turned that piece of gibberish’ – she pointed at the sheet Bronson was holding – ‘into a different kind of gibberish.’

  ‘So it’s not a single substitution cipher if you’re right and the plaintext is French. What else did you try?’

  ‘I did the same check with Latin, but that didn’t look any better. That’s as far as I got. I stopped working on it, gave you a call and here we are. Over to you.’

  Bronson shook his head. ‘Cryptography really isn’t my strong suit. I’ve done a bit of research, but I’m not an expert.’

  ‘Nor,’ Angela pointed out, ‘was the person who produced that page of encrypted text. Or at least I don’t think he was.’

  ‘Looks can be deceiving,’ Bronson said, ‘and some of those early ciphers are virtually unbreakable even today because you need to know the keywords used to encrypt them. Polyalphabetic substitution ciphers can prove very difficult to crack.’