The Sacred Scroll

by Anton Gill

  ‘We’ve got to find it,’ said Graves.

  ‘And we’ve got to crack the code in Frid Eyolfson’s letter,’ said Marlow. ‘We’re not the only people working on it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Lopez nervously.

  ‘Whoever has the original document your mysterious contact sent us knows as much as we do.’

  ‘Or as little,’ said Graves.

  ‘That’s a slim, slim chance and we can’t make any assumptions based on it,’ replied Marlow. ‘They may know more already. The essential thing is, they’ve got the box and the key, which means they’ve got the tablet.’

  ‘That’s an assumption,’ said Lopez.

  ‘Everything links the tablet to that box,’ replied Graves.

  ‘But there’s no evidence yet that anyone is using the tablet.’

  Lopez was silent, thinking.

  ‘No trace of who sent the document?’ Marlow asked him.

  ‘Nothing so far,’ Lopez replied, thinking, now would be my chance to tell them.

  ‘The INTERSEC backup at Sotheby’s only knew what they had to,’ Marlow said. ‘If we have to do a major sweep, we’ll have to be more candid than we have been with Sir Richard.’

  ‘Can we avoid that?’ said Graves.

  ‘That’s what I’m hoping. But I want you back at your apartment soonest, to report on those five lines of cipher. Go back to the inscription on the key. The codes must be linked. Sort out the bridge.’

  ‘Who was bidding against us?’ asked Lopez suddenly.

  ‘One of them was a bad loser,’ said Marlow. ‘And it wasn’t the redhead.’

  ‘Why bid at all, if you were going to come in and grab the thing anyway?’ said Graves.

  ‘That was a last resort – we went too high for them.’

  ‘There was the woman – the redhead,’ said Graves.

  ‘And there was the phone-bid, the last one left standing,’ said Lopez.

  ‘Neither of them showed any sign of stopping when the auction was interrupted,’ said Marlow. ‘Except for the moment with the deaf-aid.’

  ‘What?’ said Graves.

  ‘The deaf-aid. She hesitated but then she continued – as if she’d got authorization to go on. And it wasn’t a deaf-aid.’

  ‘She was pretty distinctive,’ said Lopez. ‘We could give a description to the cops.’

  ‘The hair was a wig – could have been, anyway – and once she’s taken off the Westwood outfit, she’s as anonymous as she wants to be,’ said Graves.

  ‘Get someone up here to do a facial composite,’ said Marlow. ‘Then put it direct through a secure server with the FBI, see if they’ve got any matches if we haven’t.’

  ‘Jeez, how many people do you want to involve?’

  ‘Use the INTERPOL cover. And see if we can trace the call. The phone bidder. There had to be someone on the other end of that line. It’s possible there’ll be an electronic record. And Sotheby’s CCTV. Do they have an outside camera?’

  ‘Sure thing.’

  ‘The box was already close to ten times its face value when the bidder lost patience. And that redhead – who knows how high she was authorized to go?’ Marlow paused. ‘Something else: how did our competitor get wind of the auction, and make the connection as fast as we did?’

  94

  ‘There’s material on the interior CCTV,’ Lopez reported to Marlow later.

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘Clear images, but they don’t do us much good. Three of them were slightly built.’

  ‘Women can handle those lightweight weapons as easily as men. They think more clinically too – maybe that’s why the operation was so well handled. Have you thrown out a net?’

  ‘Yes. But they’ll be long gone by now. Better footage from outside.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Arrival and getaway. Three motorbikes, all Vulcan 900s, got a number-plate on one. Tracked it.’

  ‘You’ve got a number-plate?’

  ‘Believe it or not. It’s registered to Andrei Borovsky. He’s a partner in a firm called Zwinger and Dels, with offices in the Bronx. Make leather goods – handbags, belts, wallets, that kind of thing. The senior partner’s called Sergei Kutuzov. Russian new money, took over an existing German firm three years ago.’

  ‘Some kind of front?’

  ‘No links yet, so officially these guys are clean. The bike was stolen twenty-four hours ago. Borovsky reported it to the local cops, but not until 2 p.m. this afternoon.’

  ‘Could be a connection. Check on them, especially this Kutuzov. Try the FSB in Moscow. Our embed there. Colonel Safin.’

  ‘Will do. Should I get them to check out Zwinger and Dels?’

  ‘Hold off for now. We don’t want to frighten the horses. Anything from Laura?’

  ‘She’s gone back to the Frid code. Left what she had with me on the facial comp.’ Lopez looked quizzically at Marlow. ‘Something odd here. She thinks so too.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘She set up the facial composite deal OK. We got a pretty good likeness – as the woman looked when she was at the sale, as she might look with her hair dragged back, and dressed in a coat from Bershka. But the face is distinctive, strong. We tried different makeup applications, the effect of different-coloured contact lenses, and the face still shone through them. Eyes, especially. But here’s the thing: we tried the FBI and the CIA, and both dragged their feet, claimed computer glitches, then, finally, said they hadn’t anything like her. Think something’s behind that?’

  ‘Homeland, you mean?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘No. This whole deal is ultra-secure within our section.’

  ‘Sure?’

  Marlow was silent for a moment then said: ‘What about our files? I guess you checked them first.’

  ‘Sure did. And – go figure – a whole swathe cut through. Fifteen files missing – all women of the right age and ethnic group.’

  Marlow closed his eyes, and opened them again. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Leon, you’ve got to give this your very best shot. There are too many players on the pitch.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I’m going to see Hudson.’

  ‘He’s not here. Washington. Day conference with joint chiefs.’

  ‘Shit – when was that called?’

  ‘He left an hour ago. Emergency session.’

  The blue phone buzzed discreetly. Marlow picked it up, pressed the flashing 5 button. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Laura. Got something. Maybe. Come over?’

  ‘On my way.’

  Lopez watched him go, and turned back to his work. He felt stronger now, surer of himself. If he could crack this, make even a little headway for them, he’d be able to erase some of his error. Things had gone too far. If his mistake came to light now, he wouldn’t be looking at dismissal any more, he’d be looking at a coffin.

  95

  ‘There’s more on the tablet here,’ said Graves. ‘Just a clue in the first couple of lines I’ve been able to decipher. The problem is that it’s written in a kind of shorthand, which makes it harder to crack. You’ve got to understand the symbols, and then understand what they’re abbreviations of. It’s kind of a mathematical code which you have to get into before you can get at the letters, and they’re encoded too.’

  Marlow nodded.

  ‘It proves the importance the tablet has,’ continued Graves. ‘The last three lines are beginning to look as if they contain a clue about where it ended up exactly, when Dandolo died, but the encryption there’s got me, so far.’

  ‘Give me what you have.’

  ‘This is what Dandolo learned from the man who deciphered the writing on the tablet for him. An Armenian monk.’ She pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘At the time, they knew the tablet was very old – it was the Armenian who put Dandolo right on Adhemar’s mistake. It was made in about 3000BC, which makes it five thousand years old now.’ She looked at him. ‘It was created somewhere in Mesopotamia –’

  ‘Confir
ms everything.’

  ‘Fertile crescent then. Where civilization began. There’s more. They grasped far more than we thought possible about the principles of astrophysics and quantum mechanics, though they didn’t see them in scientific terms, more as forces of nature – of the supernatural. But the formulae on the tablet show a man how to harness those forces to influence – control – people and events.’

  ‘So, using this, you could create your perfect world?’

  ‘Yes – a world shaped to your ambitions.’

  ‘Jesus!’

  ‘You can trace its progress. Long before Babylon fell to Cyrus the Great, the tablet must have passed into Egypt via the Assyrian campaigns there. The Great Pyramid of Giza was built in about 2500BC. It’s built of 2,500,000 limestone blocks, but even more stunning is its alignment: the sides of the base match the compass points with a deviation of only twelve seconds of arc. How did they achieve such a thing so early?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘The Assyrians re-conquered Egypt later, much later, and the tablet came back to them, because there was a last flowering of Mesopotamia and Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar the Great, about two and a half thousand years ago. After that, it may have passed from the Babylonians – Belshazzar was the last nominal ruler – to Cyrus, when he conquered the country. This is speculative, but the Armenian was on the right track. He traces the tablet’s progress through Cyrus all the way to Pericles of Athens in about 460BC, the Greek Golden Age, and from him to Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. The trail goes on until it reaches Constantine, the Roman emperor who converted to Christianity in about AD350, and made all Europe follow him in the Faith. Constantine was also the founder of a great city –’

  ‘Constantinople.’

  ‘It all fits.’ Marlow drove a fist into his palm.

  ‘It’s speculative, but, yes. All the people I’ve mentioned who were connected with the tablet were bent on absolute global power; and, in their terms, they succeeded in getting it.’

  ‘Though they never kept it.’

  ‘That must have been when the tablet passed from them.’

  ‘Or their power to use it waned.’

  ‘Now that is speculative!’

  ‘In the hands of any individual – any power – this would be an unimaginable force.’

  ‘Childhood dream: the world you want.’

  Marlow’s face cleared. ‘Business,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What rules the world now? Business. Big business. Banks. Multinationals. And how are people influenced?’

  ‘Through the media?’ said Graves.

  ‘So who’d be best placed to benefit from knowing how to use this thing?’

  Graves pondered this then replied: ‘Unless a government – a powerful government – beat them to it.’

  Marlow fell silent, and continued to pace the room, lost in urgent thought. ‘Get on with that,’ he said. ‘Because, however Leon got that document, the original is still out there somewhere.’

  96

  The following day, Lopez reported back. ‘We’ve got nothing on the woman bidder – dead end everywhere. I’ve traced our files – “glitch in the system”, as you know – but they’re all back in place now, and none of them matches our target.’

  Marlow was looking through the files himself as Graves leaned over his shoulder. Two computer screens were set up in Lopez’s laboratory area, one with Graves’s facial composite, the other showing each of the fifteen INTERSEC breakdowns on likely matches. Nothing. They went through them again. The third time, Lopez interrupted the sequence on number five.

  ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Someone’s altered this. The date on this image doesn’t tally with the date on the backup info.’

  Marlow looked at the screen hard. The general backup information had last been updated fifteen days earlier. The date on the image was …

  ‘Day before yesterday!’ he said.

  ‘That fits,’ said Lopez. ‘Someone’s not as clever as they thought they were.’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘Keep on this, Leon,’ said Marlow. ‘Don’t let it go, wherever it leads. But be careful.’

  Lopez nodded. ‘If they’re watching, there’s nowhere to hide.’

  ‘Throw up a smokescreen.’

  ‘If they make mistakes like this, they must be too confident for their own good.’

  ‘Or they think we’re more stupid than we look,’ said Marlow.

  ‘There’s a better trail on the bike,’ said Lopez. ‘Colonel Safin came up with some interesting background.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘This Sergei Kutuzov. Money scattered around everywhere, mainly in tax havens. Registered business address in the Turks and Caicos Islands, but he’s got clusters of companies in Liechtenstein, Guernsey, the Seychelles and Vanuatu. None linked to any identifiable parent bank accounts routed through places like Bolivia and Uruguay. Hard to pin down.’

  ‘Globe-trotter,’ said Marlow, reading the information Lopez had handed him. ‘Quite a stash for a leatherware merchant.’

  ‘He’s a minor oligarch. Made a pile during the Yeltsin sell-off in the 1990s. Got a complicated partnership network. Safin came up with two principal names: an Indian software mogul called – wait a minute, name here somewhere –’ Leon flipped through a battered brown notebook fished from a pocket. ‘Vijay Mehta. And there’s a Chinese associate, property developer, Shanghai-based, Guang Chien. Each of these guys is bankable at around $25 billion.’

  ‘Memorize these notes and eat them,’ said Marlow.

  ‘About to do that very thing. And there’s a fourth player in this game, Safin thinks. But whoever it is, he’s got his tracks well covered. And Safin can only do so much without getting burned.’

  ‘Anything on the bike you traced?’ said Marlow.

  ‘Still missing.’

  ‘They’ll have changed the plates anyway. Or got rid of it somewhere,’ said Graves. ‘Borovsky reported it stolen. Nothing to prove it wasn’t.’

  ‘We have another lead – of a kind,’ said Lopez. Somehow he still had to come clean to Marlow, but the longer he left it …

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Kutuzov has some unpleasant sidelines. One of them connects him with Medellín, way back, when it was still the crime capital of Columbia. Give you one guess what he was involved in.’

  ‘Smack?’

  ‘No toffee apple for getting that right. And guess who his principal partner was?’

  Graves said. ‘Gotta be one of the other players.’

  ‘Mehta. But let’s not leave out Chien.’

  ‘Guang Chien? The Chinese?’

  ‘He had another little scam going. Human organs. Mainly out of North Myanmar, the Lisu tribes in the Kachin hills. Gets them from children and adolescents. Weeded out by Chien’s men, dressed up in NDA-K uniforms. The Lisu have a good, organic diet. Very healthy hearts, livers and kidneys. Rich kids in the West and Saudi are the main recipients.’

  ‘Christ,’ said Graves.

  ‘No-risk business. What can the Lisu do? Take Chien to the International Court of Human Rights? And high profit, since he makes 100 per cent on everything, less overheads, of course. The other main source is in rural southern India – that’s where Mehta comes in again. And, of course, the hinterland of Russia. So our little trio have a pretty well boundless line of supply.’

  ‘Chien involved in the drugs?’ Marlow asked.

  ‘That’s still an open question, but I don’t think I’d die of surprise if we didn’t verify. Safin tells me there’s a couple of opium-poppy plantations in Pamir which even the maddest Taliban units don’t dare go near.’

  ‘You got all this from Safin?’

  ‘Some. The rest, I picked up the scent.’

  ‘Surely they’ve got enough,’ Graves said wonderingly. ‘If they’re worth $25 billion apiece.’

  ‘People always want more,’ said Marlow. ‘And the more they have, the more they think they’re entit
led to.’

  ‘Narcissistic psychopathic infantilism,’ said Lopez.

  ‘What?’ said Graves.

  ‘Big egos, little maturity.’

  ‘Sounds scary.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘We need to tie these guys in with the box,’ said Marlow. ‘If they’re after it, and that’s their track record, God help us.’ He paused. ‘You mentioned a fourth player?’

  ‘The Fourth Man, yeah,’ Lopez replied. ‘Or Woman. Nothing on him – or her – so far. But from what I can gather, the others take their cue from this person.’

  ‘What’s the name of this leather company?’ asked Marlow.

  Lopez checked his notes. ‘Zwinger and Dels.’

  ‘In the Bronx?’

  ‘Check.’

  ‘Address?’

  Leon tapped a search into the Mac. ‘There it is.’

  ‘Time we took a look,’ said Marlow.

  97

  This time there’d be no backup, and this time he’d go alone. Laura’s lack of field experience would be a handicap, and Leon, while another pair of eyes and ears might be useful, was strictly a desk man these days. His presence risked being more than a handicap – it would be a liability. It was breaking all the rules, but there was no one else he could trust absolutely. No one he could trust at all. And now, now that he had let his heart rule his head, he wasn’t sure he could even trust himself.

  He selected a lightweight PDR – an FN-P90 submachine gun – along with his habitual HK USP Kompakt automatic, and he packed two ALS CS blast dispersion grenades.

  He left it until past midnight to set off. Dressed in dark-grey combat gear and lightweight, rubber-soled boots, a black scarf round his neck, he drove the INTERSEC Q-car through light traffic for half an hour to his destination.

  He parked the beaten-up-looking Toyota half a block south of his target and made the final approach on foot. His objective was in a deserted street in a rundown light-industrial quarter, an area occupied by warehouses and small manufacturers, more than half of which were closed, businesses shattered by the collapsing economy, steel shutters up, graffiti everywhere.