The Apocalypse Fire (Ava Curzon Trilogy Book 2)

by Dominic Selwood

  “If not Iran, there’s always Israel,” Swinton added. “Just like Iran, their interest in hurting Saudi is about the regional balance of power.”

  One of the club’s staff approached Swinton, handing him a large navy-blue wallet embossed in gold with the club’s crest.

  Swinton nodded an acknowledgement and opened the folder, pulling out a thin sheaf of A4-sized photographs. “Ah. Good. They were able to print these.” He handed Ava one of them. “We’ve had a team of watchers on Durov. They’ve sent through some interesting photographs. What do you make of that?”

  Ava looked down to see a white limousine parked outside Durov’s house in Kensington Palace Gardens. The shot was from a high angle – a neighbouring property, she guessed.

  Durov was in the backseat, peering down at something.

  Swinton handed her another photograph, this time shot through Durov’s car window.

  It clearly showed that he was looking intently at two books – one resting on each leg.

  The right one was open at an instantly recognizable page. It was Rasputin’s notebook, and Ava could plainly see the cross, drawn in Rasputin’s shaky hand, with the coded phrases inside.

  DISEASED ROYAL BLOOD

  ANASTASIS

  CITY OF SAINT PETER

  AD

  AM

  ESHTNOAC

  As her eyes tracked left across the photograph, the breath caught in her throat on seeing that on Durov’s other knee was a second notebook, identical to the first, and he was studying its open page closely.

  Her pulse started to quicken as she saw it was also a drawing.

  Swinton handed her another A4 photograph. “We’ve enlarged it.”

  She took it, and stared in amazement at the image.

  “And here’s the translation,” he added, handing her a fourth sheet.

  “The experts have confirmed that it’s definitely also by Rasputin. They say it’s in the identical hand to the first drawing you sent us.”

  Ava exhaled slowly.

  This was unbelievable.

  Rasputin had left a pair of matching cryptographs.

  “What do you think?” Swinton leaned forward in his chair. “Do they go together? Is this a code in two parts?”

  Ava’s eyes were flicking from one photo to the other, her mind whirring as she tried to fit the pieces together.

  “On the face of it,” she answered, her thoughts coalescing, “there’s nothing to link the two. Except,” she looked up at Swinton and Jennings, “they’re both by Rasputin. They’re both in his notebooks. And Durov very much wants to know what they both mean. So yes,” she concluded, “until we know differently, we should assume that they’re very much connected.”

  Chapter 22

  Borough Market

  Southwark

  London SE1

  England

  The United Kingdom

  AVA WALKED QUICKLY up Bedale Street, under the industrial-looking railway bridges, and into the vast glass brick and metal expanse of Borough Market.

  Forty-five minutes earlier, she had received a call on the pay-as-you-go phone number she had given Ramos.

  The voice had instructed her to go to Los Tres Toros restaurant in Southwark.

  She had punched the name into Google to get the exact address, then ridden south, crossing the Thames over London Bridge – enjoying the flash of blue in the morning sunshine – before speeding down to the towering glass pinnacle of the Shard, and parking up just off Borough High Street.

  The moment she entered the covered space of the ancient market, the first thing to hit her was the smell.

  It was an intense punch of exotic herbs, spices, breads, cheeses, and dozens of other foods laid out on immaculately presented stalls. Around them, street-food vendors tended trays of sizzling roast meats, skillets of fresh shellfish, and immense karahis of curry.

  A sign told passers-by that the market had been at the southern end of London Bridge since at least AD 1014, before the Battle of Hastings, and it was proud to have served London for over a thousand years.

  Walking north, she headed further into the huge market, the unique atmosphere bringing back happy memories of her student years.

  From the mid-1100s until the Reformation, the bishops of Winchester had run the area from their nearby palace, licensing it as London’s pleasure district – filling it with hundreds of squalid stews and brothels, bull- and bear-baiting pits, theatres, and the infamous Clink Prison. Much of the money they raised from these seedy trades was then used to build the spectacular cathedral seventy miles away in Winchester. Ava had spent one university holiday here in Southwark as part of a team surveying the abandoned Cross Bones cemetery, long believed to contain the remains of the Winchester Geese, as the bishops’ prostitutes had been called.

  Pushing deeper into the labyrinth of alleyways, Ava finally found the sign she was looking for – three black bulls’ heads above the words: Los Tres Toros.

  It was a small restaurant with a green and red front. Outside, a couple were drinking coffee at a battered round metal table. Through the window, she could see the interior was decorated with arches, greenery, patterned tiles, and large garish paintings.

  She pushed open the door to find that the breakfast crowd had already moved on and the restaurant was mostly empty.

  As she neared the counter, a surly-looking man approached. “Vosper?” he grunted.

  She nodded, and without speaking, he began to pat her down.

  When he was done, he led her through a set of battered swing doors into the kitchen. It was a small and shabby space, with a sweaty-looking man loading grubby beige tubs full of steaks into a large fridge.

  She made a mental note never to eat here.

  At the far end of the kitchen was another door. The man knocked on it once. Without waiting for a response, he pushed it open, and ushered Ava into a windowless back room.

  Inside, the air was thick with cigarette smoke swirling around a grimy table littered with beer bottles and overflowing ashtrays.

  She took in the scene in an instant.

  There were three men sitting at the table. One had his back to her. The other two were facing each other. There was no other exit.

  The man to her left indicated for her to take the empty chair furthest from the door.

  Great.

  They were leaving her no way out. If things kicked off, she would have to get past them.

  Confidence is everything, she reminded herself.

  She walked around the table, pulled out the remaining chair, and sat down.

  She had come this far.

  She would see it through.

  “You think you can help us.” It was the same man, now on her right. His voice was sandpapery from decades of cheap tobacco. The accent was Mexican, like Ramos’s, but far thicker.

  She nodded.

  His face was shaped like a hatchet, with small eyes, and a droopy moustache blending into several days’ worth of stubble. It was not a friendly face. But even more startling were the tattoos covering his arms and what she could see of his chest through the largely unbuttoned short-sleeved shirt.

  At first she thought the tattoos were just a mesmerizing swirl of colours, but looking more closely, the designs were actually an intricate web of flowers, knives, and crosses. More arresting still, his neck was also tattooed – with a broad necklace of rose- and cross-patterned skulls.

  She had thought Ramos’s tattoo was unusual. But the ones she was looking at now made his look tame. They were like a psychedelic mix of South American Catholic kitsch and an Aztec death cult. If it was meant to intimidate, then it worked.

  She pulled her eyes away, not wanting to be caught staring, and quickly sized up the other two men. They were younger and, judging by the bulges under the arms of their jackets, well-armed.

  The tattooed man reached down under his chair, and lifted a brown leather satchel onto his lap. He held it open and delved into it, grabbing what looked like a
piece of pottery. As he lifted it out, his hand brushed against a notebook inside the bag, fanning out several of its pages.

  Ava had been prepared for many things.

  But not this.

  Her blood ran cold.

  “Where did you get that?” she blurted out, hearing the shock in her voice, and instantly regretting having asked.

  She could not let them see that she knew anything about it.

  The man ignored the question, and passed her the shard of pottery.

  “What is this?” he asked, his eyes narrowing to little more than hostile slits.

  Ava’s mind was still on the page of the notebook she had just seen, which had been open long enough for her to see the jottings in both French and flowing Arabic.

  Her heart was beating hard.

  She knew that handwriting anywhere.

  The previous year, Professor Amine Hamidou from the Sorbonne in Paris had contributed an article to a collection on cylinder seals published by the British Museum, and Ava had helped edit the book, dealing directly with the authors for their corrections.

  She had spent hours reading his handwriting and notes, including his Arabic.

  It seemed completely incongruous.

  What was a gangster in Borough Market doing with Professor Hamidou’s notebook?

  The man across the table was staring at her expectantly.

  Registering his question, she looked down at the piece of smooth pottery in her hand.

  It was a flat rectangular shard of earthenware the size of a small dinner plate. On it was a clearly etched Chi-Rho monogram, around which were grouped three clusters of text in the unmistakable jagged slashes of ancient Aramaic.

  She scanned it quickly, reading the words from right to left.

  The carving was clear, neatly executed, and she could make out the words with ease.

  She stared numbly at the writing, a wave of light-headedness washing through her.

  Was this a joke?

  She felt the blood rushing to her head as she tried to focus again on the small piece of earthenware, forcing herself to read it all again.

  When she finished the short text for the second time, she went into a form of mild shock.

  Without thinking, she pulled a small double-barrelled magnifying loupe from her pocket. Flicking on the LED light in the side barrel, she peered at the writing through the sixty-times magnification lens.

  She focused carefully on the carved words, studying the letter forms and their edges in minute detail. If it was a modern fake, there would be tell-tale signs.

  She angled it under the light, and examined the first cluster of letters meticulously.

  As she moved to the second group, and then the third, she saw no signs of machine tooling, later additions, or re-cutting.

  She closed the loupe and put it back in her pocket.

  Holding the pottery in both hands, she took in its dozens of distinct features – size, colour, texture, temperature, wear, depth of carving, shape and size of writing, vocabulary, spelling – and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was genuine.

  She would bet her career on it,

  Overwhelmed, she put the pottery gently down onto the table, terrified that she might drop it.

  Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined she would one day hold an object of its significance.

  It wasn’t just another antique.

  It would change everything.

  Dozens of questions tore through her mind.

  Dazed, she looked back at the man sitting opposite her.

  “Well?” His tone was impatient. Belligerent.

  She was sure he must have noticed her reaction.

  She forced herself to calm down, to focus.

  If they did not know what it was, there was no way she was going to tell them.

  She prayed her voice would not betray her.

  “It’s Aramaic,” she answered, focusing on bland generalities, “one of the most widespread language of the ancient Middle East, spread by the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians. When King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon carried the Hebrews into captivity in 597 BC, they abandoned Hebrew as their day-to-day language and started speaking Aramaic. This piece could therefore come from anywhere in the Middle East, and it’s not really possible to be more specific about culture, time, and place.”

  She held her breath.

  If the men in the room knew even the first thing about the object, they would laugh her out of the room.

  There could be absolutely no doubt where the piece of pottery came from.

  The words on it were unmistakable.

  The tattooed man grunted.

  She held his gaze, praying her face gave nothing away.

  He lit a cigarette, and slowly blew out a cloud of smoke. “Read it.”

  Her palms were starting to sweat.

  This was not good.

  Was it a trap?

  Did he know what the writing said?

  If she read it out in English, all hell would break loose.

  She stared into the middle distance for a moment, wrestling with the options.

  “Ta bien,” he grunted, “not an expert after all,” He smirked, turning to his companions, inviting them to share in the joke.

  Ava took a deep breath.

  “Ya’qov bar halpai thadai bartalmai yehuda sicari’,” she began, “Ya’qov bar zabedai yohanan philippos tauma—”

  A silence descended over the room as the ancient language filled the air – its sounds alien and guttural.

  “Shim’on kepha matai andreas shim’on qan’ana’.” She finished and looked up, terrified she had given too much away.

  “So, what is it?” he growled, his face wreathed in cigarette smoke.

  She blinked slowly, fumbling to get her thoughts in order.

  That was the question she had been fearing, hurriedly preparing an answer while she had been reading out the list.

  If he knew what the pottery was, and if this was a test, the wrong answer would destroy her credibility in an instant. Given the weapons and atmosphere in the room, that was not an attractive option.

  Yet if they did not know what it was, she could not risk giving them even the first clue.

  The consequences were unthinkable.

  She was aware of sweat on her brow.

  “It’s names,” she answered, summoning a confidence she did not feel. “Probably commemorating notable individuals involved in a significant event – paying for a building, concluding a trade or peace treaty, dying in battle. Some occasion the community wanted to mark with a permanent record.”

  She struggled to keep her voice level.

  That was a lie.

  She knew exactly what the names were, and what they commemorated.

  The man stubbed out his cigarette slowly, then leaned forward and took the pottery from the table in front of her, returning it to the satchel.

  She stared at the bag, numbed by the sudden sense of loss, quickly followed by a rising panic.

  What was he going to do with it?

  It was, without doubt, one of the most important artefacts ever to have been discovered.

  Maybe the man knew exactly what it was. She had learned long ago that people were rarely what they seemed. Deep pools of skill lay everywhere. Snap judgments were often wrong. And dangerous.

  There was one quick way to find out.

  She leaned forward in her chair. “It reminds me of a well-known piece from Palmyra in Syria.” She did not let her eyes leave the man.

  He stared back at her, expressionless.

  “Do you know the Mongol period at Palmyra?” she asked, her stomach tightening.

  He grunted an acknowledgement, and gave a shallow nod. But not before she had seen the almost imperceptible widening of his eyes as he struggled with the question.

  She had her answer.

  He was bluffing.

  He was not the Syrian end of Ramos’s operation.

  He knew nothing about the r
egion’s archaeology.

  Even a schoolchild in Syria could have told her that Palmyra was a Roman city, not Mongol.

  Whoever these people were, they were middle men. Which meant their speciality was almost certainly crime and violence, not antiquities.

  She suddenly felt ill.

  They had absolutely no clue what it was.

  What if they just threw it away?

  “You can go,” he announced perfunctorily.

  Her heart was thumping.

  Was that it?

  He nodded towards the door dismissively.

  She stared at him, rooted to the spot, unable to tear her mind away from the piece of pottery in the bag he was placing back down into the floor.

  “What are you going to do with it?” she asked, her voice coming out slightly strangled.

  The man smirked. “You want it? How much?”

  For a moment she thought he was serious, then realized he was mocking her.

  “We know where to find you.” He stood up, nodding in the direction of the door.

  Ava moved towards it mechanically.

  This was not happening.

  She had to do something.

  As she took hold of the handle, she turned back to face him. “It’s valuable.” She prayed her excitement and anxiety did not show. “Good condition. Undamaged. Clear writing. I can get it placed with a buyer, and provide all the appropriate paperwork to deflect any questions. I know what it’s worth. I can make sure no one pulls a fast one on you.” She tried to sound breezy, as if this was all in a day’s work. “Do you want me to take it?”

  The question hung in the room.

  Had she gone too far?

  He took another cigarette from the soft packet in his shirt’s top pocket, and shook his head. “Adios.”

  Ava felt herself starting to panic.

  What if it was never seen again?

  She looked down at the floor, praying for inspiration. But there was nothing more to be said. Unlike the two men guarding their leader, Ava was unarmed, so taking it by force was not an option.

  With nothing left to say, she turned the handle of the door, and stepped out into the kitchen.

  The man who had shown her in was waiting at the far end, over by the swing doors. He opened them for her, followed her through into the restaurant, and showed her out.