The Apocalypse Fire (Ava Curzon Trilogy Book 2)

by Dominic Selwood

  Ava could hear the excitement in his voice.

  Turning it over again, she slowly unfolded the parchment, section by section, until she was left holding a quarto-sized sheet covered with a firm bold handwriting.

  She and Ferguson read it together.2

  “Looks like we found it then.” Ferguson strode towards the door.

  Ava was staring down at it. “Who’s Thomas Wriothesley, I wonder?”

  “You know Thomas Cromwell?” Ferguson was clearly enjoying telling her something for a change.

  She nodded. “King Henry VIII’s lawyer and fixer.”

  “Way more than that.” He was speaking more excitedly. “Cromwell was the brains behind England breaking away from the Catholic Church. He also masterminded the programme to shut down all the monasteries and line his and Henry’s pockets with their money.”

  “Since when did you become a Tudor fan?” She put the old letter carefully back into its bag.

  “Architects don’t just do glass and chrome.” He smiled. “I told you, I’ve got a thing about English medieval buildings – most of which were pulled down by Cromwell, and Wriothesley was one of his enforcers. Cromwell sat in London, coordinating it all, while Wriothesley toured the monasteries with his henchmen, smashing the old buildings to bits and walking off with anything valuable that wasn’t nailed down.”

  Ava carefully put the letter back into its protective bags and slipped the bundle into her jacket pocket.

  “If the letter’s genuine,” Ferguson looked at her, “then whatever the professor was mixed up in was something that Cromwell and Wriothesley were prepared to torture and kill for over five centuries ago. And, by the looks of it, some people still are.”

  Ava bent to pick up the book on Henry VIII’s destruction of the monasteries, then moved to the door. “We need to get out of here.”

  Chapter 30

  Rue Myrha

  La Goutte d’Or

  18e arrondissement

  Paris

  The Republic of France

  PULLING THE APARTMENT door closed behind her, Ava turned and ran towards the far end of the corridor.

  Whoever was watching would not be far away.

  When she got to the last door, she saw what she was looking for – a sign marked Sortie de Secours.

  She pushed the thin black horizontal bar, and the door swung open to reveal a metal fire escape.

  Taking the steps two at a time, she landed in a narrow concrete yard filled with bins. Beside them was a shoulder-high metal gate, which she hauled herself over.

  Ferguson was immediately behind her.

  Up on the fire escape, a door slammed shut and someone ran out onto the external stairs.

  Pulling into the shadows on the near side of the small street, Ava began sprinting back down towards the main road.

  There was a good chance that whoever had been watching them also had the rear of the building under surveillance, too.

  She powered down the street, unable to hear anything over the noise of her own footfalls and her heart hammering in her chest.

  Now on the main road, she saw a taxi parked up at a rank around a hundred and twenty yards ahead.

  Looking over her shoulder, she could clearly make out two men running after them. She could not tell whether they were armed, but she had no intention of hanging around to find out.

  Ferguson had seen them, too, and together they sprinted for the taxi.

  Up ahead, a couple was stooping to speak to the taxi driver through the open passenger window.

  Arriving breathlessly at the car, Ava shouted an apologetic “Désolée!” at the couple as she yanked open the door and threw herself into the back seat at the same time as Ferguson piled into the front.

  She breathlessly ordered the driver to get going, and the taxi moved off, leaving the bewildered couple staring at the disappearing car.

  As they accelerated, the taxi passed the two men running on the pavement directly towards them. Ava ducked down, but not before she had seen the one in the lead spot her, and put a telephone up to his ear.

  Once the car rounded the corner, she sat upright again.

  “They saw us,” Ferguson announced, his voice deflated.

  “They’ll have the number of the cab,” Ava acknowledged. “We need to get out of this one as soon as we can.”

  At the next rank they changed taxis, and soon joined the great Boulevard de Sébastopol, heading south.

  The name turned her mind to Durov, and whatever he – and the Kremlin – were up to.

  It seemed fitting that they were speeding down a street named after one of the most decisive military actions against Russia. How many people passing up and down it, she wondered, knew of the ghastly siege of the great Crimean port of Sevastopol, when the English, French, and Ottoman forces fought for control of the home of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet? After eleven months of dreadful conditions on both sides, the Russians scuttled the fleet and blew the city up, then abandoned it. And now, as if history was incapable of learning from itself, the great powers were again fighting over the Crimean Peninsula and its famous port.

  She wondered if anyone had ever drawn a map of the several dozen most strategic places on earth, showing how many centuries of repetitive conflict they had each seen.

  She was keeping an eye out of the back window, but to her relief there was no sign of anyone following.

  Pulling onto the Pont au Change – former home of the medieval moneychangers – they sped across Paris’s main island, passing the great east end and spire of the Sainte-Chapelle, her favourite building in the city. Although the tourists flocked to the imposing cathedral of Notre-Dame, whose twin towers she could see illuminated out of the car’s left windows, she had always held a soft spot for the lesser-known Sainte-Chapelle – a jewel box of delicate tall Gothic stone tendrils woven between what looked like whole walls of rainbow-coloured stained glass.

  Finally, they arrived at the left bank, and entered the Quartier Latin – Paris’s medieval university district. The taxi dropped them off, and Ava led Ferguson into the rabbit warren of narrow streets.

  Chapter 31

  Quartier Latin

  5e arrondissement

  Paris

  The Republic of France

  AVA AND FERGUSON had checked into their rooms near the ancient and impossibly narrow Rue du Chat-qui-Pêche.

  Now they were sitting in a darkened dining room, illuminated only by the glow from a thick red candle in an antique candlestick on each of the dozen small round wooden tables.

  They were already tucking into steaming bowls of thick onion soup and melted cheese, washed down with a solid red wine.

  Since getting out of the taxi, they had been discussing the letter from Thomas Cromwell to Thomas Wriothesley, and had come to the conclusion that there was nothing more to be done about it until they had found out exactly what Professor Hamidou had been working on, which they would not be able to do until the university opened in the morning.

  Ava reached into her pocket, and removed the printout Swinton had given her of Rasputin’s second cryptograph.

  With everything that had happened since meeting Swinton and Jennings at the Cavalry and Guards Club, she had not found time to look at it in detail beyond some initial thoughts on the Eurostar.

  She laid it on the table between her and Ferguson.

  Taking a pen from her pocket, she wrote out the first word on the large paper napkin by her side:

  MELITA

  Then the group of two words either side of the head:

  SEDROH

  HORMIA

  And finally the remainder, down at the bottom:

  CHILD OF THE THEOTOKOS

  PHILERIMOS

  ZZ

  “The only famous head on a plate I know is John the Baptist,” Ferguson offered.

  Ava nodded. “And MELITA means honeyed, which ties in with the Bible’s description of him eating only honey and locusts.”

  She tapped P
HILERIMOS. “John lived by himself in the desert. Philerimos is Greek, meaning a lover of solitude, so that fits as well.”

  She looked down at the rest.

  SEDROH could be rearranged to make shored, hordes, or horsed, but neither of those seemed very promising. Equally, HORMIA was an anagram of mohair, but that did not help much, either.

  Ferguson was watching what she was writing. “What’s THEOTOKOS?”

  “It’s a central element in Orthodox Christianity,” she answered. “It’s the Greek word for God-bearer, which is the name they usually use for the Virgin Mary.”

  He drummed his fingers on the table. “So why write CHILD OF THE THEOTOKOS? Isn’t that a bit convoluted if everyone in Russia knows who the Theotokos is? Why not just write Jesus?”

  “True.” She had been wondering the same. “Unless it’s referring to one of Jesus’s brothers or sisters.”

  “His what?” Ferguson looked surprised.

  “Brothers and sisters,” she repeated. “They’re mentioned in the gospels.”

  “You’re joking, right?” He looked at her warily. “I’ve sat through my share of chapel services at school and in the Army. No one ever discussed Jesus’s brothers and sisters.”

  “That doesn’t mean they didn’t exist,” she replied. “In the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, it says that some people from Galilee spotted Jesus speaking in a synagogue, and couldn’t quite believe their eyes. They asked if he was really Jesus, the carpenter, son of Mary, and brother of James, Joseph, Judas, Simon, and a number of sisters. And after Jesus’s death, the Acts of the Apostles says that his brother, James, stepped up to lead the band of bereaved apostles in Jerusalem.”

  Ferguson looked unsure. “But doesn’t the Church say that Mary was a perpetual virgin? Surely they can’t have it both ways?”

  Ava took a piece of baguette from the basket in front of her. “People have come up with all sorts of theories over the centuries. Some say they were Joseph’s children from a previous marriage. Others are happy with the idea Mary had them after Jesus. And some even dispute the translation, preferring the idea that the Bible writers meant cousins, or perhaps even spiritual brothers and sisters.”

  “As always, time spent with you is never dull.” Ferguson refilled their glasses with wine from the carafe. “The Virgin Mary reference could explain the Virgo sign as well.”

  “I’d forgotten you knew tarot cards.” She tapped the Virgo glyph under the writing absent-mindedly, deep in thought. “Actually, that sign could mean a lot of things. A person. A place. A time of year. A navigational direction. Or it could even stand for the Greek letters pi, alpha, rho, which the Virgo symbol is probably a stylized form of.”

  He peered at the symbol. “How do you get that?”

  She wrote out two more words on the napkin, and spun them around for him to see.

  παρθένος

  Parthenos

  “Parthenos just means maid or virgin, and in ancient Greece it was a title of the goddess Athena, who was sometimes called Athena Parthenos. That’s why her most famous temple in Athens is the Parthenon, although the name is way older. Originally, Parthenos was a daughter of Apollo. When she died young, Apollo immortalized her as a constellation – the one we now call Virgo. The constellation was always associated with Parthenos’s virginity, which is how it later came to be connected with the Virgin Mary. So the symbol for the constellation Virgo is probably a jumbled up version of the Greek letters παρ. You can sort of see it if you look closely. The M-shape is a mixture of the π and α. And the loop at the end is the ρ.”

  Ava took another mouthful of the soup, and put the code out of her mind for a moment, allowing herself to enjoy the taste, and the feeling of being back in Paris.

  It was not her all-time favourite city in Europe – she felt more at home in the south, by the Mediterranean. But it was still pretty good. Especially the food. And she liked to visit the Louvre when she got the chance.

  She had taken the Channel Tunnel many times since it had been built. It was incredible that Paris was now only just over two hours away from London. It made life so much easier. As a child, it had been a whole performance with cars and ferries to get from one capital to the other, and taken the best part of a day.

  The tunnel still amazed her – a series of concrete tubes dug under the floor of the English Channel, like large drainpipes, through which cars and trains could speedily avoid the twenty-one miles of cold water between the two countries.

  She remembered how, at the time it was opened, she had been surprised to learn from the television news that the earliest plans for the Channel Tunnel had been drawn up in 1802 at the insistence of the indefatigable Napoleon Bonaparte. Not content with conquering large parts of the Mediterranean, he had dreamed of annexing England and—

  She froze as an idea suddenly hit her.

  Surely not?

  She stared down at the photograph of Rasputin’s notebook.

  Her eyes locked onto the image, her excitement rising.

  There it was.

  It had been staring her in the face all along.

  “The Knights of Saint John,” she announced breathlessly, barely able to keep the triumph from her voice. “The crusader knights. That’s what this clue is about.”

  “Crusaders, like the Knights Templar?” Ferguson sat forward. “Feels like old times again.”

  Ava thought back to their recent experience at Wewelsburg Castle, where they had come face-to-face with the modern-day descendants of the Knights Templar.

  It had been quite an eye-opening experience.

  She nodded. “The Knights of Saint John and the Knights Templar were the backbone of the crusader armies. They were both orders of crack troops, with a fierce rivalry. When Saladin captured the crusader army after the disastrous battle at Hattin, he spared everyone except the Templars and Knights of Saint John, whom he ordered to be beheaded so his men would never have to face them again.”

  “Here,” she pointed excitedly to the first word. “MELITA means honeyed in Latin. But it’s also the name the Romans gave to the island of honey – a name which has come down the centuries to us as Malta.” She paused. “These days they are known as the Order of Malta.”

  She was kicking herself.

  She moved her finger to SEDROH. “I wasn’t thinking about place names before.” She tapped the letters. “It’s an anagram of Rhodes, the largest of the Dodecanese islands.”

  She looked up at him expectantly. “And you know what the two islands have in common?”

  He shook his head.

  “The Knights of Saint John had their headquarters on Rhodes, then on Malta,” she continued. “And do you know where else they had headquarters?”

  “Go on.” He was staring at the picture.

  She pointed to HORMIA. “There.”

  He squinted at the word. “Is that a place?”

  “It’s an anagram,” she answered. “For Moriah.”

  He looked blank. “Doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  “Jerusalem,” she answered, “is built around Mount Moriah.” She felt a growing sense of certainty that she was absolutely right. “It’s the sacred hill at the city’s centre, where tradition says Abraham prepared to sacrifice Isaac, before God appeared to him as a burning bush. The tip of Mount Moriah is still visible inside the Dome of the Rock mosque at the centre of Temple Mount. It’s also where David and Solomon built the great Jewish Temple, now under the al-Aqsa mosque just to the east, where the Knights Templar had their headquarters.”

  She beamed at him. “And Rasputin drew Saint John the Baptist because the Order of Malta started life as the Knights of Saint John, in crusader Jerusalem.”

  Ferguson was staring at her. “How on earth do you know all this?”

  Ava took the last mouthful of her soup. “When I was at Amman, I used to visit Jerusalem regularly. You’d see regular reports of the Order of Malta – they’re still closely involved in the work relating to the region’
s Christian people. I was just thinking about Napoleon’s battles in the Mediterranean, and remembered how he expelled the Knights from Malta.”

  Ferguson was looking pensive. “How does that tie in with everything else on the clue? CHILD OF THE THEOTOKOS, PHILERIMOS, and ZZ?”

  Ava glanced down at them. “I don’t know yet,” she answered honestly. “But whatever they are, I’ll bet you any money they’re linked to the Knights of Saint John.”

  Her thoughts were interrupted by her phone buzzing.

  She pulled it out of her pocket, and saw it was displaying an anonymous number.

  “Hello?” the woman’s voice asked as soon as Ava answered it. “Is that Dr Curzon?”

  “Who is this?” Ava asked, immediately on her guard.

  “Ava, it’s Mary,” the voice answered hurriedly. “You need to get to Rome.”

  DAY FIVE

  Chapter 32

  Piazza di Spagna

  Rione IV (Campo Marzio)

  Rome

  The Republic of Italy

  Ava was on the Spanish Steps at 9:45am.

  It was a perfect place to meet, already bathed in early morning July sunshine, and awash with busloads of tourists, even at this hour.

  Mary had told her to be at the south-eastern end of the landmark by 10:00am, so she had arrived early to make sure she had not been followed.

  Looking at the grand sweep of pale stone steps leading up to the twin-towered church at the top, she smiled at the irony of history.

  The church, the Trinità dei Monti, had been built by the French, and was still maintained by them. The world-famous steps plunging down from its parvis to the square below had also been designed and paid for by the French. But the Spanish embassy at the bottom had resulted in everyone calling them the Spanish Steps.

  Sometimes life was just not fair.

  At 9:55am Ava spotted Mary approaching.