The Huguenot Thief

by L. K. CLEMENT

  Kate stopped him with a hand on his arm. “When is the formal meeting with the sponsors?”

  “The principals?” His face relaxed. “Oh, yes, the meeting. I am not sure, but we will fly you back in three days. Do not worry.”

  Her head began to thrum. Turning and backing away, the man gave her a reassuring smile. “Please rest, Dr. Strong. We will speak later.”

  Kate plugged in her phone. She was beginning to feel panicky and regretful, and didn’t know if it was the lack of medication, or concern for Jack. She took a quick shower and dressed, then lay down on the enormous bed and dozed off. A knock on the door startled her awake.

  “Yes,” she said from the bed.

  “Are you ready, Dr. Strong?” said Atay through the door.

  “Five minutes,” said Kate. She tried to text Jack again. To her great relief, her text showed delivered.

  Atay was waiting for her, and rather than take her down the same stairs she had climbed two hours previously, he led her farther down the corridor. Soon the granite walls of the castle gave way to a more modern material. After going through two additional doors, Atay stopped at an elevator. It opened immediately, and took them down several levels. Exiting, they walked down a short hall into a large state-of-the-art research room.

  Kate entered and walked to the middle of the room. The room was equipped with a computer and high-resolution monitor. Light boxes designed for examining parchment sat on tables against the wall to the left of the door they had entered. Two rolling office chairs sat in front of the computer and the light boxes.

  The wall directly across from where they had entered contained an unmarked whiteboard. A door stood in the middle of the right hand wall, with additional whiteboards on either side. The floor was of concrete, and what she thought was an antique Turkish Oushak carpet covered most of the visible floor, an incongruous addition for a laboratory. The rug was worn in the middle, as if someone had walked its length daily for a hundred years. Why would they put such a valuable rug in a laboratory?

  Kate said, “Am I going to be allowed to physically examine the codices? I see that you have all the necessary equipment to do so.”

  “For now we have only photographs. Since time is short, do you mind taking breakfast here in the lab?” He gestured behind them to a table that held coffee and a continental breakfast.

  “No, of course not. I am used to eating on the run.” Kate smiled and added, “Just keep the coffee coming.”

  Atay walked over to the worktable, sat down and logged onto the computer. “The photographs are indexed. Here is the master file.” Kate looked over his shoulder as he showed her the primary folder. “I will be back at lunch time.” He gestured to the wall, “Don’t forget. The receiver on the wall will link you with the castle operator if you need anything.”

  “Thank you,” said Kate. Atay walked out and gently closed the door.

  Kate walked over to the receiver and picked it up. A woman answered in accented English, “May I help you?”

  “Can you make a call to the United States for me?” Kate asked. She gave Jack’s cell phone number to the operator.

  “Of course, I will try.” Silence on the line. “I’m sorry,” said the operator. “There is no answer. Shall I ring you when it goes through?”

  “Yes, please.”

  She sat at the high-resolution monitor, and reviewed the folders Atay had showed her. The folder names were in English: site-photographs, books-in-situ, book1, book2, book3. The first folder contained pictures of the underground city and had a sketched diagram of the levels excavated. Kate studied the photographs a long time, imagining how dangerous the surface must have been for these people to build a self-contained city underground. The church itself had been built at the third level, fifty feet deep. An arrow indicated the location of the codices, behind a wall near the intersection where the cross members of the cruciform church met.

  The second folder, books-in-situ, had photographs made of each codex before being removed. The remaining folders contained photographs of each page of the books, each jpeg file labeled with a four-digit number. The first number indicated which book the pages had come from, the three other numbers representing a specific page. Kate knew how tedious the job was to unearth, preserve and then prepare parchments for photographing. Whatever team had prepared these books had done a superb job.

  She clicked on one image and it popped into full view. The page was in the style of illuminated manuscripts, and contained a detailed illustration of a particular relic and its container, the reliquary. The colors were bright, shielded from ultraviolet light for centuries. The exquisite text described each relic, where found and by whom. The location of the reliquary—church, monastery, convent, or castle completed the written description. The parchments were an amazing inventory of the Byzantine Empire’s most precious possessions, that were, at the time, worth more than gold. Kate felt a rising excitement, and her hands began to shake. If these codices were unknown to modern historians, their existence alone was phenomenal.

  Once the formal project began, the researchers would carefully correlate the information in these parchments with other documents that described relics and their provenance. Kate calculated how many researchers the project needed for this aspect, and added to her mental list of needed resources.

  Some of the photographs indicated tattered pages, but Kate knew this information would be in later books. Medieval scribes spent their days copying and recopying pages—endless pages. They would have not allowed a codex parchment to decay without replicating the information.

  Where in Constantinople had they kept these books? In Hagia Sophia, the great cathedral in the center of the city? When had they been moved to Cappadocia? These questions would remain unanswered until a team could form, and the complete inventory was translated. Even then, many new questions would arise.

  Kate forgot about eating, quickly looking at each photograph of book1, attempting to gauge the level of difficulty of the translation. When she did the official translation, she would go slowly—letter by letter, word by word—and would ask for a minimum of three researchers to do the same. For now, she wanted a sense of what was contained in the codex.

  A clatter announced someone entering the lab. Kate looked up to see Atay with food on a tray. “Thank you, I almost forgot I needed to eat breakfast.”

  Atay gestured to the table, the food from the morning untouched. “That is breakfast. This,” he said as he lifted the tray in his hands, “is lunch.” He put the tray down on the table, and drew up a rolling chair to her.

  “What time is it?”

  “It’s after two o’clock. You’ve been working for almost six hours.”

  Kate felt a long missed pleasure in her gut, the pleasure of forgetting herself in work and losing track of time. She laughed aloud. “Dr. Atay, this is wonderful. The team that removed the codices and photographed them did an amazing job. This is years of research for a very large team.”

  Kate saw pain cross Atay’s face. “I appreciate your kind words, Dr. Strong, but we do not have years. How many photographs have you looked at?”

  Frowning, Kate turned to the table and looked at her notes. “Photographs 1 through 30 in book1.”

  “Ah,” he said. “I would like for you to skip forward to study photographs 61 through 65 in the same book. How long will that take?”

  She thought for a moment, and then said, “Another two hours or so. Is there something particular you want me to look for?”

  Atay rubbed his moustache. “Those are the specific pages of parchment that concern France. I will be back in two hours.” With that, Atay stood and left Kate.

  Kate pulled out her phone to call Jack. Still no service, but she had a reply text from him.

  Got your message. Glad you’re safe. We’ll talk when you get home. L, J.

  She heaved a breath, immensel
y relieved that Jack did not seem angry. She would call him later. Head down, sipping coffee, she found herself walking the same worn path across the rug, thinking more about which experts would be perfect for the project, and how long each would be needed. No matter what Atay thought, years of work lay ahead.

  She returned to the computer to look at pages 61 to 65 in book 1. Kate looked at one of the entries, and noticed the word pseudos, Ancient Greek for falsehood. A curious word for this type of document, and the word stood alone, almost like a label at the top of the page. She skimmed the page and saw not only the same word at the top of other descriptions but also evidence of additional writing underneath the elaborate Greek script. The palimpsest, the faint imprints of this earlier writing, would require translation too. She sat up and craned her head back. Focusing again on the pages, she began to do a cursory translation in her head. She checked the Byzantine date—1204 in the Roman calendar.

  “By order of the Patriarch, I have been asked to document the wrong done to His Majesty, Louis IX, King of France. The Patriarch wishes to acknowledge the grievous insult done to the King of France and to ensure that the evil designed to be let loose in his Kingdom never comes to pass. These reliquaries should never be opened.”

  No, no, no, thought Kate. This couldn’t be accurate; she must be off in her translation. Why would the Byzantine priest describe a reliquary as an insult? What evil could the writer possibly be referring to? She read the first few lines again. Skimming the rest of the page, she determined that the remainder of this parchment described the relics taken back to Venice after the fourth Crusade and purchased by the King of France in 1239.

  The relics the king had purchased included pieces of the True Cross and the thorn crown alleged to have been on Christ while he was crucified. Baldwin II, emperor of Byzantium during the Latin Empire period, had outlawed the sale of relics but had pawned these particular items to Venice, desperately needing funds for the defense of the Empire against the Turks. When Baldwin defaulted on the loan, the Venetians offered the artifacts to King Louis IX, who paid the modern equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars. The King commissioned Saint-Chappelle to be built in the middle of Paris as a home for these treasures. The Gothic structure, with its stained glass windows and vaulted ceiling, no longer housed the relics, which had been moved to Notre Dame Cathedral after the French Revolution, in 1802.

  Kate read the lines again, then again, and finally stopped, rubbing her eyes. She could not find a mistake. The parchment clearly stated that the relics sold to King Louis IX, today reposing under massive security in Notre Dame Cathedral, viewed in reverent silence by millions of people over hundreds of years, were not only fakes, but had been seeded with disease in an attempt to begin a plague.

  Chapter 6

  On what she thought would be her final day in Istanbul; Kate arrived at the breakfast room, anxious to discuss next steps with Atay. The meeting with the sponsors had not occurred, a relief to her, as she was not certain how much Atay had told them about the codices’ contents. The College would certainly want the project, but there was much to work out: timing, number of researchers, additional equipment for those researchers, and of course, funding for all of it.

  Atay was at the dining room table when she arrived from her room, suitcase in hand. She sat and a silent servant put a continental breakfast in front of her. The room was sumptuously furnished with antiques and carpets, including one fantastic picture carpet on the wall depicting a Mughal hunting scene, complete with prancing deer, snarling tigers, and turbaned hunters on impossibly delicate horses.

  “Good morning.” Atay was his urbane self, impeccable as always.

  “Good morning, Dr. Atay. Did you review my preliminary report? I know your own researchers found some of the pseudos references, or else you wouldn’t have known what scrolls to ask me to study, but why didn’t they stay on the project?”

  Putting down his coffee, Atay gave her a serious look. “My own researchers were not entirely sure of their translations and frankly, they were nervous about the academic community. My country doesn’t always produce independent thinkers.” He grimaced. “You know, of course, there will be fierce arguments over your interpretations.”

  Atay was stating it mildly. Religious scholars all over the world would tear the translations apart. It would take very careful management and judicious “leaking” of the findings to friendly individuals to overcome what would be formidable disagreements.

  “You did look at my timeline, didn’t you? This project will need about thirty individuals and an initial phase will take eighteen months. I am curious as to what has happened to delay the meeting of the sponsors?”

  Atay gazed at her for a long moment, and then sighed. “We have a slight problem. We need to have you stay here with us for just a little while longer.”

  She looked up from her plate. “I’m sorry, Dr. Atay, but that is not possible. I need to get back to Charleston and make arrangements.” She smiled, but he remained stoic. She tried another approach. “Many of the researchers I’ve listed in my report will need to take temporary leave from their current positions, including me. That takes time to arrange.”

  Atay did not reply. The two of them regarded each other for a long moment. Kate returned to her plate, pushing the food on her plate back and forth, her appetite gone.

  “Please,” he whispered.

  Kate jerked her head up and was alarmed to see the expression on Atay’s face. His lips pressed together so tightly that his mouth seemed bloodless. Someone coughed behind her. She twisted in her chair and saw a man, someone new.

  “I’m sorry, but who are you?”

  The man walked around the table and stood next to Atay. “My name is Anton Bunin. I am in charge of the security of this site. I do not have exalted degrees in archaeology like the good doctor here.” At this, he patted Atay’s head. Kate was again shocked at the expression on Atay’s face. He had almost

  flinched at the touch of the other man, and sat preternaturally still.

  “Atay was sure he could persuade you to stay, but I am not prepared to wait for his gentler approach to work. You will remain at the castle until you identify all the false reliquaries sent to France, and their current locations.” Bunin retrieved a cigar from his jacket and made a long production of lighting it, his sunken blue eyes not leaving her face.

  He was a big man in his seventies, with close-cropped gray hair and, from his accent, she thought he was Russian. His suit was expensive, much like Atay’s daily attire, but didn’t hang right on his body. The cigar moved in and out of his mouth, his face red and flushed. He looked at Kate with a one-cornered smile, and at that moment seemed friendly, innocuous, like an uncle you hadn’t seen in a while.

  “Dr. Atay, I’m not certain that I will come back at all if this is the treatment your security people are inclined to mete out to your guests.” She stood up. “I am leaving now. I’ll have the operator get me a cab.”

  Kate walked over to the house phone on the wall and picked it up. The line was dead.

  “So, Mr. Bunin, are you now scrambling all communications?” Over the last two days, she had still not been able to make a voice call but had received several texts from Jack. During her time at the castle, Atay had continued to tell her that service was sporadic, and in the thrill of the work, Kate had not pushed the issue. She made a fist and pushed it at Bunin, her voice low and hoarse. “It’s outrageous that I’ve been able to only text my family and not speak to them.”

  “Dr. Strong, do you mean the three texts you have exchanged with your husband?” Bunin pulled out a paper from his jacket and read aloud, in a rough parody of American English.

  Jack, I’m sorry. I hope you got my note. I will be back in three days. Love, K.

  Got your message. Glad you’re safe. We’ll talk when you get home. J.

  Sara ok? Haven’t heard from her. Love, K.

/>   Yes, she’s fine. J.

  I will text when I leave. Forgive me. Love, K.

  Can’t wait to see you, J.

  Kate stormed around the table, yanked the paper from Bunin’s hand, and confirmed that the paper held a verbatim transcript of her texts to and from Jack.

  “What right do you have to monitor my private texts? I cannot believe you would allow this, Dr. Atay.” She stood rigid at the head of the table, her hands clenching and unclenching

  Atay looked up at her from the other side of Bunin. “Please,” he said again, his eyes pleading with her, his hands trembling on the table.

  Bunin snorted. “Those replies from your husband? One of my very capable staff members created them. Your phone hasn’t worked since you got on the plane in South Carolina. Your husband has no idea where you are.”

  “What?” Kate whispered this, dropping the sheet. Her right arm moved behind her to find a chair. She slumped into it. “He doesn’t know where I am? Of course my husband knows where I am, and so does Dr. Chalk. What are you talking about?”

  The Russian pulled another piece of paper from his jacket and tossed it on the table in front of her. It was the front page from the Charleston Post and Courier dated the day after she left.

  Professor Dies on Ravenel Bridge

  Police have no leads on the attack on Professor Adam Chalk that occurred yesterday around 11:00 am. According to witnesses, Dr. Chalk’s car, a Mazda Miata, was slammed against the bridge supports by a commercial garbage truck. The truck then lifted Chalk’s car in its front lifting mechanism and appeared to push it through the bridge supports. One witness, Jabos Freeman said, “I couldn’t believe it. The man driving the garbage truck just lifted that little convertible and pushed it into the bridge. He ran off and hijacked somebody when I screamed at him.” Witnesses attempted to rescue Dr. Chalk with a rope, but the car fell into the Cooper River before they could do so. Dr. Chalk was chair of the History Department at the College . . .