The Dead Sea Deception

by Adam Blake

  ‘But you said this was years ago,’ Tillman pointed out. He’d picked up the pack of recordable discs and was turning it over in his hands, staring at it with unnecessary intensity.

  Kennedy dredged her memory. ‘Fifteen years,’ she said.

  ‘So if he found something then, why wait so long? What happened in-between?’

  She didn’t know, but she could see the shape of the thing she didn’t know. It had a definite outline. ‘He found something. Or he suspected something. He kept bouncing off it and coming at it again from a new angle. He goes away and looks at Old Testament texts – the Dead Sea Scrolls. For five years. Then he looks at the Gnostic sects. And finally he goes to see the Rotgut in Avranches. That was when it all came together. It’s like … he had the key but he didn’t know where the lock was.’

  ‘I don’t think I get it,’ Tillman said.

  ‘Leo, think about it. The Rotgut is a medieval translation of a document that already existed elsewhere. Nobody can figure out why this Portuguese sea captain bought it in the first place – why he’d ever think it was worth having. But Barlow goes to take a look at it and he sees …’

  Tillman scowled. ‘What?’

  ‘Something. Something nobody else saw. I’m sure I’m right. There was a code in the Rotgut. And Barlow knew enough by that time to see it for what it was.’ She saw the hole in her own reasoning as she said it. ‘But the Rotgut is just John’s Gospel. Where do you hide a code in a copy of an existing document?’

  Tillman didn’t answer. He threw the pack of discs back down on the desk, but it hit the edge of the desktop and clattered to the floor, where it rolled away. Kennedy could see that he was angry, but she was slow to realise why. She plunged on, putting it all together while she had it clear in her mind.

  ‘Maybe it wasn’t in the words. Or maybe it’s in the changes in the words. If you started from the King James version, or whatever version they had back then, but you messed with it and changed it around, you might end up with a code that someone could crack. Holy Christ, Leo. I’m right. I know I’m right. Barlow picked up on a coded message from centuries ago and built a team to crack the code.’

  ‘Amazing,’ Tillman said, flatly.

  ‘Yeah, it is. It is amazing. But they needed a computer expert to do it. Three historians and a tech-head. It makes sense now. They were looking for some really subtle patterns in the text of the Rotgut, or somewhere else on the document. Patterns that you’d need some kind of statistical algorithm to nail down. Totally insane! But here’s the question we’ve got to answer now.’ She brandished the small sheaf of papers that had been lying on the desk. ‘This information was hidden back in the Middle Ages. Why would anyone be prepared to kill for it now?’

  It was at this point that she ground to a halt, seeing in Tillman’s face that he didn’t give a damn about the question or the answer. His expression looked as hard and set as if she’d driven her whole chain of reasoning into it with carpet tacks.

  ‘What?’ she asked him.

  ‘None of this matters,’ he said, tightly. ‘None of it, Kennedy.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s not …’ He seemed to struggle to find a word that was strong enough. ‘… relevant. This isn’t even close to what I was looking for. I lost my family. I thought if Brand was killing these people, or arranging to have them killed, it was because they’d seen through him. That they’d dug up all his dirty little secrets.’

  ‘I think they did, Leo. They found something that he wanted to keep—’

  ‘This is ancient history.’ Tillman all but spat the words out. His fists were clenched now and his face flushed red.

  Kennedy absorbed the violence of that pronouncement, kept her own voice carefully neutral. ‘The victims were all historians. I’d have to say that was on the cards.’

  ‘It’s not funny, Kennedy. Not to me.’

  ‘Not to me, either. But you’re wrong about one thing: it is relevant. It’s the key to everything, somehow, and if we stick with it, I think we’ll get all the answers we’ve been looking for.’

  Tillman opened his mouth to reply but said nothing. Instead, he sniffed.

  Kennedy was suddenly aware of a smell that had been riding under her conscious notice for a minute or more, masked by the stench of damp and dust.

  Something was burning.

  34

  Although she was the only woman, and although it had been taught to her throughout her life that women should defer to men, Mariam was the team’s leader. This hadn’t even been something that anyone had to decide on, it was the outcome of a simple equation whose three inputs were the personalities of herself and the other two Messengers with whom she’d been partnered, Ezei and Cephas. Nobody who knew the three of them would have doubted for a second which way that calculation would come out.

  So when Kuutma called, and Ezei answered, he passed the phone wordlessly to Mariam and she handled the rest of the conversation herself.

  ‘Your hunt for Tillman,’ Kuutma said. ‘I believe you were successful. You found him again?’

  Mariam kept her expression blank and calm because Ezei and Cephas were watching her, but she felt a sour-sweet wash of emotion rise in her. She was proud of what she’d managed to achieve but desperately miserable at how the operation had turned out. ‘We backtracked from the call log on Tillman’s phone,’ she said. ‘The one we took from him on the ferry. There was a number in the log that was registered to a name we knew – a man who fought alongside Tillman when he was in a mercenary cadre. Benard Vermeulens. I spoke with Dovid’s team, in Omdurman, and asked him to place a temporary tap on all numbers registered to Vermeulens. From that trace, we established that Vermeulens had called only one number in England in the last ten days. It was very easy to set up a GPS trace on that number.’

  ‘You did well,’ Kuutma said. ‘But you haven’t closed with him yet?’

  Mariam’s lips quirked. That was the only visible sign of what she was feeling but it was enough to make Ezei and Cephas glance at each other in unhappy solicitude. Ezei made the sign of the noose, a little raggedly. ‘We tried,’ she confessed. ‘Two times, both last night. The first time, he saw our ambush and didn’t walk into it.’

  ‘And the second time?’

  ‘The phone signal moved around very quickly for two hours, then was still. When we were able to zero its location, we went in. It was a sewer, in west London, but Tillman wasn’t there. He’d dropped the phone into a storm drain. He must have realised that it was the means we were using to track him.’

  Her confession was done. She waited for chastisement: for the Tannanu’s stern, concerned voice to tell her that he was disappointed in her performance and was recalling her and her team to Ginat’Dania.

  ‘Tillman is a hard target,’ Kuutma said instead. ‘Your team is far from the only one to have been set back by him. Leave him to one side, for now. I need you for another task, which at the present time is more urgent.’

  Mariam almost gasped aloud as relief made her let go of a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. ‘You know,’ Kuutma told her, ‘that we’ve been searching for written or digital records from the Rotgut affair. I believe, on the basis of new information, that the relevant files were kept in discrete and isolated form at a physical location, rather than at an internet node. I will give you an address. You will go to that address and destroy everything you find there that could conceivably contain information.’

  Having escaped Kuutma’s censure, Mariam was eager now to win his approval. ‘Tannanu,’ she said, ‘that would mean destroying everything.’

  ‘Exactly, daughter. I’m pleased that you move so quickly to the point.’

  ‘But to be sure of destroying everything, we’d need to examine the location carefully first – there could be writing engraved on walls that would not certainly be effaced by fire or even by an explosion. There could be a vault beneath the building that was sealed, and so on.’

  ‘That you
’re raising these questions, Mariam, shows me that you see at once how complicated and exacting this task is. Yes, you must rule out all these things and make absolutely certain that no word or sign survives. Only so will we be safe.’

  Mariam felt a fervent desire to thank Kuutma for giving her and her team this chance to prove themselves. They had failed so badly on the boat, even though it had seemed that they had the enemy Tillman at their mercy in an enclosed space with no obvious exits. And then they had failed again in London. To be given the opportunity – and so soon! – to redeem herself and her team from that taint was a wonderful thing. But she knew, too, that the Tannanu would not expect or welcome thanks. It was understood between them what was happening: the significance of the gift. She said nothing.

  Kuutma gave her the address and she wrote it down. Ezei and Cephas read it wordlessly, over her shoulder, and exchanged a glance. There was no mistaking what this meant.

  ‘I have it,’ Mariam said, tersely. ‘Are there any further orders?’

  ‘Yes.’ There was a short pause, as if Kuutma expected her to ask. Again, Mariam chose silence over unnecessary speech. ‘The woman detective, Kennedy, will be there, along with a male colleague. Kill both of them, ideally in a way that prompts a minimum of further investigation. If their deaths could be taken to be an accident, that would be ideal. If there is evidence of violence, it must look like casual violence, with no trail that points forward or back from the event itself. We are too exposed in this already, Mariam. With Tillman still alive …’

  He let the sentence tail off. Mariam closed her eyes and mouthed an oath in which the number thirty figured prominently. Ezei, who could read lips, stifled a gasp, shocked at the blasphemy.

  ‘I see the problem, Tannanu. Perhaps we can make it appear that the man violated and murdered the woman, and then killed himself out of shame.’

  ‘A possibility, Mariam. Overly elaborate, perhaps, but a possibility. Remember, though, the sins that are forgiven you are very specifically defined. Do what seems best to you to do, and come to me afterwards. I’ll hear your report in person.’

  ‘I will, Tannanu. Where we have been, nothing will stand.’

  ‘I believe this to be true. Goodbye.’

  The line went dead and Mariam gave the phone back to Ezei. The two men were staring at her, excitement and anticipation making them stand very straight, like soldiers coming to attention. Mariam felt a surge of love for them and such a profound joy she almost laughed.

  ‘We’re on,’ she said, simply. ‘Cousins, we’re on again. This very night.’

  ‘This is wonderful,’ Cephas said.

  ‘Yes! Yes, it is.’ Mariam went to the mini-bar in the hotel room they’d booked under a name that wasn’t Brand (Kuutma only bound himself to that convention, not his teams) and took out three hypodermic syringes along with three snap-in ampoules. She handed them out, trying to maintain a solemn face when all the while she felt as if she were giving out presents.

  The ritual itself called for silence, so they opened the syringes, inserted the capsules and injected themselves without exchanging a word. Only the fervent glances the two men cast her showed that they shared Mariam’s excitement.

  The drug hit her system with its usual expanding slow-burn: a bubble waking in the centre of her being, then rushing outward until it filled her entirely and popped startlingly against the inside of her skin.

  ‘Beracha u kelala,’ Cephas murmured, shuddering as the pharmacon lit up his nervous system. It meant: both the blessing and the curse. The drug’s more usual name, kelalit, recognised only the second part of this equation.

  But when Mariam and her team descended on Dovecote Farm and delivered the final mercy upon Detective Sergeant Heather Kennedy, it was the blessing that would sit behind their eyes and hands.

  The journey was quick and uneventful. They had no GPS, but Ezei had a great facility in map-reading and he led them unerringly.

  They identified the farm at once from the prominent sign that faced out on to the road. Mariam drove on past the building, then took a narrow lane that led into woodland half a mile or so further on. Fortuitously, the lane bent back on itself, taking them around in an oxbow bend towards the rear of the property, so that by the time she found a secluded place in which to park, invisible from the road itself, they’d almost come back to where they started.

  ‘What should we bring?’ Ezei asked Mariam.

  ‘Sicae and guns only,’ she decided. ‘We go in light and fast. Anything else we need, one of you will come back for.’

  The grounds of Dovecote Farm were easy to find, and almost completely open at the back. Wooden posts held up a single strand of barbed wire: a purely symbolic fence, low enough for them to step right over.

  They approached cautiously, but from a hundred yards out, and even in the gathering dusk, it was clear to their over-sensitised eyes that boards had been nailed over the windows of the farm. If their quarry was already in the building, there was no way they could be aware that the Messengers were approaching. And if they had yet to arrive, then so much the better.

  All the same, Mariam was cautious. She didn’t come in on a straight line but on a shallow diagonal, the two men following her lead without question, so that the closer they got to the farmhouse the more of its exterior and its outhouse buildings they could see.

  They spotted the car when they were still some distance away. So Kennedy and her partner had already arrived and were inside. Using the language of gestures that all Messengers were taught, Mariam told Ezei and Cephas to split up so that they could approach the farm separately, from different angles. Silently and efficiently, they checked each of the outbuildings in turn. It was most likely that the police officers would be inside the farmhouse itself, but it was good to take nothing for granted. Mariam herself checked the car and found it locked and empty. Only when they had been over every inch of the ground did she call her team back to her, again with a gesture rather than a word.

  The farmhouse had two doors, but a quick reconnaissance showed that the side door was screwed into its frame and would be hard to open quickly. Mariam stationed Cephas where he could see both doors and instructed him to shoot anyone who emerged. Then she and Ezei went to the front door.

  They found it standing ajar. Damage to the jamb showed that the detectives had prized it open with a screwdriver or a crowbar. Mariam gestured to Ezei to walk behind her and to split off from her if the interior made it necessary. Then she pushed the door very lightly, widening the gap by a bare inch so that she could slide through. The warped, dried wood creaked, but the sound was low and wouldn’t carry far.

  The paper-walled maze that met their eyes came as something of a shock. They had grown up in an environment where books and pictures were few, so they had no referent for these head-high stacks of white sheets filled with inscrutable figures. They seemed faintly indecent. Mariam almost wanted to raise her hands and cover Ezei’s eyes, even though he was older than her. He had always seemed to her to be someone who needed to be protected from the things of the profane world.

  The paper aside, though, the interior layout of the farmhouse appeared to be very straightforward. They quickly ascertained that there was nobody on the ground floor – and just as quickly that someone was upstairs, moving around loudly and without precaution.

  Mariam once again took point as they approached the stairs. So far their movements had been completely silent, but she could see that the boards of the stairs – as warped as the door – would creak under her feet no matter how she tried to distribute her weight. She unlaced her boots silently, slid them off her feet and signed to Ezei: hand upright, hand sloping forward, then a nod to the stairs.

  He understood at once. Standing with the toes of his boots against the bottom step, he leaned forward carefully. He put out his hands, bracing one against the angle of stair and wall, the other against the angle of stair and banister. When he felt himself to be properly balanced, he nodded to Mariam. She step
ped up on to his back, placed first one and then the other bare foot on his shoulders, and from there stepped up lightly on to the first landing. The wood beneath her shifted, with a slight creak of protest, but she was halfway up the stairs and could take the remainder in two strides.

  Motioning to Ezei to stay where he was, she looked cautiously around the bend of the stairwell. She saw nobody, but the sounds were clearly coming from inside the room directly facing her at the top of the stairs. They were the sounds of purposeful movement. Someone inside the room was walking around, perhaps moving bulky objects.

  She used the sounds as cover, moving when there was movement inside the room to mask any sounds she might make. In a few measured steps she was beside the door of the room – and by this time, she had reached some conclusions about whoever was inside it. One set of footsteps, heavy, distinctive and unvarying; no conversation. One person, probably a man, alone.

  Where was the woman, then? That was a problem that she would need to solve, but a choice had to be made right now: to take down this man and then search for his partner, running the risk that she might be alerted by the sound of a struggle, or to wait and tackle both together.

  Aim at the target that is in front of you, was a dictum that the Tannanu and her other teachers had drummed into her on many occasions. She felt confident in her own ability to kill or disable the man without giving him time to raise an alarm.

  Reaching her decision, she stepped into the room. She was still moving as quietly as she could, but she knew that at such a small distance even the movement of air might betray her. So her first priority was speed.

  The man – stocky, broad-shouldered, probably outmassing her by as much as a half – was on the far side of the room, kneeling beside an electric extension into which he was inserting or trying to insert a number of plugs.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mariam coming towards him. He started to rise as she reached him, his mouth open on the first syllable of a greeting or a challenge.