The Twelfth Tablet - Ebook

by Tom Harper

  ‘Take the next left,’ Valerie said from the back seat. For everything that had happened, her voice remained as soft as ever. In the hotel yesterday, it had opened a thousand possibilities. Now, it was the still, perfect centre of the storm that was blowing him apart. The one thing he could hold on to.

  He took the turn, through the rising suburbs that crowded the hillside above the lake. He tried to obey the speed limit, until the houses gave out and the slope steepened. He checked the mirror and saw nothing. The trees were so thick the police could have been a hundred yards back and he wouldn’t have seen them.

  ‘Turn here.’

  A dirt track led off into the forest. He almost saw it too late, but the big car’s brakes were strong enough to cope. He veered onto the track and ploughed about a hundred yards into the forest.

  He turned off the lights. He turned off the engine. He sat there, stupefied by the silence.

  Valerie got out and walked round to the passenger seat. The rifle had slid against the door: it toppled over when she opened it and banged on the sill. For an unspeakable second, he thought it would fire straight into her.

  Valerie lifted the gun – it was heavy for her – and let it fall on the ground. She climbed in, slammed the door. They sat side by side in silence, like a married couple who couldn’t be bothered to fight any more but weren’t ready to forgive. She reached across the centre console and took his hand.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ she said.

  The experience had been so overwhelming, it was hard to remember she hadn’t seen any of it. Harder still to explain to someone who hadn’t been there. He told her in a few flat phrases, absurdly inadequate. ‘Didn’t you know?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then why did Ari ask you to come?’

  The words came out heavy with implication. She tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let her go. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I wanted to see you.’

  He let go her hand. ‘Why?’

  ‘I was afraid for you. You didn’t know what you were getting into.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t either.’

  ‘I know Ari.’

  Ari. His thoughts spiralled away, anger and revenge and terror and helplessness, until she brought him back with a bump.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  The question sideswiped him. Ever since he’d got in the car, he’d had no choices to make. The few things he’d done – hitting the butler, taking the car, hiding in the forest – had been desperate instinct. Now he had to choose.

  What are you going to do? He had to answer. Everything depended on it.

  ‘I should go to the police.

  ‘They’ll be looking for you. They must know this car from the video.’

  ‘What video?’

  ‘Security cameras.’ She shrugged. ‘He’s a Swiss banker.’

  ‘Fuck.’ Paul thought about it. He hadn’t seen any cameras, but that didn’t mean anything. And what if they were inside, as well as out? He imagined the police around a monitor taking notes, watching Paul when Vincent shot Stroehlein. Watching the scene where he brained the butler with the butt of a gun – then came back for the tablet.

  And even if there were no cameras, he’d left his business card. Such a nice touch.

  He gripped the wheel to stop his hands shaking.

  ‘I’ll tell them everything.’

  ‘You mean Ari?’ she said. Paul nodded. ‘He left the country this morning.’

  ‘The car…’

  ‘Vincent bought it with cash.’

  ‘What about yesterday? Someone at the hotel must have seen us together.’

  ‘Ari will say that you approached him offering to sell the Orphic tablet because you know his father is a collector. He will be shocked at what you have done – he would never have imagined it.’

  ‘But what about you?’ A flash of hope. ‘You can tell them everything. You know I had no idea what was happening.’

  A sad look. For the first time, he noticed her scent in the car.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You have to.’ He thumped the wheel; irrationally, he thought of the rifle lying among the leaves. ‘They’ll send me to prison. You have to tell the truth.’

  Her dark eyes held his and offered no apologies. ‘The truth is what Ari will do to me if I betray him.’

  He let it sink in. Then: ‘Get out of the car.’

  Soft lights came on when she opened the door. The forest outside became darker, shrinking away, locking him into the car’s vast interior. Valerie slid one leg out the door – then paused.

  ‘Listen to me,’ she said urgently. ‘We live our lives surrounded by barriers. Work, family, habits, fears. Everything we know, everything we learn, is to live inside the barriers. But now you’ve broken through. You’re on the outside; you don’t exist in that world any more. Whatever you knew no longer applies. You must open your thinking.’

  ‘I’ll bear that in mind when I tell the police about you and Ari.’

  He wasn’t sure he meant it – he wasn’t in a state to decide anything now. He just wanted a reaction. To prove he had some kind of power.

  He got nothing. ‘Ari’s the only person who can help you now.’

  ‘Ari’s a criminal. A psychopath.’ Just words, his conscience taunted him. ‘Anyway, why would he help me?’

  ‘Because you have the tablet.’

  ‘And if I give it to him? All I’ll be then is an inconvenient witness.’ A bubble of rage broke inside him: he thumped the steering wheel again; he kicked the footwell; he hammered the indicator until it snapped off its stalk. It dangled by its wires like a hanged man.

  He slumped back in the leather seat. Valerie stared into the darkness.

  ‘Where would you go? If anywhere was possible, I mean: is there someone you could trust with your life. Parents? Your brother? A girlfriend?’

  ‘That’s a pretty hypothetical–’

  ‘Where?’ she repeated.

  A long silence. Who can I trust with my life? There weren’t many more fundamental questions, Paul realised. And none that could make you feel so lonely.

  ‘My father never forgave me for choosing academia. I don’t think he’d understand if I told him I’ve become an international art thief.’

  And murderer. The unforgiving voice inside supplied the punchline.

  ‘Your brother?’

  ‘I don’t have a brother.’

  ‘A friend, then.’

  He gave up. ‘What difference does it make anyway? It’s all hypothetical and I’m still totally fucked.’

  ‘Everything in life is hypothetical until you do it.’

  ‘Enough with the fucking philosophy.’

  ‘I can help you.’

  She said it so softly he wasn’t sure if the sound was just something blown in from the forest. But she was waiting.

  ‘How?’

  ‘There is one condition.’

  Paul stiffened. She put her hand back on his. ‘Nothing difficult. You must give Ari the tablet.’

  ‘I just told you–’

  ‘This is how it will happen.’ Her voice still barely carried in the Mercedes’ interior. ‘This car is no good, but I can rent a new one. We’ll go to the station in Zurich, and you will leave the tablet in a locker there. Only you will know the number and the combination. Then I will drive you across the border.’

  ‘Won’t they be looking for me?’

  ‘You’ll go in the boot. I will take you wherever you want – France, Germany, Italy, Austria.’

  ‘And what then?’

  ‘Then you will tell me the locker combination, and I’ll come back and give it to Ari,’ she said, as though it was obvious.

  ‘I meant what about me?’

  A cool look. ‘You do what you want.’

  ‘How do I know…’

  ‘That I won’t betray you?’ She pointed out the window to the tangled forest. ‘If you don’t trust me, there are other ways you can g
o.’

  Everything’s hypothetical until you do it.

  Chapter 4

  On the phone’s screen, Ari stood on the deck of a motor cruiser holding a steering wheel. The wind blew his hair wild; his bare chest glistened with salt water, and the sun bathed him gold. He looked like a god – the ancient sort, before gods learned to be kind.

  There was a number below the picture. Valerie pressed it and put the phone on speaker. Ari’s face stayed still as a statue – but suddenly his voice was there in the car.

  ‘Legyeteh.’

  ‘It’s me,’ said Valerie

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Safe. With Paul.’

  ‘Do you have…?’

  He left the question unfinished. In case the call’s recorded, Paul realised. Nothing incriminating.

  Anger surged inside him. He wanted to shout down the phone, to confront Ari with all the things he’d done. To drag him into the netherworld he’d condemned Paul to.

  Valerie put a warning hand on his. Her finger stroked his wrist, the little hollow between the tendons where his pulse beat.

  ‘I’m going to make sure Paul’s safe,’ she said. ‘Then you’ll get it.’

  A growl from the phone. ‘He can bring it to me himself. Now.’

  ‘He doesn’t trust you.’

  Paul listened, more carefully than he’d ever listened to anything in his life – every breath, every pause, every rise or fall of tone that might betray him.

  Ari said nothing.

  ‘Do you agree?’ said Valerie.

  A long pause. Then: ‘OK.’

  Valerie pressed a button on the phone. The screen went blank.

  They left the car and hiked through the forest. A hundred yards away, Paul buried the rifle under a mound of pine needles and earth. Valerie gave Paul her cigarette lighter, a golden cylinder with her initials engraved on the barrel. It reminded him of the golden writing on the tablet.

  He held the flame until the flint got so hot it burned him. After three goes, his thumb was so sore he gave up and let the darkness do its worst. He thought his eyes would adjust, but the trees were so thick that none of Zurich’s city glow penetrated. He walked with one arm always in front of his face: halting, hesitant steps which still didn’t protect him from the trips and bruises the forest sprung on him. The wind stirred the trees, and the trees stirred every fear men have had since they left the plains of Africa and penetrated the dark forests of the north.

  He thought of Dante.

  In the midway of this our mortal life,

  I found me in a gloomy wood, astray–

  How first I entered it, I scarce can say.

  Dante had found solace in a guiding star, he remembered. But when he looked up, the trees closed so tight they locked out the sky.

  And Dante had been going to Hell.

  From out in the darkness, he heard a bell ringing. He shook his head to make it go away, but the sound persisted, got louder. Not far ahead, down the slope, a line of yellow lights drifted by – like an ocean liner in the night. He stumbled on, tripping down the hill. The trees thinned. Suddenly, the world became real again. There was a road, and rails, and a tram disappearing round the bend still dinging its bell.

  Headlights swept up the road. He shrank back into the forest as a car passed.

  ‘What now?’

  Valerie pointed. A hundred metres up the road was a station.

  ‘You take the next tram to the Hauptbahnhof. I’ll hire a car and pick you up.’

  ‘What if someone sees me?’

  She shrugged. ‘Then it’s better if I’m not with you.’

  The famous station clock was striking eight when Paul dismounted the tram at Bahnhofplatz. The cold air hit him like a bullet, though that wasn’t what made him tense. He’d spent the ride hidden behind a newspaper; now, there was nothing to protect him. He braced himself for shouts, alarms, rough hands grabbing him.

  Nothing happened.

  Zurich Hauptbahnhof was no longer simply a station: it was, the signs announced, ShopVille-RailCity Zurich. He’d always found it philistine, a hasty euthanizing of the last romance of rail travel by a world that always needed something to buy. Now, he was glad of the shops. He ducked into one and bought a scarf and hat, winding the scarf high and pulling the hat low. The assistant was telling her colleague a long story about her flatmate and barely noticed him.

  The commuters had gone home, but the shops still drew plenty of customers to the station. In the cavernous concourse, the lights were dim: they’d put up a screen and were showing an old movie. Paul skirted round the audience, row after row all staring forward at the black-and-white images projected on the screen. He might as well not have existed.

  He took an escalator down to the lower concourse. The bright lights and low ceiling pressed down on him. Penitential bars of black and white marble striped the walls. He felt a headache coming on. The rows of luggage lockers, efficient blue, blurred together. He had to read the number three times. 247.

  He put his hand in his pocket and took out the cigarette case. The metal throbbed against his skin; he could feel the tablet inside like a beating heart.

  There is one condition.

  He thought of everything he’d suffered to get it. The life he’d lost. He thought of Ari. The injustice burned him, that Ari would win and he would flee into permanent exile.

  Everything’s hypothetical until you do it.

  He entered his combination, shut the locker and headed for the exit, head down, forcing himself not to run. He counted his steps. Ten. Twenty. Forty. Up the escalator, out of the concourse, into the bright shopping arcade. He must be almost there.

  ‘Paul?’

  He should have ignored it, carried on walking and pretended he hadn’t heard, that it wasn’t him. But he was primed. The switch tripped; he stopped dead.

  ‘Paul?’ said the voice again.

  He couldn’t pretend now. He turned, his face frozen. A tall, stooping man with brown floppy hair poking out from under a bobble hat was waiting for him.

  ‘Marcel?’

  ‘Trying to escape?’ His nose was too big and his mouth too wide: it made his smile vaguely grotesque.

  Paul opened his own mouth, but no sound came out.

  ‘The late antiquity colloquium.’ Marcel tapped him too-familiarly on the shoulder. ‘Hey, me too – it’s my fucking supervisor giving the talk, right?

  He doesn’t know, Paul thought. His legs turned to water.

  ‘Where are you going?’ was all he could manage to say.

  ‘Beckenried. My girlfriend got a free pass. Ten centimetres of powder, this late in the year, it’s a crime to miss it, right?

  Paul forced a smile. ‘Right.’

  ‘What’s your excuse?’

  Another moment where time seemed to stutter. He tried to see a departure board, but there were none in sight. All he could think of was the last train he’d taken.

  ‘I’m going to Paris.’

  From the corner of his eye, he saw two policemen slowly circuiting the station, submachine guns cradled in their arms. Sweat soaked his scarf; he edged around so that Marcel was between him and them.

  Marcel had said something he hadn’t heard. He was frowning. Is there a problem?

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Didn’t you go there like a month ago?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Paris.’ Marcel’s eyes twitched, trying to follow Paul’s gaze over his shoulder. Paul forced himself to concentrate on Marcel.

  ‘The museum asked me to go back.’ Inspiration. ‘They want me to do a piece comparing our new Aphrodite with the Venus de Milo.’ He checked his watch. ‘In fact, I really ought to get on the train.’

  ‘For sure. Give my love to Venus, OK?’

  ‘Enjoy the skiing.’

  Ten paces on, Paul looked back. Every fibre in his body warned him he’d see Marcel staring at a TV in a shop window, or getting the news on his phone, accosting a policeman and pointing hi
m after Paul.

  But he was gone.

  The pressure release when he got in the car was so much he almost threw up in the footwell. He slumped down in the seat, head barely above the window.

  ‘Someone recognised me.’ He told her about Marcel. ‘The moment he sees the news, he’ll report me.’

  ‘He’ll tell them you’re going to Paris.’ Valerie crossed the river and piloted the car down a canyon of long, high buildings. She drove awkwardly, moving the gear stick with abrupt jerks, turning the wheel in short, angular motions. Paul guessed she was used to being driven.

  ‘Where are we going, anyway?’ she asked.

  ‘Frankfurt.’

  She turned into a tunnel. ‘You have a friend there?’

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘I did an exchange there, so I know the city. And I speak German.’ That was all true. Also true: it’s connected with the whole of Europe. An easy place to leave. He didn’t say that. Now they were leaving Zurich, his terror was boiling away. What it left behind was hard, dry realism, no trace of sentiment. You must open your mind. Was this what she’d meant?

  ‘Are you excited?’

  ‘What kind of question…?’

  ‘About the future, I mean. Becoming someone else.’

  ‘Exciting’s not quite the word.’

  ‘You’re getting what everyone longs for, deep down. New life. Forgetting who you were.’

  He remembered the way she’d caressed the statue in the museum, her ear pressed against the cold bronze. The sound of immortality, she’d said.

  And maybe she was right. If he picked up the life he’d shed and examined it, was there anything there he’d miss? Work? Family? Colleagues? Not really – it was just an empty husk. Yesterday, that thought would have prompted hours of loathing self-analysis. Now it didn’t matter.

  ‘It’s not me who has to forget the truth. It’s everyone else.’

  Valerie shook her head. ‘The truth is only what people remember. They will forget you. So, all that is necessary, the one remaining spark of evidence, is for you to forget yourself.’