Josephus, who’d been listening in stunned silence, asked. ‘So what do you intend to do?’
It was Vespasian who spoke. ‘I told you. We wait. We’ve got the names of other conspirators but no proof against them. My people are working on getting it and they reckon they’ll be ready the day after tomorrow. By which time –’
‘The lady Epicharis will be under arrest in Puteoli,’ said Proculus.
‘But where do I come into this?’ asked Josephus.
‘You help us buy time so we’re not forced to act until the net is fully closed. Keep close to the court: Nero himself, ideally, but if not, then go and talk to Poppaea or to Alityros; see if you can find any hint the emperor knows about the plot. If he does, then tell us and we’ll bring our plans forward.’
‘Who else knows about this?’
‘The ones you need to know about are Nerva, who’s Praetor elect, and Tigellinus, the Prefect of the Praetorians,’ said Vespasian. ‘They won’t move without my say-so.’
Josephus left Vespasian’s house on the southern slopes of the Pincian Hill and set off towards the Palatine. He had just passed through the Saepta Gate when he heard someone call his name. Turning to look, he failed to see three figures approach from behind and at once a hand was clamped over his mouth, his arms were pinned by his side and he felt himself being bundled through a shop doorway. Someone put a bag over his head and he felt the point of a knife blade pressing into his neck. A voice said, ‘Keep quiet or you’re dead.’ In the circumstances it seemed wise to comply.
What followed next was even worse. Rough hemp rope bit into his wrists and ankles as it was pulled tight and knotted, rendering him completely immobile. Then, unseen hands grabbed him and threw him like a side of beef into the back of a cart. He cried out in pain but once again the sharp jab of a knife into his leg accompanied by a volley of curses made him hold his tongue. Next, the few glimmers of light he could see through the weave of the bag disappeared as heavy objects were loaded on top of him and all around. With a jolt, the mule cart got underway and clattered off over the cobbles.
For what seemed like an eternity, the cart lurched along, each bump sending bolts of pain through his arms which were pinned behind his back. Josephus began to groan. A disembodied voice swore and someone kicked him. Finally the cart stopped, he heard bolts being drawn back, and with a final lurch, it moved forward a few more paces on a smooth surface and stopped. Then the bolts slotted home again. He could hear the cart being unloaded and once more saw flickers of light and movement through the weave. Someone untied his ankles and for a few moments as the circulation returned to his feet, the pain was unbearable. The same pair of hands dragged him into a sitting position and pulled the sack off his head. He seemed to be in some kind of store-room or workshop at the back of a shop.
There were five of them and none of the faces were friendly or familiar. ‘Come on, move, we haven’t got all day,’ one of them said and pushed him off the cart-tail. As he landed, his feet went out from under him and he crashed to one side, his hands still pinned behind his back. Two of them hauled him to his feet, frog-marching him up the steps to the upper storey and into a small room, containing two chairs, a bench and a bed with a straw palliasse. The only light came from the open shutters of a small dormer window set in the sloping roof.
However much Josephus shifted his position on the bench, the pain in his arms just got worse and his head and neck hurt abominably from falling off the cart. He gritted his teeth.
He’d only been sitting for a few minutes when he heard footfalls on the wooden stairs. As they pushed aside the tattered sacking curtain and came into the room all his bravado evaporated in an instant. It was Paul.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Arthur Kill Correctional Facility, Staten Island, NY
At five foot eight and one hundred and forty pounds, the prisoner looked down into one of the inner circles of hell. Although the walkway was ten feet above the heads of the inmates in the mess hall below and the two armed guards who held the chains attached to his handcuffs were both over six three and two hundred pounds, he was almost knocked off balance by the wave of hatred aimed at him. “Faggot”, “queer” and “punk” – the latter, prison slang for male prostitute – were some of the milder insults hurled his way as the guards led him over the seething cacophony of noise, from the Special Housing Unit towards the waiting truck.
Paperwork screw-ups are not uncommon when it comes to prisoners – after all they’re not valuable goods – and the one which had led to the young man being put into a holding cell with ten other detainees for five hours while they processed him, nearly cost him an eye. After another delay while they sorted out his paperwork and following surgery to re-attach the retina, he was finally leaving the SHU for the “Incarcerated Witness Program” and the anonymity of a special unit in an upstate jail.
Virginia, USA
An unmarked Lincoln Town Car collected Flora and Agent Cohen from Dulles airport and set off to do battle with the DC downtown traffic. Cohen checked his voicemails as they hit their first jam. Flora dozed in the back seat by his side. ‘You see, they can’t leave me in peace for five minutes, let alone ten hours,’ he said, bringing her back from the edge of sleep.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked, her head snapping forward with a jolt.
‘Dunno. My supervisor says he wants to talk to me urgently. Usually means some trivial shit about my time-sheets.’
He dialled and Flora could tell in an instant from Cohen’s voice that whatever it was, it wasn’t trivial. Snapping the phone shut, he turned to her, looking as though he’d aged ten years. ‘We’ve got a problem. Fucking idiots have lost our witness.’
Flora blinked in surprise. ‘What, as in escaped?’
‘No. Lost, as in dead. Murdered.’
‘Who?’
‘The one I told you about – the IT guy who worked for Luzzo. They’d got him in protective custody, moved him to some minimum security joint up near the Canadian border and then instead of keeping him safe in the “hole”, some dork put him in an open dorm with twenty other inmates. Third night there and he was found strangled this morning. And, guess what? By one of those miracles which only happen in prisons, no one, not even the guy on the top bunk a couple of feet above him heard or saw anything. Shit, that’s the last thing we needed.’
‘How badly does it hurt the investigation?’ she asked.
‘Pretty bad. All we’re left with is the driver of the SUV and names for two people we can’t find: Luzzo and Raymond. Luzzo knows the score and he’ll be jumpier than a motherf… let’s just say he’s gonna be pretty jumpy. If we want to get anywhere near without spooking him, we’re going to have to get lucky. And as for Raymond, we don’t even know what he looks like.’
‘So when do we start?’ asked Flora.
‘I’ve got to go straight to the office because of this crap. You can take the evening off, go stroll round DC if you like. I’ll pick you up from your hotel at nine tomorrow morning.’
The car dropped her at the Marriott. Fighting off the urge to sleep, Flora unpacked, started her laptop and set to work making a few last-minute changes to the presentation she was giving to Cohen’s colleagues on the FBI Art Crime the following day. Once more, her head started nodding and a vigorous walk along the National Mall only delayed the inevitable: even working on her current obsession, the decryption and translation of the Devil’s Codex fragment couldn’t keep her awake so she turned on the TV to keep her company while she got ready for bed. She picked up the remote and started zapping through the channels. All the news feeds seemed to have synchronised their ads to stop people channel-hopping and she was well down among American TV’s extensive intellectual shallow-end when a familiar face stared back at her from a panel of talking heads: Donald Sumter. Brilliant, she thought, this is too good to be true. All thoughts of sleep banished from her mind she sat on the bed, drew her knees up to her chin and settled down to watch. A press of the “info
rmation” button told her she was watching the “God’s Truth Revival Channel”. She’d seen pale imitations of such programmes on UK TV, but this was the real deal and Sumter was in fine form: the anchor, a face-lifted and hair-weaved man who looked like Liberace’s ugly sister, lobbed gentle questions to the panellists who took it in turns to hit them out of the ground.
Sumter was damning to hell-fire the lost souls who obstinately refused to accept the veracity of the New Testament, with an especially warm corner reserved for those responsible for stealing priceless relics from the archives of William Sunday University. Then he started talking about the Pompeii finds and his photographs of from the “Q Source” document. Obediently, the anchor interrupted, and almost on bended knee, implored Sumter to enlighten them about “Q”. Flora nearly choked with surprise and indignation. You sly old bastard, she thought, you played that one pretty close to your chest.
He cleared his throat and with a look that was supposed to betoken sincerity but reminded Flora of a child-molester, Sumter began to hold forth: “Q”, from the German Quelle, meaning “source”, was the common document on which the gospels of Matthew and Luke were based. ‘What’s more,’ he said, trying to add gravitas by speaking in a register so low it was barely audible, ‘the translations my staff and I have completed, prove beyond doubt that the existing Gospels are but an abridged version of the Lord’s life. For the first time we have corroborated, eye-witness accounts of the miraculous deeds of our Saviour’s childhood, right through to the start of his ministry where the extant gospels rejoin his journey to the Holy Cross and subsequent resurrection.’
Sumter paused for effect and the anchor gurned at the camera in what Flora assumed was an attempt at a rapturous smile – not too rapturous of course or the caked TV make-up would have cracked – before lobbing another under-arm question to him. ‘But, Professor Sumter, this is such wonderful news and we’re deeply honoured that you chose our humble programme to make the announcement, but why isn’t this all over the headlines and the news channels?’
‘Oh it will be, don’t you worry,’ said Sumter. ‘And don’t forget, this isn’t news, it’s been God’s Truth for the last two thousand years. All that’s changed is that we now have tangible proof of something we knew was there all along – a bit like when J J Thomson discovered the electron….’
He rambled on in similar vein for another ten minutes, prompted, lauded and cajoled by the anchor and the other panellists, and when they announced it was time for a prayer break, Flora decided she’d seen enough. Part of her boiled with anger at Sumter for comparing scientific fact with unauthenticated documents, but on the other hand, she couldn’t help admiring his nerve. She looked at her watch: half past nine and her eyelids were on the way down again. So, she did the east-to-west jetlag classic: asleep early and wide awake at four in the morning.
Only a lover of nineteen-sixties brutalist concrete, or maybe at a push, its mother, would describe the J Edgar Hoover building as attractive. On the inside it is even worse which came as quite a shock to Flora who’d been expecting FBI Headquarters to be far more modern and high-tech. Cohen led the way from the elevator through a maze of corridors to a conference room where his FBI supervisor from New York, no fan of the ACT, and an assortment of other agents were gathered.
After the usual fight to get laptop to speak to projector, Cohen went first, giving an overview of art crime in Italy and the sources of the money – drugs mostly – that funded the tombaroli’s activities. What shocked Flora most were the details of how highly-trained but poorly-paid archaeologists and art historians were earning a fortune helping manufacture provenance to hide the stolen artefacts’ true origins.
Flora stepped up to the lectern and introduced herself. Starting with the historical context, she outlined the clash between the world view of the Jews and that of Imperial Rome. Next, came a brief but concise scamper through the history of the first century: the more noteworthy emperors from Augustus to Trajan, the internal conflicts within Israel, culminating in the Jewish revolt and the destruction of the Temple in AD 70. Then she moved on to the life and works of one of the few chroniclers of that turbulent century; Titus Flavius Josephus, born Joseph son of Matthias and whose writings were the subject of the current joint Carabinieri-FBI enquiry.
Next, she showed them scanned images from the stolen collection and explained how she’d managed to decipher the encrypted texts, working from the copper polyalphabetic substitution grids.
A hand went up in the audience. ‘Do you have formal cryptographic training, ma’am?’ asked a voice from the back.
‘No, not really,’ lied Flora. ‘It’s like doing crosswords, if you stick at it long enough and use a bit of common sense, it’s not that hard. Mind you, finding out about frequency analysis of letter usage was a big help: I’ve got Charles Babbage and the internet to thank for that one.’ A ripple of laughter ran round the room. Even Cohen’s supervisor permitted himself a smile.
‘And so what’s it say? What’s it telling us?’ he asked.
‘Well, I’m not sure yet because I’ve only just started and also there’s a lot of text that I can’t get anywhere near deciphering. I suspect Josephus – presuming he was the author – may’ve used a substitution grid we don’t have. Some of it seems to be to do with finding people – we’ve got the names Philippos, Matityahu and Yehudas: one Greek and two Hebrew names meaning Philip, Matthew and Jude respectively, but given that Josephus himself was Judean and Greek names were used by non-Greeks as well, all we’ve got is the modern equivalent of references to Phil, Matt and Jude in a population the size of the DC Metro area.’
Another question came from Cohen’s supervisor. ‘And does he say anything about these guys that makes this stuff worth stealing?’
Flora thought for a moment. ‘No and that’s what’s been puzzling me from the start. Josephus clearly didn’t like these three individuals – that’s all we know. The most valuable find at the dig was a beautiful first century mosaic, but the tombaroli ignored it and took the texts and the copper grids instead.’
Another hand went up. ‘Were there any other writings?’
‘Yes, there were early versions of his works that have come down to us as later copies made after his death. Together, these writings make up Josephus’ slanted and self-justifying history of the Jewish people and the revolt against Rome. Needless to say, he was the hero throughout, but he was a rotten copy editor because in trying so hard to justify being two-faced and disloyal whenever it suited him, he contradicts himself all over the place.’
At this the supervisor shook his head and Flora noticed a look of alarm spread across Cohen’s face.
‘It’s an interesting story, Miss Kemble, and I thank you for sharing it with us,’ said the supervisor, staying just the polite side of sarcasm. ‘But if I understand you correctly, nothing you’ve found to date has any possible relevance to the case: who stole this stuff, why it’s in this country and who’s got it right now?’
Flora took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t agree with you.’ He made to speak but she continued. ‘And nor does your own Art Crime Team.’
‘I think you’ve got me wrong there, Miss Kemble,’ he said. ‘I’m not ACT, I’m a supervisor from the Agency’s New York division and I happen to have lost one of my people, Special Agent Cohen to be precise, on secondment to a wild goose chase that’s stopping him doing his duty back home.’
‘So you haven’t read the ACT report on the theft of documents from museum and university archives?’
‘Can’t say I have,’ replied the supervisor.
Flora remained unmoved. ‘Then I take it das Städtisches Museum von Göttingen won’t mean much to you?’
‘Never been much of a one for foreign food – how’s it cooked?’ A dutiful ripple of laughter from the non-ACT agents in the audience ran round the room.
Flora had dealt with bigger egos than this and she turned the full force of her sarcasm on him. ‘OK, for thos
e of you who are struggling with this let me recap,’ she said, smiling at the supervisor. He glared at her with a look that could’ve stripped paint. She smiled once more and continued. ‘The ACT report shows beyond any doubt that over the past five or more years there have been a number – how many, nobody seems to know – of thefts involving uncatalogued papyrus and parchment fragments dating from the first century BC to the fourth century AD –’
‘Tell me who and why and I might be interested,’ interrupted the supervisor, trying to regain the upper hand.
‘Very well, I will,’ said Flora. ‘I haven’t enough proof yet, but I think it goes something like this. Firstly, the thefts are connected. Secondly, people steal art works because they can sell them on. In other words, the buyers create the demand – a bit like drugs I suppose. So who are the buyers?’ Nobody risked a reply so she carried on. ‘The end buyers are usually collectors – an illustrated manuscript or a first folio by Shakespeare are things of beauty, things you can gaze on in wonder and adore…. but this stuff? Most of it’s incredibly dull – a laundry list is still a laundry list even if it’s two thousand years old and apart from telling us what people were wearing back then, its interest is limited – so limited that nobody’s ever got around to cataloguing, yet alone reading it. Even the museums they were stolen from thought these finds so uninteresting that they didn’t even bother putting them on display. So I’ll ask the question again: who’s paying for this stuff to be stolen and why?’
‘Someone looking for information about something?’ ventured an agent sitting in the front row.
The Seven Stars Page 28