by E. M. DAVEY
She was trying to tell him something, but he couldn’t work out what.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said. “I’m not in the mood for art any more.”
She looked downwards, biting her lip. “I’m sorry if I’ve upset you Jake, that wasn’t my intention.”
Jake was already pounding away through the gallery.
He stopped dead.
Bonaparte confronted him.
48
Napoleon Crossing the Alps, by Jacques-Louis David: the most famous of all depictions of the emperor. The image caught Jake by the throat, and thoughts of Jenny left him. They stood to admire this astonishing man who once bestrode the world, who created the modern French state, its laws and institutions; whose puzzles they were yet unpicking. The canvas illustrated one of Napoleon’s greatest triumphs. In 1800, on the way to Marengo, his army had crossed the Saint-Bernard Pass – a remarkable accomplishment. Napoleon sat astride a rearing white charger before a sky that churned with the violence of an incoming storm. He pointed towards the heavens – in gratitude? – and the artist had added the name Hannibal, carved into a rock in the left of the painting. It was an explicit association between Napoleon and the great Carthaginian general who had led his elephants that same way millennia before to make war on Rome.
History rhymes.
Jake grabbed Jenny’s arm.
“Ow!” she said. “What is it?”
“I understand now. It all makes sense.”
“Understand what?”
“Why the Disciplina was hidden in Egypt in the first place. Napoleon knew too, he’s acknowledging it in this painting.”
“So tell me.”
“When Hannibal crossed the Alps in the third century BC, he took the Romans totally by surprise,” said Jake. “They must have ignored the warnings of their augurs, thinking such a feat was impossible. Hannibal rampaged up and down the Italian peninsula for fifteen years, besieging cities, looting homes, annihilating the Roman army at Cannae in northern Italy. Only after slaves were sacrificed for the first time in centuries was the Network appeased. Hannibal met his Waterloo.”
“I know, I remember all this from last time. Your point is?”
“Do you remember how old the Zagreb Linen was?”
Jenny recalled the Wikipedia article.
The manuscript has been dated to approximately 200 BC, give or take a few decades.
“It was made at the same time as Hannibal’s invasion,” she said.
Jake smiled grimly. “And where?”
There is evidence it originated in northern Italy. The twist of the thread is in a ‘Z’ direction, typical of that region – whereas Egyptian linen of the period has an ‘S’ thread. On palaeographical grounds, academics have speculated that the manuscript was written in the region of Lake Trasimeno in Perugia.
“Perugia,” said Jenny dully, seeing it all. “Northern Italy. Where the Battle of Cannae took place.”
“The Romans thought they were going to lose the war,” said Jake. “It looked like the end of the Republic. So they copied the entire Disciplina onto linen, cutting it neatly into strips. They sent it far away for safekeeping. To Egypt – where it could be retrieved once Hannibal had gone.”
During his last hunt for the Book of Thunder, Jake had relied upon the analytical capabilities of the human brain, equal to any ancient witchery. But he had also learned to let his instinct guide him: the whisperings of the Network to which he’d become slightly attuned. And in his gut, he knew.
This is what had happened.
*
Hammerheads darted, giant grouper lurked and a moray eel in leopard print shimmered past like a hologram. A reef shark lying on the floor of the tank glanced at Jake with dog-like eyes.
“Look, why are we here?” he said. “It’s clearly not to look at the fish.”
Jenny didn’t reply – instead she led him to the roof of the Nazi fortress. They stepped out onto the turrets, high above Vienna. The clink-clink-clink of traffic lights about to change drifted up from the streets, oddly foreign sounding, and rising from the rooftops a mile away was the flakturm’s control tower, like a UFO on a stalk with its beard of modern aerials and satellite dishes. To the south-east, there were mountains. Over there Napoleon had lost one of his only battles, on a day when the fog obscured the sky. Fitting, that they should solve half of the Napoleon Complex in this city, a place so integral to the Bonaparte story. Over those mountains Romans had once tramped too, heading to annihilate the tribes of central Europe. Different emperor; same pagan science. Just as both empires had been to Egypt, powerful waves breaking upon the same beaches.
Smash!
The sound of metal on concrete swept Jake from his abstraction. Jenny was taking a hammer to the side of the tower.
Smash!
A hole had been opened in the fabric of the flakturm. A cavity lay within.
Tinkle!
Jenny tidied up the lip of the hollow with swift, efficient movements. She reached inside and withdrew a hessian sack that clunked dully in her grasp; her wrists trembled under the load.
“X marks the spot,” she said.
“What is it?” said Jake.
“Our war chest. Come on, let’s get out of here. I’ll tell you later.”
It was gold bullion.
During the Cold War, MI6 stashed arms and gold throughout central Europe for the resistance cells that would kick into life if the Soviets overran the continent. Jenny knew the location of several of these caches. Back at the hotel, Jake turned the tiny ingots over in his hands. Together they amounted to the deposit on a two-bedroom London flat.
And something else of significance was to happen on that strangest of days. Jenny announced she was going for a stroll, an odd fancy when the streets held danger. But Jake’s offer to accompany her was declined.
He would not normally have followed her – stalking wasn’t his style. But her behaviour had not been right all day. Something was going on. He had to find out what.
Jake tailed her for two blocks, aware that it was madness, that she was trained to spot this kind of thing. But before she did, she went into a shop – and emerged carrying something that shocked him.
A bottle of red wine. And Jenny was a teetotaller.
I’ve just got something else going on, Jake.
An old flame, right here in Vienna – she had a rendezvous with him that very night. Now all the oddness of Jenny’s behaviour was explained in ghastly technicolour. That was why she’d been compelled to make that strange little speech at the Belvedere. It also explained the notion that a ten out of ten girl could ever have been his. For she never had been, not entirely – evidently a part of her mind had been here in Vienna all that time. That was why she’d left him. The jealousy was a physical thing: it rattled in Jake’s windpipe, weakened his ankles. He went and got hideously drunk.
Jake was observed on this binge by MI6, by the CIA, and also by the Chinese Secret Service.
All three agencies were about to spectacularly collide.
49
Jake was reacquainted with reality by a knocking at his door. It took him a few seconds to remember where he was, but then it came to him.
Oh god. I got wasted last night.
The base of his skull was agony: it felt as if a piece of shrapnel was lodged in there, the pain pulsing from it in waves. The room was still spinning and he felt dirty.
“Jake? Are you in there?”
He could remember the beginning of the bar crawl. Speed-drinking pints; chasing them with scotch whiskies; changing location after each few drinks so the bar staff wouldn’t know he was getting drunk alone. Memories became fragmentary before diminishing into nothingness, save for the obscure recollection of propping up the bar in some dive at 3 am and discussing the vicissitudes of women with a pony-tailed Hungarian. Jake sat up in bed. He was still wearing all his clothes (they reeked of fags) and his stomach felt as if it contained toxic waste. With a lurch he thought he was going t
o be sick.
Another knock.
“I’ll be out in a minute …” he managed.
Jake retreated under the cover in the foetal position, a teenager again. He didn’t want to venture into a world full of danger, full of pain. He only wanted to stay in this place of warmth and of safety. He closed his eyes and before he knew it he was slipping back into dreams.
“Jake! It’s half past ten.”
Wide awake again, Jake had a craving to be at his old flat in Battersea. Impossible! The door handle turned and to his horror he realised he hadn’t locked it. Before he could leap out of bed, Jenny confronted him. She appraised his crazed hair, the ruddy eyes.
“You got battered last night,” she said slowly. “Didn’t you?”
“Jenny, I …”
“There’s no point denying it – I can see it in your face. It’s in your posture, I can hear it in your voice.”
“You can talk.”
But the comeback was as meaningless as it was petulant. He must have consumed five times more than her – and at least she had the dignity of company.
“What the hell do you mean by that?” she snapped.
“Oh … never mind.” He slumped back into bed.
Jenny sighed and shook her head. “God, it’s so bloody sad, Jake. Right. I’m going to the museum to do what needs to be done. With or without you.”
The door slammed.
He didn’t have to do this.
He could sleep for a few hours, go to an art gallery and then have lunch somewhere nice, a bottle of wine to wash it down. Forget all about the Etruscans, leave Jenny to her destiny.
Destiny.
Now: if he chose that path, was it always predetermined? Self-evidently yes. Because how else could it be foretold? That was another factor in favour of a lubricated lunch – it would not actually be his choice to get back on the booze, in a sense. But that would be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Jake wrestled with the dilemma, thoughts tumbling over themselves in his head.
I was born with special gifts. I see things other people miss.
Jake’s hands went to his cranium, which thumped with pain in time with his heartbeat. But there was an apologia to his touch now.
Only I can do this.
He looked at the wretched pile of coins and crumpled banknotes cast across the table. Pisshead’s pockets, they called it at university. Any idiot can spend a lifetime getting smashed.
“Don’t go without me!” he shouted. “I’m coming with you.”
Jake got out of bed and flattened his hair under the tap in the bathroom sink. As he changed his shirt he noticed his torso in the mirror, just beginning its first slide into middle age. That said, he was in fairly good shape. Recoverable.
Jesus!!!
That moment when you lose concentration on a dual carriageway and drift two feet into the opposite lane. And a car is coming, and you jerk out of its path in the nick of time. And as the Doppler effect of the other vehicle fades away and your car regains its smooth line of travel, you think what you might have lost: all those decades of accumulated memories in your brain, joys and sadness, wisdom and laughter. A working body. A future. This was such a moment.
He had pulled back from it.
50
Snatched from life too young, the child awaited them. Jake peered at the golden mask, envisaging the fragile head contained within.
He kneeled to adjust a shoelace. “Coast clear?”
A middle-aged Chinese fellow with little round spectacles ambled from the room. They were completely alone.
“Coast’s clear,” said Jenny.
He opened his backpack, which was full of house bricks. “Behold, the feline grace of an international museum robber.”
With a smunch the door of the display case was bashed open.
“Careful,” hissed Jenny.
A couple in their twenties had wandered in, Chinese again. The girl had improbably thin legs; her companion looked rather geeky and shepherded her out with the bewildered protectiveness of a man who can’t quite believe he has a girlfriend.
“Ok, get in there,” hissed Jenny.
After a flurry of wriggles Jake was lying inside the cabinet with his chin in the dust, assailed by the smell of the musty and the forgotten. Jenny slammed the door shut and he was in darkness. The mummy lay on a panel two inches above his head.
“Well done,” came her muffled voice. “That was quite impressive.”
“Years of training, my dear.”
Jake switched on his torch and positioned the chisel against the side of the panel. He readied a brick.
“Coast clear?” he said.
“Coast clear. But if I tap, stop work right away.”
“Got it.”
Bash.
The chisel splintered up through the panel and a chink of daylight shone into the cavity, catching on motes in the air.
Bash.
More light, more sawdust.
Tap.
A swish of footsteps approached. Definitely female. And they sounded – Jake didn’t know why – as if the feet were turned outwards. A security guard? The metronome veered away through the gallery in an arbitrary curve before vanishing. He fed the hacksaw through the gap and began to cut, sawdust cascading over his face. Soon he had sawed down the length of one side.
Tap.
Spanish voices, female, teenage. Jake heard laughter and the corralling of feet, a sudden silence, a release into chatter. Photographs being taken. When the voices had dissipated he continued; the incision worked its way around all four sides of the panel and Jake propped up each corner with a brick turned on its end. After twenty minutes he had cut the wood free: it had become a table top balanced on teetering bricks.
“Coast clear?” he said.
“Coast clear.”
Jake knocked two bricks over, one side of the panel dropped like a trapdoor and the mummy rolled into the compartment with a clunk. He fiddled the panel up and wedged it back in place. The mask peered at him through its ruff of splintered wood. There was something beseeching in its gaze, like a child witnessing his father behaving badly. Jake prised open the casket and the panel was briefly lifted off its bricks. He removed the facemask and sliced away the outer linen sheet.
The bandages were unmarked.
Not this again …
Jake severed a bandage at the neck and began to unwind. The boy weighed no more than a few bags of sugar and when he lifted him there was a dry snap. One shoulder now pointed backwards at a bad angle.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
He carried on unwrapping.
Tap.
“Hi guys.” It was Jenny talking. “Can I help you?”
Jake held his breath, the child frozen in his embrace – like it was under his spell.
“Oh, we’re just taking in the show, honey.” A Mid-West accent. “It’s just a whole lotta dead people, right?”
“And where are you from, darling?”
The second voice was a New Yorker. Possibly gay, Jake reckoned, though his gaydar was far from infallible. As Jenny made small talk he unwound the child’s bandages with the delicacy of a man removing a core from a nuclear reactor. The head emerged, tiny and shrunken.
A third set of footsteps approached.
Jenny at her most ballsy: “You again? Look, will you kindly bugger off?”
“Hey Jenny. How y’all doing, guys? Charles, Steve?”
Jake had the sudden understanding that it was the man from Jerusalem. He hadn’t the foggiest clue what to do next.
*
In the next room Frank Davis patted the back of Coppock-Davoli’s head. “You ready, fella?”
The boy’s cheeks were flushed. “Yah, let’s do this.”
“Atta boy. Ladies?”
Heckler and Koch pistols emerged from handbags.
“Let’s get cracking then, eh?” From his backpack Davis produced a Desert Eagle .357 pistol, practically a foot long. “Cheers, all.”
&nbs
p; Coppock-Davoli snapped the safety catch on his Beretta and all four of them simply walked into the gallery.
51
Vauxhall Cross was very still from outside – like a modernist folly, not a real fortress of espionage where real spies did real business. But the corridors within pulsed with energy, and nowhere was that truer than in the incident room where Victor Milne and his acolytes awaited developments. Only Milne himself seemed at ease, and he sat with leg over knee skim-reading the Times. The leader column noted that banditry in Sierra Leone had been virtually eliminated, but it ended on a note of caution.
Tony Blair’s adventure in the country was a triumph too, but sadly only whetted his zeal for meddling in the affairs of other countries – with calamitous consequences. The Prime Minister rides as high in the opinion polls as his predecessor did in 1999. Let us hope he learns from Mr Blair’s hubris …
When the Prime Minister turned the page C flinched: Milne was caricatured as Queen Victoria, trying to apportion West Africa with a carving knife as the president of Nigeria fended him off. The previous evening Nigeria had refused the offer of British military assistance in tackling Boko Haram. With Ebola seemingly back under control, President Adeyemi thought he could defeat the northern insurrection alone. The cartoon was captioned, Empire Mark Three?
But Milne merely chortled. “Ha! The cartoonist really caught me, eh Dennis? Quite the compliment actually, being likened to dear old Queen Vic. I’ll get that one framed for the lavatory.”
“Are you trying to rebuild the British Empire, Prime Minister?” asked C.
“Don’t be so silly.” Two seconds’ silence. “Even though it was undoubtedly a force for good.”
“What do you mean?”
“Consider this. In 1955, British GDP per capita was eight times that of Zambia. Now it’s twenty-eight times more. Let’s be clear, whatever Africa’s troubles in the last seventy years, they can’t be laid at our doorstep.”