The Sword of Moses

by Dominic Selwood

  If they were some sort of self-appointed vigilante force, then who was to say that everything they did was for the common good? And who stopped them if they got it wrong?

  She thought of the gossipy Roman poet Juvenal, whose thorny question about those in power was still as relevant as it had been two thousand years ago—sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes? But who shall guard the guards?

  Checking her watch, she calculated it was 7:15 a.m. in Rome—an hour ahead of London—so it would be fine to call Saxby. She picked up her phone off the counter, found his number, and dialled.

  He answered almost immediately.

  “So General Danquah didn’t make it after all?” she noted.

  “Ah, you saw that.” Saxby sounded pleased. “It seems a busybody Somali airport official spotted one of the questions on the General’s flight plan had been incorrectly filled in. Something to do with the wake turbulence category of the aircraft and whether it had a heavy, medium, or light maximum take-off weight.” He paused. “I don’t understand all the ins-and-outs myself. But it seems these details are vital, and the Somalis are very strict with their paperwork apparently.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Ava hazarded a guess, “the long arm of the Foundation even extends to air traffic control in Mogadishu?”

  “Something like that,” There was now a more serious tone in his voice. “What’s the point of power if you don’t use it for your aims?” He paused. “I should be back in London later today. I’ll call.”

  With that, the line went dead.

  Ava put the phone back down onto the counter, and took a sip of tea.

  If what Saxby had said was true, then the Templars were clearly an Order with extraordinary reach.

  Taking a bite of a shiny red apple from the polished wooden fruit bowl, she was suddenly distracted by a flurry of sharp clicking sounds.

  She cocked her head to listen.

  It was coming in bursts, and sounded weak and tinny, as if it was being made by a cheap mechanical toy.

  It stopped for a moment. Then it started again.

  As she listened, trying to focus in its source, she was surprised to realize it was coming from the phone she had just hung up and put onto the counter.

  Intrigued, she stepped towards it, and could now clearly hear its small speaker relaying the clicking noises of what sounded like someone typing in short bursts.

  Baffled, she picked it up, and was surprised to see the screen was not locked, but fully awake and moving, displaying a live feed of Prince’s head and shoulders.

  The tall American was sitting at her laptop, obviously unaware of the real-time video stream beaming direct from her web-camera to Ava’s phone.

  Ava looked closely at the image moving slowly on her phone’s screen, aware something about it was not quite right.

  She stared at it long and hard, before realizing it was not the image of Prince that was wrong, but what her screen was displaying. Or rather, what it was not displaying, because she could not see the normal inset box showing the corresponding image of her that was being simultaneously beamed to Prince. That was standard on her video app.

  Disconcerted, she put down her cup of tea and tapped the screen to pull up some options, but nothing happened. It continued to stream the video of Prince.

  Perplexed, she hit the round home button to close the app down.

  It made no difference. The image of Prince remained firmly on the screen, with Prince seemingly wholly unaware Ava was watching her.

  Confused at why she was seeing a picture of Prince at all, Ava stared at the screen, bewildered how her phone came to be connected to the camera on Prince’s laptop.

  She had never accepted any requests to add Prince as a contact, and she had never even called Prince from her phone, let alone set her up in the address book. Even if she had jogged the phone when putting it down after her call with Saxby, or even if it had malfunctioned and randomly dialled someone from its address book, there was no way it could have found Prince, because Prince’s details were simply not in her phone, in any form.

  At that moment Prince looked up into her laptop’s camera.

  Her hard blue eyes were staring directly at Ava.

  Ava flinched involuntarily, embarrassed by the unexpected eye contact. She had no idea how she would explain this.

  But it never happened. Prince did not bat an eyelid, but merely continued typing and peering at her own screen with a slightly irritated expression. She seemed puzzled by something.

  “What the ... ?” the American muttered. “Can’t they get anything right?” She tapped a key on her laptop, and the picture on Ava’s phone flickered then disappeared, only to be replaced with a live image of Ava that appeared to be streaming from her phone’s camera. A moment later, the screen blacked out, and the live feed of Prince returned.

  “Christ,” she heard Prince mutter in irritation, frowning at her laptop’s screen. “What’s wrong with this thing?” She furrowed her eyebrows, clearly still unaware Ava was watching her. “How hard can it be?” She sighed in exasperation. “I said I want to see her, not me.”

  Ava again heard the sound of a key being struck forcefully. Then the image and sound cut out, leaving her phone screen completely black.

  She reeled.

  Had she heard right?

  She felt a flush of indignation.

  Prince was watching her?

  Her mind whirring with the new information, she looked on with incredulity as the phone’s black screen was replaced by a scrolling list of file names—line after line of white text flashing across the background.

  It looked like the phone was dumping some kind of activity log. She had seen her computer do it before. But never her phone.

  The titles of the files in the data dump were composed of six-digit followed by four-digit sequences, which she immediately recognized were sequential date and time stamps. From the .mov extensions at the end of the file names, it was immediately apparent they were video files.

  As the list finished scrolling, a confirmation message appeared:

  > GV5.SYS - ADDRESS D48S8J59

  > PHYSICAL TRANSMISSION DUMP COMPLETE

  > END TRANSMISSION LOG

  > TRANSMIT OKAY

  Ava felt the familiar hot prickle of adrenaline.

  What on earth?

  Had these files been sent? From her phone?

  She put her finger onto the screen and swiped downwards, scrolling back up to the top. As the list sped backwards to the beginning, she was amazed to see there were over a hundred files.

  They were in accurate date and time order, and as she arrived at the top of the list, she was stunned to see the date of the earliest file.

  She looked at it more closely, frowning.

  It couldn’t be.

  But there was no doubting it. There it was, unmistakable, in black and white.

  The first file was dated the night she had arrived back in England from Dubai after the auction fiasco at the Burj al-Arab.

  The night she had met DeVere and Prince at Legoland

  Incensed, she tapped one of the files.

  The video panel opened, and began to play.

  The picture on the screen showed an indistinct expanse of white. But she recognized the voice immediately. It was hers.

  “It’s the obverse, or front, of a papal bull. In the olden days, the Vatican sent riders all over Christendom with written orders and letters from the pope. The most important documents were called ‘bulls’.”

  She recalled the conversation immediately. It had been in her house—the night Drewitt sent her the photographs of the medal. She had been explaining the significance of the images to Ferguson.

  As the video continued, she heard his voice reply.

  “Like the animal?”

  Thinking back, she realized her phone must have been on the table in front of them at the time, where she usually put it when she was indoors. The white image was her ceiling, which the phone’s camera had be
en pointing at.

  Then there was her voice again.

  “Except the word comes from the name of the seal attached to the document—the bulla, from the Latin word meaning to boil.”

  Outrage rising, she tried another file.

  Again, it was her voice.

  “And why do you think Christ rises from the dead every year at the time of the spring equinox—exactly the moment when winter is over and the sun begins to be dominant again, bathing the earth in warmth and life. It’s the oldest religious celebration of all.”

  Although the screen was blank, the conversation was unmistakably the one she had with Cyrus and Ferguson in Cyrus’s projection room.

  She kept opening files until it became apparent all of them were videos of her conversations over the last few days.

  It was clear her phone had been recording her.

  Some of the files just showed blank or dark screens. Occasionally there was an image—usually of a ceiling or the inside of a bag or pocket. She guessed her phone was rarely pointing at something interesting when she was having a conversation. But the audio was invariably of her discussing something.

  Suddenly it made sense.

  Prince was tapping into her phone to hear what was going on. If it was interesting, she was recording it, and then sending herself a copy of the file.

  That explained why there were so many files, and also why her battery had been draining so fast, like the afternoon of her run-in with Malchus at Stockbridge House, when she had tried to call Ferguson from the pub afterwards, but her phone had been flat.

  Furious, she strode through into the sitting room, and saw to her relief that Ferguson was now awake

  His face was crumpled, and she could see the last few days had taken their toll on him. She felt a fleeting pang of guilt for having given him the slip at Stonehenge.

  From the quizzical look on his face, he had clearly caught on that something was wrong.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” she fumed, tossing the phone to him, “Prince bugged me.”

  “What?” He looked bewildered.

  “My phone. She’s been remotely activating the video.”

  Ferguson sat up, fully awake now. “How can she do that?” He looked at the list of files on her screen, and scrolled down through them. “Jesus,” he muttered, “I didn’t even know you could do this on an iPhone.”

  “Clearly you can.” Ava was incensed.

  How dare she!

  “I don’t get it.” Ferguson was tapping individual files, bringing up the videos. “How do you hack an iPhone? Did she send you an executable file?”

  Ava shook her head, angry with herself. “She got me to do it for her.”

  Ferguson looked perplexed. “You hacked your own phone?”

  Ava sat down, and breathed a long sigh as she realized just how easily Prince had played her.

  “Before we went down to Stonehenge, she gave me a flash drive with the photos of Malchus and a CX file. I attached the flash drive to my phone so I could read the files.”

  “And you uploaded a hidden suite of spyware at the same time.” Ferguson shook his head. “I’m impressed. We always underestimate her people.” He put the phone down on a table beside the sofa. “Have you got the flash drive?”

  Ava shook her head. “It splintered into a thousand pieces under one of your front wheels.” She felt livid. “I had to destroy the files she passed me.”

  “Clever,” he nodded grudgingly. “So she even got you to clean the evidence, too.”

  Ava let out another long slow breath. “It would seem so.”

  She had been half wondering whether he may perhaps have been in on it with Prince. Or at least aware of it. But from his reactions and expression, it was clearly all news to him.

  “There’s no need to look so impressed.” She stood up. “It means we have to assume Prince knows everything we know. About Malchus, the Menorah, and even the Foundation. About every discussion we’ve had since I got back from Dubai.”

  Ferguson shook his head grimly. “This is going to complicate things.”

  “Well there’s only one thing for it.” She had reached a decision.

  She stood up, and threw him his jacket, which was lying over the back of one of the armchairs. “Our American friend is in London. She said she was going to coordinate the U.S. angle from here. It’s time you played the dutiful employee and met up with her to give her an update of our progress—and more importantly, to find out exactly just how much she now knows.”

  ——————— ◆ ———————

  80

  Regent’s Park

  London NW1

  England

  The United Kingdom

  At exactly 7:00 a.m., Ava slipped through the wooded Avenue Gardens gateway into Regent’s Park.

  The sweet smell of the flowers was heady, and the vibrant colours filling the manicured horticultural beds around her shone in the clear sunlight.

  It was one of those days when the park was looking at its best.

  Even though the various gates had already been open for two hours, there was barely anyone about—just a few determined joggers taking the opportunity to stretch their muscles before spending the day anchored to one of London’s millions of desks.

  She remembered once reading that in medieval times the parkland had belonged to Barking Abbey. It had been part of the monastery’s possessions at Tyburn—a name infamous for the royal gallows which had operated there for six centuries, barely a mile to the west of where she was standing.

  She shuddered at the recollection that Queen Elizabeth I had swapped the simple gallows there for the ‘Tyburn Tree’—a large triple-posted scaffold for efficiently executing batches of up to twenty-four people at a time.

  So much for ‘Good Queen Bess’, she thought, as she moved further into the still park. It was a dark period in England’s history, and Elizabeth deserved the title ‘Bloody’ equally as much as her half-sister, Mary.

  Turning left and rounding a small ornamental stone fountain spraying cool clear water into a lichen-coated basin, she spotted a sign declaring Regent’s Park to be one of the Royal Parks—eight square miles of nature that breathed as London’s lungs, bringing greenery and air into the heart of the congested metropolis.

  Prince had readily agreed to Ferguson’s suggestion of meeting in the park. It was located centrally, and offered hundreds of places where they could walk and talk in privacy among its anonymous lawns, formal flower gardens, dense woods, and sprawling lakes. They were all largely secluded, and free from the risk of electronic surveillance or observation from vehicles.

  Prince and Ferguson had arranged to rendezvous at 7:15 a.m., so Ava had a quarter of an hour to find a hidden observation post and get herself into position.

  She headed across the springy green lawn in the direction of the Inner Circle.

  Prince and Ferguson were due to meet by the small gate in the hedge opposite Park Street West, so Ava wanted to place herself in the trees about two hundred yards north-west of them. She had calculated that from there she would get a clear view of their meeting, and whichever path they chose to take.

  Heading quickly to the other side of the lawn, she arrived at an area of dense trees that led eventually to the sunken open-air theatre. She settled herself down on a tree stump in a clump of evergreen bushes, and took out the compact military binoculars Ferguson had lent her.

  Training them on the small gap in the hedge agreed for the rendezvous, she saw Ferguson arrive first.

  She and Ferguson had split up a few hundred yards before entering the park, so he had walked the remainder of the Outer Circle by himself, just in case Prince or any of her colleagues were watching.

  Ava wanted to stay well out of the way. This was to be Ferguson’s meeting.

  Prince did not need to know how closely he and Ava were now working together.

  “Maybe we should go to the zoo when we’re finished here?” he suggested jovia
lly, looking around to try and spot Ava.

  She heard him clearly though the small flesh-coloured receiver inserted into her left ear. It was undetectable to any passer-by, as was the direct audio signal it was receiving from the sensitive mini-microphone embedded into the winding crown of Ferguson’s otherwise unremarkable black metal sports watch.

  He had snapped the watch onto his wrist and given her the earpiece and binoculars before they had left the house. “Welcome back to the Firm. I’ll need you to sign for these.” he had joked. She could not help but smile. There were some aspects of the job she still missed—like the camaraderie of these operations.

  Watching him now from across the park, she thought perhaps if circumstances were different she might quite like to go to the zoo, which was in an adjoining section of the park, not far from where she was sitting.

  Or, she wondered, questioning herself more closely, was it that she would quite like to go to the zoo with him?

  She immediately pushed the thought out of her mind.

  Her life was complicated enough already.

  Besides, she lived in Iraq. It had been her decision to move there, away from family and friends. She had taken it gladly, and would do so again in an instant. But just now, sitting in a calm and sensuous English park on a bright summer morning, it was tempting to think of what life might be like if she lived in England again. There was always her family’s house in Somerset. She had long thought one day she would return there permanently.

  “I’ve got eyes on.” It was Ferguson’s voice in the earpiece again. He was speaking softly now.

  Ava looked back to where he was standing, as a tall woman entered the small gateway into the park.

  She checked her watch. It was 7:15 a.m. exactly.

  She recognized Prince immediately. Her long auburn hair was, as usual, tied back into an austere bun, and she was wearing a crisp white cotton shirt under a sober grey jacket and calf-length skirt. She had an elegant navy blue rain mac slung over one arm.