The Sacred Scroll (21 page)

Ludendorff wasn’t a man to be fazed by others, but he looked forward to his first meeting with the crusty scholar with trepidation. Certainly no one in the world matched Koldewey in knowledge of the most ancient civilization on earth.

Koldewey hadn’t had any problem in persuading the Ottoman administration to let him prod around in Istanbul, and his reading and research had led him to the Church of Saint Irina, where he’d started a careful excavation which uncovered, not the ancient temple he was hoping to find below the church’s foundations, but a tomb of much more recent date. It was here that Ludendorff was bidden after the two men had first met in the smoking room of the Pera Palas Hotel, two days previously.

It was 05.00 hours. Koldewey liked early starts.

The church was surrounded by a military guard, but only Koldewey and five assistants were to be found in its interior.

‘Welcome, Herr General,’ said the archaeologist.

Ludendorff grunted, his eye drawn immediately to a set of sturdy wooden shelves to one side of the large rectangular hole in which Koldewey stood. On them various artefacts had been carefully arranged.

‘We’ll come to those in a moment,’ said Koldewey, following the general’s gaze. ‘First, join me down here and look at this.’

Ludendorff gingerly descended the narrow pine staircase which had been set into one wall of the dig.

In the centre of the excavated grave, an ornate coffin stood on a plinth. Its lid was off, and within Ludendorff could see a richly robed corpse, laid out in great state.

‘Put these on,’ said Koldewey, handing the general a pair of white cotton gloves. ‘We have to be careful not to contaminate anything.’

‘What have you to show me?’

‘This.’ Koldewey bent over the corpse and pointed to something held loosely in the body’s right hand. ‘I wanted to show it to you
in situ
, as I found it.’ He took a small clay tablet, about the size of a notebook, from the hand. It came away easily. ‘It was held in so tight a grip that I had to break the fingers to prise it loose,’ explained the archaeologist. ‘Not a job I like doing, but it had to be. I didn’t want to risk breaking the tablet. In the event, I needn’t have worried – it’s as hard as basalt. Only a sharp blow with a hammer would shatter this.’

‘What is it?’

Koldewey looked at the general. ‘I came here thinking I might find something under the church’s floor. I’d seen something in the archives in Venice which attracted my attention to the place. But I was expecting a Roman temple, a Temple of Mithras, perhaps, or, if I was lucky, something earlier. There’s been a place of worship here since time immemorial. But
this
!’

He placed the tablet carefully in the general’s gloved hands.

‘What is it?’ Ludendorff asked again, seeing only a greyish, roughly shaped piece of terracotta, covered with indecipherable markings not unlike the footprints of a small bird.

Koldewey was silent for a long moment before he spoke again. In that silence, Ludendorff sensed something of the man’s excitement – and something else, which he recognized with surprise as – fear.

‘If I’m right, it is the key to a power which, up until now, we have only been able to dream of.’

Ludendorff didn’t understand. What Koldewey had said sounded more than melodramatic, but his tone was deadly serious. ‘Explain yourself, sir,’ he said. He was hot in his uniform, despite the early hour, and he didn’t like this bearish, shirt-sleeved man with his unruly hair and tousled beard.

‘I haven’t yet had time to make a full study of it, but I can read enough to know what the spell encompasses.’

‘Spell?’

‘Incantation, invocation, theorem – tract, maybe. But I’m sure enough already that whoever can comprehend this and interpret it properly –’ Koldewey broke off. ‘It’s too early to say,’ he concluded guardedly, and changing tack.

‘What are these markings?’

‘It’s an ancient script – cuneiform. It was first used five thousand years ago, and I can already tell that this is a very early example. It’s written in the language of Sumer, the most ancient civilization we know.’

‘And it’s important?’

Koldewey’s eyes glittered, and his expression was impatient. What a dolt this general seemed to be! Even so, the archaeologist knew he needed the man’s support if he was to get the tablet back to Germany without anyone else’s knowledge. ‘It’s fortunate that
we
found it,’ he said tersely, reaching out to take the tablet back.

Once in his own hands, he transferred it to a small calico bag, and from thence to the pocket of the jacket which he now put on. ‘You can take the gloves off now,’ he said. ‘And I’ll show you the other pieces we’ve found.’

Ludendorff took off the gloves with relief. They chafed his hot hands. He threw them to the floor of the tomb irritably, kicking them under the plinth.

Among the other objects taken from the tomb and ranged on the shelves there was one other article of significance. A small iron box, highly decorated and locked.

‘We think this was made at a much later date to house the tablet,’ explained Koldewey. ‘But we can’t be sure. And we haven’t been able to find a key, so we can’t open it. We have searched everywhere, but our time here is limited.’ Koldewey shrugged. ‘I think the key is lost for ever.’

‘Force the box open. Blow it open, if necessary.’

Koldewey glared at Ludendorff. ‘We have tried every means of unlocking it without damaging it, but it is as if it were sealed shut. Without the key, there is no chance of getting it open. It’s as tightly closed as an oyster.’

‘You open oysters with a knife.’

‘Do it in the wrong way and you can cut yourself badly. And there are some oysters which will never open.’

‘You haven’t yet told me whose tomb this is. Or how he got hold of this thing.’

‘The first part of your question I can answer. The second, I cannot. But I think he knew what it was. He went to his grave clutching it as if his life depended on it, and that grip hadn’t weakened in seven hundred years.’

That evening, the two men sat over cognac on the terrace of Ambassador Freiherr von Wangenheim’s residence,
looking out over the thin mist that clung to the Bosphorus, making the lights of the ships ghostlike and indistinct.

‘Two things,’ said Koldewey.

‘Yes?’

‘We must close the tomb carefully, and we must ensure that it looks as if it had never been opened. All traces of our excavation must be eradicated. No one, ever, must know what we have discovered.’

‘There are the guards, and your assistants.’

‘The guards have no idea what they have been watching over. My assistants … can be dealt with.’

Ludendorff locked his fingers together. ‘And the second?’

‘We must get the tablet – and the box – out of here, to Berlin. I can make a thorough examination there, in peace.’

‘Easy enough.’

‘But the Turks must not know of it. They must think we have taken nothing away. I have made a list of all the artefacts found here, but I have omitted these two.’

‘What’s the great secret?’

The strange look of excitement mingled with fear came into Koldewey’s eyes again. ‘I have told you all I know and all I suspect. You must trust me for the rest. Germany must trust me.’

Ludendorff was aware of Koldewey’s standing in the Kaiser’s eyes, and he nodded briskly. ‘When?’

‘Tomorrow at dawn. I will travel with the articles personally.’

‘The Ottomans –’

‘The Ottomans have already been advised that my work here is at an end. They need us. They think we will protect
them from the Russians and from their own revolutionaries. They do not present a problem.’

Ludendorff nodded again, finished his cognac, and started to rise. Koldewey stopped him, placing a hand on his sleeve. Ludendorff, hating physical contact, forced himself not to recoil as the archaeologist fixed him with his eyes. ‘Tell no one anything of this. Tell your aides-de-camp only what is necessary for them to make the arrangements.’

‘The secret is safe with me.’

‘It is of paramount importance that it remain secret. Neither Hindenburg, nor even the Kaiser, must know.’

Ludendorff was suspicious, but something in the man’s manner convinced him he was right. ‘What will you do?’

‘Plumb the mystery. I will consult Einstein and Max Planck. I’ll need their expertise, but they won’t have to know the full truth. You and I will meet in Berlin and –’

Koldewey broke off and turned his gaze to the waters which divided Europe from Asia. There were things he knew which it was not yet safe to confide even in Ludendorff – perhaps especially not in the general.

If he was right in his suspicions, a power lay in his hands which other men could only dream of.

Venice, Year of Our Lord 1202

Nobody likes to starve.

Doge Enrico Dandolo had just celebrated his ninety-second birthday. It was early summer, and the Army of Pilgrims for Jerusalem had been penned in, on the Island of San Niccolò. The completed fleet rode at anchor down by Castello, and the new ocean-going ships within it were indistinguishable, to the uninitiated eye, from the ordinary galleys, warships and transports which made up the bulk of the vessels. Nobody questioned anything.

The doge had seen to that.

Dandolo gripped the cold tablet with the curious writing on it tightly in his right hand, under his robe. There was a special pocket in his right sleeve where he could lodge it, but he had learned that it was at its most powerful when he had it in his grip. He had only to think the words written on it and he could feel the minds of men glaze as they passed under his control.

The most powerful weapon in the world. But he had also learned that it had to be used with discretion, and that it needed a strong will to control it. He could not think that it had a will of its own, but he knew enough to respect the force within it.
It wasn’t in the clay itself, but in the writing.
But only the most perfect copy could ever replicate that.
And who could possibly make a duplicate of anything so complicated? Only someone deeply familiar with the original. The old Armenian? He was dead. The only other people who knew of it were Frid and Leporo. Frid was so loyal he might as well have been part of Dandolo’s own body. As for Leporo … the monk was a follower, not to be trusted as far as you’d trust your own limbs; but he knew only as much as it was necessary for him to know. And his hatred of Frid had endured for decades; it was under control.

The tablet had served him well so far. The army he needed was gathered. Now it was time to put it to the test.

Dandolo turned to his companions, wincing as he willed his failing left eye to bring them into focus.

‘Is everything going according to plan?’ he asked.

‘Yes,
Altissima
,’ Leporo replied. ‘We have stopped the supply boats taking food to San Niccolò. It’s been a week now. They have water, but not enough, and with the weather growing warmer, it will be growing stale in the barrels.’

Dandolo held up a hand. ‘We don’t want to push this too far,’ he said. ‘Biddable is what we need, not resentful. Replenish the water. And keep an eye out for disease. We must tread carefully. Let Frid take charge of it. They trust Frid. He is more like them than we are. Let them continue to want for food. We need dogs that are hungry enough to fight.’

He nodded at Frid, who stood by the door. The Norseman inclined his head in return, and left. Leporo watched him go. He showed no deference to the doge, and yet the
doge treated him more cordially than he had ever treated his faithful monk.

But his time would come.

‘And now,’ said Dandolo, interrupting his thoughts. ‘Now for Zara.’

Leporo half shrugged. ‘You’ll never get them to agree to that.’

‘I’ll get them to do anything I want. Assemble their leaders.’

Dandolo considered. The game of chess was going as he wished. Since Eastertide, the Crusaders had been arriving in Venice, and the Venetians had billeted them all on the barren little island of San Niccolò. Once there, there was no means for them to get food and drink except by boat – and the Venetians controlled the boats.

The Crusaders had another problem. As he had planned, the great numbers of men the French leadership had expected had not materialized. There were not enough people to fill the fleet Venice had built for them, let alone pay for it. Even by handing over all their money, and all their gold and silver plate, all their treasures, everything except their horses and what they needed to fight with, Leporo calculated that they were still 35,000 grossi short. But the Venetians had a contract and it had to be honoured.

No one disagreed with that and, as for the Venetian Council, they ate out of Dandolo’s hand. In the meantime, if the Crusaders refused to join him in his expedition against the City of Zara, he’d keep the money they’d paid him, and the fleet, and they could go hang.

But they wouldn’t refuse, he reflected with satisfaction as he hugged the tablet, so hard that it bit into his palm. It was as if his hand bore the physical imprint of its symbols. They couldn’t so much as get off the island without his ships. He’d quarantine the place and let them all starve to death, animals and men, knights and squires, cookboys and trollops alike, if they even so much as attempted to stand against him.

Zara was a Christian city. Dandolo was well aware of how the pope would react if he attacked it. But that didn’t worry him. He knew how much Innocent III wanted this crusade. The tablet – the sacred scroll of Bishop Adhemar – had seen to that. The doge thought of the bishop, who had died locked away from the world. Adhemar had tried to crack its secret but only partially succeeded. And that knowledge had driven him mad.

He smiled. The beauty of the thing was that he was able to make men do precisely what he wanted them to and, with a little set-dressing and a little acting from him, they did it without ever being
aware
.

Dandolo didn’t need the council for this. Flanked by his guards, in their uniform of silver and yellow, he was dressed in black satin robes with a white ducal cap embroidered with gold thread on his head.