The Sacred Scroll (31 page)

What they had never been able to understand was how
to answer the one question the man and woman – they knew them only by their voices – in charge of their kidnappers and torturers had repeatedly put to them:

‘
Where is it?
’

They knew it must have to do with the dig they’d been working on. They had, in desperation, invented answers which might please their gaolers, but these were never satisfactory. Now the two Americans had other things on their minds.

At last they halted. Their eyes had grown accustomed to the light and they could see the people who accompanied them. Five men, dressed in T-shirts and jeans. Young men, brawny, with harsh faces and dead eyes.

And the two others, the man and woman whose voices Brad Adkins and Rick Taylor had heard in their cell. The man, stick-thin, was dressed in a beige desert suit with high boots. His face was covered by a silk paisley handkerchief. The plump woman had squeezed herself into a Laura Ashley dress. She also wore a straw hat with a scarf wrapped round its crown. Her dyed dark hair hung down under it, tossed gently by the wind. She looked like an old hippie. The wide brim of the hat cast a shadow over her face, and she was careful to keep her head low, but they could see her mouth, which was set and cruel.

The group encircled the two men.

‘We’ll ask you one last time,’ the woman said, in her cut-glass accent.

‘One last time,’ repeated her male companion, whose voice was similar, rasping.

There was a silence in which the two men looked at one another in despair. Suddenly they knew what would happen to them if they could not, at this eleventh hour, provide an answer.

The only sounds were the whispering of the stiff stalks of the shrubs, the hot breeze and the tedious grating of crickets.

After a long minute, the man consulted his watch and looked at the woman.

‘Silence is your answer, then?’ the woman said to her captives.

‘We have told you that we found nothing.’

‘That’s it, then,’ said the man. ‘I told you that days ago, but you never listen.’

‘You are not in charge.’

‘More’s the pity.’

She laughed. ‘We sound like a bickering old married couple.’

‘Isn’t that what we are?’

The woman stopped laughing, and turned to her henchmen. ‘You know what to do,’ she said. She and her companion walked back, still bickering, to the SUV, parked 75 metres away. Adkins and Taylor watched them. Had they really only walked that far? They couldn’t remember when they had last eaten. They’d been given water to keep them alive, that was all.

One of the five men left behind supervised while the others divided into two pairs, each seizing one of the Americans and dragging them to separate rocks, to which they chained them. The walls of the valley craned down, enclosing everything, leaving only a blue slit of
sky above, in which the white disc of the sun hung like an angry eye.

Then the fifth man approached, drawing a long knife with a broad, heavy blade. A butcher by training, he removed the men’s hands and feet quickly and efficiently. He then took a smaller knife and cut out their tongues.

They were a few kilometres outside Edirne, way north-west of Istanbul, on the Bulgarian border.

On Detective-Major Haki’s advice, Su-Lin had been left at the police station in town. That she had been allowed to come with them at all had bothered Graves, but Marlow convinced her that the archaeologist was sufficiently recovered. She kept her reservations about her colleague’s fixation with the woman, and her own feelings, to herself.

Looking at the bodies of Brad Adkins and Rick Taylor, Marlow was glad they’d left Su-Lin in Edirne. Graves wished she had stayed behind herself.

They’d come to the place in two police Toyota Land Cruisers, Haki and his men in one, leading the way; Graves and Marlow in the other, with their driver.

Now the three of them stood by the corpses chained to the rocks, five metres apart, looking down at them in the flat light of dawn.

‘You say they’ve been here three days?’ said Marlow.

‘A goatherd discovered them late yesterday,’ replied Haki. There was no twinkle in his eye now. ‘Three days is what our forensic trawl’s determined. But it didn’t take them that long to die. We think they must have been dead within the ten hours after they’d been put here.’ It was a moment before he continued. ‘Blood loss, dehydration.
Can happen quickly. Especially when you consider what was done to these guys.’

The overnight flight in the INTERSEC Falcon 7X from Paris to Istanbul had taken just under five hours, but Marlow had never felt less tired, even after the helicopter and car journey from Istanbul to Edirne, and from Edirne, over rocky and inhospitable terrain, to this site of slaughter. His senses were alert, the ghost which haunted him forgotten. If only it would stay that way. He’d told Su-Lin her colleagues were dead. He did not tell her the manner of their deaths.

‘So they were brought here last Wednesday, and they’ve been missing …’

‘Fifteen days,’ supplied Graves. She was looking at the cadavers, her face abstracted. There was a connection here, something familiar about the manner of their deaths, if only she could place it.

Marlow and Haki followed her gaze in silence. In the short time since their deaths, the two men had shrivelled within their ragged clothes. Crows had pecked out their eyes and it was easy to imagine, in this heat, what incursions larvae had made in the tender recesses of their bodies.

The postures of the bodies showed that the two men, while life remained in them, had strained out towards one another.

‘Move them, shall we?’ said Haki. ‘We’ve done all we can here.’

‘Yes,’ Marlow agreed. Turning to Graves, he said, ‘Make the arrangements, and inform their families, and Yale. Do it through the New York office. Tell Leon to get Hudson
to handle it. But keep it close, and don’t go into detail. This mustn’t get out.’

She nodded. ‘What about Su-Lin? Do we go public on her?’

He looked at her impatiently. ‘She has no family to tell, and she can’t give us any names of friends.’

‘Tyre marks not far away,’ said Haki. ‘And the headman of the village four kilometres away saw an unfamiliar black vehicle on a track not far from his place three or four days ago.’

‘Any chance he recognized the make?’ Marlow didn’t hold out much hope.

‘Oh, absolutely. Porsche SUV. He recognized it from an ad on his satellite TV.’

Marlow looked thoughtful. He knew the organization which had abducted Graves in Istanbul was responsible for this. But why kill them in such a way? Was a message being sent?

Istanbul, the Present

Alone with her, Marlow comforted Su-Lin as best he could. But she seemed inconsolable.

‘Who could have wanted to kill them? What harm had they done anyone?’

‘We’ll find out.’ He almost told her they had a trail to follow, but checked himself in time. He made to go.

‘Are you leaving me?’

‘I have to.’

‘Don’t leave me alone.’

He returned, took her in his arms, stroked her hair. ‘You are perfectly safe here.’

‘Stay with me!’

He forced himself to go. The need to keep her safe was paramount to him. If only they could close the last gaps in her memory. But something else troubled him. Su-Lin was making inroads into his loneliness. She was so vulnerable. But he’d have to keep her out.

They were not staying at a hotel this time, but in a flat above Haki’s office for the night before returning to Paris. The day was been spent contacting Lopez at base, transmitting the details of what they’d found. Marlow returned to the Operations Centre with a heavy heart.

All day Graves had been distracted. Now Marlow found
out why. ‘Baldwin of Flanders,’ she said briskly, as he entered the room.

‘What?’

‘Baldwin of Flanders!’

‘Take me with you.’

‘Baldwin of Flanders was one of the leaders of the Fourth Crusade,’ Graves said. ‘He was the golden boy, the one they crowned emperor of the new Catholic empire in the East, after they’d taken Constantinople.’

‘And ripped it apart between them.’

‘When I saw the bodies, I knew there was something. Some connection.’

Marlow noticed the troubled look had left her face. She was focused now.

‘Go on.’

‘It didn’t take long for the new empire to start showing cracks,’ she continued. ‘Boniface wasn’t as useful to Dandolo any more, which was why Baldwin got the crown – that, and the fact that Baldwin was younger, less intelligent, less experienced – much more manipulable, in other words.’ She paused. ‘Boniface established his own territory around Thessalonika and carved out his own kingdom. There was no problem with Baldwin.’

‘So Boniface did well.’

‘Yes, but he was double-crossed by the Bulgarians, who didn’t like so much power on their doorstep. They ambushed and killed him in the summer of 1207, only three years after the sacking of Constantinople.’

‘Sure, but what has all this to do with our archaeologists?’

‘Wait! The conquered Greeks of Constantinople
weren’t out of the picture, and they allied themselves with the Bulgarian king, Johanitza, who didn’t have any time for Baldwin either. Johanitza was Eastern Orthodox Christian, not Catholic, don’t forget. There was a battle between Baldwin and Johanitza in April 1205, which Baldwin lost. The little emperor was taken prisoner. The battle took place – at
Adrianople
.’

Marlow knew immediately where she was going with this. ‘And Adrianople is –’

‘Modern Edirne. Exactly. And there’s more. No one knows what happened to Baldwin exactly, but he disappeared from the face of the earth, and there’s an enduring story –’ Graves’s voice faltered.

‘Go on.’

‘The story goes that his captors kept Baldwin prisoner, tortured him, and took him to a remote place in the countryside. They cut off his hands and feet, and threw him into a valley. The story goes that it took him three days to die.’

Berlin,
AD
1924

Over Christmas, 1924, Robert Koldewey invited General Erich Ludendorff to dinner. In the ten years since their first meeting, he and Ludendorff, sharers of the secret, had become unlikely allies. The dinner was a simple affair, as it always was in the archaeologist’s rambling Berlin apartment, full of dust and books, cases and shelves of ancient pottery, side-tables holding unwashed whiskey glasses, the whole place smelling of good tobacco and damp tweed. After the meal, they sat facing each other in armchairs on either side of the hearth.

‘So,’ said Ludendorff. ‘I imagine you didn’t invite me here just to say
Frohe Weihnachten
.’

Koldewey didn’t smile. ‘As you know, the only other men aware of the existence of the tablet are Einstein and Max Planck. But they know nothing of its importance.’

Ludendorff had no idea how much Koldewey had chosen to tell the two scientists, but he was certain that neither of them had any ambition for personal power.

‘Their insight, and their knowledge of astronomy, energy and matter have been invaluable.’ Koldewey went on. He drew on his cigar before continuing. ‘With their help, I have cracked the code of the writing on the tablet.’

‘My congratulations,’ said the general, though he had a feeling of foreboding.

‘I am close to death,’ the archaeologist went on in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘I will perhaps last until February, but that is not certain. I must pass my knowledge on to someone. You are the only person, logically, for that role.’

Ludendorff hesitated. ‘I don’t know if I –’

‘It is surprisingly simple. You will be able to hand the secret on, when the time comes. If it ever comes. I had considered letting it die with me, but’ – he broke off, showing rare emotion – ‘I find I cannot. Let me show you. A small experiment.’

From a leather bag on the table at his side he produced the tablet. Ludendorff was immediately aware, in the firelit room, of another light, a dull glow, which came from the little piece of clay.

Koldewey stood, raised it in both hands above his head, and closed his eyes. The room – Ludendorff could not believe it afterwards – darkened, but for the light from the ancient artefact. Ludendorff found himself standing too, and crossing the room to a case in the corner. It was as if something else – something outside him – had taken control of his will.

‘Lift the lid,’ Koldewey’s voice said – though it seemed to come from within Ludendorff’s own head.

He obeyed.

‘Take out the pistol.’

Ludendorff removed a Luger Parabellum from the case.

‘It’s loaded. Aim it at me,’ the interior voice, insidious, irresistible, continued. It seemed now to blend inextricably with Ludendorff’s own thoughts and desires.

‘Shoot me.’

This is insane, thought the general, but the objection in his mind melted away immediately as he cocked the gun and raised it. He felt his finger tighten on the trigger.

‘Enough!’

As if someone had thrown a switch, the room returned to normal. Ludendorff saw that Koldewey was sitting back in his chair, and the tablet was nowhere in sight. The gun was gone too. He looked in the case. It was there again, as if no one had touched it.

The general felt a fear greater than any he had ever felt on any battlefield.

That evening, Koldewey told Ludendorff all he knew, and the general trembled at it.

AD
1927

No means had ever been found of opening the box found with the tablet which Koldewey had wrested from the dead right hand of Enrico Dandolo. Neither force, nor the most ingenious locksmiths had been able to penetrate it, but it had been preserved carefully, together with the tablet it had once contained.

On the archaeologist’s death, two months after their dinner together, Ludendorff found himself the owner of both the tablet and the box.

For more than two years he had kept them in a safe, uncertain what to do with them. Many times he had considered destroying them. He had never been able to share Koldewey’s awe of the objects, though the archaeologist had convinced him of the tablet’s power. That conviction had never tempted Ludendorff to put the object to his own use. His experience at its mercy had left him a shaken man.