The Sacred Scroll (35 page)

‘Then he’s joined the club,’ said Marlow.

‘He’s not asking for secure information, Jack. Nothing like that. Look on his money as an extra reserve. Public/Private Sector Enterprise. All that.’ Sir Richard waved his arm. The movement wafted his eau-de-cologne in Marlow’s direction. ‘He doesn’t even know who we are.’

‘I should hope not.’

‘We’re using the INTERPOL cover. They’re
au fait
. No danger of a leak, if he double-checks. Not that he will. Rich maybe, powerful, yes, but a simple businessman at heart.’

Marlow was silent. He looked out over the New York skyline through the big picture window in Sir Richard’s office on the top floor of INTERSEC Central. Watery sunshine, high cloud. The lighting was warm and discreet. Thick-pile blue carpet. A mahogany bookcase covering the wall behind the teak desk. No trace of a computer or any other vulgar modern equipment. Just three telephones, red, white and blue, and a grey intercom to
connect with the outer room. An original Dufy graced the end wall. Not a hint of cuts here.

‘I’ve been in this business since Cambridge,’ Sir Richard reminded him sternly. ‘I was three years old when Burgess and Maclean jumped ship. Squeaky clean since then. More or less. They brought in James Bond as housekeeper.’ He waited for his joke to strike home. When it didn’t, he drew briefly on his cigar, and went on: ‘Adler’s deeply distressed at what happened to Adkins and Taylor. And’ – he paused – ‘at Dr de Montferrat’s continued absence.’ He looked at Marlow. ‘Any news there, by the way?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Yale and Venice?’

‘No more than what we know.’

‘Which is all Adler knows, as well; though I can tell you he’s made quite thorough investigations through the university boards himself.’

‘Has he?’

‘And he sent a team of his own to Istanbul. Much to Major Haki’s consternation.’ Sir Richard smiled. ‘Adler’s angry. Impatient. It’d be better to have him safely in the fold. We don’t want any loose cannon rolling about, do we?’

Marlow considered. The press had been allowed to give the deaths front-page coverage, but below-the-line, with additional biographical background articles in the broadsheets, around page five. Hadn’t lasted more than a day. There’d been vague speculation about a kidnapping gone wrong, about Islamist terrorists, but nothing more. Focus soon shifted to the latest coup d’état in Africa. That was
where things were hotting up, ruffling feathers in Whitehall, Washington, Berlin and the Elysée. Bad for business.

As for the recent suicides at Yale, and another in Venice, there had been obituaries, but nothing more. No conclusions were drawn, or public questions asked.

‘What help does he think he can give?’ asked Marlow.

Hudson spread his hands. ‘Use of his resources, without strings. The man has eyes and ears everywhere. Keeps a good cellar, too.’

Since this further attempt at levity showed no sign of lightening things up, Sir Richard went on to a different tack: fatherly this time, older brother at least. Sometimes worked, he thought to himself. Worth a try, anyway. ‘Come on, Jack,’ he cajoled. ‘We can do with having all the help we can get. Isn’t it good to have him on our side?’

‘Have you read his file?’

Hudson nodded, and shrugged his shoulders just a little. ‘He’s head of a multinational. All his own work. Don’t get to be that without cracking some heads.’

He waited. Marlow let him.

‘After all, Jack,’ said Sir Richard at last, ‘I
am
the boss.’

Marlow nodded, forced himself to smile. Diplomacy, delicacy, these had always been Hudson’s strong points. Marlow, seeing that he had no option, agreed to Adler’s financial involvement, but no more.

It was a small price to pay for keeping Hudson’s curiosity at bay.

It bought him time.

Leaving the building, Marlow set off on foot, taking himself down 5th past the Frick Collection and the Zoo, then
across Grand Army Plaza as far as St Thomas’s, where he turned right along 53rd and continued past MoMA. Left down 7th near the Sheraton, and south again until he reached West 48th and his destination.

A long walk, but he could be certain no one was following him.

He went in, checked the lobby was empty, and used his security card to operate the lift. It took him to the thirty-fifth floor.

He walked down the softly lit, soundless corridor to the last door on the right, pushed the buzzer briefly three times then let himself in with another security card.

She was waiting for him. Dressed in a purple silk sheath.

‘Hello, darling,’ said Su-Lin.

Berlin,
AD
1933

A cold January day, almost the end of the month, and it had been a long twenty-four hours.

But now the fruit had fallen into his hands – the fruit which had been the goal of his ten-year struggle, his
Kampf
.

Longer than ten years. Since the day of his birth in the little Austrian border town of Braunau, Destiny had chosen him for this path.

He thought of Ludendorff, an old man now, living in retirement, forgotten. The general had turned to God, writing books about the dismal fate of Germany and the world’s ills. A changed man. The old fool had broken with him a year after the last meeting they’d had, when the general had placed the fate of his adopted country firmly in his hands.

Now, under his undisputed leadership, that country would be purged and, once clean again, go on to purge the world.

He was alone, looking out of his office window at the procession. It was thousands-strong, the SA men in brown uniforms and badges, their red-white-and-black armbands caught by the firelight of the torches they carried as they marched in celebration and in triumph.
Die Fahne Hoch
 …!

Of course there were still snags. People who resisted him. But they would be broken. What had he said to Otto Strasser, when Strasser had had the temerity to ask him what the policy of the Nazi Party was? He smiled in pride at the memory of his reply: ‘The policy is not the question. The only question is power.’ Strasser had argued back, saying: ‘Power is only the means of accomplishing policy.’ ‘No,’ he had retorted. ‘That is the opinion of the intellectuals. We need
power
. That is
all
.’

And now he had it. Soon, when the programme was in train, he would deal with Strasser, and his brother, and all the other left-wing, Jew-loving breed.

Ludendorff could have had no idea of the importance of what he had handed over. If he had, he would never have let the tablet go.

The man felt for it in his pocket, clutched it. This little piece of baked earth. It had taken him much study, much discreet consultation, but he had mastered it, as he would master everything else. Nothing stood in his way now. If there were a means of using it to control his enemies – the weak British, the pusillanimous French and the distant, aloof Americans – as well as it had enabled him to control his fellow countrymen, he would find it. Their turn would come.

For the moment, it would be the turn of Germany, the turn of Austria, the turn of Poland and, above all, the turn of the Jews.

Their power would be broken for ever; their fraud uncovered in the shining light of the New Dawn.

There was a knock at the door.

‘
Herein!
’ barked the man.

An excited young adjutant entered. ‘First edition,’ he said, ‘Chancellor!’

Controlling his excitement, accepting his Destiny, the man took the proffered copy of the
Völkischer Beobachter
, the
People’s Daily
,
his
newspaper; looked at the front page. Big picture of him, smaller ones of Frick and Göring, now ministers in the new administration.

He read the headline:
Ein
Historischer Tag – Erste Maßnahmen der Reichsregierung …
‘A Historic Day – First Measures of the National Government led by …’ and then
his
name.
His
leadership!
His
country. Above all others!

It was past midnight. January 31 now. The first day.

The First Day of the Third Reich.

New York, the Present

Leon Lopez became aware of the problem on an otherwise unremarkable late Wednesday afternoon.

He’d been looking away from his screen to rest his eyes, taking off his glasses and wiping them on his tie. It was going to be his son Alvar’s fourteenth birthday the following week, and he intended to buy him the latest Ubisoft game, top of Alvar’s wish-list.

He thought about Alvar, and Lucia, now rising eleven, how time flew, and of his wife, Mia. He allowed himself a contented smile.

Then he saw the icon flash on his screen, clicked, went to the inbox, saw the mail.

Perhaps it was Mia’s Swedish connection that alerted him. There was something about the message that had come through, though how the hacker had managed to get as far as he or she had in order to place it was nothing short of miraculous.

The message itself made Lopez freeze.

He picked up the internal phone, and spoke briefly. The sector’s systems were instantly locked down, and Monitoring went on full vigilance status.

Over the next hour there was nothing more. No
demand for money, no attempt to access any kind of information. Lopez studied the message.

I have something you may need. I know this because you taught me history of science and other skills. I am in need so I turn to you. The other skills you taught me let me see your recent exchange about the scroll with colleagues in Paris. I am sorry. Accident. I just want to be in touch with you. You were like a father. I always follow you. Maybe we meet.

Christ, thought Lopez. How can I explain this to Jack?

He decided to block the thing himself, nip it in the bud before anyone else in the sector knew. This job was well-paid and a welcome addition to his university salary. He wasn’t the only academic to moonlight like this. He had colleagues, economists, who were in the pocket of big business. One made a fortune producing analyses in the financial press which were favourable to his client’s projected investment ventures. That paid for the house in Malibu.

Lopez didn’t want to lose this sinecure. But, now, he was vulnerable. He knew that if he hadn’t isolated and neutralized this incursion by day’s end he would have to come clean. If he didn’t, and they found out, he’d be out of more than a job.

As he’d expected, there was no source for the mail. But the message contained clues. One was obvious, not even a clue, a statement. Whoever it was was a former student of his. The other was less apparent but clear to him because of the way Mia still spoke English sometimes, especially when she was agitated or needed to express a
difficult concept. Whoever had written this was not a native English speaker, that was clear. The nuances suggested, equally clearly, that the person was Scandinavian, and probably female.

Maybe we meet
. Fine, but how, when there was no way he could make contact to arrange it? The time before Marlow would start asking questions about the lockdown was limited. Luckily, Marlow was otherwise engaged somewhere and Graves was working from home on material she’d told him needed further processing before she passed it on to him for analysis.

He had, maybe, two hours.

Something told him that whoever it was wouldn’t be long in getting in touch again.

He considered the position. It’d taken courage to make this first step in the first place, and now the person – she – would be careful, would make sure she wasn’t led into any kind of trap. If he was being watched, he had to give some kind of assurance that he was alone. If he was putting his neck on the block, if he was laying himself open to some psycho, so be it. But he didn’t think so and, anyway, he hadn’t a choice.

One thing was certain – he had to get out of the office. The very walls oppressed him. He passed the work he was engaged on to his assistant, told her he’d be back in an hour, and made his way down through the hotel and out of the building. He walked a block, avoiding his usual coffeehouse, and made his way to another, on East 75th near the Whitney. It was dark, fake-Edwardian, a pastiche English gentlemen’s club, all but deserted at this hour.

He chose a table in a corner, and a chair which faced the
door. He ordered an espresso and a bottle of Gize. They came accompanied by a porcelain dish of mixed nuts and fruits. He drank the coffee quickly then sipped the water, while his brain refused to come up with a plan and floundered constantly back to the hope that something would happen to take any decision away from him. Absently, he nibbled the fruit-and-nut mixture, unable to taste it.

He’d been there fifteen minutes and was beginning to fidget, hating to sit still, a world away from his normal, ordered existence. Then she entered. He knew she was the one from the moment he saw her.

She must have been hanging around near the office – she knew where it was, my God, she knew where it
was
– then followed him, waited some more, either uncertain or to make sure he was really without company. But then she’d taken the plunge. She was short, stockily built, had close-cropped brown hair, a tanned, big-boned face. She wore khaki chinos, black trainers and a parka that was too big for her. A leather shoulder-bag swung from one shoulder. She looked about as much at home here as a penguin in a desert. She’d seen him, of course, but she didn’t approach, looking about uncertainly instead. A waiter was making his way towards her. The handful of other customers, all middle-aged businesspeople, paid little attention, though one or two of the women looked in her direction curiously.

Before the waiter could reach her, Lopez stood up, heart in mouth. ‘Over here,’ he called.

She nodded, sidestepped the waiter and came over to him. She still looked unsure of herself, but she also looked relieved. The last step had been taken.