The Sacred Scroll (5 page)

‘What do you want to do?’ said Leporo, playing the innocent. ‘I’ve got a shrewd idea of what you want censored. Do you want to leave it to me?’

‘I do the censoring. Bring me this knight. His thinking’s too independent.’ A new thought struck the doge. ‘Is he
immune
, do you think?’

‘Unlikely. Possible.’

‘I’ll censor his book today. Use my work as a model to censor the other stuff the Crusaders have written. Burn anything that delves too deep.’

‘You have nothing to fear. History will be your judge. So long as you control the majority, the rest don’t matter. Just give them a bone to gnaw on from time to time,’ Leporo said.

Dandolo’s face showed nothing. ‘Bring me some wine. Then we’ll get the work done. And bring Frid with you when you return.’

Leporo looked angry.

‘Do we need him,
Altissima
?’ Leporo hated Frid. That filthy Danish cuckoo in the nest. That brainless sack of
muscle. One day the Viking would be off guard and then … Leporo fingered the thin knife at his belt. He’d already wasted too many years in Frid’s shadow.

The doge looked at him again. ‘Are you still here?’ he said.

Frid doesn’t know what I know
, thought the monk as he slunk away.
I have that advantage.

Somewhere in the South-east European Hinterland, the Present

Brad Adkins thought, fleetingly, of his safe, comfortable home, of his wife and children. What was going through their minds? Did they even know what had happened? The images were strong enough to touch, but at the same time dreamlike. Yet the picture his mind held most firmly, him pushing little Sarah on her swing, wrenched his heart. Panic rose in knots from his gut to his throat.

Somewhere near him in the gloom Rick Taylor groaned.

‘Rick?’ he said tentatively, fighting down his thoughts, relieved that there was some kind of companionship again. ‘You awake?’

‘Wish I wasn’t. Where the hell are we?’

‘We’ve been drugged. How long have we been here?’

‘They’ll be looking for us.’

‘How will they know where to look?’

Taylor stirred, his voice thick. ‘Wherever it is, it’s warm. Can’t be far from Istanbul. Maybe we’re still
in
Istanbul.’

‘I don’t remember any kind of journey.’

‘Nor do I.’

‘And where’s Su-Lin? What have they done with her?’

Adkins remembered the young woman screaming, but from the moment they’d put the hood over his head, he recalled nothing more.

‘Got her in another cell?’ he said.

‘Maybe she got away.’

‘How could she?’

‘Poor kid. Jesus, if they’ve got her alone somewhere –’ Taylor said angrily. ‘Christ, everything’s a fucking haze since that bastard hit me.’

‘They drugged us,’ Adkins repeated emptily.

‘What do they
want
from us?’

‘Don’t you remember? When they beat us? The hammering they gave us? The questions they asked? Christ, if they did that to Su–’

Adkins fingered the bruises on his arms and legs, praying that their colleague had come to no harm. Maybe she had escaped. Raised the alarm? Then his mind began to slump back into the lethargy he continually had to fight. Both men were naked, grimy, the stench of their bodies heavy in the confined space. At least now their captors had untied them. ‘But none of the questions had anything to do with what we were looking for. They seemed to be after something else,’ he said.

‘Maybe they’ve got the wrong people.’

‘Maybe we weren’t told everything.’

‘That’s crazy.’

‘They wanted more out of us than just archaeological skills.’

‘That’s even crazier. Jeez, my head –’

Adkins didn’t answer. He was too tired to think any more. Despite himself, his brain was drifting back into a comfortable miasma. All he could think of, for some reason, was the deep sea, drifting over endless underwater dunes.

He shook his head to clear it. ‘They’ll be looking for us,’ he said, echoing his colleague. ‘They’ll find us,’ but he wasn’t convinced, and neither, he knew, was Taylor.

Taylor had fallen silent.

‘Rick? Still with me?’ Adkins mumbled.

‘Still here,’ Taylor said. ‘What the hell did they pump into us?’ There was a pause. ‘I could sure as shit use a drink.’

‘Don’t go there.’

Taylor croaked out a laugh. ‘Don’t worry – state I’m in, water would do nicely.’

It’d been – how long? – since they’d last been given anything; a couple of crusts of pitta bread and two plastic beakers of warm cola. And cola is no thirst-quencher, no matter what they tell you. ‘If they want to keep us alive, they’ll bring us something.’

‘And if they don’t?’

Brad Adkins’s eyes flinched then as the dark cell was flooded with cold light from the lamps bolted into the ceiling. Soon afterwards, he knew, he would hear the footsteps.

He huddled protectively in his corner. He’d grown used to the filth, but he was still bewildered.

‘Oh Christ, here they come,’ growled Taylor, and Adkins saw that his reaction was different. Taylor was bracing himself.

New York City, the Present

Laura Graves sat uncomfortably across the desk from Sir Richard Hudson in his airy office two floors above Room 55.

‘I called you in because I felt I owed you an explanation,’ he began.

‘If it’s about the job –’

He looked at her seriously. ‘I know you’re disappointed, but this business landed on our desk in the middle of restructuring.’

‘I understand, sir. Marlow has far more field-work experience.’

‘But not your specific language expertise. The missing scientists have to be located, and that’s where you’re crucial. The job has top-level priority. And Jack is the man to lead an investigation like this.’

‘Which is why you pulled him back from Paris.’

‘I know you were expecting to take charge of the new Section 15 –’

‘It was as good as damned well promised me.’

‘– but, in our business, expediency is all. Later on, who knows? Situations change.’

Graves didn’t answer that.

Hudson leaned forward. ‘How much do you know about Marlow?’

‘He and Lopez are old friends, I know that much.’

‘I suppose you could call them that. Have you spoken to Lopez?’

‘No.’

‘That surprises me, considering you arrived before Jack.’

‘I’m more of a newcomer than he is.’

‘But you’ve been in this game almost as long.’ Hudson leaned back. ‘What do you think of him?’

She spread her hands, not knowing how to answer, then decided to fall back on a safe ‘It’s really too early to say.’

Hudson laughed briefly. ‘You don’t mean to tell me you haven’t checked him out.’

‘His files are restricted.’

‘Tell me what you know.’

Graves didn’t have much room for manoeuvre. In fact, in the short space of time since she’d met him, she’d thought long and hard about her new chief.

The research she’d been able to do was limited. She’d pulled a file which told her that Marlow was born in London. Now in his late thirties, he’d been educated at Winchester and the Sorbonne, where he’d read Archaeology and Anthropology.

The file also told her that he’d looked set for a career as an archaeologist, but something (not specified) made him change horses, and in a move which indicated to Graves an early recruitment to INTERSEC, he’d spent a year on the foreign desk of the
Guardian
before moving to
Time
and thence to a job with CNN. Cover jobs, in other words.

Just over ten years ago he had been in London, a field operative at INTERSEC’s bureau there. Five years later,
he transferred to Paris, a posting Graves envied. Like most people who’d never lived there, she equated Paris with romance and excitement.

‘But you know all this,’ she said to Hudson when she’d run through this information for him. ‘Why ask me?’

‘I wanted to hear how you described him.’

‘Why?’

‘Women are susceptible to him.’

Graves laughed scornfully. ‘For God’s sake!’

‘Not that he’s one to take advantage of that. In fact – certainly lately – he’s been quite impervious.’ Hudson looked roguish. ‘I think Cupid’s dart gave him a bad sting not long ago and he’s retired from the lists. He used to be quite susceptible to women, too.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

Hudson shrugged. ‘No reason. But there is one thing you could do for me.’

‘Yes?’

‘Just keep a sisterly eye on him for me, would you?’ He looked at his watch. ‘Now, you’d better get on. I’ve asked Marlow for an end-of-day report … unless you can give me a preview?’ He raised an eyebrow a fraction.

‘The only way to trace these people is to find out what they were after. But the gist is that it was a simple dig.’

‘The Dandolo Project.’

‘Absolutely. Marlow’s got all the information available from the universities the three archaeologists work for – Yale and Venice. The two Yale boys are Dr Bradley Adkins and Dr Richard Taylor; the Venice academic is called Su-Lin de Montferrat, a Chinese-Italian.’

‘And –?’

‘Dandolo was doge of Venice, but he died in Constantinople in 1205. The archaeologists had discovered his burial site and were researching it.’ She paused. ‘Marlow will fill you in later. That’s all I have.’

‘Nothing special they were looking for then?’

‘Nothing to show that yet.’ She looked at him. ‘But there must have been. Otherwise, why give this to us?’

‘And why were they taken? This isn’t some ad hoc terrorist kidnapping.’

‘Too clinical?’

‘Precisely.’

Hudson made a tent of his fingers. ‘So it boils down to this: find out what they were looking for, and that tells us who snatched them. And be quick. We’re keeping the Press away from this, but the families are beginning to ask questions. Understandably.’

‘Shouldn’t we make tracing the archaeologists top priority?’

Hudson swivelled his chair round to the window and gazed out over leaves still clinging listlessly to the trees in Central Park. The day had become as grey as a prison.

‘There’s interest in what they were looking for,’ he said. ‘And these days, it’s sometimes hard to define what one’s priorities are.’

He swivelled back, reached for a cigar, and lit it. ‘You’d better be getting back downstairs,’ he continued. ‘And don’t forget the little favour I’ve asked you.’

Graves made her way back to the elevators unsure whether she’d been given an order or not. But she felt less bad now about being passed over for Marlow. Slightly.

She thought again about the information she’d been able to glean on him. He certainly wasn’t the easiest guy to read. Physically, not bad, she had to admit. Lanky, wore good clothes, carelessly green eyes, sad-looking, veiled, but buried humour there, if it ever got a chance to get out. Looked a little older than he was, but no doubt of a muscular, fit body. And, though she hated to admit it, he was sexy.

No details of his private life at all. Pity.

And no time to think about that now.

She punched in the code to Room 55 and entered quietly. The two men were at the other end of the room, backs turned, talking in low voices. She caught the tail-end of a conversation, and felt like she was snooping already.

‘You’re right,’ Marlow was saying. ‘It’s a lesson I should have got by heart.’

Lopez looked sympathetic. ‘But you’ve put that in the past.’

‘It’s still with me, like shrapnel. But as far as I’m concerned, the bitch is dead. And let’s shut up about it. We’re wasting time.’

Then he saw Graves and his expression changed. ‘You’re late,’ he said, but he wasn’t unfriendly. ‘Where’ve you been?’

‘Sorry’ was all she said. To her relief, he seemed to choose not to pursue it. But he looked at her enigmatically and she wondered if he knew.

‘What’ve I missed?’ she went on hastily.

Marlow was already lifting a folder from his desk. ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘Just come in. First section.’

He tapped the folder. ‘The starting point here is our
three archaeologists. Standard missing persons in suspicious circumstances. Since the missing persons are foreign nationals, and two of them are Americans, there’s more than the usual fuss,’ he continued. ‘It isn’t just that they’ve vanished without a trace, but everything connected with them has as well. We’re waiting on a report from the Turks who are handling it at the Istanbul end. Chase it up.’

‘Do we know what they were on to?’

‘Find that out and we find them.’ His words, she thought, echoed Hudson’s. ‘Maybe.’

‘I’ll leave you,’ said Lopez. ‘I’ve got something to tie up. Tail end of a case. Just needs a last tweak.’

‘Make it fast.’

Lopez disappeared into his lab as Graves picked up a black phone and dialled a number.

It took Marlow five minutes to digest the other documents in the folder. Background stuff.

The first was a printout of a
New York Times
article from 2001:

Last week, Pope John-Paul II visited Greece – the first pope to do so in nearly 1,300 years. In Athens he had a private 30-minute meeting with Archbishop Christodoulos, head of the Eastern Orthodox Church. When they emerged from the meeting the two prelates were stony-faced as the Greek archbishop read out a list of the ‘thirteen offences’ committed by the Roman Catholic Church against the Eastern Orthodox Church since the Great Schism of 1054 which divided the Church for the first time into its Eastern and Western branches. Among the thirteen offences, Archbishop Christodoulos made particular mention of the pillaging and
destruction of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) by the crusading armies of the Fourth Crusade, inspired by Pope Innocent III and led by Count Baldwin of Flanders, Marquess Boniface of Montferrat and Doge Enrico Dandolo of Venice, in 1204, and bemoaned the lack of any apology for it from the Roman Catholic Church. He said: ‘Until now, there has not been heard a single request for pardon for the maniacal Crusaders of the 13th century.’

Pope John-Paul responded by saying, ‘For the occasions, past and present, when sons and daughters of the Catholic Church have sinned by action or omission against their Orthodox brothers and sisters, may the Lord grant us forgiveness.’

 

Archbishop Christodoulos immediately applauded this statement, and the pope added his opinion that the sacking of Constantinople was a source of ‘profound regret’ for Catholics.

 

Later, the pope and the archbishop met again at a place where Saint Paul had once preached to Athenian Christians. Here, they issued a common declaration, saying: ‘We will do everything in our power to ensure that the Christian roots of Europe, and its Christian soul, may be preserved. We condemn all recourse to violence, proselytism, and fanaticism in the name of religion.’

 

The two leaders then said the Lord’s Prayer together, an act which broke an Orthodox interdiction against praying with Catholics.