The Sacred Scroll (50 page)

And he couldn’t afford the time it’d take Lopez to get there, even if he boarded a plane immediately.

‘We have one chance,’ he said. ‘Graves is still equipped with a homing implant, isn’t she?’

‘Yes. If Adler hasn’t second-guessed it.’

‘Activate it.’

Marlow hung up. He glanced round the functional room he sat in. Plain white walls, grey woodwork, a plain blind covering the square window. Cold, flattening light. For a moment he felt helpless.

Unless Adler had specialists in his pocket – and Marlow already suspected the translation delay at Yale hadn’t originated from him – then Graves was the one person in the picture apart from himself and Lopez who had guaranteed knowledge of the tablet, and she was the only person who could interpret it. If Adler had all the data he needed, except the vital means of using the instructions which would open the door of unlimited power to him, then it followed that …

Wherever she was now, the tablet, and Adler, would be with her.

Adler had planned this every step of the way. If he knew about the tracker in Graves’s arm, they were lost.

The room was dark, wood-panelled, the only light – whether natural or artificial, she could not tell – filtering from windows which were mere slits high up in the walls. An indeterminate light. She couldn’t tell from it what time of day it was. It seemed slowly to be waning. It might have been approaching dusk.

She didn’t know how long she’d been there, didn’t know where she was. She estimated that she’d been conscious for maybe ten minutes since the drug they’d pumped into her had worn off. She was still groggy, but her eyes were able to focus and the headache she had was manageable. She was still dressed in the kimono she’d been wearing when they’d taken her, and her naked body felt vulnerable beneath it.

The room was simply furnished. There was a plain table, two simple wooden chairs, and the single bed on which she was lying. A cell, she thought. They’ve put me in a cell.

She had already raised herself on one elbow, and now she got unsteadily to her feet. Her head swam a little, but she kept her balance. She started to explore what little there was to explore in the room but, after a few steps, she had to sit down on one of the chairs. She’d noticed that there was one door, made of steel, with no handle or any other feature. The slits of windows were two metres
above her highest reach, even if she’d stood on the table, too narrow in any case for anyone to pass through, and had thick glass panes with no sign of any catches to open them.

So she was trapped.

She could guess who had captured her, and why. All she could do was wait.

She didn’t have to wait long.

They must have been watching her, for soon afterwards the door opened soundlessly, and an elegant man of perhaps fifty entered. Impeccably dressed in a charcoal-grey business suit. Not a hair out of place, and fine, delicate hands whose fingers tapered to immaculately manicured nails. He carried a small black leather case, which he placed on the table. She knew his face. It did not surprise her.

He was followed by the plump woman who’d been in her apartment, and a tall, bony, impossibly thin man. Both were incongruously clad in grey nylon boiler suits and wore surgeon’s gloves. Plastic goggles hung round their necks and their heads were covered in nylon surgeon’s caps. The man was carrying an oilcloth or tarpaulin, the kind you lay on floors to protect them when you’re decorating.

The door swung to behind them, and closed with the softest of clicks.

The man in the suit carefully unzipped the case he’d been carrying, and from it drew a grey velvet bag, from which he took a small oblong object which seemed to be made of terracotta. This he placed on the table before her, on top of its little bag. She knew immediately what it was.

‘If you’re counting on being rescued, don’t,’ the man said at last. ‘But I haven’t much time. I need your help. A little translation work.’

‘You won’t get it,’ Graves replied.

‘I think I will,’ he replied. ‘I could tell you that we are already watching your mother’s house in Mount Vernon. I could even tell you the house number and the name of the street. But you might still think I was bluffing, and that she could not be in any real danger. So …’

He reached into the case again and from it took two more objects, which he placed near him on the table. Graves looked at them and flinched. A scalpel and a pair of jeweller’s pliers. Behind her, she heard a discreet noise, and half turned to see the bony man shake out the oilcloth and spread it neatly on the floor.

‘My associates are rather expert with these simple tools,’ said Rolf Adler. ‘Take off your kimono.’

‘Let me help you, dear,’ said the plump woman, coming forward. The smell of patchouli oil was overpowering in that confined space. ‘Don’t struggle.’

She pulled the gown clear of Graves’s body and left it draped behind her on the chair. Graves tried to retrieve it, to stand, but she was still unsteady, and could not collect her thoughts. What little strength she’d regained now ebbed.

Adler regarded her gravely for a moment. Then, delicately, he picked up the pliers and handed them to the gaunt man, who stepped forward in turn to receive them and pulled his goggles up over his eyes.

‘Now,’ he said to Graves again. ‘I need your help.’

‘We’ve got a signal, but it’s faint,’ Lopez told Marlow. The secure New York/Berlin line was poor, and Marlow had to strain to catch his associate’s voice. ‘Shall I send it to you?’

Marlow moved to the window of his hotel room in a vain effort to improve the reception. ‘Tell me,’ he said. He didn’t want to involve his INTERSEC colleague in Berlin too closely. He was no longer sure how well any information could be contained. He looked at the large-scale map of Berlin and its immediate surroundings, spread out like a coverlet on the bed.

‘Place called Bönigsdorf. Tiny. About fifteen kilometres south-west of Potsdam. There’s a mansion just outside the village. Not a big place, but old. Very thick walls. Kind of mini-fortress. Modernized recently, stands alone in a walled garden, big, couple of acres. Nothing on security there.’

‘That’s where he’s gone to ground?’

‘That’s where Graves is, as far as the tracker is concerned.’

‘Do you think he’s wise to it?’

‘Jesus, I hope not.’

Neither of them voiced the fear they both shared. To separate Graves from the implant, Adler would have to cut it out of her arm. But he’d have to find it first.

‘I’ve got the place,’ said Marlow, pinpointing it on the map.

‘You could need backup.’

‘If I need it, I’ll call for it. I’ll check it out alone first.’

‘You’d better hurry.’

‘She won’t collaborate.’

‘He won’t give her any choice. And what if he doesn’t need her?’

‘To translate the thing? No, he had this planned. It’ll take him too long to get someone else he can trust to do it. He’s let us do all the groundwork for him.’

Marlow hung up. He swiftly changed into dark clothes – black jeans, soft matt-black boots, a rollneck of the same colour, over which he strapped the harness for his automatic. He clipped a Kevlar knife in its sheath to his belt and pulled on a black suede bomber jacket, stuffing black leather gloves into one of its pockets. Into the other he put a small spray canister. Then he went down to the garage and picked up the car he was using, a gunmetal-grey Porsche 911. From its boot he removed a PDR, his usual FN-P90, and two blast dispersal grenades.

He took a south-western route out of the city, into the light of the setting sun.

Once outside the city limits, the gathering darkness engulfed him and the roads became lonely. He drove fast but steadily, and had reached his destination by mid-evening. The place was as Lopez had described it. Marlow parked a hundred metres away, and walked down the country lane which led past the house. Everything was silent except for the gentle rushing of the faint breeze in the branches.

His senses were on full alert, but he was not challenged, nor could he detect any hint of anyone watching him.

He reached the wall and skirted it until he came to the gate. Very gently, he tested it – locked – and through its grille made his survey of what he could see of the house.

It stood on its own; he had not passed another building in the last kilometre, and there was no other he could see as he scanned a countryside which looked monochrome, shades of grey, in the light of a three-quarter moon. A square house, unornamented except for a modest portico surrounding the front door. Another door to the rear, and a third, on the west side, bricked up. Two floors of tall windows, and one upper storey where the windows were smaller; narrow slits of windows towards the base of the building, which indicated a basement or cellar of some sort. No visible outbuildings except for a double garage. The place was surrounded by a wall about three metres high, in which there was one entrance, an iron double gate from which a short drive led through neat gardens planted with dark-green trees and shrubs to the front door and the garage to the east of it. The gate and the garage doors were closed, and there was no sign of light in any of the windows, as far as Marlow could see, and in many places his view was impeded by the wall. He could not see the north side of the house at all.

It seemed impossible that there should be no guards, but it occurred to Marlow that Adler may have come here with only a skeleton crew. Like Marlow, he would want to keep his discovery close until he was completely sure that he could use it. But there would be electronic surveillance. Marlow would have to take that risk. From what he could
see, there were no cameras in the trees, but he’d have to take a chance on passive magnetic field detectors, microphonic or H-field systems.

The bars of the gate were set too closely together for him to squeeze through them, but the wall was scalable, and it wasn’t topped by razor wire or any other deterrent. Marlow walked round it until he was at a spot which he judged to be out of the sightlines of most of the windows. He bent his knees and leapt, succeeding the second time in getting a grip on the wall’s parapet, and with an effort he hauled himself up until he was straddling it. He crouched low, collecting his breath and listening keenly, just a shadow among other shadows. After waiting a full two minutes, he swung his outer leg over and, after a second’s further pause, dropped on to the grass below.

He remained crouched there, then cautiously made his way forward, using his spray canister to search for infra-red alarm lines. There could be fibre-optic detectors, as well, but he could see no E-field poles and there was still no evidence of CCTV cameras.

Silently as a cat, he came closer and closer to the house. He began to scan the windows for a possible way in. He’d have to keep as silent as ever and, even if the garden wasn’t wired, the house certainly would be. He was well armed, but he was alone. His only ace in the hole was the element of surprise.

He was ten metres from the nearest wall of the house when two low, dark shapes came hurtling round the far corner towards him. Low and silent, and very fast.

Dogs. Adler had chosen the oldest and most effective defence mechanism in the book.

There was no point in running. Too far to get back to the wall, the dogs would be on him in seconds. And no Mace spray. Marlow could take out one dog silently, but not two. He drew his automatic and crouched in readiness.

He was lucky. The leading dog came in for the attack first. Both Dobermans, long-muzzled beasts, which made his job easier, but vicious and lethal as Lugers. Marlow raised his left arm to give the dog something to go for, rising slightly as he did so and bracing himself for the weight of the animal’s body as it threw itself on him, jaws open, ready to latch on to the proffered target. As soon as it had, and Marlow felt its teeth worry at the thick leather of his jacket as it sought to bite through it to the flesh, he brought the gun up and smashed its butt down on the dog’s muzzle, up at the top, between the eyes. The beast died instantly, without even a yelp, and Marlow shook himself free to deal with its companion, which had been worrying his ankles, snarling, but not barking. Now the animal sensed danger and hesitated, looking Marlow in the eye, but not jumping up, as he had hoped it might. Impasse. Swiftly but steadily, he re-holstered the gun and drew the knife. The dog knew that it was not feared, and it showed doubt. Only seconds had passed. Marlow had to take advantage of the brute’s hesitation and strike, but the dog kept low.

Then it was too late. The animal reached a decision, turned and bolted back the way it had come.

Moments later, there was a confused sound of men’s voices. Rough voices, calling to each other in – what language? Slavonic, in any case. Lights came on in the house
and, as Marlow flattened himself against the wall, dark shapes appeared round the corners of the house on either side of him. Someone barked an order and in an instant the whole garden was bathed in the glaring, flat whiteness of searchlights. There was the ominous clicking of sub-machine-gun bolts.

There was nowhere to run. Praying that the glass of the window behind him wasn’t reinforced, Marlow smashed the stock of his PDR into the nearest pane. It shattered easily; old glass, maybe even the original glazing. No need to worry about setting off alarms inside now.

As the machine guns started to stutter, he hurled himself inwards through the low-silled window, shattering more glass and delicate wooden struts with his weight as he rolled over and over across the polished oak floor of the room beyond it.

No one there. Yet. He rose fast and turned back to the window. The guards, thundering up, were still bellowing at each other in what Marlow now recognized as Serbian. Not trained mercenaries; not for this kind of work, anyway. Far too incautious. He crouched by the window until he could tell his pursuers were close. Then he stood abruptly and brought the FN-P90 to bear, hammering out an arc of withering fire at face level and at point-blank range.

The silence after the deafening noise had echoed away was as deep as the sea. Somewhere in the silence, it seemed about a hundred kilometres away, the surviving Doberman whimpered in fear.