The Sacred Scroll (41 page)

Berlin, the Present

It was the best news.

He was sitting at his desk. Night had fallen, and Berlin glowed beneath him, bathed in thousands of lights. The office, illuminated only by the desk-lamp, was wrapped in deep shadows. The red glow from the MAXTEL neon on the roof found its way into the room, and stained his face and hands.

He reread the translation he held in his hands. It had taken twenty-four hours longer than he’d hoped, but it brought him a step nearer his goal. The box had been traced. Meanwhile, his assistants in Venice and at Yale were working on the code in the Frid document, which they had, so far, been unable to break.

The code held the secret, Adler was certain. But if all went well he could manage without it. Once he had the box. No one had been able to open it, as far as he knew, since it was last locked, nine hundred years before. And he had the key.

He had gone to so much trouble and expense over those damned archaeologists. But he knew from their special qualifications that he wasn’t the only one, apart from INTERSEC, interested in the box. He wasn’t the only one who knew Dandolo’s secret, careful as he’d been
to cover the tracks of his own investigation. But the manner of their deaths would have sent a warning to his competitors. They’d know someone was wise to them.

But who were they? And was INTERSEC working for them?

But why worry? Once he had the box, and had opened it, any competition would be neutralized.

He looked at his watch, waiting impatiently for the call from New York. At last, at 8 p.m., 2 p.m. EST, it came.

The telephone barely had a chance to complete one ring.

‘Yes?’ he said, tonelessly.

The voice at the other end was measured. No panic, no urgent need to propitiate him before getting to the point. He liked that.

‘I mentioned they had a lead,’ said the voice.

‘Yes.’

‘They’ve narrowed the field down.’

‘Tell me.’

‘The targeted item is selling at Sotheby’s on York Avenue here. Lot 4249.’

‘Guaranteed what we want?’

‘Worth the gamble.’

‘Reserve?’

‘$100,000.’

Adler came close to laughing. The box was as good as his. ‘When?’

‘Friday.’

‘Time?’

‘Ten a.m. 4249 is fifth up. Morning session.’

‘We’ll cover it. Who’s bidding for them?’

‘My guess is Marlow.’

‘In person?’

‘Yes.’

‘Seems risky.’

‘We know what he’s like. He’ll want to view the room. Look for us. No one knows him, he thinks. No photographs, no public ID anywhere.’

Adler saw that. A man like Marlow would have no traceable public documents; not a tax record, not a bank or any other account, not a driving licence, no birth certificate, no property deeds, nothing. But he had left clues about his life, despite himself. And exploiting those was Adler’s main strength now. He congratulated himself on his success in that direction so far.

‘Other bidders of interest to us?’ he went on.

‘Three big museums. Two important private collectors.’

‘Check their limits.’

There was a pause.

‘Are you coming over?’

‘Yes,’ said Adler.

‘How will you bid?’

‘Phone.’

‘Won’t you do that ex-Berlin?’

Adler smiled to himself. ‘I need to be there.’

Adler hung up without saying more. The tension left his shoulders. He felt the elation he always felt when battle was about to be joined. But battles should never have unknown outcomes. He picked up the yellow phone, and tapped in a number.

He had to be sure this was a battle he would win.

New York City, the Present

The auction room was two-thirds full, but it was still early. Marlow and Graves sat five rows back, aisle seats with a view of the auctioneer and the lots. Graves had been to the viewing and examined the box. The lid had a raised relief of an eagle, its wings outstretched, its talons ready to clutch, and its head down, beak poised. Around the sides of the box, people and animals cowered in various attitudes of terror and prayer. Only one man, in the centre at the front, was bold enough to stand tall, his arms held up, his hands holding a small, irregularly shaped object. The box stood on simple ball feet. It gleamed under the halogen spot which lit it. It looked brand-new, not a trace of wear or damage. But for the artistic style of the moulding, you would not have guessed its true age.

Five INTERSEC agents, three female, two male, were seated elsewhere in the room, three discreetly scanning the bidders in the saleroom, two ready to watch the telephone bidders ranged along one wall near the auctioneer’s lectern. Lopez sat towards the rear, away from them.

When Lot 4249 came up, the room had filled to 80 per cent capacity. Lopez recognized two department heads of big American museums, one of them the Met. He picked
up German and French voices. The smell of money was palpable.

No sealed bids, and no online interest, or from the House. That was unusual, but Marlow let it go, for there
was
interest – strong interest – from seven or eight people right from the start, including three on the telephones, and within a minute the box had passed its reserve.

An elegant woman with dark-red, curly hair dressed in Vivienne Westwood raised a gloved hand a fraction, to bid $150,000. Marlow noticed she wore a hearing-aid.

‘Do I see $160,000?’ The crisp, English voice of the auctioneer, Marlborough or Wellington to his fingertips, rang out.

A bear of a German in a charcoal suit nodded discreetly.

‘170?’

A nod from a smart girl on the first phone.

‘180?’

A bearded man in tinted glasses shook his head and looked down at his catalogue, making a note with his pen. The redhead raised a fingertip once more.

‘190?’

The price passed $200,000, and it was down to three in the room against two on the phones.

When it hit $250,000, one of the phone bidders hung up.

‘We’re done, too,’ said Graves. But Marlow raised his hand again. The enormous German across the room hesitated, then raised his.

‘We’re done, Jack,’ insisted Graves.

‘No we’re not,’ he replied. He grinned. ‘You know how it is – everything goes over budget.’

Graves looked over her shoulder towards the back of the room, hoping to catch Lopez’s eye, but she couldn’t see him. The room was now full, and the atmosphere was beginning to show heat.

By $300,000, only one of the phone bidders remained.

‘310?’

A nod from the German.

‘320?’

A fingertip from the redhead.

At $370,000, the German pursed his lips. At $400,000, he signalled that he was out.

Now the room was humming; the item had passed five times its reserve. It was between Marlow, the redhead and the phone bidder.

‘They’ll kill you for this,’ said Graves, sotto voce.

‘Perhaps.’

‘Stop.’

‘It’ll go on Adler’s bill. And how can we stop?’

Graves sat back, her face set.

At $750,000, the redhead, looking as if she’d just lost her mother, closed her catalogue and crossed her legs, sitting back.

‘Are we sure?’ asked the auctioneer.

The woman hesitated, momentarily putting a hand to her deaf-aid. Then she changed her mind, smiled, and the fingertip went up.

Still a three-horse race.

Adler, in the Grand Suite at the Pierre, followed the progress of the auction on the television link to his laptop, and scowled. Decision made, he reached for the
yellow cell-phone, one of three on the table next to him. He spoke into it briefly. The Cottbus-boy in him wasn’t going to part with that much money for something he could get for nothing. And there was another consideration. That
Scheißkästchen
Marlow was well past his limit, and he mustn’t get the box at any cost.

The price had hit $900,000 when the telephone bidder hung up. The redhead had just raised her finger to up it another fifty against Marlow when the auctioneer faltered, his attention caught by a disturbance at the back of the room. Seconds later, a stutter of automatic fire shattered the plasterwork of the ceiling. It tumbled in chips and flakes on to the yelling people below, who parted like the Red Sea, stumbling over chairs and each other in a scramble to get out of range.

A broad aisle was created in the space vacated by bidders and spectators, an aisle which led straight down the centre of the room from the main doorway to the auctioneer’s lectern and the podium on which it stood. The auctioneer grasped its sides, frozen. The attendant standing by the box where it lay on a small table covered with a plum-coloured velvet cloth, crouched down.

At the far end of the aisle five hooded figures in combat gear fanned out, two on each side, while the fifth made his way fast down the length of the room to the podium. Each had a nylon belt at his waist, attached to which were a Kevlar commando-knife and a holster from which projected the butt of a Walther P99. In the hands of the four covering the room were new Magpul PDRs, and it was from one of these that the rapid fire had come.

Marlow, bent low with an arm protectively round Graves’s back, took in the weapons at a glance. These were no ordinary criminals. He risked a look round the room, but couldn’t see Lopez or any of the other INTERSEC operatives. He hoped they’d see sense. This was no place to start a gun battle, let alone against such formidable arms.

Two more salvoes followed, low over the heads of the cowering crowd, as the leader of the group reached the podium and snatched the box from the table, placing it in a soft black pouch slung across his shoulders. The attendant collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, while the auctioneer, chalk-white, found time to thank God that the lectern he stood at hid from view the wet stain which had flowered at his groin.

A minute later, the attack force had gone, leaving a silence in the room as profound as the seabed. The redhead was nowhere to be seen; nor was the attendant who’d taken the telephone bid.

For two days the media had screamed about it. But there had been no deaths, not even any casualties, so the news wasn’t hot. Who cared about an antique fought over by a handful of privileged people? A spokesman for Sotheby’s appeared on Sky News, and the big German was interviewed by NDR and the
Frankfurter Allgemeine
. He’d been bidding for the Bodemuseum in Berlin.

‘We’ve got to find it,’ said Graves.

‘And we’ve got to crack the code in Frid Eyolfson’s letter,’ said Marlow. ‘We’re not the only people working on it.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Lopez nervously.

‘Whoever has the original document your mysterious contact sent us knows as much as we do.’

‘Or as little,’ said Graves.

‘That’s a slim, slim chance and we can’t make any assumptions based on it,’ replied Marlow. ‘They may know more already. The essential thing is, they’ve got the box and the key, which means they’ve got the tablet.’

‘
That’s
an assumption,’ said Lopez.

‘Everything links the tablet to that box,’ replied Graves.

‘But there’s no evidence yet that anyone is using the tablet.’

Lopez was silent, thinking.

‘No trace of who sent the document?’ Marlow asked him.

‘Nothing so far,’ Lopez replied, thinking,
now would be my chance to tell them
.

‘The INTERSEC backup at Sotheby’s only knew what they had to,’ Marlow said. ‘If we have to do a major sweep, we’ll have to be more candid than we have been with Sir Richard.’

‘Can we avoid that?’ said Graves.

‘That’s what I’m hoping. But I want you back at your apartment soonest, to report on those five lines of cipher. Go back to the inscription on the key. The codes must be linked. Sort out the bridge.’

‘Who was bidding against us?’ asked Lopez suddenly.

‘One of them was a bad loser,’ said Marlow. ‘And it wasn’t the redhead.’

‘Why bid at all, if you were going to come in and grab the thing anyway?’ said Graves.

‘That was a last resort – we went too high for them.’

‘There was the woman – the redhead,’ said Graves.

‘And there was the phone-bid, the last one left standing,’ said Lopez.

‘Neither of them showed any sign of stopping when the auction was interrupted,’ said Marlow. ‘Except for the moment with the deaf-aid.’

‘What?’ said Graves.

‘The deaf-aid. She hesitated but then she continued – as if she’d got authorization to go on. And it wasn’t a deaf-aid.’

‘She was pretty distinctive,’ said Lopez. ‘We could give a description to the cops.’

‘The hair was a wig – could have been, anyway – and
once she’s taken off the Westwood outfit, she’s as anonymous as she wants to be,’ said Graves.

‘Get someone up here to do a facial composite,’ said Marlow. ‘Then put it direct through a secure server with the FBI, see if they’ve got any matches if we haven’t.’

‘Jeez, how many people do you want to involve?’

‘Use the INTERPOL cover. And see if we can trace the call. The phone bidder. There had to be someone on the other end of that line. It’s possible there’ll be an electronic record. And Sotheby’s CCTV. Do they have an outside camera?’

‘Sure thing.’

‘The box was already close to ten times its face value when the bidder lost patience. And that redhead – who knows how high she was authorized to go?’ Marlow paused. ‘Something else: how did our competitor get wind of the auction, and make the connection as fast as we did?’

‘There’s material on the interior CCTV,’ Lopez reported to Marlow later.

‘Shoot.’

‘Clear images, but they don’t do us much good. Three of them were slightly built.’

‘Women can handle those lightweight weapons as easily as men. They think more clinically too – maybe that’s why the operation was so well handled. Have you thrown out a net?’

‘Yes. But they’ll be long gone by now. Better footage from outside.’

‘Go on.’

‘Arrival and getaway. Three motorbikes, all Vulcan 900s, got a number-plate on one. Tracked it.’