The Sacred Scroll (46 page)

‘Yes?’ said Marlow, registering the familiar name.

‘He was looking for an ancient temple which existed centuries prior to the building of the Church of Hagia Irina, on the same site. But he found something else, and the German authorities, in the shape of General Erich Ludendorff, were called in at his request.’

‘I see.’

‘Very few people were permitted on to the site. Koldewey worked alone after the initial excavations had been
made, and a crosscheck with his DNA, which is on record, was negative. It is therefore highly likely that the gloves were used by General Ludendorff.’

‘And what became of the findings – whatever artefacts they may have discovered?’

‘Normally, they should have stayed within Turkey, or within our jurisdiction. But the country was in turmoil at the time. There was a war going on and, within the country, the old regime was crumbling. The administration then in power permitted Koldewey to remove the artefacts to Germany.’ Demir paused. ‘That is what we have for you.’

‘You have indeed achieved the impossible.’

‘A full report is being prepared, and will be sent within twenty-four hours. But I thought you’d like to know the results of the findings as soon as possible. It was most fortunate that the damage done to our forensics department was less extensive than we at first anticipated.’

‘Good.’

‘But we do not now believe that the attack itself was Islamist-inspired,’ continued the colonel. ‘Any relevant information our investigation reveals will be communicated to you.’

‘Thank you, Colonel,’ said Marlow.

There was a further pause. Marlow checked his watch.

‘You may like to know that the funeral of Detective-Major Haki has taken place. He will be much missed by colleagues and friends.’

‘He was a fine man,’ said Marlow. ‘We are indebted to the work he put into this mission.’

‘Goodbye,’ said the colonel, his voice still as crisp and formal as before.

Marlow hung up then immediately dialled a number. He spoke briefly then dialled another.

He grabbed a coat, went down to the basement garage where the Corvette was parked and drove over to Graves’s apartment.

Lopez arrived five minutes after him, and Marlow briefed them both.

‘That places the tablet pretty much in Berlin,’ said Graves when he’d finished.

‘Supposition.’

‘More than likely. Something to go on.’

‘Even if it were there,’ said Marlow, ‘we’d still have to know where to look.’

‘But if the link is with Koldewey, we can narrow the field immediately,’ said Graves. ‘Give me a moment.’

She walked over to her computer and did three fast searches. She looked up from the screen minutes later: ‘There’s a 99.5 per cent likelihood that any artefacts Koldewey unearthed would have ended up at the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in Berlin, which later changed its name to the Bodemuseum. But there’s a snag. The Bode had a major refit – a massive overhaul – between 1996 and 2007, and all ancient artefacts were transferred to another place, the Vorderasiatisches Museum – what used, until recently, to be called the Pergamon. My guess is that’s where it’ll be.’

‘Jesus – that’s still a big haystack. Didn’t you brief me that there were over thirty thousand Babylonian tablets in the British Museum alone – and wasn’t that just the unclassified stuff? What if the Pergamon’s got a similar-sized collection?’

‘There may be a way of narrowing that down,’ said Lopez suddenly, his eyes keen behind his glasses.

Marlow looked at him. ‘You’ve got that other lead?’

‘Maybe.’

Lopez and Marlow exchanged another look: Lopez had redeemed his error; no need for Graves ever to know. Lopez signalled back: was it OK to speak of this in front of Graves? Marlow nodded.

‘I said there was a link close to home,’ Lopez began. ‘
Possibly
. I’ve followed up on the Swiss lawyer, Anton Hoffmann. You remember I told you he was killed by an intruder in his Bern office in 1949?’

‘Yes.’

‘This guy Guttmann, the one who sold Adhemar’s box to Lightoller and Steeples in Vienna, was a client of his. I’ve verified that now.’

‘Who with?’

‘Bern police. The Swiss never throw anything away.’

‘Not even stuff relating to a murder committed over sixty years ago?’

‘Still a cold case. They never found the lawyer’s killer. And the intruder got away with what must have been a suitcaseful of confidential records. What most of them were, we’ll probably never know. But the police impounded what documentation was left, as evidence, and they’ve still got it. Not much, but there’s a kind of ledger, a list of transactions, noting the dates of certain papers and dossiers, letters and so forth.’

‘You’ve accessed this?’

‘I played the INTERPOL card, and they scanned the entries for 1946. There’s one dated 4 February.’

‘Go on.’

‘Guttmann left a letter with the lawyer. There’s a note attached to say that another copy went into a safe-deposit box at a private bank’s offices in Bern, but we may not have to follow that copy up.’

‘Isn’t that the most obvious thing to do?’ asked Graves.

‘That might attract attention,’ said Lopez, ‘and we still don’t know who we’re up against. In any case, there could be a simpler route.’ The thing is, this letter is registered in the lawyer’s ledger as “Aloysius Guttmann/General Hans von Reinhardt.”’

‘So it’s possible that this Reinhardt was a Nazi fugitive?’ asked Graves.

‘It’s not only possible, it’s actual,’ replied Lopez. ‘Reinhardt’s listed as having died in Hitler’s bunker when the Russians took Berlin in 1945, but no body was ever found. He was a senior staff officer who built a career on the back of the Nazi regime and rose quickly. In the end, he was one of Hitler’s closest associates.’

Marlow and Graves remained silent as that fact sank in. Each knew what the other was thinking.

‘Then you mean he …?’ Marlow started to say, letting the question hang.

‘It’s a possibility.’

‘But it’s a long shot.’

‘Not if Reinhardt knew the box was empty when he sold it. It was certainly locked, but he didn’t have the key. No one did then. It was still in Dandolo’s tomb.’

‘So, if he did know the box was empty, he might have known where the tablet was,’ said Graves.

‘We need to know what was in that letter,’ said Marlow.
‘That means we have to get authority to open the safety-deposit box, if it still exists after more than sixty years.’

‘I told you there was a simpler route. And, as I said, it’s close to home.’

‘Meaning?’

‘The intruder who killed Hoffmann was one of ours. By 1949, things were winding up. Tracks needed to be covered. And there was a certain amount of house-cleaning to be done, especially in quarters which weren’t regarded as 100 per cent trustworthy.’

‘And Hoffmann was one of them?’

Lopez nodded. ‘Links to the Commies, apparently. Never proven, but better, I guess our colleagues from those days thought, to be safe than sorry. As it was, Hoffmann had kept records which would have compromised us if they’d ever fallen into the wrong hands.’

‘You say this intruder was one of ours?’ said Marlow.

‘Hoffmann worked for the OSS. From as early as 1943, he was passing certain documents to it, which he thought might be connected to Axis powers war criminals.’ Lopez leaned back. ‘And all the OSS files – which would have included that kind of material – found their way eventually into the archives of the organization the OSS eventually became.’

Graves drew in her breath. ‘The CIA,’ she said.

They looked at each other.

‘You’re wasted at Columbia,’ Graves said to Lopez.

‘Just part of the job. I’m shit at field-work.’

‘You’ve never tried it.’

Marlow and Lopez exchanged the briefest look.

‘Anyway, I’m better off the way I am,’ said Lopez. ‘Moonlighting like this.’

‘So we’d better get on to Langley,’ said Graves.

‘Yes,’ Marlow agreed. ‘But for that we’ll have to go through Sir Richard. I can’t pursue things in that direction without his authority. This is just too hot. And too urgent.’
Which means I’ll have to trust him
, he thought.

‘You want me to draw up a request?’ asked Graves.

‘I’ll see him personally,’ Marlow replied. To Lopez he said: ‘You’re certain no one else has seen this information? You haven’t had any of it routed through an open computer?’

‘Initial information only.’

‘What, exactly?’

‘Reinhardt’s identity. The existence of the letter.’

‘Could anyone armed with that information do anything with it – as you did?’

‘Not if they hadn’t made the connection, and I don’t see how –’

‘Bern police?’

‘Nothing we can do about that.’

‘Yes there is. Tell them to shut down access. Now. Full INTERSEC authority. Even the Swiss will have to bow to that.’ Marlow paused, thinking. ‘And nothing on paper or on file about this. Nothing in the computer system. Lopez, trash anything you’ve got that’s in an open or official INTERSEC channel. But put it all on a protected stick before you do and keep it safe. Put it under Alvar’s mattress, or Lucia’s. Hide it in a computer-game box.’

‘That’s about the least secure place I can think of,’ said
Lopez. ‘But I’ll manage.’ His eyes said,
You trust me again –- thank you
.

But Marlow was looking out of the window at the night city. He had to know, now, who they were up against. Whatever it took, however great the risk, he had to flush out the enemy. Bring them into the open so they could be shot down. Getting to the tablet first wouldn’t be enough. His enemy was cunning, baffling and powerful. He would never give up while he still had cover.

There was one line of attack open to him. It tore at his heart to take it, but he’d have to face the truth, and redeem himself, as Leon had, one day, and it had better be now.

Rule number one of the hunter: lull the quarry into a sense of security, lull it into thinking it is in a position it can trust.

Then strike.

Everything was in position. The few discreet questions he’d asked her had established that INTERSEC’s adversaries were not in possession of the Babylonian tablet. The questions had not aroused any suspicion. She still thought she was safe, and in control.

Only Leon knew the whole truth, and he needed Leon. Leon had set up the surveillance and could follow anything that happened from its source to its destination. It was that simple. And he could trust his associate, because Leon was in his debt.

When he’d told Leon of his suspicions, his friend had been first wary, then shocked. In the telling, Marlow, taking stock of himself, had been shocked too. Out in the open, the truth sounded so naked, so banal.

Marlow raised himself on one elbow in the bed and looked down at her. Asleep, she looked so delicate, so vulnerable, that he could still hardly bring himself to believe what he knew to be the truth – any more than he could believe that his loneliness and his broken heart could have induced him to such folly. But it was done, it could be corrected, and the bonus was that he could turn it to his advantage.

Still, he had to tread carefully. The sound of the snapping of the smallest twig underfoot, and the quarry would bolt.

This wasn’t revenge. Just business. His business. He had no room in his heart for revenge. It was too numb for that.

She must have sensed his gaze on her, if she had been sleeping, for now she stirred, and her eyes opened. She looked at him with those eyes, which he had, until now, thought enigmatic and charming. He had been blind. Her eyes weren’t enigmatic, but blank; they revealed nothing.

He wondered if her hand might come up to stroke his cheek, but it stayed where it was, immobile. Hands which could be so voraciously explorative when they were making love were as incapable of tenderness as the eyes. He now faced what he had long realized: no matter how ferocious – even aggressive – her lovemaking had been, there had never been any warmth in it. In fact, they had never
made love
; they had simply fucked. From her, there had, after all, been no giving, only taking. Only the truly vulnerable would fall for that, and Marlow, seeing that clearly now, as clearly as a drunk emerging from an alcoholic haze looks back on his folly, inwardly cursed himself for the chink in his armour.

‘I missed you,’ she said, smiling. The words were inert. The mouth that smiled now had been voracious, too.

‘I missed you too,’ Marlow replied, trying to inject some warmth into his voice. What a sham.

He knew now, of course, why his enemy had been able to keep pace with him. But this time he had fed her – his
enemy’s source all along – enough information
deliberately
. This time she would be tracked. Tracked, and trapped.

The question remained of not only who she was working with, but why.

He mustn’t underestimate her intelligence; he had to keep one step ahead. The opposite side had organized everything exquisitely well. Everything, from the sham memory-loss and the pretended vulnerability to his seduction had been done with a ruthless efficiency. Only a consummate actor or a psychopath would have been able to carry it all off so convincingly, and it had been helped by the mock-abduction which had resulted in the murder of Ben Duff. It was clear now that INTERSEC had been allowed to thwart it; it had been stage-managed to allay any ghost of suspicion. Just like the set-up at Zwinger and Dels – a delaying tactic which might have signalled his own death.

But Marlow had the advantage now. His meeting with Sir Richard had gone well. Hudson, after only the briefest of interrogations, had passed on INTERSEC’s request to his opposite number in the CIA, who had responded with speed, undertaking with Sir Richard to override the usual bureaucracy. Hudson had warned his counterpart of the urgency of the transaction, but Marlow knew that no secret service was ever as efficient in reality as it was in books. Nevertheless, he had extracted an agreement that the Reinhardt letter was to be forwarded directly to him at Room 55. INTERSEC had an internationally backed remit. It was their case. They should have first call on the document.