The Messiah Secret (15 page)

And that could mean the treasure, whatever it was, was still buried out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered.

Angela had decided to start her search by researching references to ‘the Valley of the Flowers,’ but this had soon proved frustrating – there seemed to be flower-filled valleys almost everywhere, in virtually every country. But finding places that were known by that name in the first century
AD
had proved to be considerably more difficult.

She sighed and stretched her back to ease the tension she was feeling. She had found three locations in ancient Persia that more or less fitted the bill. None of them, as far as she could tell, had actually been called the ‘Valley of the Flowers’, but all three had names that included the word ‘flowers’ or a synonym. The best match was a place called the ‘gorge of blossoms’, if her translation of the old Persian name was correct, and she guessed that it was one of the locations Bartholomew Wendell-Carfax had investigated because she’d found two references in the museum records to surveys being carried out there in the first
half of the twentieth century by teams from Britain.

There were no indications of the identity of the sponsors of those teams, or the names of any of those involved, and of course the word ‘survey’ could cover almost any type of investigation, but Angela reckoned it was a fair bet that old Bartholomew had been there. However, it also meant he hadn’t found what he was looking for.

What she didn’t know was how thorough he’d been. Had he and his men just ambled up and down the gorge looking for the ‘place of stone’, or had they done a proper, in-depth survey, checking for hidden caves and underground chambers?

The Persian text stated that the people who’d buried the treasure had fashioned the hiding place with their own hands. Angela didn’t have a date when this was done, but the age of the Hillel fragment meant it had to have been no later than the first century
AD
, and that in turn meant the hiding place was probably a fairly simple structure. Unless the ‘trusted followers’ included a large slave-labour force, skilled masons and a lot of equipment, the ‘place of stone’ had to be reasonably basic, and would probably have made use of some natural feature – a cave or something like that. And as it
was
a place of concealment, a location where the treasure
was
intended to remain securely hidden for all eternity, if her guess at one of the missing words was correct, it would by definition not be easy to detect. So just how thorough had Bartholomew been?

There was, of course, a more important question: had
he been looking in the right valley? Or even in the right country? She looked again at the search results for the whole of the Middle East. Altogether, she’d identified almost fifty locations spanning countries from Turkey to India. Any one of them could be the place she was looking for, which meant she had no real idea where to start. If this was going to work, she’d have to find some way of narrowing the search parameters.

It was time she tried to track down the other reference – to the ‘treasure of the world’.

Richard Mayhew was actually quite glad that Angela Lewis and her irritating ex-husband had left the team. She had a way of getting his back up, of usurping his authority, and she was one of those people who always thought they were right. What made it particularly galling for Mayhew – who shared this trait with her – was that she usually
was
right.

She’d correctly guessed that there had been a burglar at Carfax Hall, and had then managed to persuade her ex-husband to frighten him off. Mayhew wasn’t entirely sure how he’d done that, although there was an air of menace about Chris Bronson that Mayhew found disturbing. He guessed he was a good police officer, because he could be very intimidating. Mayhew, a man of delicate sensibilities, thought that Bronson was a brute.

Anyway, they’d both gone, which suited him fine. And their work at the Hall was now complete. The individual
specialists had prepared their inventories, listing all the items they’d assessed, their historical importance, and where possible their likely commercial value. All he had to do now was collate their data, write a covering letter with his overall assessment of the collections and present the final report to his superior at the British Museum. Then he could get back to his regular work.

But, he reflected, as he stepped outside the Hall for the last time on that Friday evening and looked up at the crumbling masonry of the old building, it hadn’t been an entirely unpleasant interlude. A week in the country, all expenses paid, engaged on what amounted to an academic treasure hunt – there were definitely much worse ways to spend one’s time.

These pleasant thoughts were interrupted by a brisk tap on his shoulder. Mayhew jumped – the rest of the team had left about a quarter of an hour earlier, and he knew he was alone at the building.

He spun round, and came face to face with one of his personal nightmares.

The man standing in front of him was shorter than Mayhew, perhaps five feet six, and stocky, with the solid bulk that comes from hard physical exercise. A bandage covered his left ear and that side of his face, and his dark unblinking eyes seemed to sear into Mayhew’s soul.

The man’s physical appearance was disturbing enough, but what Mayhew found alarmingly difficult to reconcile was the clerical collar the stranger wore at the neck of his
black shirt, and the pistol in his right hand, a pistol that was aimed directly at him.

Mayhew caught his breath. ‘Who are you? What do you want?’

‘One question at a time, fat boy,’ the man said, his voice quiet and measured, his accent American and the words simple but delivered with such menace that Mayhew felt his bowels loosening.

‘I’ve got no money,’ he stammered.

‘I don’t want your money. I just want you. Open the door you’ve just locked and get back inside the building.’

Mayhew looked around him frantically. He needed help.

The stranger chuckled softly. ‘There’s nobody here but us. Just get that through your thick skull. I could kill you right here, right now, and nobody would even hear the shot. So move before I do just that.’

Mayhew’s hands were trembling so much that it took him three tries before he got the key into the lock.

‘Get a move on,’ the man snapped, poking his gun into Mayhew’s back.

Finally the door swung open. Mayhew staggered as a powerful hand shoved him forwards, almost fell, then regained his footing as the door slammed behind him. Turning back he saw the American gangster – despite the clerical collar, what else could the man be? – putting the key into his pocket.

‘Go into the kitchen,’ the man said, pointing towards the back of the house.

Mayhew nodded dumbly and led the way. It never occurred to him to wonder how the man could possibly know where the kitchen was located.

‘What do you want from me?’ Mayhew asked again, once he was in the kitchen.

The man ignored his question, gesturing with his pistol to a wooden armchair standing in one corner of the room. ‘Take off your jacket, then go and sit down.’

Mayhew placed his jacket on the table, then walked across to the chair.

The man followed him, pulled a handful of plastic cable ties from his pocket and tossed one to Mayhew. ‘Put that around your right wrist and pull it tight,’ he ordered, and watched closely as Mayhew obeyed him. ‘That’s good,’ he said, stepping closer and securing Mayhew’s left wrist to the other arm of the chair. Then he drew a small pair of pliers from his pocket and pulled both cable ties tight.

Mayhew grimaced as the thin plastic cut into the flesh of his wrists.

The man pulled another chair across and sat down opposite him, laying the pistol on the kitchen table. From one of the inside pockets of his jacket he drew a leather whip with multiple steel-tipped thongs and placed it beside the automatic.

Gulping for air, Mayhew watched his actions with increasing trepidation.

‘This is a scourge,’ the man said conversationally, looking down at the whip. ‘It’s one of the oldest implements of chastisement, used for both punishment and persuasion, and even for self-flagellation. The name is derived from the Latin
excoriare
, meaning “to flay” and
corium
, “skin”, and it was used by the Romans to punish offenders. It’s been used through the ages in monastic orders around the world, and I’ll introduce you to it in a moment. Then I’m going to ask you some questions. I suggest you answer them as quickly, fully and accurately as you can.’

The man removed his jacket, picked up the scourge and stepped towards the wooden armchair.

‘No, wait,’ Mayhew shouted desperately. ‘I’ll tell you anything I can.’

‘I know you will. There’s not the slightest doubt about that.’

‘No. Please – please wait—’

‘Be silent. Remember that our Lord Jesus Christ endured a scourging during His Passion, before He was made to carry His cross to Calvary. This holy instrument will simply encourage your cooperation and ensure your recollections are accurate.’

The man turned so that he was facing his captive, then swung the scourge against Mayhew’s chest, the steel-tipped ends of the thongs ripping apart the thin cotton of his shirt and carving furrows across his torso.

Mayhew howled in pain and leaned back as far as he could in the chair. His fists clenched and more blood
appeared around the cable ties as the thin plastic cut deep into his wrists.

The man moved around to the other side of the chair, changed his grip on the scourge and swung it again. Then he moved back to his own chair and sat down.

After a couple of minutes, Mayhew’s howls of pain had subsided to low moans of agony.

‘Now,’ the man said, ‘we’ll start at the beginning – tell me everything you know about Bartholomew’s Folly.’

Whatever Mayhew had been expecting, this wasn’t it.

‘But it’s just a story, a story about a stupid man who lost a fortune searching for something that wasn’t there.’

‘Then it won’t be a problem for you to tell me all about it, will it?’

Mayhew shook his head. ‘No, but I mean . . .’ His voice trailed away into silence.

The man picked up his scourge, as Mayhew gathered his thoughts, and quickly explained everything he knew or had read about Bartholomew Wendell-Carfax’s abortive expeditions to Persia.

‘I’ve read all that in one of the guidebooks,’ the man snapped. ‘I need more information. Why do you think he was just wasting his time?’

‘What?’

‘Five minutes ago you told me Bartholomew Wendell-Carfax was just – and I quote – “a stupid man who lost a fortune searching for something that wasn’t there.”
Unquote. That’s what you said. So how do you know it wasn’t there?’

‘Well, I don’t
know
that, of course,’ Mayhew wailed. ‘What I said was an educated guess.’

‘So educate me. Give me your reasons.’

Mayhew paused, trying desperately to think clearly amid the waves of panic and fear that were threatening to overwhelm him.

‘There are two reasons,’ he said finally. ‘First, the fragment of Persian text probably dated from the first century
AD
, and it’s likely that in the next two thousand years somebody would have stumbled across this so-called treasure – if it ever existed – and recovered it.’

‘And the second reason?’

‘From everything I’ve read, Bartholomew Wendell-Carfax had no real idea of where to look. He might not even have been searching in the right country. The only clue to the location was the “valley of the flowers”, and I suspect that that would have been a fairly common-place name in many cultures around that time. Unless, of course, the remainder of the fragment Bartholomew found contained some other information that we don’t have.’

‘You mean what’s printed in that guidebook isn’t the whole translation?’

‘No.’ Mayhew struggled briefly against his restraints. It was no good – he was held fast. ‘If you read the section, you can see that what’s contained is only the part of the text that Bartholomew showed to Oliver. He must have
kept the rest of it hidden somewhere. Oliver spent quite a lot of his time in later life looking for the original, and that’s the reason for all the damaged walls in the house. He was certain there was a hidden passage or panel somewhere that held the Persian parchment.’