The Sacred Scroll (45 page)

‘An Austrian?’

‘Or German. The name Guttmann may have been assumed anyway. There were a lot of senior SS and Gestapo trying to get away in the mid-1940s, turning precious objects which they’d either looted or requisitioned into cash to pay the fare to South America and set them up in new lives.’ Lopez paused. ‘This Guttmann disappeared without trace, but he may have been one of the
three unidentified fatalities of a train crash between Vienna and Zurich which occurred a couple of days after the transaction. There was also a note in the paperwork giving the address of a firm of lawyers in Bern. It’s long gone out of business, but its records are intact. The firm was wound up after the senior partner, Anton Hoffmann, was shot dead by an intruder at his offices in 1949. That’s all a matter of record, it was just a question of following it up.’

‘But it still brings us to a dead end,’ said Marlow. ‘The German connection’s a long shot, though it’s worth pursuing. Too many “maybes”, Leon.’

‘Not necessarily. It seems from the 1949 Bern police reports that the intruder who killed Hoffmann wasn’t after the cash in the safe. But Hoffmann had certain connections, and papers in his keeping may have compromised them. Some of the papers he passed on to, let’s say, confidential clients with special interests in them. But he kept copies, as a kind of insurance.’

‘Which was bad news for him in the end,’ said Marlow.

‘It looks like it.’

‘We’ve still got to find the tablet,’ said Graves.

‘I wonder if Robert Koldewey took it,’ Marlow said, thinking of the gloves. ‘I wonder if he knew what it was.’

‘Which would mean that it could have ended up where?’

‘In Berlin.’

‘There’s a lead I can follow,’ said Lopez after a moment’s thought.

‘Where does it go?’ asked Marlow.

‘Can’t say yet, but if I’m right, it comes very close to home.’

Berlin, the Present

Now? Now they were going to withdraw support? Now, when he was so close to his goal?

‘I have told you repeatedly,’ he said to the three men once again assembled before him, but this time in the windowless conference room on the eighteenth floor of MAXTEL’s office building in Berlin, ‘this is not the moment.’

‘Our principals are not happy,’ said Vijay Mehta. ‘We have all invested deeply in your project because of our long association with you. It is time to cut our losses.’

Rolf Adler held the Indian’s eyes for a moment before turning to the others. Both Guang Chien and Sergei Kutusov returned his gaze steadily, hard-eyed.

‘By pulling out now, you risk losing everything we have worked for,’ said Adler. ‘Almost within our grasp is the instrument which will give us total control. No market fluctuations, no wars –
nothing
– can possibly affect us again; and natural disasters can be predicted with accuracy, their consequences planned for in advance.’

‘The key word in that little speech is “almost”,’ said Chien.

‘After all, we have only ever had your word,’ added Kutuzov. ‘The effectiveness of your business makes us
take you seriously. But we are beginning to think that your project is mere fantasy.’

‘Is unlimited business control – the control of nations – so fantastic? It has been attempted before in history with great success.’

‘Never lasting,’ said Mehta.

‘This time it
will
be lasting. And we can hand it on to our chosen successors. The East – the countries you represent – holds the key to the future. The economies of the West have passed the tipping-point. We all know that. In the past, men looked towards the West for new opportunities; now, it is the turn of the East.’

He had not told them all he knew, of course. He needed their support right up until the moment when he could turn on them and discard them, along with their worthless and narrow-minded visions of mere financial control. Adler knew what he wanted – to control Destiny itself. After that, MAXTEL, its satellites already in place above the earth, would replace God, through its radio, internet and television arms, for a grateful and obedient world. That world would become his plaything.

He thought back over his researches. Adhemar had partially understood the meaning of the tablet. Even he, with his meagre comprehension, had achieved some success. Dandolo had gained more, but could not dominate every dissident voice. Adler did not know into whose hands the tablet had passed, since – as he guessed – it had been unearthed a century ago. Perhaps it had lain forgotten in some vault, not understood at all. Not finding it among the discoveries of the archaeologists Adkins, Taylor and Montserrat, he’d guessed that Dandolo’s tomb
had been opened before, and his researches had led him to suspect the interference of the archaeologists of the colonial period. British? No, not British. They had never held more than a precarious position in Asia Minor; but Germany, his own country, had. The tablet was close, perhaps even, and in mockery of his own frustrated search, in this city – his city!

And
he
understood the tablet fully, better than anyone before. He had had the benefit of eight more centuries of knowledge and research to draw on.

It was so close. He could feel it. But these three henchmen who now came crying to him because their creditors were on their heels for the money they, in turn, had lent him threatened to ruin everything. MAXTEL, unknown to anyone but them, had taken a serious knock in the fiscal crisis of 2008. But it would recover. It
had
recovered, though there was still work to do. Hence his need for these wretches in the first place. But, within days now, he was sure, he need never fear the unexpected again.

He had to give a sharp pull on the reins of these people. Fortunately, he still had it within his power to do so.

‘May I remind you, gentlemen, that our joint ventures over the years have included operations which, if exposed to public view before we have complete control, would be enough to bring us – or rather, you – down, as disastrously as Icarus fell when he flew too close to the sun.’

The men looked at each other. They knew what he was talking about.

‘You wouldn’t dare – you are as compromised as we would be, in such a case,’ said Mehta.

‘I think not,’ replied Adler. ‘I think you will find that there are no records anywhere to connect either me personally, or MAXTEL as an organization, with any of the … hobbies … we have indulged in together.’

‘Rubbish,’ spat Kutuzov. ‘There is nothing more obvious than your club in New York, Zara la Salope, to begin with. That alone, linked to your name, would send your stockholders fleeing.’

‘You do not have access to any of my accounts or business histories,’ rejoined Adler. ‘On the other hand, your interests, and yours, and yours,’ he continued, turning to Chien and Mehta in turn, ‘are less secure. Your companies are not as strong, even together, to be a match for MAXTEL.’

Kutuzov threw him a sceptical look. ‘Bluff,’ he said.

‘Do you wish to call this bluff?’ asked Adler. ‘I can give you chapter and verse on everything you do. Let me down now, and you will fall.’

‘You have no proof of anything,’ said Chien.

‘You are right to be sceptical,’ replied Adler. ‘You each have a computer terminal in front of you. I invite you to enter the name of any one of your companies, and you will see it linked to sexual exploitation, drugs, the trade in human organs, under-the-counter arms deals with the most insalubrious regimes. It’s all there, gentlemen. MAXTEL, on the other hand, is inviolable. You were too greedy to question me when you needed backing, and that was your weakness. You trusted me. I have learned that, to get what you want from a creature as fickle as a human being, you need to rely on something rather stronger than trust. You need to have something on them. You need to rely
on their own sense of self-preservation. That is the only factor that counts.’ Adler watched them, changing his tone judiciously. ‘But don’t take my word for it. After all, that would mean trusting me, wouldn’t it? And you don’t want to fall into that trap again.’

He watched as each of them reluctantly applied themselves to the glass-thin terminals neatly placed in front of them on the huge conference table.

It didn’t take them long.

‘We still have to
trust
that this project of yours will repay us,’ said Kutuzov sullenly, after a long pause.

‘And with dividends,’ added Chien. Mehta had been plunged into a gloomy silence.

‘By all means,’ said Adler. ‘And, of course, a share in the glory, if you stick with me.’

‘I’m not sure that my creditors –’ began Mehta.

‘They will agree to another month,’ said Adler. ‘That is all I need. Look at the return you are offering. No one gets that kind of percentage in the present economy. And, believe me, they’d question it, if they themselves weren’t as greedy as you are. But their greed is your friend. Master it, and you’ve mastered them.’

‘What if some won’t comply?’ asked Kutusov.

‘Sergei, I’m sure you don’t need lessons in how to deal with people. Individuals don’t sink the boat. Small holes, we can plug. And if anyone wants to pull out, well, we can make an object lesson of them for the others, can we not? After all, in a very short time we need not worry about being accountable to anyone, ever again – not politicians, not governments, not the law, not even reforming revolutionaries, military juntas or mad dictators.’

‘People will still have an idea of freedom,’ said Mehta. ‘Of individuality.’

‘My dear chap, do you really think so?’ asked Adler evenly. He looked at them. ‘We’re agreed then?’

Sullenly, his associates nodded.

‘Good! I do so hate it when there is any kind of disharmony.’ Adler concealed his relief. He didn’t have the power to do more than bully and outmanoeuvre as yet, but he hadn’t risen from the gutter to the heights without knowing how to crush people into submission, regardless of their feelings. Of course there was still the question of time, and the question of where he put his own trust. He hated the thought of his position being compromised, but he knew his key operatives were loyal. He allowed himself a moment’s satisfied reflection on how things had gone in New York. At first, he had been bitterly disappointed in what had happened there, and he had lost control of his temper when he found that the box was empty. One should never lose one’s temper. A sign of weakness.

Luckily, there had been someone to vent it on.

Poor Frau Müller. No amount of work could disguise the wrinkles that made irrevocable inroads round her eyes, on her cheeks and neck. She might have striven to hold her weight at 48kg, not much for a woman 1.68m. in height, but it was all in vain. A skinny old blonde was all that remained, distasteful and unnecessary. And he could dispense with her loyalty now. She had served her purpose.

Meanwhile, he awaited more information from New York, as it became available. He was confident.

It was an intellectual process, really. Quite simple. And soon, the irritating unpredictability of success would be completely removed. No one would stand in his way.

As for the box, he congratulated himself on the little trick he had played on Marlow. Mr Marlow and his colleagues would never catch up with him now – and in fact they’d been rather useful to him. It didn’t really matter that Marlow hadn’t died, and Adler’s own operatives for the Sotheby’s heist and the Zwinger and Dels job were skilled, but not indispensable. If there was any fallout, it would come to rest on Kutuzov’s shoulders, did the man but know it. As for the unlocking code for the steel box, Marlow would be sure to get that message. It had been a risk –
MAX
– but Adler knew he was too well-connected for it to worry him unduly. Besides, he liked to gamble, a little.

The episode had not only amused him, and sent another little message to his competitors, similar to the
coup de théâtre
he’d brought off in the killing of Taylor and Adkins; it had also bought him time. And that was the important thing:
Time
. How they must have kicked themselves. They must have been convinced that they’d got what they wanted at last. He’d make a friendly, concerned, call to his friend Sir Richard when the time was right. To see how things were going, to see if they’d made any progress, if they’d located Dr de Montferrat yet.

He looked benignly at his associates and pressed a discreet button laid into the surface of the wood on his side of the table. Moments later, a tall blonde woman, elegantly dressed, and in her late twenties, entered the room with a black-lacquer drinks trolley.

Frau Müller’s replacement was shaping up well. Frau Müller herself was currently convalescing in a clinic he owned near Gstaad. When she had recovered he would see that she was generously provided for, during what he was sure would be a short retirement.

He eyed his new secretary appreciatively as he said: ‘Gentlemen. I think this calls for a drink, don’t you? And I’ll propose a toast: to mended fences.’

Inwardly, he smiled. He had told them nothing of the old Viking document. He hadn’t told them that even the heavily encoded part had now been successfully deciphered by his experts, always grateful for the donations and endowments of his philanthropic organization, MAXPHIL.

He hadn’t shared with his associates what he’d deduced from his findings, either.

Just one more piece of the puzzle, and the picture would be complete.

Marlow took the call on the secure line in his apartment at midnight. The INTERSEC operator had already told him who it was.

‘We’ve done the impossible,’ the crisp voice of Colonel Demir, Detective-Major Haki’s superior in Istanbul, told him.

‘The DNA on the gloves? You’ve traced it?’

‘No. We went through every databank at our disposition and our people crosschecked with yours. It was always a very doubtful undertaking, in my view. There’s no record of any DNA which matches the sample we were able to extract. So we crosschecked something else. Turkish Security Services and Foreign Office records indicate that in 1915 there was a German excavation at this site, conducted by the then world authority on Babylon, Robert Koldewey.’