The Sacred Scroll (7 page)

Graves and Lopez exchanged a look.

‘I know what you’re thinking, but don’t forget Eastern Europe and Russia in the 1990s were like the Wild West. Adler wasn’t the only guy to play dirty. And there is nothing at all to link him to any of this. Isarov and Adler were close friends, and remained so. He went to the Isarov family funeral, there were photos on the front pages of
Isvestia
and
Die Welt
that spring showing him comforting Isarov, and he invited Isarov to his villa near St-Tropez
that summer. The autumn following the accident, Adler paid generously for his interest in Global.’

‘Where was Adler when the tragedy struck?’

‘In Dallas, closing a deal for a radio station there.’ Marlow looked back at the screen. ‘Later on, he dabbled in derivatives and credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, special-purpose vehicles, and all that sort of banking finagling, even sub-primes, but managed to steer clear of trouble when the financial balloon went up in 2008. He got rich and he stayed rich, and now he controls a network of TV and radio stations across the globe, as well as a clutch of newspapers, mainly here in the States, but he’s also got a toehold in India and China.’

Marlow scrolled rapidly down a page. ‘Nowadays, he’s one of the good guys. A Maecenas where charities are concerned, especially in Africa, where he’s got a lot of goodwill; and he’s endowed university chairs all over the place, from Nigeria to Nebraska. Backing research undertakings like the Dandolo Project is a hobby of his. And he leads a simple life. Widowed – his wife died young – never remarried. Lives in Lausanne, and in the grounds, in a glass case, is an East German Trabant car, the first thing he treated himself to when he began his ascent. He’s had the thing gold-plated. He doesn’t spend much time in Switzerland – just enough to secure residency requirements.’ He sat back. ‘That’s it, but if we’re going to take a closer look at him, we need more on his background.’

‘I can help,’ said Graves.

‘Go on.’

Graves scanned her own screen. ‘I’ve got this much. His father was a technician at the Boxberg power station. Mother
was a housewife, did some cleaning for a local politician’s family. Adler had an older brother, who died aged seventeen in some kind of hunting accident, in 1974. Adler went to a local school, then got a scholarship to Humboldt University in Berlin. He read physics, switched to economics.’

‘Any more on his business training?’ asked Marlow.

‘Nothing formal. I think he saw his opportunities when the Wall came down, and went for it.’

‘He was thirty-ish then. Late starter by the standards of a lot of the new boys.’

‘He spent 1982 to 1988 teaching in a
Fachhochschule
back in Cottbus. Travelled in the East a lot after his wife died. No children.’

‘So, what led him to take an interest in the Dandolo Project specifically?’ said Marlow.

‘It’s just one of several, on the face of it.’ Graves looked at the onscreen notes. ‘MAXPHIL is involved in investigating ways of salvaging the damage done to Iraq’s cultural heritage, for example, and another venture has to do with a research programme into the history of the origins of mathematics and astronomy. Both university-run projects. The principal one for the Iraq undertaking is Houston, the other is Humboldt, his old
alma mater
.’

‘All very respectable.’

‘Yes,’ said Graves evenly, locking the file she’d opened and snapping it off. She took her glasses from her nose, and pinched the bridge.

The blue telephone rang. Marlow spoke briefly then listened, his expression changing as he did so.

‘So soon?’ he said. ‘But I haven’t had time to brief them fully –’

The voice at the other end interrupted him.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘OK.’ He listened some more, his expression changing again, to one of incredulous surprise. ‘Yes, of course. At once.’

He put the phone down carefully and stood up before speaking. ‘That, it goes without saying, was Sir Richard.’

‘What’s he handing down from the mountain now?’ asked Lopez.

Marlow looked at Graves. ‘You and I are flying to Istanbul tomorrow. We’ve a meeting with Detective-Major Haki, Turkish security service. He’s handling the disappearance that end.’

‘What a way to start your job,’ grinned Lopez. ‘No such luck for me, I gather.’

‘You know you hate travelling,’ said Marlow. ‘You’ve got to clear your decks completely for anything we send you for analysis. Premier urgency.’

‘What’ve they found?’

‘They’ll give us the details when we get there, but there’s a coded email coming through now,’ he replied. ‘But right now, Hudson wants me in his office. He has a visitor who’s keen to meet me.’

‘And that is?’

‘Rolf Adler.’

Marlow filled Graves in on the meeting with Adler on the way to the airport.

‘Why was he there?’

‘God knows how much influence he has to have reached us in the first place,’ replied Marlow, ‘but he knew all about the archaeologists, and offered his services in helping to locate them. Hudson was non-committal, but it’s obvious that Adler’s got some pull.’

‘What’s he like?’

Marlow shrugged. ‘He’s got that patina the very rich have: a kind of sheen, a kind of confidence other people just don’t possess. Looks younger than he is, obviously works out a bit. Grey hair, hooded eyes. Too much bling, but all of it’s there to make its point – cufflinks, rings, tie-pin, watch – all signalling that his corner shops are Asprey’s, Cartier and Tiffany’s.’

‘But you didn’t pick anything up from him?’

‘Sixth sense, you mean? No.’

‘Anything to bring us closer to the archaeologists?’

Marlow didn’t know Graves yet, and one instinct which was strong in him, especially now, was never to show his hand to anyone until he was sure of them. He knew his own weaknesses and he also knew how, even with his guard up, they could still take him by surprise. There’d been times when he’d thought he’d give up, hand in his resignation,
but each time he’d hesitated, and now his career had taken him beyond that option, and what he’d been deluded enough to believe was the love of his life had gone. What was left to him – all that was left – was his work. And a chance to redeem himself.

Graves went on. ‘How does he want to help?’

‘How do you think? By throwing money at the problem.’

‘But he’d want to know what we know too?’

‘Didn’t seem to concern him.’

‘Does that concern you?’

‘What do you think?’ said Marlow, with a slight smile. He was sitting close to her in the car, and Graves felt the warmth of his thigh along hers. She was wondering if that was intentional or not when he shifted slightly in his seat, and moved away.

‘Do you think they’re still in Istanbul? Adkins and his friends?’

‘I doubt it,’ he replied, still smiling that faint smile.

Istanbul was dark and rainy. Streetlights dazzled, along with the lights from dozens of tiny shops, filled with everything from coffee pots to carpets – from simple kelims to ornate Persian silk rugs selling at $50,000 apiece. Everything doubled itself in reflections in the glossy, rain-slicked tarmac and cobblestones. The area in and around the grand bazaar of Kapari Carsi glittered red and gold.

They checked into the hotel near Sultan Ahmet Square, and made their way west across the European side of the city in a yellow Hyundai taxi, after the usual debilitating
argument with the driver about the fare. The impression they’d got of the Grand Bazaar had been fleeting.

Driving at the usual breakneck speed of the Istanbul cabbie, they sped through the Sehzadebasi district, and took a right up Kimyagar Dervis and Vezneciler, passing university buildings, turning left before they got as far as City Hall, to reach an unassuming street just north of the Laleli Mosque.

Letting their driver drop them not far from the address they’d been given, and making sure he’d driven off, muttering darkly for their benefit about the size of his tip, they walked back through the fine rain to a building with a plain façade and a scattering of brass plates by its forbidding street door to indicate the professions of the occupants. They sheltered under the entrance awning. A row of bell-pushes on one door-jamb were identified by numbers only. Graves pressed number five.

It didn’t take long for the buzzer to click the door open, but Marlow looked up and down the empty street while they were waiting. Just to make sure. But there was nothing to indicate that they weren’t alone out there in what had now become freezing drizzle.

A young man with a black moustache stood in the vestibule. He was dressed in the international secret service uniform – dark suit, white shirt, dark tie – and had the kind of features – regular, unexceptional – that you’d immediately forget. It had occasionally crossed Graves’s mind that a lot of her colleagues might have been recruited on the basis of such looks, so perfect were they for the job.

He greeted them gravely and led the way along a dimly
lit corridor to a door at which he knocked softly before opening it immediately and gesturing them to enter. Then he melted away.

The room they found themselves in was large and bright, and a chaos of untidiness. The books that lined most of one wall were in disarray, many spilling out on to the floor, others, mingled with buff folders, tottering in uncertain piles on the fine Isfahan carpet, which they half smothered. The other walls were dotted with a collage of maps, graphs, children’s drawings and one or two reproductions of dark Rembrandt portraits. A table bore an old Dell computer, evidently not often in use and half buried by more paperwork. An ornate desk stood in front of the tall windows. A closed MacBook Air perched precariously on one corner, in danger of being shoved to the floor by another Manhattan of what looked like ledgers but might have been law books.

The man behind the desk rose to greet them. He didn’t look unlike the middle-aged Rembrandt himself. He was clean-shaven, with a plump face, and a body to match. His nose was bulbous and his greying hair wispy and unruly. The eyes were small, grey and shrewd, and his expression a mixture of humour and sadness – the face of a man who’d survived a lot by taking stuff on the chin, but never letting anything floor him. A man, thought Marlow, whose company you’d probably enjoy but whom you’d never take anything other than seriously.

‘Welcome!’ he said, in English as he bustled round the desk to shake hands with Marlow, plant discreet kisses on Graves’s cheeks, and introduce himself. ‘Have they offered you tea? No? I’ll see to it.’

But he didn’t. He hastened instead to clear more mountains of books from two gilt armchairs, and made a little clearing around them so that Marlow and Graves could sit down. ‘I should have done this earlier – it’s not as if I didn’t know you were coming, after all …’ He pattered on, retrieving his own seat and facing them, elbows on the desk and fingers pointed together at the tips. ‘Have a good flight?’

They thanked him.

‘Good, good. Taxi OK? I’d have sent an official car for you, but we don’t like to draw attention to ourselves in this department,’ continued Detective-Major Cemil Haki. ‘But have no fear – the taxi was one of ours. And the driver. Did you guess?’

He laughed at their silence. ‘Orhan is one of our best couriers. He loves to play the cabbie. A little too authentically sometimes. But the safety of our guests is always paramount in his mind.’

‘That’s reassuring,’ said Graves.

‘And we keep our counsel. In all messages to the outside world from this department, in fact, we like to present ourselves as simple policemen. You’ll understand, won’t you? Trust is such a rare commodity that’s it’s always a shame to waste it.’ His tone turned briefly regretful.

Marlow was looking at a framed photograph on the wall behind the detective-major, between the two windows, and the one thing on the walls that hung straight as a die on its hook. It was maybe seventy years old, and showed a slim, thin-lipped, distinguished-looking man in an immaculate light-coloured suit, a cigarette in a holder dangling from elegant fingers.

The detective-major followed his gaze. ‘Recognize him?’ he asked.

Marlow shook his head. ‘But he looks familiar …’

‘It’s my great-great-grand-uncle, the famous Colonel – later General – Haki.’ The detective-major smiled. ‘I don’t take after him. Except perhaps in my line of work.’ He paused before going on. ‘He was involved with the British a couple of times at least – there was a famous business involving a gangster called Dimitrios at the end of the thirties, and in 1940 a British engineer called Graham got his fingers burned tangling with some German agents – the Germans always like to meddle in Turkey, you know; it was almost a kind of unofficial colony for them, and of course they hated the Russians, who were also trying to put their oar in …’ He trailed off, letting the faint suggestiveness in his tone hang in the air. ‘Asia Minor, the Cradle of Civilization, the Sick Man of Europe – all that kind of thing.’

‘I knew your name was familiar,’ said Marlow.

‘I thought you might know it.’

Haki became businesslike, sweeping the pile of ledgers away so brusquely that it collapsed – an event he ignored – and drawing the pencil-slim laptop to the centre of his desk. He flipped it open and busied himself with its keys and trackpad for a few moments.

He grunted in satisfaction then looked up, the glow of the screen giving his face a slightly sinister illumination. ‘We have found no trace of them yet,’ he said.

‘Have you got
anything
?’ asked Graves, ignoring a warning look from Marlow.

‘We would not have invited you into our inner sanctum
for nothing,’ replied Haki, his own voice remaining politely neutral.

‘Tell us what you know,’ said Marlow. ‘What were they after? We have to find them.’

‘As you know,’ the detective-major said, ‘our friends were investigating the burial place of the Venetian leader Enrico Dandolo.’ He gestured them to look at a picture he had summoned to the Mac’s screen. ‘This is his monument in the great basilica of Hagia Sofia, only a short bus ride east of where we are sitting. The building is almost as old as Christianity itself, and it was a church until we Muslims took over this city in 1453, when it became a mosque. Four hundred years later it changed its nature again, and became a museum. But its original function as a place of worship – the house of God, of Allah – still sanctifies it in the eyes of many.’