Ferguson stood up and walked over the window. “Well, we’re definitely making progress. I’m just grateful it’s not still in Voynich.”
Ava froze.
“What?” he asked. “What did I say?”
She could feel a flush of excitement as the significance of his throwaway remark sank in.
Could it be?
She sprang up, and reached for the pile of books Cordingly had lent her.
Was it really that simple?
“Why would they use another text,” she asked breathlessly, “when they already had Voynich, open right in front of them!” She could feel her excitement mounting. “It makes perfect sense.”
Dropping the large facsimile book onto the table, she turned to the first page and found the sixth line, then the ninth letter along. Bringing up the EVA alphabet, she read it off.
It was a ‘Y’. The twenty-fifth letter of the alphabet.
She cleared the spreadsheet of all her work so far, leaving only the reference alphabet in bold across the top. Under it, she wrote out another alphabet, this time with a twenty-four-shift, so the ‘A’ of the second row lined up with the ‘Y’ in the original alphabet.
Reading them off and writing them down, she looked at the result, feeling a wave of disappointment.
It was another senseless jumble of letters.
Frustrated, she turned to the sixth page, and ran her finger down to the first letter of the ninth line.
It translated as a ‘D’.
Quickly deleting the previous alphabet, she wrote out another one—this time with a three-shift, mapping the ‘A’ in her reference line to the ‘D’ in her code line.
Looking at the text she was tapping out, she gasped as a word appeared:
SWORD
“Oh my God, look at this.” She stabbed the screen breathlessly.
Ferguson leant over her, peering at the screen. “Well, keep going!” The excitement in his voice was unmistakable.
Steadying the trembling in her hand, she continued to read off the characters from Malchus’s letter and type the deciphered words out:
SWORD OF MOSES
With the colour rising to her cheeks, she quickly read off the rest and wrote out the remaining two lines:
COD GAS 178 USELESS
FIND COD OX 1531
She could feel her heart pumping hard.
It couldn’t be.
She stared at the whole message:
SWORD OF MOSES
COD GAS 178 USELESS
FIND COD OX 1531
FRATER PERDURABO
“What on earth is that?” Ferguson sounded bemused. “Does it mean anything?”
“It does to me,” Ava whispered, finding it impossible to tear her eyes from the screen.
“What?” Ferguson urged her. “What does it mean?”
She turned to look up at him. “It means,” she answered slowly, “that Malchus is undoubtedly quite insane.”
She felt dazed.
“Give me a moment.” She turned back to the laptop and began searching again.
She knew exactly where to look.
Once she had finished, it finally all made sense—the Ark, the Menorah, King Solomon’s Temple, Drewitt, the apocalyptic references. Everything.
“Are you going to fill me in?” Ferguson was staring at her.
Ava got up and walked over to the window. “There’s sinister magic in the Bible,” she answered slowly. “And we seem to have walked right into it.”
“In the Bible?” Ferguson looked at her sceptically.
Ava nodded. “People just don’t think of it that way, because it’s the Bible. But it’s there. Miracles are magic. We just don’t use the word. And at times it’s very dark. For example, King Saul banned all sorcery in his lands, and then disguised himself to visit the witch of Endor, before ordering her to raise the dead prophet Samuel from the grave so Saul could consult him. Witches raising dead bodies is dark magic in anyone’s book.”
Ferguson looked pensive.
“Or, in King Solomon’s Temple, there were a series of ritual curses that the Temple priests would write on scrolls. They would then wash them off in water that a woman suspected of adultery was forced to drink. If she was guilty, their curses would make her stomach swell up, she would miscarry, and her thigh would wither. Again, cursing people with physical deformities is usually thought of as pretty sinister magic.”
“Unbelievable.” Ferguson shook his head in amazement.
“
The Sword of Moses
is an ancient manuscript that comes directly from this magical Hebrew tradition. It’s very old dark magic, for summoning and conjuring.”
“Demons?” Ferguson asked.
Ava shook her head. “Yahweh.”
Ferguson looked dubious. “Don’t millions of Jews and Christians call upon Yahweh every day?”
“Not like this.” Ava dropped her voice. “
The Sword of Moses
contains conjurations for summoning Yahweh, and commanding him to do the conjuror’s bidding.”
Ferguson stared at her. “Like black magic?”
Ava nodded slowly. “As you can imagine, it’s something the rabbis have kept quiet about over the centuries. It’s not anything they want to publicize. And they definitely don’t want it falling into the wrong hands. But over the years, copies of many strange things have wound up in far-flung libraries as old secret collections are moved around and forgotten. From Malchus’s message, it looks like he’s got hold of a manuscript of
The Sword of Moses
from the British Library, but found it’s corrupted—perhaps by scribes making errors when copying it centuries ago. So he’s heard of a version in Oxford, and now he wants that, and was using Drewitt as master of All Hallows College to find it for him. Now Drewitt is dead, he’s presumably found someone else to help him.”
Ferguson dropped down into the chair beside her. “So what’s he up to? Why does he want this manuscript so badly?”
Ava had been asking herself the same question, but she was struggling to accept the answer she had come to.
“We know he has the Ark and the Menorah—the two main objects from the Holy of Holies in King Solomon’s great Temple in Jerusalem. And Drewitt told us he thought Malchus was trying to reconstruct the Holy of Holies. So that all connects.”
“We also know from the Bible that Yahweh used to dwell in the Holy of Holies, and before that in the Tabernacle tent—using the Mercy Seat on the lid of the Ark as his throne.” She paused. “If Malchus is now seriously trying to acquire
The Sword of Moses
, which is a conjuration to summon Yahweh, then we have to face the possibility that he believes he can somehow create a portal in his reconstructed Holy of Holies and summon Yahweh there to do his bidding.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Ferguson pulled a face. “Who believes in that stuff these days? He’ll be a laughing stock.”
“It doesn’t matter what any of us believes,” Ava felt cold. “His occult-obsessed neo-Nazis will lap it up, and so will armies of other zealots and racists. They’ll be lining up to follow him. If they believe he truly has the power, then it comes to the same thing. He will have loyal legions marching to do his work.”
“Any divine power he will claim may be completely illusory,” she continued, “but he will be leading his henchman behind the Ark, one of the single most powerful religious icons in history—one, many believe, the Israelites carried before them into the great battles which shaped the course of their civilization. Belief in the Ark’s power and sanctity has been at the heart of Judeo-Christian culture for thousands of years. The political and cultural fallout of a neo-Nazi group parading behind it will shake the world as we know it. Given the extreme tensions and fragility of the Middle East at present, it could trigger a war of religious and cultural identity that would risk sucking in the old and new global superpowers. Malchus’s delusions could unleash the start of a very long dark night of conflict.”
She paused, speaking more quietly. “No wonder he’s quoting lines about the final battle of Armageddon.”
Ferguson wiped Ava’s searches from the laptop’s internet cache and deleted the spreadsheet, before picking the laptop up and snapping its screen off at the hinge. “Then we’d better find that manuscript before he does.”
Ava was already on her feet. “We need to get to a payphone.”
Ferguson headed into the bathroom and filled the basin with water and soap before dropping in the two halves of the laptop. “I’ll make it up to our waiter,” he reassured Ava, nodding at the electronics sinking to the bottom of the basin in a flurry of bubbles.
Downstairs, he left the keys on the table among the ashtrays and mah-jong tiles, before closing the main door firmly behind them.
Out on the pavement, Ava looked about. There were no cars around, or any sign they were being watched.
They found a payphone in the next street.
Ava dialled a number in Oxford.
After a few minutes of being passed around, a man’s voice answered.
“Duke Humfrey’s Library. Dr Hendey speaking.”
“I’m with the British Museum,” Ava began, “currently retrieving objects looted during the Iraq war.”
“I see. How can I help?” The voice did not sound as if it was used to being helpful.
“You have a manuscript, I believe,
The Sword of Moses
, shelfmark Cod OX 1531.”
“Yes. Cod OX classifications are ours. It’s
Codex Oxoniensis
, which means Oxford Codex, but I’m sure you know that. I think that the series you want is part of the ancient Hebrew collection.” His speech was precise and pedantic.
Ava cut to the chase. “Has anybody taken it out recently?”
“Our reader records are private.” The man sounded piqued. “That’s not information we give out.”
Ava was in no mood for games. “Please listen very carefully. If anyone requests that manuscript, you mustn’t give it to them.”
“This is ridiculous,” the voice at the other end of the line spluttered. “You can’t tell me how to run my library.”
“Even if it’s a reader you know well,” Ava continued, “you mustn’t let anyone have access to that text.”
The voice on the other end of line was openly hostile now. “I’m sorry, what was your name again?”
“Let me ask it another way,” Ava continued, with a new authority in her voice. “How many pages of priceless illuminations and text have been razored out of manuscripts in your collection over the last five years?”
There was silence at the other end of the line.
“It’s one of your biggest problems,” Ava continued, “and you know it. Our current work has made us aware of a large market for stolen-to-order manuscript pages. I’m working closely with the international authorities—and we know that a serious international buyer has recently placed an order for pages from your copy of
The Sword of Moses
. So, please—do us all a favour, and protect the text. Otherwise, if something happens to it, I’ll have to inform the university authorities that I warned you clearly of the threat.”
There was silence at the other end of the line. When the voice spoke again, the tone had changed. “What do you want me to do?”
“Get on the phone immediately and speak to your colleagues at the British Library. Ask them to e-mail you their microfiche photocopy of Cod Gas 178, which is another, slightly different version of
The Sword of Moses
that they hold.”
“Once they’ve sent it to you, disguise the fact it’s the British Library version. If anyone comes in asking for your manuscript, tell them the original is away for conservation, and they are welcome to work from the microfiche version instead. Give them the British Museum copy, not the Oxford version. That’s very important. They must think it’s a microfiche copy of the Oxford manuscript and not suspect it’s the British Library one. It should delay them for the time being.”
“I understand,” the voice replied.
“Good,” Ava breathed a sigh of relief. “We’re on our way, and will explain more when we get to you. Meanwhile, keep a record of anyone who tries to consult the manuscript. But don’t try to stop them. Just give them the microfiche copy. We don’t want to alert them to our suspicions.”
“Very well,” the voice replied. “I’ll have passes waiting for you at the front desk.”
——————— ◆ ———————
Bethnal Green
London E2
England
The United Kingdom
The Skipper had told Uri to meet him at a group of lock-up garages behind one of the large council estates in the East End borough of Bethnal Green.
Uri had arrived early.
Looking about, he found it hard to believe such places still existed.
The area was run down and neglected in a way he had rarely seen anywhere in the world. It had more in common with a Johannesburg slum than the gleaming skyscrapers of London’s financial district, which were so close he could almost hear the traders shouting to each other across the banks’ floors.
The old shops that had once served the locals had closed down long ago. They now lay boarded up and graffiti-covered. He could not tell whether they had been abandoned because of financial hardship or the soaring levels of violent street crime. Either way, it spoke volumes about the neighbourhood.
There were no tramps or dossers in the doorways. He guessed the streets were too dangerous.
There was a smashed car on the corner. The bonnet was stoved in and its insides gutted—no doubt the conclusion and highlight of a night’s joyriding.
Across the road was a dilapidated Irish pub. It had no external decoration or swinging sign—just the badly painted word ‘
O’Dwyers
’ on the wall, and more steel and bars on its door and single window than on a border checkpoint back home.
The estates had been built when the Victorian slums had been knocked down, he guessed. This had once been Jack the Ripper territory—mile after mile of England’s most deprived communities, wrecked by poverty, drugs, and crime.
If he was honest, he could not see that things had changed a lot in a hundred and twenty-five years.
He had parked up by the entrance to the dead-end road of garage lock-ups, so he had a clear view of everyone coming and going. He liked to see who else turned up to meetings he was attending. He was not a fan of surprise visitors—especially after the stunt Otto had pulled.
He did not want to wait too long. The car would attract attention on the street, and it made him vulnerable. Even though it was broad daylight, he was well aware no one would bat an eyelid if he was carjacked.
He fingered the miniature Beretta 950 Jetfire in his pocket.
It had been child’s play to get hold of a weapon in south London. All it had taken was a whispered word in a martial arts shop, and he had it the next day. High-street catalogue shopping would not have been easier. He doubted very much he would use it seriously on any would-be carjacker. The last thing he needed was attention. But it would certainly help him make anyone chancing their luck think twice.
There was almost no one on the streets, and little traffic.
He assumed the area was controlled by local gangs, as he doubted the police got this deep into the borough very often.
A car came down the road, interrupting his thoughts.
He watched in his mirror as it approached.
It was the Skipper.
Uri had left his engine running, and immediately pulled out after the Skipper, following him into the narrow road. There were no houses on it—just scruffy lock-up garages down either side.
Parking three-quarters of the way down, the Skipper got out of his car.
“Apologies for Otto’s sideshow last night, Danny,” the Skipper began as Uri approached. “Don’t sweat it. He won’t be pulling anything like that again for a while. I had to teach him a little lesson after you left.”
Uri had thought as much when the Skipper ordered him out.
“Anyway,” the Skipper looked penetratingly at him. “I wanted to know whether you’re still with us.” There was nothing friendly about his tone. It was more a challenge than a question.
Uri met his gaze. He shrugged. “It depends what you’ve got.” He knew he was slowly winning the Skipper’s confidence, but time was not on his side. He needed to up the ante if he was going to make significant progress. “I haven’t seen any action yet. Just talk. I liked that bloke at
The Bunker
. The one making the speech. He said we need to be brutally ruthless—that the world was sick, and extreme measures were needed. That sounded good.”
“Malchus,” the Skipper replied. “Our
Staffel
is ultimately under his command. There are a lot of independent groups like ours, but we give all our allegiance to the national federation. Malchus is the
Reichskommissar
for these islands.”
Uri looked unimpressed. “But what’s actually going down? Like I said, I’m not in it for the politics.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” the Skipper looked pleased. “As it turns out, with Otto out of action, I’m a man short for a little job. That’s why we’re having this chat. How do you fancy a bit of travel? As it happens, it’s for something Malchus is putting together.”
“Count me in,” Uri answered unhesitatingly, not taking his eyes off the Skipper.
The Skipper nodded. He walked several doors down and crossed the road to the lock-ups on the other side, before stopping at one with a van parked in front of it. Bending down, he took the large padlock and chain off the sliding metal doors.
“Inside,” he ordered Uri, pulling aside one of the doors and making room for Uri to enter. He followed behind and slid the door closed behind them, before snapping on a switch that brought a single ceiling-mounted fluorescent tubelight on with a flicker.
Uri had not been sure what to expect. But it had not been this.
The lock-up was filled with metal racks and shelves, all piled high with kit. He could see combat knives, empty glass bottles, boxes of nails, a door ram, batteries, acid, bleach, heavy tools, rope, mobile telephones, police scanners, radio jammers, and even a few night vision headsets.
It was a quartermaster’s store. But not a traditional military one with tents and mess-tins.
This was a cache for urban guerillas.
And a well-stocked one.
“We’ll need to get you tooled up, Danny. Do you know what the
Leibstandarte
is?”
Uri shook his head almost imperceptibly.
“The
Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler
was the
Führer
’s personal bodyguard. They were the best men in the SS, the elite of the elite. Like a Praetorian Guard.”
The Skipper opened a metal cupboard, and took out a leather waistcoat. He threw it across to Uri.
It looked to Uri like something worn by a back-patch motorcycle club member. It was made of a single piece of black leather, with no sleeves, pockets, or buttons.
On the back was the outline of a white circle, and inside it, also in white, were the two large jagged
Sig
runes of the infamous SS lightning bolts.
On one side of the front was a badge, again outlined in white, with the three lions of England under the words ‘BRITISCHES FREIKORPS
’
. And on the other was a monogram of the letters ‘L.A.H.’ in gothic script, suspended in the claws of a large Nazi eagle.
He closed the cupboard. “Wear it for the job. You’ve earned it. In fact, try it on,” the Skipper prompted. “It’s your size.”
Uri stared numbly at the waistcoat.
Something deep inside him was ordering him not to comply. He knew it was not just a piece of clothing to be taken on and off like a jumper. It meant much more than that.
Back at
The Bunker
, when the Skipper had told him he had been selected for the SS, he had almost laughed out loud, it sounded so absurd.
But now he was faced with the uniform and symbols, he was finding nothing funny about it at all.
He knew that the people who wore these clothes in the twenty-first century were not playing games. They were every bit as serious as their World War Two predecessors. Given the opportunity, they would just as readily knife their victims in quiet alleys, shoot them by the roadside, or slaughter them in extermination camps.
This was not a game.
He looked at the waistcoat again. These were the symbols of a crack regiment of the SS —the political military elite of the Nazi machinery. Their Death’s Head division ran the camps, and their frontline soldiers led most of the atrocities against those the Third
Reich
deemed unfit to live. Putting on the waistcoat would be a betrayal of the memory of all those whose last sight on earth had been a leering face under an SS skull cap-badge.
He stared at the waistcoat, wrestling with the implications.
The simplest solution would be to drop the Skipper on the spot. He had the Beretta in his pocket. The Skipper would be dead before he hit the ground.
But at the same time, he thought of Moshe and the fear in the old man’s eyes—of his parting words that their enemies could get hold of the Ark and humiliate them with it. They would tell the world that Israel’s God had abandoned his chosen people. Moshe had been clear about the stakes, and the total absence of any room for failure.
Uri turned the waistcoat over in his hands while he wrestled with the contradictory thoughts flashing through his head.
Instinctively, but reluctantly, he knew what he had to do. He could not change the past. But if he was to stand any chance of recovering the Ark and restoring it to his country, then the Skipper was for the moment his only route to Malchus.
Tightening his jaw, he slowly unfolded the waistcoat.
It felt like he was moving in slow motion as he slipped it on.
The Skipper had been right. It fitted perfectly.
The huge man nodded and opened another two cupboards. They were filled with racks of weapons.
“You’ll need a short and a long,” he ordered, picking out a handgun and a submachine gun.
Uri took the pistol from him.
He had recognized it the moment the Skipper had opened the cupboard door. It was legendary—the Luger P08, issued to German troops in both world wars. The heavily angled grip and pencil barrel were iconic, unmistakable. He pulled back the toggle to cock it before squeezing the trigger. It clicked loudly as the mechanism fired, echoing around the lock-up.
Even after over a century, it was still a superb weapon, as effective now as when it had been patented in 1898. Looking closely at the chassis, he saw the famous ‘42’ Mauser stamp.
It was the real article.
He put it down on the workbench and took the submachine gun the Skipper was holding out for him. It had a right-hand grip like a pistol, and a long box magazine for the left hand protruding under the barrel.
“M40 Schmeisser nine-mil,” the Skipper nodded. “Autofire only. Lethally accurate. The mag takes thirty-two rounds.” The Skipper threw him a black canvas holdall, and opened a drawer stacked with assorted magazine clips. “Take a load. We’re done here.”
Uri put the weapons into the bag, and dropped in ten spare magazines for each.
“You’ve got a serious set-up here,” Uri glanced around.
“It’s like peeling an onion, Danny—layers within layers. There’s lots of groups like us. You’ll see soon enough.”
The Skipper closed the cupboards and flicked off the light. He showed Uri out of the lock-up, and put the padlock and chain back onto the doors again.
“Meet me outside Maze Hill station at five o’clock this afternoon. Bring all the gear.” He thumped Uri on the shoulder, and climbed into his car. Uri wandered back to his. He put the bag into the boot, and inserted his key into the ignition.
The whole SS fetish made him sick. If the Skipper and his crew had been playing at ordinary soldiers, that would have been fine. But there was nothing ordinary about the SS. Their
Einsatzgruppen
had drunkenly machine-gunned thousands upon thousands of innocent people into pits. They were not soldiers. They were politicized butchers.
If he was honest, the SS’s role as propaganda-fuelled political soldiers was not what nauseated him. They were not the only soldiers in history to have fought for a political ideology. Such soldiers were commonplace in every age, killing for a political vision. He probably classified himself as one.
What made him nauseous was the nature of their particular ideology, the core mantra of their world view—their pathological hatred of his race.
That made this personal.
He took a deep breath, forcing himself to de-emotionalize.
He was on a job. An important one.
He had to go along with the Skipper, to see if it would get him closer to Malchus and the Ark. He needed to keep zeroed in on the objective.
He fired up the engine and drove off. He could do it. He was good at staying focused.
But he also knew that when the time came, he would like nothing better than to put a bullet in the Skipper’s head.