James Becker - The Messiah Secret

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.’

‘What do you think?’

‘I’ve no idea. It’s well established that Bartholomew did find a piece of parchment, and that it subsequently vanished. But whether it’s hidden somewhere here in the house or locked away in a bank safety deposit box we know nothing about, or even got destroyed in the last eighty-odd years, is another matter entirely.’

The man tightened the grip on the scourge. ‘Give me your best guess.’

‘I think it’s probably hidden here somewhere. Bartholomew was planning another expedition when he died, apparently, and he would have wanted the entire text available to him. He might have thought that there were still clues hidden in it, and he would probably have studied the text regularly.’