Tom Harper - The Book of Secrets

‘Nothing will happen to it.’

We crossed the road and walked around the corner. At that hour the streets were almost empty – but not quite. Two men stood in the shadows under a baker’s sign. They stepped out to block our path as we approached. One was tall and stocky and leaned on a thick staff; the other short and thin.

‘Did he agree?’ Stoltz asked.

I handed over the bag Dritzehn had given me. Stoltz hefted it in his hands, then passed it to Karl. The one-armed man struggled to hold it and the staff at the same time.

‘It’s all there,’ I said.

‘If it isn’t, you will soon know.’

The two men disappeared down an alley. We watched them until they were out of sight.

‘Is that for the good of the enterprise?’ Drach asked.

My conscience was clear. ‘If it keeps me from having my legs broken, it is certainly for the good of the enterprise.’

Stoltz had been wrong about money. It was not like a plough or a pair of bellows, to be hired out and returned. It was water driving the mill of endeavour. It did not matter where it came from or where it went. So long as it kept flowing.

France

They abandoned the car in a car park. Nick left the windows open and the keys on the front seat. Hopefully someone would steal it before the authorities found it. Then they went to the rail station.

Nick slept most of the way to Strasbourg, clutching his hand across his chest where he had the book tucked under his coat. When he woke, he saw the day had got darker. Flakes of snow whirled past the windows, while the sky promised more to come. On the opposite seat he saw Emily watching him.

‘What time is it?’

‘Almost noon.’

A hunger pang ripped through his stomach. ‘I’m starving.’

Emily reached in her purse and pulled out a paper bag. ‘I got you a croissant.’

Nick ripped off the end and stuffed it in his mouth. It felt like he hadn’t eaten in a week. ‘You’re a godsend. I don’t suppose you’ve got a cup of coffee in there as well?’

Emily slid a paper cup across the table between them, together with a pile of sweeteners and creams. He emptied three of each into the cup and swirled it with a plastic spoon while he devoured the rest of the croissant.

‘Did you sleep at all?’

‘A little. I couldn’t stop thinking.’ She stared out the window. ‘Gillian must have known something we don’t.’

Nick waited for her to go on.

‘She found the bestiary, and the card inside it – either of which would be a major discovery. But she didn’t tell anyone, not even Atheldene.’

‘So he says,’ Nick interrupted.

She acknowledged the point. ‘Then she locked the card in a bank vault and the book in the deep freeze, and disappeared. I assume to look for the “other” bestiary. Why?’

Nick sipped his coffee and let Emily continue.

‘She knew something. Something that made the other book even more valuable than the one she had.’

‘What?’

Emily screwed up her face. ‘I don’t know. But she must have found it quickly. She was only in Paris for a day after she saw the book.’

‘The day she went out to see Vandevelde.’ Nick thought back to the physicist, his evasions, his eagerness to prove he had nothing to hide. He wanted to pull out the card again, to see what Gillian might have seen on it. In the train carriage, even half empty, he didn’t dare.

‘Whatever it is, someone’s excited about it,’ he said. ‘It’s unreal. The speed they turned up at the book warehouse – and before that at the library. But if they know all about the book, why are they chasing after us to find it?’

Emily looked out the window, where the snow flurries were gathering force. ‘Maybe they don’t want to find it at all. Maybe they want to make sure it stays hidden.’

Near Liège, Belgium

Brother Jerome pored over the desk and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. Seeing Emily again had left him with a splitting headache. He reached for the plastic jar that was never far from his desk and popped two pills. As a younger man he’d prided himself on keeping his body pure. A temple, a fortress of God. Now the temple lay in ruins: flooded with caffeine to keep him alert, sedatives so he could sleep, codeine for the headaches and some pills his doctor had given him for his heart. And some stronger drugs, powders that couldn’t be prescribed, for the memories.

He looked over the notes he’d written.

bestiary

nova forma scribendi

Armand, Comte de Lorraine (Strasbourg??)

A new form of writing. Emily had always had a brilliant mind, a sort of academic cunning that knew when to look deeper. But there were some things she didn’t know. That was what she’d recognised in him: a depth of experience without equal. It had been an intoxicating mix.

Why did you come here? Jerome asked for the hundredth time. He was pleased he had managed to stay so outwardly calm – a lifetime of religious self-discipline still had some hold – but it had been an immense effort. The feelings she still aroused, anger and longing.

Forget her. He tried to focus his thoughts on the book again. Another bestiary in a new form of writing, illustrated by the Master of the Playing Cards. It was incredible. The discredited theories and baseless speculations would turn out to be correct. And maybe other, deeper secrets that prudent men only whispered.

A tentative knock sounded from the front of the house; his heart leaped. It was shameful, but he didn’t care. She’d come back. He jumped to his feet and ran to the door, gathering the dressing gown around his thin waist. Without even bothering with the peephole, he unlatched the door and pulled it open.

Two men stood on the doorstep. Both wore heavy black coats with the hoods raised against the cold. They pushed inside before he could react. Jerome stumbled back and fell against the wall. The shorter of the two men unzipped his jacket and rested his hand inside the lapel; the other man pulled back his hood to reveal a craggy face with a patrician crest of white hair, and coal-black eyes that seemed to bore into Jerome’s soul.

Jerome stared. ‘You.’

He had only met him once, thirty years ago: a Spanish priest from an obscure office of the Vatican, visiting a promising young researcher who had just begun to make a name for himself. Even then, menace surrounded him. He had spent half an hour asking about Jerome’s work – always stiffly formal, but lethal, poised like a fencer probing his opponent’s guard. At the end he had said, ‘There are many undiscovered books in this world. Some are treasures undeservedly lost; others vanished for a reason and should remain forgotten. If you ever find one of these latter books, you must tell me at once.’

In the years afterwards, Jerome had occasionally seen photographs of the priest – at first only in Church bulletins, then in newspapers and finally even on television. In the whispered gossip of his order he heard rumours about the methods the priest had used in his rise to power, and believed them.

And now he was standing in Jerome’s living room, beside a squat thug with a broken nose and a livid scar across his chin. A cardinal’s jewelled ring gleamed on his finger. He looked around the dishevelled room, at the half-empty coffee mugs clustered around the chair.

‘You have had visitors today?’

‘Only memories.’

Behind Nevado, the thug pulled his arm out of his coat. A black pistol had appeared in his hand. He squinted down the barrel as he pulled back the slide and snapped it home. The sound made Jerome wince.

‘Sometimes memories come to life.’ Nevado moved forward; Jerome cringed, pressing his bony shoulders against the wall. ‘You, Brother, have good reason to fear them.’