Читать книгу The 13th Apostle - Richard Heller - Страница 12

A few minutes later

Hotel Agincourt

“Do you think we should leave him alone in there?” Aijaz asked anxiously. “I mean, he could just leave with the money. The stuff in the envelope could be worthless, right?”

Maluka glanced at the bedroom door that separated them from Ludlow’s assistant in the living room and motioned Aijaz to keep his voice down.

“No need to worry, my friend. Peterson isn’t going anywhere until we’re done with him. He may require our financial help again in the future and he knows it.”

Ajiaz waited for clarification.

Maluka tossed the thick envelope onto the bed. “This is of little importance. What I want isn’t in the envelope. What I want lies within the man in the next room.”

Aijaz nodded, desperately trying to keep up.

“Getting what you desire is easy once your adversary thinks he’s already given it to you,” Maluka explained.

The big man looked down, not knowing what to say.

“It’s okay, Aijaz. I take care of my part. You take care of yours.”

Aijaz smiled with gratitude.

“Now we wait just long enough. Another three minutes should do it.”

Persuading noncooperative people to take seriously their moral obligations was Maluka’s forte. As a boy in Halab, Syria, he had been obsessed with playing “monks and demons,” a game that dated back to the fourth century. Having convinced one of his many cousins to dress in rags, Maluka would don his carefully assembled costume and assume the role of the holy man. With great ceremony, the young Maluka would summon the evil spirit that lurked within the heart of his playmate and challenge it to combat. Though small for his age, Maluka had been remarkably muscular, able to pin down a child several years his senior and to extract, at his demand, confessions of iniquity and promises of repentance. In so doing, Maluka invariably succeeded in exorcising the evil spirit and making the world safe for the Pure of Heart.

Once having played the game with him, a child would rarely do so again. Maluka couldn’t have cared less. Having savored victory over any particular foe, he had no need for a rematch.

Now, decades later, Maluka had transformed the physical game of his childhood into the psychological game he used in the service of his Faith. Whenever he had to resort to physical persuasion, however, he preferred to delegate that responsibility to Aijaz.

Both men returned to the living room. The still-unopened envelope remained where it had been tossed on the bed.

Ludlow’s assistant rose from his seat, waiting for Maluka’s judgment on the envelope’s contents.

“Excellent. Excellent. You have managed to obtain some very useful documents,” Maluka began.

A look of relief crossed Peterson’s haggard face and betrayed what Maluka had suspected. Peterson was frightened Maluka would discover that he had been given information that was virtually useless. Although Peterson must have included some of Ludlow’s personal notes on the diary, as Maluka had requested, and perhaps some background history on the Monastery at Weymouth where the diary was found, in all likelihood, Peterson had not included anything of any real importance. Maluka smiled with satisfaction. If there was one thing that he knew, it was people. He had no illusions about them, he could always expect the worst, and they rarely ever disappointed him.

“So, you’ve met your part of the bargain and we’re all set,” Maluka concluded with a studied good humor.

Peterson’s fingers reflexively patted the package of money in his jacket pocket. He smiled gratefully, stood, and walked toward the door, most likely convincing himself that he had been concerned over nothing.

Maluka offered the handshake that had not been forthcoming at Peterson’s arrival. Peterson responded in kind and turned to go.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Maluka said offhandedly. “What is this business about a copper scroll?”

Peterson’s smile faded.

Before Ludlow’s assistant could respond, Maluka probed a little deeper. “I’m sure it’s not really significant or the Professor would have mentioned it in his notes more than that one time. I was just wondering if you included it because you thought it might be important.”

This was the part Maluka enjoyed the most. He’d set the trap, caught the rat, and now he got to watch him slowly wriggle. Best of all, with each squirm, Ludlow’s assistant was providing Maluka with exactly the information he wanted.

“Copper scroll?” Peterson asked innocently. “Oh, no. That’s not why I included that page. I forgot it was even in there!”

Because you were so very careful to remove any possible reference to a scroll, weren’t you? I knew it! I didn’t even need to look at the pathetic pile of trash you tried to pawn off on me. You must truly think me the fool!

Peterson continued, trying desperately to cover his tracks. “Don’t worry. The copper scroll thing’s not important. On one of the pages of the diary, Ludlow and DeVris apparently found some mention of a copper scroll being hidden somewhere in Weymouth Monastery. They couldn’t even agree if that’s what it really said. Ludlow is certain that it’s what the whole diary is really about. DeVris thinks it’s nothing more than a reference to a copy.”

“A copy of The Cave 3 Copper Scroll they found in Qumran years ago?” probed Maluka.

“Right. And that you know is in the Book of the Shrine already. DeVris says the diary’s just talking about a copy of The Cave 3 Scroll, not a new scroll. The monks probably sold copies of The Cave 3 Scroll by the dozens to bored knights in search of treasure. Anyway, the only reference to any scroll, new or old, was on some old scrap of paper Ludlow found stuck in the binding, so how could it be what the whole diary is about?”

“So DeVris says there is no scroll, or, if there is one, it’s nothing more than a copy of The Cave 3 Copper Scroll?”

“Yes, nothing more than an old man’s wishful thinking.” Peterson straightened and set back his shoulders.

“If you ask me, they’re both crazy. I mean, here are two intelligent men debating and transcribing, then going back and debating it all over again. Just like the fight about who would keep the diary—that went on for a month! The Professor won, of course, ownership is nine-tenths of the law. But now with DeVris in Israel and the diary with Ludlow in London, Ludlow spends half his day uploading bits and pieces of it onto a secret website on the Internet. If you ask me, it would have been a lot easier if he had just let DeVris keep the damn thing.”

Maluka nodded and smiled. Fearful people explain too much. That always gives them away. If you can spot it, it always works in your favor. The greater the number of words they use to cover up their lies, the greater the opportunity to get more information.

“Ludlow’s paranoid,” Peterson continued. “He keeps every e-mail, every printout, even his own notes, locked up like they’re the Crown Jewels.”

Peterson explained that even if he had needed to work with diary-related information, he had to ask the Professor to retrieve it.

“I must be confused. I thought you had access to Ludlow’s safe,” Maluka asked.

“I do. I have access to his safe in the den. But there is another safe in the kitchen, in what looks like an oven.”

“In an oven! Really?”

“Yeah. The thing is bizarre. It’s got a fake back—the oven I mean—which releases if you enter the right numbers in the right succession on the oven timer. It’s one of those digital things—a smart board, Ludlow calls it—and you’d never know that it wasn’t part of the kitchen equipment.”

Peterson explained that, on one particular occasion when he had attempted to heat his lunch in the oven, Ludlow’s wife happened upon him just in the nick of time.

“She’s just a little old lady but she pushed me halfway across the kitchen. She said to never touch that oven again, that Ludlow built the safe inside to keep her valuables in,” Peterson explained. “As a child, she was a prisoner in a Gulag. You know, a Soviet forced labor camp, and apparently she’s still terrified that people will break in and take away everything she has. Not that she has anything worth stealing from what I can see.”

“And now…” Maluka prompted.

“And now, since Ludlow got hold of the diary, he’s taken to putting almost all of his papers in the oven safe, which I don’t have access to. Which is why I couldn’t get you more,” Peterson concluded with a half-apologetic grin.

“No matter,” Maluka said congenially. “You’ve given me all that I needed. Chances are this whole thing will come to nothing. Most importantly, let’s hope the money you’ve earned gives your little girl the extra help she so desperately needs.”

Peterson’s eyes shot to Maluka’s as if seeking to confirm the sincerity in his words. Maluka put on his most sympathetic face. Peterson smiled his gratitude, then opened the door.

Maluka hesitated. He wanted to frame his next question carefully. He required only one final piece of information.

“A safe journey to you, Mr. Peterson. I assume that you and Professor Ludlow are heading back to London in the next day or two?”

“Yes. Tomorrow night. Though I’m not looking forward to the long flight.”

“Yes, yes,” Maluka said brusquely and closed the door.

Even as Peterson made his way to the street, Maluka had already snapped open his cell phone to reserve airline seats for himself and Aijaz on the first morning flight to London.