She nodded in agreement, breathed in deeply a few times and closed her eyes. Jack recognised the years of yogic training in the way Mina relaxed all her muscles by a simple act of will. He had learned to do the same but the hard way, during military ops when he had to force himself to relax and sleep for a few hours before springing back into action. He picked up Mina’s notes and read through the last pages. Who was behind Eli’s murder? He had downplayed this subject in front of Mina, but he was not satisfied with their conclusions.
Same day. New York.
Natasha stepped through the glass revolving doors of the Wheatley Forecast Corporation building, into the main lobby. The security guards greeted her as she walked to the main lift. As the elegant glass lift ascended, she smiled at the irony of a glass building that housed within its walls a business that was anything but transparent. When she reached the thirty-second floor, she inserted a key into a slot next to the lift buttons and the lift rose to the thirty-third, Oberon’s floor. She proceeded through the main lobby decorated in an art deco style, with a mixture of glass and metal ornaments, and veered left into the sophisticated waiting area outside Oberon’s private office. His secretary, Miss Dawson, was a sixty-year-old Oxford-educated English spinster, always immaculately dressed and totally au fait with every aspect of Oberon’s official business. She looked up impassively at Natasha, ‘Mr Wheatley is expecting you.’
Natasha knocked on the door and walked into his office.
Oberon was on the phone, closing a deal with a major weather broadcast channel, for special rights on advanced meteorological information. A single glance at Oberon’s hunter’s smirk, was enough for Natasha to guess that he was forcing his deal down the other person’s throat, and enjoying every bit of it. He finished his call and looked at Natasha with glee, eyeing up the metal attache case she held in her hand.
‘So my dear, what have you brought me?’
‘A certain stone tablet’ she answered.
She slid the attache-case on his desk and opened it. He looked at the cuneiform tablet, picked it up and examined it on all sides.
‘What sort of stone is it?’ asked Oberon.
‘I’m looking into it,’ said Natasha. ‘We’ll have the results of the analysis in a day or two.’
‘Excellent. Send it to Professor Manfred this afternoon, under the usual confidential terms. I want the translation as soon as possible.’
‘That won’t be possible, sir.’
‘Just double his fee.’ Then, noticing that Natasha was avoiding his gaze, he asked, ‘Why not?’
‘He passed away three months ago.’
‘How unfortunate.’
‘I only found this out yesterday. Since then I’ve looked for a suitable translator, but I’m not sure we’ll get someone as amenable as Professor Manfred, when it comes to the sort of confidentiality we require. I don’t think we can trust any scholar faced with such a tablet not to publish their results or let alone refrain from talking about it.’
‘Oh. Is that all? In that case, we’ll just use the Vatican procedure.’
‘Sorry sir?’ she said.
‘When Vatican officials find an apocryphal gospel and feel that it may harm the orthodoxy of the Catholic faith, they don’t give it out to one translator. They divide the work between three or more.’
‘So that no-one but the officials have the full knowledge of the text’s importance,’ she answered.
‘Exactly. Photograph the inscription and split it between three scholars you have already listed. Make them sign the confidentiality agreement before sending anything.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘It was a stroke of luck, leaving those men behind in Safed’, he added.
‘Yes.’
‘What amazes me is that Mina Osman’s still alive.’
‘There was a man with her in Safed,’ Natasha added, ‘he might be the same one who was in Mosul. I suspect he has been protecting her all this time. I think I should find out who he is.’
‘No,’ he answered, ‘you have enough on your plate as it is. What can they do? Try to steal the tablet back? I think not. Miss Osman will probably return to New York and cash in her quarterly research funds. I don’t think we’ll hear from them again.’
‘Right. I’ll go then Sir.’
Natasha’s intuition was that Mina Osman and her mysterious helper would be back on the scene. Oberon had already made a mistake talking to Mina on the boat about his Chinese oracle bone. However clever he might be, he was too arrogant to be considered wise.
Same day. Safed.
‘Master?’ said a man. He was dressed in dark clothing and sitting in a car with tinted windows that concealed him from passers-by.
‘Yes?’
‘We have recovered a parchment describing the council of rabbis in Safed.’
‘Good. Where is it?’
‘Ephraim is on a plane as we speak, bringing it back to you.’
‘It should have been destroyed.’
The man hesitated, then said, ‘It will be done Master, but the tablet is in Wheatley’s hands.’
‘Retrieve it.’
‘It will be difficult master. He is well guarded. I may need some… special… help.’
‘Do not fret. I will pray for you and I will send you instructions.’
‘Thank you Master.’
‘Your labours will soon be at an end,’ the voice said, and the line went dead.
Chapter 21
December 13th, 2004. London
Mina woke up alone in the hotel room. Jack’s bed was untouched. He hadn’t returned since the night before. She retraced their steps from the moment they landed at Heathrow airport; they’d taken a train to Paddington station in West London, then walked through Paddington Green to Maida Vale and come to the Colonnade hotel, where Jack had booked a room for a few nights. ‘We’ll be safe here,’ he had said. They were a few streets away from Little Venice, with its beautiful mansions and canal barges. For a millionaires’ haven, it was a wonderfully discreet part of London.
Mina had been exhausted when they’d arrived at the hotel but Jack had ‘people to see,’ as he put it enigmatically. She didn’t ask any questions and hadn’t seen him since. She couldn’t find her mobile phone anywhere. Had she forgotten it in Safed? No, she was sure she still had it in Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv. She remembered turning it off. It was the last time she’d handled it. Had Jack taken it? Again? She found a note stuck to the bathroom mirror. ‘Morning Mina. Meet me for lunch at one p.m. at the Waterway, on Formosa Street. Xx, Jack.’
She was a little miffed at his bossy tone, but she couldn’t deny that she looked forward to going on a date with Jack, if this was what he intended. They had been through so much pain and misery since they had met, a change of pace would be welcome. She lay half-asleep in the large, warm bed, all alone, thinking about Jack. She felt a growing desire for Jack’s muscular body. She wanted to feel his weight crushing her, wanted his strong hands to pin her down as he made rough, passionate love to her. She snuggled deep under the sheets, and closed her eyes.
Mina left the hotel an hour later to grab a coffee in Little Venice and gather her thoughts while she waited for Jack. She had asked for directions in the hotel lobby but expected to get lost in a matter of minutes. It was only her second visit to London and she had not spent much time walking in the city back then.
Two years ago, she had attended an academic conference on the ancient Near East at University College London, which housed one of the largest institutes of Archaeology in the world. She had been offered accommodation nearby, in Russell Square, from where she had visited the British Museum a few times, as well as Covent Garden. That was the extent of her knowledge of the British capital.