The Sacred Scroll Read Free Page A

ofthe old man’s sight, ruined when they tried to burn his eyes out in Constantinople as a punishment for spying, was fading now, with every day that passed. His master was an old, old man. God alone knew how old he was, but he’d been in his mid-fifties when he had first taken Leporo into his employment as a secretary, four decades ago.
    It was just a matter of time …
    Leporo, whose own eyes had taken on a greedy glint as he thought of what was to come, what he might inherit, forced himself to return to the matter in hand. But the thought stayed at the back of his mind, and excited his soul.
    ‘We are taking what is rightfully ours,’ Dandolo went on. ‘Venice has bent the knee to Constantinople for too long. No more!’
    ‘We’ve done well here, no doubt of that. The Pilgrims have seized enough booty to pay us for the fleet we built them,
and
keep a tidy sum for themselves.’
    ‘But how much have they destroyed?’
    ‘Plenty.’ Leporo picked his words. ‘Works of art, from the ancient days. And they’ve burned down all the libraries. No profit in that.’
    ‘The Pilgrims are all illiterate, so you can’t expect anything else.’ Dandolo paused. ‘Beautiful works of art?’
    ‘Exquisite. Irreplaceable. Fortunately, we’ve had Venetian squads out rescuing the good stuff to take home. To adorn St Mark’s.’
    ‘Pity about the libraries,’ Dandolo said thoughtfully, but then a spasm pulled his face into a rictus of pain and his right hand, the good one – arthritis had turned the leftinto a claw – flew up to his eyes. When he sensed Leporo coming towards him, he waved him away impatiently.
    ‘The headache?’ asked Leporo.
    ‘Of course the headache!’ spat Dandolo. ‘And why should I give a damn about their libraries? I cannot read any more. And why should I care about the beauty of their art? I cannot see it!’
    ‘You remember it.’
    Dandolo turned his milky eyes on his confessor, and Leporo saw their centres burn with anguish and rage. The glories of Constantinople were the last things his master had ever seen.
    ‘Console yourself, my son,’ said Leporo, taking refuge in his faith. ‘You’ve got what you came for.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ said Dandolo in a dangerous voice.
    Leporo shrugged. ‘Revenge.’
    ‘For my eyes? Do you think I would have waited thirty years if all I’d wanted was revenge?’
    The monk fell silent. He knew full well why it had taken his master thirty years: he had been waiting for the opportunity and the means. Then, as if handed to him on a plate by God, they had come: a Crusader army – and the power to control it and bend it to his will. And now the time was drawing near when Leporo would seize that power for himself. He knew more about how the doge had controlled that army than his master could possibly guess. It had taken a lot of dissimulation, but he knew where the real power lay.

3
     
    New York City, the Present
     
    Jack Marlow looked up at the façade of the discreet hotel. It looked handsome in the pale sunlight of this early autumn day. It looked welcoming. Marlow hoped this would be a good omen. He needed a change after the bad business in Paris. This transfer was the answer to his prayers.
    His mind took him back for a moment to the woman, a blonde lapse-in-judgement who worked in HR. It’d lasted three and a half years, and he’d thought it was the real thing at last. But he’d been wrong.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ she’d said in response to his consternation when she dropped her bomb. ‘We’ve had a pretty good run.’
    Three and a half years.
A pretty good run.
And he’d been fool enough to think it was for real.
    That’d been eighteen months earlier. An Achilles’ heel he’d have to watch. Especially now. The first mission, from all he’d been told in his initial briefing, would need every gramme of concentration. But he’d kept his wound a tight secret. All that had happened was that he’d been used by someone who – as he