Read The Sacred Scroll Online

Authors: Anton Gill

Tags: #Fiction, #Thrillers, #Suspense

The Sacred Scroll

ANTON GILL
The Sacred Scroll

PENGUIN BOOKS

Table of Contents
 

Chapter 1

 

Chapter 2

 

Chapter 3

 

Chapter 4

 

Chapter 5

 

Chapter 6

 

Chapter 7

 

Chapter 8

 

Chapter 9

 

Chapter 10

 

Chapter 11

 

Chapter 12

 

Chapter 13

 

Chapter 14

 

Chapter 15

 

Chapter 16

 

Chapter 17

 

Chapter 18

 

Chapter 19

 

Chapter 20

 

Chapter 21

 

Chapter 22

 

Chapter 23

 

Chapter 24

 

Chapter 25

 

Chapter 26

 

Chapter 27

 

Chapter 28

 

Chapter 29

 

Chapter 30

 

Chapter 31

 

Chapter 32

 

Chapter 33

 

Chapter 34

 

Chapter 35

 

Chapter 36

 

Chapter 37

 

Chapter 38

 

Chapter 39

 

Chapter 40

 

Chapter 41

 

Chapter 42

 

Chapter 43

 

Chapter 44

 

Chapter 45

 

Chapter 46

 

Chapter 47

 

Chapter 48

 

Chapter 49

 

Chapter 50

 

Chapter 51

 

Chapter 52

 

Chapter 53

 

Chapter 54

 

Chapter 55

 

Chapter 56

 

Chapter 57

 

Chapter 58

 

Chapter 59

 

Chapter 60

 

Chapter 61

 

Chapter 62

 

Chapter 63

 

Chapter 64

 

Chapter 65

 

Chapter 66

 

Chapter 67

 

Chapter 68

 

Chapter 69

 

Chapter 70

 

Chapter 71

 

Chapter 72

 

Chapter 73

 

Chapter 74

 

Chapter 75

 

Chapter 76

 

Chapter 77

 

Chapter 78

 

Chapter 79

 

Chapter 80

 

Chapter 81

 

Chapter 82

 

Chapter 83

 

Chapter 84

 

Chapter 85

 

Chapter 86

 

Chapter 87

 

Chapter 88

 

Chapter 89

 

Chapter 90

 

Chapter 91

 

Chapter 92

 

Chapter 93

 

Chapter 94

 

Chapter 95

 

Chapter 96

 

Chapter 97

 

Chapter 98

 

Chapter 99

 

Chapter 100

 

Chapter 101

 

Chapter 102

 

Chapter 103

 

Chapter 104

 

Chapter 105

 

Chapter 106

 

Chapter 107

 

Chapter 108

 

Chapter 109

 

Chapter 110

 

Chapter 111

 

Chapter 112

 

Chapter 113

 

Chapter 114

 

PENGUIN BOOKS

THE SACRED SCROLL
 

Anton Gill was born in London and educated at Chigwell School and Clare College, Cambridge. He has written on a wide range of subjects, especially contemporary European history, and published a series of thrillers set in ancient Egypt. Until recently, he has divided his time between London and Paris, but now makes his home in London again.

For

Peter Ewence,

with thanks for his

friendship and support;

11–16 September 2010,

and thereafter.

Prologue
 

Istanbul, the Present

 

Brad Adkins looked around the lab. He couldn’t disguise his tension from the others and knew they were feeling it too.

They’d been working on the dig at Istanbul for three weeks now and they still hadn’t found what they had been sent to look for. And time was running out.

The lab looked tidy enough to leave for the night, thought Adkins, watching his two colleagues carefully placing the boxes in the white cupboards ranged along one wall.

He turned to the deck of computer screens on the broad table and switched them off, one by one, methodically checking that all the information input that day had been properly saved. His colleagues had finished before him, and stood watching. Su-Lin, he thought, looked anxious to leave, but he refused to be hurried by the junior member of his team, even if she was there by order of their main sponsor.

‘Almost done,’ he said. Quite a dish, Su-Lin, but that’d be hunting a bit too close to home, and he didn’t want to spoil the close professional rapport which the work on this project had created between the three of them. And God knows they needed it, he thought, given the pressure. He wondered how soon it would be before people would begin to get impatient.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ said his Yale colleague, Rick Taylor. ‘Another dead day – it’s time to drown it out.’ Adkins reached for the switch on the final screen. Taylor was hitting the bottle hard these days. He’d keep an eye on that. Taylor was right – they’d had another fruitless search. He tried to stay hopeful, but every day confirmed his growing suspicion that what they sought simply wasn’t there. He glanced again at Su-Lin. Impassive now, she looked at her watch.

Adkins flicked off the last button. But as he drew his hand back and the screen went blank the door to the lab crashed violently open.

Five men in black, faces hidden by balaclavas, burst in, followed by a thin man and a plump woman dressed like tourists, wearing sunglasses large enough to cover their features.

It was the woman who spoke. English accent. Cut-glass. Polite.

‘Sorry to disturb. We have some questions for you.’

‘Who the hell are –?’

One of the men stepped forward and clubbed Taylor to the ground. He lay there without moving.

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