The Black Madonna (32 page)

Sebastian Delahaye flicked open the Comms Link and checked his dispositions.

‘All clear out front.’

‘Affirmative. Support discreetly positioned. Most civilians moving off from immediate vicinity. We’ve had museum staff clear outer courtyard early. Both vehicles still in position outside. Owners feeding meters.’

Delahaye smiled: ‘Well, I suppose if the worst comes to the worst, we can always book them for that. Keep me posted.’

‘Will do.’

He switched to his other link. ‘How’s things with the night owls?’

The voice on the other end was cool and calm.

‘Couldn’t be better. Lovely evening. Perfect view.’

‘That’s what I like to hear.’

‘Oh, and by the way the apron really suits you.’

‘Ha ha. Just do your job.’

He clicked off the Comms Link and moved out into the serving area. Hashrawi was even prettier close up.

‘Can I get you ladies and gentlemen anything? A glass of wine perhaps. We shall be closing shortly.’

Saladin dismissed with an angry hand gesture the infidel waiter who had dared to offer him alcohol. His two heavies moved forward to flank him and Nazreem was surprised not to see the waiter rapidly retreat.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said rapidly, pulling out a chair next to the
worried-looking
Mansfield. ‘My friend doesn’t drink alcohol. Please bring us four coffees. For you, Edward?’ Marcus was amazed at her cool.

‘Not for me, thank you,’ said the middle-aged academic, ‘I really must be off.’ Marcus thought he looked decidedly as if he meant it. ‘Just wanted to be sure you got your bag. Good luck with the sale.’

‘Sale?’

‘Of the books. I hope you get a good price.’

‘Oh, yes. I’m sure …’

Mansfield went to get up, but one of the two bodyguards crossed and put a hand on his shoulder. Nazreem turned angrily towards Saladin and said to him, in Arabic: ‘What does this mean. Let this man go. He is not involved.’

Marcus was reduced to reading body language. Edward
Mansfield
, however, as an Arabic scholar, was clearly not at all happy about what he was hearing. The waiter meanwhile, far from fetching their coffee, was hovering about ten metres away and another one had come into sight. Marcus doubted if either would be much use against the two Algerian thugs, especially if they were packing guns, and he could not imagine they were not. His two minders had been handed weapons at a service station on the M20 into London.

Mansfield was staring transfixed at the tall man with his recently trimmed beard and ill-fitting dark suit who spoke as if he expected only obedience. ‘Fetch the bag,’ he heard him say and watched the other man lift the nylon bag and move it towards his master.

‘You have what you want,’ said Nazreem. ‘Now take it and go.’

‘Perhaps we should open it first, just to be sure.’

‘You wish to burn your eyes with the image of a pagan idol, or the Christian Madonna, whichever you prefer? Take it away if you must and destroy it at your leisure.’

Mansfield jerked forward in his seat as if he had been kicked up the backside: ‘The Madonna? You mean all this time …? No. You can’t let some fundamentalist destroy it.’ And then, with unexpected boldness he turned on the still standing Son of Saladin and his henchmen and all but shouted, in fluent Arabic: ‘You, you would destroy a priceless archaeological find, a piece of world history.’

As if noticing him for the first time Saladin said: ‘You speak the language of the prophet (peace be upon him). Then you should understand why it is necessary to rid the world of a blasphemy, a corruption of sanctity, a crime against God.’

For a moment Marcus thought Nazreem had taken leave of her senses. She threw back her head and laughed in the man’s face.

‘You’re the one who doesn’t know what he is talking about. Are you afraid of a Christian idol? Afraid that the Christian world will push Islam from their “holy land” because they have found the
original
image of the mother of their God? Are you that poor a Muslim?’

Marcus saw the man raise his hand as if to slap her face and wished he knew what the hell she was saying to him. Whatever it was, there was no stopping her:

‘Because even if you are, there was never anything here to fear. Don’t you understand? It’s proof that for years these so-called
Christians
have had a joke played on them by their own priests. The statue that all their black Madonnas, their Holy Virgins are based on is not Mary, not the Maryam of the Qu’ran, but the ancient earth goddess of the Phrygians, the Magna Mater adopted by Rome, the figure that was fetched from its Asian home to protect their “Eternal City” when it was under threat from Hannibal. It is the graven image to end all graven images, proof of the foolishness of their idolatry.’

The man’s hand had come down, but the fiery glint burning deep in his eyes suggested to Marcus, listening in helpless ignorance, that he was about to erupt in rage. Instead, he looked at Nazreem as if his eyes could burn through her and said: ‘You are more – and perhaps less – of a fool than I expected. Do you not know what material your graven image is made of?’

For a second she was totally taken aback: ‘Stone,’ she said.

‘But what sort of stone?’

This wasn’t making sense: ‘Black stone. Basalt, maybe, I don’t know. I’m not a geologist.’

He almost smiled. ‘No. Not that a study of earthly material would help when dealing with that which comes from the heavens. Have you so neglected your duty to your faith that you have never
performed
the Hajj?’

‘The Hajj …? No, I … But what has that to do with …?’ She was annoyed with him for throwing her religion – no, not her religion, her culture – in her face. What did the pilgrimage to Mecca have to do with anything. It had always annoyed her anyhow, the vast crowds, the whole ritual, the ridiculous superstitions, the throwing of stones at rocks, the endless circling of the … No, not that. It wasn’t possible. A blinding light had appeared in front of her and she hid her eyes from it.

‘You don’t mean that! How could that be?’ She stared at him aghast. Against all expectations, he had taken the wind from her.

He was nodding now, like a teacher whose pupil has finally seen the light, just too late:

‘Yes. The Hajr-e-Aswad itself, the Black Stone of God, given to
Ishmael by the angel Gabriel, and the cornerstone of the Ka’aba itself, the first holy shrine built by Ibrahim. I trust you know the history: that when Ibrahim died the people reverted to their pagan ways and the Ka’aba once again became the home of idols.

‘This thing, to which you have given sanctuary, is one such idol, the greatest offender of all, the ultimate blasphemy: a graven image carved from the holiest rock on earth. A rock not of this earth, but fallen from heaven. Go ahead, open it and touch the defiled heart of the universe. See the abomination at last for what it truly is. The ultimate blasphemy.’

For a moment it seemed as if Nazreem had lost the will to live. Her face was blank, her eyelids drooped as if she was still imagining the image in her mind’s eye rather than opening the bag at her feet to see it in this new, alien light. Could it be? The holy stone of Islam carved into a graven image of a Christian icon. And yet it wasn’t, was it? Not a Christian image. That was the point.

Al-Saladin was smiling as if he were a good shepherd watching one of his flock turn back from the edge of the cliff and return to the fold.

‘Now you see why we want it,’ he said, his eyes gleaming.

‘To destroy it,’ said Nazreem, her voice coming as if from underwater.

‘Yes, of course,’ there was triumphalism in the cleric’s voice. ‘But only after we have shown it for what it is. Shown the children of Islam how the Christians defiled the holy of holies. How should we be surprised that these infidels make cartoons of the prophet as if he were Mickey Mouse, when they can take the sacred black rock, the stone fallen from heaven, and carve it into a pagan totem pole.

‘We will put your graven image on display, have no fear. We shall hold it aloft to show the world what Christianity thinks of Islam. We shall unite Shi’ite and Sunni in the pure hatred of the infidel pagan crusader. The armies of Islam need no graven images to win their battles for them, but we shall hold this one in our hearts, the
ultimate
symbol of sacrilege against the invisible God. We shall invoke the wrath of Allah, to spur us to victory. Once and for all.’

Marcus, who had understood next to nothing of an exchange conducted wholly in Arabic, watched the expression on Nazreem’s face change from defiance to what appeared to be dumbstruck shock and then, just as quickly to anger as, apparently following orders she
produced a key, knelt down, opened the padlock and tugged at the zip on the bag.

And then suddenly she was on her feet, lightning quick, a long, thin, razor-sharp stilletto in her hand, fished from the bag and now held against the mullah’s throat. Marcus fell back against his chair, tumbled to the floor, lay there in shocked awe at the tableau before his eyes.

‘So that was your excuse,’ Nazreem, spitting in the eyes of her
tormentor
, shouted at him. ‘You who defile the name of a great Muslim warrior, a man of virtue and honour, rather than a fanatic and a
warmonger
. A superstition about a piece of stone. That is your reason for stealing from your own people, for violating a trust, for’ – screaming now – ‘for violating ME!’

Yet for all of it she could see no fear in his eyes, only scorn and disbelief, maybe even admiration.

‘You poor deluded bitch,’ he said at last, his eyes studiously
avoiding
the blade at his throat. ‘The man who raped you paid for his pleasure. I thought you knew that. He had ceased to be one of us. He had chosen to cease even to be a man. I granted his desire. We didn’t just cut his heart out. We cut his balls off, and his prick. We took your revenge for you. Ask the nun,’ he all but sneered in her face, ‘though I doubt you will ever see her again.’

‘What the …’

And then she was gone, spun round and fallen to the floor.

‘No!’ Marcus screamed. ‘No.’ But there was a gun pointing at his head. And another smoking from the barrel that had floored Nazreem. And a knife, more like a scimitar, a great curved blade good only for cutting the throats of halal cattle, or helpless humans, in the hands of the so-called Son of Saladin. Nazreem was not dead yet, but in an instant she would be.

And then, in a succession so swift it was almost simultaneous, her would-be slaughterer fell to the floor, a zing like an angry hornet pierced the air. In the distance glass shattered. And the Great Court exploded in a wash of light from above. And the waiter, of all people, was shouting, ‘STOP or you’re all dead!’

Gone were the soft seductive concealed lights that turned the night sky into a string bag full of stars, and in their place were halogen floodlights that poured luminescence of almost unbearable intensity into the Great Court. Dimly, like silhouettes in a magic
lantern, Marcus could make out the shapes of men with
long-barrelled
weapons zeroing in on them from the other side of the glass roof. In one corner, a shattered pane in the tessellated weave indicated the direction of the high velocity bullet that had found its mark in Saladin’s skull.

His erstwhile bodyguards had their hands held high. The waiter was holding his ear and talking urgently to his shirt cuff. And Nazreem was trying to sit up from the floor clutching her
shoulder
with blood oozing through her fingers. The nylon bag lay
overturned
on the floor, spilling its contents on the café floor: about a dozen heavy, dusty textbooks.

‘Is that it?’

In spite of himself, Marcus could not help but feel
disappointment
. He did not know exactly what he had expected. Not some fabulous work of art to compare with the masterpieces of the
Renaissance
. But maybe something that at least caught the eye. Something if not on a par with the grave goods of ancient Egypt, something that at least spoke to the soul.

This said nothing to him. It was simplistic, primitive, devoid of any expression or artistic merit that he could discern. And yet, it was undeniably ancient – just how ancient they still had no idea, but older by far than the first century AD. And there was something about the stone itself; a matt black which somehow seemed to shine from within as if there were minerals unknown, like the ghosts of diamonds, waiting to be coaxed from its carved surface.

It was not where he had expected first to see the supposed image of the Mother of God, a drab self-storage warehouse in west London. Marcus and Nazreem had spent twenty-four hours as ‘guests of Her Majesty’, albeit in a comfortable house in Bloomsbury. They had told a succession of interrogators everything they wanted to know. But surprisingly the one thing they had wanted to know least about was the figure Nazreem was now holding, like a human child in her left arm, notwithstanding the heavy bandage on her right shoulder. She had been lucky, the nurse who came specially to the house had told her. She would mend. Given time.

And they would take time. Time to reassess. Old wounds and new. But before anything, he had to see, had to hold in his hands, what it had all been about. And now that he had done so, it was hard, laughably hard, to dismiss a sense of disappointment. They stood in the tiny cubicle, nine-feet square and eight feet high that Nazreem had rented, cash payment down, for a month, and
wondered
what it was about inanimate objects that could make human beings lay down their lives for them.

And then the answer came from behind him.

‘I’ll take that, please.’

Simultaneously they spun round to see a small, plumpish figure standing in the doorway. A dumpy woman, in a long coat.

‘If you don’t mind.’

Nazreem almost dropped the figure to the ground.

‘Sister Galina! I don’t believe it. We thought you were …’

‘Dead. Yes. I know. Although as a matter of fact if it weren’t for me you are the ones who would most likely be dead.’

The expression on Marcus’s face wasn’t exactly a smile but it almost passed for one. ‘Do you know, I almost suspected as much. It just seemed too fantastic.’ He turned to Nazreem: ‘Your fairy godmother!’

‘It was you, on the train?’ she said, her voice fading away.

‘And in Avila,’ Marcus said. ‘And in the monastery, tucking into the pasta in the far corner.’

‘And now, please, may I have the Mother of God? You did promise, you know, to let me spend some time with her. And that was before I saved your life.’

There was confusion all over Nazreem’s face. ‘I don’t understand. I mean, why, how?’

But it was Marcus who asked the question that she was just coming round to formulating: ‘For a start what led you here?’

‘This, it fell from your handbag in the train.’

It took Marcus a couple of seconds to recognise that what she was holding was a blue London Transport Oyster card.

‘But how did that …?’

‘They’re very efficient, nowadays, you know, these British, much more so than their reputation. And very security conscious. You just need to touch this on a reader at any Underground station and it tells you every journey it has made. Like the one Nazreem here made, from Waterloo to Acton, on the afternoon she arrived in London.

‘There aren’t many reasons to come to Acton. But if you’ve got something to hide, then the presence of a secure storage facility only a short walk from the Underground is not a bad one. The only
question
was: which box? For the past two days, I’ve been waiting for you. Touching, isn’t it?’

‘That still doesn’t explain how you got in here. This is supposed to be a secure facility. There’s a security guard out there. They’re only allowed to let in customers.’

For a microsecond the little woman’s eyes closed. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, that’s enough of this,’ she said. And then there was a gun in her hand. ‘Let’s just say he won’t be bothering us.’

Suddenly, too late, the last vestiges of a veil of illusion fell from Nazreem’s eyes: ‘Your devotion, to the Madonna, it seemed so real, so moving, but you’re not a sister. You never were.’

‘No,’ interrupted Marcus. ‘In fact, you’re not even really a woman. You didn’t do it yourself, did you?’

In a split second movement that belied her dumpiness the Glock pistol she held in her hand was pressed against Marcus’s temple.

‘You think you can make jokes? For centuries we have endured the scorn of people like you. I’m a sister, all right. A sister of an order that goes back longer than any Christian cult. And now I’ve come to reclaim what is ours. The sisters of Kybele have the right to their inheritance. The return of the Magna Mater is a sign.’

‘Galina – the Gallae. The cult the Texan was going on about. It wasn’t all lunacy. No wonder you could pass yourself off so easily as a man. You used to be one.’

Her grip on the trigger tightened. Marcus was pushing her too far. All of a sudden Nazreem felt it was all too much. Give the woman the figurine, let her go, let her take it away and worship it. Whatever. Just leave them in peace. Before the demented creature did
something
foolish.

Marcus flinched as he felt the saliva splatter against his cheek. The little creature snarling up at him had spat in his face. ‘Men! You think the phallus is the key to the world. The male sexual organs strangle your brains. Sever yourself from them and you sever
yourself
from their obscene domination.’

The words jarred in Nazreem’s brain. What was it Saladin had said, seconds before the bullets struck – ‘we cut off his balls’ – ‘took your revenge’ – ‘ask the nun’.

‘Like what they did to the thief. The one who …’

‘The one who went too far. Had his wicked way with you, did he? Well, I’m sorry – it wasn’t in his instructions – but then you are a pretty little thing, aren’t you? And it was his last fling, before he became one of us for real.’

‘One of … It was you. Who stole.. You who …’ Nazreem could scarcely control the violence of her emotion.

‘Of course, it was, what did you expect, that we’d let you – them
– take the Holy Mother and make her a sterile museum piece! Or worse, give her to the cursed Christians to be their bitch Mary, the symbol of two thousand years of repression?! The thief was working for us, but he was a man, wasn’t he? All he could think of was the money we promised, and then letting his cock out to play. He told that pious fool Saladin everything. Why do you think they sent me such a clear message as his cock and balls in a plastic bag?’

‘That’ll do. Put it down, sister. Or should I say, sir. Believe me, it makes no difference to me. I follow an equal opportunities rule.’

Marcus jerked to attention, not least because the voice from the doorway was uncannily familiar. Galina thought so too, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She wheeled and fired, the shot narrowly missing the figure that flattened itself against the wall, then dropped to the floor. Galina screamed, flung herself forward, then fell prone, spreadeagled and motionless, a trickle of dark blood dripping from a hole behind her ear.

In a flash, the figure in the doorway was crouched over her, and turned over the limp body to reveal a neat, round entry hole below the right eye.

‘I guess that pays for Joe,’ he said, and turned towards where Marcus and Nazreem crouched in the corner, the bandage on his ear clearly visible.

‘Freddie!’

‘Si señor.’

‘But you’re …’

‘Take it easy, Dr Frey.’ The accent was suddenly impeccably English. ‘I’m sorry about the treatment in Madrid, but it went with the territory.’

‘I don’t get it. You’re …’

‘Friendly. I guess you could say I’m on the side of the angels. Well, most of the time anyhow.’

‘You … you …’ Marcus was speechless.

‘We’re not completely the Americans’ poodles that people sometimes think we are. For a couple of years now there have been people over here who’ve worried about the influence of the extreme Christian fundamentalists on the neocons in the last US administration.’

‘You mean you’re …’

‘A spook? Yes, if you like. But it’s not all glamour, as you can see.’ He indicated his mutilated ear.

‘But how did you …’

‘Come out here? The boys across the river. “Five”. Never mind. You don’t need to know. I was told you were coming out today to retrieve the little lady there.’ He pointed to the stone figure. ‘I wanted to take a look, considering I’d suffered in her service, as it were. Also I thought I’d say hello. And goodbye. Lucky I did. Saw the guy in reception with a bullet in his brain, and thought I maybe ought to watch out. Can’t say I’m sorry. She had it coming. I’d sort of got attached to old José, after spending two months working alongside him on a stinking cattle ranch on the Rio Grande. Gave me a real empathy for the Mexicanos.’

‘What about … her?’ Marcus gestured towards the prone body on the floor.

Freddie – Alfredo – whatever his name was, and it certainly wasn’t either of those, was already pulling a phone from his pocket and tapping in a number.

‘Don’t you worry. I’m calling in the cleaning ladies. They should be here within the hour. If I were you, I’d make yourselves scarce. Easier that way.’

Together, Marcus and Nazreem nodded. She picked up the stone figure and began to put it back in her bag.

‘Here, let me take a quick look,’ the man with the phone to his ear said. She held it out to him. He examined it for a few seconds, then shook his head and shrugged.

‘Mind how you go,’ he said. ‘Have a nice life.’

‘We will,’ she said, and slung the rucksack on her back to follow Marcus towards the open door and the rainy London skies beyond.