The Twelfth Tablet - Ebook (2 page)

Valerie refilled his glass. ‘We’re all friends.’

‘I would like to know his name.’ Something in Ari’s voice made Paul’s skin prickle. He remembered the hand on him at the museum, the feeling of utter powerlessness. He tried to sit up, and spilled champagne in his lap. Valerie dabbed at it with a napkin.

A phone broke the deadlock: a brusque jangle that drew every eye in the bar. A concierge started to move towards them, then saw Ari and backed off. Ari reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out the widest phone Paul had ever seen.

‘
Legyeteh
,’ he said. He listened a moment, then put his hand over the phone.

‘One minute, OK?’

He disappeared out the front door. Paul remembered to breathe again.

‘Is your boyfriend always that direct?’

Valerie narrowed her eyes. ‘My boyfriend,’ she repeated, experimentally. ‘He’s used to getting what he wants. His father is very rich.’

He remembered what Ari had said about the statue. ‘Did he really try to buy the Aphrodite?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t think so. If he did, it wouldn’t be in your museum.’

‘He isn’t the sort of man you say no to,’ Paul agreed. ‘Where are you from?’

‘Kind of all over.’ She waved a hand. ‘Ari has a boat.’

‘Not much good for Switzerland.’

‘I guess.’ She’d rearranged herself, legs crossed, hands demurely in her lap. Paul felt unbalanced, as if something had disconnected inside him. Even sitting felt unbearably awkward.

‘What did you hear when you listened to the statue?’

It was an impulsive question – he wasn’t even sure what he meant – but it earned him a privileged smile.

‘Immortality.’

Before he could ask what she meant, a cold breeze blew through the hotel doors as Ari came back in. He sat down opposite and drained his champagne.

‘I need to see that tablet,’ he said, without preamble. ‘Not me personally. For my father.’

‘Right.’ Paul sat back, the same posture he used when his supervisor asked him for chapters. He wondered how soon he could leave.

‘My father, his whole life is studying the Orphic religion. He thinks maybe there are secret messages written on the tablets, some key to the afterlife. It sounds crazy, right?’ Paul shrugged. ‘He’s an old man, he’s sick, he stays in his house too much. All he wants is a photograph.’

Paul pointed to the catalogue page, still open on the table. ‘I could probably find you the original image.’

‘Not good enough.’

‘Bu it’s professional quality.’

‘My father wants ultra-high definition. Also infrared. You know there have been things found with infrared that nobody saw before. Maybe this tablet has something.’

‘I very much doubt–’

‘It is easy. You take us to this collector, you tell him something about the museum, maybe there is a problem with the insurance, blah blah. You need a photograph to prove it is OK. Then we go, we take the photograph, we come home. Maybe we find the secret message, maybe – probably – there is nothing. But my father is happy.’

‘I really wish I could help.’ He meant it: anything to get rid of Ari. ‘It’s simply that–’

‘How much does the museum pay you a week?’ He took the billfold out of pocket and peeled off a hundred-franc note. ‘This much?’ Another hundred. ‘This? This?’

Paul shook his head. ‘Not that much.’

‘And the university? For your studies?’

He put down another hundred. Paul looked at the table and said nothing shook his head.

‘So. Not even this much. And when you finish the doctorate? What then?’

‘I’ll probably try for a job in academia.’

He’d said it so often he should have believed it by now. But the longer it went on, the less he could ignore the truth. He’d missed his time. He was two years late, and that meant two more crops of PhD’s out in the market, competing for the same dwindling number of jobs.

Valerie suddenly reached across and stroked his hand. He shot Ari a glance, wondering whether he’d feel those fists around him again. But either he hadn’t noticed, or didn’t care.

‘My father’s business is shipping,’ said Ari. ‘You know what he says? If something is in the wrong place, it is nothing – but take it somewhere else, where it is in demand, it can be worth everything. That is his business. He moves things from the wrong place…’

He took the stack of notes and slid them across the table.

‘… to the right place. He makes them valuable.’

Paul stared at the pile of money.

‘There is a foundation,’ Ari said. ‘We promote major research on ancient Greece – archaeology, philology, religion – and we are always looking for exciting new researchers who can work with us. Our funding is very generous,’ he added.

Paul twisted the stem of his glass in his fingers.

‘You are in the wrong place, my friend.’

‘They don’t value you,’ said Valerie earnestly.

‘All it takes is one photograph.’

Chapter 2

It wasn’t hard to guess Ari’s car: a monstrous Mercedes as long as a hearse, riding up on the pavement in a disabled bay outside the museum. The rear window slid down as he approached, unveiling Valerie’s face behind the tinted glass. He wondered why she was wearing sunglasses so late on an overcast day.

He got in next to her and closed the door. The only other person in the car was the driver.

‘Where’s Ari?’

‘He had a meeting.’

Paul looked forward between the seats and caught a thick-set pair of eyes watching him from the rear-view mirror. The rest of the face was hidden: through the headrest in front, he could see a short neck and a pair of shoulders that filled the Mercedes’ ample interior.

‘Vincent’s going to take the photographs,’ Valerie said. She reached across the seat and held his hand. ‘Where are we going?’

Her hand was soft and dry as powder. Paul looked at the mirror again and saw the hard eyes still watching.

He gave an address in District 8, Seestrasse, where the big mansions crowded the lakeshore. ‘I spoke to him this morning. It’s all set.’

He tried to sound confident, like he imagined Ari would. Not the way he’d felt taking the file out of the locked cabinet; the way his fingers had trembled as he dialled the number; the terror that the curator would come back early from lunch and overhear his conversation.

‘I told him there’d been a question from the insurance company, that they needed proof the tablet had been returned in perfect condition in case of a later claim.’

‘And he agreed?’

‘People believe anything about insurance companies.’

The car butted through the early evening traffic and headed out of town. Valerie didn’t say anything about what would happen when they got there, and Paul didn’t ask. The less he thought about it, the better. He held her hand, his arm stretched awkwardly across the wide seat, trying to stop his mind wandering to forbidden places. But each time he tried to extract his hand, Valerie’s fingers tightened around his. As if she was determined to give him strength.

And then they were there.

Even in the second decade of the twenty-first century – and especially in Switzerland – there were people old enough and discreet enough to have left almost no ripple on the internet. Hans Stroehlein was one. From office gossip, Paul knew he worked in private banking, last in the line of a family who’d been turning out heirs like clockwork for two hundred years. From the one meeting they’d had for the exhibition, he remembered a trim man in the vicinity of sixty, precise in his appearance and economical in what he said.

He couldn’t be more Swiss if he popped out of a clock
. The curator, an Italian, had said that – once Stroehlein was out of the museum with his signature on the loan agreement.

The Mercedes stopped at an iron gate, which opened when Paul spoke into an intercom. Ahead, he saw a turreted mansion, a minor fairytale, and a terrace sloping towards a pleasure-cruiser moored on the lake.

‘Nice place,’ said Paul, trying to break his own tension.

Valerie picked at a loose thread on the leather door-handle. ‘It’s cute.’

‘I suppose you and Ari must be used to it. Where you live.’

She looked at him as though he was speaking a foreign language. He remembered she’d said they lived on a boat. ‘Ari’s is bigger.’ He wondered if she meant the house or the boat.

The light surprised him when he got out of the car. The darkened windows had made it look later than it was. He waited for Valerie.

‘Aren’t you coming?’

‘I’ll stay.’ The car shook as the driver’s door slammed. ‘Vincent’s going with you.’

Paul glanced at Vincent, seeing him from the front for the first time. It wasn’t an improvement. If Paul had met him on a train, he might have chosen a different carriage.

A small grey camera bag hung around Vincent’s neck, and a heavier one was slung across his shoulders. He jerked his thumb at the house. Across the lake, the last edge of the sun slipped behind the mountains. A cool breeze picked up off the water, blowing dust in Paul’s eyes. Suddenly, he knew he should feel afraid.

He looked back into the car.

‘I’ll be right here for you,’ said Valerie.

Vincent was already at the door. Reluctantly, Paul joined him. Traffic rushed by outside, but the iron gates held the noise back. All he heard was the crunch of his footsteps on the gravel. He wanted to turn and run, but Vincent’s presence held him like a force of gravity.

They obviously knew he was coming. The moment he knocked, the door was opened by a…
what?
A servant? A butler? A PA? He didn’t know what you called them these days. Paul handed him a card with the museum’s crest. The butler studied it, studied Paul, and gave Vincent a narrow look.

‘The photographer,’ said Paul. ‘From the insurance company.’

The butler showed them down a short corridor to a sitting room-cum-library. It was built like a medieval hall in the heart of the house, rising two stories to a domed skylight. Knights and damsels floated in the glass like angels. Wooden galleries ringed the first floor, leather-bound books covered the walls, and unlit logs lay piled in the huge stone hearth. In front of it, two sofas faced each other across a coffee table, where a silver tray, a silver coffee pot and a silver cigarette case were laid out with cups and biscuits.

Hans Stroehlein rose to greet them and shook hands. No smile, but no hint of irritation either. Paul supposed a Swiss banker was used to excessive bureaucracy. And hiding his feelings.

‘I hope this is necessary. I did not quite understand on the telephone why it is so urgent.’

‘Just a formality,’ Paul promised. He realised he was grinning like a clown, and shut his mouth. ‘Five minutes.’

‘Is there a problem with the insurance? I have not made any claim.’

‘No. No problem. No problem at all.’ Sweat prickled his skin, as though he had a temperature coming on. He looked at Vincent for help, but Vincent was busy screwing a fat lens onto the camera he’d taken out of his bag.

‘You have some papers?’

‘What? Yes, of course.’ He opened his satchel and got the paperwork he’d cribbed together in the office. Stroehlein put on a pair of rimless glasses and frowned.

‘I have signed this already. When the piece was returned, after the exhibition.’

Does he suspect?
No
, Paul calmed himself.
He’s just precise. Fastidious.

‘You won’t believe this, but someone lost the original. I just need to witness the signature. And the photographs, of course.’

Stroehlein read it through carefully. Paul ate a biscuit and spilled crumbs on the sofa. He examined the room, trying to ignore Vincent, fiddling with his camera. A grand piano, a Bechstein, filled one corner. A younger Stroehlein in an old-fashioned suit watched from a black-and-white photograph on top of it. A slender woman in a white dress rested her hand on his arm.

Widowed
, Paul remembered from somewhere.
No children
.

At last, Stroehlein reached the end. He looked up.

‘I cannot sign this.’

Paul froze.
What did I do wrong?
He’d already signed it once. This was just a photocopy with the signature whited out. What could he possibly object to?

A precise smile. ‘I do not have a pen with me.’

Humour.
Paul tried to restart his heart as he found the fountain pen in his jacket pocket. Stroehlein signed, frowning slightly at the cheap pen. Paul took out the stamp he’d borrowed from the office and thumped the museum’s crest over the signature. A nice touch, he thought. The Swiss loved stamps.

‘And now, if we could just take the photograph?’

‘Naturally.’

Stroehlein unclasped the cigarette case and laid it open. For a moment, Paul forgot everything. Gold gleamed inside the silver, a thin leaf no bigger than a book of matches. The letters were so tiny you could barely make them out. He wondered how anyone had ever managed to write it – or why they’d felt the need.

‘Handle it carefully,’ Stroehlein warned.

Vincent unrolled a black rubber mat and snapped on a pair of latex gloves. With surprising delicacy, he arranged the tablet on the mat and put a red-and-white reference scale alongside it. Kneeling beside the table, he held his camera over the tablet and fired off half a dozen shots.

‘It’s an amazing piece,’ said Paul.

‘My father bought it in Naples, before the war. Now, of course, they would not let it out of the country. He was not an impulsive man, or a romantic, but it bewitched him. He had to have it. All of his life, he was certain there is some sort of key inside the tablet. The secret of immortality.’

He laughed. ‘Of course, this is nonsense.’

Paul remembered Ari saying something similar – the whole point, in fact. He looked at Vincent’s camera. It looked perfectly normal to him, but perhaps the infrared apparatus was in the lens. He didn’t know much about photography.

Vincent had finished. He stood up and began packing the camera away. Stroehlein laid the tablet back in the cigarette case and rested it open on his lap, contemplating it. Reflected light shone gold on his face.