The Lazarus Vault

XXXV

Destrier left the car at the end of the street and walked back to the address he’d been given. He forced himself to walk at a moderate pace — he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. The Aston Martin was memorable enough.

He found the house. The curtains were drawn but the lights were on — good. He slipped a pair of brass knuckles over his right hand and knocked with his left.

No one came.

He got out Ellie’s mobile and dialled Doug’s number. He lifted the letterbox flap and heard the phone ringing inside. There was no answer, and no sound of movement either.

He waited through another minute’s silence and decided to go in. It was a college house, used by generations of students: the lock was a joke. It took him thirty seconds to get in, another ninety to establish no one was home.

But only recently. The kettle was still warm. In the bathroom, steam still fogged the mirror; wet footprints walked across the carpet, and the towel on the door was damp. In the corner, beside the laundry basket, he found a woman’s sock.

He ran outside and looked up and down the road. It was empty.

Three streets away, Doug and Ellie sat in a borrowed Nissan and waited for the windscreen to demist. On the pavement, a petite girl in tight jeans and a figure-hugging top watched anxiously.

‘She’s just a friend,’ Doug said. Ellie hadn’t asked. She sat in the passenger seat, hunched forward, willing the wall of fog in front of her to clear. She wasn’t going to judge Doug.

A half-moon gap appeared in the windscreen. Doug rolled down his window.

‘Thanks again,’ he said to Lucy.

‘Drive carefully.’

They pulled away before she could have second thoughts. Halfway down the street, Doug jammed on the brakes.

‘What is it?’ Panic was never far from the surface.

‘I left the lights on at home.’

‘Leave it,’ Ellie pleaded. ‘I promise you, I’ll pay for it.’

If we ever come back. She didn’t say it, but Doug picked up the sentiment. He put the car in gear and started moving.

‘Where are we going?’

They sat at a plastic table and picked at the food in front of them: eggs, beans, anaemic bacon and sausages, slowly congealing in grease. Outside, a grey swell heaved and pressed under a grey sky.

It would have been faster to go from Dover, but Ellie insisted on avoiding London and the motorways. Doug rolled his eyes, but didn’t argue: he drove through the night, crossing the country on B-roads and backroads until they rolled into Harwich with the dawn. The wait for the ferry had been agonising, sitting in the concrete lanes constantly checking the mirrors while Doug got some sleep. She’d almost been sick when they had to show their passports, though the immigration officer had barely glanced at them. Only when the bow had slammed shut, when she’d scanned the faces of all the passengers coming up the gangway and watched the piers recede behind them, did she allow herself to relax.

Doug squinted at a piece of sausage and decided it was worth the risk.

‘Let me get this from the beginning.’

Ellie put down her coffee. ‘There are two sides to this. There’s Monsalvat, Blanchard and all them — and there’s … a rival organisation.’

Call it a brotherhood, though we’ve nothing against women.

‘Behind Monsalvat, there’s a French billionaire named Michel Saint-Lazare. Your Mr Spencer. Whatever’s in that box, Saint-Lazare’s ancestors took it from the brotherhood centuries ago.’

‘According to your friend Harry.’

‘I have to believe him.’ Two months ago, she’d never have believed she’d be saying that. ‘I can’t do this by myself.’

Doug gave her a weary look. Exhaustion bruised the skin around his eyes; his face looked grey where stubble poked through, but he still tried for a smile.

‘You’re not by yourself.’

Ellie reached across the table and squeezed his hand. ‘I know. But we won’t survive on the run for long. We’ll run out of money, for a start. All my bank cards come from Monsalvat. As soon as they work out I’m with you, they’ll probably find a way to cancel yours too — or track us if you use them.’ Doug looked sceptical. ‘They’re a bank, remember. They can do that kind of thing. Whatever we stole from them, they’ll move heaven and earth to get it off us.’

‘You could give it back.’

‘I’ve chosen my side. This organisation, the brotherhood, whatever you call them — they’re the only ones who can protect us.’ She crossed her fingers and prayed that was true. ‘We have to find them.’

‘How do we do that?’

Ellie sipped her coffee and made a face. It tasted of detergent.

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘Harry was my only contact.’ She’d tried the phone number he’d given her three times from the pier at Harwich. If no answer, leave a message for Harry from Jane. The voicemail had kicked in, but she hadn’t left a message.

‘Now he’s probably dead — or worse.’

The boat rocked up and down in the swell. A toddler with a yellow balloon staggered down the aisle between the tables, fell flat on his face and started to wail. Ellie felt a kick of sympathy.

‘There’s a company in Luxembourg that Monsalvat have just taken over.’ A mid-ranking European industrial concern. By an accident of history, they own something that belongs to us. ‘They’ve got something that links to Harry’s people. If we can find it, maybe we can find our way to them.’

‘If we can find it?’ Doug repeated. ‘Are we just going to walk in there and ask if they’ve got an address for an ancient, secret brotherhood?’

Ellie allowed herself a pale smile. ‘Something like that. Unless you’ve got a better idea.’

But across the table, Doug’s eyes had closed and his face nodded forward. Driving all night had exhausted him; he couldn’t stave off sleep any longer. Ellie shot out her arm just in time to stop him toppling into his breakfast.

Doug drove; Ellie sat with two sheets of paper laid out on the map book on her lap. One gave a transcription of the poem, the other was a translation.

‘Mr Spencer asked me to make the translation,’ Doug explained. ‘I wanted to keep the form of the original, so it’s written in rhyming octosyllabic couplets. Eight syllables per line — it’s the standard form for early French romance poetry.’

‘Romance as in …’

‘As in romance language. In ancient Rome there was written Latin and there was a bastardised, colloquial form called Romanice. As the empire fell apart, Latin stayed pretty much the same, but Romanice devolved into the languages that became French, Spanish, Italian and so on. In the twelfth century, when people started writing in those languages, the stories they wrote were called romances, to differentiate them from stuff written in Latin. Nothing necessarily to do with romantic love. Even today, the French word for a novel is “roman”.’

‘OK.’ Ellie bent forward and read the translation, trying not to feel carsick.

The car bumped over a pothole. For some reason, Ellie found herself overcome by bleakness.

‘What do you make of it?’ she asked.

‘Well for one thing, I think I know who wrote it. Chrétien de Troyes.’ He saw her reaction. ‘What?’

Blanchard gave me a book of his for Christmas. But Doug didn’t know she’d been in Switzerland for Christmas, didn’t know she’d been there with Blanchard, and certainly didn’t know why he’d have given her a twelfth-century manuscript as a Christmas present. A manuscript she’d left behind, along with everything else she owned, at the Barbican apartment.

‘I saw a book of his poems at one of Saint-Lazare’s houses. What made you think of him?’

‘Well there’s the language and the metre, which are the same style as Chrétien wrote in. The subject matter, too: knights and maidens. Carduel is one of the places, in the romances, where King Arthur had his court. We think it’s modern-day Carlisle.’

Doug broke off to concentrate as a white van overtook them. They were driving through the Ardennes, the road dipping and rising over steep ridges and wooded valleys. An easy landscape to imagine knights errant questing for damsels and treasure.

‘But the real clue’s in the text. Look at it. A Christian knight … from Troy. Chrétien is the French for “Christian”, and Troyes is how they spell the ancient city of Troy. Chrétien de Troyes.’

‘If you say so.’

‘The whole poem’s a riddle. When Mr Spencer said he believed it hid the secret to a lost treasure, I thought he was crazy. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I think he’s right. The taut parched ground is parchment, and the poet — Chrétien — is scratching at it with his reed pen like a plough. He’s sowing something in the parchment, hiding it in the poem.’

‘How?’

The first two lines sound as if they might be a clue to something. Mazy paths … noble turns … his right … maybe you’re supposed to find a maze and always turn right.’ He saw the look Ellie was giving him. ‘Or something.’

‘You’re cherry-picking words and trying to make them mean something.’ Ellie closed the map book, shutting the poems away. ‘Anyway, if your Mr Spencer was actually Michel Saint-Lazare, what’s he looking for? The treasure was already in his vault.’

‘Then why did he come to me?’

‘Because of me. Everything Blanchard’s done, he’s been trying to draw me in closer. He recruited me. He took me down to the vault. Getting you to look at the poem must have been part of the same plan. He knew we were together. He must have guessed you’d tell me about it.’

‘Why?’

It was the question she’d been asking herself ever since the stiff envelope dropped through her letterbox in Oxford. Why me? Now she had an answer.

‘He was using me as bait. He knew my father had been part of this brotherhood. He must have thought that by bringing me into Monsalvat, dangling all these pieces of the puzzle in front of me, he’d draw the brotherhood into revealing themselves.’

‘Which they did.’ Doug reached the top of the hill and shifted into a higher gear. His gaze fixed firmly on the road ahead, though it was wide and empty.

‘Except now you’re not the bait. You’re the quarry.’

It was odd being back in Luxembourg — the same feeling she used to get going home to Newport from university. Like visiting a ghost town, except that the town carried on and she was the ghost.

An eerie quiet gripped the Talhouett building. Ellie had seen the bid documents: she knew that in six months the building would be sold, half the employees out of work and the other half moved to an office park on the edge of town. She wore a black polyester skirt and a jacket that almost matched: they’d been cheap when they were new, and cheaper still in the charity shop where she found them. Tights from a service-station vending machine completed the outfit. It wasn’t much to look at, but that and her Monsalvat card got her past the front desk and into the Operations Manager’s office. She hoped the receptionist didn’t see her trembling.

‘Tell me everything you can about Mirabeau.’

Claude Doerner, the Operations Manager, sat back in his chair and frowned. He was a middle-aged man with a middle-aged sprawl: his toothbrush moustache was the trimmest thing about him.

‘What is Mirabeau?’ he asked.

‘Don’t mess me around.’ Fear sharpened her manner. What if Blanchard guessed she’d come there? What if they were watching? ‘I’ll be working on the integration team,’ she lied, ‘evaluating which personnel are going to be able to deliver the corporate synergies we need. Any cooperation you can give me will definitely be taken into account.’

‘Are you threatening me?’

With a confidence she didn’t feel, Ellie sat down and crossed her legs.

‘Just tell me about Mirabeau.’

‘I promise you, I have never heard of it.’

Perhaps he was telling the truth. Ellie glanced at the computer on his desk. ‘Can you log me in?’

Doerner swivelled the monitor around. He tapped his password on the keyboard, then pushed it across the desk to her.

‘Be my guest.’

Ellie found the search box and clicked. Doerner moved round the desk towards the door.

‘Where are you going?’

‘To the bathroom. Or do you have to sign a paper to allow that too?’

She blushed. ‘Of course.’

As soon as he was gone, she typed in ‘Mirabeau’ and set the computer searching. Doerner came back sooner than she expected. He settled himself in his chair and played with his tie.

‘Will there be much bloodshed?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The sackings.’ He made an effacing gesture. ‘Apologies. I should say, “the synergies”.’

She couldn’t see any point in lying. ‘It’s going to be bad. They — we — promised the Luxembourg government not to do anything until the next election, but after that they’ll swing the axe pretty hard.’

He grimaced. ‘You know, twelve hundred years ago Duke Siegfried built Luxembourg as a castle. I wonder how much has changed.’

Ellie watched the progress bar crawl across the screen. Every second was like a knot tightening around her throat.

‘For all our technology, the only organising principle we recognise is the dominance of the strong. Feudalism. Workers don’t want to be empowered. They want safety: a steady income and protection from the vicissitudes — this is the word? — of the world. For that, they allow themselves to be exploited. They know their lord only cares for them because they generate income, but it is better to be abused by one tyrant than by many. And when a new master takes over through war or conquest, they know they will suffer.’

He drained the last of his coffee. ‘I’m getting philosophical. Perhaps I should accept the no-doubt-inadequate early retirement offer they will make me.’

Ellie had stopped listening. She was staring at the screen.

Translation: nothing.

She turned the monitor towards Doerner. ‘What is this?’

His phone rang. He held up a finger and took the call.

‘Oui? J’attends.’

When he put the phone down, his face had changed. He looked happier, almost eager to please.

‘Can I get you a cup of coffee?’ he asked.

‘Not unless you can tell me about Mirabeau.’

He shrugged. ‘No more than the computer.’

‘Michel Saint-Lazare has just spent over a billion euros buying this company because of Mirabeau. You can’t tell me no one knows anything about it.’

‘Of course, someone will know, if it exists. But to find this person, it is not easy. Talhouett is a big business: we have many operations in many countries. There is probably no one in the company who knows everything.’

‘I need you to let me in to your archives.’

‘All the files are still in the data room. It has been locked for the duration of the takeover battle.’

‘Then take me there.’

‘If you can just wait a few moments. My secretary has gone out with my keys.’

Ellie waited ten seconds — long enough to assure herself that the smile on his face was 100 per cent false. She rummaged through her bag as if looking for her lipstick, until she felt the handle of the kitchen knife she’d bought that morning.

In a single motion, she whipped it out of the bag and held the tip to Doerner’s throat. Doerner went very still.

‘You’re not really working for Monsalvat,’ he said.

‘No. I’m much nicer than they are.’

She watched him, wondering if there was any sort of panic button or alarm he might press. But these were administrative offices in one of the most boring cities in Europe: they didn’t expect people to walk in and hold knives to their throats. Not literally.

‘Who was that phone call from?’ She jerked the knife: she’d only meant to scare him, but she was so tense she broke the skin. He winced. A drop of blood seeped in to his starched shirt collar.

‘Your boss. Christine Lafarge.’

She almost took his head off. ‘Where is she?’

His eyes sidled round to the window, though he didn’t move his head. ‘She said she’ll be here in five minutes.’

For a split second, Ellie really thought about killing him. She saw the choice in black and white: him or her. She’d slit his throat, take his keys, leave his body for Christine Lafarge to find. Show them what they were dealing with. It would be so easy.

A second later, shame overwhelmed her. What sort of person are you becoming?

‘Give me your keys,’ she ordered him. ‘And your mobile.’

He’d dropped the line about his secretary having the keys. He reached into the suit jacket on the back of his chair and deposited a ring of keys and a mobile phone on the desk. Ellie swept them across and picked them up.

‘Stay there.’

She used the knife to cut the cord on his desk phone, and the cable going into his computer. She couldn’t see anything else he might use to communicate with — and she didn’t have time to look.

‘Which is the key to the data room?’

‘The one with the yellow ring.’

‘And for this office?’

‘The blue.’

She stepped out of the office and locked it. Five minutes, he’d said. How many had gone already? She ran down the corridor and found a bank of lifts at the back of the building. How long?

The data room was just as she remembered it, though somehow more forlorn. She locked the door behind her and turned on the lights, taking in the cheap tables and the long ranks of mechanical shelves. There must be a million pieces of paper in here. She’d have five minutes, if she was lucky.

But at least she had an idea where to start. She was sure she’d seen Mirabeau doing the due diligence. She ran to the shelves and punched in the rack she wanted on the keypad.

‘Open sesame,’ she murmured to herself.

The shelves rumbled into life, like giants woken from their sleep. They groaned and clattered, rolling themselves apart so that an aisle opened between them. Even that seemed to take forever.

Ellie pushed in before they’d finished moving. There’d been stacks like this at university: she’d never quite shaken the fear that they might suddenly to decide to spring shut and crush her. Now that was the least of her worries. She found the accounts folders halfway down the aisle and started pulling them out. Mirabeau. Where had she seen it? She’d always had a good head for archive work, a recall that allowed her to find things again. She’d never needed it so desperately.

She turned the pages, searching for something to jog her memory, forcing herself not to go so quickly she’d miss it. She felt as if a giant fist had clenched around her heart, squeezing each time there was a noise in the corridor. She saw a jagged graph shaped like a mountain range and thought it looked familiar. She slowed down.

Two pages later, she found it. A single line in the budget for one of Talhouett’s French subsidiaries. Mirabeau Exploratory (Ref 890112/A/F2727).

She knew the way their record-keeping worked. F2727 was the file reference. She consulted the shelving list. F2650-F2900: Stack 7. She went back to the keypad on the end of the stack and pressed the button to open up the new aisle.

A fraction of a second before the shelves started to move, she heard a noise at the door. The handle was turning. Time had run out.

Christine Lafarge snapped the door open and pushed Doerner through. He stumbled in. Nobody stabbed him. He gazed around the empty room, unused chairs at dusty tables.

‘You said she’d be here.’

Doerner had never heard a woman growl before. He remembered Ellie: I’m much nicer than they are.

‘She said this was where she was coming. And the lights are on.’

A book lay open on the floor. Christine Lafarge picked it up and swept her gaze over the page. A long fingernail rasped down the entries — and stopped.

‘Mirabeau.’

‘I told you. She wanted to know all about it.’

‘What did you tell her?’

‘Nothing. I have never heard of this project. Talhouett is a big company. We —’

‘What does this reference mean?’

‘It’s the file location.’ A pause, a consultation. ‘Stack 7.’

Five feet away, in Stack 4, Ellie lay hunched up on the empty shelf under the accounts folders and tried not to shake it with her trembling. She lay there, entombed in paperwork, and listened.

Doerner’s footsteps proceeded down the aisle. She could hear him counting off the file numbers under his breath. She clenched her fists, digging her nails into her palms in frustration. She’d led them right to it.

Doerner knelt. She heard the shuffle of files — and then, unexpectedly, a curse.

‘The file — it’s gone.’

Ellie went still as stone.

‘She must have taken it.’

‘How long since she left your office?’

‘Five minutes. Maybe ten.’

‘Did you tell Security to stop her at the exit?’

Doerner, plaintively: ‘She took my phone.’

‘Is there any other way out of this building?’

A silence as Doerner thought about it. ‘There is a fire door at the back of the south corridor. It is supposed to be alarmed, but we disable it for the smokers. She maybe could have got out that way.’

Ellie could only imagine the look Christine Lafarge was giving Doerner. She almost felt sorry for him.

‘If she has escaped, every person in this building will be out of a job. Do you understand?’

Ellie heard the clack-clack of high heels receding, Doerner’s footsteps squeaking behind. The door opened and closed. She was alone.

She waited two minutes to be sure they wouldn’t come back. She would have waited longer, hours if necessary, but she had a more pressing concern.

How am I going to get out?

The aisle was between stacks seven and eight. She was in stack four. There were three shelves of files between her and freedom, and no other way out. She could wait for someone to come, but the room hadn’t been used in months, might not be used for months again.

And if anyone does come, I probably don’t want to meet them.

She’d thought she’d already squeezed up as tightly as possible, but she found that if she pushed herself back she could make a small opening at the head of the shelf. That gave her space to reach through to the next shelf and start manoeuvring the files through, filling them in around her.

She felt like a worm, gobbling the earth in its path and squeezing it out behind. A bookworm. That’s what her mother always called her. The memory spurred her on. She pushed herself over the divider into the cavity she’d dug out and started attacking the next shelf.

The second stack went more quickly than the first, and the last was easiest of all. With a couple of heaves, she pushed through, spilling a cascade of paper across the floor and slithering down on her stomach like a polar bear coming out of its cave. Dust and paper dandruff covered her. Her mouth tasted of paper, and she couldn’t be sure when Christine Lafarge might come back. All she wanted to do was go.

But there was one thing she had to check. She moved along the aisle to where file F2727 ought to be.

Doerner had been right. There was nothing — only a thin gap where file F2726 leaned against F2728.

Who took it? Not Doerner. Not Christine Lafarge, or Blanchard.

She felt ill. So much effort, so much danger — for nothing. A gap on a dusty shelf. She crouched down and stared at the space, as if she could will the file back into its place.

A small bump on the shelf caught her eye. She reached in a finger and felt it. The waxy hardness of dried chewing gum.