The Messiah Secret

33

The sun was high in the sky by the time Killian had taken both paintings out of their frames and then systematically reduced the frames to matchwood. The obvious place to hide a small piece of paper or parchment was within a secret compartment somewhere in the heavily gilded wood that surrounded and supported each picture, he reasoned, so he’d started by examining the frames themselves, looking for any writing or marks on the wood itself that might be relevant. But both the fronts and the backs of the two frames were virtually unmarked. Killian had checked every crack and line he could see, searching for the compartment he was certain was hidden there, but no panels or drawers sprang open under his probing.

Then he’d broken the first frame, pulling apart the joints and separating the four component parts. He’d examined each of them individually, breaking the lengths of wood apart until he was surrounded by splinters and chunks of wood, and flakes of gilt paint covered the blanket like golden confetti. But still he found nothing.

He repeated the process with the second frame, with precisely the same result. There was nothing hidden inside the frame of either picture. Only then did he turn his attention to the paintings themselves.

The reverse sides of the two oil paintings appeared normal in every way. The canvases were mounted on oblong wooden stretchers, the fabric pulled taut and secured in place using short tacks. As far as Killian could see, there were no marks on the wood itself, and nothing on the rear of the canvas. The only other place Bartholomew could possibly have concealed the text of the parchment was on the face of the wooden stretcher, the part that lay hidden underneath the canvas of the painting itself.

Killian took a broad-bladed screwdriver from the small toolkit he always carried, then stopped and shook his head. There were dozens of tacks — maybe fifty or sixty in all — studding the rear of the stretcher, and to shift them using the screwdriver would take ages. The painting itself was of no interest to him, so he could remove it much faster using a knife.

Selecting a utility knife, he slid out the blade and, with one swift movement, cut down the entire length of one side of the stretcher. Then he turned the painting and repeated the operation on the other three sides. The canvas fell away and Killian eagerly studied the clean wood his action had revealed.

Again, he could see no marks of any sort. He picked up his screwdriver again and worked the end of the blade under the strip of canvas that was still attached to the stretcher. He levered up the fabric until he could grip it firmly, then ripped the canvas away from the stretcher and tossed it aside. There was nothing on the wood; no marks of any sort.

Killian stood looking down at the stretcher, turning the wooden oblong over in his hands. He knew he must have missed something. The statement by Bartholomew could only be interpreted in one way. The translation of the lost parchment had to be hidden somewhere in the paintings, in the ‘Montgomerys’. Nothing else made sense.

Groaning with frustration, he tossed the stretcher aside and picked up the painting he’d cut out of it. He examined the back of the canvas but could see no marks of any sort. Only then did he turn the fabric round and look at the painting itself.

Ten minutes later he screwed the canvas into a ball. There was nothing, no clue at all, anywhere on the painting. There was only one possible conclusion he could draw, and he belatedly realized there was one vital question he hadn’t asked Suleiman al-Sahid.

He’d badly underestimated Bronson and Lewis. They’d obviously studied the contents of the leather-bound box before he’d snatched it off them, and made the same connections he had. Then they’d flown out to Egypt, visited al-Sahid and removed the clues Bartholomew had hidden in the paintings years earlier. His own exhaustive and destructive search of the pictures, he now realized, had been a complete waste of effort, and more importantly of time. Most likely, Bartholomew had written down the full translation of the Persian text on a couple of bits of paper, sealed the pages in envelopes and tucked them away at the backs of the paintings.

And then Bronson had come along, spun Suleiman some line, and helped himself to what they’d all been looking for.

Killian cursed long and fluently, then gave the wooden debris a vicious kick that scattered pieces of the frames in all directions. The clues simply weren’t there.

He bent down and rummaged through the bits and pieces one more time, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette lighter and touched the flame to the edge of the canvas. In the extreme midday heat, the old and dry fabric caught almost immediately. Killian waited a few moments, making sure that the fire was well established, piled the remains of the picture frames and stretchers on top of the flames, then walked back to his car.

At least he now knew exactly what he must do. Bronson and Lewis obviously had the information he needed and they had to be somewhere in Cairo. He simply had to find them and recover the clues. And then he’d kill them. He smiled, the pain from his ear receding a little. The deaths he was planning would be long and lingering.