The Black Madonna Read Online Free PDF Page A

continued today.
    She opened the door to her office. Thin shafts of sunlight filtered in through the closed shutters. She turned on the light and a slow rotating ceiling fan started the illuminated dust motes dancing. The office was sparsely furnished. The walls were lined with cheap shelving supporting a small fortune’s worth of research and reference books in three languages: English, French and Arabic. Nazreem had a natural ear for languages. She had even a basic working knowledgeof Hebrew, and found the guttural sounds of another Semitic language uncomfortably familiar.
    There was a filing cabinet below the window and an elderly rubber plant with brown-edged leaves that suggested it needed watering. There was a bare functional desk with lockable drawers and a dusty computer with an old cathode-ray display. The desk was covered with papers, the product of weeks of research since the find. The thing that had preyed on her mind, even at the worst moment as the bastard thrust himself into her, was that he might ransack her office too. But the burglar had been single-minded. She herself had been his sole distraction. He had spotted his target and been gone from the building within minutes.
    Nazreem turned the key in the lock behind her, then crossed to her desk and sat down. She looked at the mound of papers on her desk, shuffled a few of them and then set them down again, before using another key to open the deep lower drawer in the frame of the desk, opened it and biting her bottom lip, reached inside. At that precise moment a sudden shrill screech sent an electric spasm through every muscle in her body.
    She slammed the drawer shut, then slumped back in her chair, shocked but ashamed by her own stupidity, and let the telephone ring twice more before answering. When she heard the voice on the other end, she was thankful that the adrenaline charge had given her the strength to reply.

6
    The television was switched off and Marcus Frey’s eyes were drifting over the perpendicular splendour of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s Gothic towers outside the windows but his thoughts were a thousand miles and more away. His fingers drummed on the stained green surface of the ingrained leather on his Victorian oak desk, listening to the unfamiliar single tone ring on the other end of the telephone line.
    It had been relatively simple to locate the telephone number for the new Museum of Palestine – a search on Google had pointed him to the web pages of the Palestine Authority’s embryonic Culture Ministry. The bigger question was who, if anyone, would answer.
    He had hesitated before ringing, wondering how he ought to ask for her, by name or as the curator; by name probably given the negligible state of his Arabic and the likely limited English of whoever might be charged with answering the museum’s telephones.
    He need not have worried; on the third ring the phone was answered by a voice that he recognised at once, an unusually quiet, almost breathless, ‘ Marhaba .’
    ‘ Marhabytn ,’ he replied. Hello back. ‘Nazreem, it’s Marcus.’
    For a moment it seemed as if he had been cut off, a sudden total silence, and then: ‘Marcus. How did you …? Why? Now of all times. This is …’
    He interrupted her, as he always did, as she always hated him doing: ‘Congratulations, Nazreem – on the job, I mean. I had no idea. I knew you were capable of it.’
    ‘Marcus, I …’ he could hear the warning tones in her voice. Of course, she was hardly in a mood for congratulations. ‘It’s been so long.’
    ‘I know, I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t have a number. Or an email address. I didn’t think to …’
    ‘Nor did I. Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Not right now.’
    All of a sudden Marcus realised he had no clear idea of what he planned to say. Should he tell her he simply wanted to hear thesound of her voice again? It was the truth, wasn’t it? There was a moment’s awkward silence and then they both began talking at once.