The Codex Read Online Free PDF Page A

reverberated in the empty room.
    “Greetings from the dead.”
     
    4
     
    Tom Broadbent stared at the life-size image of his father slowly coming into focus on the screen. The camera gradually panned back, revealing Maxwell Broadbent seated at the giant desk in his study, holding a few sheets of paper in his large hands. The room had not yet been stripped; the Lippi painting of the Madonna was still on the wall behind him, the bookshelves were still filled with books, and the other paintings and statues were all in their places. Tom shivered: Even his father’s electronic image intimidated him.
    After the greeting his father paused, cleared his throat, and focused his intense blue eyes on the camera. The sheets shook slightly in his hands. He seemed to be laboring under a strong emotion.
    Maxwell Broadbent’s eyes dropped back to the papers, and he began to read:
     
    Dear Philip, Vernon, and Tom,
    The long and short of it is this: I’ve taken my wealth with me to the grave. I’ve sealed myself and my collection in a tomb. This tomb is hidden somewhere in the world, in a place that only I know of.
     
    He paused, cleared his throat again, looked up briefly with a flash of blue, looked down, and continued reading. His voice took on that slightly pedantic tone that Tom remembered so well from the dinner table.
     
    For more than a hundred thousand years, human beings have buried themselves with their most valuable possessions. Burying the dead with treasure has a venerable history, starting with the Neanderthals and running through the ancient Egyptians and on down almost to the present day. People buried themselves with their gold, silver, art, books, medicine, furniture, food, slaves, horses, and sometimes even their concubines and wives—anything they thought might he useful in the afterlife. It’s only in the last century or two that human beings stopped interring their remains with grave goods, thus breaking a long tradition.
    It is a tradition I am glad to revive.
    The fact is, almost everything we know of the past comes to us through grave goods. Some have called me a tomb robber. Not so. I’m not a robber, I’m a recycler. I made my fortune on the wealth that foolish people thought they were taking with them to the afterworld. I’ve decided to do just what they did and bury myself with all my worldly goods. The only difference between me and them is that I’m no fool. I know there’s no afterworld where I can enjoy my wealth. Unlike them, I die with no illusions. When you’re dead you’re dead. When you die you’re just a duffel bag of rotting meat, grease, brains, and bones—nothing more.
    I’m taking my wealth to the grave for another reason entirely. A very important reason. A reason that concerns the three of you.
     
    He paused, looked up. His hands were still shaking slightly, and the muscles in his jaw were flexing.
    “Jesus Christ,” Philip whispered, half rising from his seat, his hands clenched. “I don’t believe this.”
    Maxwell Broadbent raised the papers to read some more, stumbled over the words, hesitated, and then abruptly stood and tossed the papers onto the desk. Screw this, he said, shoving back the chair with a violent motion. What I’ve got to say to you is too important for a damn speech. He came around the desk with several great strides, his enormous presence filling the screen and, by extension, the room where they were sitting. He paced in front of the camera, agitated, stroking his close-cropped beard.
    This isn’t easy. I don’t quite know how to explain this to you three.
    He turned, strode back.
    When I was your age, I had nothing. Nothing. I came to New York from Erie, Pennsylvania, with just thirty-five dollars and my father’s old suit. No family., no friends, no college degree. Nothing. Dad was a good man, but he was a bricklayer. Mom was dead. I was pretty much alone in the world.
    “Not this story again,” moaned Philip.
    It was the fall of 1963. I pounded