The Sacred Scroll Read Online Free PDF Page B

here,’ Taylor said. ‘What the hell did they pump into us?’ There was a pause. ‘I could sure as shit use a drink.’
    ‘Don’t go there.’
    Taylor croaked out a laugh. ‘Don’t worry – state I’m in, water would do nicely.’
    It’d been – how long? – since they’d last been given anything; a couple of crusts of pitta bread and two plastic beakers of warm cola. And cola is no thirst-quencher, no matter what they tell you. ‘If they want to keep us alive, they’ll bring us something.’
    ‘And if they don’t?’
    Brad Adkins’s eyes flinched then as the dark cell was flooded with cold light from the lamps bolted into the ceiling. Soon afterwards, he knew, he would hear the footsteps.
    He huddled protectively in his corner. He’d grown used to the filth, but he was still bewildered.
    ‘Oh Christ, here they come,’ growled Taylor, and Adkins saw that his reaction was different. Taylor was bracing himself.

6
     
    New York City, the Present
     
    Laura Graves sat uncomfortably across the desk from Sir Richard Hudson in his airy office two floors above Room 55.
    ‘I called you in because I felt I owed you an explanation,’ he began.
    ‘If it’s about the job –’
    He looked at her seriously. ‘I know you’re disappointed, but this business landed on our desk in the middle of restructuring.’
    ‘I understand, sir. Marlow has far more field-work experience.’
    ‘But not your specific language expertise. The missing scientists have to be located, and that’s where you’re crucial. The job has top-level priority. And Jack is the man to lead an investigation like this.’
    ‘Which is why you pulled him back from Paris.’
    ‘I know you were expecting to take charge of the new Section 15 –’
    ‘It was as good as damned well promised me.’
    ‘– but, in our business, expediency is all. Later on, who knows? Situations change.’
    Graves didn’t answer that.
    Hudson leaned forward. ‘How much do you know about Marlow?’
    ‘He and Lopez are old friends, I know that much.’
    ‘I suppose you could call them that. Have you spoken to Lopez?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘That surprises me, considering you arrived before Jack.’
    ‘I’m more of a newcomer than he is.’
    ‘But you’ve been in this game almost as long.’ Hudson leaned back. ‘What do you think of him?’
    She spread her hands, not knowing how to answer, then decided to fall back on a safe ‘It’s really too early to say.’
    Hudson laughed briefly. ‘You don’t mean to tell me you haven’t checked him out.’
    ‘His files are restricted.’
    ‘Tell me what you know.’
    Graves didn’t have much room for manoeuvre. In fact, in the short space of time since she’d met him, she’d thought long and hard about her new chief.
    The research she’d been able to do was limited. She’d pulled a file which told her that Marlow was born in London. Now in his late thirties, he’d been educated at Winchester and the Sorbonne, where he’d read Archaeology and Anthropology.
    The file also told her that he’d looked set for a career as an archaeologist, but something (not specified) made him change horses, and in a move which indicated to Graves an early recruitment to INTERSEC, he’d spent a year on the foreign desk of the
Guardian
before moving to
Time
and thence to a job with CNN. Cover jobs, in other words.
    Just over ten years ago he had been in London, a field operative at INTERSEC’s bureau there. Five years later,he transferred to Paris, a posting Graves envied. Like most people who’d never lived there, she equated Paris with romance and excitement.
    ‘But you know all this,’ she said to Hudson when she’d run through this information for him. ‘Why ask me?’
    ‘I wanted to hear how you described him.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Women are susceptible to him.’
    Graves laughed scornfully. ‘For God’s sake!’
    ‘Not that he’s one to take advantage of that. In fact – certainly lately – he’s been quite