The Book of Secrets Read online

  The Book of Secrets

  Tom Harper

  In a snowbound village in the German mountains, a young woman discovers an extraordinary secret. Before she can reveal it, she disappears. All that survives is a picture of a mysterious medieval playing card that has perplexed scholars for centuries. Nick Ash does research for the FBI in New York. Six months ago his girlfriend Gillian walked out and broke his heart. Now he's the only person who can save her – if it's not too late. Within hours of getting her message, Nick finds himself on the run, delving deep into the past before it catches up with him. Hunted across Europe, Nick follows Gillian's trail into the heart of a five-hundred-year-old mystery. But across the centuries, powerful forces are closing around him. There are men who have devoted their lives to keeping the secret, and they will stop at nothing to protect it.

  Tom Harper

  The Book of Secrets

  Copyright © Tom Harper 2009

  for Owen

  Art and Adventure

  I

  Oberwinter, Germany

  Thick snow covered the village that morning. A cold silence gripped the streets. The cars parked opposite the hotel were shrouded with frost – except one, where a gloved hand had scraped a rough circle clear on the driver’s window. Behind the black glass, the red eye of a cigarette blinked and glowed.

  A young woman came round the corner and hurried up the hotel steps. She was dressed as if for a run: a hooded sweatshirt and jogging trousers, running shoes, a woollen hat and a small rucksack on her back. But it was not a morning for running, and no footprints had left the hotel since the overnight snow. She let herself in the front door and disappeared. The cigarette in the car glowed faster, then went out.

  Gillian reached the top of the hotel stairs, tiptoed across the landing and slipped into her room. A dirty half-light seeped through the curtains, making the shabby room look even shabbier. It stank of nicotine: in the thin mattress and untouched sheets, the heavily varnished furniture, the threadbare rugs slung over the floorboards. The black laptop on the dresser was the only sign of change in the last thirty years.

  Gillian pulled off the hat and shook out her raven-black hair. She glimpsed herself in the mirror and felt a faint pang of surprise: the new hair colour still didn’t feel right. If she couldn’t recognise herself, perhaps others wouldn’t either. She unzipped her top and stripped it off. Mud streaked her pale arms; her fingers were cracked and bloody from climbing in the dark, but she hardly noticed. She’d found what she’d gone for. She crossed to the computer, flipped up the lid and turned it on. Down on the street, a car door slammed.

  As the machine clicked into life, something gave inside Gillian. The adrenalin drained away. She was exhausted – and shivering with cold. Too tired to wait for the computer, she went to the bathroom and undressed, peeling the damp fabric away from her skin. She left the clothes in a heap on the floor and stepped into the shower. The old hotel might lack some comforts, but at least the plumbing worked. The hot water blasted her face, slicking her hair flat against her scalp. The sharp droplets pricked warmth back into her skin; her muscles began to relax. She closed her eyes. In the dark space that opened, she saw the castle on the cliff; the icy rock face and the tiny crevice; the terror in her throat as she pushed against the ancient door…

  Her eyes snapped open. Over the white noise of steam and water, she’d heard a sound from the bedroom. It might have been nothing – the hotel had its share of creaks and bumps – but the last three weeks had taught Gillian new fears. She left the water running and stepped out of the shower, wrapping herself in a skimpy hotel towel. Wet footprints pooled on the floorboards as she tiptoed through to the bedroom.

  There was no one there. The laptop sat on the dresser between the two windows, chattering away to itself.

  The sound came again – a knock at the door. She didn’t move.

  ‘Fräulein – telefon.’

  It was a man’s voice, not the hotel owner’s. Gillian looked at the door. She’d forgotten to attach the safety chain. Did she dare slip it on now, or would that only alert him to her presence? She grabbed the hooded top from the bed and zipped it over her breasts, then pulled on a pair of pyjama bottoms from under the pillow. That made her feel less vulnerable.

  ‘Fräulein?’ The voice was harsh, impatient – or was that just her imagination? No. In horror, she saw the door handle start to turn.

  ‘I’m here,’ she called, trying not to sound frightened. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Telefon. Is important for you, Fräulein.’ But it didn’t sound important – it sounded false, a rehearsed lie at the wrong moment, dialogue out of sync with the film. The handle was still down, the tongue of the lock bumping the frame as the man pushed against it.

  ‘I can’t take it right now,’ said Gillian. She snatched the laptop from the dresser and stuffed it into the rucksack. ‘I’ll be down in five minutes.’

  ‘Is important.’ An ill-fitting key scrabbled in the lock. It was opening. She flew across the room and slammed the safety chain home. She grabbed the handle and tried to hold it, but the grip on the other side was remorseless. Her fingers went white; her wrist was twisted back.

  With a pop, the lock gave. The door sprang open, flinging Gillian backwards onto the floor. The chain snapped taut, bit – and held. The door shuddered to a standstill. Gillian heard a muffled curse. An unseen hand pulled it back a fraction and thrust it forward again. Again the chain held.

  Dazed and desperate, Gillian pushed herself up. Blood ran down her cheek where the door had grazed it but she didn’t notice. She knew what she had to do. She slung the rucksack over one shoulder, pulled open the window and climbed out onto the tiny balcony. A rusting ladder, the fire escape, ran down the side of the building. She’d insisted on a room next to it, though she hadn’t expected to need it. She’d thought she’d lost them after Mainz. She pulled her sleeves down over her hands and reached for the nearest rung.

  A second before she touched it, the whole ladder shivered. The snow on the rungs shook loose. With her arm still outstretched, she looked down.

  The icy air seemed to freeze in her lungs. Through the swirling mist and snow, she saw a dark figure climbing towards her. From inside the room she heard another crash: the impact must have almost torn the chain from its housing. Perhaps someone had heard the noise, but she doubted it. She hadn’t seen another guest since she checked in.

  She was trapped. Only one thing mattered now. She ducked back through the window, ran to the bathroom and locked the door. It wouldn’t hold two minutes, but perhaps that would be enough. Trembling, she perched on the edge of the bathtub and opened the laptop. In the bedroom, she heard a splitting crack as the chain finally gave. Footsteps ran in, paused, then headed for the window. That would buy her a few more seconds.

  But not enough time to write – to explain. She reached behind the machine and turned on the webcam built into the lid. The light on the data card blinked as it established a connection; on screen, a new window opened with a list of names. She cursed. All of them were greyed out, dead to the online world. Probably still fast asleep.

  Out in the bedroom, voices conferred for a moment, then approached the bathroom. A heavy boot slammed against the door, so hard she thought they’d kick it off its hinges. But the door held. She scrolled frantically through the names. Someone must be up. The light on the data card blinked orange and her heart almost stopped, but a second later the connection re-established itself and the light turned green. Another kick; this time the door buckled.

  There. At the very bottom of the list, she found what she was looking for: a single name rendered in firm bold letters. Nick – of course he’d be up. A flash of misgiving shot through her, but more pounding on the
door drove it out instantly. He’d have to do. She clicked the button next to his name to open a connection. Without waiting to see if he answered, she found the file and clicked SEND. The light on the data card flashed a furious pulse as it started streaming the information out of the computer.

  Come on, she mouthed. She waited for Nick’s face to appear on screen so she could warn him, tell him what to do with it – but the box where he should have been stayed black, blank. Answer, godamit.

  ‘About 1 minute remaining,’ the status bar said. But she didn’t have that long. There was a small window behind the bath: she reached up and jammed the laptop into the opening. Her fingers scrabbled on the keyboard as she typed two brief lines of text, praying that the message would find someone. Another kick. She pulled the shower curtain across the bath to hide the computer.

  The door smashed open. A man in a long black coat and black gloves stepped through the splintered frame and advanced towards her, the cigarette glowing like a needle in his mouth. Unthinkingly, Gillian tugged up the zip of her top.

  Outside, a faint scream drifted down the street until the cold mist smothered it. Loose snow filled the footsteps outside the front door. The car drove away, the chains on its tyres clanking like a ghost. And on the other side of the world, a handful of pixels flashed up on a screen to announce that a message had arrived.

  II

  The Confession of Johann Gensfleisch

  The Lord came down to see the city, and the tower which mortals had built. And the Lord said, ‘Look, they are one people and they all have one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; from now, nothing that they propose to achieve will be impossible for them…’

  God have mercy for I have sinned. Like the men of Babel I built a tower to approach the heavens, and now I am cast down. Not by a jealous god, but by my own blind pride. I should have destroyed the cursed object, cast it in the river, or burned it in a fire until the gold leaf melted off the pages, the ink boiled away and the paper charred to ash. But – beguiled by its beauty and its creator – I could not do it. I have buried it in stone; I will write my confession, a single copy only, and they will lie together in eternity. And God will judge me.

  It begins – I began – in Mainz, a town of wharves and spires on the banks of the river Rhine. A man may bear many names in his life: at this time, mine was Henchen Gensfleisch. Henchen was a childish form of Johann; Gensfleisch was my father’s name. It means goose meat, and it suited him well. Our family’s fortunes had grown fat and he had grown with them, until his belly sagged below his belt and his cheeks drooped around his chins. Like a goose, he had a sharp bite.

  It was only natural that my father’s financial interests led him eventually to the source. He became a companion of the mint, a sinecure which catered perfectly to his vanities. It gave him a pension and the right to march in pride of place on the St Martin’s Day procession, and demanded little in return except the occasional inspection of the mint’s workings. One day, when I was ten or eleven years old, he took me with him.

  It was a black November day. Cloud had settled on the pinnacles of the cathedral, and rain pelted us as we scurried across the square. There was no market that day; the rain seemed to have washed every living thing from the streets. But inside the mint all was warmth and life. The master met us himself; he gave us hot apple wine, which burned my throat but made me glow inside. He deferred constantly to my father, and this also made me happy and proud (later I realised he ran the mint under contract, and hoped it would be renewed). I stood close beside my father, clutching the damp hem of his robe as we followed the master into the workshops.

  It was like stepping into a romance, a sorcerer’s laboratory or the caverns of the dwarves. The smells alone intoxicated me utterly: salt and sulphur, charcoal, sweat and scorched air. In one room, smiths poured out crucibles of smoking gold onto guttered tables; through a door, a long gallery rang with pealing hammers as men on benches pounded the sheets flat. Further along, a man with a pair of giant shears cut the metal as easily as a bolt of cloth, snipping it into fragments no bigger than a man’s thumb. Women worked them against wheels until the corners and edges were ground into discs.

  I was entranced. I had never imagined such harmony, such unity of purpose, could exist outside the heavens. Without thinking, I reached for one of the gold pieces, but my father’s heavy palm swatted me away.

  ‘Don’t touch,’ he warned.

  A small boy, younger than me, collected the pieces in a wooden bowl and brought them to a clerk at the head of the room who tested each one on a small pair of scales.

  ‘Each must be exactly the same as the others,’ said the master, ‘or everything we do would be worthless. The coinage only works if all its pieces are identical.’

  The clerk swept a pile of the golden discs off his table into a felt bag. He weighed the bag and made a note in the ledger beside him. Then he passed the bag to his apprentice, who carried it solemnly through a door in the back wall. We followed.

  I could tell at once that this room was different. Iron grilles covered the windows; heavy locks gripped the doors. The moneyers, four huge men with bare arms and leather aprons, stood at a workbench striking iron dies like miniature anvils. The apprentice brought the bag to one of them. The moneyer tipped it out on the bench beside him, slipped a disc into the jaws of his mould, then raised his hammer and struck. A single blow, an eruption of sparks, then the die was popped open and the newly minted coin added to a fresh pile.

  I stared. In the heavy lamplight, the coins gleamed and winked back perfection. My father and the master had their backs to me, examining one of the moulds through a lens. At the bench, the moneyer concentrated on aligning the gold blank in the die.

  I knew it was wrong – but how could it be theft to take something that would instantly be replaced a hundredfold? It was like scooping a handful of water from the river to drink, or plucking a wild berry from a bramble. I reached out my hand. The coin was still warm from the impress of the die. For an instant, I saw St John’s embossed face in a reproachful gaze. Then he vanished in my clenched fist. I felt no guilt.

  It was not greed – not for gold. It was a longing such as my child’s mind had never known, a lust for something perfect. I understood – dimly – that these coins would enter the world and be changed and changed again – into property, power, war and salvation – and all this would happen because each was a perfect duplicate, triplicate, replicate of all the others, members of a system that was unbreakable as water.

  They were done. My father shook the master’s hand and offered some approving words; the master smiled hungrily and proposed schnapps in his lodgings. While he turned to say a few words to the moneyers, I tugged my father’s sleeve and pointed to the door, squeezing my legs together to imitate discomfort. He looked surprised to be reminded I was there. He tousled my hair, as close to affection as he ever managed.

  I knew I had been caught the moment we stepped through the door. The clerk was standing behind the desk, the apprentice opposite, both staring at the balance in incomprehension. One pan lifted the velvet bag high in the air; the other sat immovable on the table, pinned down by a copper weight. I felt the lightness like a hole in my stomach – though even then, I marvelled at a system so precisely tempered that it could detect the absence of a single coin.

  The master ran to the table. Angry words followed; the clerk lifted off the weight and replaced it, the scales swung, but the judgement remained the same. The moneyer was summoned and furiously protested his innocence. The clerk tipped open the bag and counted out the coins one by one, assigning each a square on his chequered cloth. I counted with him silently, almost believing that the missing coin might miraculously reappear. One row of ten crept across the table, a second followed, then a third and the beginnings of a fourth.

  ‘Thirty-seven. Thirty-eight. Thirty-nine.’ The clerk reached inside the bag and pulled it inside out. ‘Nothing.’ He consulted the ledger. ‘
There were forty before.’

  The clerk glared at the moneyer. The moneyer stared at the master, who glanced anxiously at my father. Nobody thought to look at me – but that made no difference. I knew that the all-seeing eye of God was upon me, could feel His angry gaze. Sweat trickled down into my palm. The gulden became lead in my hand, bearing down the full weight of my guilt.

  My hand opened. Perhaps it slipped, perhaps I wanted to let it go. The gulden spilled out, dropped at my foot and rolled away. Five heads craned to follow it across the stone floor, then slowly turned back to me. One was faster than the others. A stinging blow hit the back of my head and knocked me to the ground. Through my tears, I saw the clerk bend down to pick up the errant coin, dust it off and place it lovingly in the final square of its row. The last thing I remember before my father dragged me away was seeing him lick his pen to record the outcome in the vast ledger at his side.

  My father beat me again that evening, thrashing me with his studded belt while he damned my sins to everlasting hell. I cried readily – stoicism only made him angrier. But as I bent over the chair and stared into the hearth, all I saw was an endless cascade of gold gulden, each one a bright fragment of perfection.

  III

  New York City

  People used to have circles of friends, Nick thought: now they had lists. Thumbnail photographs tallied on a web page like a fighter pilot’s kills, or ladders of contacts displayed in real-time league tables of how recently you’d been in touch. Never mind how you felt: if you didn’t keep talking, your friends fell ruthlessly into social purgatory. Part of Nick found it unsettling, but he still used the programs. He was looking at one of those lists on the monitor in front of him now, at a green button flashing next to a highlighted name. The name had been anchored to the bottom of his list for months, down among the former colleagues, old classmates and vague friends-of-friends. But that didn’t begin to tell the story.