“How much?” Shadow asked, cutting straight to the point.
He named a seven-figure sum. “That’ll do, right?”
“Are you for real?” Niel asked, the map forgotten. “That’s huge!”
“The find was worth billions, and that’s not even factoring in its cultural significance.”
Shadow whooped, jumping up and down. “Lots of lovely gold!”
“Money in a bank account, actually, Shadow,” Ash said.
“But I can buy gold with it, right?”
Nahum laughed. “You want a nest of it?”
“Could I?” Her eyes gleamed with the prospect.
Gabe shook his head. “Please stop giving her ideas. However, they need a signature from one of us. We need to meet Theo on Monday morning. Harlan too, because he’ll get a share, of course. All of us and Shadow are all named as beneficiaries, so any one of us can do it. I suggest that you,” he looked at Nahum, “or Barak go. Probably you, seeing as you want something to do, and Barak might have other leads to follow up. Or you can both go.”
Nahum nodded enthusiastically. “Of course. Do we get to see the treasure again?”
“I believe so. Some of it, at least.”
Shadow’s mouth dropped open. “I want to see it!”
“Sorry, you’re stuck here with us!” Gabe stuck his hands in his jeans’ pockets. “I’m a bit gutted I can’t go, actually.”
“Why don’t we all go?” Ash suggested. “It’s a short flight.”
Niel considered the jewels they had found, and the statues, and the likelihood that there’d be more. “I don’t think we should. One of us should stay here. I’m happy to do that. Hopefully it won’t be the only opportunity we get to see the hoard again. Plus, I want to get back in that house, in case there’s something we missed.”
“Unfortunately,” Ash said, leaning back in his chair, “I agree.”
Gabe nodded, disappointed but determined. “Yes, we’ll stay here.”
“Okay, then.” Nahum headed to the door. “I’ll organise my flights, and someone will need to take me to the airport. With luck I can get one this afternoon. I’ll take Olivia with me on Monday. She’d love to see the hoard.”
“I’ll drive you,” Niel told him. “What about the jewels? You may as well take those. We don’t really want them with us.” The spelled box would also get the jewels through customs without alerting anyone, much the same as the one they used to transport the emerald discs out of Egypt.
Nahum’s lips tightened. “I’m not keeping them in Olivia’s place. No way!”
“JD’s house, then? Or The Retreat?”
“No!” Gabe’s strident voice cut across Niel’s suggestion. “Only we look after them. JD wouldn’t be able to help himself.”
“A trip to Cornwall too, then,” Nahum said, nodding. “Leave it with me.”
When Harlan arrived at JD’s estate, Mortlake, on Saturday afternoon, he was buzzing with excitement that he knew even JD wouldn’t dampen.
He’d be signing the paperwork on Monday morning to receive his Templar treasure finding fee, and would be seeing some of the treasure again. He’d been so overwhelmed when he first saw it under the church that he’d barely been able to take it in. Not helped, of course, by being captured and at great risk of imminent death. However, on Monday he would see it properly, with hopefully most of it catalogued. His imagination was working overtime just thinking about the stories the treasure could tell. It would be good to see Theo again, too. Out of courtesy, he’d tell Mason Jacobs, his boss. He would have to go during work time, after all. He had a feeling that Mason, who knew Theo well, would also want to go. He hoped The British Museum’s staff would be accommodating.
Plus, he’d phoned his contacts in Rome, and had successfully talked to an Occult Hunter called Romola Falco. She had agreed to look into Amato’s house and the family for him. Romola was a voluble woman in her mid-thirties, passionate about her work and effusive about everything Italian—food, cars, cities, fashion, and of course, its vast history. She was even named for the myth about Romulus and Remus who had founded Rome after being suckled by a she-wolf as babes, and then raised as shepherds. Romola was the female derivative of Romulus.
Harlan had kept the details about a Fallen Angel’s jewellery out of it. He’d just said it was religious iconography that he was chasing down. She’d pressed him for details, and once she heard about the Florentine church, she’d told him she’d investigate that, too. He passed the good news on to Jackson, hoping that might encourage his friend to take time off, as well as Barak, Estelle, and Lucien. All of them had been obsessing over Belial for weeks, and this was a chance to rest for a while, and recover from their bruising encounter with Black Cronos, too. Like the rest of the team, he couldn’t really believe that the count was really gone, but for now, he was enjoying it.
Since Christmas he had dedicated himself, more or less, to his job. He’d had a few old texts to track down, a rumoured cursed statue, and a few auction jobs to attend for clients. He’d only been sidetracked when a demon had rocked up in Wimbledon, courtesy of a witch who’d tried to fool the Storm Moon Pack. More fool him. Now that was over with too, and his thoughts circled back to the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus.
Anna, JD’s assistant, answered the door as usual, her gaze sweeping disapprovingly over him. He had no idea why she seemed to dislike him, but took heart in the fact that she looked at everyone except JD with that same tight-lipped air of intolerance. “He’s in the marquee,” she said, heading up the stairs and leaving him to find his own way to the garden.
“Thanks!” he called sarcastically after her.
He walked quickly through JD’s Elizabethan manor, exiting onto the long back patio with the expansive lawns beyond. Right in the centre was a huge, white marquee that looked as if JD was preparing for a wedding. He wasn’t, though. It housed the tablet.
Harlan shouted as he neared the entrance, not wanting to surprise him. “JD! It’s Harlan. Okay if I come in?”
“Just watch your step! And shut the door after you!”
Warily, Harlan unzipped the entrance flap, pushed his way inside, and then stopped in shock. “Herne’s horns! What the hell is going on?”
Electric cables snaked across the ground, and strings of lights were suspended overhead. Benches were set up in a circle around a central area, littered with scientific equipment that looked utterly baffling, like some kind of Frankenstein’s circus, with JD as the ringmaster. Plus it was stiflingly warm from the array of heaters around the place.
“What do you think I’m doing, imbecile? I am testing the tablet.”
Harlan ignored the insult. He was used to it. Besides, JD said it more out of habit than real meaning. That was what he told himself, anyway. “Now?”
“Yes! For about the hundredth time.” JD was wearing one of his Elizabethan smocks that made him look like a mad Renaissance artist, and he turned, hand on hips. “In fact, to be precise, this is my one hundred and thirty-eighth test. It’s all in there.” He gesticulated to a large book on one of the tables.
“So many?” Harlan weaved through the tables, focussing on the Emerald Tablet displayed on a large, stone block. A wheel of correspondence was a few metres away, set up by some kind of control centre. “Is this the one from your lab?”
“Yes. I brought it all out here. Took a week. To make another one would take far too long.” JD’s beard was unkempt, and his hair was brushed rakishly in the wrong direction. “I’ve been testing since just after Christmas, once I knew we got rid of that old devil.” He meant the count.
Harlan turned the pages of the book that JD had referred to, seeing reams of confusing notes and diagrams. “Why so many?”
“There are a million permutations of the wheel, but my investigations have narrowed down the possible combinations to several thousand instead. However, I am getting close. At least I know which disc fits now.”
“You do?”
“It’s already in place.”
“It is?”
“Yes. It took a few attempts, but then I realised it had to be done at a certain time—planetary alignments, stars, etcetera. Well, one of several special times.”
“How did you discover that?” Harlan was aware that he was asking an endless number of questions, but the last time he had discussed this with JD was weeks ago, and he hadn’t achieved any of this.
“Mathematical calculations based on potential dates of its construction, the alignments of the cosmos, plus the properties of emerald, and the text itself, of course. It didn’t make sense that it could just be resurrected at any old time. There needed to be a key, and not one that was accessible once in a thousand years, either. When I cracked it, it slid in like warm butter in a pan. You can‘t even see the edge where they join anymore.”
“It’s heavy! How did you manage it?”
