The Book of Spies

28

EVA FOLLOWED Yitzhak, and they climbed upstairs, first into the cellar and then back into the house. Angelo and Judd brought up the rear. In the hallway Eva could hear Odile's and Roberto's voices floating back from the sitting room.
The professor led them through the airy kitchen and into a large storage room lined with metal shelves stacked with cardboard boxes. They stood beside the professor, the air electric with suspense as he peered around.
"Now, where did I put it?" Lips pursed, he headed into the back and pushed aside some cartons. When he emerged, he was carrying a small box taped tightly shut. He rotated it to show the top. "See? Here's your name, Eva." He handed it to her.
She stared at the handwriting. It was Charles's.
"Perhaps it is some fabulous necklace from ancient Persia, or jeweled earrings from Mesopotamia." Angelo's chiseled features were alight with excitement.
"Open it," Yitzhak ordered.
She tore off the tape and lifted the lid. On top of Styrofoam bubbles lay two pieces of protective paper boards about eight inches wide by twelve inches long, held together with clips. She separated them, revealing a fragment of parchment. One side showed cramped, faded Arabic lettering, while the other side was blank. There was nothing written on the protective boards.
"What's that?" Judd asked.
"It looks like something from an ancient document." Eva handed the yellowed piece to Yitzhak. It was much smaller than the boards, about three by four inches.
"Let's go into the kitchen, where I can see better." Yitzhak led them back into the room, where he carefully put the fragment on a high butcher-block table.
She watched as he scrubbed his hands at the sink. Many professional archivists wore white cotton gloves when handling manuscripts and other artworks to protect them from skin oils and acids. At the same time, others claimed gloves were dangerous, since they not only could contain unseen dirt and particles, but they also minimized the wearer's sensitivity when handling the article. For them, thorough hand-washing was the better choice. Yitzhak belonged to the hand-washing school, as did she. Charles had been a white-glove archivist.
When Yitzhak finished, she washed her hands, and he ordered Judd and Angelo to do the same.
She joined Yitzhak on one side of the high table as he positioned his reading glasses on his nose. Judd joined Angelo on the other side, two men of the same height with similar body builds, she noticed.
As Yitzhak muttered to himself, translating the fragment, Eva dug through the Styrofoam packing in the box. "There's something else in here."
She pulled out a tapered cylinder of glistening gold, about eight inches long and, judging by its heft, hollow. At the narrowest end it was two inches in diameter; at the other, about four inches. Perfectly round ivory knobs shone on each terminus.
Yitzhak stared at the baton. "Simple, but spectacular."
"Gorgeous," Angelo said. "But what is it? Is there any writing on it?"
"Does it open?" Judd asked.
Eva rotated the cylinder, and everyone leaned close.
"There are small engravings of arrows, shields, and helmets. Decorations, no writing. I can't find a way to open it. You try, Judd." She could see nothing that related to the Library of Gold. She handed it to him.
"It looks very old," Angelo observed.
"It is," Eva told him. "And it's not only a work of art; it had a real purpose. You can tell from the deep patina--the small abrasions and scratches that come from being used. It didn't just sit on some mantel in a throne room."
"If it opens," Judd reported, "I don't see how."
"I will attempt." The Frenchman took the conical baton, cupped it in both hands, and studied it.
Yitzhak peered up at them over his reading glasses. "The fragment is Arabic Judaica. Military poetry. It mentions the Spartans and secret letters."
"That's it," Eva said, understanding. "The fragment gives us the clues--the Spartans, secret letters, and the military. The cylinder is a scytale." She pronounced the word SIT-ally, rhyming with Italy. "The Spartans invented the scytale around 400 B.C. for secret communication between military commanders. It's the first use of cryptography for correspondence that we know about, but scytali are usually uniform in diameter--not tapered like this one. When I curated an exhibit of ancient Greek artifacts at the Getty, I got lucky and found one to display, but it was plain laurel wood."
"How does it work?" Judd asked.
"A narrow strip of parchment or leather is wrapped around the baton from one end to the other without overlapping itself. Then the message is written lengthwise along the scytale. When the strip's unwrapped, the writing looks like scrambled letters, gibberish. At that point a messenger takes it to the recipient, who winds the ribbon around his own scytale--which obviously must have the same dimensions. Then he can read it."
"So scytali were used for transposition ciphers," Judd said. "Let me see it again, Angelo."
Reluctantly, Angelo handed it over. "It warms the hands. Gold does that."
Yitzhak smiled at Eva. "Charles left you a lovely gift. It's probably worth a great deal of money."
"It would be my honor to buy it from you," Angelo said instantly.
"Thanks, Angelo. But I want to keep it."
He pursed his lips, disappointed. "Is there anything more in the box? I'm still waiting for that necklace from Persia."
She took the scytale from Judd, laid it on the table, and dug through the carton.
"I'm wondering whether Angelo's right," Judd said. "Whether there shouldn't be something else--for instance, a strip of paper with another message from Charles that fits around the scytale for you to read."
Eva stared at him, then abruptly turned over the carton, spilling out the Styrofoam bubbles. As the others spread them out, she inspected the inside of the box.
"There are tiny words written on the bottom," she said, surprised. "I need something to cut open the sides."
Judd grabbed a bread knife from a magnetic holder above the counter and handed it to her. She sliced open the cardboard, and he returned the knife.
"It's Charles's writing." She read aloud:
" 'Think about the Cairo geniza. But the geniza of the world's desire has the answer.' "
"What's a geniza?" Judd asked.
"It's the Hebrew word for a container or hiding place," Yitzhak explained. "All the tattered books and pages--from old Haggadahs and dictionaries to business invoices and children's readers--are put in some safe place in a synagogue, perhaps inside a wall or in an attic, until they can be given a proper burial."
"Veneration of the written word is common in religion," Angelo said. "For instance, Muslims believe the Koran is too holy simply to be discarded."
"But the Jewish geniza is different," Yitzhak explained. "It recognizes that not a single book but the written word in general is sacred. In the rabbinical tradition, a geniza is a grave of written things."
"Where does Cairo fit in?" Judd asked.
Yitzhak stood back and closed his eyes, reverie on his face. "It's long, long ago--the end of the ninth century--and the Jews of what became Cairo are renovating a destroyed Coptic church to be their synagogue. They carve an opening near the top of a tall tower. Children and adults climb the ladder every day to drop inside all the books and pieces of paper we'd throw away now. Can you hear the rustle as they fall through the air? The contributions pile up for a thousand years--a thousand years!--and the desert preserves everything. Then a little more than a century ago, the rabbis finally allow investigation."
His eyes snapped open. "Voila! The geniza yields up its treasures. One priceless fragment belonged to The Wisdom of Ben Sira-- Ecclesiasticus. The earliest version we'd had until then was Greek, although the original was written long before that, in Hebrew in 200 B.C. Because of Cairo's tomb in the air, we know far more about how people from India to Russia and Spain lived, what they thought about, what they ate and bought and fought over. Scores of scholarly books resulted."
"But what does that have to do with anything?" Angelo asked. "This is another mystery. Charles had an annoying habit of being oblique." He eyed the scytale shining on the table.
Judd kept them on point. "How does Charles's scytale relate to 'the geniza of the world's desire'?"
"His note indicates he didn't mean the Cairo geniza," Eva said. "So it's not Cairo."
"Of course you're right." Judd smiled. "But Istanbul is. That's what it's called--the City of the World's Desire."
"Every synagogue there would have a geniza," the professor said. "But that's a lot of genizot to have to dig through."
Judd looked across the table to the professor. "Charles may have left the package with you not only because he trusted you to hold it for Eva, but because you might understand what he meant for her to do next."
"My friend, you have a point," Yitzhak agreed. "Let me think. . . . Istanbul. Geniza. . . ." He frowned and ran a hand over his bald head. Atlast he smiled. "Charles could be such a tease. I think he must've meant Andrew Yakimovich. Yakimovich has the largest private collection of documents from the Cairo geniza in Istanbul. Actually the largest in the region."
"I remember him," Eva said. "He's an antiquities dealer."
She had been concentrating on Yitzhak, but now she glanced at Judd in time to see his gaze focus on Angelo, whose hand had just slipped into and out of his jacket pocket. Judd turned casually away.
"Does this Yakimovich person live in Istanbul?" The fine lines on Angelo's chiseled face deepened with curiosity.
"He's notoriously secretive and moves around a lot," she told him. "I don't remember his address there, and even if I did, it'd be no help."
"He's advised Charles and me in the past." Yitzhak took off his reading glasses and addressed Eva: "I wouldn't be a bit surprised that since Charles left the scytale with me, he also left what Judd calls a transposition cipher with Andrew." He added cheerfully, "Another gift, Eva. I wonder what message Charles wrote on it."
"Finding Yakimovich will be a trick--" Eva froze.
Angelo had pulled a pistol from inside the back of his waistband and quickly whipped it around to aim at them. But Judd was already moving. As Angelo's mouth opened to warn him off, Judd lowered his head, his feet flew over the floor, and his shoulder rammed into the Frenchman's chest. They landed with a thud against the kitchen wall.
"What are you doing!" Yitzhak bellowed. "Stop this!"
Eva grabbed the professor's arm and yanked him down behind the butcher-block table just as the gun exploded. The noise shook the room. A bullet blasted into the ceiling, and plaster sprayed down in a snowstorm.
Angelo slammed the pistol at Judd's head. Judd dodged, ripped the gun away, and pinned Angelo's throat with his forearm. He pointed the weapon at his temple.
Angelo's face was red and furious. He swore in French.
"A man who doesn't want anyone to know he's a threat shouldn't have a bulge at the back of his jacket." Judd's voice was calm. "I saw it when I followed you up the ladder. What do you have to do with the Library of Gold?"
"You will never know," Odile said from the kitchen doorway.
Eva spun around. Roberto was walking shakily in, with Odile behind him, her hand steady as she held a pistol to the back of his head.
The room turned silent.
"Judd, give the gun back to Angelo," Odile commanded. "Or I will kill Roberto."