It seemed to have the desired effect. The billionaire gulped, then gave a reluctant nod. ‘All right. The sword is here. Come with me, and I’ll show it to you.’
Chapter Fifty-Four
Wesley led Ben and Jude along a bare white passage. At the end of it was a metal doorway with no handle and no visible hinges, just a shiny blank panel mounted on the wall to its right.
‘I don’t generally go for newfangled technology,’ explained the owner of several leading electronics corporations, ‘but I’m willing to admit it has its uses now and then.’ He pressed his palm flat against the panel. After a very slight pause while the scanner did its work, an LED blinked, there was a click, and the door opened.
‘This way,’ Wesley said, showing them through. Beyond lay a downward flight of steps, immaculate and white, leading to a heavier security door equipped with a keypad and a rotary combination lock.
‘It’s where I store some of my knick-knacks when I’m not around,’ Wesley told them. ‘Seeing as the place is empty a lot of the time. Hold on while I key in the codes. They’re long ones.’
As the billionaire fiddled with the vault door, Ben noticed Jude’s drawn expression and felt sorry that wounds had been reopened by talking about the car accident. He touched Jude’s shoulder. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked softly. Jude nodded. Ben patted him on the arm.
A solid metallic ‘thunk’ sounded from the massive innards of the vault door, and Wesley heaved it open with an effort. The vault was an octagonal room, thirty feet across, that seemed to have been cast out of solid steel. Inside, it was like a museum. Knick-knacks, Ben thought, looking around him at the artwork that hung behind glass on the metal walls. He was no expert, but recognised a couple of Van Goghs and a Cézanne. There was no need to ask if they were real, or if the hundred or so swords of various shapes and sizes that hung on wall racks were cheap mail-order reproductions.
‘What’s that?’ Jude said, pointing at an object on a display stand.
‘It’s a Fabergé egg,’ Ben said.
‘How come you know so much?’
Ben just shrugged.
‘Oh, that stuff’s nothing compared to what you’re about to see,’ Wesley said, waving them across to a plinth on which lay a black oblong case, a little under four feet long. Ben and Jude stood either side of him as he produced a key from his pocket and clicked open the locks, then opened the lid.
‘There it is,’ Wesley breathed, his eyes glowing.
The case was lined with thick protective foam padding. Nestling inside was the sword that Ben recognised from Fabrice Lalique’s drawings. They had been a close likeness of the curious sickle-shaped blade and curved hilt. The latter was bronze, age-tarnished to a dark reddish patina. The steel of the blade was dull and pitted with the centuries, here and there showing traces of its former glory.
It wasn’t a large weapon, nothing like as imposing as many of the medieval battle swords in the vault, with their long triangulated blades and cruciform hilts, some of them obviously intended to be wielded with two hands, and even then with some difficulty. Nor was it any more ornate than Lalique’s drawings had suggested. The metalwork of the hilt was plain and unadorned, and only the faint inscriptions on the blade hinted at any kind of special craftsmanship – to Ben’s eye, at least.
One thing you didn’t have to be an expert to notice was that the sword had been used in battle. The blade was notched here and there where its edge had clashed against the edge of another sword, armour plate or shield. The weapon had been a witness to the bloody reality of history.
As delicately as handling a newborn baby, Wesley reached into the case and lifted out his trophy. He held it up to show them with a look of reverence, as if choirs of angels were bursting into song inside his head.
‘This is what everyone’s after?’ Jude said. ‘It doesn’t look like much.’
‘May I?’ Ben asked, reaching towards the sword. Wesley balked, but before he could snatch it away Ben had gently taken it from him and was examining it, turning it over in his hands.
‘Please! Be careful with that!’ Wesley gasped. ‘You have no idea of its value.’
‘Relax,’ Ben said. ‘I’m not going to chop wood with it.’ He hefted the sword in his fist, feeling its balance. It was no mere ceremonial piece, that much was immediately clear. The hilt fitted perfectly in the palm and the blade just asked to be swung in a chopping motion. Ben noticed that the sickle shape of the blade gave it as many of the characteristics of a short axe as of a stabbing sword. In its day, this had been a state-of-the-art fighting implement that in the hands of a skilled soldier would have been capable of inflicting terrible injury, piercing armour and hacking off limbs. He wondered about the man who’d last used it, how long ago it had been and what had happened to him.
It was still just a sword, a lump of metal – yet one that had inspired such obsessive fascination that scholars wanted to write books about it, rich men would pay almost anything to possess it, and evil men would murder for it.
‘Why?’ Ben said to Wesley. ‘Why this sword?’
‘Simeon really didn’t tell you anything at all?’
‘He never had the chance,’ Ben said. ‘But now you’re going to.’
They left the vault and returned upstairs to the kitchen, where Wesley poured the remainder of the Bordeaux into three glasses and opened another bottle. Ben had gently but firmly insisted on bringing the sword upstairs, so that he could study it more while they talked. The ancient weapon looked strangely incongruous lying on a modern kitchen table. Wesley kept glancing at it nervously, as though concerned that at any moment Ben might run outside and start slashing weeds with it – but after another glass of wine he seemed to unwind and began his story.
‘If you’ve talked to Hillel, then you pretty much know the sword’s history for the last fifty years,’ Wesley said. ‘Since he stumbled on it by chance that day in 1963, it’s passed through the hands of various owners, none of who regarded it as anything more than a historic curio, not even Prince Al-Saud, who as a collector should have known better. He might have asked a far higher price for it. And I’d have paid it, too, I can tell you.’
‘So what about before Hillel found it?’ Jude asked. ‘Did it just stay hidden in the ruins of Masada?’
‘Given that nobody even knew where the site of Masada was for centuries, I’d say it’s a fair assumption that the sword was there all that time, yes. It was well concealed in the rampart wall, for the simple reason that the men who deliberately hid it there were determined that it should not fall into the hands of their enemies after the defeat of the fortress. If what I believe – and what Simeon and Fabrice believed – is correct, then for this particular sword to be taken as a trophy by the Romans would have been regarded as a worse disaster than defeat itself. Thankfully, that didn’t happen, or the sword would surely have been lost to us for ever, melted down, buried, hanging on the wall of some Roman emperor, only to be captured by the Barbarian hordes when the empire finally fell. Who knows where it could have ended up?’ Wesley eyed the sword lovingly.
‘Backtrack,’ Ben said.
‘Sorry, I’m skipping. Okay, let me lay the groundwork here. How much do you know about the history of Masada? Specifically, about the nine hundred or so men, women and children who died there?’
‘I know what most people know,’ Ben said. ‘That after the Jewish uprising against Roman rule in 66 a.d., Jerusalem was besieged and then sacked, and pockets of refugees fled to the fortress at Masada to escape persecution. They held out as long as they could, but defeat was a foregone conclusion. The rest is history.’
Wesley nodded. ‘In a nutshell. But there’s more to it. The revolt that kicked off in 66