The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [55]
The silence hung heavy between them. Neither man gave an inch.
"So when you say 'they,' " said Doyle, "who exactly do you mean?"
Sparks stared at him, unblinking, seemingly unmoved, but after making a decision behind his impassive gaze, he took a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Doyle.
A lithograph of a woven coat of arms, an interrupted black circle on a field of white, three jagged red lines darting through the circle like lightning bolts.
"I've seen this design before," said Doyle, as he took out the sketch he'd been carrying in his pocket and gave it to Sparks. "Scrawled on the baseboard of Selig's cabin wall. I believe he saw it on the arm of one of his assassins—a scar or tattoo—and wrote it himself just before he died."
"Do you know what it signifies?"
"Haven't the faintest. Do you?"
"For centuries something similar to this served as the official seal of the Hanseatic League."
Doyle rummaged through his schoolboy memories: "The Hanseatic League was an alliance of German merchants. Medieval. Formed for protection of their cities and trade rights in the absence of a central government."
"Their influence eventually spread to every court in Europe. They raised a mercenary army, fought wars to assert their authority. The city of Lubeck, now in Germany, was the seat of their power, which reached its peak in the fourteenth century when they were as strong a force as any sovereignty."
"But they were finally defeated."
"By 1700 the League had all but disappeared, although Lubeck, Hamburg, and Bremen even today are still referred to as Hanseatic cities."
"Why would their seal turn up in the middle of this business?"
"There have for the last two hundred years been persistent rumors that the League did not die out with the consolidation of Germany as originally believed. That a form of the League survived as a secret society, with its resources and objectives intact."
"Who would have been responsible for that?"
"The merchants themselves initially. After the League dissolved, they still needed to protect their ships and caravans so they formed a militia, a private police force. And lacking the skilled men required for that work, they began to recruit criminals and thieves from port cities around the world, training those members rigorously, making them expert in arms, munitions, killing techniques.
"Through the years, this rogue branch began to prey on its employers and finally seized outright control of the organization. This renegade form of the League has survived to this day, headquartered in Eastern Europe."
"An international guild of thieves," said Doyle.
"Smuggling. Pirating. Trafficking in contraband. Stealing for themselves or as commissioned."
"And you suspected them in the theft of the Vulgate from Oxford prior to our sailing."
"Yes."
"And you think the same men, or elements of that organization, are after the Book of Zohar as well."
"Yes."
"But as to the question of who they might be working for or why ..."
Jack shook his head.
"Someone in America," said Doyle.
"Yes."
"The Vulgate Bible would have been transported here as well. On an earlier ship."
"Correct."
"But we don't know where."
Jack shook his head.
Doyle felt a satisfying and familiar meshing of the gears of their thought. This felt more like the old Sparks, the two of them alternatively sprinting ahead of each other on a chase for buried truth.
"Then we must trace these thieves back to whoever commissioned the crime," said Doyle.
Sparks raised an eyebrow. "How would you do it?"
"Let them steal the Book of Zohar—or think they have— and follow them."
The slightest smile appeared at the edge of Sparks's mouth. "Yes."
"You'll need the full cooperation of Lionel Stern—"
"I have it."
"You'll have mine as well."
"No. You're here on business. Couldn't expect you to