2001, New York

They studied the rectangle of yellow parchment cut out from the Treyarch Confession. Adam held it up carefully by two corners and looked at them through the patchwork of little square windows he’d cut out of it.

‘It’s so very fragile,’ he said, ‘I’m scared of tearing the thing.’

‘Let’s get the Grail out,’ said Maddy. She reached for the Treyarch, now missing a rectangle four feet long by eighteen inches wide, and hurriedly wound it round its wooden spindle. Rolled up, she casually tossed it on to one of the armchairs and reached for the wooden box.

Cabot rested a hand on its lid. His eyes locked on Maddy’s. ‘Ye understand what lies within?’

She nodded impatiently.

He glanced at the Treyarch tossed on the chair, already forgotten. ‘I trust ye will treat what lies within this box with more respect than ye did the Confession.’ His hand remained firmly on the lid. ‘In here are precious words many men have died for … and killed for.’

‘The Holy Grail, right.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Ye say that, young girl, like a … like ’tis just a flavour of preserve.’ He looked down at the box. ‘If ’tis what King Richard believes it to be, if it be what the Templars believe it to be, then this contains the hidden words of God. Ye understand this?’

Maddy pursed her lips and sighed. ‘Yes … yes, of course, I’ll be very careful with it. OK?’

Cabot shook his head with frustration. ‘’Tis not the scroll – the parchment and ink – I am talking about. That is merely the work of a man with a quill.’ He glanced at the parchment grille Adam was holding up carefully. ‘If that really be the key … By laying that atop the Grail and looking through the holes, we are looking upon the true Word of God. Is it truly for us to see?’

Maddy’s first instinct was to brush the old fool aside. She didn’t have the patience for this kind of superstitious nonsense. She didn’t believe in some fluffy-haired Father Christmas-like guy sitting up on some heavenly throne and handing down sound-bites of wisdom once every few millennia. She was about to dismiss his medieval superstition with a sarcastic comment, but then a solitary word pushed itself to the forefront of her mind and silenced her.

Pandora.

Her eyes dropped down to the box.

What’s in there – the message hiding inside – includes the word Pandora.

There was no knowing what was about to be revealed. She looked around at Adam, Sal, Becks, Cabot … and wondered if this really should be for all of their eyes.

For your eyes only, Maddy.

‘Uhh … yes, Cabot … Perhaps you’re right.’ She looked at Sal, then Adam. ‘I’m sorry, guys, this is something that I have to do alone.’

‘Why?’ asked Sal. She sounded hurt. In truth she probably was. After all, Sal, Liam and herself were supposed to be a team: a shared bond, a shared trust in each other. Shared secrets.

But not this one. Not yet.

‘Sal, I – I don’t know why. Not yet. I just know somebody, somewhere, in some time, has tried to warn me about something, with the word Pandora. That’s all I’ve got. That’s all I know. If this is the answer,’ she said, nodding at the box, ‘then I have to find out what this is first. Then we’ll talk.’ She looked at Adam. ‘And I’m sorry, Adam … this is meant for Sal, me and Liam, when we get him back. Team first – that’s how it works.’

‘What? You can’t cut me out now. I mean, I’ve been helping you. Maddy? I worked out –’

Becks stepped forward. ‘Team strategist Madelaine Carter has authority on this matter,’ she said in a firm voice that hushed Adam. He’d nearly lost a finger in the casual twist of her hand once before. He didn’t look like he was ready to try his luck again now.

‘Sure, all right …’ he said, ‘if that’s how you want this to go.’

‘Sorry, Adam,’ said Maddy. ‘Let me do what needs to be done first … and maybe there’ll be more I can tell you in a little while. OK?’

He nodded, putting the grille down gently on to the table.

Maddy turned to Cabot. ‘I may not share your faith, I’m sorry about that, but whatever truth is in here, I believe, is profoundly important. It’s the Holy Grail, I know. I’ll treat it with respect. I promise you that.’

He lifted his hand slowly. ‘You may regret the truth you are about to discover.’

She sighed. ‘Well, we’ll see, won’t we?’

She turned to Sal. ‘Will you take Adam and Mr Cabot outside?’

Sal glanced at the support unit. ‘What about Becks?’

‘She’s staying.’

A flash of resentment seemed to cross Sal’s face. She looked like she wanted to say something. Maddy could guess what she was thinking.

You’re trusting a robot over me?

But Sal merely nodded, beckoned both men to follow her towards the shutter door. She cranked the shutter doorway up until it was high enough for them to duck under into the night.

Maddy could hear their disgruntled murmuring as they walked together down to the muddy shingle of the river to watch the fishing boats in the harbour opposite.

‘Becks,’ she said.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m going to open a locked partition on your hard drive.’

Maddy trawled her own mind for those three words. And then realized they were there in her head, ready and waiting.

‘Right, listen to me: iPad – Caveman – Breakfast.’

Becks’s eyes lost their focus for a moment. Then almost immediately, her body posture changed, reset. No longer the acquired modest stance of a noble lady, instead she stood legs planted, hands by her side, like a marine on parade. Then she smiled faintly. ‘Acknowledged. The locked partition is now accessible.’

‘Good.’ She looked down at the wooden box on the end of the table and carefully lifted the hinged lid. Inside she saw the roll of parchment and the wooden tip of its spindle. She felt her heart quicken, her breath catch.

‘This is the Holy Grail,’ she found herself almost whispering as she lifted it carefully out and rested it on the table. ‘Do you understand how to decode it?’

Becks nodded. ‘Of course. I have access to the rest of the data on my hard drive.’ Her left eyebrow cocked. ‘Jay-zus, I’m not stupid.’

Maddy laughed. No need to guess who she’d been spending too much time with.

Carefully she turned the scroll’s spindle and gently pulled the brittle parchment down the table, until finally, almost long enough to overhang the end, it was entirely unravelled.

Just like the Treyarch, there were margin illuminations down both sides, but this time much less elaborate. Simple crosses: the cross-swipe of a nib in dark ink, there to mark the beginnings and endings of different, meaningless passages.

She spotted what looked like sections of Latin – at least, she recognized letters from the Latin alphabet. She looked again at the margin markings: crosses, every now and then on both sides. She reached across the table for the template they’d cut from the Treyarch and lined up the top right corner of it with the first cross in the right-hand margin.

The top left-hand corner of their grille lined up with a cross on the left margin, but it was several inches too short for the bottom corners to line up with the next margin crosses. She looked down at the hundreds of squares cut in the parchment, seeing the slanted strokes of the Grail writing through the windows. One or two letters seemed to line up, to be perfectly framed, but the majority of windows showed letters half in, half out.

‘Not here, then,’ said Maddy.

Becks’s eyes ran systematically down the cross markings in the left margin. She stepped slowly down the length of the kitchen table, comparing measurements by eye.

‘It should be placed here,’ she said finally, pointing towards two crosses. ‘The gap between these is precisely twenty-seven inches. The grille is also twenty-seven inches in length.’ Becks quickly examined the next cross marker down the left margin. ‘This is also spaced by twenty-seven inches.’

Maddy stepped down her side of the table with the grille in hand and carefully lined up the top right and top left-hand corners. She spread her hand across the parchment, holding down the corners at the bottom that desperately wanted to curl up again.

Oh my God.

‘It lines up,’ she said quietly. She looked across the grille, and found herself holding her breath. Every small rectangular cut-out in their grille perfectly framed a single letter. She lifted the grille away, looked again at the Grail document and saw endless spidery lines of handwriting – none of the letters seeming to stand out, none asking for specific attention, and all of it unintelligible. She rested the grille back down again, carefully lining the corners up once more.

You ready to know, Maddy? Ready to find out what Pandora is supposed to mean?

The question frightened her. No – she wasn’t ready. She knew the story of Pandora’s Box. The young woman, Pandora, who wanted to know the secrets within a box – perhaps little different to the one sitting open on the end of their table – but, once the box was opened, all manner of evil spilled out that she could never put back inside again.

There’s a reason this code word is Pandora, right?

Maybe it was something that would be harmful to know? Something that could hurt her? Destroy her – hurt the others? She looked at Becks, who watched her silently, waiting for instructions.

‘I … I’m not sure I want to read this,’ said Maddy.

‘Why?’

‘I’m scared.’

Becks looked confused. ‘It is just data … knowledge. All information is tactically useful.’

‘Well, I’m not so sure. Sometimes knowing something isn’t so good. You know?’

Becks said nothing.

‘Look … I …’

God, I wish Foster was here. Or even Liam, she decided. After all, they were one and the same, weren’t they? No. Not the same. Foster was Liam but with a lifetime of knowledge, a lifetime of experience. One day, Liam was going to become that old man. But he wasn’t there yet. She could imagine Liam standing here, impatiently fidgeting with frustration while she dithered like this.

‘I want you to read it,’ she said finally. ‘Decode the whole thing.’

Becks nodded.

‘When you’re done, I want you to come and get me and I’ll password-lock your hard drive again. Understood?’

‘Yes, of course, Maddy.’

‘And when you come for me, Becks … do NOT tell me anything about the message. Is that perfectly clear? I don’t … I don’t want to know yet.’

‘This is perfectly clear.’

Maddy sighed. Whatever message was on this table would be safe on Becks’s hard-drive mind for now. She decided she needed Foster’s advice before she opened that mind. Better still, she could bring Becks with her to the park, find Foster sitting beside that hotdog stand and feeding the pigeons. Then they could both listen to it together.

That was it. She realized she didn’t want the burden of knowledge to be sitting on her shoulders alone. She’d already done enough of that.

‘You know what to do?’

Becks nodded.

‘I’ll be outside, then, with the others.’