“You’re putting a lot of faith in a five-thousand-year-old carving.”
“It’s not just that one,” Kelly said. “I’ve found multiple variations of this same deity from the same time frame in our database alone. He appears across many cultures and goes by many different names.”
She gestured toward the screen of her laptop. Roche leaned closer to get a better look.
“This is a photograph of the petroglyph from the tomb in Mosul,” she said. “Here’s another depiction of him, only facing forward. Still holding a pinecone in one hand and a canister in the other. He has the same beard and hat, the same wings and watch-like bands on his wrists. Here he is again, standing sideways. And again. He appears in at least fifty carvings from ancient Mesopotamia alone, from the ancient Sumerians, who knew him as An, to the Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians, who called him Anu. To them, he was the god of all creation, the personification of the sky.”
“So what’s his significance?”
“I’m still trying to work that out, but if you look here, this same deity with his pinecone and canister appears in later carvings as the Zoroastrian god Ahura Mazda, who looks an awful lot like how the Egyptians depicted their god Ra in these hieroglyphics, only with his beard bound at his chin and holding an ankh by the handle instead of a canister, and even the customary Christian portrayal of Jesus Christ. We’re talking about five thousand years of worshipping this one being.”
“All religions are derivative to some extent. It’s possible they envisioned their god looking the same because that’s how the ideal man looked at the time, especially considering they originated in the same general area. Or maybe he’s based upon an actual person who traveled the area—”
“Or maybe his body is sealed in a stone sarcophagus like the others.”
Roche looked out the window while he gathered his thoughts. They were searching for a canister from an ancient petroglyph they believed contained a virus capable of wiping out mankind; was it so hard to believe that the man depicted carrying it had been real as well?
“Walk me through it,” he said.
“This god you see here is nearly identical to the first,” Kelly said. “He has the same pinecone, the same canister, the same bands on his wrists. The Assyrians called him Nisroch and portrayed him with the head of an eagle.”
“Like the man from the tomb in Mosul.”
“Exactly. In Sumer he was known as Enki; Ea in Akkadia and Babylon. The son of An/Anu. They believed he lived in the abzu, the ocean underneath the earth, upon which the city of Babylon itself was built. As the ‘god of subterranean waters, ’ he was supposedly the one who saved his people from the Great Flood.”
Roche glanced up at Kelly in surprise. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard those names.
“The crop circle from Poirino, Italy, in 2011 was encoded with a message in a binary language used for electronic communications called ASCII. It read ENKI EA. While I’ve always searched for a rational explanation for such phenomena, there are those within the field of crop-circle research who genuinely believe that ancient astronauts came here from other planets long ago, beings so advanced they were believed to be gods and incorporated into primitive pantheons.”
“After everything we’ve seen, nothing sounds as insane as it once did,” she said and offered him a smile from behind her microphone. “He was also known as Set to the Egyptians and Brahma to the Hindu.”
“What about this one here?” he asked and tapped the thumbnail image of a man identical to the others, only wearing the head of a fish and a cape made of scales.
Kelly maximized the image and skimmed the attached documentation.
“That’s Enlil. At least to the Sumerians. Ellil to the Akkadians and Babylonians and Ashur to the Assyrians, none of whom anthropomorphized him, for whatever reason. They envisioned him wearing a crown of seven pairs of superimposed ox horns. It was the Phoenicians and Philistines who depicted him with the skin of a fish, only they called him Dagon, in which form he made an appearance in the Bible. The Egyptians called him Set. The Hindu knew him as Vishnu. His likeness even appeared in the Americas, where he was known as Quetzalcoatl to the Toltec, Kukulcán to the Maya, and Viracocha to the Inca.”
“How did we get from Mesopotamia to Mesoamerica?” he asked.
The mere mention of the god Quetzalcoatl recalled the terror of being hunted through the Antarctic ruins by an extant species of dinosaur, the very same creature the Teotihuacano had used to guard the alien body entombed in the maze beneath the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. “I’m not entirely sure, but all three incarnations are associated with the various ‘flood myths’ of their respective people.” She switched screens to reveal dozens of pictures of statues, petroglyphs, and reliefs in the unmistakable style of the ancient Mexican civilizations. “These images are from the ruins of the Toltec in Tula, the Olmec in La Venta, and the Maya in Chichén Itzá, where he’d been depicted wearing the mask of the feathered serpent god and still carrying that infernal canister.”
For the life of him, Roche couldn’t envision the implications of what she was saying. There were simply too many seemingly disparate thoughts running through his mind at the same time, all demanding his full attention, and yet simultaneously crying out for him to recognize the connection between them.
“I know you’re searching for a way to rationalize what I’m telling you,” she said, “but maybe we should consider the irrationality instead. We’re dealing with ancient cultures with no scientific knowledge and belief systems built upon superstition. These people literally thought of these men as gods, regardless of whether or not they were real, or if they were even men at all, but for the sake of argument, let’s say they were. This bearded man with his pinecone and canister, his sons with their eagle and feathered serpent masks. Masks like we’ve seen on the bodies inside the sarcophagi in Antarctica, Teotihuacan, and Mosul. Bodies we’ve since learned have regenerative properties that allow them to survive thousands of years in a state of suspended animation. Imagine these giant advanced beings with their animal masks walking among much smaller, intellectually inferior humans with no understanding of the natural world. Superior physical specimens that have been memorialized at some of the most architecturally advanced structures known to man. What if these aren’t just mythical beings, but rather gods that physically lived in their midst?”
Roche thought about the megaliths at Göbekli Tepe and Tula. The henges of England. The pyramids in Egypt, the Yucatán, and Antarctica. The ziggurats of the Middle East. They were all structures primitive men should never have been able to build, not even with modern technology at their disposal.
“The presence of a godlike race with superior intelligence would theoretically explain how they were able to build some of these monuments, and maybe even why they entombed these beings instead of killing them.”
“Who’s to say they didn’t try?” Kelly said. “The man bound to the plinth in Mosul, the one with the eagle mask? Nearly every single one of his bones was broken. The other masked bodies were sealed inside stone sarcophagi with lids too heavy to lift. And it can’t be a coincidence that all three of them were among the statues inside the pyramid in Antarctica, the pantheon of gods worshipped by the people who built it.”
“What do we know about the one with the stag mask?”
“The Sumerians called her Inanna, but the Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians all knew her as Ishtar. She was Sauska to the Hittites and Astarte to the Phoenicians. Goddess of fertility and war, rebirth, and destruction. Daughter of An/Anu. Half-sister of Enlil and Enki. Twin of Utu/Shamash, god of justice. She’s often depicted with the skin of a fish, riding a lion, and with antlers on her head or an eight-sided star behind it.”
Roche understood the connection Kelly was attempting to make, but couldn’t comprehend what could possibly be so important about the mummified remains of a supposed goddess to a creature like Subject Z that it had risked its life to save them.
&
nbsp; “We’ve seen the evidence of these beings in the flesh,” Kelly said. “And while the historical correlation is anecdotal at best, you can’t deny there’s a certain logic to it.”
“So then what’s the significance of the pinecone and the canister?”
“Can you think of a better weapon to maintain control over the masses than a deadly hemorrhagic virus?”
He closed his eyes and concentrated. Something she’d just said had brought him to the brink of a revelation he could positively feel building inside of him.
“We still can’t raise the Hangar,” the copilot said through the headset, “but we’ll have you on the ground in fifteen minutes.”
Roche couldn’t respond for fear he’d lose his train of thought. He thought back to Antarctica, after he and Evans had narrowly escaped their encounter with the drone inside the clean room, when they’d first discovered Hollis Richards was missing. They’d followed his trail into the stone passageways leading deep into the heart of the Drygalksi Mountains, where the creature had brought the remains of its victims. He’d emerged from the tunnel and heard a conversation he would remember to his dying day, one between the monster that would come to be known as Subject Z and an old man desperate to prove mankind wasn’t alone in the universe.
All . . . species . . . serve.
Serve what?
God.
You’re saying God is real?
Many.
So both of our species serve these gods.
In ... different . . . capacities.
Yours is to destroy us when we evolve beyond the limits of our usefulness? And what is ours?
Build.
Build what?
What . . . is . . . required.
Was it possible these beings were indeed the physical manifestations of primitive deities, a race of superhuman, godlike entities? Everything Friden had shown them confirmed theirs was an advanced species, even more advanced than the symbiotic organisms that formed Subject Z. More advanced than any species he’d ever seen before, one so advanced the only word he could use to describe it was alien.
Thinking about AREA 51 reminded him of the Nazi relics they’d discovered beneath the ice, from the listening station at Snow Fell to the sunken submarine in the channel below the pyramid. Anya, Evans, and Jade had independently described their masked assailants from Enigma as having the same blue eyes. While such a detail could prove entirely coincidental, there had to be a reason they all wore masks. Until now he’d assumed it was to prevent them from being identified, but what if they needed to conceal their faces for an entirely different reason? What if it was because they were all the same?
One could certainly make that case with the results of the DNA tests he held in his hand. While the odds of the three masked men Subject A killed in Teotihuacan being triplets were by no means astronomical, the chances of Unit 51 botching the collection and handling of the blood once, let alone twice, were incalculable, which left him with two realistic alternatives: either these men really did have the exact same DNA or someone within the organization deliberately sabotaged the samples. He’d suspected there was a mole inside Unit 51 ever since their unknown adversary had appeared in Mexico six months ago, but he simply couldn’t see any of the people he worked with every single day betraying them when there was so much at stake. And even if the three masked men were triplets, was there any significance?
Roche’s cell phone chimed to alert him to an incoming text. He removed it from his pocket and glanced at the screen. They must have been out of cell range for a while, because several messages all came through at once. He’d missed two calls from Maddox, who’d left a voice mail his phone had converted to text:
POWER OUTAGE ON JBL-E. ON BACKUP GENS UNTIL
ARMY REPAIRS. NOT LIKE WE CAN CALL TO COMPLAIN.
It felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He’d known there had to be a logical explanation. He almost laughed out loud before he read the text message he’d received from Tess.
WHEN ALDEBARAN SEES RED, 2/12–00 = 1.
He read it three times before handing his phone to Kelly.
“I don’t get it,” she said. “When Aldebaran sees red, two-twelfths minus two zeroes equals one?”
“It’s a coded message. She’s trying to tell us something no one would understand if the message was intercepted.”
“Why would she need to do that?”
Roche shook his head, and the weight settled onto his shoulders once more.
“Aldebaran’s the brightest star in the constellation of Taurus,” he said. “It’s literally the bull’s eye.”
“Taurus is one of the twelve signs of the zodiac.”
“The second, but Aldebaran’s orange, not red.”
“Maybe it’s in reference to the color of the cape that causes a bull to charge. Then again, she could mean the metaphorical definition of seeing red. Like it’s angry. What else could make a bull see red?”
And then it hit him.
“Those aren’t zeroes. They’re balls.”
“I don ’t . . .” she started, but quickly caught on. “Oh. I can definitely see how losing those might make a bull angry, but I still don’t get what she’s trying to say.”
The answer struck him with the force of a physical blow.
“Damn it!” he shouted. “How long until we’re on the ground?”
“Ten minutes,” the pilot said.
“That’s too long!”
He suddenly understood why they hadn’t been able to reach anyone at the Hangar, why Enigma seemed to know their every move.
Unit 51 had been compromised at the highest level.
“What is it?” Kelly asked.
“A castrated bull is an ox. If you cut off its balls, you’d have one very mad ox.”
“Jesus,” she whispered.
“Maddox is the mole.”
32
ANYA
Göbekli Tepe
Anya pressed her back against the escarpment and scooted sideways as fast as she dared. Loose pebbles skittered from the ledge and plummeted into the deep chasm, through which the rising wind screamed. She did everything in her power to keep from looking down for fear her legs would turn to jelly. The bottom was so far down she couldn’t even see it, the wall of the opposite cliff so close she could have almost reached out and touched it. How anyone could have built the structure nestled like an Anasazi cliff dwelling inside the cave across from her defied the laws of physics, but why they had done so was obvious from the stench, which she could smell despite pulling her wet shirt up over her mouth and nose and biting it to hold it in place.
The construct reminded her of the tower of a medieval castle, only broad and squat, with walls made of stacked stones. Swatches of the brittle, clay-based mortar that once formed a smooth outer layer remained. The vultures perched on the top ring flapped their massive wings to maintain their balance as Jade passed within mere feet of them. They huffed their indignation at Anya, who followed Evans and Jade up a series of staggered, steplike ledges until she could see over the wall and the filthy birds and into the primitive structure.
It was what the Zoroastrians called a Tower of Silence, a circular building designed for the sole purpose of excar-nation, a practice of using carrion birds to deflesh human remains known as a sky burial. While the rationale for disposing of the dead in this manner varied from one religion to the next, the act was essentially the same: the body was prepared in a ritualistic manner and laid out for consumption by scavengers, leaving behind only the bones to be shoveled into the central pit. She’d studied the remains collected from a Parsi tower in Mumbai back in grad school, but they’d had a whole lot less flesh on them. In fact, it looked like these bodies hadn’t been touched at all.
“Jesus,” Evans said through the hand holding his shirt over his mouth and nose.
“The bodies have been out here in the elements for at least three days,” Jade said. “If it was an airborne virus that killed them, it co
uldn’t have survived outside of a host for more than forty-eight hours in this climate. Of course, a hemorrhagic fever like Ebola can remain active inside a corpse for more than a week, so don’t even think about touching them.”
“The thought never crossed my mind.”
“Are you certain that’s what killed them?” Anya asked.
She climbed carefully upward until she could clearly see into the tower. The inner ring was maybe six feet down, six feet wide, and slanted subtly toward a hole roughly six feet in diameter, around which at least a dozen corpses had been arranged in a radial pattern. Their skin was black and distended, their clothes discolored by putrefaction, a greasy stream of which coated the stone and clung like wax to the inner lip. The blood had settled into their feet, making them appear disproportionately large.
“Without a doubt. See those black spots all over their skin? Those lesions are the result of subcutaneous petechial hemorrhaging. That’s why the lips and eyelids look like the skin of a burned hot dog. And you can tell by the pattern of bruising, the way it almost mimics the shape of the ruptured vessels underneath, and the suffusion of blood in their eyes that this is definitely the work of a virus from the Filoviridae family.”
“They tested the virus here,” Evans said. “They needed to make sure it worked.”
“Which means we’re too late,” Anya said. “It could be anywhere in the world by now.”
“They obviously have access to the same intel as we do. I get that they beat us here because they already had a man inside the dig, but how is it they seem to know everything we’re going to do before even we do?”
The question hung in the air between them before being swept away by the wind. The implication was clear: Enigma had infiltrated Unit 51. Someone within their organization—possibly someone they saw every day—had betrayed them.
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