by P. W. Child
“No shit,” Sam mumbled as he took a hefty few swigs to dampen the worry he felt at being detected so easily. “I saw that when you stood on my doorstep. You are a man of keen observation and have swift response to it. Am I correct?”
“I am,” Liam replied. “That is why I instantly noticed that there was a security breach in the official records of one of our highest executives, Joe Carter, head of MI6.”
“And you are here to deliver an ultimatum for a fee lest you leak the perpetrator’s identity to the Secret Intelligence dogs, right?” Sam sighed. “I don’t have the means to pay off blackmailers, Mr. Johnson, and I do not like people who do not just come out and say what they want. What do you want from me to keep this under wraps, then?”
“You misunderstand, Sam,” Liam hissed firmly, his demeanor instantly revealing to Sam that he was not as mild mannered as he seemed. His green eyes flashed, ablaze with the vexation of being accused of such banal desires. “Which is the only reason I would let that insult slide. I am Catholic and we cannot prosecute those who insult us out of innocence and ignorance. You don’t know me, but I tell you now that I’m not here to shake you down. Jesus Christ, I’m above that!”
Sam kept to himself that Liam’s reaction literally frightened him, but after a moment, he realized that his assumption, fathomable as it was, was uncalled for before he’d allowed the man to properly state his business. “I apologize, Liam,” he told his guest. “You are right to be pissed at me.”
“I’m just so tired of people who assume things about me. I suppose it comes with the turf. But let us put that aside and I’ll tell you what is going on. Since Mr. Purdue’s rescue from that woman’s house, the high commission of British Intelligence has issued a clamp down on security measures. I think it came from Joe Carter,” he explained. “At first I could not figure what would make Carter respond in such a way to, if you pardon me, a common citizen who just happens to be wealthy. Now, I don’t work for the intelligence sector for nothing, Mr. Cleave. I see suspicious behavior a mile away and the way in which a powerful man like Carter responded to Mr. Purdue’s being alive and well struck a bit of a chord with me, you know?”
“I see what you mean. There are things I can unfortunately not disclose about the research I am doing here, Liam, but I can assure you that you are dead-on about that suspicious feeling you have.”
“Listen, Mr. Cleave, I am not here to squeeze information out of you, but if what you know, what you are not telling me, pertains to the integrity of the agency I work for, I need to know,” Liam urged. “Fuck Carter’s agenda, I’m after the truth.”
10
Cairo
Under the warm skies of Cairo there was a stirring of souls, not in the poetic sense, but in the sense of the devout feeling that something sinister was moving through the cosmos, preparing to burn the world like a hand holding a magnifying glass just at the right angle and distance to scorch mankind. But these sporadic collections of holy men and their faithful followers kept the odd shift in axial precession of their stargazers between themselves. Ancient bloodlines safely secured within secret societies had maintained their status amongst their own, preserving the ways of their forefathers.
At first, the people of Lebanon suffered the darkness of a sudden power failure, but as technicians were struggling to find the problem, the news broke from other cities in other countries that the electricity there had failed as well, creating chaos from Beirut to Mecca. It was not a day later when reports came in from Turkey, Iraq, and parts of Iran that inexplicable power outages were causing havoc. Now in Cairo and Alexandria parts of Egypt were darkening as well, rushing two men from the stargazer tribes to look for a source other than the grid of a power station.
“Are you sure Number Seven has gone off orbit?” Penekal asked his colleague, Ofar.
“I am one hundred percent sure, Penekal,” Ofar answered. “Look for yourself. It’s a monumental shift, and only stretching over an amount of days!”
“Days? Are you mad? That is impossible!” Penekal replied, dismissing his colleague’s theory outright. Ofar raised a gentle hand and waved it calmly. “Come now, brother. You know that nothing is impossible to science or God. The one wields the wonder of the other.”
Contrite for his outburst, Penekal sighed and motioned for Ofar to forgive him. “I know. I know. It is just so…” he gasped impatiently. “It has never been scribed that such a phenomenon has ever taken place. Maybe I’m afraid that it’s true, because the thought of one heavenly body changing orbit without any disturbance in its fellows is downright terrifying.”
“I know, I know,” Ofar sighed. Both men were in their late sixties, yet their bodies were still very healthy and their faces carried hardly a sign of the weathering of age. They were both astronomers and scholars of the theories of Theon of Alexandria primarily, but they also welcomed the modern teachings and theories, keeping track of all the latest astro-technology and news from global scientists. But apart from their modern accumulative knowledge, the two old men kept to the antique tribes’ traditions, and as they faithfully studied the skies, they would keep in mind both science and mythology. Usually the hybrid consideration of the two subjects gave them a wonderful middle ground to overlap wonder with logic, something that aided in forming their opinions. Until now.
With his hand quivering on the tube of the eyepiece, Penekal slowly pulled back from the small lens he’d been peering through, his eyes still fixed ahead of him in astonishment. Finally, he turned to face Ofar, his mouth dry and his heart sinking. “By the gods. It’s happening in our lifetime. I cannot find the star either, my friend, no matter where I seek it.”
“One star has fallen,” Ofar lamented, looking down in sorrow. “We are in trouble.”
“Which one is this, according to Solomon’s Codex?” Penekal asked.
“I already looked. It’s Rabdos,” Ofar said forebodingly, “the lamp lighter.”
Distraught, Penekal wandered with a labored pace to the window of their vantage room on the 20th Floor of the Hathor Building in Giza. From up there they could see the vast Cairo metropolis, and below them the Nile snaked like liquid azure through the city. His old, dark eyes floated across the city below and then found the hazy horizon, trailing along the dividing line between the world and the heavens. “Do we know when it fell?”
“Not exactly. From the entries I made it must have happened between Tuesday and today. That means Rabdos fell in the last thirty-two hours,” Ofar noted. “Shall we say something to the elders of the city?”
“No,” came the swift negation from Penekal. “Not yet. If we say one thing that brings to light what we really use this equipment for, they could easily disband us, taking millennia of observations with them.”
“I see,” Ofar said. “I’ve run the Osiris Charter program on the constellations from this observatory and the smaller one in Yemen. The one in Yemen will keep track of the falling stars when we’re not able to here, so we’ll be able to keep track.”
Ofar’s phone rang. He excused himself and left the room while Penekal sat down at his desk to watch the screensaver image propel through space, giving him the illusion that he was flying among the stars he loved so much. This always calmed his demeanor and the hypnotic repetition of the stars passing had a meditative quality to him. However, the disappearance of the seventh star in the perimeter of the Leo constellation was sure to give him sleepless nights. He heard Ofar’s footsteps come into the room at a faster rate than they’d left the room with.
“Penekal!” he wheezed, unable to master the rush.
“What is it?”
“I just got word from our people in Marseille, at the observatory atop Mont Faron, outside Toulon.” Ofar was panting so hard he was momentarily unable to continue. His friend had to pat him lightly to take a breath first. Once the hasty old man had caught his breath, he continued. “They say a woman was found hanging in a French villa in Nice a few hours ago.”
“That’s awful,
Ofar,” Penekal replied. “It truly is, but what does it have to do with you, such that you had to get a phone call about it?”
“She was swinging from a rope made of hemp,” he wailed. “And here is the proof that it is of great concern to us,” he said, taking a deep breath. “The house belonged to a nobleman, Baron Henri de Martine, who is known for his diamond collection.”
Penekal caught on to some familiarities, but he could not quite bring two and two together until Ofar finished his account. “Penekal, Baron Henri de Martine was the owner of the Celeste!”
Rapidly abandoning the urge to utter some holy names in shock, the thin old Egyptian covered his mouth with his hand. Those seemingly random facts had a devastating implication on what they knew, what they followed. Quite honestly, these were the alarming signs of the advent of an apocalyptic event. It was not written, or believed in, as a prophecy at all, but it was part of King Solomon’s encounters, written by the wise king himself in a hidden codex only familiar to those of Ofar and Penekal’s tradition.
This scroll mentioned the important precursors to celestial events that carried Apocryphal connotations. Nothing in the codex ever stated that this would happen, but upon the accounts of Solomon’s writings in this instance the falling star and the subsequent catastrophes were more than coincidence. Those who walked in tradition and could see the signs were expected to save mankind if they realized the portent.
“Which one was dealt with spinning ropes of hemp, again?” he asked loyal old Ofar, who was already paging through the writings to locate the name. After jotting down the name under the previous fallen star, he looked up and revealed it. “Onoskelis.”
“I am completely stunned, my old friend,” Penekal said, shaking his head in disbelief. “This means the Freemasons have found an alchemist, or the worse scenario – we have a Magician on our hands!”
11
The Parchment
Amiens, France
Abdul Raya slept soundly, but he did not dream. He had never understood it before, but he did not know what it was like to travel through unknown places, or see unnatural things twist under the plot threads of dream weavers. Nightmares never came to him. Never in his life could he relate to the terrible nocturnal tales of slumber told by others. Never did he wake in a sweat, shaking with terror or still reeling from a sickening panic imbued by the hellish world behind his eyelids.
Outside his window, there was only the muffled conversation of his downstairs neighbors as they sat outside having wine in the minutes past midnight. They’d read about the grisly sight the poor French baron endured when he came home the night before to find his wife’s charred body in the fireplace of their mansion in Entrevaux upon the river Var. If only they knew that the foul creature responsible was breathing the same air.
Below his window, his courteous neighbors kept their voices low, yet somehow Raya could hear their every word, even in his state of sleep. Listening, recording what they said to the sound of the trickling cascade of the mild river canal adjacent to the yard, his mind saved it all to memory. Later, should he need to, Abdul Raya would be able to recall the information, if he needed. The reason he did not wake from their discussion was that he already knew all the facts, not sharing in their bewilderment or that of the rest of Europe who heard about the theft of the diamonds from the baron’s safe and the ghastly murder of the housekeeper.
Newscasters all over the primary television channels reported on the ‘vast collection’ of jewels stolen from the vaults of the baron, how the safe from which the Celeste was stolen was but one of four, all emptied of precious stones and diamonds overflowing in the home of the nobleman. Naturally, the fact that this was all untrue was unbeknownst to all but the Baron Henri de Martine, who used his wife’s death and the still unsolved robbery to claim an exuberant sum from insurance companies and collect his wife’s policy payout. No charges were laid against the baron, as he’d an airtight alibi at the time of Madame Chantal’s demise, which granted him a fortune in inheritance money. The latter was the sum that would pull him out of debt. So, in effect, Madame Chantal did incontrovertibly help her husband out of bankruptcy after all.
It was all a sweet irony the baron would never comprehend. Still, after the shock and horror of the incident, he wondered about the circumstances surrounding the incident. He did not know that his wife had removed the Celeste and the other two less significant stones from his safe, and he wracked his brain trying to make sense of her unusual death. She’d been by no means suicidal, and if she were even remotely inclined that way, Chantal would never have set herself alight, of all things!
Only when he found Louise, Chantal’s assistant, with her tongue cut out and blinded, did he realize that his wife’s death was not a suicide. The police concurred, yet they did not know where to begin investigating such a heinous murder. Louise had since been admitted to a psychiatric ward at the Paris Psychological Institute where she would be kept for examination, but doctors who’d met with her were all convinced that she had lost her mind, that she was perhaps responsible for the murders and her own subsequent maiming.
It made headlines all over Europe and some smaller stations in other parts of the world also featured the bizarre incident. All the while, the baron refused any interviews, citing his traumatic experience as reason for taking time away from the public eye.
The neighbors finally found the chilly night air too much for their comfort and they retreated into their apartment. All that remained was the sound of the river trickling to the occasional distant dog barking. Now and then, a vehicle would come down the narrow street on the other side of the complex, whooshing by before leaving silence in its wake.
Abdul woke suddenly, with a clear mind. It was not a start, but it was an instant urge to wake that shot his eyes open. He waited and listened, but there was nothing that could have woken him, apart from a sort of sixth sense. Nude and gaunt, the Egyptian con man walked to his bedroom window. With one look at the starry sky, he knew why he’d been prompted to leave his slumber.
“Another one falling,” he murmured as his keen eyes followed the rapid descent of a falling star, mentally marking the approximate position of the stars around it. Abdul smiled. “Only a few more to go and the world will fall to all your desires. They will be crying out and begging to die.”
He turned away from the window as soon as the white streak had dissolved in the distance. In the dusk of his bedroom, he wandered toward an old, wooden trunk he took everywhere with him, embraced by two substantial leather belts that met at the front. Only a small porch light, off center from the shutter above his window, provided light into his room. It illuminated his lean shape, with the light on his bare skin emphasizing his sinewy musculature. Raya resembled some contortionist from a circus sideshow, a dark version of an acrobat that did not care for entertaining anyone but himself, but rather utilizing his talent to force others into entertaining him.
The room was much like him – basic, barren, and functional. There was a basin and a bed, a wardrobe and a desk with a chair and lamp. That was it. Everything else was just there temporarily for him to keep track of the stars over the Belgian and French skies until he had acquired the diamonds he was after. Lining the four walls of his room were countless charts of constellations from all corners of the globe, all marked up with connecting lines, crossing at certain ley lines, while others were marked in red for their unknown behavior due to missing charts. Some of the large, pinned maps had bloodstains on them, rusty brown spots silently accounting the manner in which they’d been procured. Others were newer, having been printed out only years ago, contrasting starkly with those discovered centuries ago.
It was almost time to wreak havoc in the Middle East and he relished the thought of where he had to wander next: to the kind of people that were far easier to beguile than the dumb, greedy westerners in Europe. In the Middle East, Abdul knew people would be more susceptible to his trickery, due to their wonderful traditions and superstitious beli
efs. He could so easily drive them insane or make them kill one another down there in the desert, where King Solomon once walked. He would save Jerusalem for last, only because the order of falling stars made it so.
Raya opened the chest and fumbled for the scrolls he was looking for among the fabric and gilded belts. The dark brown, oily-looking piece of parchment right against the wall of the box was the one he sought. With an ecstatic look, he unrolled it and set it down on the desk, using two books at each end to secure it. Then, from the same chest, he retrieved an athame. Curving with ancient precision, the snaking blade gleamed in the dim light as he pressed its sharp end down on his left palm. Effortlessly its point fell into his skin from the mere force of gravity. He need not even push it.
Blood formed around the small point of the knife and formed a perfect pearl of crimson that grew slowly until he removed the knife. With his blood he marked the position of the star that had just fallen. While doing so the dark parchment eerily shuddered slightly. It satisfied Abdul, pleasing him to no end to see the reaction of the charmed artifact, the Corpus Codex Sol Amun which he’d found as a young man while herding goats in the arid shadows of nameless Egyptian hills.
Once his blood had been absorbed into the star chart on the bewitched scroll, Abdul rolled it up carefully and tied a knot in the sinew that held the scroll. The star had finally fallen. Now it was time to leave France. Now that he had the Celeste he could move on to more important places where he could work his magic and watch the world fall, undone by the guidance of King Solomon’s diamonds.
12
Enter Dr. Nina Gould
“You have been acting strange, Sam. I mean, stranger than your darling innate weirdness,” Nina remarked after she’d poured them some red wine. Bruich, still remembering the petite lady babysitting him during Sam’s last absence from Edinburgh, made himself at home in her lap. Automatically, Nina started petting him as if this were the natural course of events.