Warren gingerly placed his coffee cup a few feet away on the floor. It was empty. He reached into his coat pocket and produced some papers, which he waved enticingly at Loring.
“Kirst,” he said. “Herr Leutnant Kirst has been shipped to a POW camp at Blackbone Mountain, Montana.”
Relief flooded through Loring, along with the unpleasant certainty that if she took those papers from Warren, she would never see him again. She suddenly felt very guilty.
“These are for you.” He placed the papers in her hand as if he were entrusting her with the Japanese invasion plans. “Travel instructions and a letter of introduction from the State Department. I’ve already wired the commandant. He’s expecting you.”
She kept the papers. “Look, Warren—”
“Don’t make a speech.”
“I wish you’d understand. I have to follow through on this....” He was already dragging himself to his feet. She stayed on the floor. “I promise—when I get back, we’ll straighten out our lives, and it won’t be the way it’s been—”
“It sure won’t, lady.” He was moving toward the door.
Loring rose and made a move to follow, but something held her back. Warren reached the door and opened it. He turned and gave her a bitter smile. “I’ve turned away some interesting possibilities since I’ve known you. I’m not going to do that anymore. I’m going to find somebody who wants me.”
He straightened his coat and tie and walked out. “Thanks for the coffee,” he said as he shut the door.
Loring stared after him, feeling nothing but the touch of the papers in her hand.
She turned away and looked for somewhere to sit, and at last the tears started to come. Determined not to give in to this, she swore at herself, but the tears still came, because deep inside she knew that despite never having given Warren Clark any real encouragement, she hadn’t been completely honest with him either. She should have told him way back at the beginning, when she suspected that his ultimate purpose was to win himself a wife who would cook for him, poop out his babies, and rise up the Washington social ladder on his arm. An ornament, not a woman. His very presence had always carried the hint that her career was an illusion, that reality lay within what Warren Clark had to offer, and not within the world she had built for herself. The trouble with that was, there was no room for the real Loring in Warren’s world.
Look forward, she told herself, clutching the papers tightly. Look forward to what? What she had been dreading ever since Warren told her the ship was overdue? It went further back than that. Back to Iraq, to the tablets and the silver flask and the legends and the rock splitting and water gushing and all the nightmares she hadn’t been able to deal with throughout the long dark hours of the war.
Fleeing Iraq, returning to London, burying the artifacts in the bowels of the museum with instructions that they not be touched, researching their origins, learning, learning.... It all flooded back into her mind. She hurried to the kitchen and poured coffee for herself, then thought, no, that would keep her awake the rest of the night, but yes, perhaps it would keep her from dreaming, because she knew what tonight’s dream would be—the faces, the swirling bodies and groping arms, the cries....
Shakily, she sipped the coffee and opened the papers on her kitchen counter, studying Warren’s neatly worded letter “To Whom It May Concern:”... The letter faded from her vision and she saw a frightened young woman after her first year in the field, huddled in the library at the British Museum, poring over Arabic texts and maps and illustrations, growing more and more terrified by the hour. Sleepless nights, long days with her nose in those books, learning, learning.... Taking courage only from the thought that the flask was safely stored in the bottom of the museum, that no one else would ever touch it or even know it was there or what it was. Hoping as she left England and returned to America that it would remain untouched forever, until she died, and the terrible responsibility fell to someone else.... What folly! How stupid to think that she could escape it!
And finally bringing it to America, having it packed in a watertight crate with all the other Iraqi artifacts, believing the propaganda as Warren had said, that the U-boats were finished in the Atlantic. But no, they were far from finished. They had one last little job to do, and they had done it well.
Kirst. She had to get to him, speak to him, learn what he had done with the flask. And that could merely be the beginning.
Chapter 5
Mahmud Yazir carefully measured milk into his tea and stirred it delicately. He tossed the used bag into his wastebasket, then raised the cup and sipped. He edged the old leather chair back so he could squeeze in behind his desk, between the sagging bookshelves and the stacks of borrowed library volumes. Through his closed office door, he heard the laughter of students passing in the corridor. Ignoring them, Yazir tried to relax with his tea. But it was difficult. Loring’s call last night had been anxious, her tone urgent. Yazir was not looking forward to this meeting. Stress was bad for his heart.
He looked up at the faded wall maps opposite his desk, maps of the present-day Middle East and of the ancient Babylonian Empire, the latter covered with thumbtacked notations written in an Arabic scrawl. Beneath the maps were more stacks of books and yellowed periodicals. Yazir thought fleetingly of reorganizing the clutter, then he gazed out the window and saw Loring Holloway hurrying up the walkway to the first-floor entrance.
Yazir recalled the last time she had been to see him, shortly after her return from England. She had breezed in, nervous and excited, wanting to tell him all about her field work in Iraq, but at the last minute, after raising his interest to unbearable heights, she had abruptly decided not to tell him anything. One minute she was in the room with him, the next minute she was gone.
Yazir sighed. Perhaps now he was going to get the story, but why would it be urgent so many years later? It was 1940 when Loring was attached to the British Museum expedition. For months she had worked a dig in the desert lands near the Euphrates River. Before that, she had been one of Yazir’s top students here at Columbia University. She had gone through History of Ancient Civilization with him, then continued through his upper-division Middle Eastern Folklore program, then she had taken her master’s degree in archaeology. Yazir had sponsored her for the British expedition, and before leaving, Loring had showered him with gratitude. But upon returning, except for the one brief, exasperating meeting, she had avoided him.
He had provided references for her job with the Metropolitan, but she had not requested them. Yazir bore no grudge: he had many former students who didn’t like to be reminded that before they became experts they had been pupils.
But now Loring was back, and Yazir’s sharp sixth sense told him he was about to be drawn into something unpleasant. He stood up and drained the last of his tea.
She looked better than he remembered, although the Middle Eastern tan was gone and she was back to that New York City museum pallor. But she seemed flushed with excitement, or was it agitation?
Yazir guided her to a chair and offered to make tea. She accepted graciously and thanked him for agreeing to see her. Yazir got the hot plate going again and smiled at her. “So, student, how can I help you?”
She managed a smile. “I hope you still have that great open mind that I recall from the old days.”
“I hope so, too.”
“When I came home from Iraq, I wanted to tell you about this. You were the only one I could trust, but, as I was about to tell it, it suddenly seemed so far away and unbelievable. So... I ran out. I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted, but if you do it again I shall be very upset.”
There was no reply. He glanced back. She was working her hands together and frowning. He brought her the tea and waited. When she looked up, he saw fear in her eyes. He knew what was coming—one of those farfetched, mystical experiences that every archaeologist dreams of having, and many concoct because their imaginations demand it.
“There were three of us at the dig,” sh
e began. “Aside from the workers, there was Selim Bayar—an Armenian linguistics expert, and Ismet Moulin—a hieroglyphics man from Syria.”
Yazir sat down. “I know Moulin. Good fellow. Experienced.”
Loring relaxed. “We were on our own. Working apart from the rest of the expedition, we dug through the ruins of a building and found a cache of artifacts, many of them smashed by the weight of accruing sand. But some of them had identifying marks which Moulin was able to decipher. We determined that they had all been the property of a Babylonian sorcerer named Korbazrah.”
“Sorcerer?”
“Necromancer, magician, whatever you want to call him. He lived in Ur-Tawaq, a small city in constant friction with Babylon during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. For most of his life he produced crafted silver and made a living from a small shop in the city, but in his last years he became a secret ally to the king and was probably responsible for a panic that brought the city to its knees and permitted Nebuchadnezzar to destroy it. The ruins we uncovered were evidently Korbazrah’s work chamber. Moulin deciphered a stack of clay tablets that turned out to be a cabala, a set of occult rituals.”
Yazir showed mild interest, but inwardly his stomach was beginning to protest.
“I found a box made entirely of handworked silver, covered with satyrs and devils and winged lions—Babylonian imagery crossed with the occult. Inside the box were several clay tablets and a silver flask, which was stoppered and sealed and... warm to the touch. It contained some sort of liquid, but we never opened it to find out precisely what.” Her voice caught, and there was a fleeting look of regret in her eyes. “Moulin took the tablets away to translate. A few nights later, he sat down with us around the fire and told us what he had deciphered. The tablets described how Korbazrah had trapped a demon in that silver flask—”
“A demon?” Yazir’s eyebrows went up.
Loring nodded. “And that anyone opening it would be releasing a plague of evil.”
She sat quietly a moment. Yazir stared at his wall maps but said nothing. Finally, he nodded for her to continue.
“The Iraqis, who were around the fire with us, were terribly frightened. They demanded that we put everything back where we had found it, rebury the site, and leave. Moulin and Bayar did their best to calm the men down, but they were insistent. They threatened Bayar, until finally he went down into the excavation to prove there was nothing harmful. He made a lot of noise— shouting at imaginary demons, warning them to leave or risk being destroyed by a man without fear. Quite a performance.”
“Did it work?”
“On the Iraqis, boasting is very effective. They relaxed and went to sleep. Moulin and I stayed up drinking. Nervous. We started kidding around. Moulin read some of his translations from the hieroglyphics. He gave me one of Korbazrah’s spells—a chant that was supposed to bring water.”
She stopped a moment and sipped her tea, lost in reflection. “I thought it would be interesting to see what would happen, so I climbed up on a rock and began chanting. It was—it was a joke.” She hesitated. “But then I fell into the rhythm of it and there was a moment when... when I knew I was doing it right.... The sound became a singsong effect I copied from the Iraqis.... All of a sudden I knew how that chant should sound... and then... then there was the water.”
“Water?” Yazir’s brow darkened.
“A boulder over the excavation disintegrated—and water erupted out of it. It came rushing down—”
She stopped with her hands in the air and sorted through a torrent of thoughts.
“It completely flooded the excavation, overran the dig, washed down into our camp, and then”—her eyes went wide and her voice quavered—”I just couldn’t get down there fast enough. I was shouting—Moulin and I were both shouting to warn them, but they didn’t hear us over the roar of the Water—” She choked. “They never had a chance—”
“The workers ...”
Loring nodded, her eyes filling with tears. Her hand covered her mouth. “They were all caught sleeping. All of them—drowned.”
She was very still for a moment. Yazir stared at her but she couldn’t meet his gaze. “I see,” he said. “You recited a chant, a rock broke, water flooded the excavation and drowned the Iraqis—leading you to the inescapable conclusion that you were somehow responsible.”
Loring looked at him miserably. Yazir packed a pipe with a foul-smelling Turkish tobacco and lit it. He spoke around the stem. “What did you do about this accident?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Did you report it?”
“They were washed away without a trace—down a gully into a canyon filled with erosion holes. We searched when the water stopped flowing. We tramped down miles of that gully and never found anything.”
“Then what did you do?”
“Packed up the artifacts... the silver flask and the clay tablets... whatever was left up on the ridge. We returned to the expedition and told them that our workers had run off and the excavation had been destroyed in a flood.”
“Ah.” Yazir puffed hard on his pipe.
“What was I going to tell them? What could I possibly have said to the Iraqi authorities? They would have reacted exactly as you—”
“Never mind my reaction. What did you do next?”
“Returned to England, deposited everything in a basement vault at the British Museum, left orders that nothing was to be disturbed. Moulin swore never to speak of it again. I don’t think he returned to Iraq. He disappeared, and took all the translations with him. I lost track of Bayar, too. I stayed at the museum for a while and researched what we had found.... Eventually, I caught a boat home and took the job at the Metropolitan, The last few years I’ve been on staff, and occasionally I’ve done more research. I had been planning to go back after the war, to get the artifacts out of storage and work on them but never could get up the courage. Then recently I was informed that the British Museum was dispersing its collection to get it out of danger. I didn’t want that material inspected, so I arranged to have it sent here. But the ship it was on, the Delaware Trader, was torpedoed and sunk a few days ago in the Atlantic by a German U-boat. I thought that was the end of it—the stuff went to the bottom of the sea and there was nothing more to worry about. Then it turned out that the U-boat was almost immediately bombed and sunk by one of our planes. A survivor saved himself by climbing onto the crate containing my artifacts, which he evidently dumped out to make room for himself. I hope.”
She was silent a long time, then she got up and paced to the map. Her hand floated over the area labeled Babylon. “There is a book of collected tales about ancient Babylon called The Light of Days—”
“I know it.”
“In it, Korbazrah is described as a tall, thin, ascetic silversmith who specialized in occult designs on shields, goblets, and urns. Sorcery was a profitable sideline. He hired himself out as a demon remover. He would go to the-homes of people suffering from unknown maladies, and he would invariably diagnose demonic possession. He would then perform an elaborate ritual—burning incense, placing silver objects decorated with occult designs all around the room, speaking in strange tongues—it was a hell of a show. Then he would force the victim to ingest a substance to make him vomit up the demon. The bile was collected in a silver container which the family paid for in advance. Afterward, Korbazrah would seal the container and supposedly place it in a secret vault, where it would be kept for all eternity. He sold a lot of demon containers. More likely, he sold the same one many times over. The victims would recover from whatever ailment they had—probably nothing more serious than a case of flu. But the whole performance was probably a great comfort to the Mesopotamians. In The Light of Days this is all passed down as part of the folklore. Korbazrah’s giant catacomb with its endless shelves of silver urns—most likely never existed.”
“I recall that story,” said Yazir. “I’ve read other accounts.”
“Imagine a quack like that suddenly finding himself
face-to-face with a real demon.”
“The one in the flask?” Yazir’s pipe had gone out. He ignored it.
Loring smiled back at him. “That flask was not one of Korbazrah’s customary demon containers. It was specially designed for a special demon. A djinn.”
Yazir removed the pipe and fixed Loring with a reproachful stare. “Miss Holloway, a djinn is nothing more than a Middle Eastern gremlin. The goat won’t eat, the crops won’t grow, the sun is obscured—there must be a djinn around somewhere. Please—we’re going now from water spells and exorcism to the sublimely ridiculous!”
Loring waited for him to finish, then said, “The demon in that flask is mentioned in The Light of Days and in two other books. The flask is described as being made of crafted silver, with a pentagonal base tapering up to a long rounded neck, a five-sided opening, and corresponding stopper.”
Yazir frowned. Loring went to her chair, sat down, and opened her handbag. She gave him a sheet of paper listing book titles and page references. Yazir recognized several titles.
“These titles are all cross-referenced,” said Loring, “and I’ve summarized them here.” She produced a thick typescript, yellowed and dog-eared. Yazir flipped through it.
Loring continued, “This is no ordinary gremlin—no genie in a bottle—no wish-granting mythical being with long fingernails and pointy ears. This is a monster in every sense of the word. Of course, Korbazrah’s mum- bojumbo must have been useless. No, incantations and vomiting into a silver container. Capturing it must have been a very difficult, dangerous job.”
Yazir cleared his throat. “There is an expulsion ritual for djinn—”
“Invoking certain passages from the Koran? This djinn has been sealed away in the flask for twenty-five hundred years—that’s longer than recorded Arab history. It predates the Koran. The ritual would have effect. If there is a spell for dealing with the djinn, it might be in the tablets, but there isn’t enough time to start a manhunt for Moulin—”
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