The Lovecraft Code

by Levenda, Peter;

  As a human being, he knew that all that violence, all that misery, was evidence of the action of an unspeakable force in the world, one that no one dared name, and which had existed since time immemorial.

  It was God.

  For a moment—a moment of blinding clarity—he saw how the entire run of human history was the chronology of wars fought over gods. God was the justification for all of it, for all that spilled blood, for all those mutilated bodies and minds. God.

  The Great Absence.

  And in that moment, Gregory Angell knew that there really was no God. That was the point. The whole thing was a kind of sick joke, perpetrated by some mad genius a hundred thousand years ago or more. God was the Black Hole around which the religions of the world since ancient times swirled in a slowly decelerating orbit. God was an Event Horizon towards which all humanity was moving in an endless parade of destruction. God was ... Not Here.

  God was murdered, along with faith and reason and love, that February day on a side street in the Iraqi city of Mosul, only a few kilometers from Nineveh in an area where the world's great religions were born. Fitting, then, that God should die there, confronted with his own perfidy. He thought of that famous aphorism of Nietzsche, “God is dead.” God was dead and he, Gregory Angell, had discovered the body. The crime scene was Mesopotamia. The murder weapon was a much-delayed moment of enlightenment.

  He returned to the States in a mood of profound depression. He began to drink, but that did not begin to fill the emptiness in his soul. What does a religious studies professor do when he has lost his religion? Well, as they say, those who can, do; those who can't, teach.

  And teach he did. He got tenure, conducted seminars that were overflowing and the talk of the community, but resisted all attempts to have him go back to the Middle East, even for a talk or a conference. Even to Egypt, or Turkey. As he became well-known for his innovative approach to the study of religion, he became increasingly reclusive. He had a hard time sleeping, for he would frequently awaken to the sound of gunfire in his dreams, to the sight of blood pooling in the dust of Mosul. To the sudden extermination of human life, life taken by other humans in some kind of sick fantasy of cosmic justice.

  He moved to Red Hook, away from the conviviality of Upper West Side Manhattan intellectual society, and into a basement apartment where he moved his books and papers and what oddments of his life mattered to him ... or did not matter enough to jettison. He reduced his course load as much as he was able, and tried to find some meaning in his life, something to take the place of the giant Gorilla who had left the room. He became increasingly paranoid about his fellow human beings, and using his government connections managed to obtain a gun in New York City where the punishment for possessing an unlicensed firearm was a mandatory one-year prison sentence. He slept with it under his pillow at night, the oil staining his sheets. He carried it with him, illegally, through the streets of New York like a melancholy Charles Bronson or a slightly less-geeky Bernie Goetz. He ate in the Arab restaurants of Atlantic Avenue, where the cooks and the waiters took pity on this sad American scholar who spoke their language and read their newspapers, but who didn't share their faith.

  And as for women, he avoided them. One might say, “religiously.” As practical and realistic as most of them were in his experience, they accepted the existence of God quite naturally and without argument. The same way they accepted the existence of eternal love, or the fidelity of their husbands. They needed this unfounded belief in a fantasy world in order to survive everything from the rough advances of their lovers to the intense pain of childbirth and the bitterness of watching their infants turn into the sullen and angry children they eventually would become. Without God, and the promise of heaven, it would not be possible or even worth enduring. Mother's milk would turn poisonous in the breast.

  This was the state of Gregory Angell's life in April of 2014, more than seven years after the Yezidi massacre at Mosul. A machine stuck in a neutral gear. A powerful engine with nowhere to go. A car with a disinterested driver. And a handgun he had never fired in anger, with ten rounds in the magazine and one in the pipe.

  Which is when Dwight Monroe's agent sat down next to him on the bench on the Brooklyn Heights promenade, and looked at him, and smiled a cobra's smile.

  Chapter Six

  A Rich Uncle

  ... the sacred and the profane have always and everywhere been conceived by the human mind as a separate genera, as two worlds that have nothing in common. ... This does not mean that a being can never pass from one world to the other, but when it happens, the way this passage occurs highlights the essential duality of the two realms. It implies a true metamorphosis. This is demonstrated particularly well in rites of initiation ...

  —Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life

  When James Aubrey first set eyes on Gregory Angell, as the latter sat silently and still on his park bench on the Promenade like a gringo Buddha under a Bo tree, he had a hard time reconciling the man in front of him with the photograph in his file. While the dossier photo revealed a typical academic, albeit with a bit more physicality than one normally associates with the profession, the real Gregory Angell seemed to have withdrawn into himself to such an extent that his body appeared to have shrunk within its clothes. It was as if the scholar was trying slowly to disappear, and had begun by minimizing his affect. He would not have been surprised if Angell began speaking in a whisper, or with subtle twitches of his eye muscles.

  He was of medium height, maybe five-ten or five-eleven, not quite six feet. About one hundred sixty pounds, or maybe less by now as he seemed to swim in his trousers and jacket. Dark hair, brown eyes. Regular features. He had a strong jaw, but it was usually obscured by a neatly-trimmed beard, also dark brown but with the beginning of some grey. His mouth was a little unusual, with the full lips one would expect of a woman rather than a forty-year-old man, but his moustache compensated. His fingers were those of a pianist, long and slender. In short, he could pass for almost any ethnicity from Central Asia to Portugal. A Pashtun tribesman, maybe. Or an Italian gigolo.

  He knew from the file that Angell carried a gun, and that he was right-handed. That meant the piece was probably on his left-hand side to enable easy access. Thus, Aubrey decided to bear down on Angell from the right. He didn't believe the man was violent, but he wasn't taking any chances. The loose jacket Angell was wearing was large enough to conceal a weapon, and although Angell appeared to be relaxed there was no telling how far his paranoia had already taken him.

  He sat down next to him.

  Angell continued to stare out at the Manhattan skyline, as if totally unaware of the agent's presence. That was unusual for New York, and particularly so for a section of Brooklyn that had once been the gay cruising capital of the East Coast.

  After a moment, Angell spoke.

  “Who sent you?” he asked, still staring straight ahead.

  “A mutual friend.”

  “A friend.” The sarcasm was palpable.

  “A rich uncle, then.”

  “You're not the first.”

  “I know.”

  “Then you know it's pointless to ask me. I'm not going back.”

  Aubrey let that sit for awhile, as if waiting for a soufflé to rise. His silence was a measured part of the conversation. He did not get up to leave, but he did not try to convince Angell to do anything, either. The pressure of the silence weighed on Angell, who tried to fill it with words that had little meaning for him but which he hoped would mean something to this man with the flat, burnt-umber aura of certain death about him.

  “I've done all that anyone can ask of me. I'm not a spy, or a field agent. I'm a college professor. And I've seen all the action I ever want to see. There are other men just as capable as myself. Go ask them.”

  “We have,” replied Aubrey.

  “And?”

  “And they all recommended you.”

  That was not entirely true. There were few
other individuals Monroe's people could safely approach outside of normal channels and, anyway, Angell's value was something unique. It did not rest solely on his previous experience in the “region.” It also did not rely on his knowledge of its languages and religions. For that, there were others who could be tapped, such as the anthropologists who worked for the Pentagon's Minerva Project, academics who were taking DOD money to create imaginative and sometimes wholly-invented profiles of terrorist groups and their celebrity leaders from Palestine to Papua. No, Monroe didn't need any more of those. They had their place, and were of some value in the total scheme of things, but they were too eager to please for Monroe's taste, and frequently exaggerated the importance of their data or just—in Aubrey's particular turn of phrase—“made shit up.”

  And then there were the lions of the field, men like Lawrence Schiffman, James Tabor, Tudor Parfitt ... Dead Sea Scroll scholars and Biblical specialists who were rock stars in their profession, too well-known to send off into the wasteland on this particular venture. And in some cases they were not up to the physical demands that the mission required.

  Angell wasn't like that. He was a loner, and even though he was respected he did not have the cachet of a Schiffman or a Tabor. And he didn't make shit up. He was too devoted to the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, and that meant he could not afford to embellish or invent. He lived alone, had no bad habits anyone could discover, and thus was immune to blackmail, both financial and emotional. He seemed to have no need for money or, if he did—beyond his salary as a tenured professor at Columbia—it wasn't much. Angell wasn't out to make a fast buck, wasn't applying for grants or writing ambitious proposals, and that made him attractive to Monroe. At the same time, it also made him a loose cannon. Angell would do what Angell wanted to do, and to hell with the government. Ever since Mosul, Angell had become independent, and in the world of the Patriot Act, Camp X-Ray, and extraordinary rendition that translated as “eccentric.”

  But the upside was they didn't need him for long. Only a few days. A week, at the most. And then they could cut him loose. And if anything happened to him in the process, he had no ties in the States other than his classes and his students. In virtually every respect, Gregory Angell had the profile of an ideal field agent. The languages, the experience, the university cover, an anonymous appearance that enabled him to blend in anywhere, the lack of family obligations, even his recently acquired expertise with a firearm. He was driven, and did not give up easily once he had the bit between his teeth.

  Problem was, he was just a little bit crazy.

  Angell sighed, and made as if to get up and leave the agent there for the pigeons to anoint.

  “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

  For the first time Angell turned to look directly at his petitioner. Aubrey was shocked to see the expression in the professor's eyes. Deep sadness, mixed with a hint of desperation, and what seemed to be a chronic lack of sleep.

  The professor was exhausted. For a moment, Aubrey was reluctant to proceed any further with the recruitment. Angell looked like a basket case. But the stakes were too high to get sentimental about his target's emotional state. Still, he could not shake a sudden bad feeling, an experienced agent's intuition that this would not end well for Angell.

  “What do we have to talk about? I told you, I'm not going back.”

  “I understand, Professor Angell.”

  “Then?”

  “I won't try to appeal to your vanity, Professor. I know that won't work, and I wouldn't want to offend you that way. I also won't appeal to your patriotism. You have already demonstrated that. But we are in a difficult situation, and only someone with your background ... your unique background ... can help us, help your country, and even help other people. Innocent people. Not only in America. I can't tell you more until I know you're with us, but I can say that this isn't a localized issue. It has implications far beyond our borders, and I can't emphasize enough how your specific profile is absolutely necessary at this time.”

  Angell almost smiled. “You want me to save the world, is that it?” When Aubrey didn't say anything, only stared back into Angell's haunted eyes, the academic turned his head in disgust.

  “Give me a break, whatever your name is. I'm not a child, and this isn't an Indiana Jones movie. You don't need me. I'm just convenient and probably too needy, according to the psychological evaluation in my file, to turn you down. Well, you're wrong. You're all wrong. Go back to your masters and tell them you failed.”

  Aubrey had no choice but to play his trump card. As Angell had turned to go, he spoke to his retreating form, his words like gunfire shooting him in the back.

  “Does the name Francis Wayland Thurston mean anything to you?”

  Angell stopped dead, and slowly turned around to face his inquisitor. The look of shocked incredulity on the professor's face was impossible to misinterpret. “My ... What? What do my relatives, my ... ancestors have to do with ... with anything? Have you people lost your minds?”

  He strode back up to Aubrey and stared at him, his fists clenched at his sides as if trying to keep himself from punching the older man in the face.

  “Is this some kind of ... of blackmail? Have you all really stooped that low?”

  “It's not blackmail, Professor. I know this is a sensitive issue with your family, and we would not bring this up if it were not relevant to the matter at hand. Urgently relevant, I might add.”

  “You know about Thurston, so you know about George Angell, his grand-uncle. George Gammell Angell, of whom I'm a direct descendant. You know this. So you know about the rumors, and the stories. You know how that libel has plagued my family for almost a hundred years now. And you're using it against me, just like every tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist and Sci-Fi conventioneer has been doing for at least as long as I've been alive. This is contemptible. It's below even the government's bar and that one has been set pretty damned low of late.”

  Aubrey finally stood up from the bench to face his accuser.

  “Then it's time to put those rumors to rest, isn't it? Once and for all? And if we can't ... if the rumors have any basis in reality ... isn't it just as important for you to find that out? Once and for all?”

  Angell was still gaping at the man in disbelief. A cold shudder had gone through him at the mention of Thurston, the family's black sheep. The one who told those tall tales about George Angell, the distinguished professor at Brown University, and the crank archaeological theories he came up with towards the end of his life. The ones that were eventually described in all their lurid detail by a deeply disturbed young Rhode Island writer of hack fiction. The ones that destroyed the Angell family reputation for decades.

  But how this had anything to do with national security, or whatever it was this strange government agent had come to him about, was some bureaucrat's wet dream. It had to be.

  “You can't ...you can't be serious.”

  “It won't take long, I promise,” Aubrey insisted. “Hear me out. And if you still want out, you're out. We won't bother you again.”

  He held his hands out to his sides, either in supplication or to show that he wasn't armed. Or both. Angell held his gaze for another moment, and then nodded.

  “This had better be good. If you're lying to me, I just want you to know that I'm carrying a weapon and will not hesitate to blow your fucking head off, government agent or no government agent. Are we clear?”

  Aubrey smiled to himself, but said in a straight voice to the crazed professor, “Crystal. There's a place on Montague Street. It's quiet this time of day. Let's go there. It's only a few blocks away.”

  Angell didn't stop to consider how a G-man from DC would know about local restaurants in Brooklyn and their seating schedules, but allowed himself to be led out of the Promenade and down Montague Street as if he was Dante and James Aubrey was a pinstriped Virgil in black wingtips.

  Spiraling down into the deepest circles of Hell.

  Watching them lea
ve, a man in a retro denim jacket and a floppy hat got up from lacing up his running shoes at a nearby bench. He was a professional, so he did not need to pat his pocket to be sure that his weapon was in its place. He did not need to touch his ear to ensure that his radio was intact and operative.

  Slowly, he stood up and stretched, rolling his head around and seeming to get the kinks out of his neck and shoulders. And then he began walking, following the two men out of the park and into the streets of Brooklyn Heights.

  Chapter Seven

  The Libel

  They had come from the stars, and had brought Their images with them.

  —H.P. Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”

  Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights is named after Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the wife of Britain's ambassador to Turkey in the mid-eighteenth century, who resided briefly in the area. She is noted primarily for her reporting on Islamic customs in “the Orient,” one of the first western women in history to do so. Her relatives, the Pierreponts, gave their name to another Brooklyn Heights street.

  Gregory Angell was not thinking of these connections at the time, though if he had he might have taken some solace in them. After all, there was a peculiar connection between this oldest of Brooklyn neighborhoods and the Middle East. In addition to the Lady Montagu link, there is also the fact of Atlantic Avenue which, in that area of Brooklyn, boasts many Arab shops and restaurants. It's an area that Angell knew well, for his own apartment in Red Hook was close enough that he could walk it easily from Montague Street, across Atlantic Avenue and through Cobble Hill.

  Capriciously, a restaurateur once decided to open an establishment named Capulet's on Montague Street. The popular bistro is long gone, as is the Piccadeli and so many others that Angell knew from his student days. Instead, Aubrey led him to a Hungarian restaurant on the second floor of one of the older buildings on Montague, close to Court Street. It was, as the agent had claimed, deserted at that hour. The stock brokers had not yet returned home across the bridge from lower Manhattan, and their wives were busy at home with children, nannies, and the Food Channel.