“Was he one of the ones they ...?”
“Beheaded? No. As far as we know he was taken to Evin Prison in Tehran. That's pretty much where all the political prisoners wind up. There are still some there who were arrested in ‘79 when the ayatollahs came to power. It's notorious. A hell on Earth.”
“Why would they keep him alive?”
“Well, I figure, to give him some of the same treatment he gave them back in the day.”
Angell shivered, even though it was at least 80 degrees Fahrenheit in the car.
“Most likely, though, they'd want to know how he was able to stay on the lam for so long. You know, who his networks are, that sort of thing. And why he got involved with that weird-ass cult. Makes no sense, really. Unless the guy just lost his mind.”
“Sounds like it.”
“But the Guard. You know, they gotta figure that the cult was part of some wider network of terror cells or something. The line between cultist and terrorist is mighty thin in these parts.”
Something occurred to Angell. “Wouldn't they be turning Yazd upside down right about now, looking for other members of the cult?”
Adnan shrugged.
“Well. Ordinarily you would be right. But they got some actionable intel that said the surviving members had fled to Isfahan.”
“Really? How do you know that?”
“I'm the source for that particular intel. So just sit back and enjoy the ride. In another few hours we'll be at the Towers of Silence.”
When they arrived at the outskirts of Yazd, Angell saw immediately why the tour bus was so essential to their mission. He had been wondering about that the whole way, since it didn't seem to do anything except precede them on the highway. Here, as the road signs told them they were approaching the city, the bus slowed down and Adnan slowed down behind it on the shoulder.
Two men exited the bus and started walking away, down the road in the direction of the town. The bus started up again and they were on their way. Adnan followed.
Angell was mystified by the maneuver.
“They're gonna reconnoiter. We've got only another klick or so to go before we reach the Towers. These guys are gonna make sure there isn't a welcoming committee.”
“But ... they're walking. We'll arrive long before they do.”
“Not to worry, my friend. We know what we're doing.”
They drove along for another few minutes and saw the signs for the Zoroastrian burial ground, the dakhmah: the famous Towers of Silence.
The approach was eerie. It was part tourist attraction, part cemetery. Angell was reminded of the Recoleta in Buenos Aires, the place where Evita Peron had been buried which was now a tourist attraction as well. He had once walked among the mausoleums with their broken sarcophagi, bones of the dead clearly visible through the wrought iron gates and doors.
The Towers of Silence, however, did not have the claustrophobic feel of the Recoleta. It was an open plain, dotted with small buildings that had served as shelter and chapels for the Zoroastrian priests who maintained the site and which were now in disuse. In front of them were two hills, and at the top of each were stone, clay and brick towers. On top of those towers—until about forty years ago—the Zoroastrians placed their dead in the open air so that the vultures could consume their bodies. It was a practice that could be found throughout the Zoroastrian world as far as Mumbai in India, which also has its Towers of Silence. In Tibet, open-air burials are also to be found although the Zoroastrian influence there is debatable.
As they drove up to the parking area behind the bus, Angell saw in the distance the two men they had left by the side of the road only a few minutes earlier.
“They're already here?” he asked.
“The road to the Towers goes around a little from the highway. They took the direct route. We wanted to be sure there were no militia on the side away from the road, so that was their function. Now the rest of the passengers from the bus—all our people, you understand—will fan out around the Towers. They look like tourists and they will act like tourists but they are our bodyguard. They will blend in with everyone else and not be noticed.”
It was true. There were other tourists in the area, walking quietly among the low, white-washed buildings and staring up at the towers around them. Some were Europeans or Americans, in carefully-chaperoned groups by government-approved tour guides. Others were local Iranians. In a moment it was nearly impossible to tell who their escorts were from the real tourists.
They passed one group, and Angell heard Americans speaking English. He almost turned around but Adnan grabbed him by the arm.
“Careful,” he whispered. “You're not an American here. Remember that.”
Angell swallowed and nodded.
Adnan looked over to him and winked.
“It's showtime.”
There was a low, squat building with five domes and open archways. It was separated from the other buildings, towards the edge of one of the two hills with the towers. Adnan and Angell walked towards it but without seeming to do so. They wandered in a circular pattern, sometimes separating from each other, at other times wandering closer until they both arrived at the entrance to the building at about the same time. Adnan was alert to any possibility that their presence was being noticed, and he made eye contact with one of his people who looked back, expressionless. So far, so good.
Angell found himself trembling a little at the realization of where he was and what he was doing. If the Iranian security forces found him, he was either dead for sure or would wind up in Evin Prison and be tortured ruthlessly. At the same time, if he did not follow through then many thousands—if not millions—of people would suffer and die as the result of this crazy cult. The weight of the responsibility fused with the sense of imminent danger, and it made him lose his breath.
“You okay, man?”
Angell just nodded.
“Let's do this.”
The light was dim inside the building, refreshing after the glare from the sun that reflected off the white structures all around them. It was not exactly cool, but there was a sensation of death in those dark rooms that made the two men shiver.
The room they were in was the main part of the building, directly under a small central dome. There was nothing but sand and grit and broken bricks on the floor. No decoration on the walls, and no furniture. There were open windows on the sides that had never had glass. There were three smaller rooms at the rear of the building that seemed similarly empty.
“We're supposed to wait here. Someone will contact us,” said Adnan.
“How do you know?”
“Once your people understood where we were going they made some contacts, me being one of them. We analyzed the name you were given, Arad, and made contact first to be sure it wasn't a trap.”
They heard a sound, and from the gloom at the central area at the rear of the building a figure began to emerge from the shadows.
It was a small boy with startlingly blue eyes and hair the color of a desert night. He held up a finger to his lips, the gesture of silence amid the Towers of Silence, and pointed up.
Towards the Tower.
“I guess we're going up,” said Adnan. The boy smiled and ran off on some other mysterious errand.
There are two Towers at Yazd, towers of death where thousands of corpses have been placed over the centuries to decompose in the open air and be devoured by vultures. Angell could not help but think of those other two Towers, the ones that claimed members of his own family on that September morning thirteen years before.
What was the connection between those two, lightning-struck, towers and the ones before him in this remote part of Iran?
The way up was a winding road that went partway around the hill and ended in a few stairs carved out of the rock. They passed tourists coming down from the tower, women in black veils from Iran and women from Europe and America in windbreakers and carrying cameras, men from many countries in jackets and hats against the sun
, and could not imagine that their contact would have chosen so open and public a place for such an important meeting.
As they climbed higher up the hill they could see the city of Yazd in the distance. All around the site were roads, small buildings, what appeared to be a modern-looking housing complex, and the signs of everyday life. A brick wall separated the parking area from the site itself. As they walked up the path to the top of the tower they noted graffiti here and there, a lot of broken masonry and crumbled stones, and a dryness about the place that tickled their throats with its dust. This was a cemetery of a cemetery, a graveyard for a graveyard.
On the wall of the tower, near the narrow entranceway, was more graffiti. This time it looked obscene at first until Angell got a better look. It was some kind of animal, almost cartoonish. Like a talking fish. He stopped briefly, its design reminiscent of another he had seen, the one at Mosul just before the massacre. He thought no more of it at the time, but the memory of it would come back to haunt him.
When they finally reached the top and walked through a narrow entryway to the burial area itself they found themselves strangely alone. The tourists had all gone down ahead of them, as if on cue. Suddenly they were back in the open air, under the direct sun.
They were standing on the edge of a giant circle. In the center of the circle was what used to be an ossuary pit for the bones of the dead but which now was filled with stones. From this vantage point they could look down on the site below and on Yazd itself in the distance, but the view was lost on Angell as he realized that so many dead bodies had been left where he was standing, to rot in the sun and feed generations of vultures. It was like Ground Zero, desert version. It was while thinking about this that he jumped at the sound of a voice coming from somewhere behind him.
He was tall, and gaunt. Although he wore a long black robe over what appeared to be a white tunic he looked rail-thin. His hands had long, boney fingers that seemed preternatural, almost feral. A beard that reached down to his waist was the most impressive part of the old man's appearance. Gray tinged with black, at first Angell thought it was an article of clothing. A trick of the light and the strange circumstance of their meeting.
“Salaam,” came the raspy greeting in Farsi by way of Arabic. Peace.
“Salaam,” Adnan replied, his hand over his heart in a gesture of greeting.
“Khosh amadid,” the old man offered. Welcome. “I am Arad.”
He then turned to Angell, who so far had said nothing.
“You are al-malak?” he said in English, but using the Arabic word for “angel.”
Angell smiled at the usage in spite of himself.
“Perhaps al-malak al-din saqatu,” he said, using the Arabic for “fallen angel.”
The old man was not amused.
“Be careful, my son. These are not subjects for levity.”
“My apologies, sir.”
“You have come about the book.” It was a statement, not a question. It seemed everyone and his brother knew about the book and Angell's quest for it, no matter how far he traveled or under what circumstances.
“Yes, this is true, mobad.” Mobad. A priest.
The old man nodded.
“I am a priest of the prophet Zarathustra, whom you call Zoroaster. It is the oldest monotheistic religion in the world. I have lived all my life here in Yazd, except for two years abroad to study before the Revolution. Your name was given to me by a friend who lives in Mosul, who was contacted by a man from Tell Ibrahim. They are Yezidi, I think you call them. They are Yezidi, but they are not from Yazd,” he said, with a slight smile at the pun.
Angell nodded. “Yes. We were told to look for you. Here. We were told you would be expecting us.”
The old man expelled some air, and then relaxed.
“I would ordinarily offer you some tea and some hospitality. Unfortunately the circumstances require that we be brief. There were some difficulties here a little while ago. You have heard about this.”
“Yes, sir. We have.”
“These people ... these demoniacs ... they also came here looking for the book. But they were confused.”
Angell looked at Adnan, who shrugged as if to say, “I don't know, either.”
“Confused?”
“These are called the Towers of Silence in English, yes?”
“Yes.”
“But there are other Towers. Our Towers can be found wherever there are members of our faith, as far away as India. But the other Towers, they are not part of our religion. The other Towers are of Angra Mainyu, the evil Spirit, the one called Ahriman. They form a network that stretches from Iraq to Mongolia. Ours are Towers of death, it is true. We lay the bodies in circles at the top of each Tower, here,” he pointed to the circular area in which they were standing. “Men on the outside, women in the middle, and children at the very center. We return our physical forms to the World. But the other Towers, the Towers of Shaitan, are edifices built to resurrect dead gods. It is blasphemy. Criminal. A system of channels that runs through the Earth, connecting the putrefaction of corpses and consolidating it as the material basis for their High Priest to return.”
The old man had run out of breath and held up a hand to support himself against a wall as he spoke.
“You must stop them,” he gasped. “You must not let them get the book.”
Angell went up to him then, and touched him on the shoulder. “You need to rest,” he said. “Do you need water? We have some ...”
“No, no,” he interrupted, holding his head erect with some effort. “I am old, that's all. I used to prepare burials here, back before the Revolution. Now we bury our dead underground, like the Muslims. But we use concrete blocks, all around. We seal them in so they do not touch the earth. So they are not ... how do you say ... grounded. We cannot let them use our dead as ... as batteries, or, or, food ... for their High Priest.”
“But who are they? Who are those who seek the book? Yezidis?”
The old man looked startled. “Yezidis? No.”
“But they have towers, outside Mosul, Lalish, and at Sinjar ...”
“Yes, yes,” the old man said, waving his hand impatiently. “Those are shrines of their faith. Because they are said to worship the Devil, they are accused of maintaining the Towers of Satan. But this is not true. The Yezidis are guardians, since ancient times.”
“So, then, who ...?”
Adnan interrupted to say that his cell phone was ringing and he was going to take the call outside, in the entranceway. He left Angell there with the old man, who then pressed him for an answer.
“We Zoroastrians are an ancient people. We are older than Christians, Muslims, even the Jews. But the people who seek the book are even older. They have harbored a resentment against all humans for thousands of years. Since the rise of human civilization, which they abhor. Our brothers, the Yezidis, may be just as old. They know the old words, the ancient rituals, from Sumer and Babylon. The Yezidi towers are a fortress against the evil of the worshippers of the Ancient Ones. We call the leader of the Ancient Ones by the name of Ahriman. But the old word for their High Priest is known to every culture in the world by the same name: al-Qhadhulu. Kutulu.”
That name again.
“Who are they? How can we tell ...?”
“They are everywhere. They play with religion the way politicians play with politics, the way bankers play with money. They have no name, none that is known to us. They operate through other groups, even other cults. When a religion sheds human blood as part of their rituals, they are revealed. Their gods need human sacrifice.”
Adnan came rushing back in to the circle.
“We have to move. Now.”
“What's happening?”
“My people got word over the radio that militia have been alerted to the presence of enemies of the state at the towers. We don't know how, or why the Guard isn't involved, but we can't take any chances.”
The old man grabbed Angell by both shoulders with a stra
nge gesture. For the first time Angell realized that the old man was blind, with cataracts clouding his vision.
“Their priest speaks to his followers in dreams. Dreams while they are awake. He is dead, but not dead. He sleeps and dreams in his death and sends dreams to others. They follow his commands.”
“Let's go! Now!” Adnan ran to the entrance and looked in all directions, waving at Angell as he did so.
Angell tried to wrest himself away from the man's strong grasp.
“Kafiristan! The book is in Kafiristan. Find it before the others do! Seek the Katra in Kamdesh!”
Angell got out of the grasp of the old Zoroastrian priest, but could make no sense of the words he said. But their alliteration—Katra of Kamdesh—stayed with him. And as for Kafiristan, he knew very well where that was.
It was in Afghanistan.
He walked quickly behind Adnan who signaled his men with a gesture. He could see people returning purposefully to their bus, walking quickly but not running. Their car was parked alongside, but before they could get to it they saw two jeeps slam on their brakes just outside the brick wall.
“Wait.” Adnan stopped in his tracks.
“What's wrong?”
“We're not going to make it to the car in time. Let's walk back up to the tower and see what happens.”
Slowly, Adnan and Angell turned and started walking back up, hoping they would not be noticed from the street. Behind them, their tour bus passengers began getting back on the bus as if nothing was happening. One man did not join them but instead walked over to the car driven by Adnan.
“Good thing I left my keys in the car, as always,” he said.
“Why?”
They had just made it to the top of the stairway and were looking down from the darkened entryway.
“If everyone left the parking lot and that car was still there, it would have alerted the militia that there was still someone on-site.
“We might be safe up here if we need to lie low. Let's just wait a spell and see what happens.”
The Lovecraft Code Page 20