The Covenant Of The Flame

by David Morrell

  'What?' the voice on the other end said fiercely.

  'Something's happening! In front of the hotel. I don't understand! The bait just-!'

  SEVEN

  Craig kept pacing. With greater tension, he suddenly noticed movement to his right and spun, apprehensive, his hand beneath his suitcoat, grasping his revolver. He relaxed only slightly when he saw that the movement was the hotel's thin-lipped doorman walking toward him, frowning harder.

  Don't tell me he's going to insist I check in or stop loitering outside the hotel! Craig quickly removed his hand from his weapon and reached toward a pocket inside his suitcoat, ready to pull out his police ID, anything to appease the doorman.

  But what the doorman said was so unexpected that Craig restrained his gesture, paralyzed with bewilderment.

  'Is your name Craig, sir?'

  Craig felt a chill. 'Yes. But how did you know that?

  'Sir, the clerk at the check-in desk just received a phone call. From a woman who, to say the least, is upset. She demanded that someone hurry outside and see if a man was waiting. She said if the man's name was Craig, she had to talk to him at once.'

  Tess, Craig thought. It had to be! What had happened? What was wrong?

  'The phone!' Craig said. 'Where is it? Is she still on the line?' He hurried toward the hotel's entrance.

  'Yes, sir,' the doorman said, following briskly, troubled. 'She insisted that we not hang up.'

  Craig pushed open the hotel's front door, lunging in. His eyes struggled to adjust to the shadows after the smoggy sunlight. The check-in desk was directly across from him. Hurrying toward it, Craig fumbled into one of his trouser pockets, pulled out a ten-dollar bill, and handed it toward the doorman.

  Thank you, sir. I appreciate your-'

  'Don't go far. I might need your help. I've got more money.' Craig reached the desk. 'My name is Craig. There's a call for-'

  'Definitely.' A clerk straightened, picking up a phone, extending it across the counter.

  'Tess?' Craig's hand cramped around the phone as he pressed it against his ear. 'Where are you? What happened!'

  'Thank God, you waited,' she said.

  Craig exhaled at the sound of her voice.

  'I was worried,' she said, 'that you might have-'

  'Left? No way! I promised I'd wait! Answer my question. What happened?'

  'Don't worry. I'm safe. At least, as safe as I can be until you get here.'

  'Where?

  'Craig, I think I've found out what's been happening, and it makes me even more terrified. I don't have time to explain, and this isn't something we can talk about on the phone. Write down this address.'

  Distraught, Craig glanced toward the counter, grabbed a pen and a pad, and frantically printed the information she gave him.

  'It's important,' Tess said. 'Get here as fast as you can.'

  'Count on it.' Craig tore off the sheet of paper, shoved the phone toward the clerk, and blurted, Thank you.'

  In distress, he spun toward the doorman, thrusting twenty dollars at him. 'Get me a taxi. Now.'

  EIGHT

  In the parking lot across the street from the hotel, the solemn man with a ring in his pocket straightened behind the steering wheel in the replica of the UPS truck.

  Again he spoke into the cellular phone. The bait! I see him! The detective! He's outside the hotel again! He's getting into a taxi!'

  On the other end of the phone, the chameleon responded with equal intensity. 'Follow him! Alert the other unit! Remain in contact! A team of enforcers is en route from LaGuardia!'

  The man behind the steering wheel felt his stomach cramp as he set down the phone.

  Enforcers?

  He hadn't been told that this mission was considered so desperate. He had the unnerving sense that events were out of control, that brutal forces were converging, that a terrible, ultimate battle was about to begin.

  Obeying instructions, he used a two-way radio to alert his other team, then twisted the ignition key, heard the engine rumble, and glanced toward the rear of the truck. There, five men waited, their expressions strained, ignoring him, rechecking their handguns.

  The driver, breathing rapidly, stomped the accelerator and sped from the parking lot in pursuit of the taxi.

  NINE

  In the Marriott's lobby, a well-built, tanned, expensively dressed man in his thirties stepped through the entrance and approached the check-in desk, carrying a briefcase.

  'Excuse me.' His manner was deferential toward the clerk, his voice smooth but sounding concerned. 'I wonder if you could help me – I had an appointment to meet a man here, but traffic delayed me – Unfortunately, I don't see him anywhere. He must have become impatient and left. I wonder if… Is it possible? Did he leave a message. His name was Craig.'

  'As a matter of fact, sir, a man by that name was here, and indeed he was waiting for someone,' the clerk said. 'A minute ago, he received a phone call and left.'

  The well-built man looked disappointed. 'My boss… to put it mildly… won't be happy. My promotion's at stake. I had important contracts for Mr Craig to sign. I don't suppose you know where he went.'

  'I regret to say no, sir. Mr Craig wrote directions on that pad and tore off the sheet of paper. But he didn't mention where he was going.'

  'On that pad, you say?'

  'That's correct, sir.'

  The well-built man studied the indentations that Craig's strong printing had made on the page beneath the one he'd torn off. 'Did you happen to overhear the name of the person he spoke to?'

  'A woman. Her name was Tess, sir.'

  'Of course. Well, I thank you for your trouble,' the man said, giving the clerk twenty dollars.

  'That's really not necessary, sir.'

  'Ah, but it is.' The well-built man tore off the next sheet on the pad, feeling the indentations of Craig's printing. 'If you don't mind.'

  'Not at all, sir.'

  'Very good.'

  As the well-built man walked briskly from the lobby, the clerk glanced with satisfaction at the twenty-dollar bill and thought with interest that in all his years of greeting guests, it was seldom that he'd met anyone who had gray eyes.

  TEN

  In a rush, Tess reentered the study. 'Thanks for letting me use the phone.'

  'No need to thank us,' Professor Harding said. 'The main thing is, did you manage to contact the man you were supposed to meet?'

  Tess nodded forcefully. 'He'll be here as quickly as he can. I'll feel a lot better when he does. In the meantime…' She spun toward Priscilla. 'The statue. You were about to explain what it meant. Keep talking. Why is Mithras slicing the neck of the bull?'

  Priscilla shoved her glasses higher onto her nose and studied the photograph. 'I can understand why you're mystified. Like most depictions of rites sacred to various religions, this object appears incomprehensible. Imagine an aborigine who's spent all his life on a small Pacific island, totally isolated, with no experience of Western customs. Imagine if he were brought to America and taken to a Catholic church. Then imagine his reaction when he saw what hung behind the altar. The statue of Christ on the cross, hands and feet pierced by nails, head crowned with thorns, side slit open, would be an absolute, horrifying mystery.'

  'Wait,' Tess said. 'After everything we've discussed, you're telling me you don't know what the statue means?'

  'On the contrary, I do know what it means,' Priscilla said. 'What I'm getting at is that without a knowledge of the traditions and symbols of an unfamiliar religion, you can't appreciate why a particular image is important to that religion. But the moment the symbols are given meaning, the image becomes perfectly clear. To me, this statue is as easy to interpret as an image of Christ's crucifixion. Lean closer toward the photograph. Examine the details I point out. I suspect that soon you'll realize how simple they are to interpret.'

  'Simple?' Tess shook her head. 'I really have trouble believing that.'

  'Just try to be patient.' Priscilla placed her righ
t index finger on the photograph. 'Why don't we start with the bull?

  'Notice that the marble of the statue is white. The bull is white,' Priscilla said. 'After his death, he'll become the moon. Logically, you might expect that the bull would become the sun, given that Mithras is the sun god. But there's a deeper logic. The moon is a version of the sun at night. It illuminates the darkness, and in this case, it represents the god of light in conflict with the opposite god, the evil god, the god of darkness.'

  'Okay,' Tess said, 'I see that logic. But what I don't is… Why does the bull have to die?'

  'Did you ever read Joseph Campbell? The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology?'

  'In college.'

  'Then you ought to know that in almost every religion there's a sacrificial victim. Sometimes the god is the victim. In Christianity, for example, Jesus dies to redeem the world. But often the victim is a substitute for the god. Among the Aztecs and Mayans, they frequently chose a maiden, who gave up her life as a surrogate for, a sacrifice to, the god. The most common method was to cut out her heart.'

  Tess winced.

  Priscilla continued, 'In the case of Mithras, the bull dies not only to become the moon but to give life to the earth. The ritual execution probably happened during the vernal equinox… the arrival of spring… to regenerate the world. It's a traditionally sanctified time of the year. Most Christians don't know it, but that's the reason Easter is so important in their religion. When Christ leaves the tomb just as the earth comes back to life. And Mithras, too, came back to life in the spring.'

  Tess struggled to concentrate, her forehead aching with intense frustration.

  'Regeneration,' Priscilla said. 'Out of death comes life. That's why Mithras slices the throat of the bull. There has to be blood. A great deal of blood. The blood cascades toward the ground. It nourishes the soil. You can see grain sprouting from the ground near the bull's front knee. Many ancient religions required blood – sometimes human, sometimes animal – to be sprinkled on the fields before the crops were planted.'

  'But that's repulsive.'

  'Not if you believed. It's no more repulsive than the implications of communion in the Catholic Church, swallowing bread and wine that symbolize the body and blood of Christ to regenerate your soul.'

  'Okay,' Tess said. 'Point granted, although I never thought about it that way before. But what about the dog in the statue? Why is the dog lunging toward the blood? And why is the serpent-?'

  With a tingle that swept from her feet to her head, Tess abruptly realized. Dear Lord, Priscilla had been right. Everything was suddenly, vividly clear. The dog and the serpent!'

  'What about them? Can you tell me?' Priscilla's eyes gleamed.

  'They represent evil! The dog is trying to stop the blood from reaching the ground and fertilizing the soil! The serpent wants to destroy the wheat! And the scorpion's evil, too! It's attacking the bull's testicles, the source of the bull's virility!'

  'Excellent. I'm proud of you, Tess. Keep going. Can you tell me about the torch bearers?'

  The flame pointing upward signifies Mithras. The flame pointing downward represents his evil competition.'

  'You must have been a brilliant student.'

  'Not according to your husband,' Tess said.

  Professor Harding set down his teacup. 'What I said was, you weren't my best student. But you were bright enough and certainly enthusiastic.'

  'Right now, "enthusiastic" doesn't describe what I'm feeling. I'm grieving for my mother. I'm desperate. I'm scared. The raven, Priscilla. Tell me about the raven.'

  'Yes.' Priscilla sighed. The raven. On the left, from above the upraised torch, on the side of good, he watches the sacrifice. You have to understand. Mithraism had seven stages of membership, from beginners to priests. And the first stage was called "the raven". As it happens, the raven was also the sacred bird in their religion. It was a messenger sent from heaven, ordered to witness the ritual sacrifice, to observe the renewal of the world, the death of the bull, the blood cascading toward the earth, the return of spring, the fertilization of the soil.'

  'Now I understand too well.' Tess quivered. 'It's what I've devoted my life to. Mithras wants to save the planet, and his evil counterpart wants to destroy it.'

  ELEVEN

  Lima, Peru.

  Charles Gordon, a short, frail importer-exporter, slumped behind his desk. Although his office window overlooked the impressive Rimac River, he ignored the dismal view and did his best to concentrate on a catalogue of the various American products that he'd tried, with little success, to sell to local merchants. His gaudy bow tie and ill-fitting suit had attracted smirks from the local population when he'd rented this office a month ago, but his clothes were now an accepted, tired joke that made him in effect invisible.

  Bored, his only consolation was that Lima was only seven miles from the Pacific. This close to the sea, the temperature was moderate, the drab city far enough from the towering mountains to the east that the air was breathable. No high-altitude wheezing for him. In that respect, this assignment wasn't bad. Except that the operative who called himself Charles Gordon got tired of the charade involved in pretending to conduct a profit-earning business.

  He had a business, all right.

  But it wasn't import-export.

  No, his business was death, and profit, in the normal sense of the word, had never been his motive.

  As the brochure in his hands drooped, the trilling bell on his fax machine made him jerk upright. He quickly stood, crossed toward a table on his left, and watched a page unroll from the fax machine.

  The message was from the Philadelphia office of his American supplier, notifying him that a shipment of laptop computers would soon be arriving. The message gave the quantity, the price, and the date of shipment.

  Well, finally, Charles Gordon thought.

  It didn't trouble him that so sensitive a message had been sent via his easily accessed telephone line. After all, his American supplier was, to all appearance, a legitimate corporation, and the laptop computers would arrive as promised. Even if someone suspected that the message was in code, no one could decipher its true meaning – because the code had been chosen arbitrarily. Kenneth Madden, the CIA's Deputy Director of Covert Operations, had explained it to Gordon the evening before the operative had flown to Peru.

  The date of the shipment had nothing to do with the date of the mission. The quantity and the price of the laptop computers were irrelevant. What the message referred to was President Garth's imminent trip to Peru for a drug-control conference. The president's intention was to attempt to convince the Peruvian government to pay subsidies to farmers who switched to less lucrative crops than the easy-to-grow coca plants that local drug lords, among the world's major suppliers, needed to make cocaine.

  But the president would never reach the conference.

  TWELVE

  Tess hesitated. In the study in the Victorian mansion near Georgetown, a memory nagged at her subconsciousness. In a flash, it surfaced. 'But what about the treasure?'

  Priscilla frowned, puzzled by Tess's abrupt change of topic.

  'Before I used the phone, you mentioned a mysterious treasure,' Tess said. 'In southwestern France, in the thirteenth century.'

  'Ah.' Priscilla nodded. 'Yes. When the Catholic crusaders killed tens of thousands of heretics to eradicate a new version of Mithraism."

  'You called it Albigensianism,' Tess said. The last stronghold of the heretics was a mountain fortress.'

  'Montsegur.' Priscilla squinted.

  'And you said that the night before the final massacre' – Tess trembled – 'a small group of heretics used ropes to descend from the mountain, taking with them a mysterious treasure.'

  'A rumor. A persistent legend, although as I mentioned, it could have some basis in fact. Since Mithraism survives in India, it might have survived in Europe as well. A small group conducting its rites in secret. To avoid the Inquisition.'

  'If so' - Tess raised her
voice in frustration – 'what would the treasure have been?'

  Priscilla shrugged. 'The obvious answer is wealth of some sort. Gold. Precious gems. Indeed, as recently as the Second World War, the Nazis believed that such a treasure existed and was hidden in the area near Montsegur. Hitler sent an archaeologist, a team of engineers, and an SS unit to search for it in the numerous caves in the region. Evidence of their excavations can still be found. However, the treasure was not. At least, no one ever indicated that a treasure had been discovered, and surely, given something so dramatic, word would have spread. Then, too, another theory is that the treasure was the Holy Grail, the chalice from Christ's Last Supper. And still another theory claims that the treasure was a person, that Christ – contrary to tradition – married and had a son, a descendant of whom was the leader of the Albigensians. Those latter theories were made popular in a book called Holy Blood, Holy Grail. But those latter theories are nonsense, of course. Because the Albigensians had only a superficial resemblance to Catholics. They descended from a tradition much older than Christianity, one that happened to use rituals similar to those of Christianity, but that in fact was based on the theology – opposing good and evil gods – of Mithraism. The heretics would have had no respect for the so-called Holy Grail, and they wouldn't have cared if Christ had a son who established a bloodline. No,' Priscilla said, 'whatever the treasure, assuming it even existed, it more than likely was the obvious: wealth.'

  Tess breathed with excitement, although her excitement was tinged with fear. 'I disagree.'

  Priscilla adjusted her glasses, confused. 'Oh?'

  'I think there was a treasure. Not wealth. At least not in the ordinary sense, although it definitely was mysterious.'