33
Something else surprised me in my voyage through the valley of death. Unlike the memories of the living, the memories of the dead are not vague, shapeless far-off mirages. No. They are like life itself, vibrant and immediate and real, but with one main difference: the perspective. It was as if I were seeing my life again through the eyes of God.
Maybe that’s why my soul was so intent on reviewing every moment of my wedding. Because I was now able to draw so much meaning from each moment. And now I was focused on what happened as Daniel gave his dark lecture on the meeting between Gilgamesh and Utnapishtim, when one of the guests rose and hurried out of the Biddlestone chapel.
I let the images wash over me again.
The man who rushed out of the church was Artemi Dujok. He was an old Armenian friend of Martin’s who, I’d learned that day, was the majority stockholder in a technology company. I hadn’t paid much attention at the time when his picture ran in the paper a few days before my wedding under the headline THE DOOMSDAY MAN. It seemed Dujok was behind a project called the Global Seed Vault to build an underground catastrophe-proof bunker to protect a vast variety of the world’s plant seeds. Forget Noah’s Ark. Martin said Dujok hoped to build Noah’s Greenhouse thousands of feet below the Svalbard permafrost, where they could warehouse more than two and a half billion seeds from every continent at below-zero temperatures in case of a worldwide calamity. Dujok’s company was in charge of handling the seed bank’s security. But the newspaper articles also examined his company’s links to military projects and advanced weaponry, bringing into question the benevolent image Dujok tried to project.
Yet the first thing I thought when I met him was that for a brilliant multimillionaire, his clothes didn’t match his bank account. He was introverted, hanging in the background, and I don’t remember him having a single conversation with another guest. Maybe he felt like he didn’t fit in with the others. He’d come alone, without a driver or bodyguards. And maybe he buried his nose in his electronic organizer to avoid calling more attention than his tanned skin and thick, memorable mustache did.
That’s probably why no one noticed when he got up after Daniel’s speech and hurried to the back of the church, pretending to take a call. He turned his back to us and, when he felt no one was looking, slipped the phone into his coat pocket and headed for the parking lot.
I was surprised to find that in my postmortem state I could follow his every move.
He pressed a key fob and the lights on his BMW flashed in the distance. When the trunk popped open, there was a sight you didn’t expect to find in a $70,000 car: a used shovel and pick, covered in mud, and a beige duffel bag that he threw over his shoulder.
He quickly tossed aside his coat and tie and was only in his shirtsleeves, looking around to make sure no one was watching him. The windows of the seven adjacent houses behind the church remained closed and dark. Dujok was alone.
What’s he going to do now? I wondered.
Dujok hurried to the church’s apse, the curved wall behind the altar, and dropped his bag on the ground. He opened the bag and started taking out all manner of tools. First, he put on a mask and a pair of mud-spattered coveralls. He made sure his pants were tucked into his waterproof boots, then he pulled out a small extendable spade, like the ones mountain climbers use, and he glanced at his watch. I could tell he wanted to work quickly. He stood over a hole in the rocky and muddy ground, about a yard and a half wide and deep, that I somehow knew he had dug the night before. He went to work, continuing to dig as my wedding was going on, behind the back of even his close friend Martin, as if he were looking for something he needed at that very moment.
It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for. And he didn’t seem too surprised at how quickly he’d heard the sound of metal against metal. As if he knew it was waiting for him.
Artemi Dujok tossed aside the shovel and continued to dig with his hands, revealing the outline of a small lead chest. The metal was aged and rusted, definitely ancient. It didn’t seem to have any hinges or locks or identifying marks. Instead, it looked like it had been welded shut, hermetically sealed.
Only before grabbing the metal box did Dujok hesitate. He took off his work gloves and slipped on a thicker, metallic pair. He carefully secured a rope around the box and pulled it out of the hole, until it came to rest at his feet.
I was starting to wonder why I was having this particular vision at the moment of my death when I saw Artemi Dujok start to chisel open the box’s top. The smell of ammonia puffed out as the lid popped off, and Dujok covered his face with his arm as a small trail of smoke rose into the air. The Armenian grumbled something under his breath. But when he looked inside the box, I could see his twisted mustache curl up with a smile.
I wasn’t close enough to see what was inside, but I did make out the contours of something rough, dark and odd shaped. It was some kind of tablet, engraved with a series of notches and lines. But I didn’t have time to see anything else. He quickly picked up the box and placed it under the window of the church’s apse. He clearly knew what he was doing.
“Sobra zol ror i ta nazpsad!” he whispered in a language I didn’t recognize. “Graa ta malprag!” he added, raising his voice.
Dujok was no longer that anonymous figure lost in the background. His face glowed with a superhuman intensity.
“Sobra zol ror i ta nazpsad!”
His voice now resonated throughout the courtyard. And when he said that phrase a second time, I saw the inside of the box begin to glow and shoot a bolt of light into the sky. It was quick and intense, leaping from inside the lead box toward the window that separated the garden from the altar where Martin and I were being married.
I swallowed hard. He had awoken something inside that box and had done it with an ancient spell, unleashing something I never imagined existed. Never, aside from the night before with Sheila Graham, had I witnessed anything like it.
Who the hell was this Artemi Dujok?
34
Just as Inspector Figueiras floored the accelerator of his Peugeot 307 to take the last hill standing between him and the Plaza de la Quintana, he felt the ninety horses under the hood wheeze and his speed drop.
“Damn it, now what?” he said, pounding the steering wheel.
The engine tried to obey but eventually coughed, shook and came to a silent rest.
Well, at least it had stopped raining.
He coasted the car to the side of the road and set off on foot. There was enough on his mind to quicken his pace. An American spy. Maybe two. A pair of valuable stones. A shooting inside of a church and a woman in danger. If the police commissioner was right, the woman needed to be under police protection, at least until this mess was cleared up. And if that wasn’t bad enough, there was that damn rainstorm and a power outage that cut off radio communications between him and his men.
Figueiras adjusted his showy white glasses as he rushed down the block. He cut down a side street, leaving behind the picturesque Pazo archway and the rows of closed souvenir shops. He was so wrapped up in his world that he didn’t even notice the helicopter, which was still resting across from the cathedral.
But he snapped back to reality when he turned a corner and saw two men dressed in black rushing down a walkway. Despite the darkness, he immediately recognized them.
“Father Fornés! Archbishop Martos!” he called to them. “Is something the matter? What are you doing out at this time of night?”
Archbishop Martos brightened immediately. “Ah, Inspector.” He smiled. “Am I glad to see you.”
“Really?”
“A godsend. The dean here just pulled me out of bed to show me something your men found during the shooting at the church, something we hadn’t noticed. Isn’t that right, Father?”
The old priest’s gaunt face tightened, as if he were wishing the earth would swallow him up. He’d never liked Figueiras.
“What is it, Father?”
“W-well . .
. ,” Fornés stammered. “Remember where the shooting started?”
“Near the Campus Stellae monument. I remember. What about it?”
“Well, one of the stone blocks seems to have been damaged . . .”
“Wait, did you breach the secured perimeter?”
Fornés’s face reddened.
“What Father Fornés is trying to say is that something has . . . appeared on that wall,” the archbishop said. “A sign. The good father saw it while looking over the cathedral a couple of hours ago, and he thinks this might have something to do with the incident.”
“A sign?” Figueiras scrunched up his face. “You think that bastard left some kind of signature behind?”
“No, no, Inspector,” the priest said, clearly annoyed. “I think the man was looking for that symbol. That symbol wasn’t something done on the fly. I think after he discovered it, he didn’t have time to cover it back up.”
“That’s some handy police work, Father. Tell you what: Why don’t I give you my detective’s shield and you can just go ahead and do my job for me?”
The priest bit his tongue.
“Don’t you think he could have gone looking for that symbol while the cathedral was open to visitors, without causing such a fuss?”
“You never were a man of faith, Figueiras,” Fornés grumbled. “You’d never understand.”
“Understand what?”
Figueiras glared at the priest. In a city dominated by religion, Figueiras derived a strange pleasure from arguing with the clergy.
“That symbol was not made by man, Inspector.”
“Of course not. How could it be?” Figueiras said, mocking him.
“It’s the mark of the angels—the angels of the apocalypse. And the man who desecrated our temple was trying to invoke them.”
“Father, please . . .” the archbishop said, interrupting.
“Angels of the apocalypse, huh?” Figueiras’s face lit up.
But the old priest clenched his fist.
“Think whatever you want,” the priest spat out, his voice rising. “But don’t start praying when the ground begins to shake and the Antichrist himself emerges, and the dragon’s tail whips the stars from the sky and brings them crashing to Earth. By then, Inspector . . . you’ll already be dead.”
“Father!” the archbishop said finally. “Enough!”
The inspector took a step back. The smile had been wiped from his face. Because just then, he noticed the earth had started to shake beneath his feet. And it wasn’t his imagination. A hum—first soft, then growing stronger and violent—reverberated throughout the streets, unnerving the three men.
Figueiras looked up. It wasn’t the apocalypse, after all.
The helicopter, he thought, looking for the bird’s outline in the night sky.
35
By the time Artemi Dujok had returned to the church, Daniel had just finished his speech about the polemical Book of Enoch, and it was Sheila’s turn to speak. She looked eager to begin.
“Well, then,” she said, looking out at the congregation and letting her eyes fall on the man slinking back into the church. “I’m sure you all want to know how Utnapishtim answered Gilgamesh’s question. Am I right?”
The congregation nodded collectively.
Martin was glowing. He seemed proud to have turned our wedding into some kind of lecture on ancient mythology—the mythos of angels.
Utnapishtim did not simply answer his question, Sheila told us. Instead of giving Gilgamesh a straightforward reply about how to reach immortality, he told him a story about himself.
“And I’d like to tell that story now,” she said.
“This comes from the Sumerian version of the myth,” she began. “Centuries before Gilgamesh was born, Utnapishtim was the ruler of another great city, Shuruppak, whose ruins archaeologists have found. At the height of the city’s splendor, civilization had begun to spread throughout Asia and Africa in those antediluvian times. That was about the period when the god Enlil decided it was time to end the spread of the human race. He had been so disappointed with the human species, much like the Bible’s Yahweh. And he had reason to be: We were unruly.
“And the manner in which he intended to exterminate us was so cruel that he made the other gods swear not to tell a single mortal soul. Enlil believed the root of our problem was the marriage between divine beings and the ‘daughters of man.’ Those unions, he said, had corrupted our species. It had made us ambitious, disobedient and, what’s worse, stronger and smarter. We were a challenge to the gods themselves. So the god of gods—ruler of skies, winds and storms—decided to snuff out a dangerous genetic deviant. And he had a radical plan: to unleash a worldwide flood that would wipe us from the face of the earth.
“Only one of the gods denounced it: his brother Enki. He believed in the human race. He was the one who helped us spread throughout the earth. He was the one who sent the Watchers to guard over us and allowed them to marry human women. He wanted to improve our species and educate us.
“But Enki was conflicted: How could he save our species without directly betraying his brother?
“Not long before D-day, as seas and skies were changing in anticipation of the cataclysmic event, Enki came up with an answer. He knew he couldn’t speak directly to Utnapishtim without breaking his oath to his brother. But what if Utnapishtim overheard the plan? Enki hid behind a wall, waited for Utnapishtim to happen by and began lamenting out loud about his brother’s fiendish plan.
“‘Tear down your home and use it to build an ark. Leave behind your riches and instead focus on survival. Cast aside prosperity, and seek to save humanity. Take with you seeds from every living thing,’ Enki said out loud.
“Utnapishtim immediately recognized his god’s voice. He went home that night convinced he had stumbled upon an important conversation, a warning he must heed. He built an enormous armor-plated vessel without a bow or stern or masts, something that would float no matter what the conditions at sea. The twelfth clay tablet of the epic of Gilgamesh goes on to tell the story of the endless days and nights of rain that flooded the city of Shuruppak and terrified the king’s crew aboard his ship.
“When the worst had passed, the ship ran aground on a mountaintop. King Utnapishtim led the survivors out and sent them forward to repopulate the earth. And that is how our species was reborn.”
Sheila looked over at Martin and me.
“This story is a gift to you,” she said. “The couple we honor today in holy matrimony is descended from that ancient sailor and his bloodline. They are the heirs of that sacred union between men and gods. And today, we continue to honor the commandment of the god Enki, to go forward across the land and multiply, ensuring that the genetic code of the Watchers will live on.”
“And finally,” Daniel said, “it’s time to bless this union. May I have the adamants?”
We handed our adamants to Daniel, and Martin and I held hands.
“The ‘sons of God’ gave stones just such as these to their human wives,” he said, raising the stones for the congregation to see. “It was a symbol of the world they came from—paradise—and the world where they so wanted to live.”
“These stones,” Father Graham added, “are often mentioned in the Bible. The Ten Commandments were carved by the finger of God into two large slabs. Jacob, the patriarch, fell asleep atop one and in his dreams he could see the angels climbing the ladder between Earth and heaven. The ones in your hands proceed from those ancient stones and they remain the symbol of the connection between our two worlds.”
“Do you remember, Father, what Jacob said at discovering the ladder?” Daniel asked, cutting back in. “‘This is the door to the house of God.’ He was telling us the stones unlocked a doorway to this invisible world and opened a line of communication between man and our Father in heaven.”
To which Sheila added solemnly, “And your stones are the keys to His door. Keep them close to you. And guard them with your lives.”
/> Father Graham stepped forward and raised his arms to bring the congregation to its feet. He had heard enough.
“It is time,” he said, again leading the ceremony. “Martin Faber, by the Stone of Commitment, do you solemnly swear to take Julia Álvarez, daughter of man, as your wife? Do you promise to protect her against all adversity and dishonor for all of your remaining days?”
Martin’s eyes flashed with life at Father Graham’s choice of words, and he said, “I do.”
“And you, Julia. By the sacred Stone of Alliance, do you take Martin Faber, son of the Eternal Father, as your husband? Do you promise to remain at his side in the face of the enemies of light, to support him and comfort him even in the dark days ahead?”
I felt a shiver run down my spine. I felt the intensity of the priest’s gaze.
“Do you swear it?” he asked.
“I do.”
“In that case,” he said, taking the adamants from Daniel’s hands and holding them over ours, “these age-old relics will be the witnesses to this union. Lap zirdo noco Mad, hoath Iaida. And they will always lead you down the path of righteousness and justice.”
He placed the adamants in our hands. And I immediately felt my heart quicken. Mine felt warm, and it jostled like a bird desperate to take flight.
As soon as I closed my hand around my adamant, it stopped humming. But very subtly, it began to glow, pulsing with a soft and calming light in the palm of my hand. And then, it did something unlike anything it had done at Sheila’s house and, judging from Martin’s face, something he had never seen it do before. Every time it pulsed with light, I could make out the outline of a figure inside, what looked like some kind of letter.
Something like this:
“Zacar, uniglag od imvamat pugo plapli ananael qaan. From this day forward, you are husband and wife,” Father Graham said, unshaken by what he was seeing.
The Lost Angel Page 11