“Your most famous?”
“Yes. That one right over there,” I said, pointing to a well-restored mausoleum about ten feet away. “It’s a stone sarcophagus with a life-size sculpture carved on the lid. It’s one of the few pieces that we know everything about. And I can promise you Noah’s not inside.”
Dujok walked over for a closer look. It was a magnificent monument, probably from the Renaissance era, shielded over the centuries under the arched recesses of these catacombs. The sarcophagus had been meticulously decorated with angels, a family coat of arms, and a large medallion showing a bull and cow walking side-by-side along a row of cypress trees.
“What period is this from?” Dujok asked, caressing the surface with his hands. “It looks much more modern that the others.”
“You’re right about that. The character carved on the cover looks to be dressed in sixteenth-century garb. His tall hat, his long, pleated ceremonial robes, they’re all typical of a Renaissance businessman.”
“Do we know who he was?”
“We know his name and a little bit about his history. If you look right there, at the top, you can see his name carved into that scroll. It says Ioan d’Estivadas. Juan de Estivadas . . . The only strange thing is that the name is carved backward. See here?”
“Sad-av-itse-d-na-oi . . . Io-an-d-Esti-va-das . . . ,” Dujok said out loud, tracing the name with his fingertips, and then remaining silent for a moment.
I could almost see the wheels turning in his head. He drummed his fingers over the name. He looked at the inscription up and down, backward and forward. He even blew a thin layer of dust from the letters. And when he was finished, he had this incredibly satisfied look on his face.
“Ms. Álvarez,” he said, clearing his throat. “I felt I knew what your husband was trying to tell you in the last part of his message. Now I’m sure of it.”
46
The president made his decision just before midnight.
Out of view of the press, under the cover of night, he had his car take him to the NSA’s headquarters at Fort Meade, just a few miles north of the White House.
“Good evening, Mr. President.”
An NSA staff member opened the door to his limousine. Four of his Secret Service men went inside first. One of his aides and his chief of staff followed the president inside when he got the all-clear. After having spoken with his agents in Madrid, Castle knew trouble lay ahead.
“Director Owen is waiting for you inside, Mr. President.”
“It’s an honor to have you here, Mr. President.”
“Welcome to the NSA, Mr. President.”
The farther he walked into of that labyrinth of offices and conference rooms, the sweeter the greetings became. Only Michael Owen, head of the NSA, with an inscrutable gaze and exquisite manners, seemed worried to see him.
Owen was the three-headed dragon that guarded the country’s secrets. He was rarely—make that never—in a good mood. Most of his employees thought it was because he hated hobbling around the halls of the agency with his prosthetic leg, but that wasn’t the real reason. Not on that night, anyway. He had been up all night because of one of his agents in Spain. The last thing he needed was to stare down the president of the United States at this hour. “Jesus Christ, when it rains it pours,” he grumbled as he straightened up his desk.
When President Castle knocked at his door, Owen offered him a seat on the couch and a cup of hot coffee, and prepared himself for more bad news.
“The Big Secret.”
Three words. It was all the president said.
Owen swallowed hard.
“Michael, I hope you’ve got that file ready for me,” the president said, launching right in without so much as a sip of his coffee.
“Mr. President, it’s only been an hour—”
“More than enough time,” Castle said with his own hawkish glare, one The New York Times had made famous on its front page in times of crisis. “I want to know the Big Secret—or shall I say the status of Operation Elijah? Is it so hard for you to follow a direct order from your commander in chief? I thought after the attacks in Chechnya, you were clear on the kind of response I expect from this office.”
“Sir, in that amount of time I can barely—”
“Listen here, Michael,” he interrupted with feigned kindness. “I’ve been reading your goddamn reports for the last twenty-five months from inside the White House. They’ve all been meticulous. And they’re at my desk first thing in the morning, right on time. Oh, and they’re very informational. You’ve told me about world finances and nuclear weapons, biological terrorism and even manned missions to the moon. But I seemed to have missed any reference whatsoever to this operation.”
“But I—”
“And, Mr. Director,” he said, stopping him, “before you lie to the president of the United States, I want you to know the White House has done its due diligence. Yesterday, I sent two agents to Spain to investigate the disappearance of one of your former agents. According to my reports, this man was involved in Operation Elijah,” the president said as he saw puzzlement wash over Owen’s face. “But now he’s been kidnapped in Turkey, so I figured that his wife, who lives in Europe, might have some pertinent information. But guess what? Your agents were already on the trail, like thirsty bloodhounds. And what’s worse, apparently the NSA has not informed me of the kidnapping of an American citizen overseas. I had to find that out on my own, through back channels. And less than an hour ago, I just got word that the ex-agent’s wife has disappeared, as well.
“What the hell’s going on here, Michael? What are you not telling me?”
Michael Owen’s face suddenly hardened. He shot a look at the president’s chief of staff and his aide, one that left no doubt that he needed to speak to the leader of the free world in private.
“Right. Just you and me, then,” Castle said, picking up on Owen’s thought.
“Thank you, sir.”
“But I just want to let you know I don’t like having to keep secrets from my people, Michael.”
“Believe it or not, neither do I, Mr. President. But this matter requires . . . discretion,” Owen said.
A minute later, the two men were alone. Owen got up from the sofa to grab a book off his desk, a thick red-leather-bound Bible that he walked back to Roger Castle.
“I have to ask you one more thing, sir.”
Owen placed the Bible on the coffee table in front of President Roger Castle.
“Mr. President, I need you to swear an oath that you will not discuss with any other person what is said in this conversation.”
The president of the United States looked down at the book, stunned.
“What is this, Michael? I’ve already taken the oath of office.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. President. This might seem out of place to you, but if we’re to talk about Operation Elijah, you have to abide by the requirements of the operation’s protocol. I know this seems antiquated, I’ll give you that. But protocol is protocol.”
Castle looked down at the leather-bound Bible and Owen seemed to read his mind.
“This operation is very old, sir. It was created during President Chester Arthur’s administration. And before we speak of it, it’s required that you take a special oath.”
“Chester Arthur? Michael, you’re talking about something that happened a hundred and thirty years ago.”
Michael Owen nodded. “Few men in your position have ever asked for access to Operation Elijah, sir. This might seem an outdated ritual, but Elijah is what gave birth to all of our large-scale covert operations. It exists under a separate statute, one outside the confines of the Freedom of Information Act. Few men even know of its existence. Only Presidents Eisenhower in 1953 and George H. W. Bush in 1991 have asked for access to Elijah. And each of them followed procedure.”
Owen waited for Roger Castle’s decision, his unflinching gaze focused on the Bible.
“It’s necessary, sir.”
&nbs
p; “Will this make me complicit in a crime, Michael?”
“Of course not, sir.”
Roger Castle reached out his left hand, hesitated, then placed it on the Bible and swore to keep whatever information he received confidential. That done, Owen handed Castle a form that outlined the punishment for perjury, and the president signed it.
“I hope this is all worth it,” Castle said as he tucked his pen into his coat pocket.
“You can judge for yourself, Mr. President. First, what can you tell me about President Arthur?”
Owen changed the subject as a way to lighten the tension, an invitation for the president to talk. And Castle appreciated the truce.
“Well . . . ,” Castle said, trying to remember. “I guess I know what everybody knows about President Arthur. You can’t say he was one of our most popular presidents, though they called him ‘Elegant Arthur’ in Washington. And I guess I owe him for the lavish accommodations at the White House. Tiffany designed my bedroom to his specifications. And I guess he’s to thank for instituting a budget for ‘official parties.’”
“Well, Mr. President, I can tell you that there was, in fact, a very serious man behind that frivolous façade. Chester Arthur was the fifth son of an Irish Baptist minister, who taught him his love for the Bible. But he kept his religious beliefs and those fundamental ideas very close to the vest. Not even his wife knew the depths of his obsession with the details in the Bible. You might not know that the National Archives have only three rolls of microfilm that preserve his notes. And he didn’t mention his religious convictions in them . . .”
“Only three rolls? That’s it?”
“He burned the rest of his papers before leaving office.”
“Those were other times,” Castle said, shaking his head. “Could you imagine what the press would say if I did the same thing? I’m sorry . . . Please, go on.”
“But there’s one thing President Arthur did that gives tremendous insight into his beliefs: He created the Office of Naval Intelligence, the country’s first branch of secret service. And there was one topic that he constantly discussed with his admirals, something he was obsessed with finding proof of. Can you imagine what it was?”
The president, intrigued, shook his head slowly.
“The Great Flood.”
“Go on . . .”
“You have to try to understand it within the context of the times, Mr. President. During the president’s second year in office, a contemporary of his, Minnesota governor and fellow party member Ignatius Donnelly, published a highly acclaimed book titled Atlantis: The Antediluvian World. Donnelly had spent months in the Library of Congress, trying to prove that the Atlantis that Plato spoke of was an actual place and that it was, in fact, destroyed in the Great Flood. Even today, Donnelly is considered one of the most learned men ever to sit in the House of Representatives. It’s no wonder that Arthur, an equally erudite man, was worried after reading Donnelly’s work. And those worries grew exponentially when word of the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano reached the White House. Just imagine: That volcano wiped out an entire archipelago with the force of ten thousand atomic explosions. It created tidal waves forty feet tall that swept entire populations off the face of the earth.”
“And this all happened during Arthur’s presidency.”
“You can see why a man like Arthur might have ordered the navy to look into a catastrophic event such as the Great Flood. He was worried it would happen again.”
Castle couldn’t manage to continue looking at Owen with a straight face. “I hope everything you’re telling me is the truth, Michael.”
“It is, sir.”
“So then, if the object of that presidential order was to study the Great Flood,” Castle said, “why did he call it Operation Elijah, and not Operation Noah?”
Owen smiled. Castle knew how to look for holes in an argument, and there was no doubt that sharp mind was what had landed him in the Oval Office.
“There’s one thing I haven’t explained yet, sir,” Owen said. “See, Chester Arthur wasn’t looking for proof of the Great Flood. By that point, he wholeheartedly believed it had happened. What he wanted to know is whether something like it could happen during his presidency.”
“And did he have a good reason to think it would?”
“In the Bible, the prophet Malachi closes the Old Testament by alluding to a second Great Flood, a second great disaster, one after the time of Noah. Look, here.”
Owen flipped open the red-covered Bible and flipped to the end of Malachi, chapter 3:
And I will send thee my messenger, the prophet Elijah
Before the arrival of Yahweh on that great and terrible day
“You see? A ‘great and terrible day’ is associated with the return of Elijah. It’s a belief still honored by the Jewish faith, by those who honor him with a place at the table during every Passover. Chester Arthur was obsessed with determining when this new day of apocalypse would be. It became the priority of his administration. Yes, he ordered the navy to look into it, but also some of the country’s top scientists from all different backgrounds, and to this day, no one has dared put an end to Operation Elijah.”
“So . . . have they figured it out?” Castle said, still stunned that his father’s reference to that ‘great and terrible day’ had come from the Bible. “Have they figured out the day of the apocalypse?”
“Well, I can tell you that that wealth of great minds did agree on one thing . . .”
“Tell me, Michael.”
“After reading the biblical texts, they realized that information about the catastrophe—in the case of Noah and Elijah—didn’t come from observing Mother Nature. In fact, the information came directly from . . . a higher power,” Owen said nervously. “From a supreme intelligence. The Great Architect. God himself. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“God. Naturally,” Castle said, shaking his head.
“I think you missed my point, Mr. President. The object of Operation Elijah was to find a way to open a direct line of communication with Him, so that He might have a way to warn us—as he did with Noah—should another global extinction be headed our way. An insurance policy, just like the one Noah had. Simple as that.”
“What . . . ?” Castle couldn’t wrap his mind around what he was hearing.
“Operation Elijah is about talking directly to God, Mr. President. That’s why the NSA is involved. After all, isn’t it our job to monitor all communications that might affect our country?”
“You’re kidding, right? This is a joke. Oh, I can just imagine it: a nightly prayer group at the NSA headquarters, the pinnacle of the country’s military intelligence.”
“It’s not a prayer group, Mr. President,” Owen said flatly. “It’s a communications task force.”
Roger Castle’s eyes were now bulging.
“You mean to tell me that for the last hundred years, the Office of Naval Intelligence and then the National Security Administration has spent time, energy and resources trying to literally speak to God!”
“It’s actually more rational than you think, sir. President Arthur came from a very spiritual time in world history. Everyone thought it was possible to communicate with the ‘other side.’ And if telecommunications were to keep advancing—as they were at the time, exponentially—people could envision a time when we would indeed manage to communicate with whatever was on the other side. It wasn’t beyond logic.”
Fury settled into a dark shadow falling across the president’s face. “Then tell me, Mr. Owen, how much has this cost the American taxpayer?”
“Elijah doesn’t have a budget assigned to it, sir. Whatever time or resources Elijah needs, Elijah gets.”
“So why hasn’t anyone put an end to this madness, Michael? Because that’s what this is: utter and complete madness.”
Owen looked stoically at the president, lifted himself from his chair and limped with his prosthetic leg over to the window. “I’ll remind you, Mr.
President, that the Apollo program was considered madness at one time, too. And yet, we managed to put twelve men on the moon. If Elijah is still operational, it’s because it’s yielded some . . . interesting results.”
“You’re joking again.”
For the third time that night, the president couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Operation Elijah has evolved since Chester Arthur’s administration, sir. We have satellites that cover every corner of the earth, a level of military intelligence never before dreamed of.”
“Well, sure, they didn’t exactly have radio telescopes in 1882 . . .”
“We also have a team dedicated to finding and trying to use the radios used in the ancient world, ones that were supposedly used to communicate with God. We’ve got some of the country’s best minds working on these ideas. And their work is pure science. But the science and their results are so advanced that if they were ever made public, it might look like modern-day witchcraft.”
“Wait, back up. Did you say ancient radios?” Castle said, still stunned.
“Remember the old crystal radios, sir?”
“Sure, my grandfather had one.”
“Well, these primitive radios didn’t use a battery. Instead, they relied on a galena crystal, a stone that had lead sulfide veining inside. The radio runs when the mineral reacts to electromagnetic signals or radio waves in the air. They’re so simple but so effective. With an adequate stone and antenna, it could easily receive medium-wave signals.”
“And they knew about this technology in Noah’s time?”
“We believe they did, sir. In fact, we believe our ancestors used these stones to communicate with God. They were electromagnetically modified minerals that were capable of picking up on very specific frequencies. The power of these minerals wasn’t kept secret for long. All of our holy books mention these stones: the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments, the Kaaba, the Stone of Jacob, the Scottish Stone of Scone, the “whispering” Oracle of Delphi, the Irish Lia Fáil . . . Even the Australian aborigines have revered stones they call ‘soul stones,’ or churingas.”
The Lost Angel Page 16