“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“No? Let me refresh your memory,” he said, smiling. “When Martin last saw you before leaving for Turkey, you told him you wouldn’t help him with his ‘witchcraft’ anymore. Remember? That you never wanted to hear him talk about adamants or John Dee or an apocalypse ever again. You insisted on ignoring your destiny, the very reason for your existence. But luckily for you, these old friends and I are going to help you get back onto your path.”
“I told him to do whatever the hell he wanted with the adamants!” I said. “As long as he didn’t drag me into his obsession anymore. Wait a minute . . . is Martin behind all this? Tell me, right now!”
“This is no obsession, love . . .”
“Besides, what does any of this have to do with Martin’s kidnapping?” I said, unable to stop a rising fire inside my chest. “I don’t understand . . . I don’t understand anything anymore!”
“Kidnapping? Please . . .” Daniel’s cherubic face lit up. “Julia, you’re an intelligent woman. Think about what’s happened to you these last few weeks. First, Martin hid the adamant in a secure location because you refused to continue. But he continued his work, which brought him here. And you, love, knew as well as he did that sooner or later, you would come to Turkey to be at his side. Am I right?”
I felt the heat rush up into my face until I almost couldn’t speak. “What are you getting at, Daniel?”
“Julia, Julia . . . ,” he said, shaking his head, “you married a man who needed a woman like you to answer a higher calling, to finish a mission greater than your marriage. Martin spent years searching for a woman with the gift of sight. Someone who could help him—help us—take his work to the next level—to open a pathway to the angels.”
“Just like John Dee and his mediums . . . same old story,” I said.
“Exactly.”
Daniel’s hand shook almost imperceptibly as he poured me a cup of tea from the hot kettle on the table. But I was too tied up in knots to care, still wrestling with everything that had happened the last few weeks.
“So . . . you . . . faked the kidnapping,” Ellen Watson added, “just to lure Julia here?”
Daniel Knight tried to contain a smile. “That’s one way to look at it, Miss Watson.”
“But . . . why?” I said.
“If Martin simply had asked you to come with him to Mount Ararat and to bring your adamant for one last ceremony, would you have done it?”
That question was all I needed to finally realize that Martin really was behind all of this. But where was he? Why hadn’t he shown his face? I felt my pulse quicken, my lungs struggle to breathe the cold, humid air.
Daniel continued. “We needed to give you a strong enough reason for you to come to us. You have no idea of the cosmic forces at work even as we speak. The time to activate the adamants is upon us. We had to devise a plan to get you here, fast, in the least threatening way possible—”
“The least threatening? And this is what you came up with?”
“I know you love Martin, and love is a very human weakness. I counted on it, actually. And, look, here you are! Just in the nick of time.”
“Damn you! I was almost killed because of you!”
Daniel just sipped his tea, exchanging a scornful look with Ellen Watson. “I miscalculated. I had no idea the people from the Elijah project might intercept our video and go for the stone as well,” he said, holding his glare on Ellen. “But no matter. That’s why we sent guardian angels of our own to ensure your safety,” he said, patting Dujok on the back. He was still holding us at gunpoint.
“So now what? You’re going to force me to play your little game again?”
Daniel finished his tea before answering.
“The time for games is over, love,” he said, setting down the cup. “Every so often, this world’s earth and sky are bombarded with solar magnetism, changing our planet into a kind of cosmic beacon for several hours. I’ve spent years studying these events at the Greenwich Observatory, and I can tell you they are exceedingly rare. There might be one or two every century. And they are brief. But while my colleagues are content with making statistical charts, I have compared these data with monumental moments in history. I realized if we learned to channel these forces, we could open a pathway to realms we have never thought possible.”
Daniel’s eyes narrowed.
“As I mentioned, John Dee managed to establish his angelic communication because his first tries took place during one of the greatest solar storms in history. The sun went wild that May of 1581. By the twenty-fifth of that month, the aurora borealis could be seen as far south as the Tropic of Cancer. Earth had never seen anything like it. We know now that, as all this was going on outside, Dee was inside his small chapel in Mortlake when a noise made him come to the window. Maybe it was the crackle of the aurora; we’ll never really know. But what he saw outside dumbfounded him. It was a sort of child-angel with a luminous complexion, floating several feet off the ground. He opened the window, reached out and touched the heavenly figure with his fingertips. And the angel in turn gave Dee the powerful stones he would use in later years to communicate with the other world.
“Dee was fifty-four, elderly by the day’s standards, and he would not waste his remaining years with childish fairy tales. Instead, he hired a medium to use the adamants to open a connection to the other plane, one that had not been established for more than four thousand years. And now,” he said, clearing his throat, “those cosmic conditions are repeating themselves. A new solar storm is on its way toward Earth . . . and you have the gift to help open that portal once again. What more could we ever ask for?”
Emotion welled up inside me as Daniel reached his crescendo. I wanted to cry, to scream in his face that I wanted no part of his insane experiments, that I’d had enough of his cat-and-mouse games in London. But I managed to maintain my composure. If Daniel, who until this moment, I had considered a harmless bookworm, was capable of bringing all of this to bear, it was better not to draw his anger.
“What I still don’t understand,” I finally managed to say, choking back my rage, “is why you and they”—I motioned to Dujok and Haci—“are so obsessed with establishing this connection with angels.”
“That’s because there’s something you don’t know about us, love. My family and the Yezidi are the descendants of an ancient dynasty: We are the sons and daughters of angels.”
My mouth must have dropped open. Because from the expression on Daniel’s face, I could tell that he delighted in my stunned silence. He stroked his beard and leaned his towering figure close to me, his crystal-blue eyes flashing. I’d never been that close to him, and I’d never felt such fear.
“We are descended from a lineage of fallen beings and desperately want to reconnect with our origins and leave this forsaken world,” he said, and I could hear the honest desire in his voice. “My family has been trapped on this world for more than a thousand years. And here we mated and lived side-by-side with man, just as it says in the Book of Enoch. But regardless of the many generations that have passed, we do not forget who we are or where we came from . . .
“So you see, to us, this is no obsession, love. It is the fulfillment of an ancient dream.”
I couldn’t speak. I didn’t dare say anything. Neither did Ellen.
“And, as you’ve probably figured out, Dee was one of us. Quite possibly the one who has done the most to bring us home. But since his death in 1608, we have not been able to build on his work.”
“You have to be joking,” Ellen finally said.
“You think so? Why don’t you ask the Yezidi here, Miss Watson?” Daniel said, and Dujok stood up straighter. “It was only a few years ago that we determined they were also descended from the angels that populated Earth some ten thousand years ago. They survived the Great Flood just as our ancestors did. The only difference is that they were more successful at preserving their history. We were amazed to learn they
still knew how to control forces that we had long forgotten how to manipulate. And they are able to do it because they keep sacred the very land where it all began. Here, in these mountains, is the remaining vestige of a forgotten antediluvian world. The only surviving piece of angelic technology that will help us to reestablish the connection to our native world.”
“Noah’s Ark, I suppose. . . .”
“Precisely. God may have given Noah the instructions on how to build the ark, but our ancestors were the ones who supervised its entire construction.”
Ellen cut in. “Right. And I’ll bet that huge crater out there is also a result of your technology.”
Daniel smiled. He seemed to delight in her sarcasm. “The Hallaç crater is the source of these blessed crystals. That’s why the Yezidi have guarded it for generations, to keep these sacred stones with their transmitter-like properties out of the wrong hands.”
“Angels, Yezidi . . . what kind of craziness is this? You don’t believe this bullshit, do you, Julia?” Ellen said. “This is the most ridiculous pile of garbage I’ve ever heard.”
“I can assure you that it’s all true, Ms. Watson,” Daniel muttered dismissively. He seemed bent on convincing me. “Believe what you will, but humanity is, in fact, descended from a hybrid of man and divine angels. We are flesh and bone. And we share your DNA, though we aren’t entirely human in the strictest sense . . .”
“I’ll say,” Watson muttered. “How could you people manipulate Julia like this? How could her own husband—”
“I already told you this mission is more important that his wedding vows. Maybe your inferior mind can’t comprehend it, but our species has a different, more pragmatic view of ethics. Maybe that makes us colder—that logic should supersede emotion. But it also makes us more efficient. And stronger.”
“Your species? You’re a different species now? Well, I’ve never heard of you,” Watson scoffed.
“But I’ll bet you have, Agent,” Daniel said flatly. “Every religion has a fable for how our species came to mix with yours and was doomed to this planet. We are the sons of exiles. Cursed. Even man condemned us, blaming us for all the evils of the world. You wove the folly into your myths and called us Lucifer, Thoth, Hermes, Enki, Prometheus. On one hand you worshipped us, these beings who brought knowledge from the heavens. But you also feared us for what we might want in return. You demonized us in every myth. We’ve been your heretics, your witches and warlocks, even your vampires. And if some of our ancestors were affiliated with the occult, it’s only because that is how they could disguise their knowledge about our true origins. And that’s why our ancestors appear only intermittently in your history. We are sworn to protect this information until we can decipher it, so that one day we might call to ask for permission to return home . . .”
“And you think now you’ve finally got it figured out?” I asked, disbelieving.
“We do,” he said. “Thanks to Martin. To his father. To Dee. Thanks to mystics such as Emanuel Swedenborg, William Blake and so many others who sought to study the ancient science that will allow us to finally reconnect with our home.”
“And who do you suppose is going to come take you ‘home’? A squadron of winged cherubs? Little green men aboard a flying saucer?” Ellen said.
Daniel raised his hand to stop her. “No, Miss Watson. Contrary to what people might think, we angels do not have wings. It says it clearly in the Bible. Abraham, Tobias, Jacob, all of them met us face-to-face and each time they described us as what we really are: creatures from a faraway place who are more attuned to our surroundings. We can communicate with and understand all manner of life without having to speak or to put it under a microscope. We can see part of the electromagnetic spectrum that you are not able to. But aside from that, we are virtually identical to you . . .”
Daniel didn’t seem to notice as I shook my head in disbelief.
“And that’s why we admire humans like you, Julia,” he said, turning to me. “You possess a gift that we have lost over time. A gene that disappeared from the angel lineage after our DNA mixed with humans’—but one that still remains in you. And that sublime gene, which appears in just one in a million humans, is the reason you can communicate with the heavens.”
“So the ‘angels’ forgot how to talk to God, is that it?” Ellen shot back acerbically.
“Frankly, yes. Many generations ago. But fortunately we passed on that ability to you when the sons of God mated with the daughters of man. That’s why some of you have this gift,” he said, staring at me with his icy blue eyes, “and why we are so drawn to you. As it turns out, you’re our only hope of ever reconnecting with our origins.”
“What a convoluted history . . .”
“I know it is. But now do you understand why Martin was so overjoyed when he found you, Julia? He felt he’d discovered the key that would unlock the passageway back to the heavens.”
“Where’s Martin now?” I asked.
Daniel looked at Dujok out of the corner of his eye. Dujok was still standing beside me, his Uzi at the ready, and his eyes seemed to ask the same question.
“He’s on the mountain,” Daniel said finally. “He’s preparing to open the line of communication. And he’s waiting for you.”
88
The role of the Executive Office of the President is often underestimated. In fact, it’s made up of some of the smartest and finest people in their fields, who are divided into teams to advise the president on everything from climate change to the Treasury to internal security matters. However, only rarely does the president give orders directly to one of these subordinates without his assistant knowing about it. But when he does, it’s considered one of the highest honors—an honor Tom Jenkins had come to know well in the last year and a half. He was one of the few people who had the president’s personal encrypted phone number and the authorization to use it at any time of day or night. No more than a dozen people—the president’s wife and children and Ellen Watson included—had this privilege. So Tom tried not to abuse it.
But just after meeting with Colonel Allen in his hospital room, Jenkins decided it was time to use his direct access to Roger Castle and report to him about the lack of cooperation from the NSA agent.
“I’m sorry to disturb you with the details of the operation, Mr. President,” he said, “but I need you to put pressure on the NSA so this agent will tell us what he knows.”
The phone call caught President Castle in the middle of a state dinner, surrounded by European ambassadors. He’d already jumped in to save Ellen Watson—who, thankfully, was now keeping a close watch on Julia Álvarez and her kidnappers, as far as he knew. But he realized that if he wanted to stay ahead of the game, he’d have to do as Tom asked.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Jenkins. I’ll take care of it. I was only waiting for your report. Owen needs to cooperate with us.”
“Thank you, Mr. President,” Jenkins said. “Maybe this goes without saying, sir, but Ellen and I think you’ve taken a major step here. The Elijah project’s days are numbered.”
Castle hung up without responding. Minutes later, he ducked out of the dinner to call Michael Owen.
“I suppose you know what’s happened to your agent in Spain.”
Owen knew Castle was getting closer to the truth. Owen had just read the preliminary report that Nicholas Allen had sent via encrypted email. And he’d heard about the mess aboard the USS Texas, where the president had stepped in. Things were not looking good . . .
“I’m up-to-date on everything, sir. We’ve been hit with the second electromagnetic attack in a civilian area since they kidnapped Martin Faber. The situation is . . . worrisome . . .”
“I want to propose something to you, Michael. And I want you to really think about it. Maybe you already know my people have located the stones and the terrorists you’re looking for. I’ve got information about where they’re headed and I’d be glad to share it with your people—if you’re willing to work together.”
“Open your eyes, Michael. We have a common enemy. I want those stones as much as you do, and I’m aware the Elijah project knows more about them than anyone else. I’m suggesting we unite our forces to get them. You help me, I help you.”
“United against a common enemy? Like Reagan and Gorbachev in Geneva?”
“Right. Just like Reagan and Gorbachev,” Castle said.
“Very well, Mr. President. As of this morning when you first stepped foot in Elijah, I consider you ‘in.’ There’s no reason we shouldn’t work together. What would you like us to do, sir?”
“Get in touch with Colonel Allen in Spain and ask him to work with our people on the ground. I want them to go after those damn stones and get them under our control.”
“Do you want me to take care of the logistics? My men have a private aircraft at the ready, which could take them all to Turkey.”
“That’s more than I could have hoped for. Thank you, Michael.”
“Good,” Owen said. “And just so you have no doubt about my willingness to work with you, let me give you the latest news.”
The president shifted the phone from one ear to the other. “News? What news?”
“It’s not good, sir.”
“None of it ever is . . .”
“We’ve just received word that there has been a colossal electromagnetic explosion on the surface of the sun. We still can’t say for sure whether it’s related to the class-X emissions we’ve been reading on Earth. But we have confirmed that the solar shock wave is headed our way. Sir, it’s going to be bad. Like a massive electromagnetic bomb going off right in our faces.”
“A bomb?”
Just then, he remembered what the submarine captain had said to him about an attack of global proportions. That was Owen’s biggest fear, too.
“Yes, sir. That’s why Elijah is so bent on getting the stones under our control. Aside from being a supernatural communications device, in the wrong hands they could cause a worldwide catastrophe.”
The Lost Angel Page 29