The Babylonian Codex

by C. S. Graham

  O’Reilly led them across the crowded parking lot. “The sanctuary seats eight thousand, which means it’s twice the size of the theater in Hollywood where they hold the Academy Awards. Patterson built it three years ago for a hundred million. Cash.”

  “Wow.”

  “It caused quite a stir at the time. Even motivated one of the local senators to launch an inquiry into the church’s finances. The senator insisted the inquiry wasn’t against the separation of church and state because it had nothing to do with the church’s doctrine and everything to do with its tax situation, but of course our man Patterson denounced the whole thing as an attack on religious freedom and property rights.”

  “So what happened?”

  “The senator uncovered some real gems—like Patterson’s habit of staying in five-thousnd-dollar-a-night presidential suites, and the twenty-five thousand the church had just spent on a marble-topped commode for his toilet. But churches don’t need to file financial statements or even keep records. Which means that while hundreds of millions of dollars pour through here every year, there is literally no accounting of where any of it goes.”

  October said, “The senator gave up?”

  O’Reilly scratched beside his nose. “Actually, he died.”

  Jax said, “Plane crash?” A lot of politicians and journalists who’d asked uncomfortable questions—or governmental aides who’d made noises about testifying—had been dying in small plane crashes lately.

  O’Reilly shook his head. “Heart attack. Quite a shock it was, too; the senator was only forty-eight and had no history of heart problems.”

  Jax and October exchanged glances.

  They had reached the broad sweep of concrete before the sanctuary itself. Strains of organ music and voices lifted in song drifted through the closed doors. O’Reilly said, “Ever watch Warren Patterson work a crowd?”

  “No.”

  He reached for the long polished-brass handle of one of the arena’s massive doors. “Then you’re in for a real experience.”

  They entered a vast, cavernous space, dark except for the flashes of white and yellow strobe lights that pulsed at a steady beat across rows and rows of shining, upturned faces. Rather than sit on hard wooden pews, the thousands of faithful lounged comfortably in individual upholstered seats that rose in a semicircle of theaterlike tiers so that everyone had a good line of sight. Their gazes were trained not on an altar but on a central stage, where a chorus of young women in filmy pastel chiffon dresses locked arms and swayed back and forth, their voices raised in joyous song. Three huge 18- by 32-foot high-definition LED screens mounted strategically around the auditorium—it was hard to think of this place as a church—displayed the words of the hymn for the faithful, complete with a bouncing little ball to help them sing along. “Jesus, lead your warriors into battle.”

  An impressive sound system picked up the voices and the sepulchral dirge of the organ and doubled it back at them, until the entire auditorium throbbed with sound and light and pulsating joy. Then a muffled boom rose from the stage, and the audience—it was hard to think of them as a congregation—gasped in delight. Fog rose from beneath the platform, catching the yellow and white lights in an eerie evocation of heaven or hell—Jax wasn’t sure which. The music and mist spiraled up, the lights flashing faster and faster in a rising crescendo that came to a sudden, crashing halt.

  The lights went out. A spotlight cut through the darkness, illuminating the tall, broad-shouldered figure of the man now standing at the pulpit.

  “Praise the Lord,” shouted Patterson.

  Thousands of rapturous voices answered him. “Praise the Lord!”

  Jax leaned forward to whisper to O’Reilly, “We need to know where Warren Patterson and his jet were at seven o’clock last night. Is there any way you can look that up?”

  From his pulpit, Patterson spoke, the clear, hypnotic cadences of his voice echoing around the auditorium. “In the Bible, God left us a message that is loud and clear. He tells us that it is our mission to take dominion of all the earth. Our mission and our duty. Now, this isn’t going to be easy. The agents of the devil don’t give up easily. It’s gonna take strategy and its gonna take war. But make no mistake: the time has come for God to triumph. Hallelujah!”

  The faithful shouted back, “Hallelujah!”

  O’Reilly said, “I don’t need to look into it. He was here.”

  October cast the Irishman a quick, incredulous glance. “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. I watched him preach last night myself. He did his God the Warrior routine to a packed house and then came back at dawn this morning and delivered it again.”

  From his pulpit, Warren Patterson said, “More than thirty-five years ago now, God gave a vision to three godly men: Loren Cunningham, Bill Bright, and Francis Schaeffer. God told these men that it’s our duty as His soldiers to reclaim what God calls the Seven Mountains. You see, the Seven Mountains are the gates or the portals if you will, to God’s Kingdom.”

  He held up his fingers, counting each off in turn. “First, there’s the Mountain of Education, because God wants his children to be taught the truth of His creation, not fed satanic lies by the ungodly. Second, there’s the Mountain of Media. We’ve all seen the lies the so-called mainstream media can spin. We must take over the media, so that truth can be interpreted for the faithful rather than twisted by the agents of evil the way it is now.

  He held up another finger. “The Mountain of Arts and Entertainment. Think about how much time we all spend watching TV, and you’ll realize how important it is that the media be controlled by men who enforce God’s values. Fourth, the Mountain of Religion, so that God’s people can finally worship Him in joy and truth, the way He meant them to. The Sixth Mountain is the Family, where women and children must be shown how to live as God intended rather than being left to pursue their own wicked, selfish desires, thus bringing a curse to all to come.”

  October said, “Does he mean what I think he means?”

  O’Reilly said, “Yes.”

  “The Mountain of Business,” continued Patterson, holding up six fingers, “Where men should build for the glory of God rather than for the Prince of Darkness. And, rising above all, the Mountain of Government. Because it is government that controls all the other mountains. And who sits at the top of this mountain? Right now, it’s the Prince of Darkness himself. But the time has come for bold men to retake the Mountain of Government for the Lord. The time has come for those who do not truly follow Christ to be cast out, not just from our government but from our land. Cast out, or destroyed.”

  Again, October’s gaze met Jax’s.

  “Now, some people might say, Oooh, Patterson; that sounds a bit like totalitarianism. Well, yes. It’s true. You see, the servants of the Lord are going to have some work to do, cleaning the temple and smiting the agents of the devil and destroying the spirit of the antichrist that now dominates the earth—”

  “God help us,” whispered Jax. “These people are essentially declaring a holy war on the rest of humanity.”

  “—but as the Lord foretold in Revelation, the days have come. Already the Lord has sent a great rising of the sea at New Orleans, when the waters that flowed through the reeds of life like the ruby-eyed serpent killed all before them.” Warren Patterson’s voice rolled across the vast auditorium. “And when they receded, all was turned to dust. And now, the Lord tells us, the sun shall be cut in half like the moon.”

  O’Reilly whispered, “I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember reading that anywhere in Revelation.”

  “It’s from the codex,” said October, her gaze fixed on the tall, ramrod-straight man behind the pulpit.

  O’Reilly threw her a quick, puzzled look. “What codex?”

  Duane Davenport was driving back to D.C., the emergency light on his Mercury flashing, when the call came through from Casper Nordstrom.

  The assistant’s voice was soft and smooth, with a dangerous edge—like a
dagger hidden beneath a silk sheath. “According to my latest tally, you’ve lost five FBI agents in less than twenty-four hours. What exactly is going on, Duane?”

  Davenport exchanged a quick glance with Brockman. “We’ve encountered some difficulties cleaning up a few loose ends. But it’s nothing we can’t handle.”

  “I hope you’re not going to tell me one of your loose ends is October Guinness. Can’t your people handle one little witch?”

  Davenport set his jaw. “She has help.”

  There was a pause. Nordstrom said, “What kind of help are we talking about?”

  “The CIA agent she worked with in the past. But now that we understand the situation, we can make adjustments.”

  “See that you do,” said Nordstrom, and hung up.

  Chapter 35

  Dusk was falling by the time Jax turned the rented sedan onto I-95 and headed back toward D.C.

  October sat beside him in silence, her arms hugging her chest, her face troubled. She’d yanked off the gray wig and tossed it on the backseat, wiped the makeup off her face, then simply shoved her hair up under Jax’s Nationals baseball cap. It made her look absurdly young and vulnerable.

  “None of this makes any sense,” she said at last, as he idled in bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic on the beltway. “I saw him. I’m sure of it. He had his fancy private jet parked right there, beside that lake. It’s obvious he knows about the codex—he was quoting from it. And you heard him—he did everything but come out and declare war on the Constitution. Yet O’Reilly says he never left Maryland?”

  “If you want, I can ask Matt to check the jet’s flight records, just to be sure. But it’s not like O’Reilly to get something like this wrong.”

  “I don’t know . . .” She scrubbed a hand across her forehead. “Maybe I’m the one who’s wrong. Maybe Patterson just looks like the guy I saw.”

  Jax threw her a quick, troubled glance. He was the one who was always challenging the reliability of remote viewing, the one who laughingly called it a bunch of “New Age woo-woo nonsense.” Only now that she was questioning her own results, losing confidence in her own skills, he found himself, oddly, driven to defend her against herself.

  He said, “You told me once that remote viewers can unintentionally slip in time—that you’ll be tasked with viewing a target in the present but be drawn to a different time that’s somehow more significant, or at least more intense. Or that sometimes a part of what you’re seeing can be from the past even if most of it is in the present—as if one time somehow bleeds into the other.”

  She turned her head to look at him, but said nothing.

  “Well,” he prompted. “Couldn’t that be what happened?”

  “I suppose.” She didn’t sound convinced. “It’s just . . .” She let out her breath in a huff. “First we find out the manuscript I saw wasn’t anything I was actually tasked to view. Now we’re told the guy I think I saw couldn’t have been where I saw him. Maybe I just . . . had a miss. It happens. No remote viewer is ever one hundred percent accurate. There’s a reason the Army and CIA got out of the remote viewing business back in the nineties. It’s just . . . not reliable.”

  “Right. And because you had a complete miss, a bunch of seriously scary bad guys have spent the last twenty-four hours trying to kill you.”

  A ghost of a smile touched her lips. “And here I thought you’re the one who doesn’t believe in remote viewing.”

  “I don’t.” He pulled off at the next exit. “Which is why I’ve been trying to come up with a way to figure out who the other guy you saw is.”

  At that she laughed out loud. “Well, that makes a lot of sense.” The smile faded. “And exactly how do you propose to accomplish this feat?”

  Jax turned across the Francis Scott Key Bridge. “I’ve been thinking about what Dr. Stein said—that the theft of the major Iraqi artifacts was probably coordinated and planned in advance.”

  “Yeah, but . . . how does that help us?”

  “Think about it. If it’s true, then whoever organized the theft knows the name of the collector who put in a request for the Babylonian Codex.”

  “But someone like that would go through an intermediary, wouldn’t he? I didn’t think the rich did anything for themselves.”

  “They don’t. But how many major collectors do you suppose we’re talking about in this business? I suspect whoever coordinated the thefts knows exactly who his customers are.”

  “Okay. So some übershady antiquities dealer out there knows who ordered the Babylonian Codex. But we don’t have a clue who this übershady dealer is. And even if we did, why would he give us the name of one of his best customers?”

  Jax turned onto M Street and slowed, looking for a place to park. It was a trendy shopping area lined with quaint restaurants and high-end boutiques and, halfway down the block, a certain little bow-fronted shop painted a discreet hunter green. As usual, parking was a nightmare. He said, “You’ve never met my mother, have you?”

  “No.” There was a pause, after which October added diplomatically. “I’ve heard of her.”

  Jax smiled. “Her fourth husband—” He broke off. “Or maybe it was her fifth? Anyway, he was into old jewelry. As in gold Parthian earrings and Etruscan garnet necklaces.”

  Her eyes went wide. “You mean you can buy that kind of stuff?”

  “You can buy anything these days. And I do mean anything.” He’d reached the end of the block without finding a place to park; he swore softly and swung back around. “Needless to say, he didn’t last long. But he left my mother with a passion for two-thousand-year-old ornaments that all her subsequent husbands have slavishly labored to indulge.”

  They were coming back up on the little bow-windowed gallery. A tasteful, gold-lettered sign proclaimed, THE TREASURE CHEST. Beside the door, a smaller sign read, SPECIALIZING IN THE ANCIENT CULTURES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN AND BEYOND. MADELEINE LIVINGSTON, PROPRIETOR. ANTIQUITIES BOUGHT AND SOLD. APPRAISALS. COLLECTION CONSULTATIONS.

  A black-and-white sign propped up in the window read CLOSED. Inside, the lights were dimmed to a golden glow, but Jax could see the shadow of a woman moving around in the back of the shop.

  October said, “Let me guess: this is where Mom gets her geegaws?”

  “A lot of them.”

  “So you—what? Think Madeleine Livingston here is the mastermind behind the theft of the century?”

  “No. I suspect that honor goes to a Brit by the name of Gabriel Sinclair. Picture a cross between Yves St. Laurent and Elton John, and you’ll have a handle on Gabriel.”

  “So why aren’t we going to see Gabriel?”

  “Because Gabriel was found floating off the end of his dock in the Hamptons this morning.” Jax swooped in at the mouth of the alley that ran along the rear of the shops, hit the emergency flashers, and hopped out. “Just keep driving around the block. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  She shouted something after him, but Jax was already trotting down the dark, rubbish-strewn alley.

  Chapter 36

  Madeleine Livingston had installed a Medeco M3 high-security lock on the gallery’s alley door. The Medeco was the gold standard for door locks; they even used the suckers at the White House. Their claim to fame was a very clever little sliding mechanism. Only problem was, the mechanism could be bypassed with a piece of wire inserted into the keyway. Then all it took was a modified screwdriver and a little bump and, hey presto, you were in.

  Closing the door quietly behind him, Jax found himself in a storage area stuffed with piles of boxes and packing crates. Exotic chords plucked from a sitar played over the sound system, an evocative melody that whispered of distant lands and ages past. Pausing behind an archway curtained in hunter green velvet, Jax watched as a tall, impossibly thin woman dressed all in black bent over a large wooden packing crate, scattering curls of fine wood shavings. Her impeccably coifed blond pageboy swung forward, hiding her face.

  He thought, at first, that Madeleine L
ivingston was unpacking the crate. Then she straightened, her hair settling to reveal an elegant, fine-boned face, as she reached for what looked like a painted wooden Egyptian mummy mask, vintage first or second century, and began wrapping it.

  “Big order,” said Jax, stepping from behind the curtain. “Or are you planning to relocate?”

  She swung to face him with a gasp, one bony, heavily beringed hand fluttering up to clutch the heavy agate necklace that hung around her neck. (Parthian, second century, Jax figured.) Her smooth, unlined face made her appear to be in her forties, although he suspected she’d had a bit of help in that department, so that sixties was more accurate. “You startled me,” she said, her South African accent still strong despite the thirty-odd years she’d been in business in Georgetown. “How did you get in? The gallery is closed.”

  “Yes.”

  She took a step toward the ornate Baroque-looking desk that stood in a corner. If she had a panic button, that’s where it would be.

  “Don’t,” he warned.

  She drew up sharply, her chest lifting with a quickly indrawn breath. “What do you want?”

  “Just some information.”

  “Oh? And who are you?”

  “Homeland Security.” He held up his fake credentials. At this rate he was going to wear the damned thing out.

  She raised one meticulously arced eyebrow. Christ, she was a cool one. “Do I know you? You look familiar.”

  He had, in fact, accompanied his mother on one or two of her browsing expeditions. But he hadn’t been sporting salt-and-pepper hair and a walrus mustache at the time. She was obviously very good at remembering her customers.

  He said, “On April 8, 2003, on the day the United States forces invading Iraq reached Baghdad, the last of the staff that had been working feverishly to protect the collections of the National Museum and National Library were forced to flee. Over the next two days, in a scene that must have been reminiscent of the looting of Rome by the barbarians or the sacking of Constantinople by the crusaders, the most exquisite treasures of ancient Mesopotamia were stripped from their cases to disappear forever into the shadows of the international antiquities market.”