The Paradise Prophecy

by Robert Browne

  She crossed to the box, hitched up her dress, and crouched next to it, running her fingers over the words: Onu koru. A message left behind by a man who knew he was about to die.

  “What does it say?” LaLaurie asked.

  She looked up at him. “Protect her.”

  26

  So you believe me now? That he was Custodes Sacri?”

  “Considering what he wrote here, it’s certainly a possibility.”

  “No kidding. And what about the rest of it?”

  “The woo-woo stuff?” Callahan shook her head. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Professor. I’m still leaning toward some nutcase who thinks he’s some kind of dark avenging angel.”

  “What if I could change your mind? Make you see it my way?”

  “Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to do ever since we met?”

  LaLaurie moved to the center of the room and squatted next to the symbol on the floor. “Give your hand.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  Callahan hesitated, not sure what he was up to, but finally reached out and took his hand. “Don’t get any ideas. I saw the way you were looking at me tonight.”

  He ignored the remark. “When I was young,” he said, “before I fully came into my own, my mother would do this so that I could see what she saw. To prepare me for what was to come.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Let me show you.”

  He looked at the symbol, then paused a moment as if to brace himself. Then, lowering his free hand, he pressed his palm against the floor and closed his eyes.

  Callahan sighed. “This again? If I wanted to see the Amazing Kresk-”

  She flinched as heat radiated up through her arm and tunneled straight through to her brain-a simmering bolt of energy that came at her so fast and furiously she didn’t have time to react.

  Her nostrils filled with an almost overwhelming smell of sulfur, as the floor tilted sideways and she felt herself falling. She yelped and tried to reach out, but realized she had no hands, no body. She was merely a presence in free fall, tumbling into a deep, dark nowhere.

  Then light assaulted her, blinding light, sweeping past her, through her, all around her, and she felt as if she were spinning out of control. In the middle of it all she saw Koray Ozan, blurry but unmistakable, tears streaming down his face as he begged some unseen entity for mercy.

  Then she was inside Ozan’s head, the hiss of a thousand voices skittering through her brain, speaking in a tongue she didn’t understand, uttering what she sensed were hideous, vile things. All she knew for sure was that they were unwanted voices, invading Ozan’s mind-her mind-like an army of angry locusts.

  Then the room around her burst into flames and Ozan screamed.

  Callahan cried out, too, ripping her hand away from LaLaurie’s as she collapsed to the floor, the flames gone, the voices fading.

  Shaking uncontrollably, she stared at LaLaurie in horror and confusion. “What the hell did you just do to me, you son of a bitch?”

  But LaLaurie didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. He had collapsed himself, looking as if all the blood had drained from his body, his eyes closed, his face deathly pale.

  Was he alive?

  Somewhere in the distance, beyond the stone walls of the tunnels and the muffled braying of the fire alarm-

  – was the sound of approaching sirens.

  We need to get out of here, Callahan thought. Right now.

  Once the fire department got here and realized there was no fire readily apparent, they’d start searching the building, looking for whatever had tripped the alarm. And when they found that guard on the stairs . . .

  Still trying to shake off the effects of LaLaurie’s mind meld-or whatever the hell it was-Callahan checked to make sure he still had a pulse and shook him awake.

  “Come on, Professor, we’re about to have company.”

  He moaned and opened his eyes, barely able to speak. “Stronger than I expected . . . Did you see it? Did you see Ozan?”

  “At this point it doesn’t much matter what I saw. We need to get moving.”

  She helped him to his feet, threw an arm around him, and urged him through the doorway. LaLaurie could barely walk and had to lean into her for balance.

  Working her way through the tunnel, she found the steps to the next floor, but with LaLaurie in his current condition, getting to the top would be problematic. Callahan had always taken pride in her athletic ability, but LaLaurie weighed a ton. And from the feel of his body, much of that weight was pure muscle. No way they’d get up these stairs on her strength alone.

  As if reading her mind-which might not have been all that much of a stretch-LaLaurie muttered something, then shifted around, gathering his strength and started up the steps.

  They moved at the pace of a newborn snail, Callahan trying to figure out what the hell had happened back there. Ozan’s tortured face filled her mind’s eye and she shut it quickly, not wanting to relive his horror.

  When they reached the top of the stairs, the alarm stopped and she heard muffled shouts above them.

  The fire department was here.

  Steering LaLaurie to the right, she crashed through a doorway into the nearest office then sat him in a chair and closed and locked the door behind them.

  The room was dark, except for the incandescent light that filtered in through the pebbled glass. She could see the outlines of a cluttered desk, an old CRT computer monitor sitting atop it.

  A search of the building would likely start upstairs, but it wouldn’t take them long to get down this way and the sight of the guard on the stairs would stir up a whole different kind of trouble.

  LaLaurie looked at her. “This is Ozan’s office, isn’t it?”

  “I think so, yeah.”

  He gestured to the computer on the desk. “Can you hack into that thing?”

  “Now? Why?”

  “I want to see his records. He sent that figurine of Michael to Gabriela, so he may have sent something to the other guardians, too. Maybe we can figure out who they all are.”

  “We don’t really have time to be playing around with this.”

  “We’ll never get a better chance.”

  Callahan didn’t know how much good it would do them if they were sitting in a Turkish prison cell, but she took a seat behind the desk and tapped the keyboard, bringing the screen to life. To her relief, Ozan’s computer wasn’t password protected. No hacking necessary. She called up the file system, quickly clicked through the menus, and found Ozan’s client database.

  “No time for a thorough search,” she said. “I’ll just download the whole damn thing.”

  Taking a memory chip from her handbag, she stuck it into the computer, hit a key, and seconds later, the database was on disc. As she ejected the chip, she heard a shout down the hall.

  They’d discovered the guard.

  “You ever been to jail?” she said. “It isn’t fun. Especially here.” LaLaurie got to his feet. “We need to hide.”

  “Maybe if we turn sideways, they won’t notice us.”

  He gestured to a closet against the left wall. A narrow, rectangular wooden wardrobe. “In there,” he said.

  “Both of us? There’s barely room enough for-”

  “We don’t have a choice.” He crossed to it and threw it open. There were a couple thick coats inside, but at least it wasn’t stuffed full.

  Callahan heard running footsteps in the hall, urgent voices.

  She eyed LaLaurie with reluctance, then switched off the computer monitor and joined him at the closet. It took them a moment to squeeze in, chest to chest, a smashing of body parts that turned two medium frames into one large one. But they managed to make it work and get the door closed.

  Then a two-way radio squawked and someone jiggled the office doorknob, barking a command in Turkish. “Open it.”

  A key chain rattled, a lock was turned and the door flew open.

  Callahan suc
ked in a deep breath as a flashlight beam swept through the office, passing the crack in the closet door like a lighthouse beacon, once again reminding her of LaLaurie’s mind meld.

  A switch was flipped and the overhead light went on.

  Through the crack, Callahan saw three uniforms in the doorway. One fire, two security. One of the security men stepped inside and crossed to Ozan’s desk, checking behind and under it.

  With sudden horror, Callahan spotted something-

  – Her purse. She’d left it next to the computer monitor.

  How fucking careless could she be?

  Her heart started thumping. So hard she was convinced it would burst a hole straight through LaLaurie’s chest. And just as she was sure the guard was about to find the thing-it was right there in plain view, for God’s sakes-someone in the hallway shouted, “Hakki! Come quick!”

  The guard in the doorway turned. “What is it?”

  “Someone’s been in the archive room where Director Ozan was found. They took away the tape.”

  Hakki gestured to the other guard. “Come on.”

  The guard by the desk nodded and crossed the room, then shut off the light and closed and locked the door behind him.

  Callahan let out a shaky breath. “That was pleasant.”

  “I thought your chest was gonna explode. Do you always get so worked up, or is it this little bear hug we’ve got going?”

  “Just for the record, Professor, I know twenty different ways to kill a man with one hand. You want to try me?”

  “I think I’ll pass.”

  “Smart move.”

  She was about to push the wardrobe open, when LaLaurie held her back. “Wait a minute.”

  “Look, buster, you’ve already copped your feel, so if-”

  “No,” he said, “I’m getting something in here. A feeling. We aren’t the only ones who’ve been in this wardrobe in the last few days.”

  “What are the odds? It is a closet after all.”

  LaLaurie threw the doors open and gestured for her to get out. Callahan didn’t hesitate. As she squeezed past him, however, he immediately turned, shoved the coats aside and began to inspect the wardrobe’s back wall, running his hand along it.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Ozan was once a smuggler, remember? And old habits die hard. What do you bet he had more than one way into the tunnels, in case he had to disappear in a hurry?”

  She gestured. “And you think this is it?”

  “There’s a definite energy here.” His hand stopped moving. “And it looks like Gabriela wasn’t the only one who had a thing for hidden doors.”

  Callahan heard a faint snick, then LaLaurie shifted slightly and pulled, sliding the entire back panel of the wardrobe to one side, revealing another set of steps.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Callahan said.

  The steps led to a part of the tunnel that had been sealed off from the rest of the archives-smaller and narrower, curving sharply to the left. After waiting for Callahan to retrieve her purse, Batty took the lead, moving along the curve until he came to an arched doorway that opened onto a brightly lit, cavelike chamber with a vaulted ceiling.

  He stopped in his tracks, taken aback by what he saw. “This sure as hell isn’t Narnia.”

  “Another book lover,” Callahan murmured, but her words were inadequate, giving short shrift to what lay before them.

  It was a small library, with ten or more rows of bookshelves, each filled with exquisitely bound books. And if Batty was correct, not one of them was less than two hundred years old.

  Ozan was not merely a book lover, but a bibliophile-in the grandest, most traditional sense of the word.

  Batty stepped forward cautiously, as if his mere presence here might do damage to these treasures. The sight of this room electrified him, and he was suddenly alive, the most alive he’d felt since he’d lost Rebecca. More alive than that night with the mysterious redhead.

  And that was saying something.

  Crossing to the nearest shelf, he moved down the first row of books, gently running his fingers along the spines, feeling their age, their gravity. He began removing and examining them, one after another.

  Demonomanie des Sorciers by Jean Bodin. A Compleat History of Magick, Sorcery and Witchcraft by Richard Boulton. Basilica Chymica by Oswald Croll. Disquisitionum magicarum by Martino Del Rio. Manuale Exorcismorum by Maximiliani ab Eynatten.

  First editions all. Each one pristine. Priceless.

  And this was only a small sampling of Ozan’s collection. Batty had never seen so many volumes on the paranormal and the occult gathered in one place.

  “Check this out,” Callahan said.

  He turned and found her standing next to a cluttered worktable at the center of the room. On one corner of the table sat a small stone figurine of a winged Saint Michael, his sword held high.

  “I’m sensing a shared obsession,” she said, then gestured to the mess on the table. “Looks like he was trying to decipher code. Just like Gabriela.”

  Batty joined her there and she pointed to a spiral notebook with several lines of verse written on it in English, some of the words and letters crossed out, others circled-

  – all of them from the eleventh chapter of Paradise Lost.

  Sitting open next to the notebook was another pristine first edition, nearly five centuries old.

  Batty picked it up. “Steganographia,” he said, carefully leafing through it. Its pages held lists of spirit names, tables full of numbers, zodiac signs, planetary symbols. “He must have been using this as his guide.”

  “What is it?”

  “A three-volume treatise on conjuring up spirits to send secret messages.”

  “Come again?”

  “It was written by a fifteenth-century abbot named Johannes Trithemius. Kind of a how-to book on communicating with your colleagues through the use of angelic messengers. But when his friends found out what he was working on, it caused such a commotion he decided not to publish it. He even destroyed the parts he thought were particularly incendiary.”

  “What kind of commotion?”

  “He was accused of dealing in the black arts and consorting with demons.”

  “There seems to be a lot of that going around.”

  “But here’s the thing,” Batty told her. “It’s not really a book of magic at all. The stuff about spirits is all coded writing, and Trithemius clearly says in the preface that it’s just an exercise in cryptology and steganography. But nobody believed him, and his reputation as an occultist was sealed.”

  “And it looks like someone published it anyway.”

  “Nearly a hundred years after he died,” Batty said. He closed the book and returned it to the table. “The first two volumes were deciphered almost immediately, pretty much proving that the incantations were exactly what Trithemius had said they were-harmless encryption exercises. But the key for the third volume wasn’t cracked until the seventeenth century by a guy named Heidel, and he hid his solution in his own coded message. So it effectively wasn’t deciphered until about a decade ago.”

  Callahan gestured to the notepad. “And you think Ozan was using the same encryption keys to hunt for secret messages in these verses?”

  “That’s the way it looks.”

  “But why? What does he know that you don’t?”

  Batty shrugged. “Milton was a controversial figure in his day, who got into a lot of trouble for speaking his mind. Maybe Ozan was working on the assumption that he used Trithemius’s encryption methods to conceal his later work-although you’d think, if anything, the material in Polygraphiae is a better choice.”

  “Polygraphiae?”

  “Another one of Trithemius’s books. His true masterpiece on cryptology.”

  Callahan sighed. “My head’s starting to hurt.”

  “Welcome to my world. Whatever the case, Ozan or Gabriela strike me as naive amateurs more than anything else, yet they both seemed convince
d that there’s something in Milton’s poetry that the rest of us haven’t . . .”

  Batty paused, his gaze now drawn to the stone figurine of Saint Michael at the corner of the table. He studied it a moment, suddenly aware that there was something off about it.

  It was a familiar-looking piece, one he recognized from the Garanti catalogue, but the depth and pattern of the chisel marks didn’t look right, and he’d bet his last dollar that it wasn’t an original. In fact, it wasn’t even that great of a reproduction.

  “What’s wrong?” Callahan asked.

  “Probably nothing. It just seems odd to me that someone with Ozan’s taste would have such an obvious fake on his worktable. Especially in a room like this. And especially of Saint Michael.”

  Callahan shrugged. “Maybe he liked it.”

  Batty reached over, picked it up. “That’s like finding a jazz purist who likes Kenny G. Besides, there’s something about this thing . . .”

  “Let me guess. You feel an energy.”

  Batty looked at her. “Mock me all you want, Mrs. Broussard, but unless I’m mistaken, you were feeling it pretty strong back in that archive room.”

  But she was wrong-this was more instinct than energy. Flipping the figurine over, he examined the base, which was rounded and about the same circumference as a soda can. Grabbing hold of it, he pressed and twisted until he felt it give, then the lower half of the base swung to one side, revealing a narrow, hidden compartment.

  There was a key inside. Hollow shank. Antique.

  He looked at Callahan. “You were saying?”

  “Luck. Nothing more.”

  There was some truth to that, but Batty would never admit it. He removed the key, set the figurine back onto the tabletop and scanned the room, staring at the bookshelves. “It’s obvious Ozan was hiding something. What do you bet some of these books aren’t real?”

  “I think that’s a pretty safe assumption.”

  Batty moved into the first row again and began running his hands along the books, this time looking for a faux book panel. Following his lead, Callahan went to another row, the two moving from shelf to shelf until, a few minutes later, Callahan called out to him.