The Paradise Prophecy

by Robert Browne

  Callahan was what his mother had called “a woman with no back up.” In other words, no reverse. Always moving forward, like a shark. And after seeing what she’d done to Ajda, he didn’t envy anyone who got in her way.

  He hoped this trip wasn’t in vain. Even though Ozan and the monk had been somewhat careful about their e-mails, Batty knew that if Callahan could figure it out, others could as well.

  And that meant Brother Philip was in danger.

  Of course, they couldn’t be absolutely sure that Philip was a guardian. Their information on him was almost nonexistent. It seemed to Batty that a monk wouldn’t fit the typical Christopherian profile of spiritual redemption, but there was no telling where Brother Philip had come from. Callahan had requested a background check from her office in Washington, but had yet to hear back from them.

  This whole government thing bothered Batty.

  Back at the hotel, he had thought about D.C. and the e-mail Ozan had sent to an Internet cafe there. Knowing this was Callahan’s stomping ground, it had raised a question in his mind.

  “How did you get involved in this case in the first place?”

  “Same way I always do,” she’d told him. “They give me an assignment and I catch a plane. This one had a higher priority level than usual, but I’m not supposed to ask questions, just do my job.”

  “You ever stop to wonder why they sent you to investigate the death of a pop star?”

  “Of course I have.”

  “And what’s your conclusion?”

  “That they know more than I do. But then they always do.”

  “Maybe somebody put a bug in their ear.”

  “Like who?”

  Batty shrugged. “Somebody who knows enough to recognize a red flag when he sees one. Maybe somebody who got an e-mail message that said, ‘stay alert.’ They hear about Gabriela, happen to be close enough to your people to wield some influence, and the next thing you know, you’re on a plane.”

  Callahan looked as if she was weighing a decision, then said, “I’m breaching protocol when I tell you this, but I think the order may have come directly from the White House.”

  “You think maybe our president is a guardian?”

  Callahan laughed. “I highly doubt it, but he’s been accused of worse. Maybe somebody in his administration is. And if that’s true, then why bother with me? Why not warn the others directly?”

  “Maybe he feels compromised. Thinks he’s being watched and doesn’t want to raise any alarms.”

  “None of which tells us what’s at the root of all of this. Why Milton, of all people? Why Paradise Lost and the search for hidden messages? Why all the questions about missing pages and giant books? I can’t stand being blindfolded.”

  “Maybe this Brother Philip will know.”

  “Assuming we can find him,” Callahan said.

  They had left it at that, taking a taxi to a remote airport in the dead of night, so that some pilot for hire could lock them into a tiny metal tube and bounce them all over the cloudless sky.

  But in the end, it wasn’t the turbulence that terrified Batty.

  It was the nosedive.

  was exhausted. She’d spent the last few hours running the night’s insanity through her head, visions of sycophants and human combustibles parading before her mind’s eye, convincing her that her entire life had been a fraud.

  It wasn’t her fault that she hadn’t known these things existed, had thought that they were merely fantasies created to thrill and entertain in movies and books and around the campfire. But maybe if she’d had an open mind, had not been so closed off to that world, had accepted at least the possibility that it existed, she wouldn’t be paying for it now.

  She thought about that moment in the alley in Paradise City. Seeing her ten-year-old self put a shotgun to her head. Had that merely been a product of her fractured past, or had something more sinister been at work? That whole place was knee-deep in the spooky.

  She was, she suddenly realized, verging on another panic attack, and it took everything she had to tamp it down. Her hands were trembling worse than ever and she knew that if she didn’t get some decent sleep, very soon, they’d have to carry her off this plane in a stretcher.

  But, like always, sleep refused to come.

  Unwilling to sit here and let her mind keep recycling the same events until they drove her completely nuts, she pulled Ozan’s notepad out of her bag and started going through the verses he’d copied, concentrating on the crossed-out letters and words, trying to see if she could find what Ozan had been looking for.

  She’d read up a little on Trithemius’s code schemes and one of the codes featured in Steganographia was called the Ave Maria cipher, in which you looked for every other letter in every other word. But it was clear that Ozan had already covered that ground and had come up with zip.

  And no matter how she rearranged these words, she got nothing. Absolutely nothing. If there were any hidden messages here, they were beyond her feeble mind. Still, she spent the good part of an hour running through the possibilities before she finally gave up in utter frustration.

  And she still couldn’t sleep.

  Pulling Ozan’s iPad into her lap, she thought about checking for more e-mails, but the labs at Section had already been alerted and were busy scouring Ozan’s server, so she didn’t see any real point. Instead, she navigated to the New York Times Web site and stared morosely at the home page:

  STATE DEPARTMENT WARNS OF NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION

  The story warned that U.S. intelligence agencies had encountered evidence of the recent distribution of weapons-grade uranium throughout the Middle East and Africa. Some were concerned that several nuclear warheads had already been built and could well be circulating on the black market, and the impending threat of doom hung heavy over everyone in D.C.

  The attorney general insisted that there was no need for alarm. He was working night and day and, with the president’s help, was busy putting together an international coalition to study and address these concerns. Most experts, however, agreed that this was too little, too late. The fuse was already burning and might not be all that easy to put out.

  Maybe it wasn’t dark angels they had to worry about, Callahan thought.

  Why the hell was she headed to Thailand?

  Dumping the iPad in disgust, she settled back in her chair and closed her eyes. Maybe if she could just let herself go, didn’t try so hard, her creeping anxiety would subside and sleep would find her.

  When she was very young, and her father was still alive, he would perch himself on the edge of her bed at night and sing her a song. She could always smell the booze on his breath, but she loved him and he was there and that was all that counted. She remembered his voice, low and sweet, as he stroked her forehead with his fingertips.

  Then, to her surprise, there it was-his voice-right now. There inside her head:

  Sleep, Bernadette. Sleep.

  The sound was as real as if he’d whispered in her ear. But she knew that was impossible. He’d been dead for most of her life.

  Sleep, my angel. Sleep. I’m here with you. I always will be. So let yourself go and sleep.

  Yes, she thought. Sleep.

  Maybe she could manage it after all.

  The moment she thought this, all of her cares began to melt away, like magic. Sleep was now a real possibility, an all-consuming possibility, and the temptation was too great to resist. Her anxiety would no longer be an issue. The tremors would stop. The world along with them. Everything would be better if she just let it take her.

  Sleep, my darling.

  And before Callahan knew it, sweet, blissful darkness wrapped itself around her . . . and swept her away.

  Three minutes before the nosedive, Batty pulled the Milton manuscript from his book bag, finally ready to look at it.

  It was a work of beauty. The worn leather cover. The time-aged pages. The fading ink. The flawless blank verse. Over ten thousand words. Words that had
meant so much to him for so many years. Words that Milton claimed had come from God himself.

  So was it possible that there was something in this draft that would open the door for them?

  Batty supposed he should feel guilty for stealing it from a dead man, but he didn’t. If it wasn’t a fake-and he instinctively believed it wasn’t-then it deserved to be in a museum somewhere, to be shared with the world, not locked up in a private library.

  The most commonly seen version of Paradise Lost, the one taught in schools and found in the bookstores, was twelve chapters long. The twelve-chapter version had first been published the year Milton died, but that wasn’t his original intent. The first incarnation of the poem, published several years earlier, had contained only ten chapters. But at the request of his publisher, Milton had divided chapters seven and ten and added short summaries to all twelve for the more poetry-challenged readers in the crowd.

  The version Batty now held in his hands, dictated to Milton’s daughter, held the original ten chapters, and several of its pages showed additions and corrections, and marks in the margins.

  Maybe this was where the secret lay.

  But in leafing through it, his mind nearly frozen with awe, Batty frowned as he came to the end of the last chapter-Book X. Something looked off here. A subtle but unmistakable anomaly in the binding. And on closer inspection, he saw what may well have been torn edges, as if several pages had been removed.

  Could he be mistaken?

  He didn’t think so.

  So was this Ozan’s doing?

  When he read through it, however, there seemed to be nothing amiss. The verses flowed just as they should, from Michael’s revelation of the future to Adam and Eve’s departure from Paradise.

  Then the missing pages. If he wasn’t imagining things.

  So what had been removed?

  He was pondering the significance of this when the jet suddenly bucked, a violent jolt of turbulence that dropped them several feet, leaving Batty’s stomach behind in the process. He quickly set the manuscript onto the table beside him and tightened his seat belt.

  Outside his window, a storm was brewing, threatening to make the previous bit of turbulence seem like child’s play.

  He glanced over at Callahan, but she was asleep. Lucky her. Then the plane buckled again and Batty grabbed his armrests, wishing to hell he had a parachute strapped to his back, because this wasn’t looking good.

  Suddenly aware of the smell of sulfur, he glanced again at Callahan, surprised to find her fully awake now and looking right back at him. Her gaze was unsettling in its directness.

  “What’s the matter, Sebastian? You afraid of a little turbulence?”

  Her eyes didn’t flinch, and that gaze was mesmerizing.

  “You shouldn’t be afraid, darling. I won’t let anything happen to you. I’d never let anything happen to you. You mean too much to me.”

  Darling?

  What the hell was going on with her? Batty tried to look away, but he couldn’t. His eyeballs seemed frozen. His head wouldn’t move.

  Callahan unbuckled her seat belt now. “It hurt me to see you so angry, Sebastian. To see that hate in your eyes. You don’t really hate me, do you? I only did what had to be done.”

  And all at once Batty realized that this wasn’t Callahan at all.

  This was the redhead.

  She got to her feet and crossed the aisle toward him. “After all, it wasn’t my fault, was it? Rebecca was the one who invited me into your home. Rebecca was the one who called. All I did was answer. So if you have to blame someone, don’t blame me. Blame her.”

  Smiling now, she stood over him and began unbuttoning her shirt. “Besides, she could never give you a night like I did. She would never surrender herself, let you use her body the way I let you use mine.”

  The jet bucked wildly, but she barely seemed to notice, sidestepping only slightly as she dropped her shirt to the floor. “It’s yours for the taking, my darling. Touch me anywhere you want.”

  Batty’s mind was racing. He again tried to look away but he couldn’t. Her gaze was too hard to resist. And now she was moving forward, straddling him, reaching her hands back to unhook her bra.

  “Tell me you want me, Sebastian. I’m yours for the taking.”

  The engines began to scream, and the jet tilted into a dive, but suddenly Batty didn’t care. He just wanted to lose himself in Callahan’s gaze, to feel her flesh in his hands . . .

  “Show me how much you want me, my darling. Feel me. Taste me. Put your lips on me. Let me feel your tongue.”

  A rush of pleasure washed through Batty’s body and he still couldn’t look away. And then, to his utter surprise, he saw Rebecca’s face, smiling down at him, speaking in that subtle Louisiana drawl, “Show me how much you want me, Batty.”

  Then she leaned toward him, her tongue creasing his lips as she brushed her hand against his crotch, her fingers finding him, kneading him.

  He couldn’t believe it was her. Two long years without her, and now here she was, alive and vibrant, working her fingers until he grew hard against them.

  Then the jet bucked again, knocking them sideways, and Rebecca reached out to steady herself. Her hand touched the Milton manuscript and she hissed, jerking it away.

  Batty felt as if he’d been slapped in the face.

  He blinked and looked at her, abruptly coming to his senses. And he was once again looking at Callahan’s face.

  But in that moment, he saw what truly lay behind her eyes:

  The mind of a beast. A hideous, feral beast.

  Thrusting his arms out, he shoved her away, knocking her backwards into the aisle as the jet continued its rapid dive.

  She hissed at him and pulled herself upright, starting to rise as-

  – Batty flung his seat belt off and sprang from his seat, knocking her back down, sending her sprawling, shouting, “Callahan! Wake up!”

  But she couldn’t hear him, didn’t respond, again getting to her feet, coming toward him with her teeth bared, her face curled up in a snarl. “You’re fucking mine, you little insect.”

  Batty started to back away, glancing around him, trying to think what he could use to fight her off. But there was nothing.

  Then his gaze shifted to the manuscript and he remembered how she had reacted when she’d touched it. It suddenly occurred to him that if it truly was the original manuscript, and it truly was the divine word of God . . .

  Scooping it up off the table, he got it between both hands, and as Callahan advanced, he shoved it toward her, pressing it against her breasts. She howled as if it burned, her eyes filling with agony as she stumbled back.

  And now she was really mad.

  With a deep, animal growl, she surged forward again, coming at Batty at full speed. He threw his hands up, holding the book out, and she slammed into it, howling as it touched her flesh. They crashed into the aisle and Batty scrambled, getting on top of her, keeping the book pressed against her chest.

  “Wake up!” he shouted.

  She continued to howl and hiss and moan, writhing beneath him, the whites of her eyes turning red, as if the blood vessels were starting to burst. She hammered at him with her fists, landing several solid blows to his ribs-

  – but Batty didn’t let up. Kept the manuscript in place.

  “Wake up, Callahan! Wake the fuck up!”

  Then suddenly her eyes went blank and she stopped. Her arms fell to her sides and she was still.

  Then the jet leveled off, steadying itself, the storm now behind them.

  Batty pulled the manuscript from Callahan’s breasts, and stared down at her half-naked form, relieved, but barely able to catch his breath.

  Then Callahan blinked, the life coming back into her eyes.

  And when she realized Batty was straddling her, she glanced down at her exposed body, then back up at him in horror and said, “What the fuck?”

  34

  CHIANG MAI, THAILAND

  The pla
ce Brother Philip called home was the only Christian monastery in Chiang Mai.

  Callahan hadn’t spent a lot of time here and was frankly surprised that in a country that was overwhelmingly Buddhist, there were any Christian churches at all.

  As usual, LaLaurie was all too happy to educate her.

  “The Portuguese brought Christianity to Siam in the sixteenth century,” he said.

  They were riding through town in back of a tuk tuk, a three-wheeled motorized rickshaw. Their driver wore ear buds and seemed intent on killing someone as he blasted through the crowded streets.

  “King Narai let the Roman Catholics in because he was curious about them and the world they’d come from. Unfortunately, that curiosity wasn’t shared by everyone in government and when Narai died, the Europeans were either killed or kicked out.”

  “Isn’t that always the way?”

  “Then around the late seventeen hundreds Taksin let some French missionaries come in, followed by the Baptists and the Presbyterians in the early part of the next century. They’ve never been more than a blip on the radar compared to the Buddhists, but they’ve made their mark.”

  As he spoke, there was a bit of a twinkle in LaLaurie’s eyes, which annoyed Callahan no end. She knew what he was thinking whenever he looked at her now. She barely remembered anything that had happened on that plane, had just wanted to push past it and do her job. But she couldn’t.

  When she’d come to, with LaLaurie straddling her-vague images of their encounter dancing through the cobwebs in her brain-the thought that she hadn’t been in complete control of her body had scared the crap out of her.

  But that was something she could cope with. LaLaurie had assured her that even though she’d somehow given permission for that thing to use her, no permanent damage had been done. He’d managed to drive the invader away before it could get a lasting hold on her and suck out her soul.

  Which was all well and good, she thought, but what bothered her most of all was one small, niggling detail-