She pointed to the north-east.
My God, thought Jake. She’s every bit as dotty as Britton.
But to his astonishment the medic nodded. “Yes, yes … you mean the Monastery of Debre Damo. That way, maybe fifty kilometres drive. It is more than one thousand five hundred years old.”
“How do we get there?”
The man waggled his head. “Not possible. It’s not safe, madam. Too close to the border.”
“How close?”
“Maybe five, six kilometres from Eritrea, something like this.”
“The Foreign Office advisory, remember?” muttered Jake. “We’re not supposed to go anywhere near there.”
“It’s dangerous,” the Ethiopian agreed. “Really. Last month Europeans shot by Eritrean bandits there. Very bad men, come to Ethiopia to make trouble.”
But Florence merely stared at the horizon.
“I’m going,” she said at last. “You stay here if you want, Jake – it’s up to you.”
Jake couldn’t let her go into danger alone. In the throes of this obsession she would get herself killed and his conscience wouldn’t allow it.
“If we did want to get there,” he began, “how would we go about it?”
“A man two villages from here has a car,” said the medic. “And he speaks English ok. He can take you, I think. But not cheap. Many dollars.”
“I’ll pay,” said Florence. “We’ll find something there, I’m sure of it.”
Jake felt a weight in his stomach, as if a heavy stone was lodged there. He followed her eyes to the north-east.
46
The pickup truck bounded through a landscape of baked orange scrub, hemmed in by distant mountains. The earth had been carved into terraces, and in each field a figure could be discerned, bashing at the dirt with a hoe or wandering behind oxen. Most of them seemed to be children. Jake was flung into the air by a bump and he gasped, clinging to his seat.
The driver cackled. “Ethiopia road, is disco road!”
Berihun was a barrel-chested rogue with a snatch of dark beard; the feel of a hundred US dollars had him in high spirits. He stopped to check the map and the children seemed to generate out of the earth itself, tiny bodies dashing to meet them from every ridge. When Jake produced biscuits it became bedlam.
“Faranji! Faranji! Faranji!,” they cried. “You! You! You!”
“Like feeding ducks in the park,” said Florence witheringly.
Jake ignored the comment. “Look at that one,” he whispered.
A boy of three was sniffing at his biscuit; evidently he did not know what it was.
They passed a gang of Chinese labourers, hacking a road out of the desert. European statesmen had given up on the continent, but the Asian scramble for Africa continued apace.
“What do you think about that?” Jake asked Berihun. “Good thing or bad thing?”
The driver frowned. “I not like. Just pretend he wants to help us. China is new Mussolini in our Ethiopia.” He remembered Florence and blushed. “Sorry madam.”
“I’m not Chinese,” she said. “I’m British.”
The driver looked sceptical about the claim, but he let it go.
As they neared the badlands the villages thinned out, leaving only a sense of desolation until it was like driving across Mars. They passed a field of mortars, pointing north on their tripods; a dozen pieces of artillery; a column of teenagers in camouflage jogging alongside the track. Finally they reached the end of the line.
The outpost was fortified with sandbags and a heavy machine gun pointed towards Eritrea. A piece of string was strung across the track, the winning tape at the end of a marathon. A soldier sauntered over, chewing on a stick, and addressed the driver in rapid-fire Amharic.
“He says is not safe past here,” Beriuhn translated. “If you want go further, you must buy permit. Is costing five hundred dollars.”
“I have three hundred.” Florence began counting out banknotes. “Will that cover the paperwork?”
The soldier eyed the cash.
“Three fifty, is ok,” muttered Berihun.
“Didn’t you hear what the man said?” said Jake. “It’s too dangerous.”
“He just wants money. This is Africa, remember?”
She handed over a wad of bills and the teenager lifted the piece of string. They were through.
“Madness,” Jake groaned as they drove into no-man’s-land. “Absolute madness.”
Beyond the checkpoint it was deserted. Jake and Florence kept up a constant watch, expecting a Kalashnikov to start clattering away at any moment. Cacti assumed the form of desperados before betraying themselves with their scarecrow stiffness. It reminded Jake of swimming in Australia, that dread of a dark shape passing underneath. Even Berihun was tense.
Without warning he hit the brakes.
“What is it?” demanded Jake.
The engine chugged over.
“What?” repeated Florence.
But the driver was grinning. “It is the Monastery of Debre Damo.”
A flat-topped mountain rose before them, a house brick dropped in the desert. A spire was discernible at the peak – but the cliffs appeared to be sheer.
“How do we get up there?” said Florence.
“Rope,” the driver replied.
Now Jake saw it – a sliver of spaghetti dangling fifty feet from the summit, two monks lounging beneath it. He felt his stomach turn over in synch with the engine. And something else perturbed him, though at the same time his blood pulsed with irrational hope.
“This might be coincidence,” he said. “Actually, it must be coincidence …”
“What’s coincidence?” said Florence. “Just spit it out, for God’s sake. Why do you always have to dither so much?”
“Don’t you remember? Eusebius, Book Four, Verse Forty-one. ‘I myself explained details of the imperial edifice.’ And look.”
The cliff towered above them, bearded with trees at its summit.
“The edifice,” said Jake. “And above it, a ‘Church of God’.”
“It’s not coincidence,” Florence whispered, almost to herself. “This is the place.”
47
The rope consisted of leather strips tied together with granny knots, dangling from a dry-stone guardhouse far above. As Jake looked upwards the cliff seemed to topple towards him by degrees.
“Are we really going to trust our lives to this thing?” he said.
“Is good rope,” said Berihun. “Very strong.”
A monk grinned and yanked the line with both hands. It held.
“I’m not sure I can do this,” said Jake, resting his palms against the rock. “I’m not a big fan of heights.”
“You must,” Florence replied.
“Why?”
She turned away. “Because I need you. I’ve needed you all along. Why else would I let you tag along this far? Ok, happy now? Has your ego been massaged enough?”
Jake looked up again, blowing air into both cheeks. “All right then. Let’s do this.”
The monk tied the rope around Florence’s waist and whistled through his fingers. Instantly it became taut and she was plucked off the ground like a sprat on a hook. A minute later she disappeared through the door of the outhouse and the rope snaked back to earth. There was a sense of unreality as Jake was lifted clear of terra firma. He scrabbled at the rockface to keep steady, trying not to think about the rope snapping or the monks loosing their grip.
Just keep going. Just keep going.
As quickly as it began, the ordeal was over. Jake grasped for a handhold and hauled himself into the guardhouse – the doorstep was pebble-smooth. He found himself in a grotto cut into the cliff. An old man in combat fatigues slouched against the rock, AK cradled in his lap. The guard peered at Jake’s hands, which were trembling like an Alzheimer’s patient.
“You ok?” said Florence.
He gave her a shaky thumbs up. “Yep, home and dry.”
Their ascent h
ad been watched.
*
The Monastery of Debre Damo stood amid olive and cherry trees, and the scent of blossom hung in the air. It mingled with a smell Jake couldn’t put his finger on – something herbaceous, a little wild. The church itself was a hunch of masonry held together by beams protruding from the walls at each end; a bell jangled listlessly in the breeze. A monk wearing white robes and a black fez glanced at them before returning to his Codex. The bible was hand-written, the saints’ names inked in scarlet. The monk read each name aloud, raising a knuckle to his forehead. With each clank of the bell the relaxation flowed through him more deeply, and Jake felt his shoulders loosen. For a crazy moment he fantasized about staying here, to hell with the world and the Disciplina Etrusca.
“What are we waiting for?” said Florence. “Let’s go inside.”
“Just … two minutes, ok?”
“Jake!” Her voice lashed at him like a whip. “Come on. We’ve got work to do.”
The journalist abandoned his daydream and stepped into the cool of the church. The first room was plastered and painted with naive religious figures, and Florence set about them, examining each scene for a hidden meaning. A young monk produced a bible and showed Jake the pictures – only to become distracted by a line of scripture and begin mumbling it to himself, suddenly far away.
“There’s nothing here,” Florence hissed. “Let’s go further in.”
They stepped into a panelled room, the timber black with age; each panel bore a religious scene and a few letters in Ge’ez. They worked in silence, checking the walls methodically, Florence releasing the occasional ‘humph’. But there was nothing to be found. Finally she said, “There’s shit-all here.”
The profanity jarred him in those surroundings, and Jake rolled his eyes to the ceiling.
“Holy fuck,” he said.
“What?”
“Florence – look up.”
The ceiling was swathed in Etruscan.
It was as if a night sky full of stars had revealed itself after weeks of cloud. The characters stretched from wall to wall, hundreds of them: this was twice the length of the Istanbul inscription. And at the far side two Roman numerals had been carved. Florence moaned, staggering slightly. Jake was oblivious to her. The world eddied around him. His mouth had fallen open and the little finger on his left hand trembled.
“It’s real, isn’t it?” he said.
48
Florence broke off from her vigil. “What’s real?”
Insects crawled beneath Jake’s skin and the room felt as if it were rotating; he fought to control his bladder. Again he heard the incantation from his dream, the beat of the drum. He tried to blink himself awake, like a patient told he has advanced cancer. But this was reality.
“The Book of Thunder,” he managed. “It works.”
Dark shadows had formed under Florence’s cheeks. “Why do you say that?”
“Because it’s the only explanation,” he said. “There are thousands of churches in Ethiopia, and we stumble on the very one where Eusebius hid the inscription? No. You knew it was here.”
“A lucky guess.” She tried to laugh.
“I saw you last night, Florence. Storm watching again. I saw the lightning – the bolt hit this exact spot, like …” he struggled for an analogy. “Like a finger, pointing the way.”
“Coincidence.”
“No, no, no!” Jake was angry now. “It’s too much.”
He couldn’t believe it. But he couldn’t not believe it. Not on top of the death of Professor Britton, struck down by lightning. That, and the ebb and flow of Roman history: how it dovetailed with thunder from beginning to end. He thought of all those ‘leaps of intuition’ Florence had made. Her chanting in Istanbul and the instantaneous crack of thunder over the mainland. She had pulled him into an alcove. I suddenly felt so paranoid. Seconds later they walked into a trap. Florence had sensed what was coming, even if her prescience was fuzzy at the time.
Under that same turbulent sky she had pulled them into the Topkapi – on the one evening its doors stood open for cleaning.
And after the lightning in Axum she had insisted they flee from the chapel in the opposite direction from MI6. She knew there was trouble waiting for them: the skies had told her so.
Something else occurred to him. “You once said the Etruscans believed lightning from the north-east was a good omen,” she said. “And lightning from the north-west a bad one.”
Reluctantly she nodded. The room seemed to darken as Jake pictured the lightning that killed Britton. That CCTV image left no doubt: the bolt had come from the north-west. Jake made another geographical calculation. The thunder in Istanbul was over the European mainland – north-west again, auguring ill. And the portent that bought them here had pointed from the north-east.
It was as if the book wanted to be found.
Still the revelations came. “Your eyes,” he whispered. “Every time you read a sign there were more burst blood vessels in your eyes. Every discovery we made, you were increasing your power.”
Florence didn’t deny it. In one epiphany each little strangeness of the last few weeks had resolved itself. And all he had learned about existence and the rules that govern nature was blown away – like Einstein standing over the rubble of a clockwork universe.
Pure subordination.
A dark religion.
The world had become creepy. Every object looked different: the rugs, the beams, the tapestries. Brought to this place by causation and chance? Or by the decisions of men? The runic letters seemed to sneer at the notion. For if actions could be read in the clouds before they happened, what of free will?
49
Now Jake understood this deadly race; now he appreciated MI6’s scramble for every scrap of text; now he saw why desperate men were doing battle from Europe to Africa, why they were prepared to kill. The power to predict the future: it was the power to command the world.
“So you finally worked it out,” said Florence. “Well done you.”
“Does that mean you believe in their Gods?” Jake’s mind reeled at what he was asking. “Are they real?”
“Nobody knows,” she said. “There’s a lot we don’t understand about the universe. It’s strange, strange beyond comprehension. Any quantum physicist can tell you that. All we know is it works.”
“And what of Rome? Was Britton right?”
Florence gestured to the ceiling with open palm. “This is an incantation to dii novensiles, the casters of lightning,” she said. “On these words titan legions marched. Kings and countries fell. On these words western civilization was forged.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Jake, taking a step back. “It doesn’t make sense. Come on, Florence, you’re a historian. Think like one. If the Etruscans harnessed this power, how come Rome conquered them, not the other way round? Why was it Rome and not Etruria that spread across the globe?”
“You know why.”
From somewhere two words rose to Jake’s mind.
Ten saecula.
The Roman legions. The clank of armour; the blast of the war horn; the destiny of so many souls. The violence, the glory. Blade on leather; blood on blade; the Roman eagle planted across the Mediterranean. Through all the smoke and chaos of the centuries the Disciplina had been their lodestar, guiding them on.
“We think Britton was spot on,” said Florence. “And it cost him his life.”
“Who is ‘we’?”
She flinched.
“Who are you working for, Florence?”
The archaeologist closed her eyes and relaxed her shoulder blades. “I suppose you were always going to realize sooner or later. Too sharp for your own good, Jake Wolsey. Which means unfortunately – I must do this.”
When Florence opened her eyes a pistol was in her hand. She aimed it at his forehead.
“Thanks for all your assistance, Jake,” she sneered. “I couldn’t have done it without you. And the above will be a big help. Tru
st me on that.”
Jake couldn’t take his eyes off the tiny hole wavering before him, nor comprehend the death about to whistle through it.
“This is it, then?” Again he fought to control his bladder. “You kill me in cold blood? Just like you killed Britton?”
“That wasn’t me. Roger taught me everything. I would never …” The pistol trembled. “I don’t know how to …”
“… how to call down lightning strikes?” Jake laughed, though his stomach caved inward. “Hostilius, slain for rejecting the Gods. Otto the Barbarian, struck down on the say-so of Etruscan priests. Emperor Carus, electrocuted on the plains of Persia. And finally it was the turn of Roger Britton.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
Jake judged it the truth. “But that means …”
“I know,” she said. “It means someone else killed him. It means there are people out there who already know how to wield this science.”
“Science? An odd choice of word, don’t you think?”
“But that’s what it is, Jake. Don’t you see? A science they discovered how to tap into in 800 BC, a science we’re only beginning to understand.”
There was a noise of dismay to their left. Berihun stood in the doorway, head alternating between them like a spectator at a tennis match. Florence glanced at the intruder.
Jake charged.
50
The archaeologist had time to fire a single bullet. But the ferocity of Jake’s advance took her by surprise and the shot went high and wide. Before she could fire again Jake was upon her in a dive and they crashed to the floor. Florence clawed at his face with one hand, raising the pistol with the other. Jake grabbed her wrist and held it easily, using his other arm to pin Florence as her legs thrashed beneath him. She fired again, but the bullet splintered through wooden panelling.
“Don’t just stand there,” Jake shouted at Berihun. “For God’s sake do something.”
The driver prised the gun from Florence’s hand, casting it across the room. Still she squirmed in Jake’s hold, her eyes feral. Then she saw it was hopeless and lay back.
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