The Babel Codex

by Alex Archer

  “I want them close, but I don’t want to get shot.”

  Friedrich laughed. “Have I ever let you get shot?”

  “There was that time in Barcelona.”

  “Bah. The way you handled that, anyone could have shot you. And the Kevlar stopped the bullet.”

  Garin strode to the ship’s railing and peered out at the pirates’ command vessel. The small powerboat sat in the darkness among the other ships anchored off the Somalia shore. The trade lane was important to several countries. The pirates aboard the small craft didn’t know they had been identified. They believed only the eight men holding the ship’s crew on Tequila Blossom were exposed.

  They were wrong, and Garin was about to show them.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Garin saw the three pirates closing on his position. One of them dropped to his knee on the deck. Garin resisted the impulse to turn to face the man, but his guts churned slightly in anticipation of the bullet he knew would be coming his way. He cursed Friedrich under his breath.

  Then the gunman toppled over. The second pirate dropped in a loose-limbed sprawl before the sound of the first rifle shot reached Garin. Friedrich was using a .50-caliber sniper rifle so the carnage was visible and noisy. The third pirate turned to run, but Friedrich took him out before he’d gone two paces.

  “Happy?” Friedrich asked.

  “Ecstatic.” Garin grinned, knowing that at least some of the pirates on the boat had binoculars trained on him. He spoke over the confiscated radio. “My name is Garin Braden.” He knew that other ships’ crews were watching the encounter. “You have been holding this ship and this crew for three days. You were told to let them go. You didn’t and now you’re going to pay the price.”

  He lifted the pistol. None of the men on the boat moved. At two hundred yards, they didn’t think he had a chance of hitting them with small-arms fire.

  Men hunted big game with the .500 Magnum, though. Two hundred yards was well within the big pistol’s range.

  Deliberately, Garin fired four times, moving from target to target. The first two pirates jerked back as the bullets took them, before the sound of the shots even reached them, then the other pirates ducked for cover. Garin’s third shot caught one of them, but his fourth only struck the ship.

  Behind Garin, machine pistol fire signaled an end to the remaining four pirates about Tequila Blossom. Calmly, Garin dumped the empty brass from the big revolver and thumbed in more rounds as the pirates regrouped aboard the boat and brought their weapons to bear.

  “Now, Evander.” Garin snapped the cylinder closed and watched as a rocket from one of the nearby ships his men had taken up positions on streaked across the water and detonated on the boat, turning it into a roiling mass of orange and black flames.

  Fiery debris rained down. Gray smoke streaked the black sky, muting the starlight.

  Applause broke out on several of the nearby ships as the crews realized what had happened.

  “Well, that went well.” Garin walked toward the wheelhouse, intending to see to the crew. He knew the captain of this particular ship and wanted to make sure he was all right.

  “Mr. Braden.” The voice over the earwig was feminine, polite and insistent. It belonged to an efficient woman back in Berlin who watched over some of his other interests.

  “This isn’t a good time. I’m basking in my success.” Garin had wanted the physical release of the encounter, which was why he’d handled it himself instead of simply sending in a team.

  “Understood, sir, but you wanted me to tell you any time I had news of Rafik Bhalla and his project.”

  Garin had crossed paths with Bhalla in the past and promised himself he would kill the man someday. But only after Bhalla found the tower. If Garin didn’t find it first. Then killing Bhalla would be at Garin’s convenience.

  “Well, I have news. Bhalla’s in Addis Ababa, and he appears to have tried to kill Annja Creed.”

  Growling curses, Garin gave orders to bring a helicopter to him and for a flight to be booked to Addis Ababa. Annja could take care of herself. Garin had learned that and been surprised. However, her presence was problematic. He liked her, but he didn’t want to lose the tower to her.

  Chapter Eleven

  Annja stood in the center of the hotel room in sweat pants and a T-shirt, slowly going through t’ai chi exercises to loosen and warm her muscles, and to center her mind. She practiced Wu Chien Chaun today because the style favored form, pushing hands and weapons. She held the horse stance flawlessly, working out her legs.

  “Are you going to get up or continue to lay in bed?” She pushed both hands to the side slowly, like she was striking an opponent in slow motion.

  Burris lay in bed and didn’t reply.

  “I know you’re awake.”

  Silence

  “Your breathing changed ten minutes ago.”

  “Only because I got excited watching you do monkey fu. This is even better than watching women on the aerobics channel.” Not bothering to feign sleep anymore, Burris pushed himself up on an elbow and studied her with open interest. “You should do an exercise show. Charge for it. You’d make more money than you do from archaeology.”

  Annja finished the form, then plucked a towel from the nearby chair. “I’m going to take a shower.”

  “I can do your back. You know, since we have the partnership in the brick and all that.”

  “If you come in that shower while I’m in there, the next place you’re going to be is the emergency room. Rafik Bhalla will find you there.”

  “Who’s Rafik Bhalla?”

  “The guy in the car yesterday who tried to kill us.” Annja paused in the bathroom door. “Now get up. We have to get moving. We don’t want him to find us.”

  * * *

  Burris was hungover and he’d lost his sunglasses sometime yesterday, so he peered out at the morning through slitted fingers over his eyes.

  “Stop that,” Annja said at his side.

  “My head hurts.”

  “You’re a walking advertisement that screams, Mug me!”

  Burris cursed. “So who’s Bhalla and why should I be afraid of him?”

  “He used to be a priest at the Syriac Orthodox Tewahedo Church here in the city. Now he’s an art dealer and relic hunter supplying well-heeled collectors around the world.”

  “By relic hunter, you mean thief?”

  “Yes. And he’s a murderer, though he’s never been caught.”

  “Why does Bhalla want the brick?”

  “Because he believes it will lead him to the Tower of Babel and the treasure he thinks it holds.”

  “What treasure?”

  Annja shrugged. “The usual kind. Gold. Gems. Priceless artifacts. And some kind of device capable of converting all languages into the original language people spoke before God destroyed the Tower of Babel and made the world speak in different tongues.”

  Burris thought about that. “So this thing, whatever it is, would let you talk to anyone? No matter what the language is?”

  “That’s what Bhalla believes.”

  “Why does he believe that?”

  “He’s supposed to have found some scroll that mentions a prince named Joktan, the son of the king who first started building the tower, hiding the device somewhere near the original building site.”

  Burris looked thoughtful and he even forgot to squint against the bright sun for a moment. “If I could talk to everybody in the world, just like I’m talking to you, can you imagine the audience share I would pull in? I would be even more amazing than I am now.”

  “Contrary to your conceited opinion of yourself, not everyone is a fan.”

  Burris waved away her comment. “Who told you about Bhalla and this Tower of Babel device?”

  “One of my contacts in the community.” Annja walked through the gebeya, picking up fresh fruit and small dishes of food, paying for them as she went. Burris refused her help, and she left him to figure it out on his own.

 
; “And this person would know how?”

  “He knew about Bhalla, and he knew about Bhalla’s search for the Tower of Babel.”

  “Do you believe in a device that would let you be understood by everyone?”

  “That’s what you’re fixated on? It probably isn’t real.”

  “Then why are you so interested in finding the Tower of Babel if you don’t believe in a device that will allow you to talk to anyone in the world?”

  Annoyed, Annja swallowed a bite of fir-fir, shredded injera stir-fried with spices. “Aside from the fact that the tower has never been found and was at one time the greatest construction the human race ever undertook?”

  “Don’t mean to break your heart, but you’ve only got lunatics interested in Atlantis and bigfoot and the Tower of Babel.”

  “That’s good to hear. I was afraid you might want to hang around and I was going to have to dissuade you. This way you can grab a cab and get back to Los Angeles.”

  Burris was quiet for a moment, then shook his head. “I can’t go back yet.”

  “Why?”

  “The only reason I’m out here is so my ex-wife can’t get to me.”

  “Your ex-wife is the only reason you’re here?”

  Burris stopped and looked at the food spread on a colorful blanket on the ground. The man minding the space talked with hopeful animation in broken English, hawking his wares with a passion and gleaming eyes. Burris shook his head and started walking again.

  Annja apologized and purchased a cup of coffee from a jebena, the clay coffeepot most Ethiopian coffee was boiled in. She declined the offer of sugar.

  Burris fell into step with Annja when she got under way again.

  “I’m not afraid of ex-wives. I’ve got six. But my fourth one has a new, young attorney who thinks he’s in love with her and that she’s the most wonderful woman he’s ever seen, and that he’s gonna win her over raising my alimony payments. He doesn’t know her like I know her. By the time he does, he’s gonna lose half of everything he has. She’s great at getting around prenups.”

  Annja couldn’t believe it. “You came to Ethiopia to get away from your ex-wife’s lawyer boyfriend.”

  “Not the boyfriend. The boyfriend I could handle. It’s the boyfriend’s dad. Winston Churchill McArthur Patton IV is a force to be reckoned with. Hollywood studios break out in hives when he goes after them.”

  “Surely Patton the father would have better things to do than come after you.”

  “You’d think, wouldn’t you?” Burris looked glum. “It’s a nest of snakes, I tell you. So when Doogie—”

  “Doug.”

  “When he called, asked me about doing a piece on Chasing History’s Monsters, I thought, Why not? He sounded like a fanboy, and I needed to get out of town. Promised me Kristie Chatham—gave me you.”

  “It doesn’t occur to you that telling me that might be hurtful or disrespectful?”

  “Think how hurt I am. I figured the way Kristie falls out of her clothes, I had a shot. But you?” Burris shook his head.

  “I’m glad we’re clear about that.” Annja stopped at another vendor and picked up a serving of fatira, a pancake filled with egg and drizzled with honey. She ate it with gusto.

  “So what’s our next move?”

  “We’re going to get you a cab, since you’re not interested in breakfast.”

  “I am interested in breakfast, but I want something edible. Something American. Preferably with avocado.” Burris blew out a theatrical sigh. “And I’m sticking with you. I own half of that brick.”

  Annja thought of ditching Burris then and there. Getting away from him would be child’s play. But then he’d be in the city alone and untended. “It would be better if you left.”

  “Not leaving.”

  “You’re an idiot.”

  “I’m an idiot with half ownership in a brick that’s gonna take me to a thing that will let me speak to the world.”

  Annja wanted more than anything to punch him. But that would be about the time Bhalla or his men found them.

  She flagged down a cab for both of them at the corner.

  Chapter Twelve

  “It isn’t as big as I thought it would be.” Burris gazed around in open wonder at the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East as he and Annja got out of the taxi into a courtyard.

  Church buildings built of white stone lined the courtyard on three sides. The main building was four stories tall and wide with a red stone roof. The two smaller buildings on either side across the courtyard from each other shone in the early-morning sun. The church sat well away from the city on the flat plains, but she could see the blue-tinted peaks of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains in the distance.

  Annja stared at Burris as she finished paying the driver. He hadn’t even reached for his wallet. “You see this place...one of the most famous in history, founded by the Apostle Saint Peter. It still uses the Syriac, an Aramaic dialect spoken by Jesus and the Apostles, as its official language, and the Apostles preached here after they were driven out of Jerusalem. It’s a church that served in the Councils of Nicaea, Constantinople and Ephesus that created the Nicene Creed, confirmed the divinity of the Holy Spirit and declared Mary’s title as Mother of God. And that’s all you have—it’s not as big as you thought?”

  Frowning, Burris looked around the stone courtyard leading up to the church. “Did you read that from a plaque?”

  “It’s magnificent, a symbol of so many events that shaped the world.”

  “I shape parts of the world, too.”

  Annja found herself at a loss for words. The flight to Damascus, Syria, had been a last-minute scramble and they’d barely caught the connection. Then they’d endured a fifteen-hour flight, and a stay at a hotel so they could get an early start. Security in the country was also tight because of civil unrest. Soldiers armed with assault rifles patrolled constantly.

  Annja had spent her time researching everything she could about the Tower of Babel and Rafik Bhalla, and she’d even gotten a breakthrough on the brick’s inscription with Cybele’s help

  “They should put in a plaque. It would be more impressive.”

  Deciding to ignore Burris, Annja passed through the parishioners and tourists headed into the church. She scanned the area for Bhalla and his people, but didn’t see anyone suspicious.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the Cave of the Seven Sleepers on Mount Qasioun.”

  Burris caught up to her. “Wait. Why are we at the church when we’re looking for a cave?”

  “There are documents in the church library I need to find the cave.”

  “The cave has been around for thousands of years. Don’t they have a sign or something?”

  “Well, there’s a madressah—a secular school—on the site, which will be a form of sign.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “I deciphered part of the inscription on the brick.”

  “What?” He stumbled. “You should have told me.”

  Annja ignored him and kept walking, growing more excited with each step she took. “The inscription I figured out was made later, but still in the same language.”

  “How much later?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So it said there was a cave that no one has found in two thousand years? In a place where a school has been built?” Burris shook his head. “There are guys in L.A. that give fake tours of stars’ housing. I’d say your brick was part of a scam.”

  “Okay, then you can go back to the hotel while I check this out. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

  Burris grumbled as he kept pace. “Who are the Seven Sleepers?”

  “Who were the Seven Sleepers. They were seven young men who fled persecution from the Romans. Emperor Decius either chased them to the cave and they hid, or he sealed them up in it alive. The stories vary, and so do the locations of the cave. Greece and Turkey each lay claim to it. The Muslims have their version of the
cave story, as well, so it spread across religions. It made a big impact.”

  “We’re sure we want the one here?”

  “It was named and placed in the inscription on the brick. Sometimes they are referred to as the Companions of the Cave.”

  “And these guys were supposedly sealed up in this cave?” Burris hesitated. “We’re not gonna be digging through corpses, are we?”

  “Wouldn’t that be more fun than digging in the dirt?”

  Burris scowled at her.

  * * ** * *

  It took them two hours to get past the administrative staff and gain entry to the church’s library, despite Annja’s having made previous arrangements by phone. And even then they were assigned two priests as chaperones to walk them through the towering stacks.

  “These people have serious trust issues,” Burris muttered as he and Annja followed the priests.

  “Of course they have trust issues. For centuries, churches have been looted for artwork and precious metals. It’s not the material goods they worry about losing so much. It’s the ties back to history, and to their faith. If I didn’t know some of the people I do, we wouldn’t get in at all.”

  A nondescript room held the antique documents at the back of the library. The two men in the lead stood at the door and let Annja and Burris go in first.

  “What is it you would like to see?” The young priest spoke flawless English. He also carried an iPhone. Annja had seen him checking it as they’d walked through the library. He’d introduced himself as Father Louay.

  The older priest appeared disdainful and hadn’t spoken at all. His disapproving scowl deepened the wrinkles that lined his face.

  “The documents concerning the Cave of the Seven Sleepers and the excavations to find it.”

  Louay nodded and walked to a massive collection of books against the back wall on the left. “Those will be over here. They do have a school at the cave, you know.”

  “But the school doesn’t have these documents, do they?”

  “They have studies of all the cave explorations.”

  “Recent ones. I’m looking for an older document.”