by Glenn Cooper
‘That is indeed so, Your Excellency. But I am not speaking of the angels in Heaven.’
The Emperor became angry again. ‘What are you, priest? Are you a conjurer? Do you practice dark magic? I could have you burned at the stake!’
‘Surely, Your Excellency, you would agree that conjuring to rid the world of the Saracen would not be an act of evil. Would it not be to the benefit of all good and faithful Christians?’
Alexios went quiet and said that he would have to confer with his council of noblemen and with the Patriarch on the matter. In the meanwhile, Thaddeus would remain in the palace in the custody of his guards. The young priest thanked him and bowed obsequiously.
As he was being led away the Emperor suddenly told his guards to halt. ‘Tell me, priest,’ he said, ‘how do you summon the angels?’
‘With the use of the tools in this bag,’ Thaddeus replied.
‘Show me.’
Alexios took the red bag and looked inside it. ‘These are unfamiliar objects.’
‘I can show you how I perform my magic, Your Excellency. You can speak to the angels through me.’
‘Is that so?’ the Emperor said. ‘I will take counsel, but I alone will decide what shall be done. Guards, take this priest away.’
‘My bag, Your Excellency?’ Thaddeus said.
‘If you were a soldier I would confiscate your sword and your shield to diminish the threat to my person. As you are a conjurer, I will confiscate the tools of your magic.’
Thaddeus was treated well. Although he was locked inside a room, it was larger and far better appointed than his monk’s cell at the monastery and the food he was given was fresh and appetizing. It came almost as a disappointment when a guard announced that he was to be freed from confinement.
As he was taken through dark corridors he asked, ‘Where are we going?’
When he received no answer he began to panic, wondering if these were to be the last moments of his life.
He was brought into a large room festooned with candles. On a green and gold rug in the middle of the room sat his red bag.
Emperor Alexios entered and sat on a padded bench.
‘My advisors were unanimous in their opinion. Speaking for the Council, would you care to know what Patriarch Nicholas advised?’
Thaddeus nodded hesitantly.
‘He believes you should be burned alive, depriving whatever remains of your bones a Christian burial. What think you of that?’
‘I am not overly fond of his advice, Your Majesty.’
He held his breath until Alexios said, ‘I am not fond of it myself. In the end, I have made a contrary decision. Nothing is more vital than the defeat of the Saracen plague. You will do your magic, right here, right now, and I will observe. I presume it is a fallen angel whom you will summon.’
A visibly relieved Thaddeus told him that was so.
Alexios said, ‘If I am satisfied your angel will smite the Saracens then you will live. If I am unsatisfied, then you will not see the sun again.’
The Emperor was brought a cup of wine and he watched Thaddeus assemble the magic table and place the black scrying stone atop the largest of the wax seals, the Sigillum Dei Aemeth. As the monk positioned candles so that the showstone would catch the light, he felt his sweat beading on his forehead and dripping from his armpits. He had only invoked the 49th Call a single time. He had bucked up the courage one night during one of the early days of his journey from Al-Iraq to Constantinople, for if the call had not worked, why make the dangerous trek at all? Better to open a vein as penance for his murder of Daniel and lie down to drain his blood upon the soil of his homeland. But the call had worked, though he had been too frightened to continue. He had tipped over the showstone and backed away until he could muster the courage to pack up his implements.
‘I am ready to begin, Your Excellency,’ he said.
‘Shall I join you?’ Alexios asked. ‘Will I be able to look upon your stone and see what you see, hear what you hear?’
‘Please sit opposite me, Your Excellency. Only the scryer sees and hears but you may ask questions through my voice.’
The time had come.
Thaddeus had used his time trekking through the wilderness to commit the 49th Call to memory, but now he was so nervous that he placed Daniel’s papyrus on his lap lest he forgot any of the words.
He slowly intoned the call and when he was done all he could do was wait.
The wait was short.
The surface of the showstone came alive with the image he had seen that one time before.
His guardian angel, Jachniel, was a rather flamboyant figure with a red robe, gold-colored sandals, and an animated face. This angel who appeared in the stone sat still upon a plain throne, his head slightly bowed to the ground. He wore a simple gray robe. He was neither handsome nor ugly, his beard neither long or short. If one had encountered such a personage upon the road or at the market, he would have made a light impression. He spoke the angel language smoothly with almost a soothing cadence.
‘I am Satanail. Why have you summoned me?’
That is when the angel cocked his head and stared through the showstone, locking his black eyes on the young priest, imbuing him with fear.
Thaddeus somehow found the courage to translate the question.
The Emperor sucked in air as if punched in the gut. Satanail was the name given to him in the Book of Enoch, but most knew him by his shortened name, Satan. He had been an archangel, the leader of the Watchers, the angels who chose to cohabitate with human women and thereby fell from God’s grace. Now he was Prince of the fallen angels, the great architect of evil.
The Emperor was too shocked to speak. Thaddeus struggled to find his own words, the ones he had rehearsed in his head. After he spoke them in angel tongue he whispered a quick translation for Alexios.
This is what he said: ‘Lord Satanail, I need your help to bring destruction down upon the heads of the Saracens who have killed innocent Christians and who threaten our land.’
The angel’s mouth thinned. Was it a smile or a frown? ‘Why do you not seek help from the king who sits before you?’
Thaddeus asked Alexios how he should reply.
‘Tell him that although I am indeed a king and emperor, I do not have the power to smite so powerful an enemy. Implore him to act as our sword and spear.’
Satanail leaned forward on his throne and said, ‘I can but act on Earth through the body of a man. If this king is not powerful enough to raise an army to smite your enemy, which man is so?’
The Emperor did not have to think long. ‘There is but one man who possesses this power. Yet on his own he lacks the resolve for action.’
On hearing the name, the angel’s lips parted into a full-on smile, revealing rows of plump yellow teeth.
‘I know of this man,’ Satanail said. ‘Ask the king if he understands the magnitude of death and misery that such an action will bring upon your Earthly realm?’
Alexios answered without hesitation, ‘I know full well. Tell him it will be worth every drop of spilled blood.’
Thaddeus felt a chill run through his feverish body at the sight of Satanail laughing and slapping his thigh.
‘Drops of blood?’ the angel cried gleefully. ‘I think not. Prepare ye for rivers of blood!’
TWENTY-TWO
Cal woke to a harsh sunlight pouring through the parted curtains. Eve was sleeping beside him. There had been no point getting two rooms. Both of them wanted to keep whatever it was they had going, at least for a while.
He showered, ordered room service for two, and made an outside call. When the breakfast arrived, he had it brought onto the balcony then woke Eve with a playful pat to her rear.
‘Are we still in Cairo?’ she asked, her eyes a couple of slits.
‘Come outside and see for yourself.’
The view from a high floor of the Four Seasons at the Nile Plaza was worth the crazy price of the suite. The river, brownish-blue and sw
iftly flowing, snaked around both sides of Gezira Island. The low, sprawling cityscape was punctuated by the spires of mosques and a few skyscrapers. Eve clutched her robe to her chest and took it in.
Cal pointed toward the island and said, ‘There’s the Opera House and next to it, just there, is the Museum of Modern Egyptian Art. And over there on the mainland – the orange building – that’s where we’re headed this morning. The Egyptian Museum.’
‘You know your way around.’
‘A little. Egyptian archeology isn’t my thing, but I’ve been here for conferences. And as a tourist.’
‘It’s so beautiful. You think we’ll be able to see the pyramids?’
Tourism was far from his mind. ‘We’ll see. Work comes first.’
She nodded and gulped down a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.
While she dressed, he tackled an email reply he’d been avoiding. Jessica had shot him a message, asking how things were going in Cairo, and wondering whether Eve Riley had returned to the States. The question had been put so benignly, without her usual barbs or sarcasm, that he almost felt she knew with certainty that he’d already fallen off the monogamy wagon. He tapped an artful reply that Eve had, in fact, come to Egypt because, assuming the papyri were found, he wouldn’t be able to make sense of them without her. Then he added that he missed her.
He pocketed his phone and sank into a shallow gulley of guilt.
He was remarkably disciplined when it came to some parts of his life, the academic and scholarly parts, and so reckless in others. His drinking still veered out of control, but he’d found that Jessica had largely tamed his roving eye. She punched every one of his tickets. They were so well matched in intellect and finances that there weren’t any of the superiority/inferiority games that had torpedoed so many of his past relationships. She was also funny, rather beautiful, and well read, which was important to him. She had even made the effort to tackle some of his more rarefied books on religion. She was also a Catholic, which mattered to him only insofar as she intuitively understood the concept of Catholic guilt. It was always handy, he reckoned, to be on the same guilt wavelength as a girlfriend. So why was he cheating? If he ever was forced into therapy, he’d have to ask his shrink. For now, he comforted himself in the knowledge that at least it had been Eve who had made the first move. That had to count for something.
The morning was already steamy when he and Eve strolled through a bustling Tahrir Square on the brief walk to the Egyptian Museum. Cal only knew the museum as a tourist. Egyptian archeology was far afield from his areas of interest and he had been forced to cold-call the museum director, who, based on Cal’s credentials, had kindly put him in touch with the curator of the papyrus collections, a fellow named Osama Nawal. It was Dr Nawal who came to meet them in an entry hall teeming with a tour group from Japan and local school children on field trips.
Nawal was a clean-shaven, bespectacled man in a loose plaid sport shirt. He spoke excellent English. He was older than Cal, but he came across deferentially, making a point of telling him that he had reviewed Cal’s bona fides online and was most pleased to be of any possible assistance to such an illustrious professor. He treated Eve somewhat as an afterthought, directing his full attention to the Harvard academic whom he led, talking non-stop, through the crowds, and past a guard station into a staff area, and from there, to a staircase to the basement.
‘I have been the curator for the papyrus department for only five years,’ Nawal said. ‘It was my predecessor who I have been able to ascertain was responsible for receiving Professor Rasouly’s materials from the Baghdad Museum after the war. Of course, the decision to accept various artifacts from Iraq was taken at a ministerial level as a service to a brother-museum in distress.’
‘Are all the Baghdad artifacts still here?’ Cal asked.
‘My understanding is that the Iraqi government subsequently requested for much of it to be returned and that has occurred over the years. However, I am aware of no requests for the return of the Rasouly archive during my predecessor’s tenure and certainly none have been made since I took charge of the department.’
‘Does that surprise you?’
‘Not at all. You see, for political and cultural reasons, artifacts and writings from an early Christian monastery would not be a priority for the Iraqis. And as you can imagine, the Rasouly papyri are quite the step-children here in an Egyptian museum that concentrates on Dynastic epigraphy. That is why I was so astonished to receive two queries about these papyri in the past week when there were none before.’
Cal stopped him. ‘I’m sorry. Two queries? Who else asked about them?’
‘A gentleman presented himself to the director’s office the day before yesterday. His name was Almasi. Walid Almasi. He said he was from the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior. He wanted to see the Rasouly papyri. However, he did not have proper identification papers and the assistant to the director asked him to return the following day after the Iraqi Embassy could be contacted. Well, the Embassy knew nothing about this man and he did not return. Very strange, no?’
Cal looked at Eve and said, ‘Do you know what this man looked like?’
‘I did not see him, but Mrs Elhawary told me he was a very large gentleman, perhaps fifty years old, and a bit rough in his mannerisms, which is why she was suspicious.’
Cal said nothing more about him but he knew damn well who Almasi or whatever his name was. But he didn’t want to spook Nawal and distract him from helping them.
First London, now Cairo. How was the killer able to keep one step ahead of them at every turn?
Instead, Cal asked, ‘Were you able to find the Rasouly papyri?’
‘In truth, it was a challenge. I am quite sure that no one has examined them since their arrival. One of my assistants spent a full day going through cabinets and boxes.’
‘You have them?’
‘Indeed we do. I have set up a work station in my department for you to make an examination.’
Walking through the basement, they passed through long halls of cabinets and open racks of pottery and statues, sarcophagi, storage jars of mummified animals, and dozens of human mummies. Eve paused to look into the hollow eyes of a beautifully preserved female from the Third Dynasty and had to scramble to catch up when Nawal took a turn and disappeared. She caught up with them at the door to the Papyrus Restoration Laboratory.
The large man with a floppy fedora had been loitering in the square outside the museum entrance. When he spotted Cal and Eve, he drifted inside and waited by the gift shop until he saw Nawal come to get them. Then he followed at a discreet distance. At the guard station, Barzani told the guard that he had seen a boy urinating on a statue, and when the guard ran off to investigate, he went through to the staff area and down into the basement. From a distance he saw Cal and Eve disappearing into the Papyrus Laboratory. Once he knew their destination he returned to the museum square and bought himself an ice cream.
The lab was bathed in harsh fluorescent light. There was an open plan of work stations manned almost exclusively by female conservators at drafting tables. They briefly looked up from their magnifying loupes when the visitors entered.
‘You will work here, Professor,’ Nawal said.
There was a file box on the table labeled Baghdad Museum/Omar Rasouly.
‘Will you be letting Professor Rasouly know that his papyri have been located?’ Nawal asked.
‘I wish we could,’ Cal said. ‘Unfortunately, he recently passed away.’
Nawal tutted his sympathy.
‘I have a meeting I must attend,’ Nawal said. ‘Here are security passes that will allow you to come and go as you wish and here is my card with my contact information. Perhaps we can get a coffee when you have made some progress. I will leave you to your work.’
As soon as they were alone, Eve whispered, ‘He’s here!’
Cal tried not to sound alarmed, but it wasn’t easy. ‘I wish I hadn’t brought you, Eve. Let’s just
get this done as fast as we can and get home. We’ll take taxis. No walkabouts, no restaurants outside the hotel.’
‘No pyramids,’ she said sadly.
‘No pyramids.’
Cal opened the file box and there it was: his father’s calligraphy. The first envelope he took from the box was labeled with one of the Rabban Hurmizd grid references from his father’s excavation journal – Cutting 9/ L 14. Peering inside he saw loose papyrus fragments the size of average postage stamps, some larger.
‘Bingo!’ he said.
A woman at a nearby desk glanced over.
‘Yes?’ Eve asked.
‘Oh yes,’ he replied, more softly, carefully tipping the fragments onto the drafting table in a small pile.
Nawal had equipped the table with the tools of his trade – tweezers, a set of magnifying loupes ranging from low to high power, a high-intensity light, dainty paint brushes, special glue for working with papyrus fragments, acid-free backing paper, and pieces of mounting glass for non-permanent fixations. Cal tweezed one of the fragments, put it under a low-magnification loupe, and adjusted the lamp.
‘It’s very similar to the piece we already have,’ he said, ‘same coloration, same striations, same kind of lettering.’
He moved over so she could have a look through the glass.
‘Is it Aramaic?’ she said.
‘Yeah, but it’s like the piece I brought with me from Harvard. They’re not words I recognize.’
‘Can you sound them out for me?’
Their cheeks were almost touching. He could smell her hair.
He vocalized the Aramaic.
‘It’s Enochian,’ she said. ‘It says earth. Actually, of the earth.’
‘Then we’re in the money. How good are you at jigsaw puzzles?’