The Eye of God: A Sigma Force Novel - Страница 3
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Once that was done, Vigor placed his burden down and folded back the brown parcel wrap, revealing a small wooden crate.
“This arrived for me earlier today. With no return address, only the name of the sender.”
He turned back a corner of the wrapping to show her.
“Father Josip Tarasco,” Rachel read aloud. “Am I supposed to know who that is?”
“No, nor should you.” He stared over at her. “He was declared dead over a decade ago.”
Her brows pinched, and her posture stiffened. “But the package is too pristine to have been lost in the mail for that long.” She turned that discerning gaze back on him. “Could someone have forged his name as some cruel hoax?”
“I don’t see why. In fact, I think that’s why the sender addressed this package by hand. So I could verify it came from Father Tarasco. We were dear friends. I compared the writing on the parcel to a smattering of old letters still in my possession. The handwriting matched.”
“So if he’s still alive, why was he declared dead?”
Vigor sighed. “Father Tarasco vanished during a research trip to Hungary. He was preparing a comprehensive paper on the witch hunts there during the early eighteenth century.”
“Witch hunts?”
Vigor nodded. “Back in the early 1700s, Hungary was beset by a decade-long drought, accompanied by famine and plague. A scapegoat was needed, someone to blame. Over four hundred accused witches were killed in a span of five years.”
“And what about your friend? What became of him?”
“You must understand, when Josip left for Hungary, the country had only recently shaken free of Soviet control. It was still a volatile time there, a dangerous place to be asking too many questions, especially in rural areas. The last I heard from him was a message left on my machine. He said he was on to something disturbing concerning a group of twelve witches — six women and six men — burned in a small town in southern Hungary. He sounded both scared and excited. Then nothing after that. He was never heard from again. Police and Interpol investigated for a full year. After an additional four years of silence, he was finally declared dead.”
“So then he must have gone into hiding. But why do that? And more important, why surface a decade later, why now?”
With his back to his niece, Vigor hid a smile of pride, appreciating Rachel’s ability to get to the heart of the matter so quickly.
“The answer to your last question seems evident from what he sent,” he said. “Come see.”
Vigor took a deep breath and opened the hinged lid of the crate. He carefully removed the first of the package’s two objects and placed it in the shaft of moonlight atop his desk.
Rachel took an involuntary step backward. “Is that a skull? A human skull?”
“It is.”
She moved past her initial surprise to step closer. She quickly noted the hen-scratched inscription across the bone of the cranium, following the spiral of its course with a fingertip without touching.
“And this writing?” she asked.
“Jewish Aramaic. I believe this relic is an example of early Talmudic magic practiced by Babylonian Jews.”
“Magic? Like witchcraft?”
“In a way. Such spells were wards against demons or entreaties for help. Over the years, archaeologists have unearthed thousands of such artifacts — mostly incantation bowls, but also a handful of skulls like this. The Berlin museum holds two such relics. Others are in private hands.”
“And this one? You said Father Tarasco had an interest in witches, which I assume extended to an interest in occult objects.”
“Perhaps. But I don’t think this one is authentic. The practice of Talmudic magic started in the third century and died out by the seventh.” Vigor waved his hand over the skull as if casting his own spell. “I suspect this artifact is not that old. Maybe thirteenth or fourteenth century at best. I’ve sent a tooth to the university lab to confirm my estimate.”
She slowly nodded, contemplating in silence.
“But I also studied the writing here,” he continued. “I’m well familiar with this form of Aramaic. I found many blatant mistakes in the transcription — reversed diacritics, wrong or missing accent marks — as if someone made a poor copy of the original inscription, someone who had no true understanding of this ancient language.”
“So the skull is a forgery then?”
“In truth, I suspect there was no foul intent in its crafting. I think its forging was less about deception than it was about preservation. Someone feared the knowledge found here might be lost, so he or she hand made copies, trying to preserve something more ancient.”
“What knowledge?”
“I’ll get to that in a moment.”
He reached into the crate and removed the second object and placed it beside the skull on the table. It was an ancient book, as wide as his outstretched hand and twice as tall. It was bound in rough leather, the pages secured by crude stitches of thick cord.
“This is an example of anthropodermic bibliopegy,” he explained.
Rachel screwed up her face. “And that means…?”
“The book is bound in human skin and sewn with sinew of the same.”
Rachel took a step away again, only this time she didn’t return to the desk. “How can you know that?”
“I can’t. But I forwarded a sample of the leather to the same lab as the skull, both to test its age and its DNA.” Vigor picked up the macabre volume. “But I’m sure I’m correct. I examined this under a dissection microscope. Human pores are distinctly different in size and even shape from that found in pigskin or calfskin. And if you look closer, in the center of the cover—”
He drew a fingernail along what appeared to be a deep crease in the center of the cover.
“Under proper magnification, you can still make out the follicles of eyelashes.”
Rachel paled. “Lashes?”
“On the cover is a human eye, sewn shut with finer threads of sinew.”
Visibly swallowing, his niece asked, “So what is this? Some text of the occult?”
“I thought as much, especially considering Josip’s interest in the witches of Hungary. But no, it’s not some demonic manuscript. Though in some circles, the text is considered blasphemous.”
He carefully parted the cover, cautious not to overly stress the binding. He revealed pages written in Latin. “It’s actually a Gnostic book of the Bible.”
Rachel tilted her head, well versed in Latin, and translated the opening words “ ‘These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke…’ ” She glanced over at him, recognizing those words. “It’s the Gospel of Thomas.”
He nodded. “The saint who doubted Christ’s resurrection.”
“But why is it wrapped in human skin?” she said with disgust. “Why would your missing colleague send you such ghoulish items?”
“As a warning.”
“A warning against what?”
Vigor returned his attention to the skull. “The incantation written here is a plea to God to keep the world from ending.”
“While I certainly appreciate that plea, what does—?”
He cut his niece off. “The prophetic date for that coming apocalypse is also written atop the skull, in the center of the spiraling inscription. I converted that figure from the ancient Jewish calendar to today’s modern accounting.” He touched the center of the spiral. “This is why Father Josip came out of hiding and sent these items to me.”
Rachel waited for him to explain.
Vigor glanced out the window to the comet glowing in the night sky, bright enough to shame the moon. With that portent of doom hanging there, a shiver of certainty rang through him. “The date for the end of the world… it’s in four days.”
FIRST
CRASH & BURN
Σ
1
November 17, 7:45 A.M. PST
Los Angeles AFB
El Segundo, California
Panic had already begun to set in.
From the observation deck above the control room, Painter Crowe read the distress in the sudden cessation of idle chatter among the technicians in the room. Nervous glances spread up the chain of command and across the floor of the Space and Missile Systems Center. Only the base’s top brass were in attendance at this early hour, along with a few heads of the Defense Department’s research divisions.
The floor below them looked like a scaled-down version of NASA’s flight control room. Rows of computer consoles and satellite control desks spread outward from a trio of giant LCD screens affixed to the back wall. The centermost screen showed a map of the world, traced with glowing lines that tracked the trajectories of a pair of military satellites and the path of the neighboring comet.
The two flanking screens showed live feed from the satellites’ cameras. To the left, a curve of the earth slowly churned against the backdrop of space. To the right, the glowing blaze of the comet’s tail filled the screen, casting a veil over the stars beyond it.
“Something’s gone wrong,” Painter whispered.
“What do you mean?” His boss stood beside him atop the observation deck.
General Gregory Metcalf was the head of DARPA, the Defense Department’s research-and-development agency. Dressed in full uniform, Metcalf was in his fifties, African-American, and a West Point grad.
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