The Genesis Secret

18

Rob leaned out of the apartment. The city was thrumming. Bread-sellers were parading the busy streets, carrying on their head big trays of rolls and sweet pastries, and pretzels with sesame. Mopeds rode the pavements, avoiding dark-skinned schoolgirls with satchels.

Rob heard the bang again. He scanned the scene. A man was cutting baklava with a pizzaslicer in a shop across the way. And once more: Bang!

Then Rob saw a motorbike: an old, black, oily British Triumph. Backfiring. The owner was off the bike, and was now angrily hitting the machine with his left shoe. Rob was about to duck back inside when he saw something else.

The police. There were three policemen climbing out of two cars along the street. Two of them were in sweat-stained uniforms, the third in a dapper blue suit and a pale pink tie. The policemen walked to the front door of Christine’s block, sixty feet below and paused. Then they pressed a button.

The bell in Christine’s flat buzzed, very loudly.

Christine was already out of her bedroom, fully dressed.

‘Christine the police are-’

‘I know, I know!’ she said. ‘Good morning Robert!’ Her face looked strained, but not frightened. She went to the intercom and buzzed the door open.

Rob pulled on his boots. Seconds later the police were in the flat-in the sitting room-and in Christine’s face.

The dapperly-suited man was courteous, wellspoken, faintly sinister and barely thirty years old. He gazed curiously at Rob. ‘You must be?’

‘Rob Luttrell.’

‘The British journalist?’

‘Well, American, but I live in London…’

‘Perfect. This is most convenient.’ The officer smiled as if he had been given an unexpectedly large cheque. ‘We are here to interview Miss Meyer about the terrible murder of her friend, Franz Breitner. But we would also like to talk with you, similarly. Perhaps afterwards?’

Rob nodded. He had anticipated a meeting with the police, but he felt oddly guilty being cornered here: in Christine’s flat, at 9 a.m. The policeman was maybe playing on this guilt. His smile was suggestive and superior. He sidled to the desk, then flicked another supercilious glance at Rob. ‘My name is Officer Kiribali. As we wish to speak with Miss Meyer first, in private, it would be beneficial if you could step outside for an hour or so?’

‘Well, OK…’

‘But don’t go far. Just for one hour. Then we can proceed with you.’ Another serpentine smile. ’Is that agreeable, Mr Luttrell?’

Rob looked at Christine. She nodded unhappily. Rob felt more guilt: at leaving Christine alone with this creepy guy. But he had no choice. Grabbing his jacket, he left the flat.

He spent the following hour on a sweaty plastic seat in a noisy internet café, trying to ignore the grunting older man, in baker’s overalls, openly surfing lesbian porn on his right.

Rob worked the numbers from Breitner’s book. He stuck them in every search engine possible: juggling them and rearranging them. What could the numbers be? They surely were a clue, maybe the key. One likelihood was page numbers. But what book? And surely they went too high-1013?

The Turkish baker had finished his surfing. He brushed past Rob with a petulant expression. Rob squinted into his screen, and juggled the numbers again. What was all this about? Were they geographical coordinates? Calendar years? Carbon dates? Rob had no idea.

He was sensing that the best method of cracking a puzzle like this was to let it lie: to let the subconscious get to work. Like a computer humming away in a backroom. The idea had a good pedigree. Rob had once read about a scientist called Kekule who had been striving to establish the molecular structure of Benzene. Kekule toiled for months with no success. But then one night he dreamed of a snake with its tail in its mouth: an ancient symbol called an ouroboros.

Kekule then woke, recalled the dream, and realized his unconscious mind was speaking to him: the molecule for Benzene was a ring, a circle, like a snake chewing its tail. Like the ouroboros. Kekule rushed to the laboratory to test the hypothesis. The solution he had dreamed was correct in all parts.

That was how powerful the unconscious was. So maybe Rob had to leave the problem in the mental cellar for a while, to let it ferment. Then the solution to Breitner’s numbers might pop into his mind when he was thinking of something else: when he was showering, shaving, sleeping, or driving. Or being interviewed by the police…

The police! Rob checked his watch. An hour had passed. Thrusting his chair back, he paid the net café owner and walked swiftly to Christine’s flat.

One of the uniformed policemen opened the door. Christine was sitting on the sofa, dabbing at her eyes. The other constable was handing out tissues. Rob bristled.

‘Do not worry Mr Luttrell.’ Officer Kiribali was sitting on the desk, his legs neatly crossed at the ankle. His tone-of-voice was casual and presumptuous. ‘We are not Iraqis here. But Miss Meyer found talking of her friend’s death rather…discomfiting.’

Christine glanced warily at the policeman and Rob detected plenty of resentment in her expression. Then she walked to her bedroom and slammed the door shut.

Kiribali shot his dazzling white cuffs, and wafted a manicured hand across the sofa, gesturing Rob to sit down. The two other policemen were standing across the room. Mute and sentinel. Kiribali smiled down at Rob. ‘So you are a writer?’

‘Yes.’

‘How charming. I rarely get to meet genuine authors. This is such a primitive town. Because, you know, the Kurds…’ He sighed. ‘They are not exactly…scholars.’ He tapped his chin with his pen. ‘I studied English literature at Ankara. It is my private delight, Mr Luttrell.’

‘Well, I’m just a journalist.’

‘Hemingway was just a journalist!’

‘Really. I’m just a hack.’

‘But you are too modest. You are a gentlemen of letters. And of English letters, at that.’ Kiribali’s eyes were a very dark blue. Rob wondered if he was wearing tinted contacts. Vanity oozed from him. ‘I always liked American poets. The women in particular. Emily Dickinson. And Sylvia Plath? You know them?’ He looked at Rob, an inscrutable expression on his face. ‘An engine, an engine, chuffing me off like a Jew…I think I may well be a Jew!’ Kiribali smiled, urbanely. ‘Aren’t they some of the most frightening lines in literature?’

Rob didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to discuss poetry with a policeman.

Kiribali sighed. ‘Another time, maybe.’ He waggled the pen between his fingers. ‘I only have a few questions. I am aware you did not witness the alleged murder. Consequently…’

And so the interview proceeded. It was brief to the point of perfunctory. Almost pointless. Kiribali barely noted Rob’s answers, one of the policemen turned a tape recorder on and off, in an apathetic way. Then Kiribali concluded with some more personal inquiries. He seemed more interested in Rob’s relationship with Christine. ‘She is a Jewess, is she not?’

Rob nodded. Kiribali smiled, contentedly, as if his biggest problem had been solved, then he laid the pen down. Resting it precisely in line with the edge of the desk. He clicked his fingers, the somnolent constables stirred; and the three policemen walked to the door. Pausing at the threshold, Kiribali asked Rob to tell Christine that she might be required for further questions, at ‘some point in the future’. And then he was gone, with a final noxious waft of cologne.

Rob swivelled. Christine was standing in the bedroom doorway, looking cool and relaxed again in white shirt and khakis.

‘What a total wanker.’

Christine shrugged acceptantly. ‘Peut-être. He was just doing his job.’

‘He made you cry.’

‘Talking about Franz. Yes…I haven’t done that for a few days.’

Rob picked his jacket up. Then he put it down. He stared at Breitner’s notebook on the desk. He didn’t know what to do now. He didn’t know where he was headed or where this story was going; he just knew he was involved and possibly even endangered. Or was that paranoia? Rob stared at the picture on the wall. The unusual tower. Christine followed his gaze.

‘ Haran.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Not so far away, an hour or so.’ Her eyes sparkled. ‘You know, I have an idea. Would you like to see it? Get out of Urfa again? I’d rather like to be somewhere else. Anywhere but here.’

Rob nodded keenly. He felt drawn to the desert more and more, the longer he was here in Kurdish Turkey. The starkness of the desert shadows, the silence in the empty valleys: he liked it all. And right now that desert emptiness was very preferable to the alternative: a day of skulking in hot and watchful Sanliurfa. ‘Let’s go.’

It was a long drive: the landscape south of Urfa was even more brutal than the desert surrounding Gobekli. Great yellow flatlands stretched to shimmering grey horizons; sandy wastes besieged the odd dilapidated Kurdish village. The sun was burning. Rob rolled the car window down as far as it would go but the breeze was still hot, as if a team of blowtorches had been turned on the Land Rover.

‘In the summer it can reach 50° here,’ Christine said, changing gear with a lusty crunch. ‘In the shade.’

‘I can believe it.’

‘Didn’t always used to be like that of course. The climate changed ten thousand years back. As Franz told you…’

For about fifty klicks they talked about Breitner’s notebook: the map and the scrawl, and of course the numbers. But neither of them had any new ideas. Rob’s subconscious was on vacation. His Kekule idea hadn’t worked.

They passed an army roadblock. The blood-red flag of the Turkish state hung limp under the noontime sun. One of the soldiers stood up, wearily checked Rob’s passport, leered briefly at Christine through the car window, then waved them on down the burning road.

Half an hour later Rob saw it, suddenly, the strange tower, looming. It was a broken pillar of a building constructed from burnt mud bricks seven storeys high, but shattered at the top. It was enormous.

‘What is it?’

Christine swerved off the main road, towards the tower. ‘It belongs to the oldest Islamic university in the world. Haran. A thousand years old at least. It’s derelict now.’

‘It looks like the tower on the Tarot cards. The tower hit by lightning?’

Christine nodded distantly, staring out of the window as she parked; she was staring at a row of little homes with mud domes for roofs. Three kids were kicking a football made of rags, in the yard that abutted the tiny houses. Goats bleated in the heat. ‘See those?’

‘The mud houses? Uh-huh?’

‘They’ve been here since the third millennium BC maybe. Haran is vastly old. According to legend, Adam and Eve are meant to have come here, after being thrown out of Paradise.’

Rob thought of the name: Haran. It was triggering some deep memory of his father, reading out the Bible. ‘And it’s mentioned in Genesis.’

‘What?’

‘The Book of Genesis,’ Rob repeated. ‘Chapter 11 verse 31. Abraham lived here. In Haran.’

Christine smiled. ‘I’m impressed.’

‘I’m not. Wish I didn’t remember any of that crap. Anyway,’ he added. ‘How can they be sure?’

‘What?’

‘How can they be sure it’s the town where Adam and Eve lived after the Fall? Why not London? Or Hong Kong?’

‘I don’t know…’ She smiled at his sarcasm. ‘But it’s pretty clear, as you say, that the early Abrahamic traditions date back to this area. Abraham is strongly linked with Sanliurfa. And, yes, Haran is where Abraham got the call from God.’

Rob yawned, and got out of the car, and gazed across the dust. Christine joined him. Together they watched a mangy black goat scratch itself against a rusty old bus; the bus, inexplicably, had blood down one side. Rob wondered if the local farmers used the bus as a makeshift abattoir. This was a strange place.

‘So,’ he said, ‘we’ve established this is where Abraham came from. And he was the founder of…the three monotheistic religions, right?’

‘Yes. Judaism, Christianity and Islam. He started them all. And when he left Haran he went down into the land of Canaan, spreading the new word of God, the single God of the Bible, the Talmud and the Koran.’

Rob listened to this with a vague but insistent sense of unease. He leaned against the car and pondered; he was getting more flashbacks to his childhood. His father reading from the Book of Mormon. His uncles quoting Ecclesiastes. Glory O young man in thy youth. That was the only line from the Bible Rob had ever really liked. He said the line aloud, then he added: ‘What about the sacrifice? The slaying of the son?’ He searched Christine’s intelligent face for confirmation. ’I remember some story about Abraham and his son, right?’

Christine nodded. ‘The slaying of Isaac. The Prophet Abraham was going to butcher his own son, as a sacrifice, a sacrifice ordered by Jehovah. But God stayed the knife.’

‘There you go. Pretty decent of the old man.’

Christine laughed. ‘Do you want to stay here, or shall I take you somewhere even weirder?’

‘Hey, we’re on a roll!’

They jumped back in the car. Christine shifted a gear and they sped away. Rob sat back, watching the landscape blur into dust. Every so often the mouldering hills were punctuated by the odd ruined building, or a crumbling Ottoman castle. Or a dust devil, whirring its solitary way across the wastes. And then, unbelievably, the desolation intensified. The road got rockier. Even the blue of the desert sky seemed to darken, to turn a brooding purple. The heat was almost insupportable. The car rattled around bleached yellow promontories, and along hot rutted tracks. Barely a tree disturbed the endless sterility.

‘Sogmatar,’ said Christine, at last.

They were approaching a tiny village, just a few concrete shacks, lost in a silent bare valley in the middle of the baked and mighty nothingness.

A big jeep was parked incongruously outside one shack and there were a few other cars; but the roads and yards were devoid of people; it reminded Rob instantly and queerly of Los Angeles. Big cars and endless sunshine-and no people.

Like a city hit by plague.

‘A few rich Urfans have second homes here,’ said Christine. ‘Along with the Kurds.’

‘Why the fuck would anyone live out here?’

‘It’s got a lot of atmosphere. You’ll see.’

They stepped out of the car, into the kiln of dusty heat. Christine led the way, scrambling over decaying old walls, past scattered and carved blocks of marble. The latter looked like Roman capitals. ‘Yes,’ Christine said, sensing Rob’s next question. ’The Romans were here, and the Assyrians. Everyone came here.’

They approached a big dark hole in an odd and very squat building: it was a building carved literally out of the rock face. They stepped inside the low-slung structure. It took a few seconds for Rob’s eyes to adjust.

Inside, the smell of goat shit was oppressive. Pungent and dank, and oppressive.

‘This is a pagan temple. To the moon gods,’ said Christine. She pointed at some crudely carved figures cut into the walls of the shadowy interior. ’The moon god is here, you can see his horns-see-the curve of the new moon.’

The badly eroded effigy had a sort of helmet: two horns like a crescent moon balanced on his head. Rob ran a hand over the stone face. It was warm, and strangely clammy. He drew his hand back. The decaying effigies of the dead gods stared at him with their eroded eyes. It was so quiet in here: Rob could hear his own heartbeat. The noise of the outside world was barely perceptible: just the tinkling bells of goats, and the churning desert wind. Hot sunlight blazed at the door, making the dark room seem even darker.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Fine. I’m fine…’

She walked towards the opposite wall. ‘The temple dates from the second century AD. Christianity was sweeping the region, but here they still worshipped the old gods. With the horns. I love it here.’

Rob gazed about him. ‘Very nice. You should buy a condo.’

‘Are you always sarcastic when you are uncomfortable?’

‘Can we get latte?’

Christine chuckled. ‘I’ve one more place to show you.’ She led him out of the temple and Rob felt a serious relief as they exited the clammy, fetid darkness. They headed up a slope of scree and hot dust. Turning for a moment to take a breath, Rob saw a child staring at them from one of the humble houses. A small dark face in a broken window.

Christine scrambled up and over a final rise. ’The Temple of Venus.’

Rob climbed the last metres of scree to stand beside her. The wind was brisk up here, yet still burning hot. He could see for miles. It was an extraordinary landscape. Miles and miles of endless, rolling, blanched-out desolation. Dying hills of dead rocks. The mountains were marked with the black empty sockets of caves. These were, Rob presumed, more temples and pagan shrines, each more derelict than the last. He stared at the floor on which they stood, the floor of a temple, open to the sky. ‘And all this was built when?’

‘Possibly by the Assyrians, or the Canaanites. No one knows for certain. It’s very old. The Greeks took it over, then the Romans. It was certainly a place of human sacrifice.’ She pointed out some grooves in the carved rock beneath them, ‘See. That was to let the blood flow out.’

‘OK…’

‘All these early Levantine religions were very keen on sacrifice.’

Rob looked out across the desert hills and down at the little village. The child with the face was gone; the broken window was empty. One of the cars was on the move: taking the valley road out of Sogmatar. The road ran alongside a dried up old river bed. The course of a dead river.

Rob imagined being sacrificed up here. Your legs tied with rough twine, your hands bound behind your back, the foul breath of the priest in your face; and then the thud of pain as the knife plunged into your ribcage…

He breathed deeply and wristed the sweat from his forehead. It was surely time to go. He gestured in the direction of their car. Christine nodded and they walked down the hill to the waiting Land Rover. But halfway down the slope, Rob stopped. He stared at the hill.

Suddenly: he knew. He had worked out what the numbers meant.

The numbers in Breitner’s notebook.