The Revelation Code

4

Cross led Nina across the control room to a vault-like metal door, using a thumbprint scanner to unlock it. Beyond was something even more incongruous within a church: a chamber that appeared to be a laboratory. Walls, floor and ceiling were all tiled in gleaming white, a stainless-steel bench standing before a glass and metal cabinet. A laptop on the countertop was the only loose item.

Nina felt a new unease. She had been in a similar lab before, part of a Russian biological warfare centre. Whatever Cross kept in here, he considered dangerous.

He went to the cabinet. ‘Do you know what that is?’ he asked, pointing at its contents.

She peered through the toughened glass. On top of a small pedestal sat a fragment of pottery or ceramic. It seemed to have been burned, a dark charcoal smear on the surface. ‘It looks like… a piece of a statue?’

‘It is,’ said Cross, nodding. ‘But it’s also something else. I told you I’d seen an angel, Dr Wilde. There it is.’

‘You mean you saw a statue of an angel?’

‘Yes. But I believe — as firmly as I believe in the word of God and Jesus — that they’re the same thing.’ On her questioning look, he went on: ‘The Book of Revelation talks of four angels, bound by God. Chapter nine, verse thirteen: “And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, ‘Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.’” And I’ve seen one of them with my own eyes. This was it!’

Nina held back the more scathing of her immediate thoughts. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I was on a mission for the CIA in Iraq, before the invasion. There’s a lake between the Euphrates and the Tigris called Umm al Binni — we had a rendezvous with a group of Marsh Arabs there. Saddam had drained the marshes to drive them out, and because of that, the water level had dropped enough to reveal something in the lake. A temple. I went inside, and found the angel. The unbroken angel.’ He held one hand about twelve inches above the other. ‘It was this tall, and looked exactly as John described in Revelation — the body of a man but with the head of a lion, wrapped in six wings full of eyes.’

‘If you say so,’ said Nina warily.

He rounded on her. ‘I don’t need to say so!’ he barked. ‘I can show you!’ He flipped up the laptop’s lid. ‘Here!’

The screen came to life, displaying a photograph of the interior of the temple. The resolution was relatively low, but still clear enough for her to realise that whatever else she thought of her captor, he had made an impressive discovery.

He had also accurately described the angel, which rested inside a gold-lined nook. It did indeed have a lion’s head on a man’s body, metal wing-like shapes tightly encircling it. But she found herself more intrigued by the surroundings than the centrepiece. The walls were covered in inscribed text — she recognised it as Akkadian, a long-extinct language of ancient Mesopotamia. It wasn’t one she could translate, though, those words visible through the dirt and shadows remaining indecipherable.

She also recognised another language: ancient Hebrew, carved into stone tablets propped against the wall. Their lower halves were lost beneath the flooded temple’s murky waters, leaving only a few lines visible. Again she couldn’t read the language; Latin and Greek had been her specialities.

‘This was under the lake?’ she asked, intrigued. She knew she was falling prey to her own weakness, her obsession with learning more about lost treasures of the past, but couldn’t help wanting to know more.

Cross nodded. ‘It had been under twenty feet of water until Saddam drained the region. The Marsh Arabs avoided the area even before then; they thought it was a place of death.’

‘And was it?’

‘I was the only person who got out alive after the Iraqis attacked, so yes. The temple was blown up by a helicopter gunship.’ He gestured at the sliver inside the cabinet. ‘That was the only piece of the angel I recovered.’

Nina was still examining the photograph. ‘I don’t know what you expect me to do with this. I can’t translate Akkadian, and I only know a small amount of ancient Hebrew. I don’t have a clue what this says.’

‘You don’t need to. This was taken twelve years ago. I’ve had it translated since then. In pieces, so that no outsider would know what it all meant.’ Cross brought up another picture.

Words had been overlaid upon a copy of the original image. But they were positioned almost randomly across the wall, a scattershot translation. Nina frowned. ‘These are only fragments. Is there even a complete sentence there?’

‘Only a few,’ he replied, with clear frustration at the fact. He pointed them out. She read them: The guidance of God led His chosen through the desert and showed them water when they thirsted; Three times shall it be said, seven is the number of God, and man is always lesser; And the Elders sent their people into the lands around. ‘They were all we could find, even after the picture was enhanced. But it told me enough.’

‘Which was?’

‘That this place was used by the twenty-four Elders — the ancient Hebrew leaders who sit around God’s throne in His temple, just as Revelation says.’ Cross indicated some of the translated text. ‘You see? The Akkadian symbols for the number twenty-four — and here in the Hebrew text,’ he added, pointing out one of the half-submerged slabs, ‘it actually uses the word “Elders”.’

Nina shook her head. ‘So it was an important religious site. That doesn’t prove that God personally stockpiled his angels there. The ancient Hebrews spread out over a wide area, including into Mesopotamia.’

‘There’s more.’ Cross’s finger moved to other snatches of translation. ‘These Hebrew sections say that the Elders sent the other three angels away for safety, dispersing them as more tribes came into the region. And the older text, the Akkadian, describes how the angels were bound in the first place — or rather, what was bound inside them.’

‘And what would that be?’ said Nina, her cynicism muted by the fact that she now genuinely wanted to know. She had no intention of taking Cross’s deductions at face value, but at the same time she couldn’t deny that his find deserved proper archaeological study.

‘Do you know what the Umm al Binni lake is, Dr Wilde?’ Before she could speak, he provided the answer. ‘It’s a meteorite crater. A meteorite hit Mesopotamia around 2200 BC. The destruction it caused led to the downfall of the Sumerian civilisation — the Sumerians being replaced by the Akkadians.’

‘That’s conjecture,’ Nina corrected. ‘It’s a possible cause for the fall of Sumeria, but there are others. And yeah, I have heard of Umm al Binni. It might be a meteorite crater, but considering the state of things in Iraq since the war, nobody’s been in a big hurry to check it out.’

‘I believe it was a meteorite. And you will too.’ Cross went back to the cabinet, gazing down at the chunk of stone within. ‘Let me quote from Revelation again.’

‘Oh, I doubt I’m gonna be able to stop you,’ she sneered.

Anna strode right up to her. ‘Don’t talk back to the Prophet again. Understand? I can hurt you without hurting your baby.’

‘Anna, that’s enough. For now,’ said Cross. ‘Revelation chapter eight, verse ten: “And there fell a great star from heaven, burning as if it were a lamp.” Now, what does that describe, in modern terms?’

‘A meteorite,’ Nina had to admit — then her mind made a connection to another ancient story. ‘Wait… there’s a section in the Epic of Gilgamesh, I think the eleventh tablet, that could be interpreted the same way. It describes the Anunakki — a group of Sumerian sky gods — “setting the land ablaze with their torch” and “shattering the land like a pot”. That’s followed by a great flood, maybe the same one from Genesis, but the timing of the Gilgamesh legend roughly coincides with a date of around 2200 BC.’

Cross exchanged glances with Anna and Simeon. ‘You know your subject, Dr Wilde,’ he told Nina. ‘That proves you’re the right person to find what I’m looking for. But I’m curious. You’re willing to accept Gilgamesh as a source of truth. So why not the Book of Revelation?’

‘Because some of the events in Gilgamesh can be corroborated by other sources. Revelation can’t. It’s a completely stand-alone piece of work, and to be frank, it reads like some sort of drug trip.’

She expected an angry response. Cross’s reply, however, surprised her. ‘Have you ever taken hallucinogenic drugs, Dr Wilde?’

‘What? Of course not.’

‘I have.’ Her surprise grew at the admission. ‘Part of my training with the CIA’s Special Activities Division. It lets them judge if an operative’s likely to give up information under truth agents. I passed the test, by the way.’

Nina gave him a thin smile. ‘Congratulations.’

‘But I discovered something about hallucinations, which I’ve since corroborated from other sources.’ A glance at Simeon; had he been another CIA agent who’d undergone the same training? ‘Anything you see while under the influence is taken from your own subconscious mind — it’s something you’ve already encountered, but reflected back at you in a distorted way, like a funhouse mirror. You can’t hallucinate something you’ve never encountered before, because there’s nothing for your mind to work with. So if you’ve never heard of an elephant, say, it would be impossible for you to hallucinate an elephant.’

She regarded him dubiously, unsure where the sudden divergence of topic was heading. ‘I’ll… take your word for it.’

‘So when I got back from Iraq and started researching — really researching — the Book of Revelation,’ he went on, ‘I realised that John’s visions were very much like my experiences under drugs. The intensity, the reality of what you’re seeing, the way your perception of time skips backwards and forwards, how all your senses are engaged — it made me think that John underwent a similar experience.’

‘Wait, wait a second,’ said Nina. ‘One minute you’re telling me you believe the Book of Revelation is true, that you take it literally — and the next you say that nope, the guy who wrote it was tripping?’

‘I never said I took Revelation literally. I said I believe it’s true — that it contains the truth.’

‘I don’t understand,’ she was forced to admit.

He clasped his hands together as if about to deliver a sermon. ‘I quit the CIA and went on a pilgrimage — to Patmos. There’s a monastery there, the Monastery of St John, marking where John wrote the Book of Revelation.’

‘The Cave of the Apocalypse.’

‘You know it?’

‘I know of it. John supposedly lived in the cave during his exile, and that’s where he wrote Revelation. I’ve never been there, though.’

‘You should.’

‘Let me go, and maybe I will.’

That prompted a mocking snort from Simeon. Cross gave him a stern look, making him lower his head in penance, then continued: ‘I visited the cave, and saw the crack in the ceiling through which John heard the voice of God telling him to write down his visions. I also saw that water comes down through it from above. Now, the land around the monastery is private, but that never stopped me before. And you know what I found growing in the woods? Psilocybin mushrooms. Hallucinogens. It looked like the monks had tried to clear them, but there were still patches hiding away. And if they’re growing naturally there now, there’s no reason to think they wouldn’t have been there two thousand years ago.’

‘So… you really do think that John was tripping when he wrote Revelation?’

Cross nodded. ‘The water might have been contaminated. Or he could even have eaten the mushrooms, not knowing what they were. But yes, I believe that his visions were psychoactive hallucinations.’ His gaze intensified. ‘So I had to find out where they came from.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I told you — you can’t hallucinate something you haven’t experienced. Yet John described mountains falling from the sky, the sea turning to blood, cities being destroyed — and he also described the twenty-four Elders, and the angels bound at the Euphrates.’ He returned to the laptop and pointed at the statue in the centre of the image. ‘He described this!’

She frowned. ‘But he couldn’t possibly have seen it.’

‘No. But someone could have described all those things to him. Or, more likely, he read about them, and all the other things that came from his subconscious when he had his vision. They were described so vividly, with such detail, that his mind was able to visualise them perfectly.’

‘So where did he read about them?’

‘The answer’s in Revelation. Chapters two and three are the letters that the Lord told John to send to the seven churches: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea.’

‘All in modern-day Turkey,’ said Nina.

‘And all places that John must have visited to know so much about them. The Ephesians hated the Nicolaitans, the Smyrnans were rich, the Thyatirans tolerated the presence of the false prophet Jezebel — and he also knew that Antipas the bishop, his friend, was martyred in Pergamum.’ He watched Nina expectantly, as if waiting for her to make a connection.

One came almost immediately. ‘Pergamum is another name for Pergamon,’ she said. ‘And Pergamon had one of the largest libraries of the ancient world.’ His expression confirmed that she had guessed correctly. ‘Is that what you’re saying? You think John read something there that formed his visions in Patmos?’

‘That’s exactly what I think, Dr Wilde,’ Cross replied. ‘The library contained the ancient texts of the Elders — a record of the meteorite strike and the binding of the four angels at the Euphrates.’

‘Well, I can tell you a big problem with your theory right away,’ she said. ‘Mark Antony took everything from the Library of Pergamon to give to Cleopatra as a gift. He cleared the place out, every last scroll. There’s no exact date for that, but he died in 30 BC — long before Jesus was born, never mind John. And Antipas died in AD 92, so Revelation couldn’t have been written until after then.’

‘The Library of Pergamon still existed for centuries after John wrote Revelation,’ Cross told her dismissively. ‘Either Mark Antony didn’t really take its entire contents, or some were hidden from him. John was still able to visit and read what he found there.’

‘That’s just supposition, though,’ she objected. ‘You’re making things up and presenting them as facts to fit your theory.’

‘It’s not a theory!’ he barked, making her flinch. ‘It’s the truth! I know it’s the truth, because God led me to it!’ Another stab of his forefinger at the image of the angel on the laptop. ‘I found the angel! I witnessed its power with my own eyes!’

Nina tried to control her returning fear. Cross was revealing himself as a zealot, and she knew from experience that such people were most dangerous when their beliefs were directly challenged. ‘What power?’ she asked, hoping to calm him by bringing him back to his pet subject.

He ignored her. ‘I found the truth on Patmos. I know what caused John to write the Book of Revelation — and I know it holds something real. I came here and established the Mission away from the corruption and sin of the world, and it gave me clarity. I’ve seen the truth. I believe it, my followers believe it, and you’ll believe it too. You won’t be able to deny it when I find the other angels!’

‘That’s what this is about?’ she said. ‘Finding the rest of the angels from Revelation?’

Cross nodded. ‘The Elders kept one of them at the temple in Iraq, but hid the other three for safety. I believe they wrote down where they hid them, and that this text ended up in the Library of Pergamon, where John read it.’ He stared at the remains of the statue once more. ‘He might not have realised its significance, at least consciously, but when he had his visions in the Cave of the Apocalypse, his mind, guided by God, brought it all back to him. He wrote down everything he saw during the vision. It was all mixed up, scrambled, surrounded by other hallucinations, but it was still based on what he’d read about the Elders and the angels.’

He whirled back to face Nina, white robes swirling. ‘That’s what I believe the Book of Revelation is, Dr Wilde. It’s a code. And I’ve spent twelve years reading it, uncovering its secrets — cracking that code. The texts I found in the temple gave me the clues I needed to decipher it.’

‘This?’ Nina protested, waving at the laptop’s screen. ‘This is gibberish!’

‘You don’t need to read every word in a book to understand the story. It told me enough. I know where to find the angels — at least, I know which parts of Revelation contain the clues leading to them. What I don’t know yet is where these locations are in the real world.’

Realisation dawned. ‘And that’s why you need an archaeologist.’

‘Exactly,’ Cross replied. ‘Someone with the knowledge and experience to join the dots, to make the connections between the places John saw in his visions and where they are today.’

‘But why me?’ objected Nina. ‘Your followers have obviously given you plenty of money if you’ve been able to build all this. You could have just hired somebody to work it out. Why kidnap me and Eddie?’

‘I didn’t want to involve an archaeologist until now, because they have their own biases that would have made them deny the truth. Just like all scientists. But you don’t have the option to deny it. And…’ The cult leader smiled. For the first time, the sense of malevolence lurking beneath the surface came out into the open. ‘You were highly recommended by an associate of mine.’

The words sent a chill through her. That suggested Cross was working with someone with a personal grudge against her — but who? She and Eddie had made a lot of enemies…

She didn’t have time to worry further about it as Cross spoke again. ‘Three locations are given special significance in the text of Revelation: “the Synagogue of Satan”, “the Throne of Satan”, and “the Place in the Wilderness”. I think they’re where the other angels are hidden.’ He closed the laptop and gestured towards the door. ‘Your job, Dr Wilde, is to find them.’

Nina suddenly realised that she already knew the true identity of one of the locations — but managed to hide her recognition of the fact, not wanting to give anything to her kidnapper. Instead she summoned up resistance. ‘I’m not doing a damn thing until I know Eddie’s okay.’

Simeon advanced on her. ‘You were warned—’

‘Wait, Simeon,’ said Cross. ‘I was always going to let you see your husband, Dr Wilde. This way. Please.’ The unpleasant smile returned.

That alone made Nina feel more worried than ever, but she followed him back into the control room, Anna and Simeon again shadowing her. The screens were still cycling through clips of her at the Mission and in New York, but her eyes went straight to the single monitor showing the live feed of Eddie.

Cross went to his chair and tapped at a touchscreen. The dizzying display before him faded to black. Another command, and the curved video wall came back to life, the image of Eddie bound to the chair spread across it. The camera was offset to his right, looking down at him. ‘Mr Irton,’ said Cross. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘Yes, sir, I can hear you,’ came the reply. The new voice was American, like Cross and his lieutenants, the accent suggesting that the speaker was from one of the south-western states.

‘Dr Wilde is with me. Could you wake her husband, please?’

‘I sure can.’ Nothing happened for several seconds — then a plume of water lanced in from the bottom of the screen and hit the Englishman in the face.

Nina gasped as he thrashed and coughed. ‘Eddie!’