by Brad Ricca
Millen put both arms on the lectern. “We did take the cipher to Palestine, as you may have read in the papers, in an expedition of which I was the leader. Our plan to find the Ark was to find physical—substantiated!—proof of the contract with God.” Here Millen waved his hands, at times pointing his finger to the ceiling. “All the stories about robbery will be disproved. In fact, the excavations were done not only with the most conscientious accuracy, but the workers were well treated, and no one was injured. We restored a double-clean water supply. Alms were given to the poor. We were honest and laudable.
“The reason it became such a big thing—mentioned in The New York Times and so forth—is that some people, who tend to unconsciously scoop stories out of murky sources, deceive gullible people to make money. A new volume by the esteemed Father Louis-Hugues Vincent will reveal our archaeological successes. Though it does not contain nearly everything we explored, it will prove our intent and results.
“History is important to help us understand the Bible. When the Israelites finally left Assyrian captivity in 606 BC, they wandered for over a year along the Caspian seas to Scythia. They settled there and never returned. The people who were left in Jerusalem took the name of Israel. But though they both worshipped the one true God, with only a few missteps, they were different peoples. The Jews had very distinctive faces. Israel, who wandered into Europe, on the other hand, were blond, tall people.”
Millen paused. “‘That they never shall become a nation of their own,’ says the Scripture. And why? you ask. Yes, that they crucified Christ and killed the prophets, but that isn’t the answer. We have been looking to the wrong Israel.
“Zechariah tells of a sacred shepherd, a great leader who left God’s city to rule his people, somewhere in Assyria, now Southern Russia. He says: ‘Woe to the worthless shepherd who leaves the flock! A sword shall be against his arm and against his right eye; his arm shall completely wither, and his right eye shall be totally blinded.’
“His name was Odin.
“Until now, Odin has only been a figure of myth, but the Bible says he was real. Undoubtedly, Odin possessed a great number of powers. And he was a true Israelite. This is also confirmed by an old manuscript in Heralds’ College in London and Sharon Turner’s History of the Anglo-Saxons. Some of the tribes under Odin settled south of the Baltic. Odin himself continued into Scandinavia and adopted the name Æsir. This was even suggested in Beowulf, the oldest Anglo poem in existence. His followers spread even further, fulfilling the prophecies that Israel would find refuge in ‘the land of the witch,’ the ‘sea-lands,’ and ‘the islands of the west.’ They went to Ireland, England, and even America.
“And they were Israelites.
“The Assyrians however, settled in Germany. There, over time, they became inventive in the manufacture of weapons of war. Their neighbors must always be on their guard, for they are eager warriors, cruel and relentless in war. If they set up their military force, and their armored warriors march through the land they occupy, great will be the horror that they spread around them. In the days of warlike Assyria, the people fled before them; the cities fell into their hands as they marched. If we compare this assertion with today’s Germans and the state of the day, very little seems to have changed.
“We see how frenetic evil grows day after day. We approach the Last War … mainly between the Assyrians—the Germans—and the Israelites. The prophets foresaw, among other things, the aircraft with their black guns. They saw bullets fired by the airplanes against each other, as well as cannons on wagons and how their projectiles passed through the air with a loud noise, burning over heights and through walls and windows.
“This is the time,” he said.
When Millen finally stopped to take questions from the audience, he looked ahead smugly as the people erupted in disrepair with shouts of “Falsiture!” and even “Thief!” Instead, Johan Millen answered only in his head, that when someone bitingly asked what sect he belonged to, he knew that their lack of understanding was great.
PART FIVE
A BLACK STAR
Chapter Forty-Two
Ava Astor
Ava moved back to London in September 1911. After her ex-husband John Jacob Astor remarried, he and his nineteen-year-old wife, Madeleine Force Astor, took a protracted honeymoon to Egypt and Paris with Kitty, their precious Airedale. When Madeleine discovered she was pregnant, they decided to return to America. They booked their trip home back to New York, first-class all the way, on board the Titanic. When it began to sink slowly into the sea, Astor lifted his wife into one of the lifeboats with the help of an officer. He then asked the man, very lightly, if he might join her because she was pregnant. The man was sorry, but women and children first. Astor bowed his head, then helped two other women onto the boat. He stood on the deck, smoking a cigarette, with the dog. A half hour later, they were gone.
When the news of the tragedy came, Ava rushed home to New York, dragging Alice with her, to fight for her son’s interests in the Astor estate. Madeleine was given the mansion and money, but only on the proviso that she never marry again. Both Vincent and Alice received substantial trust funds. When the body of John Jacob Astor was recovered from the cold Atlantic, he was carrying $2,500 in cash and his gold pocket watch. Vincent carried the watch for the rest of his life.
Ava returned to England. She became vice president of the American Women’s War Relief Fund during World War I. She met Thomas Lister, the Lord Ribblesdale, an aristocrat of fiery reputation who had served under Victoria herself. Ava gave up her own divorce settlement to marry the old man in 1919, much to the chagrin of many. Ava thought she would be elevated to a life of reputation and unparalleled social life, but her grandson later remarked that all Lord Ribblesdale wanted was “to marry a beautiful woman and carry her off to his old Tudor horror of a home and read the classics to her in the evenings with his magnificent bass voice.”
Ava detested it, and him. She tried to make nice with the English side of the Astors, becoming friends with Nancy Astor, who would become the first woman in Parliament. But Ava mostly spent her days in schemes trying to find a husband for Alice, who was, Ava thought, spoiled and stubborn. But Alice, who had black and blue hair, had her own ideas. She fell in love with a Russian-American prince named Serge Obolensky, who was not only unwealthy but already married. Ava was crushed. She tried to change Alice’s mind, but her daughter wouldn’t budge. Ava proposed a trip to perhaps distract her.
In 1923, Ava and twenty-year-old Alice voyaged to Egypt as a guest of Ava’s friend George Herbert, the Earl of Carnarvon, who was funding the work of a promising archaeologist named Howard Carter. There, in the Valley of the Kings, dressed in a black fur coat and pointed white shoes, Ava visited the newly opened tomb of Tutankhamen. She posed by the stone steps as they fell downward into the sand, her hand steadying her black hat.
The earl, dressed in a khaki suit and felted hat, kissed them both and took their hands, leading them down the stairs into the tomb. They had just opened the seal to the third room—the burial chamber—only days ago, and they were going to be some of the very first people to see it. Alice walked down slowly.
With the light of an electric torch, they saw the smooth, light-colored walls. The earl told them how the first time Howard had broken through, he pushed his light through the opening and said he saw “wonderful things.”
“Here we are,” said Lord Carnarvon.
“Behold.”
The earl was at the far wall and raised his torch.
“The king,” he said, with a cough.
They had accessed the burial chamber through an old looter’s passage, and everything inside remained still and undisturbed. Down there, in the dark, Ava saw a room filled with statues of strange animals, elegant vases, and everywhere—like it was part of the dust itself—the glint of pure gold. She gasped. The small room was filled by an enormous structure, perhaps nine feet tall, that reached almost to the ceiling. Gold covered its surfac
e, except for the sides, which were colored a brilliant blue. They were inlaid with what Ava guessed had to be magical symbols that repeated themselves over and over. It was an incredible sight, but Ava felt too that it was death boxed up in the desert. She feared the thing inside and hoped they would not have to look upon its face.
Alice was looking at long pieces of wood that seemed to be boat oars. Lord Carnarvon saw her and explained.
“He needed them to make his way across the waters of the underworld.”
Alice was clearly taken by the mysteries of the room. Ava watched her very closely. Alice looked at the brightly decorated people on the walls, with their dark eyes and strange poses. She knew this was magic. The earl put his hand on her shoulder and laughed.
“We will open it up soon,” he said. “We need to make sure it is absolutely safe. We have tested the air for poisons already. Mr. Carter is very thorough.”
Ava was glad of that.
“Mother, look.”
Alice had moved to the king’s feet. Directly across from them was an opening in the wall. She pointed inside to the darkness.
“A good eye,” said the earl. “Just a moment.” He ambled over with his light.
“I believe you will appreciate this, Lady Ribblesdale. Look.” He flashed his light.
Ava adjusted her eyes and nearly jumped. There, in the dark, a great black beast with two horns was staring at her.
“Hold on,” he said, adjusting his angle.
The room was bright, and not because of the light. There was even more gold. The beast looked to be a dog, sitting on a great box of some kind.
“Anubis,” said Lord Carnarvon, “the jackal god.” Ava looked closer: he was entirely black and lithe, swathed in a linen cloth. All of it was impossibly old. The jackal sat atop a trapezoidal wooden box covered in a thin layer of gold leaf. The box, which was around three or four feet long and two feet high, had two wooden poles projecting from the front and back with which to carry it. Ava saw Alice looking down at a brick that had an inscription on it. It read in part: “I have set aflame the desert, I have caused the path to be mistaken.”
Whether Ava saw Monty after he returned from Palestine is unknown. The same goes for the true nature of their relationship beyond a few lines in gossipy newspaper columns. Whether she had any feelings for him is a mystery. But if she did, at that moment, in front of a golden box in the middle of ancient ground, she was surely thinking of him.
They finally ascended to the desert, full of white light and blue sky. Before they left, Alice was given a gift, possibly for her upcoming wedding, or as the momentary impulse of a powerful man. It was a necklace, from the tomb. Around a large circle of semiprecious stones were hung hundreds of tiny rams’ heads set among black rocks and covered in a soft gold. She put it on. Ava stared. The necklace gave her daughter—her beautiful daughter—an aspect that was otherworldly. The earl told her they had estimated it at 3,400 years old.
Less than two months later, Lord Carnarvon died of a blood infection borne by a single mosquito bite that had become infected. He was fifty-six years old. The newspapers back home made whispers about a curse.
When they returned to London, Serge divorced his wife and married Alice in 1924. Ava grumbled through it. When Lord Ribblesdale, whose nickname had become “the Ancestor,” died in 1925, Ava was alone again. She moved to New York once more.
One night, the newlyweds prepared for a fancy-dress affair. When Alice emerged from her mirror, she was wearing the necklace. It was the first time Serge had seen it.
“My God,” he asked her, “what is it?”
When she told him the story, he felt like the necklace had “a power” to it. He implored her to take it off. She laughed it off, but all night he “felt the shiver of the unknown” around them.
“I am not a mystical person,” Serge said, shaking his head, “preferring to stay away from such things. I believe that such things are better left alone.” He looked at the necklace again.
“But the feeling is there within me.”
Alice married three more times and had four children. Whenever she wore her necklace, people said she was a different person. She began to have dreams, like this one, recounted in a biography of the Astors by Lucy Kavaler:
A large, decorated mummy case would appear in the shadows of her room, and its top would open to reveal the body of a lovely, dark-haired girl who looked just like Alice. This double was dressed in rags, but her neck and arms were circled with jewelry bearing the ram’s head design. Just as she was about to rise form the mummy case, a hand would reach out and push her back into the darkness.
In 1954, Ava gave a dinner party, to which she invited a psychic named Harry Stump. He was also an artist, so Alice showed him some of her things. When he touched the gold necklace, he staggered around the room and fell into a chair. Alice rushed to get him a glass of water. When she returned, he asked for a pencil and paper. He began to draw Egyptian hieroglyphs.
With her fortune, Alice helped to fund the Roundtable Foundation, headquartered at a house in Rockport, Maine, and under the direction of Dr. Andrija Puharich, a Chicago researcher interested in psychic phenomena. The foundation began running experiments in ESP and psychedelics. Puharich built Faraday cages made of copper to block electromagnetic radiation so that the psychics he tested could have stronger experiences. These cages quickly became the center of their work and were used by many, including Alice.
Alice remained active in the New York social world but poured much of her passion into her intense psychic life. Her friends became worried. “She opened Pandora’s box and unleashed forces she could not control,” a friend said. “She was ready to believe any claim, however suspect or implausible.”
Alice died one night of a stroke at fifty-four years old. The Egyptian Book of the Dead lay on her nightstand. Alice, who had gone down a tunnel in the sand thirty years before, had been awakened to an endless curiosity that she would not escape. As Lucy Kavaler notes:
Bit by bit the pressures of the lore of the past began to prey upon her, as she delved into it. She was an expert in Egyptian hieroglyphs. Who knows what secret doors might have been opened?—if indeed any such secret doors actually exist. Or do they even have to, when the mind itself may be the very largest door of all? All I know is that Alice died suddenly, unnecessarily and before her time, put upon by the pressures of this life, and cursed by the pressures of the past. God bless her, for I know in my soul that she has found at last happiness and rest.
Living in Manhattan, Ava Astor had survived her own daughter. She developed a stammer to her voice, but she was still a force of nature, and was often seen walking her pack of dogs through the city, a cloud of perfume surrounding her. She preferred the company of men mostly. Friends noted that there was a “strain of melancholy to her.”
“How can I believe in heaven with what I’ve seen here?” Ava told a young cousin. Ava lived to be eighty-nine and died on June 9, 1958, in her apartment on Park Avenue. She left $25,000 to her son, Vincent, and three million dollars to Alice’s children.
Forty-Three
The Expedition Men
Monty’s men went their separate ways after the expedition ended. The last remaining connection for many of them was the nearly inescapable Great War. Cyril Ward took command of the HMS Mischief and survived the war, dying in 1930. Pertti Uotila fought in the Russian army and in a succession of wars and border skirmishes until his death in 1943. One of the only expedition members who escaped the violence was Clarence Wilson, who was still holding out hope to return to Palestine. In his last, mysterious letter to Monty, he wrote: “Our ‘friends’? the Masons are still very busy & Ananias is not in it with them, but I think that they are getting a little tired.” Soon after, Wilson suffered a mental breakdown and was institutionalized. He died in 1936.
Cyril Foley served in World War I in the trenches of France. After the war, he joined the Royal Air Corps and worked in military intelligence. His memoir, Au
tumn Foliage (1935), showcased his uncanny range of gentleman hobbies, all in his ineffable style of storytelling. When he died, still a bachelor—exactly one year to the day after the publication of his book—those who knew him were astonished, not only that he had died, but that he was capable of doing so in the first place. As one of his admirers put it, he had “a typical Englishman’s way about the world, which hardly includes a proportionate reference to the couple of wars he saw through.”
The year after the expedition left Palestine, Robin Duff was spotted at the Hotel Cattani in Engelberg, Switzerland, a gorgeous resort set in a small green valley in the shadow of snow-covered mountains.
“I met a big sleepy man in the Guards who has been in that mad treasure-hunt for King Solomon’s treasures,” wrote Rudyard Kipling in a letter to a friend dated February 8, 1912. The famous writer, nearly fifty, was amazed by the story Duff told him, of the “siphoning of the pool of Siloam.”
“[He] told me that the cipher on which they worked,” Kipling wrote, “and it appeared to be a perfectly accurate cipher, was discovered in the St. Petersburgh museum by one Jurisius a Finn. He had his points both as a decipherer of codes and as an explorer but he would rape the local virgins. Hence trouble with the Turkish authorities and the final elimination of him.”
“Talk of fiction!” Kipling wrote of the story of the expedition. “Fiction isn’t in it.”
When the war began, Robin Duff reenlisted and was tragically killed early on in 1914, only days after leaving for the front. He left behind his wife, Lady Juliet Lowther, and a son and daughter.
Others avoided the war, though they felt its reach. Otto Von Bourg ended up in America, giving traveling lectures on his abilities that might have felt more like magic shows.
Agop Macasdar, the Armenian who was most likely a Christian, was jailed in Beirut along with Sheikh Khalil El-Danaf and his two sons for digging under the Dome of the Rock. While in prison, Macasdar wrote to the British consul general:
