The Pillars of Abraham

by Ian Young

  I hover a second to make sure Howie catches my smile, the smile that says everything’s going to be all right. Has he had the talk with his wife already?

  When I meet up with Howie at midday he tells me he’s arranged an appointment with Datalabs for 2 p.m. Where do I want to go for lunch, he asks. I think of a restaurant on Ocean Avenue where we can gaze out over the Pacific and recall our experience seven miles beneath it. But neither of us brings a car to work, and I guess we don’t have enough time to take the bus all the way over to Santa Monica and back and still enjoy lunch. We decide to go local and wander out of the campus along Manning Drive to wait for a cab on Hilgard Avenue. I’m tempted to slip my hand into his, but he’s never been an overtly affectionate guy, even when we were in Tennessee where no one knew us. Instead, I stand close to him as we walk.

  Away from the shade of the faculty buildings on Manning Drive, the sun bears down on us. I squint and reach into my purse for my sunglasses. I love the sun, but sometimes it saps my vision and now I struggle to see inside the darkness of my purse, so I move across to one of the tall trees and hide in its shade. With the sun’s glare removed I quickly find my sunglasses and use one hand to open up the arms and slide them on to my head.

  A screech of tyres, like the T-rex in Jurassic Park, makes me jump and I drop the glasses. A woman screams and a sickening thud puts an end to the tyre screech like a period at the end of a sentence. Has she been hit? I turn around and look towards the screaming. She’s still screaming, it isn’t her lying on the ground in a spreading pool of blood. It’s Howie.

  The driver dashes around the vehicle and checks Howie over. My face drains. I can feel the blood deserting my skin and a scream rattling in my throat. At first my legs won’t move, then I will myself – brain over body – but as I get close … something’s wrong. The driver is patting around Howie’s body, like he’s … like he’s searching for something, not life signs, but … he’s patting in all the wrong places. And then I realise what he’s doing: he’s trying to steal his wallet. I run. I’m right there, but I can’t see the driver’s face. It’s hidden, hidden by a ski mask. He looks up as my short run becomes a faltering walk, staring straight at me through slits in the hood, like a black-clad Spiderman. With a glance around at the gathering crowd, he springs to his feet and runs back to the car. In seconds he’s gone. A hit and run. They happen, but never to people I know.

  I collapse to my knees like I’m praying over Howie’s crumpled body. ‘Howie!’ I scream, as though I might wake him. I even shake him. There’s no pulse in his carotid artery, and his eyes are staring at the sky. But the blood, it’s still spreading across the sidewalk. I cast around like I’ve just lost a small child.

  ‘Did you see him?’ I cry to anyone listening. ‘The man – the driver, he was wearing a mask.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ says a man next to me. ‘Do you know the victim?’

  ‘What? Yes, yes, he’s my … he’s my boss.’ I stand up and reach for my phone.

  ‘Someone’s called for an ambulance already, ma’am, but it looks like it’s too late.’

  Another voice speaks at me, a familiar voice, female, but I can’t take in the words. Then a hand takes mine and pulls me away. The woman speaks again as she leads me back along Manning Drive into campus. I recognise her now, one of the clerical staff, Lillian, works in reception.

  The sound of a siren emerges above the din of traffic, growing and rising as the ambulance comes closer – the Doppler shift – why am I thinking about that? By the time the wail is cut off, I’m inside the Terasaki Life Sciences Building and sitting down waiting for the receptionist to bring me some water.

  ‘Someone should go with him,’ I say when Lillian comes back. My voice is flat and insipid, like the ocean yesterday – a benign surface concealing an atavistic power. At some point I’m going to go crazy.

  ‘We’ve contacted his wife,’ she says, like she’d just plunged a knife into my chest.

  ‘Of course,’ I say with no trace of the undercurrents building beneath.

  ‘I’ll call you a cab if you like. You were going home, I guess.’

  ‘No, but I had a cab, it’s probably waiting outside. I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Do you want me to call the counsellor? You’ve had a terrible shock.’

  I shake my head. If I’m going to lose it, I want to be alone in my apartment. The ball could wait. In fact, it really doesn’t matter anymore.

  I tell the driver my address then hesitate. ‘No, tell you what …’ Then I realise I have no way of knowing which hospital they would take Howie to. I really hadn’t imagined myself married to Howie and sailing off into the sunset, but I did think my future would be with him until something changed. I guess something has changed. There haven’t been any tears – yet – but when I get home and finish off the bottle of tequila I opened last night, I know I’ll cave in.

  The last person I want to see now is Mason. If he’s loitering outside, I’ll send the cab around the block. Once I get in the apartment, I’m answering to no one. I consider ringing my brother. He’d just listen, wouldn’t offer any conversation, but that’d be fine right now. He doesn’t know about Howie; he looks up to me like I’m some Disney princess. But if my father answers the phone I’d be in for it. I’d get the full treatment: heaven, paradise, at God’s side, oh and the old favourite: God moves in mysterious ways. I really can’t deal with all that right now.

  ‘This yours, ma’am?’ says the cab driver, puncturing my thoughts like a needle – the needle whose eye I’d more easily pass through than join Howie in Heaven. Not that he’d get in either.

  ‘Yeah, stop just here, thanks.’ I scan the streets and doorways for Mason lurking; he’s good at that. I give the driver a twenty and tell him to keep the change. Well, he’d waited for me whilst I dragged myself back to life.

  I have my door key to hand as I climb the steps to my first floor apartment. There’s a scraping of metal on metal as my fingers fumble with the key in the lock. It takes me several seconds to steady myself and unlock the door. FUCK! As I push the door open a hand grabs my throat and drags me across the floor, flinging me on the sofa like a broken toy. I have no time to gather myself before the hand is on me again, gripping my windpipe and squeezing so hard I think my eyes will burst from their sockets. My vision blurs but I recognise the ski mask, and those eyes. It’s Spiderman in black.

  ‘Where is it?’ he hisses.

  I croak out a sound, my voice defeated by the grip at my throat. And then the man’s hand swings at me, smashing into the side of my head, knocking me senseless. Fuck, that hurt! He’s shouting but I hear nothing, see nothing. I’m roused by more violence. My body is being lifted from the sofa and thrown back down again, over and over. I’m reminded of the young girl in The Exorcist, rebounding on the bed under the influence of a demon. More shouting. It seems like the same question. If he wants information he’ll keep me alive. That’s good, isn’t it? And at some point, he might release his grip on my throat if he wants to hear an answer.

  The mask filling my vision blurs, becoming nothing more than a blob. I have seconds of consciousness left. But then he releases my throat and I drag air into my lungs like I’d just surfaced above water. But the air is punched from me in a violent grunt as Spiderman rams his gloved fist into my belly. FUCK! I jack-knife and roll on to the floor, hitting my head on the table leg.

  ‘Where is it?’

  I open my eyes and see the bile I’ve just spewed on to my carpet. The stench rouses me like smelling salts, and I look up at this man, this murderer, and try to summon my voice.

  ‘Stop hitting me,’ I sob, staring at his brown eyes, eyes that almost match the rest of him. ‘Please!’

  I feel like an abused child. I curl up, crying, waiting for evil to leave me alone.

  ‘Where is it?’ His voice is like aci
d, searing my ears with a fierceness that burns.

  I shake my head and look back at the carpet. My shoulders tremble and my cheeks tickle as tears tumble from my eyes. Any moment he will slam his fist or his foot into me, and I have no words to stop him – no words because I have no idea what he wants from me.

  ‘A black ball,’ he seethes. ‘Where is it?’

  Oh, thank God. The ball, the ball, he wants the ball. ‘In the bag.’

  As he grabs my bag and tips it upside down, I slump back to the floor and wait for him to leave. I hear the ball drop on to the carpet and I watch as it rolls away from his feet. He stoops quickly and picks it up. Just get out, I think, over and over, as though trying to will him out of my home. But he comes back. Stooping once more he grabs a fistful of my hair, gripping it close to the roots. I yelp. And then a metallic click next to my ear freezes my body like I’m already dead. It’s a gun, pointing right at my head.

  The moment I will discover once and for all who is right, me or my dad, has arrived. When I open my eyes I will know the truth. I hope my dad is right.

  There’s a deep grunt – it wasn’t me, but then I scream. The lock of hair he has in his hand rips clean out of my scalp. I open my eyes. He’s gone – no he hasn’t: across the room, an amorphous lump rolls around the floor.

  Rubbing my head eases the pain from his assault, and my eyes begin to focus. There are more grunts and lots of desperate breathing. The restless shape splits into two. A man stands over my attacker, but not for long. The speed he leaps to his feet would be impressive for the real Spiderman. The two men barge around the room like duelling bulls, smashing my furniture and each other. I scramble to my feet and run behind the sofa. The other man is Mason, and he is pounding my attacker with fists, knees and feet.

  Spiderman is still now. Mason kneels beside him, one knee on his chest, a hand at his throat. He places the barrel of the gun against the man’s head.

  ‘Who are you?’ says Mason calmly, like he’s just met someone in the street.

  The man gurgles and spits, but no words come out.

  ‘One more time,’ says Mason. ‘Who are you?’

  This time the half-dead man fizzes out a word that sounds like he’s going to tell Mason to fuck himself but a different word eventually emerges, though I don’t recognise it. Mason strikes him across the head with the handle of the gun and the man’s head rolls to the side and back again. That same word fizzes off his lips, spittle bubbling out with the hate-sounding word. It means nothing to me.

  Mason places the butt of the gun against the man’s temple then lifts it away as though teeing up a golf shot. He brings it down quickly to the same spot and the man’s eyes go out.

  ‘He won’t tell us anything,’ says Mason, getting to his feet. ‘Sorry you had to see that, but if I’m right, it’s better he’s dead.’

  ‘You’ve killed him?’ I want to throw up again.

  ‘I had no choice—’

  ‘There’s always a choice!’

  ‘Not with these guys,’ says Mason, looking back at the dead man. ‘He’s a Vrazi.’

  That’s the word the man hissed out. I stare at Mason waiting for him to explain what the hell a fucking Vrazi is.

  ‘Murderers,’ he says. ‘Have you ever heard of the Pillars of Abraham?’

  ‘The Pillars … the what?’

  ‘The Pillars of Abraham. All I know is it’s some kind of a religious cabal. No one knows where they meet, who they are, or why they exist.’

  ‘So how come you know so much?’

  ‘These guys,’ says Mason, nodding at the dead man on the floor, ‘are mostly ex-military. I know someone who went to work for them. It’s good money, if you believe in God. The thing is, you never leave the Pillars of Abraham, not alive anyway.’

  ‘Wait.’ I have to get my head around this. ‘He was after the ball. He killed Howie and tried to kill me.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ says Mason. ‘I didn’t know about the professor. Then we need to get you out of here. Another Vrazi will come to finish the job.’

  ‘What job? Why are they trying to kill me?’ Even I could hear the shrill in my voice.

  ‘They want the professor’s artefact.’

  ‘What’s it to them?’

  ‘Who knows? Maybe they think it belongs to God. I don’t know.’

  ‘Then the other scientists, Cooper, Finch … Captain Ortiz, too, they’ll be in danger. I have to warn them.’

  ‘It might already be too late,’ says Mason, conveying me to the door. ‘Let’s concentrate on saving you, shall we?’

  * * *

  Prague, same day

  Zdeněk Hanzel jumps on a trolleybus and makes his way back to the street and the building the priest had come from. It’s an unassuming building, drab concrete punctuated by boarded-up windows and a small, almost unnoticeable faded wooden door. The most remarkable thing about the building is that someone’s using it at all.

  He waits for about thirty minutes, just watching, standing in a doorway, puffing one cigarette after another just to look less conspicuous. His wife always knows when he’s tailing someone, pretending to be someone else, because he comes home stinking of tobacco. Hanzel throws the cigarette butt on to the snow and it fizzles for a moment, leaving a thin line of smoke reaching back towards the gloved hand that dropped it. There has to be another deceptive trick he could employ. It wouldn’t be long before smoking in doorways became conspicuous, casting him into the spotlight, like he was in a movie, like he was Harry Lime.

  No one has arrived or left since he’s been standing there. Perhaps he should try the door, take a look around? There are protocols these days, not like the old days when his father had prowled the city in his Moscow-supplied Volga. His father, no doubt, would have arrived mob-handed, kicked down the door and arrested everyone inside. As simple as things were back then, he doesn’t wish for a return to the days when all foreigners were assumed to be spies. Hanzel knows he has to be discreet, more tactful than his father might have been. He will have to find some ruse to explain why he has wandered into what seems like a derelict building. Whatever guise he adopts, they would suspect him of deceit. Just knock on the door and ask what’s going on; you’re the law, you have the right.

  Hanzel pulls the collar of his coat up and wriggles his hands deep into the pockets before strolling along the pavement away from the building. He will walk around the block then cross the road and wander back towards the wooden door. It looks less obvious than simply striding across the road from his observation post.

  Having made good his circular ruse to approach the building, Hanzel checks his phone is on silent then knocks on the door. His soft leather gloves mute the sound and he knocks again, harder. There’s no answer. Hanzel digs out his lock pick and starts fiddling away inside the hole in the wooden panel. The lock turns, but the door doesn’t open. He tries again, another turn, but the door remains locked. He is about to give up when he spurs himself on for one more try. Three turns of the lock, and the door opens. Cautiously he steps inside.

  ‘Dobrý den,’ he calls. ‘Ahoy.’

  No one answers his greeting so he creeps deeper inside the decrepit building. A door at the end of the corridor draws him in and he finds that door opens easily. It takes him into a long corridor with a bench along one side. Another door at the end offers the only other way out. Apart from the bench the corridor is empty. He walks through the door and down some steps and, as the light fades, he pulls his phone out and switches on the torch app. The steps lead to a cellar. Hanzel moves around, shining the light into the corners and crevices, but finds nothing. There’s a smell of burning, like … like being in a church. It’s an old memory. A small raised area below a skylight is the only feature Hanzel can see in the otherwise empty and dusty space.

  Back on the street, Han
zel flicks his phone off silent and calls for a car to pick him up. It isn’t the weather for strolling through Prague.

  Chapter 9

  Los Angeles

  It’s impossible to know what a person’s reaction to death would be – the death of a loved one, followed by the near death of oneself. I think I should be freaking out right now. Instead, I’m staring into space like I just need some sleep. Like I can sleep right now! My eyes seem hypnotised by the fender of the car in front. There’s a sticker on it, but I have no idea what it says, despite staring at it for the last ten minutes.

  They say on the car radio that Howie was knocked down by a hit and run driver. None of the witnesses mention the man in black, they remember only the hysterical woman kneeling over Howie’s dead body. I tell Mason I was hardly hysterical, but he just says it’s nothing to be ashamed about. Had he not just saved my life, I’d slap him in the face.

  I hold the coveted ball in my hands, absently rolling it from one to the other, wondering why God’s followers would believe this to have anything to do with their deity. I wonder too whether it might prove quite the opposite, it seemed to disprove creationism if nothing else. But whatever it might be, it’s simply a record of Earth’s history. Whether it was made last week or billions of years ago, as Seth claimed, it’s still nothing more than a record. OK, if it really is billions of years old, then there are questions to ask, but I doubt it. I can’t understand how it would prove anything with respect to anyone’s understanding of God – whichever side you’re on. As I squeeze the ball hard in my hands, something inside me tenses like a cobra desperate to strike. If there is a chance this … this thing really could be some kind of evidence that God doesn’t exist then I want to know about it. Once and for all we could have our answer, and no one need die to find it. It’s a stupid notion because, as a scientist, I know it represents nothing of the sort.