Brimstone

by Douglas Preston

  { 29 }

  Even before entering, Harriman had formed a clear picture of Von Menck's sitting room in his mind. He figured he'd find it carpeted in Persian rugs, decked out with astrological charts, ancient pentacles, and perhaps Tibetan durgas made of human long bones. The room alone, he hoped, would make great copy. Thus he was crestfallen when the door drew back at his knock to reveal a simple, almost spartan study. There was a small fireplace, comfortable leather chairs, lithographs of Egyptian ruins on the walls. There were, in fact, only two clues that this room was not just another middle-class parlor: the wall of glass-fronted bookcases, bulging with books and manuscripts and papers, and the Emmy for Best Documentary that sat neglected on the desk beside the telephone and old-fashioned Rolodex.

  Harriman took the proffered seat, hoping his hunch would prove correct: that Von Menck would give shape and voice to the devil-killings story. A typical scientist would merely debunk the business, while some crank satanist would have no credibility. What made Friedrich Von Menck perfect was that he straddled the gray area in between. While Von Menck's academic credentials were beyond reproach—doctor of philosophy from Heidelberg, doctor of medicine from Harvard, doctor of divinity from Canterbury—he had always made a specialty of mysticism, the paranormal, the unexplainable. His documentary on crop circles had aired on PBS to great acclaim, and it had been well done, salted with both skepticism and just the right frisson of the inexplicable. And, of course, his earlier documentary on the exorcisms in Cartagena, Spain, had won the Emmy. At the time, it had left even Harriman wondering—if only until the next commercial break—if there wasn't something to the idea of demonic possession.

  Von Menck would provide more than just an opinion: he would provide a foundation, a launching pad, an engine. If Von Menck couldn't get this story into orbit, nobody could.

  The doctor greeted him with courtesy, taking a seat in the leather chair opposite. Harriman liked him immediately. He was surprised to see that the compelling, almost magnetic personality projected on television was, in fact, real. It had a lot to do with the man's low, mellifluous voice and cool, ascetic features, with the prominent cheekbones and finely molded chin. Only one thing seemed to be missing. On television, Von Menck had frequently smiled—a raffish smile of wit and good humor, of a man who didn't take himself too seriously. It had the effect of keeping his rather technical investigations from getting too heavy. Now, however—though Von Menck was polite to a fault—the engaging smile was absent.

  After a brief exchange of pleasantries, the doctor got right to the point. "Your message stated you wished to speak with me about the recent killings."

  "That's right." Harriman reached into his pocket for his digital voice recorder.

  "What your paper has referred to as the devil killings."

  "Right." Did he detect the slightest hint of disdain, or disapproval, in the doctor's polite inflections? "Dr. Von Menck, I've come to see if you've framed an opinion on these murders."

  Dr. Von Menck leaned back in his chair, tented his fingers, and looked carefully at Harriman. When at last he spoke, it was in very slow and measured tones. It almost seemed to Harriman the man had been considering the question long before he asked it. "Yes. As it happens, I do have an opinion."

  Harriman placed the recorder on the arm of his chair. "Do you mind if I record this?"

  Von Menck gave a small wave of permission. "I've been debating the wisdom of making my opinions public."

  Harriman felt himself go cold. Oh, no, he thought. The guy's planning to do his own documentary on this. I'm about to get the royal shaft.

  Then Von Menck sighed. "In the end, I decided people had a right to know. In that way, your phone call was fortuitous."

  The chill was replaced by relief. Harriman leaned forward, snapped the recorder on. "Then perhaps you can tell me your thoughts, sir. Why these two men, why in such a manner, and why at this time?"

  Von Menck sighed again. "The two men, and the manner, are of lesser importance. It's the timing that means everything."

  "Explain."

  Von Menck stood, walked toward one of the bookcases, opened it, and removed something. He placed it on the desk before Harriman. It was a cross section of a nautilus shell, its growth chambers spiraling outward from the center with beautiful regularity.

  "Do you know, Mr. Harriman, what this shell has in common with the building of the Parthenon, the petals of a flower, and the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci?"

  Harriman shook his head.

  "It embodies that most perfect of nature's proportions, the golden ratio."

  "I'm not sure I understand."

  "It's the ratio obtained if you divide a line in such a way that the shorter segment is to the longer segment as the longer segment is to the entire line."

  Harriman wrote this all down, hoping that he could figure it out later.

  "The longer segment is 1.618054 times longer than the shorter segment. The shorter segment is 0.618054 percent of the longer. These two numbers, moreover, are exact reciprocals of each other, differing only in the first digit—the only two numbers to demonstrate that property."

  "Right. Of course." Math had never been his strong suit.

  "They have other remarkable properties. A rectangle constructed with sides of these two lengths is believed to be the most pleasing shape, called the golden rectangle. The Parthenon was built in this shape. Cathedrals and paintings were based on this shape. Such rectangles also have a remarkable property: if you cut a square off one side, you are left with a smaller golden rectangle of exactly the same proportions. You can keep cutting off squares and creating smaller golden rectangles ad infinitum."

  "I see."

  "Now, if you start with a large golden rectangle and reduce it, square by square, into an infinite series of smaller golden rectangles, and then connect the center of all these, you end up with a perfect natural logarithmic spiral. This is the spiral you see in the nautilus shell; in the packing of seeds into the head of the sunflower; in musical harmony; and indeed throughout all of nature. The golden ratio is a fundamental quality of the natural world."

  "Yeah."

  "This ratio is part of the basic structure of the universe. No one knows why."

  Harriman watched as the doctor carefully put the shell back in the case and closed the glass front. Whatever he'd been expecting, this was not it. He was lost, and if he was lost, he knew that the Post's readers would certainly be lost. What a waste of time. He'd have to escape at the earliest opportunity.

  Von Menck stepped behind his desk and turned back to face the journalist. "Are you a religious man, Mr. Harriman?"

  The question was so unexpected that, for a moment, Harriman did not know what to say.

  "I don't necessarily mean in any organized sense: Catholic, Protestant, whatever. But do you believe there is a unifying force underlying our universe?"

  "I'd never really thought about it," Harriman said. "I guess so." He had been raised Episcopalian, though he hadn't set foot inside a church—except for weddings and funerals—for almost twenty years.

  "Then might you believe, as I do, that there is a purpose to our lives?"

  Harriman shut off the tape recorder. Time to end this and get the hell out. If he wanted a lecture on religion, he could always call the Jehovah's Witnesses. "With all due respect, Doctor, I don't see what this has to do with the two recent deaths."

  "Patience, Mr. Harriman. My proof is complex, but the conclusion will, to use a popular expression, blow your mind."

  Harriman waited.

  "Let me explain. All my life, I have been a student of the mysterious, the unexplained. Many of these mysteries I have solved to my own satisfaction. Others—oftentimes the greatest—remain dark to me." Von Menck took a piece of paper from his desk, wrote on it briefly, then placed it before Harriman:

  3243

  1239

  "Those two numbers"—and he tapped the page—"have always represented the biggest mysteries of a
ll to me. Do you recognize them?"

  Harriman shook his head.

  "They mark the single two greatest cataclysmic events ever to befall human civilization. In 3243 B.C., the island of Santorini explodes, generating tidal waves that wipe out the great Minoan civilization of Crete and devastate the entire Mediterranean world. This is the source of both the legend of Atlantis and the Great Flood. And 1239 B.C. is when the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were reduced to ash by a rain of ruin from the sky."

  "Atlantis? Sodom and Gomorrah?" This was getting worse.

  Von Menck tapped the sheet again. "Plato described Atlantis in two of his dialogues, Timaeus and Critias. Some details he got wrong: for example, the date, which he put at around 9000 B.C. Recent extensive archaeological digs on Crete and Sardinia provide a more exact date. The story of the lost city of Atlantis has been sensationalized to the point where most people wrongly assume it's a myth. But legitimate archaeologists are convinced there is a foundation of truth: the volcanic explosion of the island of Santorini. Plato described Atlantis—that is, the Minoan civilization on Crete—as a powerful city-state, obsessed with commerce, money, self-improvement, and knowledge, but bereft of spiritual values. Archaeological excavations of the Minoan palaces at Knossos confirm this. The people of Atlantis, Plato said, had turned their backs on their god. They flaunted their vices, they openly questioned the existence of a divine, and they worshiped technology instead. Plato tells us they had canals and a so-called firestone that produced artificial power."

  He paused. "Sounds like another city we know, doesn't it, Mr. Harriman?"

  "New York."

  Von Menck nodded. "Exactly. At the very height of Atlantis's power, there were harbingers of some dread event. The weather was unnaturally cold, and skies were dark for days. There were strange rumblings in the ground. People died suddenly, unexpectedly, outrageously. One was said to have been hit 'by a bolt of lightning that came from the sky and from the bowels of the earth both together.' Another was abruptly torn apart, as if by an explosive device, 'his flesh and blood hanging in the air like a fine mist, while all around lay the most appalling stench.' Within a week came the explosion and flood that destroyed the city forever."

  As Von Menck spoke, Harriman snapped on his recorder again. There might be something here, after all.

  "Exactly two thousand and four years later, the area of the Dead Sea between what is now Israel and Jordan—the deepest naturally occurring spot on the surface of the earth—was breathtakingly lush and fertile. It was the home of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Precisely how big these cities were remains unknown, although recent archaeological digs in the valley have uncovered massive cemeteries containing thousands of human remains. Clearly, they were the two most powerful cities in the Western world at that time. As with Atlantis, these cities had fallen into the last degree of sin, turning away from the natural order of things. Pride, sloth, the worship of earthly goods, decadence and debauchery, rejection of God and destruction of nature. As it says in Genesis, there were not fifty, not twenty, not even ten righteous men to be found in Sodom. And so the cities were destroyed from above, by 'brimstone and fire… the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.' Again, archaeological excavations in the Dead Sea area confirm the biblical story to an amazing degree. In the days before this took place, there again were harbingers of the fate that was to come. One man burst into a pillar of yellow flame. Others were found calcified, not unlike Lot's wife, who was turned to a pillar of salt."

  Von Menck came around the desk and sat on its edge, looking intently at the reporter. "Have you been to the Dead Sea, Mr. Harriman?"

  "I can't say that I have."

  "I've been there. Several times. The first time I went was right after I discovered a certain natural link in the timing of the disasters that befell Atlantis and Gomorrah. The Dead Sea is now a parched wasteland. Fish cannot live in it: the water is many times saltier than the ocean. Almost nothing grows on its edges, and what does is glazed and caked with salt. But if you walk across the dead plains near Tell es-Saidiyeh, where many scholars now place Sodom, you'll find a vast number of balls of pure, elemental sulfur riddling the salt surface. This sulfur is not rhombic, as found in naturally occurring geothermic areas. Rather, it is monoclinic: white, exceptionally pure, exposed to very high temperatures for long periods of time. Geologists have found no other pockets of such naturally occurring sulfur anywhere else on earth. Yet they are found in riotous abundance on the ruins of these two cities. What destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah was not some normal geological process. It remains a mystery to this day."

  Von Menck reached for the scrap of paper, wrote another number beneath the first two:

  3243

  1239

  2004

  "2004 A.D., Mr. Harriman. It forms the end of the golden ratio. Do the math. The date 3243 B.C. is exactly 5,247 years ago: golden ratio. The date 1239 B.C. is exactly 3,243 years ago: golden ratio again. The next date in the series is 2004A.D. , which also happens to be the exact number of years separating the earlier disasters. Coincidence?"

  Harriman stared at the paper. Is he saying what I think he's saying? It seemed unbelievable, crazy. And yet the quiet eyes that looked back at him with something like resignation did not look in the least bit crazy.

  "I searched for years, Mr. Harriman, for proof that I was wrong. I thought perhaps the dates were incorrect, or that the evidence was flawed. But every discovery I made simply gave more credence to the theory." He walked to another cabinet and pulled out a sheet of white cardboard. On it, a large spiral—like that of the shell of a chambered nautilus—had been drawn. At its outermost point, it was labeled in red pencil: 3243 B.C.—Santorini/Atlantis. One-third of the way along its curve was another red marking: 1239 B.C.—Sodom/Gomorrah. At other spots along the spiral, smaller tick marks in black listed dozens of other dates and places:

  79 A.D.—Eruption of Vesuvius destroys Pompeü/Herculaneum

  426 A.D.—Fall of Rome, sacked and destroyed by barbarians

  1348 A.D.—Plague strikes Venice, two-thirds of the population die

  1666 A.D.—The Great Fire of London

  And at its very center, where the spiral closed in on itself and ended in a large spot of black, was a third red label:

  2004 A.D.—???

  He balanced the chart on his desk. "As you can see, I've charted many other disasters. They all fall precisely along the natural logarithmic spiral, all perfectly aligned in golden ratios. No matter how I cut the data, the last date in the sequence is always 2004 A.D. Always. And what do these natural disasters have in common? They have always struck an important world city, a city notable for its wealth, power, technology—and neglect of the spiritual."

  He reached across his desk, picked a red pencil from a pewter cup. "I'd hoped I was wrong, hoped it was a mere coincidence. I waited for the arrival of the year 2004, expecting to be proved wrong. But I no longer think nature believes in coincidence. There is an order to all things, Mr. Harriman. We have a moral niche on this earth, just as we have an ecological niche. When species exhaust their ecological niche, there is a correction, a purification. Sometimes even an extinction. It's the way of nature. But what happens when a species exhausts its moral niche?"

  He turned the pencil around, moved it to the center of the diagram, and erased the question marks:

  2004 A.D.—

  "In every instance there were harbingers. Small events, of seemingly limited significance. Many of these events have involved the death of morally dubious persons by the same means as the upcoming disaster. This happened in Pompeü before the eruption of Vesuvius, in London before the Great Fire, in Venice before the plague. So now perhaps you see, Mr. Harriman, why I say that Jeremy Grove and Nigel Cutforth are in themselves meaningless. Oh, to be sure, both men are remarkable for their hatred of religion and morals, their repudiation of decency, their outrageous excess. As such, they are role models for the greed, concupiscence, materi
alism, cruelty of our times—and particularly of this place, New York. But they are still merely harbingers—the first, I fear, of many."

  Von Menck let the chart fall gently to the desk. "Are you a reader of poetry, Mr. Harriman?"

  "No. Not since college, anyway."

  "Perhaps you remember W. B. Yeats's poem 'The Second Coming'?

  "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…

  The best lack all conviction, while the worst

  Are full of passionate intensity."

  Von Menck leaned closer. "We live in a time of moral nihilism and a blind worship of technology, combined with a rejection of the spiritual dimension of life. Television, movies, computers, video games, the Internet, artificial intelligence. These are the gods of our times. Our leaders are morally bankrupt, shameless hypocrites, feigning piety but devoid of real spirituality. We live in a time in which university scholars belittle spirituality, scorn religion, and bow deeply to the altar of science. We live in a time when so many spurn the church and the synagogue, where radio commentators are shock jocks spewing hatred and vulgarity, where televised entertainment consists of Real Sex and Celebrity Fear Factor. We live in a time of suicide bombing, terrorism run amok, and nuclear blackmail."

  The room fell silent, save for the faint beep of the recorder. At last, Von Menck stirred, spoke again.

  "The ancients believed nature to be comprised of four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Some talked of floods; others of earthquakes or mighty winds; others of the devil. When Atlantis had betrayed its niche in the moral order of nature, it was consumed by water. The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah came by fire. The plague that struck Venice came by air. Like the golden ratio, it follows a cyclical pattern. I've charted it here."

  He took out another diagram, very complex, covered with lines, charts, and numbers. All the lines seemed to converge on a central pentagram in which was written: