The Lucifer Code

by Charles Brokaw

  Sometimes, my friend, you are far too imaginative for this profession, Lourds told himself.

  Imagination was a necessary component of his work, though. Translating and deciphering ancient and dead languages required someone who could navigate between creative thinking and logic, between fantasy and fact. Either one of those two disciplines could bring him to a basic understanding of a manuscript, but it wasn’t until he was able to combine both that he was at his best.

  He flicked his flashlight beam round the tunnel. Shadows shifted like oily ghosts, plunging into the voids left by the lights. The halogen beam easily cut through the darkness and revealed the rough walls. Pickaxe scars showed in the strata, softened over the years by the passage of bodies. He wondered what stories those old scars could tell if they could only speak. The Hagia Sophia had enjoyed – or suffered, depending on one’s point of view – a vigorous history. It had been built on the site of a former pagan temple, a common practice in those days. It had stood for forty-four years before getting burned to the ground by Empress Aelia Eudoxia. The empress had been at odds with John Chrysostom, the Patriarch of Constantinople at the time. Chrysostom had denounced extravagance regarding women’s clothing choices, and the empress had taken the matter personally.

  The second church had lasted one hundred and twenty-eight years before being burned down during the Nika Revolt. It had immediately been rebuilt.

  But the tunnels beneath the structure had been maintained and grown more labyrinthine over succeeding generations. Lourds would have loved to have had time to explore thoroughly the tunnels. Even after all these years, there were treasures still to find for someone who was looking.

  ‘Are there tunnels underneath this whole city?’ Cleena asked. She followed Lourds.

  ‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘And cisterns.’

  ‘What’s a cistern?’

  ‘A cistern catches and holds rainwater, maybe groundwater if it’s available,’ Lourds replied. ‘The word comes from Latin – cisterna – and the root of that is cista, meaning box. Of course that came from the Greek as did most Latin. The original word was kiste, meaning basket.’

  ‘Container for water would have done nicely.’

  ‘You’re welcome. If you get the chance, before you leave Istanbul, you should go see the Yerebatan Sarayi. It’s also known as the Basilica Cistern and Yerebatan Sarnici.’

  ‘Not exactly here on a sightseeing tour,’ Olympia said from in front of Lourds.

  ‘Of course,’ Lourds responded.

  They hadn’t talked much in the last hour while Joachim had led them through the underground network of tunnels. This prolonged lack of conversation bothered Lourds more than walking around in the dark. Admittedly, tensions ran high. Although Lourds had proved himself, Joachim and the other monks weren’t happy about revealing their secrets to an outsider. Part of it was a pride issue, but Lourds felt some of it was fear. He couldn’t bring himself to believe that the fate of the world could depend on a two-thousand-year-old scroll that might not be translatable.

  Or are the final blitherings of a madman, he told himself.

  Still, a part of him was – perhaps – a bit afraid. He had never been superstitious. Not exactly. However, he had seen things that had given him pause over the years. He had never expected lost Atlantis to be found again, and especially not to have walked through part of those fabled lands himself.

  But he had.

  ‘So tell me about the cistern,’ Cleena invited.

  Ahead of Lourds, Olympia blew out an angry breath and cursed.

  Lourds didn’t mind.

  ‘Today, the cistern is more commonly known as the Basilica Cistern, which was the name first given to it.’ He spoke quietly but his voice still echoed. ‘The Turks called it Yerebatan Sarayi, which means Sunken Palace, and Yerebatan Sarnici, which means Sunken Cistern. In fact, we shouldn’t be far from it. The cistern was constructed near the Hagia Sophia.’

  ‘Since the cistern’s sunken, I suppose that means it’s underground.’

  Lourds negotiated a particularly narrow passage then continued, ‘Exactly. And it ties back to the construction of the church. It was built underneath the Stoa Basilica, a public square everyone used. The emperor allotted the water usage during times of drought, but otherwise people were free to come and go and use as much as they needed.’

  ‘I guess during times of drought though, the emperor wasn’t so generous.’

  ‘No, he wasn’t.’

  ‘Having the cistern so close to the castle meant the emperor’s guards could easily defend it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Constantine sold the idea of the cistern to the people by saying it was for the common good, then took it back if he needed it. Close placement to the castle just made it easier.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Lourds said. ‘But it also made the cistern more defensible when the city was under siege. I think that was the original concept. I don’t know that Constantine ever kept the citizens from the water, but the city was sacked and besieged on more than one occasion.’ He did, however, think the comment was indicative of her particular mind set.

  ‘How big is the cistern?’

  ‘It’s the largest in Istanbul. As I said, Constantine started the cistern, but Justinian enlarged it after the Nika Riots of 532 AD. It’s almost five hundred feet long, a little over two hundred feet wide and thirty feet deep.’

  ‘Big swimming pool,’ Cleena commented.

  ‘When it was full, the cistern held almost three million cubic feet of water. There were also over three hundred marble columns supporting the cistern’s ceiling. It looks like rows of picket fencing. Interestingly, there are two Medusa heads in the cistern.’

  ‘Medusa heads? As in the snake-haired woman whose glance turns people to stone?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lourds agreed, ‘that Medusa.’

  ‘Sounds kind of strange for a Christian emperor to put something like that in his cistern, don’t you think?’

  ‘There is some conjecture regarding the placement of the Medusa heads. One stands upside down, and the other lies on its side. Both support pillars. Some historians believe that Constantine simply availed himself of whatever materials there were to build the cistern. The heads were thought to have been salvaged from a Roman building.’

  Olympia stopped so suddenly that Lourds ran into her.

  ‘If you’d been paying attention,’ Olympia said, ‘that wouldn’t have happened.’

  ‘My humblest apologies.’ Lourds didn’t put his heart into the effort. He knew she was primarily irritated by the attention he was paying to Cleena. ‘Why did we stop?’

  ‘Because we’re here.’ Joachim shone his flashlight over the wall to his right. Ahead of him, the passageway split into a Y and continued into double-barrelled darkness.

  Lourds played his light over both tunnels but saw no discernible difference between them. ‘Which way?’

  ‘Here.’ Joachim leaned into the wall and pressed a series of stones.

  Faint clicks barely reached Lourds’ ears. He placed his hand against the wall and felt the vibrations as Joachim shoved back a section large enough for them to pass through.

  ‘Come on.’ Joachim disappeared into the hole in the wall.

  On the other side of the wall, Lourds pointed the flashlight ahead of him, then behind. There was only one way to go: forward. The tunnel dead-ended behind them. This tunnel was narrower than the first tunnel. He had to turn sideways to go along it.

  ‘This way was made for smaller men,’ Joachim said.

  ‘Obviously.’ Lourds held his hat in one hand over his heart. His backpack slid along the rough stone, catching every now and again. Against his forearm, the stones were worn smooth. He couldn’t help wondering how many people had traversed this tunnel since its construction. He also imagined the stories they would’ve had to tell.

  ‘No one has been here in a long time,’ Joachim said. ‘I’ve only been here three times my whole life.’

&nb
sp; ‘Why?’

  ‘Because this is a holy place, and because the scroll is not here.’

  Lourds knew the last was intended as a goad but he ignored it. He hadn’t told any of them that the Joy Scroll was within the room. He just hoped he was right concerning his other suspicion.

  ‘Who knows about this place?’

  The grade in the tunnel angled more steeply downwards. Lourds stepped carefully now as he descended. He thought he felt impressions that might once have been steps carved into the solid stone. The centre of the passageway was bowed slightly, as it was more worn in the middle.

  ‘Everyone in the Brotherhood.’

  ‘Do they come here?’

  ‘No one is allowed here. Until today, no woman has ever been in this passageway.’

  ‘Not even Olympia?’

  ‘Not even my sister.’

  ‘Joachim was even better at keeping secrets than I expected,’ Olympia said. ‘I didn’t know he was part of the Brotherhood until a couple of months ago.’

  ‘How are the brothers chosen for the order?’ Lourds asked.

  ‘Usually it passes from father to son,’ Joachim answered. ‘Occasionally a nephew must be brought in, or an older monk may pass his knowledge on to a grandson.’

  ‘Your father?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Another big secret keeper,’ Olympia said.

  ‘Our father began telling me about the Brotherhood when I was just a child,’ Joachim said. ‘I loved the stories and the idea of being part of something so secret and so important. As I grew older, I also grew more serious about my responsibilities.’ He paused. ‘The hardest part was occasionally losing faith and thinking that the scroll I had sworn to protect was already gone.’

  ‘What if we find out it is?’

  Joachim halted in front of a bare wall. His flashlight beam bounced off the stones and highlighted his features. He looked grim.

  ‘As I told you before, Professor Lourds, as long as the world is safe, we are not too late. The Joy Scroll still exists. It is out there and we have to find it.’

  Lourds shone his beam over the blank wall. He searched for signs of crevices or cracks, but there were none that he could see.

  ‘Another door, I suppose?’ he asked.

  ‘Not exactly.’ Joachim knelt and pressed against certain stones set into the floor.

  In the next moment, a section of the floor receded a few inches. Joachim hooked his fingers into the gap and pulled. Stone ground as the hidden door slid out of the way.

  The glare of the gathered flashlights revealed the stone steps going downwards. Joachim led the way.

  19

  Crypt of the Elders

  Hagia Sophia Underground

  Istanbul, Turkey

  19 March 2010

  The stone steps had the same grooved wear as the passageway earlier. In this case, though, the steps were steeper and shorter. Lourds struggled to keep his balance as he went down. The staircase also corkscrewed and filled his head with thoughts of premature burial. He forced himself to focus on the curiosity and certainty that had brought him to this place.

  ‘Is it getting hard to breathe?’ Cleena asked.

  ‘The air contains more moisture,’ Lourds told her. ‘Just take normal breaths and you’ll be fine.’ But the confined space was getting to him as well.

  Finally, they came to the end of the torturous corkscrew staircase and stepped into a square room. The discomfort Lourds felt was extinguished as soon as he laid his eyes upon the library shelves that covered one wall. Dusty journals filled the shelves in neat rows.

  Unbidden, drawn by his excitement, Lourds approached the shelves. He shone the flashlight along the spines and saw names and dates handsomely lettered there. They went back hundreds of years.

  ‘Those are the journals of the Elders who occupied this room all their lives,’ Joachim said.

  ‘How far back do they go?’ Lourds asked hoarsely.

  Joachim came to stand beside him. ‘To the beginning.’

  ‘Of the church?’ If that was the case, the shelves contained at least sixteen hundred years of history.

  ‘To the time of John on Patmos Island.’

  That knowledge halted Lourds for a moment as he realized how much information lay practically at his fingertips.

  ‘May I?’ He gestured to the shelves.

  ‘Those books don’t tell us the whereabouts of the Joy Scroll.’

  Without a word, Olympia stepped close and took down one of the books. She handled it gently, as if it might disintegrate.

  ‘You had these down here all this time, Joachim?’ Her voice was hushed and tight with awe. ‘Do you know what I would have given to have been able to study these? Do you know the information that is probably contained within these books?’

  ‘The brothers only wrote benedictions to God,’ Joachim replied. ‘Father didn’t ask me to be a librarian. He asked me to keep the Joy Scroll safe. The monks didn’t bother themselves with the secular world.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter.’ Carefully, Olympia leafed through the book. ‘Any contact they had with the world outside this place would have rubbed off on them. No matter what you think, there will be artefacts of everyday life reflected in passages in these books.’

  ‘That’s why archaeologists are now studying the literature of the past.’ Lourds crossed over to stand behind Olympia. ‘Until the last few years, the study of novels and poetry and the like for historical detail hadn’t been recognized as a hard science.’

  ‘Look at this, Thomas.’ Olympia kept turning pages and her fascination grew.

  Lourds felt the same way, and his mind was totally captivated by the neat lines of script that crawled across the pages. The volume Olympia held was written in Ancient Greek and detailed a day trip around Patmos Island by a new monk.

  ‘Can you imagine the wealth of knowledge contained within these pages?’ Olympia asked in hushed tones.

  ‘I can.’ Lourds glanced over his shoulder at Joachim. ‘Are there any journals here written by John of Patmos?’

  ‘No.’ Joachim’s voice was short. ‘Professor Lourds, I have to remind you that we came here to find the Joy Scroll. We cannot afford to waste time. You already know others are searching for it as well.’

  Frustrated, Lourds swallowed his curiosity. ‘Perhaps there’s something in these books you have missed. If we could find the volumes that were written by the monks during the time of Constantine, maybe we could learn more about the scroll’s location.’

  Joachim’s eyes narrowed. ‘Only a short time ago, you told me you could find the scroll’s hiding place by seeing the stone where the rubbing was taken. Was that the truth?’

  Reluctantly, Lourds nodded.

  ‘The stone is over here.’ Joachim directed his flashlight to a corner of the room.

  Despite the bright halogen beam, Lourds had a hard time spotting the engraving on the stone. The work was skilled and delicate, done by a true craftsman. If Joachim had not pointed out the stone, if the light had not fallen just so, he would never have noticed it. The curiosity about his hypothesis grew strong enough to draw him from the library shelves, filled with the thoughts of the men who had followed John of Patmos’s final instructions.

  The fate of the world, Lourds reminded himself, steeling himself to walk away. In the end, he didn’t think the situation would be anything so weighty, but the possibility of finding a document written by one of Christ’s twelve apostles was a magical elixir that made his blood sing. He crossed the room, took off his backpack and stored it next to the wall, then knelt in front of the stone. He ran his fingers across the engraving. The depth was no more than a fraction of an inch, hardly noticeable. He reached into his backpack and took out a pad of paper and writing utensils. A skilled stonemason had built the wall. The stones were of uneven size, but they’d been carefully mortared together. Lourds ran his hand along the wall and felt the smoothness, noting that the man must have polished the stone. No rough
surfaces remained.

  ‘A lot of time went into the construction of this place,’ he commented.

  ‘After the brothers took their vows to protect the Joy Scroll, they didn’t leave here.’ Joachim knelt next to Lourds.

  ‘That’s a hefty price to pay.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Have you given any thought to what you’re going to do if – when – we find the Joy Scroll?’

  ‘Protect it.’

  ‘Even if it means spending the rest of your life locked away from the world in a room like this?’

  Joachim didn’t hesitate. ‘Even if that were so.’

  Lourds fitted a blank piece of paper over the stone.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Joachim asked.

  ‘Taking a rubbing.’ Lourds selected a piece of charcoal from his kit and began gently rubbing it over the paper. The engraving on the stone started coming to life immediately.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To match it against the one in the book. Have you done that?’

  Joachim was silent for a moment, then shook his head. ‘I haven’t. We already have a copy of the rubbing and it told us nothing.’

  ‘Does Qayin know where this stone is?’

  ‘No, he doesn’t. And if he did, what would it matter?’

  Lourds took his fresh rubbing and matched it against the one in the book he’d got from Qayin. ‘Can you hold the book for me?’

  Joachim took the book.

  ‘Hold the book so the page with the rubbing hangs down by itself,’ Lourds instructed. Joachim did so. By that time the others had all come around to watch what he was doing. Lourds folded the new rubbing so that it fitted over the one in the book. Then he held his flashlight behind the papers so that both were illuminated. When he had them lined up, they matched exactly.

  He grinned. ‘Looks like the same stone to me.’