The Babylonian Codex

by C. S. Graham

  Jax lowered his chin to hide a smile. The GIS—the global information sifter—was the Company’s latest toy: an incredibly powerful computer program designed to sift through and correlate unbelievable quantities of disparate information. But so far, Jax hadn’t been impressed. “Go ahead and give it a try.”

  “I keep telling you, that thing’s amazing.”

  “Right.”

  Matt reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “This came in just as I was leaving. It’s a copy of the list of antiquities Agent Cox had selected for Tobie to view.” He paused. “There’s no manuscript on it.”

  “What?” Jax scanned through the list. Statues, cuneiform cylinders, vases, a necklace, a gold dagger . . . no manuscript. “You’re sure this is the final list?”

  “She had it in her hand when she was killed.”

  “Someone could have switched it.”

  Matt shook his head. “Not a chance. She’d given copies to the other members of her team. And you’re not going to convince me they’re all in on this.”

  “No,” agreed Jax.

  Matt rubbed a hand down over his wild beard. “How’s October holding up?”

  “Okay. You’ve heard what they’re saying about her psychiatric discharge. Somebody obviously has access to her military records.”

  They’d reached the FDR Memorial, with its red granite walls and trickling waterfalls. Matt swung to face him. “There’s one more thing you might find interesting: an antiquities dealer by the name of Gabriel Sinclair was found floating beside the dock of his house in the Hamptons this morning.”

  “Chilly weather for a swim.”

  “He was wearing silk pajamas.”

  Jax stared off across the Tidal Basin, the blue water reflecting the bare branches of the cherry trees and the clear cold sky above. “I knew Sinclair. He isn’t just any antiquities dealer. He’s probably the biggest dealer in ancient Mediterranean artifacts in the country—if not the world.”

  “The timing is certainly interesting.” Matt buttoned the top of his jacket against the wind. “I’ll keep digging. See what turns up. We can meet at the cathedral amphitheater at seven tonight.” He started to turn away, then paused to look back and say, “And go see Davenport. Otherwise they’re gonna put out an APB on you.”

  Chapter 19

  Medinaceli, Spain: Saturday 3 February 2:45 P.M. local time

  Rearing high above the Rio Jalón on a barren, windswept mesa, the crumbling stone battlements of Medinaceli rose pale and stark against a gunmetal gray sky.

  As the commuter train chugged into the station, Noah Bosch stood at the top of the passenger car’s steps and stared at the steep, narrow road winding up the side of the mesa. No one had told him there was an Old Medinaceli and a New Medinaceli, and that the train stopped in the modern settlement that had grown up along the Madrid to Zaragosa highway far below the ancient village.

  Stepping off the train, he approached the stout woman behind the ticket counter. “Pardon,” he said, his fractured Spanish painful even to his own ears. “Is there a bus up to the old village? Or maybe a taxi?”

  “No,” she said and turned away.

  Noah shouldered his backpack and glanced at his watch. It was already ten to three. “Shit,” he whispered, and took off at a steady jog.

  The day was cold, the wind brisk. But after a couple of steep kilometers, he was hot, the straps of his pack digging into his shoulders, his breath coming painful and labored. When the hell did I get so out of shape? he wondered, blowing hard. He’d turned out for cross-country in high school, even run a couple of marathons in college. Yet here he was, wheezing like a fifty-year-old chain-smoker.

  The whine of a car’s engine brought his head around. Turning, he spotted a blue Citroen laboring up the hill toward him and hopefully stuck out his thumb.

  The Citroen whipped past him, the young woman at the wheel not even glancing in his direction.

  “Thanks,” Noah shouted after her.

  By the time he reached the top and collapsed against the base of what looked like a crumbling old city gate, his face was streaked with sweat and dust, and he had a stitch in his side.

  It was also twenty past three.

  “You are late,” said a voice behind him in lightly accented English.

  Glancing around, Noah found himself staring at an elderly gentleman with a darkly weathered, heavily lined face and an elegant white mustache and goatee. Small but lithe, he was wearing a wool cap, rugged brown trousers held up by leather suspenders, and an old canvas jacket that hung open.

  He held a wind-ruffled bouquet of snowdrops in one hand.

  Noah slid off the stone platform. “Professor Zapatero?”

  The old man inclined his head. “Sí.” He nodded to the wind-worn structure rising beside them. “I wonder, do you know that’s a Roman triumphal arch you are leaning against?”

  Noah twisted around to stare up at it. “Roman? Here?”

  Zapatero gave a soft chuckle. “Oh, yes. It was the Romans who built Medinaceli’s first walls. It’s difficult to dig anywhere in the village without hitting the remains of their villas and their temples and their synagogues. Or the remains of their successors, the Moors. The Moors extended the walls, you see, and built their own houses and their mosques and a castle. But then the city fell to the Reconquista, and the synagogues and mosques all disappeared, to be replaced with churches and monasteries and convents.”

  The old man’s eyes crinkled and he made a tsking sound with his tongue. “And you, you are standing there thinking, I have come all this way to talk to this crazy old man about the early Christians of Mesopotamia, and listen to him, he’s giving me a history lesson about some half-dead village. It doesn’t occur to you, does it, that there’s a reason I’m telling you all this?”

  Noah shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Come,” said the Spaniard, and turned away, leaving Noah to follow or not, as he chose.

  Chapter 20

  Washington, D.C.: Saturday 3 February 9:10 A.M. local time

  The massive concrete pile of the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building took up an imposing stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue between Ninth and Tenth Streets. Built in the Brutalist style of the sixties and seventies, it had harshly repetitive angular geometrics and a blocky construction that made it look like a fortress. Or a prison, thought Jax, going through the heavy security.

  He was met by a slim, attractive woman with long blond hair and a Glock 26 on her hip who led him to Duane Davenport’s comfortable offices overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue. The assistant director—or AD, as the head of the Bureau’s Criminal Investigative Division was called—was seated at his desk. He had his dark head and massive shoulders bent over something he was writing and said curtly, “One moment,” without bothering to look up or apologize. It was a not-so-subtle way of impressing Jax with the AD’s power and authority.

  Jax smiled.

  He wandered the AD’s office, his gaze taking in the large, ornately framed photograph of Davenport with a smiling former president Robert Randolph. Beside it hung a similar photograph of Davenport with Secretary of State Forest Quincy. Personally, Jax thought the newly inaugurated president was making a mistake, keeping his predecessor’s appointment, but then, Jax had never been fond of either Randolph or his band of thugs.

  If Davenport had had his picture taken with the new president, he hadn’t bothered to get it framed yet.

  The AD finished whatever he’d been writing and looked up. “I expected you in my office an hour ago,” he snapped.

  “Really?”

  The other man’s face darkened perceptibly. “I want to know, when was the last time you saw October Guinness?”

  Jax met the other man’s icy stare with a bland smile. “I think you already know the answer to that question.”

  Davenport stretched back in his black leather executive chair, his attention seemingly all for the pen he twirled around and around at the tips o
f his fingers. He was a handsome man, tall and fit and accustomed to dominating other men with his size and his looks and the force of his own sense of superiority. “I want to hear it from you.”

  “All right.” Although he hadn’t been invited to do so, Jax very deliberately repositioned one of the straight-backed chairs facing the desk and sat down. “She came to my house last night. She’d lost her purse and she needed me to pay off her cab. So I lent her a couple hundred dollars and drove her to the Omni Shoreham.”

  “You expect us to believe she got a room there? There’s absolutely no record of it.”

  “I don’t care what you believe. I’m just telling you what happened.”

  Davenport sat forward with a jerk and tossed the pen onto the tooled leather surface of his desk. “I’ve heard about you, Alexander. You have a bad reputation as a smartass. A loose cannon who likes to play by his own rules.”

  Jax let his eyes crinkle with amusement. “In my business, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

  Davenport didn’t smile back. “What did Miss Guinness tell you she planned to do?”

  “Ensign. Ensign Guinness.”

  Davenport’s lips tightened. “What did Ensign Guinness say she was going to do?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “It’s my understanding you and Guinness are friends.”

  “We’ve worked together a couple of times, yes.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  “You know why Agent Cox brought her here?”

  Davenport huffed a contemptuous laugh. He obviously wasn’t a fan of remote viewing. “I know.”

  “Then you know she’s very good at what she does.”

  “She was given a fucking psychiatric discharge from the Navy.”

  “She’s not crazy,” Jax said evenly, “if that’s what you’re implying.”

  “But she’s not exactly normal, either, wouldn’t you say?”

  Jax showed his teeth in a smile. “Define normal.”

  Davenport pushed to his feet and went to stand at the window overlooking the famous avenue below. “You know what happened at the Warton Office Park last night?”

  “I know what your agent says happened.”

  Davenport glanced back at him. “You have reason to doubt him?”

  “Let’s just say I disagree with some of his conclusions.”

  Davenport pursed his lips in thought. “Did Guinness tell you about the shooting?”

  Again, Jax chose his words with care. He was walking a dangerous, narrow line. For all he knew, Davenport could be up to his bulging biceps in last night’s shootings. Then again, the guy might simply be a colossal jerk. And if Davenport wasn’t involved, then Jax had to be careful not to say anything that could end up making October look worse, should she ever find herself facing murder charges.

  “No,” said Jax. “The first I heard about it was from the morning news.”

  “You don’t find that strange? That your friend told you nothing?”

  Jax shrugged. “You forget what I do for a living. It was fairly obvious something had happened to frighten her badly. But I didn’t press her for an explanation and she didn’t give me one.”

  Davenport leaned back against the window, his arms crossed over his chest. “I’m curious: where exactly did you spend last night—after you dropped Guinness at the Omni?”

  Jax smiled. “Had your men watching my house, did you?”

  “Just answer the question.”

  “I went to visit an old friend—and no, I’m not going to give you her name,” Jax added when Davenport opened his mouth to ask just that.

  “You’re familiar with the phrase ‘obstruction of justice’?”

  Jax glanced very deliberately at his watch and pushed to his feet. “I’ll leave my lawyer’s address with your assistant.”

  Davenport snorted in derision. “If you hear from Guinness again, you’re to contact this office immediately. Is that clear?”

  “Got it.”

  “Special Agent Brockman will see you out.”

  Jax swung away. But at the door he paused to glance back and say, “I’m curious about something: Kowalski told reporters he discovered the shooting when he came back from getting everyone burgers. Is that right?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Did he happen to say what October ordered?”

  Davenport frowned. “A burger, like everybody else. Why?”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. What the hell difference does it make?”

  Jax studied the other man’s tightly held jaw and narrowed eyes. “October is a vegetarian.”

  Davenport blinked. “You’re right,” he said without missing a beat. “Now that you mention it, I think Kowalski did say she asked for a salad.”

  And that, thought Jax as he turned away, told them exactly what they needed to know about AD Duane Davenport.

  Wordlessly, he followed Agent Brockman through the maze of corridors and out into the weak winter sunshine.

  Like October, he was about to become a fugitive.

  Chapter 21

  Medinaceli, Spain: Saturday 3 February 3:25 P.M. local time

  The Spaniard led Noah along the paseo that ran at the outer base of Medinaceli’s crumbling town walls. Noah had no idea where they were going, or why.

  He followed anyway.

  “I take it you’re here because of the Babylonian Codex,” said Zapatero, striding along with the easy, loping gate of a lifelong hiker.

  “Not just the codex,” said Noah, struggling to keep up. The wind blowing up from the valley was like a cold battle-axe, the long grass beside them brown and dead, the ancient, weathered stone houses of the village looming above them to cast crenellated shadows across the dusty path. Noah kept close to the old wall.

  The Spaniard glanced back, his dark eyes glinting with amusement. “Not only? What else, then?”

  Noah gave a rueful smile. “Okay—you’re right. I’m interested in the codex.”

  Zapatero made a derisive clicking noise with his tongue. “You Americans. Why have you all become so fascinated with the end of the world?”

  Noah tripped over a stone that had tumbled onto the path from the wall above. “It’s true then, what I’ve heard? That the codex is an early copy of the Apocalypse of St. John?”

  “Not just an early copy; it is the earliest text we have, predating the other known texts by half a century or more. It also includes of a number of verses that were subsequently omitted from the later known texts. It is not unusual for early manuscripts to show subtle differences in wording. But the codex goes beyond that.”

  “So what exactly do these newly discovered verses say?”

  Rather than answer, Zapatero squinted off across the gentle hills spreading out below them, where acres and acres of windmills spun furiously, giant towers of electricity-generating steel such as Don Quixote could never have imagined. “You know, of course, that the Revelation of St. John is only one example of what is known as apocalyptic writing?”

  “I’ve heard there were others. But most have been lost, right?”

  “Many, yes. But not all. Apocalyptic writing was enormously popular several thousand years ago, and not just in Jewish circles. The Sibylline Oracles, the Qumran War Scroll, the Apocalypses of Ezra and Baruch, the ancient teachings of Zoroaster . . . there were many such ‘apocalyptic’ writings floating around the Mediterranean at the time, although most are now known only to scholars.”

  “Yes,” said Noah. “But they’re not particularly similar to each other, are they?”

  “Quite similar, actually. Parts of the War Scroll sound so much like the Apocalypse of John that when you read it, you find you must keep reminding yourself you are not reading the Bible. The imagery in both books is very much in the tradition of Jewish apocalyptic literature: horns and beasts, angels and demons, seals and cups—these are all symbols we meet again and again in the works of the period. You see, writers had a different
attitude toward originality in those days. They saw nothing wrong with borrowing passages from other authors.”

  “Like the Old Testament story of the Great Flood,” said Noah. “That was adapted from an earlier Mesopotamian myth, wasn’t it?”

  Zapatero nodded. “Many of the Old Testament stories were borrowed from the Sumerians and the Babylonians. The writers of apocalyptic literature took a similar approach. As far as they were concerned, they were all working in a similar tradition with a similar purpose: to address the mystery of evil and explain it.”

  Noah studied the Spaniard’s lined, sun-darkened profile. “And they explained it as a product of demonic forces?”

  “Essentially, yes. But were they attempting to predict the end of the world?” Zapatero pressed his lips into a thin line and shrugged. “Probably not. You must remember that the word apocalypse did not originally mean ‘the end of the world.’ It meant only ‘to reveal what is hidden’—which is why the Apocalypse of John is also known as the Book of Revelation.”

  “So how old is Revelation?”

  “As we know it, the book was probably given its final form around the year A.D. 100. But its origins are murky—very murky. In all likelihood it is a compilation of several earlier works, which were themselves taken from the Talmud and the writings of the Zoroastrians, the Egyptians, and the Canaanites. The vision of the beast rising from the sea is a good example; it is a very obvious adaptation of the vision of the four beasts rising from the sea in Daniel, which itself echoes earlier works.”

  “But the verses weren’t copied verbatim, right? They were reframed and reworked?”