The Lucifer Gospel fr-2

by Paul Christopher

  The Lucifer Gospel

  ( Finn Ryan - 2 )

  Paul Christopher

  Paul Christopher

  The Lucifer Gospel

  1

  The American Airlines 777 circled the ancient city, invisible within a dark brown smudge of air pollution. Finn Ryan stared out her window on the wide-body jet and frowned. For her first sight of the land of the pharaohs it wasn’t a very inspiring view. Pittsburgh on the Nile.

  “Urine,” said the man in the seat beside her. He was craning his neck for a look out the window. He was in his early thirties, dark-haired and handsome if you liked the slightly beat-up, untidy look.

  “Pardon me?” Finn answered. She was younger than he was, red-haired and beautiful.

  “Urine,” the man repeated. “That’s the first thing you notice when you get off the plane. ”The whole place smells like pee.”

  “Thanks for sharing,” said Finn.

  The man grinned, his whole face brightening. “Every city has its own particular smell, have you noticed that? London smells like a wet cigar, Dublin smells exactly like a brewery… which figures, I guess. Hong Kong reeks like the inside of a chicken farm, New York has this faint undertone of rotting garbage.”

  “I never noticed that about New York,” said Finn. Most of her life had been spent in her home-town of Columbus, and then New York City, where she now lived. She hadn’t done an awful lot of traveling.

  “That’s because you live there, right?” said the man. “You’ve gotten used to it, that’s all, but it’s there, believe me. Prague smells exactly like a leftover pork roast. Geneva smells like room deodorizer, Paris smells like an old lady’s shoes. In Saigon it’s fish soup. It’s true.”

  Finn tried to remember if Columbus had any particular odor. The only thing she could recall was the cool tang of the Scioto River in the summer and apple blossoms in the spring. “What does it smell like where you come from?” she asked.

  “A giant car ashtray,” he said. “Los Angeles.” He held out his hand. “My name’s Hilts.”

  She took the hand briefly. The grip was strong and dry. “Finn Ryan.”

  “Finn. Short for Fiona, right?”

  “That’s right,” she said and nodded, surprised. He was quick.

  “I like Finn better. Fiona’s kind of… prudish, I guess.”

  She decided not to respond to that. “Do you have a first name?”

  “Hilts. Just Hilts.” He pointed his chin out the window. “First time in Cairo?”

  Finn nodded. “First time anywhere, really. I just got my master’s. It seems like I’ve spent my whole life in school.”

  “Vacation?”

  “Job. Technical illustrator for an archaeological expedition.” She liked the sound of that. Archaeological expedition. It brought up images of men in pith helmets and King Tut’s tomb. Agatha Christie mysteries. She froze at the thought of the word “mystery.” She’d had enough of that kind of thing the year before to last her a lifetime. She remembered the dying map in the old crypt tunnel and shivered.

  “Sounds interesting.”

  “We’ll see.” Finn shrugged. “It’s in Libya. The first time they’ve allowed an American dig there in more than fifty years.”

  “Libya hasn’t been on the best terms with us for a while,” Hilts said. “The western desert is kind of spooky. It really is like a frozen sea. The worst storm ever, sculpted out of sand. The dunes are like the biggest Hawaiian surfing waves you’ve ever seen, except bigger, and even more dangerous, except for different reasons.” He paused, his grin replaced by a grimace. “The part that’s not dunes is even worse, like an endless rocky beach with no ocean. Boiling in the daytime, freezing cold at night. It’s where Dante got his idea for Hell.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  Hilts laughed. “Sweetheart, I’ve been everywhere.”

  She looked at him; it wasn’t a boast, just a statement of fact. The word “sweetheart” came out like a travel-weary sigh. “So what do you do that takes you everywhere?” Finn asked.

  “I’m a photographer,” he answered. Suddenly the aircraft leaned heavily to the right. Finn held her breath. The conversation was cut short by the pinging of the public-address system and the stewardess announcing their final approach. They were landing.

  2

  Finn was swept out of the aircraft along with five hundred other passengers, most of them Egyptians coming home on vacation to see their families. She moved through the laughing, chattering crowd, eventually found her luggage, and then spent almost an hour in a lineup at a customs desk to clear her bags. The terminal concourse was almost unbearably packed with meeters and greeters, but she eventually made her way to the doors of the glass-fronted building relatively unscathed and unmolested, except for a couple of quick anonymous clutches as she was getting out of the jetway and a clumsy attempt to unzip the bag on her hip and steal her wallet while she was emerging from customs. By the time she’d made her way through the crowds at customs and the even bigger throngs at immigration and finally reached the terminal exit, she’d paid out close to a hundred dollars American in “gratuities” and “fees” to half a dozen airport employees and officials.

  When she stepped out of the building the heat hit her like a fist. So did the smell. On the ground the pollution was almost invisible, just a metallic haze in the distance, but the stink was just like the guy Hilts had said. It smelled like a giant litter box. Finn almost laughed out loud. All those years in school and it had come to this.

  She looked around. There were people everywhere. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands of them, and they all seemed to know exactly where they were going. About half the men were wearing Western dress, while the other half wore a bewildering variety of the long flowing robes called jelabia. Some were turbaned, some wore small white embroidered skullcaps she knew were called tagiyahs, and others wore the Lawrence of Arabia-style kafiya with their braided silk-rope circlets. The women, dressed in skirts or in the more traditional robes, all had their heads covered, some only with scarves, while others were fully veiled. Her own copper-colored hair, tied back in a ponytail and barely covered by her battered old Toronto Blue Jays baseball cap, was drawing a lot of attention from the men, and none of it good.

  Cars, trucks, minibuses, scooters, taxis, and tour busses crowded the curb. Horns blared, people yelled and gestured; there was even a horse-drawn cart with huge rubber wheels piled high with battered hubcaps. Finn found herself grinning broadly. It was hot as hell and blindingly sunny. The sounds were painfully loud and the traffic added its own sour smell to the air. It was a madhouse.

  And it was wonderful.

  With her carry-on in one hand and dragging a suitcase behind her, Finn threaded her way through the bustling crowd looking for the driver that had been promised. She’d been expecting an appropriately adventurous Discovery Channel Toyota Land Cruiser, or better yet, a Land Rover. What she got was a distressingly rusted Fiat ambulance that at some stage in its long career had been converted into a minibus. Once upon a time the Fiat had been red, but it had long since faded to pink. Finn could still see the almost invisible white cross on the door and the word ’emergency” along the side. Standing beside it was a young man in blue jeans, a skintight Shoenfelt T-shirt, and shiny Elvis Presley hair. He looked about sixteen, but she knew he had to be older than that. He was smoking a cigarette and clearly trying to look like Al Pacino in Scarface. He was carrying a cardboard sign that read ADAMSON EXPEDITION. Her smile widened even farther; it was amazing what that word “expedition” could do for your energy level after a long flight in a crowded airplane.

  She humped her luggage across the broad sidewalk and crossed the street to the flat-nosed v
ehicle. “I’m Finn Ryan.”

  The young man gave a worldly sigh, breathing twin lines of smoke from his nostrils. He looked ridiculous. “Which one are you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I said. Field Crew? Lab Crew? Volunteer? Specialist?” His English was perfect and nearly without accent.

  “I’m the staff illustrator.”

  He nodded, looking her up and down. If he hadn’t been so young she might have called it a leer. “Specialist.”

  “Who exactly are you?”

  He made a sour face. “Achmed, the driver. Achmed, the translator. Achmed, the labor supervisor.”

  “I gather your name is Achmed.”

  “You couldn’t pronounce my real name. Americans think all Egyptians are named Achmed, or Abdullah, or Mohammed, so I’m Achmed. Achmed the Egyptian.” He barked out a bitter little laugh.

  Finn smiled. “What do Egyptians think all Americans are called?”

  “In your case, Ah’mar katha ath nan,” Achmed replied, arching an eyebrow.

  “Excuse me?”

  “It means red-haired… sort of,” said a voice behind her. It was Hilts, the dark-haired photographer from the plane. He was now wearing a battered pair of amber-tinted aviator-style Serengeti Drivers, a very old dark blue peaked cap with gold pilot wings embroidered on the band, and a cracked and ancient leather flying jacket that was far too heavy for the terrible heat. He smoked a fuming, slightly deformed cigarillo. His only luggage was a large gray canvas duffel bag with the name HILTS stenciled on the side.

  “I’m Hilts,” he said, leaning close to Achmed, then whispering, “Balaak bennana derri lawTul’a!”

  Achmed’s jaw dropped. “Aawwaah! You speak Dardja?”

  Hilts rattled off another brief speech in the melodic, high-speed dialect, and the blood ran out of the young Egyptian’s face. He muttered something to Finn, his eyes refusing to meet hers.

  Hilts translated. “He apologizes for what he said and for offending you and he also begs your forgiveness.”

  “What did he say?”

  “You don’t want to know.” He turned back to Achmed. “Why don’t you put our bags on the bus?”

  “Yes, of course, Mr. Hilts,” Achmed said with a nod. He began loading the luggage.

  “You’re part of the expedition?” Finn asked, surprised.

  “I told you, I’m a photographer.”

  “You look more like a flyer wearing that getup,” she said, nodding at the cap and jacket.

  “That too.” He smiled. “I’m-”

  “Don’t tell me,” Finn said and laughed, “you’re an aerial photographer.”

  “You’re quick for a girl.”

  They climbed into the minibus. Achmed got behind the wheel and they headed into the city. The drive into Cairo was a quick education in the art of automotive mayhem. There were thirteen million people living in Egypt’s capital city, and by the looks of things all of them were in their cars and trying to get somewhere. Most of the vehicles were old and Japanese, Russian, or French, and the vast majority were missing at least one body part. All of them were blowing their horns. Red lights were ignored. There were no lanes of any kind and traffic cops were everywhere, having absolutely no effect on anything.

  “Think like an autumn leaf floating on a fast-flowing river,” Hilts cautioned philosophically as Achmed bullied his way into the city. “You’ll eventually get there, but not necessarily by the route you intended or the speed you thought you’d be going.”

  The Nile Hilton was a late-50s monolithic slab and the first modern hotel built in Cairo. It sat like a giant pack of cigarettes blocking the view of the Nile on Midan Tahir, the overpopulated dead center of the city’s financial district and the place where, one way or the other, all that traffic was headed. Achmed dropped them off at the Corniche El Nil entrance, dumped their bags on the sidewalk, and promised to be back in forty-eight hours to take them and the rest of the expedition to the civil airport in the Imbaba district on the other side of the river. The young man gave them a brief nod, slammed his door, and drove back into the seething traffic in a blast of exhaust, horn blaring.

  “Welcome to Cairo,” said Hilts. He helped Finn with her luggage and they checked in at the standard blonde oak and marble front desk. When they were done the pilot-photographer rode up with her in the elevator. “I’ll meet you at Da Mario’s in an hour,” he said, getting out on his floor. “I need a lasagna fix.”

  “Da Mario’s?”

  “The best Italian food in Cairo. It’s either that or Latex.”

  “Latex?”

  “It’s the hotel bar; very classy, believe it or not. They’ve got flavored vodka hookahs.”

  “I’ll go for the lasagna.”

  “Good choice. Da Mario’s, an hour.” The door slid closed. Finn rode up another two floors, found her room, and dropped her bags at the end of the bed. She went to the balcony and stepped out. The sun was setting now and the western horizon was a streaked bloody fog of dying light. It was the most sinister, most dangerous, most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, like looking at the memory of a battle fought long ago, or a vision of one yet to come. She thought about where she would be going the day after tomorrow-out there, six thousand years of history waiting just around the corner. She stayed for a moment, then turned away, her heart beating hard with excitement. She went back into her room and began to unpack.

  3

  Da Mario’s had old lamps, dark wood, and raffia-covered Chianti bottles. Very Egyptian-looking waiters wandered around with huge pepper grinders, inviting the guests to have pepper on any and everything. Somebody in a dark corner was playing “Che Sera, Sera” on a twelve-string Spanish guitar. Hilts was sawing his way through a vast plate of liberally peppered lasagna and Finn was working on a small salad. They were sharing one of the raffia-covered bottles of Chianti. Hilts was now wearing shorts and a plain red T-shirt, while Finn had changed into jeans and an NYU sweatshirt against the frigid air conditioning.

  Finn took a bite of salad and shook her head. “My first meal in Egypt and it winds up being something I could get just as easily on Mulberry Street.”

  “We could go out to a local joint and get you some nice bamya or maybe some shakshukat beed iskandarani if you wanted something light, but you’d spend the next three days on the toilet, if you’ll pardon my French.” He took a sip of wine and then continued attacking his lasagna. “The first rule about Egypt is don’t ever drink the water. The second is, don’t ever eat the food.”

  “Is it really that bad?”

  “It’s not a question of bad, it’s a question of acclimatization. The tap water here is what they cook with, what they mix their food with. Anything in the tap water is going to wind up in the food. They’re used to the particular bugs, you’re not. It’s pretty simple.”

  “What about the dig?”

  He shrugged. “You’ll probably be sick as a dog for a couple of days. And they’ll most likely boil the water. You’ll be okay.”

  “The things my father never told me about the life of an archaeologist.”

  “You’re L. A. Ryan’s kid, right?”

  “That’s right. You knew him?”

  “Knew of him. I resurveyed his original site in Mexico.”

  “The one in Yucatan? All I can really remember were the spiders. The size of dinner plates.”

  “That’s the one. Quintana Roo. Chan Santa Cruz. It was the first time they ever had an infrared survey done. Tricky flying.”

  “You really have been everywhere.”

  He grinned. “I get around.” His shoulders lifted and he took another sip of wine. “It’s a job.”

  “What do you think about this one?”

  “The job?” He shrugged again. I do know Rolf Adamson’s a bit of a flake.”

  “All I read was the profile they did of him in Newsweek a while back. It’s the only thing the library at school had on him.”

  “The reclusive billionaire thing?�
��

  “I wonder how much of it’s true,” Finn said. “It made him sound like a cross between Bill Gates, Steven Spielberg, and Howard Hughes.”

  “With a little of the guy who owns Virgin Records thrown in for good measure. Balloon flights around the world, trips to the South Pole and all that.”

  “An adventurer who’s interested in archaeology,” said Finn. “Spending a million dollars financing a dig in the desert. He must have a serious side.”

  “According to my sources he’s got a bee in his bonnet.”

  “Who are your sources and what kind of bee?”

  “A lady on a dig he ran last year in Israel. They eventually took away his permits. Originally it had to do with one of those fake ossuaries that have been making the rounds. He tried to smuggle one out of the country and he got caught. It turned out to be one of the phonies, but that didn’t change the intent. If he wants something he’ll get it, no matter what the cost or whether it’s legal or not.”

  “So what’s the bee in his bonnet?”

  “If you read the Newsweek profile you know who his grandfather was.”

  “Some kind of big-time evangelist from the twenties.”

  “Schuyler Grand. ’The Grand Army of God’s Final Hour of Redemption.’ They’ve written books about him. California’s first radio evangelist. The ABN, Angel Broadcasting Network. Made millions and invested it all in orange groves and made millions more. Then he lost his radio license because everyone was saying he was secretly a Nazi. Committed suicide on the morning of Pearl Harbor. Adamson’s tried to whitewash his reputation for years. Clear his name, resurrect his theories.”

  “What does that have to do with the dig?”

  “Among other things, Schuyler Grand was an amateur archaeologist. He believed all the pseudo-science the Nazis were spouting about master races, and he mixed it up with all sorts of other things, including the Holy Grail. His big pitch was that one of Christ’s disciples carried the Grail to America.”