by J. F. Penn
Private ward, John Radcliffe Hospital. Oxford, England. A week later.
Morgan opened her eyes, this time with clarity. She had felt the darkness ebbing and flowing, a comforting sleep of drugs and exhaustion that had kept her under. Her dreams had been a freak’s gallery of bones, demons and the rotting face of a little girl, buried in splintered corpses, but now she felt ready to wake up.
The hospital room was small but tastefully furnished in moss green and sky blue and the window looked out onto the spired city of Oxford. She was home. There were flowers on the table and cards, including a hand-drawn one with a little girl holding roses on it. At least that’s what it looked like. Morgan smiled at the thought of her niece coloring carefully for her Auntie and she felt a pang of need to see her family.
“Good, you’re awake.” The staff nurse bustled in, smiled at her and checked the monitors. “There’ve been lots of visitors. You’re a popular lady. How are you feeling?”
“Like I’ve been run over several times,” Morgan whispered.
“I’ll bring you some tea.” The nurse turned to go.
“Please wait,” Morgan said. “What happened to my partner, Jake Timber. He would have been brought in at the same time as me?”
The nurse looked concerned.
“I’ll try to find out. In the meantime, you need to rest.”
Morgan tried to sit up, but a bolt of agony flashed up her side and she fell back on the bed. Her fingers explored the bandaged wound where she had been slashed. It had been deep but must have missed anything vital, as she was still here. She found the buttons for the bed control and eased it into a sitting position.
“Shall I come back later?” Marietti stood in the doorway, a takeaway coffee steaming in his hand from The Missing Bean, her favorite coffee shop. He held it towards her. “Or can I tempt you with this?”
“You’re a saint, Director.” Morgan took the cup and raised it for a tentative sip, the hot coffee a balm to her parched throat and the caffeine a welcome kick to her soul. Everyone is allowed one addiction, she thought. “Now, where’s Jake?”
Marietti looked grave.
“He’s been in and out of surgery. The kidney issues caused by crush syndrome and shock have been the most severe but he’s now stabilized in Intensive Care. He wouldn’t have made it without your call which enabled the swift extraction by the local team.”
Morgan took another sip of coffee and looked out of the window towards the fields of north Oxford. Tears pricked her eyes with concern but also relief. Jake would pull through, he was a strong man, but she needed some answers about what happened.
“What did you find at the church? Did you take Milan’s body?”
“I know what you must have seen Morgan. I saw photos of the carnage left behind. Something ripped those men apart, but there’s no evidence other than the injuries.”
Morgan shook her head.
“There must be evidence. Did you test the body? He looked so normal at the end, but Director, I swear, he was turning into a demonic creature after speaking the words from the Devil’s Bible.” She faltered. “But then there was a haze of hallucinogenic smoke in the church. Perhaps what I saw was the effect of the drugs?”
Morgan rubbed her eyes, trying to clear her head. It was hard to believe what she remembered and there was no rational explanation. Marietti put his hand on her arm.
“This is what we do, Morgan. This is ARKANE. We take these secrets and we bury them. We keep people safe in their snug faith. The Devil’s Bible is buried deep in the vaults now with the missing pages intact. It’s in a box, embedded in concrete and the location has been plastered over. No one will find it again. Milan’s body was patched up as best we could and a sympathetic coroner in the Czech government helped with the press release about his death. Officially, he committed suicide at his Czech home because of the scandal of the Zoebios eugenics program.”
Morgan sighed.
“I didn’t take the threat of Thanatos or the Devil’s Bible seriously before, and I don’t know what to believe now.”
“We’re all flawed Morgan and we all have our own demons.” Marietti met her eyes, the violet slash bright. “I know you have your doubts about me and Ben has told you of old enemies and generations of lies. But whatever the mistakes of the past, we keep trying. There is real evil in this world and the line between the physical and spiritual wavers. The gap between is where ARKANE must work. If you stay with us, you will see many more things that will make you question what you believe.”
“Of course I want to stay.” She said, with no hesitation. “My own questions can only be explored by these experiences and I can protect my family better if I’m involved.”
Marietti nodded. “That’s good, because I need you back as soon as you can get out this bed.”
“Why, what’s happened?”
“There’s been a ritual murder at the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo,” Marietti replied. “A number of exhibits have been ransacked but it’s certain that select pieces from the Amarna period are missing.”
“That’s the time of Pharaoh Akhenaten, when Egypt moved briefly into monotheism.” Morgan said, her eyes brightening with interest. “It’s thought by some that Moses was a priest in that time and that the Exodus happened shortly after.”
Marietti looked serious.
“From the security cameras, it looks like Natasha El-Behery is behind this. The local ARKANE team is certain that she’s searching for the Ark of the Covenant. I know you’ll want to be part of the team, but are you well enough?”
Morgan’s eyes were cobalt steel.
“Director, I’ll do anything to get my hands on Natasha. After what she’s done, you have to let me go. I can start the research right now.”
“The doctors will have to clear you but I’ll have Martin send over the information for you to look at. Now, let’s see if we can get you in to see Jake.”
He helped her out of bed, waving away the frantic nurse who tried to stop them. Morgan stifled a groan and forced herself to move through the pain and into the wheelchair. Grabbing the portable IV, Marietti wheeled her out of the room and down the corridor to Intensive Care where Jake had a private room with a glass door. Morgan stretched forward and placed her hand palm inward on the glass. Be well, my friend, she thought. But as she looked at him, body lying like a corpse on the hospital bed, oxygen mask on his face, tubes in and out of his body, Morgan knew she would be going to Egypt without her partner.
Thanks for joining Morgan and the ARKANE team.
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Author’s Note
I love to meld the real and the possible in my writing, ideally so you don’t even know which is which. Research is also one of the most fun parts of being an author. Here are some of the aspects woven into the book that you might be interested to know more about.
Obedience to authority research
“When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find far more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have been committed in the name of rebellion.”
CP Snow, “Either-Or” (1961)
This topic has fascinated me since I first read of Stanley Milgram’s experiments based on demon
strating that the Nazi atrocities would have been perpetrated by any of us given the same situation. The Stanford prison experiment took this further and I urge you to read Philip Zimbardo’s ‘The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil’ if you’re interested in more detail.
The assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 was also a turning point in my own life. I had been studying Arabic with the intention of working in the Middle East. The fact that Rabin was killed by an extremist Jew dashed my own hopes of working for peace in the troubled country to which I am so emotionally attached. It seemed there were just too many obstacles to a real solution. The killer’s words, “God told me to do it” remained with me and were part of the inspiration for this book.
After switching to study Theology at the University of Oxford, I specialized in the psychology of religion. I wrote my thesis on fundamentalism and why people commit violence in the name of God. Abraham’s agreement to sacrifice his son Isaac was one of my influences and is also examined in Soren Kierkegaard’s ‘Fear and Trembling’.
I have written more extensively on this at: http://www.jfpenn.com/obedience/
The God Helmet
Dr Michael Persinger, speaking about the God Helmet on a UK BBC Horizon documentary
“The fundamental experience is the sensed presence, and our data indicate that the sensed presence, the feeling of another entity of something beyond yourself, perhaps bigger than yourself … can be stimulated by simply activating the right hemisphere, particularly the temporal lobe.”
Michael Persinger is a cognitive neuroscience researcher and the God Helmet is one of his inventions. His research was inspired by temporal lobe epilepsy and the visions of God and the supernatural that can occur to people in that state. His research received so much media attention that even atheist Richard Dawkins tried it. He didn’t report anything significant, but many others who have tried the helmet have had unusual experiences. Of course the smaller version that Zoebios created is my own invention but I would love to give this technology a try.
You can read more at: http://jfpenn.com/god-helmet/
The Devil’s Bible
The Codas Gigas is indeed the largest medieval manuscript in the world. It was at Sedlec for a period of time and is now kept in Sweden. It’s called the Devil’s Bible because of the rather comical illustrations of the Devil in the book and there really are 10 missing pages.
You can watch a documentary on it here: http://jfpenn.com/devils-bible/
Art and architecture
The ossuaries and catacombs featured in the book are all real places. You can visit the Paris catacombs, Sedlec, Evora and Palermo and see the macabre arrangement of bones. Once I had discovered Sedlec I knew I had my final scene and it was synchronicity that the Devil’s Bible had been held there by the monks. The apocalyptic woodcuts of Albrecht Durer are real, as are the details about his life. It’s feasible to think he would have seen the Devil’s Bible, although the woodblocks haven’t actually been split open to see if they contain the missing pages. Or have they?
The painting in Marietti’s office by Dali is one of my own favorites and the images Morgan examines in the ARKANE database are all real paintings. William Blake and John Martin are renowned for their Biblical scenes. The Treasures of Heaven exhibition at the British Museum inspired the scene on religious relics.
Acknowledgements
As always, my love and thanks to Jonathan. You’re the stability from which I can experiment with this new writing life.
Thanks to my editor and official first reader, Jacqueline Penn, who did an incredibly detailed job on editing and who continues to bring a fresh perspective to my writing. Thanks for keeping me honest, Mum!
A huge thank you to my beta-readers: my husband Jonathan; my friend and mentor Orna Ross http://www.OrnaRoss.com who brought a much needed professional slant; action-adventure author David Wood http://davidwoodonline.blogspot.com/ who brings a kick-ass perspective; and to Arthur Penn, my Dad, who is also an art history specialist and writer himself. I couldn’t have done it without you guys.
Thanks to my cover designer, the lovely Derek Murphy who did a brilliant job: http://bookcovers.creativindie.com/ Thanks also to Liz Broomfield from http://libroediting.com/ who did the final copyedit on the last draft over the Christmas period as I just had to get the book out in 2011. Thanks to Jane at http://www.jdsmith-design.com/ who did the interior for the print edition.
Thank you to my fantastic tribe at The Creative Penn and also my writing and blogging friends on Twitter @thecreativepenn. In the last 3 years I’ve found my niche online and it has changed my life beyond imagining. Thank you for being part of the journey.
A final thanks to my friends from Rio in Australia who supported me through the beginning stages of being an author. To Heidi and Damian, Lizette, Hervais, Ian, Michael, Derek, Bruce and all the boys on the PTP team. I miss you guys, but this is the life for me!
About J.F. Penn
Joanna Penn has a Master’s degree in Theology from the University of Oxford, Mansfield College and a Graduate Diploma in Psychology from the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
She lives in London, England but has spent 11 years in Australia and New Zealand. Joanna worked for 13 years as an international business consultant within the IT industry but is now a full-time author-entrepreneur. She is the author of the ARKANE series: Ancient Mystery, Modern Thrill as well as other stand-alone books.
Joanna is a PADI Divemaster and enjoys traveling as often as possible. She is obsessed with religion and psychology and loves to read, drink pinot noir and soak up European culture through art, architecture and food.
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