by Tim LaHaye
“Here, in the face of the greatest pain and most unknowable mystery of my life, the loss of my soul mate, just like Moses with the Serpent, my faith is being tested, but I will not turn away. Just like Moses with the Serpent, I have a responsibility to fulfill, my duties, my service, in the face of all the evil and the fear and the turmoil of the world around me.
“So today, I wish to announce to you, my Christian friends, that I am going to trust our Lord for the future and believe that He still has a plan for my life, even while I am grieving. And with His strength and hope, I can put my life’s worst tragedy behind me and get back to work. So, thank you for your prayers and for letting me get this off my chest. Now I’m off to find the other two pieces of the Brazen Serpent. I am confident that is what both God and Laura would want me to do.”
FIFTY
IT WAS A day of wrenching opposite emotions. As kept her vigil with Paul in his unconscious state, he began to stir, and then without any warning opened his eyes. He was very weak, but he was able to speak, and seemed to be showing few effects of his temporary unconsciousness. He even managed to smile at her. The doctors and nurses rushed in and wanted to begin testing Paul, so was asked to step out.
FBI Agent Baines was waiting for her in the hallway of the hospital. His news was horrible, one of her worst nightmares made true, but it brought with it a sense of relief for Shari. Tests had finally revealed the identity of the remaining victim from the church basement. The body had been completely destroyed, so DNA testing had been a challenge. However, they were now convinced that it was her brother, Chuck. And the FBI believed that Chuck had actually been the one to detonate the bomb that had been some form of a pack worn on his back.
Shari had not seen Chuck since the Wednesday morning of the bombing, and, of course, she had worried where he had gone off to, even allowing for the possibility that he could be involved in the bombing in some way, though he was both the most unreligious and unpolitical person she knew. Strangely, she had been rooting for his just having run off on some spree with his new friend.
Now the seeming truth was settled and she felt the hot tears running down her cheeks. What could he possibly want with bombing the church? It had to be his strange friend putting him up to it. Shari braced herself for Agent Baines’s likely barrage of questions. To her surprise, he was very kind.
“Miss Nelson, I am sorry for your loss. There are a lot of questions you could help us with about how and why your brother would have bombed the church. But if you need time to deal with this, I understand.”
Shari looked at the medical team attending Paul, her happy story, and realized she would probably not get to see him for hours. She turned to Agent Baines. “No, let’s deal with Chuck now and start putting this tragedy to rest.”
It became clear pretty quickly that Chuck was likely more victim than evil mastermind of the church bombing. Based on his criminal record, the FBI could see he had neither the experience nor the brains to have worked with the explosives, and stressed his complete lack of interest in being part of any religious group, even if there had been a bomb factory of religious zealots in that basement—which the FBI was not inclined to believe once they sifted through the rubble and conducted their interviews.
Agent Baines drove back to the hospital after an hour. “Bizarre as it sounds, I almost wish you all were a bunch of religious fanatics, as the press is making out. This just looks like some nasty attempt to implicate evangelical Christians, as with the U.N. message. To what end, beyond troublemaking, we don’t know. But we will figure it out and catch them.”
“I hope you do, Agent Baines. We’ll all be relieved to be out of this disturbing spotlight someone is shining on our faith, seemingly to hurt innocent people and embarrass us.”
When got back to Paul’s room at the hospital, she was glad to see that the doctors had left, but he was not alone. A very distinguished-looking man in a handsomely tailored suit was leaning in very close to where Paul lay, talking very seriously.
“Hi, Paul.”
Paul smiled as she entered the room. “Oh, Shari, great, you’re back. This is Shane Barrington, the Shane Barrington. He came here to visit me, can you imagine?”
“How do you do, Miss Nelson. Paul here has been saying what a good friend you have been to him. What a tragedy for a young man to have to struggle with the year he has had, and that was before this.”
There was something about Barrington that made stand back and be wary. “Yes, Mr. Barrington. But, forgive me, why would a rich, powerful man like yourself care about what’s going on in Paul’s life?”
Weak as he was, Shari’s question made Paul pale even more. “Shari, there’s no reason to be rude to Mr. Barrington.”
“Oh, I don’t take that as rudeness, Paul. I have recently suffered some terrible violence in my family that took my only son from me. When I heard about this bombing and what happened to Professor Murphy and to you, I felt I wanted to come and offer my support. This is exactly what I talked about in my press conference. I want to help victims and fight criminals of every kind.”
Paul smiled. “Well, it sure is good of you to come, sir.”
Barrington patted Paul’s shoulder. “I’m not here just to be sociable, Paul. My staff looked into your story and it made me think of my son, of the chances he’ll never have now, and, I’m sorry to say, of the missed opportunities I had to be there for him when he was growing up and having some problems.” He pulled an envelope from his pocket. “So, I have taken the liberty of drawing up a special Barrington Communications scholarship for you to Preston. Now you have no financial worries as long as you stay in school.”
Paul’s eyes welled up with grateful tears. Shari became even more suspicious of this Mr. Barrington and his sudden interest in Paul. This was turning into quite a day.
FIFTY-ONE
NEBUCHADNEZZAR STOOD on the highest part of the palace ramparts as a spring breeze from the river gently stirred his robe and filled his nostrils with the smells of new life. How strange are the workings of the mind, he mused. Just a few months earlier he had been tormented by the dream of the great statue, reduced to an impotent wreck by his inability to remember a single detail of it. Then the Hebrew slave, Daniel, had restored it to him, and since that day he had dreamed of the statue every night, intense, almost unbearably vivid reveries that left him not drained and confused as before, but eager and invigorated when he awoke.
Ever since Daniel had explained the dream’s meaning, that there would be no greater empire in the history of the world than Babylon, no greater ruler than he, Nebuchadnezzar, king of kings, he had felt a new energy surging in his veins, a heady, intoxicating feeling of almost superhuman power. Surely none could resist him now; surely every tribe, every nation, from the far mountains where the sun rises to the unknown shores where it sinks back into the underworld, must acknowledge his mastery, must bow down before his imperial might and feel his foot upon their necks.
Looking out over the plain, he could already see many of his subject peoples toiling in the spring heat. Hundreds, thousands of men, pulling ropes, lifting great beams, swarming like ants on the arid ground. Even at this distance he could faintly hear the crack of the whips, feel the sting of leather biting into naked flesh as his foremen drove them on beyond the point of exhaustion.
Was it just his imagination, or did he smell the sweat of their labors on the breeze? His wife, Amytis, had filled her gardens with every kind of blossom and shrub to remind her of the lush sanctuaries of her native Persia, and he often walked there, filling his lungs with their rich scents. But even the most exotic of her blooms did not smell as sweet as this, the sweat of men who would die for no other reason than to glorify his name.
As the sun rose higher and the air began to tremble with the coming heat, his eyes lifted from the teeming crowds of workers to the massive object in the center of the plain. It lay like a prostrate giant bound with a massive spider’s web of ropes. But the ropes were not to keep it
in place. They were there to raise it. And as he heard the shouts of his foremen and the cruel lashing of whips grow in intensity, he knew that the statue was about to take its appointed place at last. That his dream was finally becoming a reality.
For a time the huge figure didn’t move, and for one terrible moment he wondered if his engineers had miscalculated, that it was simply impossible to raise such a massive weight from the ground no matter how many slaves you had at your command. For surely such an ambitious feat had never been tried, never even been imagined before.
But then the groaning of thousands of feet of twisted hemp mingled with the agonized cries of muscles straining beyond endurance gave way to a deeper, wrenching sound as the statue seemed to raise itself out of the dust and started to float upward. The king opened his mouth in awe, unable to shake the conviction that the statue was somehow alive, pushing itself toward him.
Cries of horror and pain suddenly cut through the air as several ropes attached to the statue’s huge torso snapped, and dozens of workers were flung to the ground in the vicious recoil. The figure seemed to hesitate; then, as Nebuchadnezzar willed it forward through clenched teeth, it seemed to regain its momentum and with one last mighty effort its great feet thudded into place, sending up a huge cloud of yellow dust.
Nebuchadnezzar didn’t hear the sounds of thousands of men crying out either from the pain of torn muscles and snapped tendons or simply relief that their torment was over. All he could hear was the frenzied beating of his heart and the rasping of his breath as he clutched the wall and gulped great lungfuls of air. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the dust enveloping the statue began to disperse on the wind and his vision gradually shimmered into life before him.
As if someone had touched aflame to a cauldron of oil in a night-dark room, the sun suddenly caught the broad expanse of forehead and at once the great head burst into golden light. Shielding his eyes from the dazzling visage, Nebuchadnezzar heaved great sobs of exaltation as the rest of the statue revealed itself. First the chest and arms of silver, then the belly and thighs of bronze, and finally the legs of iron straddling the heaps of broken scaffolding and bloodied corpses.
Standing fully ninety cubits high, its muscular frame etched in hard, metallic lines, the statue loomed over Babylon like a great, cruel god.
As the king’s eyes adjusted to the glare, he could at last make out the features of the golden face. The broad lips were curved downward in a vengeful sneer, the empty eyes blazing with ferocity.
With a roar of laughter that rang out over the plain, he recognized the face as his own.
FIFTY-TWO
ISIS TOOK A last look at the tail of the Serpent, its bronze scales shimmering under the halogen lights, and dropped it into a nylon bag. She took a card key from around her neck and inserted it into a heavy steel door that swung open with a soft hiss. Inside, the gray metal shelving was mostly empty. Just a strongbox she knew contained a priceless necklace from the site of Troy, and two steel tubes stuffed with papyri from the recently excavated tomb of an Egyptian princess of the Third Dynasty. She placed the bag between the tubes and pushed the door firmly shut.
“This place is like Fort Knox,” she said. “I can’t imagine how anyone unauthorized could get down here. And if they did get past the alarms and the security guards and what have you, they’d have to get through here.” She rapped the door with her knuckles. “Let’s just say I sometimes have nightmares about being shut in here by mistake. When they finally opened the door, they’d just find a dried-up old mummy,” she said with a shudder.
“I guess that’d be poetic justice, wouldn’t it?” said Murphy.
“I’m sorry?”
“You know, to be turned into an ancient artifact.”
She sniffed. “If I were an archaeologist, maybe. I think you’re the one who needs to be careful.” She winced and put her hand to her forehead. “Look, I’m sorry….”
Murphy put a hand on her arm. “Let’s get something straight. You don’t need to walk on eggshells. You don’t need to worry you’re going to accidentally mention death and I’ll go to pieces. You can even talk about Laura if you want.”
She breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. I’d like to. Talk about Laura, I mean.”
She walked to a door in the floor-to-ceiling wire-cage wall and opened it with her card key. As it shut automatically behind them, Murphy glanced at the metal plaque, which read:
SECURE STORAGE AREA—NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL BEYOND THIS POINT. He saw Isis disappear around a corner and hurried to keep up. He realized that he would never be able to find his way through this subterranean labyrinth on his own.
“Was this place designed by the same guy who built Annacherib’s pyramid?”
“The one with all the dead ends and false corridors? What do they call it—the Maze of Forgetting?” She laughed. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
At last she led him up a staircase to a door that, to Murphy’s surprise, opened directly onto the employee parking lot. Isis noticed Murphy was looking at the security booth off to one side. “There’s one at each entrance,” she said. “The security guards are in radio contact with the central security station in the main building. That’s where all the electronic surveillance systems are monitored.”
He seemed satisfied. “Okay, where are we going?”
“I’m no expert on local restaurants, I’m afraid. I don’t eat out an awful lot. Usually I just have a pizza at my desk.”
“What about in the evening?”
She looked embarrassed. “Same thing.”
“And always pizza?”
“Why not? Pure carbohydrate. Minimal nutrition. It could be the Scottish national dish.”
“Pizza it is, then.”
She pursed her lips. “I think we can do better than that. How about Scotland’s second favorite national dish: curry?”
“Anything hot sounds good.”
“You may come to regret that,” she said, taking his arm.
A cab took them down the 12th Street Expressway, one of several tunnels that cut through the Mall, the three-mile-long expanse of greenery, monuments, and government buildings at the heart of the city. They emerged onto E Street and were soon headed for Chinatown.
The Star of India, nestled improbably between Yip’s Noodle House and the Jade Palace, was dark and virtually empty. Over tea and popadums, they scanned the menu while the latest Hindi show tunes played in the background, Isis settling for a shrimp vindaloo while Murphy acknowledged defeat before the contest had even begun by ordering a chicken bhuna.
“So, tell me about the inscription.”
“I thought you’d never ask,” she said, clearing a space on the table. She pulled a crumpled piece of paper from her bag and smoothed out the edges. “It took forever. Really quite the trickiest bit of Chaldean I’ve come across. But after your call, I think I finally cracked it—at least the important bits. I think your theory is right, that the high priest Dakkuri wrote this puzzle with two minds. He wanted the reader to understand how to find the rest of the Serpent, but on the other hand, he’s keen that the wrong people not get their hands on it. So he wraps it all up in metaphorical language that’s quite tough to penetrate. Like a sort of shell around his message.”
“Who are the wrong people?”
“Hard to say. We know that Dakkuri was told by Nebuchadnezzar to get rid of the Serpent, along with all the other idols. Presumably, if someone loyal to the king found where Dakkuri had hidden it, he’d destroy it—and Dakkuri himself wouldn’t fare much better.”
“That makes sense. So who are the right people? Who does Dakkuri want to find the Serpent?”
“Good question.” Her finger ran down the lines until she found what she wanted. “Here. There’s a formal incantation. It’s quite common. You see it on all sorts of inscriptions. Something like ‘only the pure of heart shall find what they seek.’”
“Sounds like the good guys.”
“I said it was something li
ke that. In fact, he substitutes another word for ‘pure.’ It doesn’t quite make sense, but the nearest I can get is ‘only the dark of heart’ or ‘only those with darkness in their hearts.’” She smiled. “So I’m afraid that rather scuppers your chances, doesn’t it?”
“You’d be surprised,” Murphy said. “There’s quite a lot of darkness in my heart right now.” She looked at him and bit her lip. He nodded at the paper. “Go on. What else does the man say?”
“Well, there are some more incantations to a few of the lesser-known Babylonian gods—and then we get down to it.” She pointed to a paragraph. “The pieces of the sacred snake are scattered far, yet still are joined. He who is wise enough—actually ‘wily’ is probably a better word—to find the first already holds the second in his hand. Find the third, and the mystery shall return.’ That last bit really had me stumped for a while. I’m still not sure I’ve got it right. But ‘mystery’ is the only way I can see of translating it.”
“Mystery,” Murphy repeated. “Okay. What he’s saying is that each piece of the Serpent has an inscription telling you where to find the next one.”
“I think so.”
He smiled. “So … where’s the second piece?”
She turned the paper over. “Right at the end. I suppose he assumed that if you’d made it this far, you were definitely his sort of person. Here we are. ‘Look to the desert and Erigal’s master will take your left hand….’”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, Erigal is a very minor Babylonian demon. Some experts don’t even include him in the textbooks. But my father was a bit more thorough than most,” she said proudly. “I looked him up in one of his old notebooks. Anyway, Erigal’s function was doing odd jobs for Shamash, the chief Babylonian god. Like Zeus or Odin. Chief male one, anyway. I couldn’t figure out what Dakkuri was on about until I realized Shamash was originally a sun god.”
