01 Babylon Rising (9 page)

LAURA MURPHY WATCHED
the young man with the shaved head and the baggy jeans loping down the hallway, and shook her head, smiling. She remembered enough about her own student days to feel a rush of sympathy whenever a student turned up at her door with red eyes and chewed nails, looking as if they hadn’t slept or eaten for a week, and while today’s young men and women seemed to find it harder than her generation had adjusting to the big, bad world, she didn’t judge them harshly.

Negotiating that tricky no-man’s-land between childhood and adulthood had never been easy, and there were certainly more temptations and distractions nowadays for them to deal with. When you considered all the disturbing images and messages being pumped out daily on TV and in the music they listened
to, she sometimes felt it was a wonder any of them turned out as well as they did.

Even if their taste in clothes was still occasionally beyond her.

And if she could play a small part in helping their transition to adulthood, she was more than happy. She had been the university’s student counselor for two years now. While some people close to her—notably her father—had berated her for throwing away a potentially glittering career as a field archaeologist just so she could listen to some acned teenagers “whining about their grades,” she had no regrets. She knew few professional triumphs that could match the sense of achievement she felt when a formerly suicidal English major she had helped was able to get a book of her poetry published and then start her own creative writing seminars, helping others channel their inner emotional turmoil into something positive.

Besides, Laura was still able to find time to work on her own book on lost cities. It might not hit the best-seller lists or spawn a hit movie, but when she proudly handed a copy to her dad, she would at least have created an archaeology artifact of sorts of her very own.

She also shared fully in her husband’s work, not just acting as an unpaid diplomat in his frequent brushes with authority, but adding her considerable expertise to his in the quest to search out and authenticate Biblical artifacts.

Which, she realized with a keen shiver of anticipation, was what she was supposed to be doing just then. She had missed Murphy’s day-after initial scroll investigation because of a
typically jammed office of students, but now it was time to see if the rehydrated scroll was ready to reveal some wonderful secret about Daniel.

She closed her office door behind her, adjusted the sign that read I KNOW I SAID MY DOOR IS ALWAYS OPEN—BUT I’LL BE BACK SOON, I PROMISE! and walked briskly down the corridor and out of the building. After a few minutes, she arrived at Murphy’s door, knocked smartly, and walked in.

Murphy was seated at a workbench, denim sleeves rolled up, hair awry, peering at something through a magnifying lens, and seemingly lost in thought.
That’s the Murphy I think I like best
, she thought with a smile,
the so-absorbed-in-his-work-he-wouldn’t-notice-the-building-is-on-fire Murphy
. The Murphy who had called her with such buzzing excitement a few minutes before to shout that the scroll was ready.

She gave his hand a squeeze, said hello to Shan, and turned her attention to the hyperbaric chamber. “So, you think the scroll’s properly rehydrated?”

“I reckon it’s as plump and juicy as one of your mother’s Thanksgiving turkeys,” Murphy declared. “Actually,” he added, “it may even be slightly juicier.”

“I know, I know, and probably tastes better,” said Laura, rolling her eyes.

Murphy put on a pair of white cotton gloves, opened the door to the chamber, and carefully removed the scroll. “Let’s see what we have baked,” he said quietly.

Gently he began unrolling the papyrus over a plastic tray. Laura held her breath, amazed at the steadiness of his hands, considering he was holding something that had been made in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, the time of Daniel.
Right now
,
she thought,
in this room, we three living, breathing people are linked to the Biblical past through this impossibly fragile object that could crumble to dust at any minute
.

But the ancient papyrus didn’t crumble. Like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, it slowly unfurled, intact and beautiful.

“Will you look at that,” said Murphy as line after line of ancient cuneiform appeared. Solid triangles with linear tails, and V shapes like birds against the sky, crammed together in narrow columns. Fully unrolled, the sheet of papyrus measured about nine inches by fifteen. It was scarred by long creases across its tobacco-brown surface, the edges were tattered, and much of the surface had flaked away. But more of the lettering remained than Murphy had dared to hope.

“I’d say that was Chaldean.”

Laura couldn’t bear to look away from the strange geometrical symbols, in case they faded to nothing in front of her eyes. “That makes sense. In Nebuchadnezzar’s day, half the priests and sorcerers in Babylon were Chaldean. Can you read it?”

Murphy tilted the scroll slightly to get a better angle. “Well, I’m not exactly fluent. I can order a salad or ask directions to the post office, but anything more complicated than that …”

Laura gripped his arm. “Be serious. I’ve seen you doodling in Chaldean. What does it say?”

“Well, that’s the funny thing.” Murphy squinted intently at the letters. “I can definitely make out the symbol for ‘bronze,’ and here”—he pointed to a barely legible smudge— “is the symbol for ‘serpent.’ And look, there they are again, with the symbol for ‘the Israelites.’”

They were silent for a moment, and Shari watched as it seemed both Murphys’ minds were racing to make sense of the images before them. “What does it all mean?” she asked.

“The Brazen Serpent,” whispered Laura.

“Exactly,” said Murphy. “Made by Moses thirty-five hundred years ago …”

“And broken into three pieces by King Hezekiah in seven fourteen B.C.”

“But, ladies, this doesn’t make any sense. Methuselah said this prize was an artifact that had to do with Daniel. He lived in the time of King Nebuchadnezzar—which was almost a hundred fifty years after the time of King Hezekiah.”

Murphy pushed his chair back and started pacing. “It doesn’t make sense. What would a Chaldean scribe be doing writing about the Brazen Serpent? And what’s the connection to Daniel?”

Laura peered at the scroll to see if she could make out any more details. “Any chance of asking the crazy person who gave it to you?”

“Gave
it to me?”

“You know what I mean.”

Murphy shook his head. “Methusaleh likes me to figure things out for myself. That’s part of the game.” He snapped his fingers. “But there’s no reason I can’t ask for a little help. Come on, let’s take some photographs. I know someone who practically speaks Chaldean in her sleep.”

Laura folded her arms and gave him a stern look.

“Not,” he added quickly, “that I know from personal experience. In fact, I’ve never even met her.”

“Relax, Murphy. I know you love only me—and anything
that’s been lying in the ground for two thousand years. Who is this oracle?”

“You’re not going to believe me, but her name,” said Murphy, pronouncing each syllable carefully as if he were ordering an exotic bottle of wine in a fancy restaurant, “is Isis Proserpina McDonald.”

THE PARCHMENTS OF
Freedom Foundation was one of hundreds of private organizations headquartered within the very official-looking stone buildings in Washington, D.C., that many citizens automatically assumed must be government offices. The plaque on the door of the office on the second floor of the PFF building read simply
DR. I. P. MCDONALD
and only initiates would have known that behind the door was one of the smartest living experts on the subject of ancient cultures.

Nor would anyone passing by this office make the connection between the study of dusty, forgotten civilizations and the very loud, persistent commotion coming from behind the closed door.

The noise of books thudding to the floor one by one was followed by the gentler swish of cascading paper, then a crash as a heavy object (a lamp? a paperweight?) connected with
something solid. It was lucky for the perpetrator of the chaos that few people ever did pass down this particular corridor.

The small, windowless office was lined with bookshelves on three sides, but many of the volumes—some irreplaceable, almost all of them rare or at the very least out of print—now lay in a sprawling heap on the faded brown institutional carpet. Standing in the middle of the carnage, a petite, lithe figure was scanning documents from a large pile on an antique roll-top desk and furiously tossing them aside.

“It must be here. It
must
be,” rasped a voice as a tottering column of academic journals was heaved onto the floor. Now the desk’s drawers were exposed and these were systematically rifled, but judging by the hiss of anger that accompanied the search, the desired object was not inside.

The figure stopped suddenly, head cocked toward the door. Footsteps. High heels tapping their way down the corridor. In the office all was still. The footsteps continued, coming nearer. Then stopped. A pause. Then a knock, soft, tentative. Then another, louder, more insistent.

“Dr. McDonald? Do you need any assistance?”

The prim young woman in the neat navy blue suit hesitated. Sometimes when Dr. McDonald didn’t answer, she was simply concentrating so hard on a manuscript that she literally didn’t hear you knocking, and woe betide you if you marched in without being invited. One thing she’d learned early on was that Dr. McDonald didn’t take kindly to being interrupted in her work. It was a little like sleepwalkers, she thought to herself—if you woke them up, they could get terribly confused, violent even. Best to leave them well alone until they found their own way back to the land of the living.

But this was different. She’d distinctly heard several loud crashes as she turned the corner, and as she neared the door there was no doubt in her mind that someone was trashing Dr. McDonald’s office.

Fiona Carter wasn’t brave. The thought of any sort of physical violence made her nauseated with fear. But if there was one thing she feared more than a confrontation with a determined burglar, it was trying to explain to Dr. McDonald why she had allowed someone to decimate her precious library.

Her hand shook as she slowly turned the knob and pushed the door.

It swung open gently, revealing a slim female figure in a tweed skirt and a shapeless fisherman’s sweater standing ankle-deep in tattered journals and manuscript pages, a few of which stirred briefly in the sudden draft. The figure glared at her.

“Dr. McDonald!” Fiona took a step forward and almost tripped over a hefty black volume. “Are you all right? I heard such a noise—I thought there was an intruder. I thought someone was—”

“I can’t find the blasted poem of Charybdis! I was looking at it only yesterday, and now it’s disappeared. Fiona, have you been interfering with my manuscripts again?”

Fiona stifled a nervous laugh. How could anybody, however ill intentioned, make Dr. McDonald’s office any more chaotic than it already was?

“The poem of Charybdis? Is it possible you were consulting Merton’s
Early Coptic Literature
while you were reading it?”

Dr. McDonald looked dubious. “Possibly. I suppose.”

“In which case perhaps you put the poem inside the book
for safekeeping?” If she remembered correctly,
Early Coptic Literature
was bound in dark green cloth with red lettering on the spine. It wasn’t in its usual place on the shelf against the far wall. Very little was. She looked down at the book-strewn floor.

“Is that it? Over there, next to Eliade’s
The Sacred and the Profane?”

Dr. McDonald turned in the direction Fiona was pointing and scooped up a fat green book. She riffled nimbly through its pages and a single sheaf of parchment fluttered to the floor. The poem of Charybdis.

Dr. McDonald turned back to Fiona, beaming. With her matronly clothes and permanently severe expression, it was easy to miss the fact that Isis Proserpina McDonald was a stunningly beautiful woman. It was only her rare smiles that gave it away. Not that you were likely to see her smile if you called her by her given name.

“Clever girl. How on earth do you put up with me?”

Before Fiona could frame an appropriate answer, they were both frozen in place by a sudden ringing. Turning instinctively to the empty desk, they then scanned the floor, trying to pinpoint where the sound was coming from. Fiona pushed back a pile of journals and picked up the phone.

“Hello, Dr. McDonald’s office, Fiona speaking. Oh, good morning, Professor Murphy.” She turned back to Dr. McDonald, who was still standing amid the rubble of her library, furiously shaking her head and mouthing
no
.

“No, she’s not busy at all, Professor Murphy. I’m sure she’d love to speak with you.” Fiona smiled sweetly and held out the phone.

Isis sat at her desk, arms folded, lips pursed, and waited for her computer to register an incoming e-mail. While she had been standing in the wreckage of her office, listening to Professor Murphy and his rather wild story about a Babylonian scroll, she had hardly noticed as Fiona began the laborious task of restoring order. Now almost everything was, if not in its place, then at least off the floor and in neat-looking rows and piles. She’d even done her best to rearrange Isis’s collection of ancient pottery figures—her goddesses—in the correct chronological sequence on the top of her one filing cabinet.