Ancient Echoes (7 page)

Paris

CHARLOTTE HAILED A TAXI to take her
from Charles de Gaulle airport into the city.

The night before, in Jerusalem, as the wail of sirens
filling the streets, she thought of the gunman who had appeared ready to shoot
her as she drove Al-Dajani’s Mercedes. At the same moment, a police car sped
by. The gunman faded into the darkness, and she drove away.

At the Tel Aviv-Jaffa airport, she purchased an El Al ticket
to Paris. When living in Israel, she had always carried her passport, papers,
and credit cards with her and had reverted to that system without thought. The
few clothes, books, and toiletries back in her hotel room weren’t worth going
after.

She went through the special internal security division,
showing her U.S. Homeland Security credentials and weapon. She scarcely
breathed until the plane left Israeli air space. Three men lay dead, and she
feared security cameras had captured her leaving the parking lot in a victim's
car. She had no idea how long it might take before the Israeli police
identified her.

On the plane, she looked through the papers she had picked
up from Al-Dajani's desk. Most of them were photocopies of ancient Egyptian
Demotic script. She remembered a few of the consonant glyphs, but would need
her books and dictionaries to make any sense of the writing. The only thing
clear to her was a symbol drawn on a sheet all by itself:

Given Al-Dajani’s area of study, the symbol very likely had
an alchemical connection. In alchemy large outer circles represented boundaries
of energy fields, and the four elements that made up all matter were
represented by triangles.

But she had no idea what the complete symbol with two vees
and the solid circle above them represented.

The taxi brought her to the Latin Quarter. She got out at
the Rue Saint Jacques, two blocks south of the Seine, and began walking. The
Musée National du Moyen Age Thermes de Cluny with its flamboyant Gothic
turreted walls and dormers with seashell motifs was located on the Place
Paul-Painlevé.

She slowed to make a thorough scan of the area,
then
hurried to the Cluny. The medieval mansion housing the
museum had been built originally for Benedictine abbots in the fifteenth
century. In 1515 it became the residence of Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VII
and Elizabeth of York, and widow of Louis XII. The newly formed French republic
confiscated in 1793, and turned it into a museum in the mid-nineteenth century.

She entered an open cobblestone courtyard with gargoyles
peering down from beneath a stone parapet. At the museum entrance, she gave her
name, and asked to see the curator, Pierre Bonnetieu, saying she needed to see
him about a mutual friend, Mustafa Al-Dajani.

After a short wait, a pointy-faced woman led her up the
stairs, past the rotunda which housed the six Lady and the Unicorn tapestries,
the museum's most famous collection, to the administrative section.

Bonnetieu's office was paneled in dark wood covered with
paintings and small tapestries. Shelves held fine pottery and figurines as well
as leather bound first editions. The curator sat behind a massive inlaid
mahogany desk. He wore an expensive but overly snug suit, as if refusing to
admit his weight. His brightly florid face with sagging jowls spilled over a
too-tight collar.

As he rose to greet her, he studied her face. “Miss Reed?
You look familiar. I'm sorry, I can't quite place...”

Although her heart pounded, her stance remained stiff,
devoid of expression. “Many years ago I met you through my husband, Dennis
Levine.”

His eyebrows rose with recognition. She watched his
expression shift as the full impact of the memory hit.
“Dennis...oh,
my.
Yes, I do remember. I'm so sorry for your loss. He was a good man.
A brilliant scholar.”

“Yes, thank you,” she murmured, then hurried on. “The reason
I'm here may have something to do with what he had been investigating when he
died.” She said no more, wanting to gauge his reaction to those words.

He showed no surprise. “Please sit.” He gestured toward the
leather chair facing his desk. “May I offer you something to drink?
A liqueur?
Tea, perhaps?”

“No, thank you,” she said curtly,
then
added, “Mustafa Al-Dajani is dead.” The words were a sharp crack in the air.

His face drained of color.

She quietly relayed the details of her visit with Al-Dajani,
and how he'd mentioned the possibility of danger. “He said that after speaking
with you about the visit of Lionel Rempart, an American professor of
anthropology, he began to piece together information, and that caused him to
think about what Dennis investigated. Perhaps it had to do with alchemy. Do you
know what he referred to?” she asked.

The Frenchman grew agitated as he thought about her words.
“
Non
! Impossible!
The American, he wanted to know about
an old alchemical text. Nothing special; nothing dangerous! That is all. I
showed him the information I had, and when he asked what the symbolism meant, I
referred him to Mustafa who is the greatest scholar of alchemy in the world…or,
so he was.” He placed his hand against his mouth and whispered, “
Mon dieu!
Mon ami!”

She waited while he composed himself. “Please, you must tell
me what you know,” she said, her gaze hard.

He took a deep breath, his hands atop the desk, clasping and
unclasping them. “Texts on alchemy are always written in symbolic, poetic
language, impossible to understand. Mustafa and I learned that one book, and
only one, existed which made everything understandable. We wanted it; we
dreamed of finding it.”

Bonnetieu crossed to a wooden cabinet, and poured two
glasses of Courvoisier. He handed one to Charlotte despite her earlier refusal.

“The book we looked for had once been owned by an alchemist
who lived here in Paris in the fourteenth century. It was called
The Book of
Abraham the Jew
. It is the text Professor Rempart asked about.”

She put down the drink. Her hand shook. “Did Dennis talk to
you about that book as well?”

“He did.” He drained his glass. “I think it will be best if
I show you, just as I did him. The book, you see, vanished centuries ago, if it
every truly existed. Most people say it is merely apocryphal, and legends of
its existence are simply that, mere legends.”

Their footsteps echoed loudly as Bonnetieu led Charlotte
through dark, stone-covered medieval corridors filled with exhibits from the
Middle
Ages.

Bonnetieu unlocked the room with the Nicolas Flamel display.
The space had a musty smell, the stone walls dank and cold. He switched on the
lights. Several didn't come on at all, leaving the room heavily shadowed.

“No one paid any attention to this collection for years,” he
said. “Periodically, there's a flurry of interest in Flamel, then it all dies
down again. The last time was because of
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's
Stone,
or the
Sorcerer's Stone
as you renamed it in the States. The
book mentioned Nicolas Flamel, and people were shocked to learn there actually
once lived such a man. But, few are interested now, so we rarely bother to open
up this display.”

The Flamel materials, tracings of engravings, stone
sculptures, and a manuscript allegedly written by Nicolas Flamel himself, fit
in a single glass case. Beside it were translations in a number of modern
languages.

Bonnetieu waited patiently as Charlotte read.

Born around 1330, Flamel had been a bookseller and had a
stall next to the Saint Jacques la Boucherie in Paris. Copyists and
illuminators did their work at his house in the Rue de Marivaux. He married a
slightly older widow named Perrenella. They had no children.

Flamel's quiet, happy life changed when a stranger in need
of money came to him with a unique book to sell. He wrote:

…there fell into my hands for the sum of two florins, a
guilded Book, very old and large. It was not of Paper, nor or Parchment, as
other Books be, but was only made of delicate rinds (as it seemed unto me) of
tender young trees. The cover of it was of brass, well bound, all engraven with
letters, or strange figures; and for my part I think they might well be Greek
Characters, or some such like ancient language….

Upon the first of the leaves, was written in great
Capital Letters of Gold the words: Abraham the Jew, Prince, Priest, Levite,
Astrologer, and Philosopher, to the Nation of the Jews, by the Wrath of God
dispersed among the
Gauls,
sendeth Health.

Flamel concluded his description by writing:

After this it was filled with great execrations and curses
(with this word Maranatha, which was often repeated there) against every person
that should cast his eyes upon it, if he were not Sacrificer or Scribe.

Charlotte stopped reading. A chill came over her. “
Maranatha
….Mustafa
said both Dennis and the professor, Lionel Rempart, used that word. Do you know
what it means?”

“Ah, an interesting question,” Bonnetieu replied. “Saint
Paul used it in the first Epistle to the Corinthians and currently it is
interpreted to mean 'The Lord comes' or 'The Lord is coming.' However, he used
it right after the word 'anathema,' a curse for damnation or excommunication.
And since ancient Greek has no punctuation, in the past many kept the two words
joined in their mind. As a result,
anathema maranatha
was believed to be
the most extreme sort of curse, as in 'The Lord is coming to execute
vengeance.' The word has now mostly lost its negative connotation, but in
Flamel's time, it was a strong, horrible curse. I believe the book contained
the warning if anyone not permitted to read it did so, they would be forever
damned.”

Charlotte heard a quiver in his voice, as if he believed
such nonsense.

Idaho

LIONEL REMPART HADN’T said a word
to the students after the guide left them. Instead he marched off in the direction
he alone had determined. The others trailed behind, silent and fretful. Soon,
they reached the powdery silt Nick Hoffman had warned against. They made an
effort to climb it, but kept sliding back down. Even crawling on hands and
knees, they reached a point where the loose soil and steep ground could no
longer hold their weight.

Rempart, his pale skin red and perspiring from the effort
and the sun, studied the topographical map once more, and every so often he
took out another map. This one appeared to be hand-drawn, but he didn’t allow
anyone else to inspect it. The more he referred to the two maps, the more
nervous the students became. He led them through a stand of quaking aspen and
pine, and then down a treacherous naked slope to a jagged canyon with talus and
jumbled boulders.

By the time they reached the bottom, they were too exhausted
and nervous to go on. The students spoke among themselves as they made camp.
They had expected to hike two days before reaching the anthropological site,
but now they wondered how far out of their way they had gone.

The next morning the group started out early. Hours later,
past a grove of willows, they found a creek with crystal clear water flowing
over rocks and white sand. Two men, rough and hard-looking, stood by a couple
of beached orange rafts.

“Hey, there!
What brings all you
out here?” The man who spoke was a mountain. Everything about him was big, from
the filthy, misshapen cowboy hat, to his wide, beefy shoulders, enormous belly,
and thick legs. He wore a stained flannel shirt, heavy boots, dirt-crusted
shapeless jeans, and wide belt. His companion was as skinny as the first man
was fat. Similarly small eyes and bulbous vein-covered noses were surrounded by
thick beards and hats pulled low. Each man held a can of beer.