The Tower (20 page)

Enos could barely open his eyes. ‘Your father . . . find him . . .’

‘Where? Where?’

‘Abu el Abd . . . in Tedmor . . . he knows,’ he managed to say in a whisper, before his head fell back and all life left him.

Philip shook him, gripped by uncontrollable panic. ‘Enos, answer me! Answer me! Don’t leave me! I need you!’ Then he collapsed, weeping, the old man’s body still in his arms.

Outside, the muezzin’s voice flew over the rooftops of the city, chanting the pre-dawn prayer, his voice sounding like a long lament: ‘
Allah-u-akbar!
’

Philip roused himself. He arranged the old man’s body on the floor, laying his head on a pillow and crossing his arms over his chest. He softly recited the prayer of the dead for the sons of Israel. It was the only honour that fate had allowed for a courageous man who had spent his whole life struggling against overpowering forces. That scrawny, frail body had been stronger and more unyielding than that of the most indomitable warrior. For the first time in his life, Philip hoped that God existed, so that Enos’s death would not be meaningless. So that he would not have been defeated for all eternity.

Philip knew he couldn’t stay in the house; it was too risky now. The city was still being scoured by Selznick’s troops. Philip wandered through the shadowy streets of the district, trying to come up with the means to slip away unnoticed. He was ardently hoping that El Kassem would appear like a
deus ex machina
to lift him out of this desperate situation, but his protector seemed to have vanished. He was teaching Philip a hard lesson: that he would not tolerate him losing sight of their objective. But perhaps, mused Philip, he’d no longer be offered a second chance. The only point of reference he had was a name and a place: Abu el Abd, at Tedmor. Tedmor: the ancient desert metropolis once known as Palmyra, fabled kingdom of the great queen Zainab, whom the Romans called Zenobia. How was he to get there?

As dawn broke, Philip noticed a beggar who was just waking up and stretching his stiff limbs. He approached him, after making sure there was no one else around, and asked to buy his soiled cloak, thinking that he would use it to cover up the beautiful embroidered robes he’d been given. The old man accepted with enthusiasm and Philip bought his bowl and his cane as well, leaning on it as he hobbled away. He thus managed to pass through the Baghdad Gate without as much as a glance from the sentries. He walked off towards the east with a slow, shuffling step. The sun was just rising over the horizon and cast a long shadow behind him in the dust of the road.

When the sun had got a little higher and the city had faded into the distance, Philip tossed away the bowl and cane, stripped off the bulkiest part of his clothing and started to walk at a much quicker pace. It still took a great many hours before he came upon a rest station. He stayed clear of it for a while, as there seemed to be legionnaires in uniform inside. As soon as the soldiers had moved on he took off his tattered cloak and went in. He sat at a table and ordered a plate of rice pilaf with some boiled chicken. The waiter’s confidence was easily won over with a tip, and Philip told him that his horse had been stolen and that he was afraid that his master would punish him severely unless he found another. Was there any way he could buy a horse in the vicinity? He didn’t need a charger worthy of Saladin, as the waiter was quick to offer; any decent mount would do, as long as it didn’t cost too much or collapse as soon as he put it into a trot.

It took two hours of exasperating haggling with a horse trader before they managed to settle on a price, so it was near dusk by the time Philip set off again. He saddled the horse and spurred it into a gallop as a huge red moon rose over the chalky rolling hills in the east.

To his right, the waters of the Nahr Qoueik flowed lazily beneath the moon, but Philip’s horse flew down the road at a full gallop. Behind him, in the long train of white dust, Philip left memories and reminiscences, his childhood, his adolescence and the long peace of his studies, as he chased dreams and nightmares, shadows teasing him in the night. He urged his mount on faster and faster until the pounding of the horse’s hooves matched the convulsive beating of his heart, soaring on a wave of delirium until a cloud abruptly covered the face of the moon.

The sudden darkness calmed Philip’s frenzy and he pulled on the horse’s reins, easing the foaming, sweat-soaked animal into a walk. He let himself slide to the ground and collapsed onto the warm sand as consciousness slipped away.

Philip awoke from that suspended state of mind with a shudder and looked around him. His horse shone damp in the shadows like a living statue of bronze and the endless plain stretched out all around him as far as the eye could see. Philip got back into the saddle and continued his journey without ever stopping again. He had no idea of how long he had been riding when, all at once, a vision loomed up in the night before him: the battered towers and crumbling walls of Dura Europos.

He dismounted and led his horse slowly by the reins towards the ancient legionary fortress. He entered through the gate, observing the innumerable graffiti that covered its jambs. He felt as though he could hear those words, carved into stone in the lost language of Rome, echoing in the vast silence like a chorus of confused cries. They seemed to flit away through the air as he passed, like startled bats. He advanced along the north–south military road amid collapsed walls and broken columns until he reached the eastern gate. The liquid majesty of the Euphrates greeted him, glittering in the dark.

He sat on the banks of the great river, surrounded by the towering ruins of the Roman fort. When he closed his eyes, he could still see Selznick writhing on the floor. But just beyond was the image of the woman he had met at Bab el Awa and glimpsed once again in that magical, fragrant place . . . Philip could not get her out of his mind, and the thought of her wounded him, filled him with an acute sense of longing and deep regret. But her image vanished as she had, like an apparition. Flocks of nocturnal birds took to the air from the towers behind him, while thousands of bats shot out of the hidden recesses of the ruins and scattered over the river and the desert.

Philip gathered some twigs and wood and lit a fire so he could have a little light and warmth in the midst of all that desolation. He toasted a bit of the dry bread that he still had in his haversack and melted a little goat’s cheese on it. In that deserted, melancholy place, his scant repast gave him sustenance and the courage to go on. He added more wood and lay down alongside the bivouac in the shelter of a low wall. He rested easily, for he knew no one could see him from the desert, but someone did, from the other side of the river, and waited until morning so that he could make out the youth’s features. That same day Selznick was informed about a young foreigner travelling on horseback, hiding among the ruins of Dura Europos.

F
ATHER
H
OGAN CROSSED
the Vatican gardens in the dark, listening to the sound of his own footsteps on the gravelled pathways. He stared at the light in the observatory, its eye wide-open onto the night sky, scrutinizing its immensity. He knew that the old priest was waiting for him up there, waiting to relate the epilogue of a blasphemous story, the last act of a rash, arrogant challenge. He went up the stairs and, as he drew closer to the top, he could hear the signal, as persistent as a winter rain.

Father Boni was sitting at his desk. As always, with his back turned to him.

‘I know what’s going to happen,’ he said. ‘I know what that signal means.’

Father Hogan did not reply, but sat down.

‘The civilization of Delfud succeeded in launching their mind into the furthest reaches of space before their elevated level of knowledge was destroyed for ever.’

‘What do you mean by “launching their mind”?’

‘I don’t know. I’m quoting directly from Father Antonelli’s translation. Maybe . . . a machine.’

‘Capable of thinking?’

‘What else?’

Father Hogan shook his head. ‘A machine capable of thinking cannot exist.’

‘The fact is that we are receiving an intelligent signal. This . . . thing was launched into outermost space for a precise purpose, for a mission that . . .’ The old priest stopped, as though he couldn’t find the words for what he had to say.

‘Yes, Father Boni?’ urged Father Hogan.

‘The purpose was to probe the mind of God in the very moment of creation.’ The old man fell still and lowered his eyes as if ashamed of what he had said.

‘You cannot believe such a thing.’

‘Oh no? Then come here, Hogan. I have something to show you. Look at this . . . The signals we are receiving give us the celestial coordinates of all twenty stars of the Scorpio constellation, plus one . . . a dark, remote star of unimaginable power, millions of times greater than our own sun . . . It is represented in the Stone of the Constellations and is described in “The Book of Amon”. It is called “the black heart of the scorpion”. Hogan, its position corresponds to the astral coordinates transmitted by our radio source. I believe that . . . that it is a black body. The civilization of Delfud somehow harnessed its monstrous gravity to use as an accelerator, a kind of cyclopean catapult that hurled their device at an unimaginable speed into the most remote reaches of the universe.

‘Tens of thousands of years have passed and now . . . now that thing is returning. Hogan, in thirty-five days, seventeen hours and seven minutes, it will project onto the earth everything that it has learned in those lost regions of the cosmos. Do you understand how little time we have left to us? You’ll have to leave as soon as possible.’

Father Hogan shook his head. ‘Marconi said that the radio source coincides with a point suspended in a geostationary orbit at 500,000 kilometres from earth.’

‘That’s only a relay station; the device that guides the signal to its target.’

‘And where is the target?’

Father Boni opened a large map of the Sahara and pointed to a spot in the south-eastern quadrant. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘in a place searing hot by day and bitterly cold at night, swept by torrid winds and by storms of sand and dust. A corner of hell called the Sand of Ghosts.’

D
ESMOND
G
ARRETT RODE ALONE
over the barren land in the midday sun. His long years in the saddle had given him a particular bearing, as if his own body were an extension of his horse’s. The desert wind and sand had carved out his features and weathered his skin. He dressed like the bedouins of Sirte, with a keffiyeh around his head and in front of his mouth, but wore shiny brown leather boots over Turkish-style trousers. A repeating rifle of American make was hanging from the saddle and a damascene-hilted scimitar hung from his belt.

Desmond would stop now and then to check his compass and mark a spot on his map. The waning sun was nearing the horizon to his right when he spurred on his Arab charger. His plan was to reach the oasis just when the sky would be flaring violet over the colonnades of ancient Palmyra.

The Pearl of the Desert appeared all at once, like a vision, as he cleared a low hill. The oasis of Tedmor shone a deep, dark green in the harsh landscape that surrounded it, as thousands of palms waved their fronds in the evening breeze like a field of wheat in the month of May. The huge glittering pool at their centre flashed with the fiery evening light and the slow-moving sun loomed like a divinity over the great limestone portal, lighting up the columns of the majestic Roman portico one after another, as if they were colossal torches.

It was at that moment that the miracle took place. Just as the sun had sunk below the horizon and the ruins of Palmyra were about to be plunged into darkness, a violet flash illuminated the hills and the desert behind the city and spread nearly all the way to the centre of the heavenly vault, like an illusory dawn.

Desmond climbed off his horse and stood stock still, taking in the magic. He had seen it for the first time twenty years ago and then never again, but many a time, during long nights spent in the desert, he had dreamed of the rapturous violet sky of Palmyra as a refuge of the soul.

The purple reflection was shot through with the rosy streaks of the last tremulous light of dusk, and then began instantly to darken, invaded by the deep blue of night.

Desmond walked slowly to the edge of the pool, leading his horse by the reins. Just a short distance away, under a group of towering palms, he could see an imposing tent guarded by a pair of warriors. He tied his horse to one of the stakes and waited for someone to notice his presence. The guards did not even glance in his direction but a servant peered out from behind the flap opening and then ducked back inside. Sheikh Abu el Abd in person soon appeared at the entrance to the tent.

He strode towards Desmond and embraced him warmly, then brought him into the tent and had him sit on velvet pillows from Fez as his servants brought hot tea in little Turkish cups of silver and glass.

‘Enos told me you would be coming and my heart filled with joy. I am pleased that you are my guest here, as he once was.’

‘It makes me very happy to see you as well, Abu el Abd. So many years have gone by . . .’

‘Why hasn’t Enos come? Aleppo is not so far from Tedmor.’

‘I don’t know. Messages are slow to arrive in the desert. But Enos has grown very old, you know. That must be the reason. I’m sure he would have come otherwise. It was here at Tedmor that I first met him, so long ago.’

‘That’s true. Right here in my tent.’

‘What did he ask of you then, Abu el Abd?’

‘He wanted to speak with the Fateh of Kalaat al Amm. A very difficult endeavour indeed . . . only a few people may speak with the Fateh in her whole lifetime.’

‘And the Fateh agreed to see him?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did she tell him?’

‘I don’t know. But when Enos left, there was a shadow in his eyes . . . the shadow of death.’

‘I am here to see the Fateh as well.’