Ancient Echoes (2 page)

The skull had been placed atop a square of material with a
picture of two demons. One had a bright green body, huge belly and monkey's
head. The other, a red dragon-like beast, had a human face in a snake's head
with four golden fangs. Both demons glared with furious, black, bulging eyes.

Michael squatted low and fingered the material. The silk
looked and felt quite old. The art work was Tibetan, a land whose culture and
religion had influenced the Mongolian people from their earliest days.

The demons seemed to dance before his eyes, mocking him.

He hurried back outside and searched the bleak, treeless
emptiness, hundreds of miles from civilization, for any sign of what had
happened to his companions.

He was completely alone except for the
kurgans
in the
distance.

Jerusalem

“CHARLOTTE! IT IS GOOD to see you
again, my friend.” Mustafa Al-Dajani kissed Charlotte Reed on both cheeks. She
stood a whole head taller than he and bent forward with a stiff and awkward
smile as he gripped her shoulders for the warm greeting. Thirteen years had
passed since she last saw him.

They stood at the entrance to a two-story gray office
building near Hebrew University’s Mt. Scopus campus. Years ago, Charlotte had
studied there.

Only a handful of Arab scholars such as Al-Dajani taught at
the University. A leading scholar of Egyptian history, culture, and language
from the Middle Kingdom through the Ptolemaic period, roughly 2000 B.C. to 30
B.C., he served as an external lecturer for the Institute of Archeology. And he
was one of the world’s few experts on early alchemical texts.

 “It's good to see you, as well, Dr. Al-Dajani,” she
said. He had gone quite gray, and his stomach, a gentle paunch thirteen years
ago, was rotund. He seemed prosperous and happy.

She knew that when he looked at her, he no longer saw the
willowy, enthusiastic twenty-four year old student she had been, but someone
more angular, sinewy.
Harder.
Her once flowing blond
hair was short and straight now, usually worn tucked behind the ears. She wore
no make-up. Large blue eyes, analytical and cold, dominated her face.

“You look better than ever,” he said.

“So do you.” Her head inclined as her reserve slipped ever
so slightly. “And we're both terrible liars.”

He chuckled as he led her into the building, past the
security guard at the entrance, and down the hall to his office. The university
secured the building due to the stature of its scholars and the value of the
artifacts they studied.

When the two first met, Charlotte Reed had been a doctoral
candidate in Al-Dajani’s field of expertise. But one day, after having lived
and studied in Jerusalem for over a year, her life changed abruptly.

Her husband, Dennis Levine, had been seated in a small café
when it was blown up by terrorists. He was killed instantly. She gave up her
studies and returned to Washington D.C. where she found a quiet desk job as a
Customs agent dealing with forgeries and smuggling of Near and Middle Eastern
art and antiquities, an almost forgotten area ever since ICE, U.S. Immigration
and Customs Enforcement, became part of Homeland Security.

Then, one week ago, she received a baffling call from
Al-Dajani.

“I have just learned of something that greatly interested
your husband before he died,” Al-Dajani had said. “It’s complicated, impossible
to explain over the phone. But if you have time to come to Jerusalem, you may
find it of interest.”

Despite the calmness of his words, he sounded excited, even
desperate, to share his discovery.

But then, he added, “I hesitated to contact you after so
many years, Charlotte, to bring up the past this way. And also, if you have
moved on from those terrible days, if your life is full now, I will understand
if you choose to stay away.”

In truth, her life wasn't full.
Pleasant,
at best.
Boring, in truth.
She liked her home,
her job; she had friends, even occasional lovers. Yet, at times, her
surroundings felt oddly temporary, as if she missed something vital, crucial.

Al-Dajani gave her a reason to return to the place where her
life had swerved so violently awry.

Hearing his voice, talking to him once more,
made
her realize that the past couldn’t be laid to rest by simply
ignoring it.

But being here was even more difficult, emotionally, than
she had expected.

An ancient quote played through her mind: that the world was
like a human eye—the white was the ocean, the iris was the earth, and the pupil
was Jerusalem.
The center of all things.
The center of her life.

As the sights, sounds and smells of the city flooded over
her, a bit of her heart, what little she had left of it, broke all over again.

Al-Dajani’s office changed little from the way she
remembered it: one small window, dark wooden shelves overflowing with books and
folders, and a desk piled high with papers. He offered her tea heavily spiced
with cinnamon and cardamom. While the tea brewed, he prattled on with animation
and obvious love about his wife and three daughters. She offered few words
about her job. He didn't bring up her private life, and neither did she.
Finally, impatient and abrupt, she said, “Your call intrigued me.”

“Yes. We must talk about it,” he murmured.

She braced herself. “I would say so.”

He flinched at the coldness of her tone. “At first, I found
it merely amusing,” he began, “that an American professor who specialized in
the Western expansion—cowboys and Indians (your 'Indians,' as you call
them)—should come to me about ancient Egyptian alchemical texts. I wondered if
he planned to become an alchemist himself.”

Al-Dajani’s
grin
mixed mockery and
humor at the American, but his words surprised her.

She probably knew more than most people about alchemy and
alchemists. Many Americans formed their opinions from children’s books and
movies in which alchemists were depicted as sorcerers or wizards with pointy
hats and long white beards, spending their lives in dark, dank castle
laboratories trying to change common metals into gold.

Al-Dajani’s gaze caught hers as his expression changed to
fear. “Soon after the professor left, strange incidents began to occur. I felt
watched. Someone broke into my office. I couldn’t help but feel more was behind
this than appeared on the surface. The American had been referred to me by
Pierre Bonnetieu in Paris. I believe you have met him.”

Her world shifted as the past rushed at her once more.
Bonnetieu was curator of the Cluny Museum in Paris. She shut out the onslaught
of memories of being with Dennis in Paris, of how it felt to be young and in
love in that magical place. “Yes,” she murmured. “I’ve met him.”

Al-Dajani continued. “The American professor, Dr. Lionel
Rempart, had been at the Cluny asking to see medieval writings about alchemy.
When Bonnetieu couldn’t answer, he referred the professor to me.”

“What did this professor want you to do? Create some gold
for him? Professors don't make a lot of money, you know.”

Al-Dajani's round face crinkled into a smile. He lifted his
hands, palms up. “Who knows? But at least that would make sense!” Then he
turned serious. “This professor acted nervous, impatient, and arrogant. I
explained that everyone made up stories about alchemy from day one. But
Rempart’s only interests were in the author of the Emerald Tablets, and in a
Kabbalist scholar named Abraham who, some believed, wrote down the information
from those tablets. Do you remember your studies regarding any of that,
Charlotte?”

Charlotte felt like a student again, a wayward student who'd
forgotten to do her homework. She smiled. “All I remember is that about 1900
B.C., a scholar known only as Hermes Trismegistus produced the earliest
writings on alchemy, the Emerald Tablets. Hermes believed all life, human,
vegetable and mineral stemmed from one single source. A few centuries after his
death the Emerald Tablets were lost, but many adepts claimed their own writings
included information from those original texts. The most well-known of these
adepts, Geber or Jabir, is best known because his name became the root of the
English word 'gibberish,' which tells what people thought of him.”

Al-Dajani chuckled mischievously. The mystical East baffling
the materialistic West remained a constant source of amusement to him. He took
a loud slurp of his tea. “Dr. Rempart seemed to think an ancient book of
alchemy had been brought to the western part of your country many years ago,
during the time of some early explorers…Lewis and Clark, I think their names
were. As I answered his questions, his excitement grew. His last words to me
were ‘
Maranatha
, it exists.' Then he left.”

“What exists?” Charlotte asked.

“The same book that your husband wanted to know about,”
Al-Dajani said.

“My husband?”

He looked surprised. “You don't know?”
At her blank
look he shifted, nervous and chagrined. “I'm so sorry, Charlotte. I thought you
knew. It's what your husband was investigating when he was killed, the reason
for his trips to Paris, and his meetings with me.
Maranatha
was the last
word I ever heard him say.”

Her mind whirled with confusion. She had introduced Dennis
to Al-Dajani, but she had no idea they had ever met beyond that.

“You’re telling me Dennis looked into alchemy?” Her voice
rang with doubt. Dennis used to laugh that deep, throaty laugh of his about the
Egyptian mysticism classes she took from Al-Dajani. She could almost hear him
now. No, she couldn’t imagine Dennis investigating such a thing. Not her
Dennis. Al-Dajani had to be mistaken.

“I'm so sorry, Charlotte, if I'd known you were unaware I
wouldn’t have asked you here at this time. It will take a while to explain.
Come this evening so we will have time to talk and we won't be disturbed by
confused undergraduates.” Al-Dajani patted her hand. “What I've found is
incredible.
An ancient secret.
One
that extends from this area to China and then to the New World—your world.
A secret some men have died to
learn,
and others have
died to keep.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

He nodded sadly. “I'm glad you decided to come and hear what
I have found. If the tables were reversed, if it were my wife who had died and
you had learned something about what she had been pursuing...”

She stared at him, scarcely able to believe what she heard.

He glanced at his wristwatch. “I must be off. Shall we meet
here at six o'clock?”

“Fine.”

He quickly signed a pass to get her admitted through
security after hours, then walked her to the door, and took her hand. “Don't be
late!”

“I won’t,” she said, still somewhat dazed by all he had
stated and implied.

“
Insh'Allah,
” he called.
God
willing.

Idaho

HIGH GRAY GRANITE walls cast a
gloomy shadow over a narrowing trail as six anthropology students, a professor,
teaching assistant, and their guide trudged through the bitterbrush and
beargrass that covered the canyon floor of central Idaho's River of No Return
Wilderness Area. Jagged mountains, deep canyons, white-water rapids, glaciers,
and high mountain lakes filled its scantly charted two and a half million
acres.

Little to no human intrusion had been made in the area,
ever. Cascading mountains soared to ear-popping heights and then plummeted to
cavernous streams and snaking creeks. Even game was scarce.

The day before, a chartered bus had carried the university
group the three-hundred plus miles from Boise to a place called Telichpah Flat.
No more than a few buildings alongside a dirt road, its population reached ten
in summer and dropped to zero in winter.

From there, the group planned to hike two days in, spend
five days at the site, and then two days back out.

They met their guide in Telichpah Flat. He drove the group
out the narrow Salmon River Road, and then onto fire roads heading west. Once
the roads ended, they left the truck and hiked inland as far as they were able
before they made camp for the night.

Professor Lionel Rempart and the guide disagreed with each
other almost from the outset, and their disagreements quickly grew. Rempart had
arrived at Boise State University two weeks earlier to spend the school year
doing research. A tenured professor at George Washington University in Washington
D.C., and one of the country's leading Lewis and Clark scholars, BSU treated
his visit as if it were the Second Coming. That he was brother to the dashing,
rather mysterious, world-famous archeologist, Michael Rempart, who dated
Hollywood stars and was a darling of magazines and TV specials, heightened the
buzz surrounding him.

Now, Rempart stopped and pulled out a map. The guide, Nick
Hoffman, folded his arms and waited.

Watching Rempart and Hoffman, Devlin Farrell knew which one
he'd listen to. A second-string wide-receiver on BSU's football team, Devlin
found himself spending more time warming the bench than in the game. He knew
he'd never have a football career. He exulted in being outdoors, and having
aced several anthropology classes gave him the edge to be selected for the
field trip. The trip offered a chance to decide if this should be his chosen
field.

Devlin eyed Rempart, a pasty, soft-muscled man in his
fifties, with thinning blond hair, glasses, and surprisingly delicate features.
His khaki slacks, white polo shirt, navy blue wind blazer, and Merrell hiking
shoes were more appropriate for a stroll through a vacation health spa than
exploring a forest. Devlin heard he had been divorced three times, had no
children, and enjoyed the company of coeds. That any coed would look twice at
the tallow-faced professor told Devlin he would never understand women.