The Genesis Secret: (12 page)

Forrester was researching human sacrifice, in his London office. His coffee sat on his desk next to a photo of his son holding a beach ball and a picture of his snowy-blonde daughter, beaming and happy. It was a photo taken just before her death.

Sometimes when the black dog of depression was at his heels, Forrester would lay the photo of his daughter face down on the desk. Because it was just too painful, too piercing. Thinking about his daughter sometimes gave Forrester a kind of sharp chest pain, as if he had a fractured rib digging into his lungs. It was such a physical pain that he would almost vocalize it.

But most of the time it wasn’t quite this bad. Usually, he was able to look past the pain-to other people’s pain. This morning the photo stood on the desk ignored, his daughter’s happy still-alive smile white and bright. Forrester was transfixed by his computer screen, Googling away at ‘human sacrifice’.

He was reading about the Jews: the early Israelites who burned their children. Alive. They did this, Forrester learned, in a valley just south of Jerusalem-Ben-Hinnom. Wikipedia told the DCI that this valley was also known as Gehenna. The valley of Gehenna was Hell to the Canaanite, the ‘valley of the shadow of death’.

Forrester read on. According to historians, in ancient times Israelite mothers and fathers would bring their firstborn children down to the valley, outside the gates of Jerusalem, and there they would place their screaming babies into the hollow brass stomach of a huge statue dedicated to the Canaanite demon god Moloch. The brass bowl in the centre of the enormous statue of Moloch also functioned as a brazier. Once the babies and children were in the brass bowl, fires were lit under the statue, which heated the brass, thereby roasting the children to death. As the children screamed to be saved, priests would pound enormous drums to drown out the shrieks and save the mothers from undue distress, from having to listen to their children burning alive.

Forrester sat back, his heart pounding like the drums of an Israelite ritual. How could anyone do such a thing? How could anyone sacrifice their own children? Unbidden, Forrester thought of his own children, his daughter, his dead daughter. The firstborn of the family.

Rubbing his eyes, he scrolled through some more pages.

The sacrifice of firstborn was a common motif in ancient history, it seemed. All kinds of peoples-Celts, Mayans, Goths, Vikings, Norsemen, Hindus, Sumerians, Scythians, American Indians, Incas, many others-sacrificed humans, and many of them sacrificed the first child. Often this was done as a so-called ‘foundation sacrifice’ when a strategically important or sacred structure was being built: before the main construction took place the community would sacrifice a child, usually a firstborn, and they would bury the corpse under the arch or pillar or door.

Forrester inhaled, and exhaled. He clicked another link. The sky outside was bright, the sunshine of late spring. The DCI was too absorbed in his macabre task to notice or care.

Aztec sacrifices were especially blood-thirsty. Homosexuals would be ritually killed by having their intestines ripped out through their rectums. Enemy warriors would have their living hearts torn from their chest cavities by priests whose heads were daubed with the human offal of their previous victims.

He read on. And on. Supposedly the Great Wall of China was built on thousands of cadavers: yet more foundation sacrifices. The Japanese once venerated a hitobashira-a human pillar-beneath which virgins were buried alive. Enormous cenotes, or water cisterns, were used by the Mayans of Mexico as drowning lakes for maidens and children. And there was more. The pre-Roman
Celts would stab a victim in the heart and then divine the future from the death spasms of the thrashing body. The Phoenicians killed literally thousands of babies as atonement and buried them in ‘tophets’-great baby cemeteries.

And on, and on. Forrester sat back feeling a little sick. Yet he also felt he was making progress. The ritual murder in the Isle of Man and the attempted murder in Craven Street had to be connected with sacrifice, not least because the murderers had gathered at the spot of a historically proven sacrifice. But what linked them?

He took a deep breath, like someone about to dive in a very cold pond, and Googled ‘Star of David’.

After forty minutes of searching through Jewish history he found what he needed. It was on some lunatic American website, possibly a Satanist site. But lunacy was just what Forrester was investigating. The mad website told him the Star of David was also known as the Star of Solomon, as the ancient Jewish king had allegedly used it as his magical emblem. The symbol was abjured by some modern rabbinical authorities because of its occult associations. Solomon was reported to have used the Star on the temple he raised to Moloch, the Canaanite demon, where he committed animal and human sacrifice.

Forrester read the webpage again. And again. And for a third time. The Star of David was not what the murderers were etching into their
victims. They were cutting the Star of Solomon. A symbol closely associated with human sacrifice.

And the head shaving?

That took only three minutes to Google.

Victims of sacrifice in many cultures were purified in various ways before the ritual. They were bathed, or required to fast, sometimes they would be shaved of all hair. Some would have their tongues cut out.

Forrester’s thesis was confirmed. The murderers were obsessed or engaged with the concept of human sacrifice. But why?

He stood up and massaged his neck muscles. He’d been reading for three hours. His mind was buzzing with the pulse of the computer screen. All this was well and good. But they had no actual leads on the murder gang. All the Manx ports were being watched. The airport was under surveillance. But he had little hope they would catch the gang that way: they would surely have split up and fled the isle at once. Dozens of boats and ferries and airplanes left Man every day at all hours; most likely the gang had left Douglas before the corpse was even discovered. The only real hope was looking for CCTV images of the black Toyota. But it could take weeks for the available footage to be scanned.

Forrester sat down again and tugged his swivel chair nearer to the screen. He had three things left to research.

Jerusalem Whaley was a member of this club
of roistering aristocrats: the Irish Hellfire Club. As the Manx historian had told him. But how was that fact linked to sacrifice? To the murders? Was it linked at all?

And the bones in Craven Street, in Benjamin Franklin’s House, what was all that about?

These two queries led to his third question: everywhere they went, the gang dug something up. What were they looking for?

His initial search was simple and immediately successful. Forrester typed in Benjamin Franklin and Hellfire and the very first hit gave him his answer: Benjamin Franklin, the founding father of America, was a good friend of Sir Francis Dashwood, and Sir Francis Dashwood was the founder of the Hellfire Club. Indeed, according to some authorities, Benjamin Franklin was himself a member of the Hellfire Club.

The puzzle yielded. The Hellfire Club was obviously crucial. But precisely who or what were they?

As far as Forrester could tell from Google, the Hellfire Club, in both Ireland and England, was a secret society of upper class ne’er-do-wells. But that was all. They were unsavoury and dangerous, maybe, indulged and hedonistic certainly; but truly Satanic and murderous? Most historians reckoned they were little more than a drinking club which sometimes got a little ribald. The rumours of devil worship were largely dismissed.

That said, there was one expert who disagreed.
Forrester scribbled the name on a pad. A professor Hugo De Savary, at Cambridge University no less, reckoned that the Hellfires were serious occultists. Though he had been ridiculed for his views.

But even if De Savary was right it still didn’t answer the rest of the awkward questions. What were the gang looking for? Why were they digging stuff up? How was it connected with the Hellfires? What was the point in turning over lawns and cellars? Were they seeking treasure? Demonic gewgaws? Old bones? Cursed diamonds? Sacrificed children? Forrester’s mind was fizzing-a little too much. He had done enough for one morning. He had done well. He felt as if he had finally gathered all the main jigsaw pieces, or someone had tipped them all in his lap. The only problem was that he had lost the box and couldn’t see the lid. So he didn’t know what the jigsaw pieces were meant to represent, he didn’t have a clue what picture he was trying to recreate. Still, at least he had the pieces…

Stifling a yawn, Forrester yanked his jacket from the back of the swivel chair and fed his arms into the sleeves. It was lunchtime. He’d earned a nice lunch-Italian maybe. Penne arrabiata at the trattoria down the road. With some good tiramisu to follow, and a nice long read of the sports pages.

On his way out of the office, he glanced down at his desk. His daughter smiled back at him, with her innocent face shining. Forrester paused, feeling a sharpness inside. He looked at the picture of his
son, and then again at the picture of his daughter. He thought of her voice. Saying her first real words. Appull-App-ull. App-ull daddy! App-ull…

The pain was sharp. He laid the picture flat on the desk, and stepped through the door.

The first thing he saw was Boijer, breathless and excited.

‘Sir, I think we have something!’

‘What?’

‘Toyota. The black Toyota.’

‘Where?’

‘Heysham, sir. In Lancashire.’

‘When—’

‘Two days ago.’

Rob and Christine were sitting in the tea-house by the Pool of Abraham. The honeyed stones of the Mevlid Halil mosque were glowing in the morning light: their mellow hues reflected placidly in the water of the fishpond.

They had spent the previous evening researching the Eden theory separately: Christine on the laptop in her flat, Rob in a net café: dividing their time to get more data more quickly. And now they had met to discuss it. They had come here for the anonymity: it felt safer to be sitting amongst the crowds. The strolling friends and off-duty soldiers, the kids eating fried mutton balls with one hand as their mothers gazed at the carp. The only jarring note was a police car parked discreetly at the edge of the tea-gardens.

Rob was remembering how he’d arrived at his solution. They had discussed Genesis when they were in Sogmatar and Haran. And Christine had also mentioned the Adam and Eve legend. This
combination must, Rob realized, have triggered memories of his father reciting the Bible; so he had seen how the numbers could be read. Chapter x verse y. Digit followed by digit. But now they had to examine this solution, more deeply, and compare notes on the underlying logic.

‘OK.’ He took a gulp of tea. ‘Let’s go through it again. We know that agriculture began here. The first place in the world. In the area immediately surrounding Gobekli. Sometime around 8000
BC
, yup?’

‘Yes. And we know roughly when and where farming began…’

‘Because of the archaeological evidence: “domestication is a shock to the system”. I read that in the book in your flat. The skeletons of people change, they grow smaller and less healthy…’

‘Yyyyes,’ Christine agreed, hesitantly. ‘As the human body adapts to a protein-poorer diet, and a more arduous lifestyle there is certainly a change in skeletal size, in the robustness of the physique. I have seen that in many sites.’

‘So. Early domestication is a trial. Likewise, newly-domesticated animals get scrawnier.’

‘Yes.’

‘But…’ Rob leaned forward. ‘When this domestication happened, in 8000
BC
, that was also the time when the local landscape began to alter. Around here. Right?’

‘Yes, the trees were chopped down and the soil
leached away and the area became very arid. As it is now. Whereas before, it was…paradisiacal.’ She smiled meditatively. ‘I remember Franz talking about Gobekli as it must have been. He said it was once a
prachtvolle Schafferegion
-a glorious pastoral region. It was a region of forests and meadows, rich with game, and wild grasses. And then the climate changed, as agriculture took over. And then it became a weary place-that had to be worked ever harder.’

Rob took out his notebook and recited, ‘As God says to Adam: “cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life”. Genesis Chapter 3, verse 17. Three seventeen.’

Christine rubbed her temples with her fingertips. She looked tired, which was unusual for her. But then she shook herself, and pressed on. ‘I have heard this theory before: that the story of Eden is a folk-memory, and an allegory.’

‘You mean, like, a metaphor?’

‘According to some, yes. If you look at it one way the Eden story describes our hunter-gatherer past, when we had time to wander through the trees and pick fruit and gather wild grasses…like Adam and Eve, naked in paradise. And then we fell into farming and life got harder. And so we were expelled from Eden.’

Rob looked at two men holding hands, crossing the bridge over the little rivulet; the bridge that led to the teahouse. ‘But why did we really start farming?’

Christine shrugged. ‘No one knows. It is one of the great mysteries. But it certainly started here. In this corner of Anatolia. The very first pigs were domesticated at Cayonu, that’s just seventy miles away. Cattle were domesticated at Catalhoyuk, to the west.’

‘But how does Gobekli fit in precisely?’

‘That’s a difficult one. It’s a miracle that hunters created such a site. Yet it shows that the life before farming was very leisured. These men, those hunters, they had time to learn the arts, to sculpt, to make exquisite carvings. It was a huge leap forward. Yet they didn’t know how to make pots.’ Christine’s silver crucifix glinted in the sunshine as she spoke. ‘It’s bizarre. And of course sexuality developed, too. There are many erotic images in Gobekli. Animals and men with enlarged phalluses. Carvings of women, splayed and naked women…’

‘Maybe they ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge’? said Rob.

Christine smiled politely. ‘Maybe.’

They were quiet for a moment. Christine turned nervously to her left, as a swarthy policeman patrolled with his radio buzzing. Rob wondered why they were both so paranoid. Neither of them had done anything wrong. But Officer Kiribali had been so sinister. And what about the men staring up at the flat. What was that all about? He dismissed his fears. There was still ground to cover. ’Then there’s the geography?’

‘Yes.’ Christine nodded. ‘The topography. That’s also important.’

‘There aren’t four rivers near Gobekli.’

‘No. Just one. But it’s the Euphrates.’

Rob remembered what he had read in the net café. ‘And scholars have always reckoned that Eden, if it lay anywhere, must have been somewhere between the Tigris and the Euphrates. The fertile crescent. The earliest site of civilization. And the Euphrates is actually mentioned in Genesis, as rising in Eden.’

‘It is. And also we have the mountains on the map.’

‘The Taurus.’

‘Source of the Euphrates, East of Eden,’ Christine affirmed. ‘There are strong legends that Eden is sheltered by mountains to the East. Gobekli has the Taurus to the east.’

Christine took out her own notebook: and read out some of her notes. ‘OK, there’s more. In ancient Assyrian texts, there is mention of a Beth Eden, a so-called House of Eden.’

‘Which is?

‘It is or rather it was a small Aramean statelet. Located on the bend of the Euphrates, just south of Charchemish. Which is fifty miles from Sanliurfa.’

Rob nodded, impressed. Christine’s research had been better than his. ‘Did you find anything else?’

‘We know about Adam and Eve in Haran. But Eden isn’t just described in Genesis, it is also
mentioned in the Book of Kings.’ She flicked a page in her notebook, and read the citation: ‘“Have the gods of the nations delivered them which my fathers have destroyed, as Gozan, and Haran, and Rezaph, and the children of Eden which were in Thelasar.”’

‘Haran again?’

‘Yes. Haran.’ She shrugged. ‘And Thelasar is possibly a town called Rusafah in Northern Syria.’

‘How far is that?’

‘Two hundred miles south-west.’

Rob nodded, enthused. ‘Making Gobekli just east. Eastward in Eden. And what about the name? The word Eden itself? It means delight in Hebrew…’

‘But the Sumerian root is in fact “eddin”. A steppe or plateau, or plain.’

‘Like…the Plain of Haran?’

‘Quite so. Like the Plain of Haran. In which we find…’

‘Gobekli Tepe.’ Rob felt the tingle of sweat on his back. It was a very hot morning, even in the cool of the teahouse gardens. ‘OK then, the last thread is the actual Bible connection.’

‘Abraham was meant to have lived here. He is certainly linked to Haran, in the Book of Genesis. Most Muslims believe Urfa is the Ur of the Chaldees. And that is also mentioned in Genesis. This small region has more links to Genesis than anywhere else in the Middle East.’

‘So that’s it.’ Rob smiled, feeling satisfied.
’Taking into account the Biblical links, the history and legends, plus the topography of the region and the evidence of early domestication-and of course the data from the site itself-we have the solution. Right? At least we have Franz’s solution…’ Rob lifted his hands, like a magician about to do a trick: ‘Gobekli Tepe is the Garden of Eden!’

Christine smiled. ‘Metaphorically.’

‘Metaphorically. But still, it is persuasive. This is where the Fall of Man took place. From the freedom of hunting, to the toil of agriculture. And that’s the story recorded in Genesis.’

They were silent for a moment. Then Christine said, ‘Though a better way of putting it is that Gobekli Tepe is…a temple in an Edenic landscape. Rather than the actual Garden of Eden.’

‘Sure.’ Rob grinned. ‘Don’t worry, Christine, I don’t actually think Adam and Eve were wandering around Gobekli eating peaches. But I do think Franz reckoned he had found it. Allegorically.’

He gazed across the glittering pools, feeling a lot happier. Talking it through was helping; and he was also very excited about the journalistic possibilities. Even if it was a bizarre story it was astonishing, and surely very readable. A scientist who thought he was digging up Eden, even metaphorically and allegorically? It could be a double page headline. Easy.

Christine did not seem so happy about the success of their hypothesis. Her eyes misted for a
second: a phase of emotion that swiftly passed. ‘Yyessss…Let’s say you are right. You probably are. It certainly explains the numbers. And his mysterious behaviour at the end, digging for things at night. Taking them away. He must have been very excited. He was very jumpy just before…just before it happened.’

Her mood touched Rob; he chided himself. Here he was thinking about his work and yet there was still a murder unsolved.

Christine was frowning. ‘There’s still many questions left.’

‘Why did they kill him?’

‘Exactly.’

Rob wondered aloud. ‘Well, heck. Maybe…maybe some American evangelists found out what he was up to. Digging up Eden, I mean.’

Christine laughed. ‘And they hired a hitman? Right. Those Methodists can be so touchy.’

There was nothing left in her tea glass. She picked it up and put it down, then said, ‘Another problem is this: why did the hunters bury Gobekli? That’s not explained by the Eden theory. It must have taken them decades to inter an entire temple. Why do that?’

Rob looked up at the blue Urfan sky for inspiration. ‘Because it was the site of the Fall? Maybe it symbolized even at that early stage the error of mankind. Falling into farming. The beginning of wage slavery. So they hid it out of shame or anger or resentment or…’

Christine made a rather unimpressed pout.

‘OK.’ Rob smiled. ‘It’s a crap theory. But why
did
they do it?’

A shrug.
‘C’est un mystère.’

Another silence fell across their little table. A few yards away, through the rose bushes, little children were pointing excitedly at the fish in the pond. Rob looked at one girl: she was about eleven, with bright golden curls of hair. But her mother was shrouded in black veils and robes: a full chador. He felt a sadness: that soon this lovely girl would be concealed like her mother. Shrouded for ever in black.

And then a flash of real guilt crossed his mind. A flash of guilt about
his
daughter. On the one hand he was revelling in this mystery-and yet, inside, he still wanted to go home. He yearned to go home. To see Lizzie.

Christine was opening Breitner’s notebook, and laying it on the table alongside her own notes. Shadows of sunlight, spangled by the teahouse lime trees, flickered across their little table. ‘One final point. There is something I didn’t tell you before. Remember the last line in his notebook?’ She pointed to a line of handwriting, turning the notebook so that Rob could see.

It was the line about the skull. It said,
Cayonu skulls, cf Orra Keller.

‘I didn’t mention it before because it was so confusing. It didn’t seem relevant. But now…Well, take a look. I have an idea…’

He bent to read: but the line remained incomprehensible. ‘But who is Orra Keller?’

‘It’s not a name!’ said Christine. ‘We just presumed it was a name because it’s in capitals. But I think Franz was just mixing languages.’

‘I still don’t get it.’

‘He’s mixing English and German. And…’

Rob looked over Christine’s shoulder suddenly. ’Jesus.’

Christine stiffened. ‘What?’

‘Don’t look now. It’s Officer Kiribali. He’s seen us, and he’s coming over.’