The Lucifer Code (9 page)

Catacombs

Yesilkoy District

Istanbul, Turkey

16 March 2010

L
ourds reached for one of the lanterns the men carried. Before the man could react, the professor had it in his hand. He didn’t know the man was reaching for a gun until the barrel was pressed up against his cheek.

‘What are you doing?’ Lourds asked in disbelief. ‘I need the light if I’m going to be working.’

The leader waved the man off, but he clearly wasn’t happy about removing the gun. He growled what Lourds believed were curses and walked away.

‘My apologies, Professor,’ the leader said. ‘Perhaps it would be best if you made no sudden moves. We lead very dangerous lives. There are people who would kill us on sight.’

As I recall, your people don’t have any problem responding in kind
, Lourds thought but didn’t say it.

‘Now we have reached something of an understanding, allow me to introduce myself.’ The man bowed his head slightly but never dropped his gaze from Lourds’. ‘I’m called Qayin. Other than light, is there anything else you need?’

Lourds’ mind spun as he looked at the page again. ‘A desk, perhaps?’

‘No, sorry.’

Now that he had emptied his bladder, Lourds discovered he was starving.

‘I suppose asking for a pizza would be out of the question.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Then do you have my backpack?’

Qayin nodded to another of his followers and the man sprinted away. He returned momentarily with Lourds’ backpack, but when the professor reached for it, the man held it too far away.

‘I don’t have any weapons in there,’ Lourds said. ‘I do have a couple of nutrition bars.’

When the man finished searching the backpack, he handed it over.

Lourds hunkered down. All the men in Qayin’s gang pointed their lanterns and pistols at him. He could hear safeties click back and pistols cocking. Moving slowly, Lourds reached into the backpack and took out a journal, a pen, two trail bars and a bottle of water. He displayed his treasures for the rest of the group to see.

‘I need something to work with,’ Lourds said, ‘and I’m hungry.’

The pistols and lanterns slowly drew back.

Lourds stood, hoisted the backpack over one shoulder, and juggled his food, writing utensils, and the book Qayin had given him. He crossed the room and sat with his back against the wall.

‘This wasn’t written on the page.’ Lourds traced his fingers over the symbols on the surface. They felt slightly matted, and the texture told him that a fixative had been applied to the page. ‘This is a rubbing.’

‘A child could have told me that.’

Lourds ignored the sarcasm. ‘Where did you get this? Where was the rubbing taken?’

‘That doesn’t matter.’

‘I beg to differ. Knowing where this rubbing came from and when the original carvings were done might help me isolate this language. Establish the root.’

Qayin hesitated, obviously ill at ease when it came to revealing anything about the book.

‘It came from here.’

Lourds took a bite of his trail bar and chewed quickly. ‘By here, you mean Istanbul?’

Qayin nodded.

‘Or do you mean Constantinople?’

A look of irritation flashed across Qayin’s hard features. ‘This city. That’s all you need to know.’

‘No, that isn’t all I need to know. Istanbul began as Constantinople, a city with a European history—that’s if you discount the Neolithic settlements and choose to begin with the Greek settlers from Megara. Then the Romans took over. After that, the Ottoman Empire arrived under Mehmed II. This city has constantly been torn between the east and the west, between Christian and Muslim, and marks have been left throughout the city on various pieces of architecture.’ Lourds tapped the paper. ‘This is a rubbing, and I’m willing to wager that it came from some building within the city. If someone went to the trouble to create a new language, then I need to know if the mind that created that language was European or Eastern or African in origin.’

‘You think this is an artificial language?’ the young woman asked.

Qayin didn’t look happy about her asking questions.

‘I don’t recognize this language,’ Lourds said. ‘I know all the languages of this region. But throughout history a number of people have created artificial languages to keep their secrets.’

‘Did you think the language that led you to the discovery of Atlantis was artificial?’ the woman asked.

‘For a time I had to consider that possibility, yes. As it turned out it wasn’t artificial.’

‘Then you could be wrong about this one as well.’

‘You should listen to me here. You’re out of your area of expertise.’ Lourds sighed. ‘We’re not kidnapping anyone here now. This field is where
I’m
expert.’

‘The way I hear you, if you don’t understand something, you can always cop out and just say, “This language isn’t real.” ’

‘Even an artificial language is real.
Star Trek
fans insisted that the Klingon language be made real. Tolkien invented languages for his characters, human and non-human. People are always creating languages. It’s one of the things we do that sets us apart from every other creature on this planet. We communicate via language. Look at cellphones. Only a few short years ago they didn’t exist.’

‘Maybe at your age they didn’t exist.’

Lourds ignored her snarky attitude and continued. ‘People had to come up with a name for telephones that were fully portable. The term “cordless” had already been taken. So people started calling them “cellular telephones” at first. That quickly became bastardized to “cellphones”, and that gave way to just calling them “cells”. Mention “cell” after 9/11 and many people think of terrorism. However, the cell terminology didn’t take in Britain. Over there, they call them “mobiles”.’

‘I’m aware of that. I’m not a child.’

‘I have no doubt that you’re aware of it. Your accent tells me you’re acquainted with Ulster. I’d go as far to say that you’ve been in Ireland often. Probably grew up there.’

From the way her face went blank, Lourds knew he had hit close to home.

‘But being aware of language and
thinking
about it are two different things,’ he continued. ‘Just because you know something doesn’t mean you’ve thought about it. Language was created to express thoughts and ideas, to hand down education and history, to paint pictures of things that could only be imagined. Words have such an ephemeral quality to them because language is so organic that many words quickly pass in and out of usage and disappear. Or the way they are employed changes. Take the word
text
. Until that function was created for cells, it was never used as a verb. Now when people think of a text, they don’t think of books. They think of electronic messages they receive on their cellphones.’

‘Professor,’ Qayin interrupted sharply, ‘you don’t have time to give a lecture.’

‘I wanted to make a point. Not only is language geographical, but the time a document was written is also tremendously important.’

‘You are running out of time.’

Lourds fixed the man with his gaze. ‘Fine. Then tell me where this rubbing came from and when it was made.’

Qayin’s hot, angry gaze held Lourds. All the fear the professor had been holding at bay returned in a gut-twisting rush.

You’ve just got yourself killed
. Lourds tried not to be sick, but his mouth turned dry as cotton.

After a moment, Qayin said, ‘I’m told that the rubbing was taken from somewhere inside this city. The writing is from early in the second century after the death of Christ.’

The enormity of the statement settled over Lourds. Almost two thousand years had passed since these words were written. He focused on the rubbing.

‘This ought to be some form of Greek language, then,’ he mused out loud. He opened the water bottle and drank as he thought. ‘We’ve done a lot of work with Mycenaean Greek, Ancient Greek and Koine Greek. But we can’t rule out the possibility that this is some kind of proto-Greek.’

‘It’s Greek?’ Qayin asked.

Lourds shrugged. ‘Possibly. Some of the characters look familiar, but they’re not quite right. They bear some resemblance to Greek characters, but they’re unique at the same time.’

‘Why Greek?’ Cleena asked.

‘Because Greek was one of the primary languages in this area at that time: the language of the conquerors, of Alexander the Great. At the time, he ruled almost all the known world. When he put his people in place to hold different lands, they were trained to read and write in Greek. Conquerors build buildings. As a result, the Greek language is still scattered throughout Europe and parts of Asia. There was Latin as well, by then, but these letters don’t look Roman. I’m guessing they’re some form of Greek.’

Qayin and his followers listened silently.

‘When this rubbing was taken, was the inscription new?’ Lourds asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Qayin answered. ‘I was told it was taken soon after.’

‘Soon after what?’

Qayin shook his head. ‘What I know will not help you.’

‘I think I’d be the better judge of that.’

‘You’re not going to get to know any more. Now you tell me which Greek language this is.’

‘This isn’t simply any Greek language,’ Lourds said. ‘If it was, you would have already had it translated. But it does have its foundation in the Greek language. Of that, I’m sure.’ He paused. ‘If we can assume that the date this rubbing was taken was somewhere around the second century
AD
, then the root language would most likely be Koine Greek. That was in use from the middle of the fourth century
BC
to the middle of the fourth century
AD
.’

‘Then it is based on this language?’ Qayin asked.

‘It could also just as easily be based on the Mycenaean and Ancient Greek languages.’

‘Are those so very different?’

‘Of course they’re different,’ Lourds answered. ‘The Greeks were a culture of traders. They went everywhere across the known world. They were successful in what they were doing, which made other people want to be like them. The Mycenaean Greek language is the most ancient Greek language we can research. Several clay tablets were found in Knossos and Pylos, and those weren’t translated until 1952. It was pretty dry stuff, too. Mostly inventories and lists, accountants’ work. That language had seven grammatical cases, including the dative, locative and instrumental. Both the latter two grammatical cases fell out of favour when Classical Greek was born, and dative has been dropped from modern Greek.’

Excitement drummed through Lourds as his mind began grappling with the symbols. He could almost make sense of part of it, not what it said, but how it was put together.

‘Ancient Greek was also used heavily in Constantinople. Most of Europe stopped using it during the Middle Ages, but after Constantinople fell to Mehmed II, the language flourished again for a brief time because of all the people that fled the city. Both Ancient Greek and Koine Greek were used in Constantinople.’

‘Was any one favoured more than the other?’ Cleena asked.

‘That’s an interesting question.’ For just a moment, Lourds felt a glow of satisfaction. Even here, at gunpoint, he loved being an instructor.
There is something definitely wrong with you, my friend
. ‘Rome preferred Ancient Greek because they thought it was more pure. Koine Greek was actually a blend of several Greek dialects with Attic, which was the language spoken in Athens. As I’ve mentioned, that language is spread primarily through Alexander the Great’s armies and it was spoken from Egypt to India. Early Christians adopted the Koine Greek language, possibly to differentiate themselves from the Romans and their gods, which were actually made over from the Green pantheon. The Apostles preached in it. That language also became known as the Alexandrian dialect, Post-Classical Greek and New Testament Greek because the Apostles wrote the New Testament in that language.’

‘The Apostles?’ Qayin asked.

Lourds nodded absently, still trying to wrap his thoughts round the language.

‘How can you know so much about this and still not be able to read it?’ Cleena asked.

‘Knowing something about the language isn’t the same as reading it. As I stated, language evolves, sometimes even from generation to generation. And if you have someone deliberately trying to disguise information, as I believe was done here, deciphering that language becomes even harder. If you consider the New Testament and its subsequent translations that have fractured churches and religions, you’ll get an idea of what I’m talking about.’ Lourds looked up at her. ‘Given the religious division between England and Ireland, I’d have thought you might have known that.’

‘Religion is a touchy subject.’

‘Let me give you another example. Have you ever written down a note, then gone back a few days later and seen it without understanding why you had written it?’

‘No.’

Lourds sighed and rubbed his face tiredly. ‘Well, I have.’
Far more times than I want to remember
. ‘Just imagine that you have, and you can’t figure out why you wrote the note in the first place. Now, instead of a few days, let a hundred years go by. Or even one thousand, just to make things interesting. Do you think that someone a few generations, or several generations, removed from the original writer will understand the context of that message even if they’re able to read it?’

Qayin paused visibly before offering, ‘I will tell you this much, Professor: you are on the right track. I am told that this missive does indeed tie to one of the Apostles.’

Excitement inside Lourds grew. He put his water bottle down and held the book in both hands. Desperately, he scanned the lines of writing. More than anything, he wanted to unlock the secrets that lay within the words.

‘Now, tell me something about that writing that will save your life.’ Qayin’s tone held deadly menace.

‘It’s a warning or a command.’

‘I grow weary of these oblique answers.’

Lourds pointed to one of the words. ‘I believe this is the word
diamarturomai
. That’s Koine Greek. It means “to solemnly charge”. In the New Testament, the Second Book of Timothy, Paul instructs Timothy about the danger of false teaching. Timothy was supposed to focus on the truth of God, and to teach that Satan is a liar and the father of lies.’