Charles Brokaw - The Lucifer Code

‘When it was full, the cistern held almost three million cubic feet of water. There were also over three hundred marble columns supporting the cistern’s ceiling. It looks like rows of picket fencing. Interestingly, there are two Medusa heads in the cistern.’

‘Medusa heads? As in the snake-haired woman whose glance turns people to stone?’

‘Yes,’ Lourds agreed, ‘that Medusa.’

‘Sounds kind of strange for a Christian emperor to put something like that in his cistern, don’t you think?’

‘There is some conjecture regarding the placement of the Medusa heads. One stands upside down, and the other lies on its side. Both support pillars. Some historians believe that Constantine simply availed himself of whatever materials there were to build the cistern. The heads were thought to have been salvaged from a Roman building.’

Olympia stopped so suddenly that Lourds ran into her.

‘If you’d been paying attention,’ Olympia said, ‘that wouldn’t have happened.’

‘My humblest apologies.’ Lourds didn’t put his heart into the effort. He knew she was primarily irritated by the attention he was paying to Cleena. ‘Why did we stop?’

‘Because we’re here.’ Joachim shone his flashlight over the wall to his right. Ahead of him, the passageway split into a Y and continued into double-barrelled darkness.

Lourds played his light over both tunnels but saw no discernible difference between them. ‘Which way?’

‘Here.’ Joachim leaned into the wall and pressed a series of stones.

Faint clicks barely reached Lourds’ ears. He placed his hand against the wall and felt the vibrations as Joachim shoved back a section large enough for them to pass through.

‘Come on.’ Joachim disappeared into the hole in the wall.

On the other side of the wall, Lourds pointed the flashlight ahead of him, then behind. There was only one way to go: forward. The tunnel dead-ended behind them. This tunnel was narrower than the first tunnel. He had to turn sideways to go along it.

‘This way was made for smaller men,’ Joachim said.

‘Obviously.’ Lourds held his hat in one hand over his heart. His backpack slid along the rough stone, catching every now and again. Against his forearm, the stones were worn smooth. He couldn’t help wondering how many people had traversed this tunnel since its construction. He also imagined the stories they would’ve had to tell.

‘No one has been here in a long time,’ Joachim said. ‘I’ve only been here three times my whole life.’

‘Why?’

‘Because this is a holy place, and because the scroll is not here.’

Lourds knew the last was intended as a goad but he ignored it. He hadn’t told any of them that the Joy Scroll was within the room. He just hoped he was right concerning his other suspicion.

‘Who knows about this place?’

The grade in the tunnel angled more steeply downwards. Lourds stepped carefully now as he descended. He thought he felt impressions that might once have been steps carved into the solid stone. The centre of the passageway was bowed slightly, as it was more worn in the middle.

‘Everyone in the Brotherhood.’

‘Do they come here?’

‘No one is allowed here. Until today, no woman has ever been in this passageway.’

‘Not even Olympia?’

‘Not even my sister.’

‘Joachim was even better at keeping secrets than I expected,’ Olympia said. ‘I didn’t know he was part of the Brotherhood until a couple of months ago.’

‘How are the brothers chosen for the order?’ Lourds asked.

‘Usually it passes from father to son,’ Joachim answered. ‘Occasionally a nephew must be brought in, or an older monk may pass his knowledge on to a grandson.’

‘Your father?’

‘Yes.’

‘Another big secret keeper,’ Olympia said.

‘Our father began telling me about the Brotherhood when I was just a child,’ Joachim said. ‘I loved the stories and the idea of being part of something so secret and so important. As I grew older, I also grew more serious about my responsibilities.’ He paused. ‘The hardest part was occasionally losing faith and thinking that the scroll I had sworn to protect was already gone.’

‘What if we find out it is?’

Joachim halted in front of a bare wall. His flashlight beam bounced off the stones and highlighted his features. He looked grim.

‘As I told you before, Professor Lourds, as long as the world is safe, we are not too late. The Joy Scroll still exists. It is out there and we have to find it.’

Lourds shone his beam over the blank wall. He searched for signs of crevices or cracks, but there were none that he could see.

‘Another door, I suppose?’ he asked.

‘Not exactly.’ Joachim knelt and pressed against certain stones set into the floor.

In the next moment, a section of the floor receded a few inches. Joachim hooked his fingers into the gap and pulled. Stone ground as the hidden door slid out of the way.

The glare of the gathered flashlights revealed the stone steps going downwards. Joachim led the way.

Crypt of the Elders

Hagia Sophia Underground

Istanbul, Turkey

19 March 2010

The stone steps had the same grooved wear as the passageway earlier. In this case, though, the steps were steeper and shorter. Lourds struggled to keep his balance as he went down. The staircase also corkscrewed and filled his head with thoughts of premature burial. He forced himself to focus on the curiosity and certainty that had brought him to this place.

‘Is it getting hard to breathe?’ Cleena asked.

‘The air contains more moisture,’ Lourds told her. ‘Just take normal breaths and you’ll be fine.’ But the confined space was getting to him as well.

Finally, they came to the end of the torturous corkscrew staircase and stepped into a square room. The discomfort Lourds felt was extinguished as soon as he laid his eyes upon the library shelves that covered one wall. Dusty journals filled the shelves in neat rows.

Unbidden, drawn by his excitement, Lourds approached the shelves. He shone the flashlight along the spines and saw names and dates handsomely lettered there. They went back hundreds of years.

‘Those are the journals of the Elders who occupied this room all their lives,’ Joachim said.

‘How far back do they go?’ Lourds asked hoarsely.

Joachim came to stand beside him. ‘To the beginning.’

‘Of the church?’ If that was the case, the shelves contained at least sixteen hundred years of history.

‘To the time of John on Patmos Island.’

That knowledge halted Lourds for a moment as he realized how much information lay practically at his fingertips.

‘May I?’ He gestured to the shelves.

‘Those books don’t tell us the whereabouts of the Joy Scroll.’

Without a word, Olympia stepped close and took down one of the books. She handled it gently, as if it might disintegrate.

‘You had these down here all this time, Joachim?’ Her voice was hushed and tight with awe. ‘Do you know what I would have given to have been able to study these? Do you know the information that is probably contained within these books?’

‘The brothers only wrote benedictions to God,’ Joachim replied. ‘Father didn’t ask me to be a librarian. He asked me to keep the Joy Scroll safe. The monks didn’t bother themselves with the secular world.’

‘That doesn’t matter.’ Carefully, Olympia leafed through the book. ‘Any contact they had with the world outside this place would have rubbed off on them. No matter what you think, there will be artefacts of everyday life reflected in passages in these books.’

‘That’s why archaeologists are now studying the literature of the past.’ Lourds crossed over to stand behind Olympia. ‘Until the last few years, the study of novels and poetry and the like for historical detail hadn’t been recognized as a hard science.’