Guillermo del Toro - The Fall

“Well, I couldn’t possibly comment on business affairs.”

“Please.” Setrakian laid a hand on the top edge of her desk, gently, as though it were her arm. “Is it at all possible? For an old man just to look?”

Her eyes were unmoved over her mask. “I cannot.”

Setrakian looked to Fet. The city exterminator stood up and pulled down his mask. He produced his city badge. “Hate to do this, but-I need to see the building supervisor immediately. The person in charge of this property itself.”

The director of Sotheby’s North America rose from behind his desk when the building supervisor entered with Setrakian and Fet. “What is the meaning of this?”

The building supervisor said, his face mask puffing, “This gentleman says we have to evacuate the building.”

“Evacuate the… what?”

“He has the authority to shutter the building for seventy-two hours while the city inspects it.”

“Seventy-two… but what about the auction?”

“Canceled,” said Fet. He punctuated that with a shrug. “Unless.”

The director’s expression flattened behind his mask, as though he suddenly understood. “This city is crumbling around us, and you choose now, today, to come looking for a bribe?”

“It’s not a bribe I’m after,” said Fet. “The truth is, and you can probably tell just by looking at me, I’m something of an art fanatic.”

They were allowed restricted access to the Occido Lumen, their viewing occurring inside a private, glass-walled chamber within a larger viewing vault located behind two locked doors on the ninth floor. The bulletproof case was unlocked and removed, and Fet watched Setrakian prepare himself to inspect the long-sought tome, white cotton gloves covering his crooked hands.

The old book rested on an ornate viewing stand of white oak. It was 12 × 8 × 1.8 inches, 489 folios, handwritten in parchment, with twenty illuminated pages, bound in leather and faced with pure-silver plates on the front and rear covers and the spine. The pages themselves were also edged in silver.

Now it made sense to Fet. Why the book had never fallen into the possession of the Ancients. Why the Master didn’t just come and take it from them right here, right now.

The silver casing. The book was literally beyond their grasp.

Twin cameras on arched stems rising out of the table captured images of the open pages, which were shown on oversized vertical plasma screens on the wall before them. The first illuminated page in the front matter featured a detailed drawing of a figure of six appendages done in fine, glowing silver leaf. The style and the minute calligraphy surrounding it spoke of another time, another world. Fet was drawn in by the reverence Setrakian showed this book. The quality of the craftsmanship impressed him, but, when it came to the artwork itself, Fet had no clue what he was looking at. He waited for insights from the old man. All he knew was that there were clear similarities between this work and the markings he and Eph had discovered in the subway. Even the three crescent moons were represented here.

Setrakian focused his interest on two pages, one pure text, the other a rich illumination. Beyond the obvious artistry of the page, Fet could not understand what it was about the image that captivated the old man so-that wrung tears from Setrakian’s eyes.

They stayed beyond their allotted fifteen minutes, Setrakian rushing to copy out some twenty-eight symbols. Only Fet could not find the symbols in the images on the page. But he said nothing, waiting while Setrakian-obviously frustrated by the stiffness of his crooked fingers-filled two sheets of paper with these symbols.

The old man was silent as they rode the elevator back down to the foyer. He said nothing until they had exited the building and were far enough away from the armed security guards.

Setrakian said, “The pages are watermarked. Only a trained eye can see it. Mine can.”

“Watermarked? You mean, like currency?”

Setrakian nodded. “All the pages in the book. It was a common practice in some grimoires and alchemical treatises. Even in early tarot card sets. You see? There is text printed on the pages, but a second layer underneath. Watermarked directly into the paper at the time of its pressing. That is the real knowledge. The Sigil. The hidden symbol-the key…”

“Those symbols you copied…”

Setrakian patted his pocket, reassuring himself that he had taken the sketches with him.

He paused then, something catching his eye. Fet followed him across the street to the large building facing the glass front of Sotheby’s. The Mary Manning Walsh Home was a nursing home run by the Carmelite Sisters for the Archdiocese of New York.

Setrakian was drawn to the brick front to the left of the entrance awning. A graffiti design spray-painted there, in orange and black. It took Fet a moment to realize that it was yet another highly stylized, if cruder, variation on the illuminated figure in the front matter of the book locked away on the top floor of the facing building-a book no one had seen for decades.

“What the hell?” said Fet.

“It is him-his name,” said Setrakian. “His true name. He is branding the city with it. Calling it his own.”

Setrakian turned away, looking up at the black smoke blowing over the sky, obscuring the sun.

Setrakian said, “Now to find a way to get that book.”

Dearest Zack,

What you must know is that I needed to do this-not out of arrogance (I am no hero, son), but out of conviction. Leaving you in that train station-the pain I feel now is the worst I have ever experienced. Know that I never chose the human race instead of you. What I am to do now is for your future-yours alone. That the rest of mankind may benefit is but a side issue. This is so that you will never, ever have to do what I just did: choose between your child and your duty.

From the moment I first held you in my arms, I knew that you were going to be the only genuine love story in my life. The one human being to whom I could give my all and expect nothing in return. Please understand that I cannot trust anyone else to attempt what I am about to do. Much of the history of the previous century was written with a gun. Written by men driven to murder by their conviction, and their demons. I have both. Insanity is real, son-it is existence now. No longer a disorder of the mind, but an external reality. Maybe I can change this.

I will be branded a criminal, I may be called mad-but my hope is that, in time, the truth will vindicate my name, and that you, Zachary, will once again hold me in your heart.

No amount of words will ever do justice to what I feel for you and the relief that you are now safe with Nora. Please think of your father not as a man who deserted you, who broke a promise to you, but as a man who wanted to ensure that you survived this assault on our species. As a man with difficult choices to make, just like the man you will one day grow to be.

Please think also of your mother-as she was. Our love for you will never die so long as you live. In you, we have given this world a great gift-and of that, I have no doubt.

Your old man,

Dad

THE OFFICE OF Emergency Management building operated on a darkened block in Brooklyn. The four-year-old, $50 million OEM facility served as the central point of coordination for major emergencies in New York. It housed New York’s 130-agency Emergency Operations Center, containing state-of-the-art audiovisual and information technology systems and full backup generators. The headquarters had been built to replace the agency’s former facility at 7 World Trade Center, destroyed on 9/11. It was constructed to foster resource coordination between public agencies in the event of a large-scale disaster. To that end, redundant electromechanical systems ensured continuous operation during a power outage.