Covenant Of The Flame Read online

  'Wait,' Tess said. 'After everything we've discussed, you're telling me you don't know what the statue means?'

  'On the contrary, I do know what it means,' Priscilla said. 'What I'm getting at is that without a knowledge of the traditions and symbols of an unfamiliar religion, you can't appreciate why a particular image is important to that religion. But the moment the symbols are given meaning, the image becomes perfectly clear. To me, this statue is as easy to interpret as an image of Christ's crucifixion. Lean closer toward the photograph. Examine the details I point out. I suspect that soon you'll realize how simple they are to interpret.'

  'Simple?' Tess shook her head. 'I really have trouble believing that.'

  'Just try to be patient.' Priscilla placed her right index finger on the photograph. 'Why don't we start with the bull?

  'Notice that the marble of the statue is white. The bull is white,' Priscilla said. 'After his death, he'll become the moon. Logically, you might expect that the bull would become the sun, given that Mithras is the sun god. But there's a deeper logic. The moon is a version of the sun at night. It illuminates the darkness, and in this case, it represents the god of light in conflict with the opposite god, the evil god, the god of darkness.'

  'Okay,' Tess said, 'I see that logic. But what I don't is. Why does the bull have to die?'

  'Did you ever read Joseph Campbell? The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology?'

  'In college.'

  'Then you ought to know that in almost every religion there's a sacrificial victim. Sometimes the god is the victim. In Christianity, for example, Jesus dies to redeem the world. But often the victim is a substitute for the god. Among the Aztecs and Mayans, they frequently chose a maiden, who gave up her life as a surrogate for, a sacrifice to, the god. The most common method was to cut out her heart.'

  Tess winced.

  Priscilla continued, 'In the case of Mithras, the bull dies not only to become the moon but to give life to the earth. The ritual execution probably happened during the vernal equinox. the arrival of spring. to regenerate the world. It's a traditionally sanctified time of the year. Most Christians don't know it, but that's the reason Easter is so important in their religion. When Christ leaves the tomb just as the earth comes back to life. And Mithras, too, came back to life in the spring.'

  Tess struggled to concentrate, her forehead aching with intense frustration.

  'Regeneration,' Priscilla said. 'Out of death comes life. That's why Mithras slices the throat of the bull. There has to be blood. A great deal of blood. The blood cascades toward the ground. It nourishes the soil. You can see grain sprouting from the ground near the bull's front knee. Many ancient religions required blood - sometimes human, sometimes animal - to be sprinkled on the fields before the crops were planted.'

  'But that's repulsive.'

  'Not if you believed. It's no more repulsive than the implications of communion in the Catholic Church, swallowing bread and wine that symbolize the body and blood of Christ to regenerate your soul.'

  'Okay,' Tess said. 'Point granted, although I never thought about it that way before. But what about the dog in the statue? Why is the dog lunging toward the blood? And why is the serpent-?'

  With a tingle that swept from her feet to her head, Tess abruptly realized. Dear Lord, Priscilla had been right. Everything was suddenly, vividly clear. The dog and the serpent!'

  'What about them? Can you tell me?' Priscilla's eyes gleamed.

  'They represent evil! The dog is trying to stop the blood from reaching the ground and fertilizing the soil! The serpent wants to destroy the wheat! And the scorpion's evil, too! It's attacking the bull's testicles, the source of the bull's virility!'

  'Excellent. I'm proud of you, Tess. Keep going. Can you tell me about the torch bearers?'

  The flame pointing upward signifies Mithras. The flame pointing downward represents his evil competition.'

  'You must have been a brilliant student.'

  'Not according to your husband,' Tess said.

  Professor Harding set down his teacup. 'What I said was, you weren't my best student. But you were bright enough and certainly enthusiastic.'

  'Right now, "enthusiastic" doesn't describe what I'm feeling. I'm grieving for my mother. I'm desperate. I'm scared. The raven, Priscilla. Tell me about the raven.'

  'Yes.' Priscilla sighed. The raven. On the left, from above the upraised torch, on the side of good, he watches the sacrifice. You have to understand. Mithraism had seven stages of membership, from beginners to priests. And the first stage was called "the raven". As it happens, the raven was also the sacred bird in their religion. It was a messenger sent from heaven, ordered to witness the ritual sacrifice, to observe the renewal of the world, the death of the bull, the blood cascading toward the earth, the return of spring, the fertilization of the soil.'

  'Now I understand too well.' Tess quivered. 'It's what I've devoted my life to. Mithras wants to save the planet, and his evil counterpart wants to destroy it.'

  ELEVEN

  Lima, Peru.

  Charles Gordon, a short, frail importer-exporter, slumped behind his desk. Although his office window overlooked the impressive Rimac River, he ignored the dismal view and did his best to concentrate on a catalogue of the various American products that he'd tried, with little success, to sell to local merchants. His gaudy bow tie and ill-fitting suit had attracted smirks from the local population when he'd rented this office a month ago, but his clothes were now an accepted, tired joke that made him in effect invisible.

  Bored, his only consolation was that Lima was only seven miles from the Pacific. This close to the sea, the temperature was moderate, the drab city far enough from the towering mountains to the east that the air was breathable. No high-altitude wheezing for him. In that respect, this assignment wasn't bad. Except that the operative who called himself Charles Gordon got tired of the charade involved in pretending to conduct a profit-earning business.

  He had a business, all right.

  But it wasn't import-export.

  No, his business was death, and profit, in the normal sense of the word, had never been his motive.

  As the brochure in his hands drooped, the trilling bell on his fax machine made him jerk upright. He quickly stood, crossed toward a table on his left, and watched a page unroll from the fax machine.

  The message was from the Philadelphia office of his American supplier, notifying him that a shipment of laptop computers would soon be arriving. The message gave the quantity, the price, and the date of shipment.

  Well, finally, Charles Gordon thought.

  It didn't trouble him that so sensitive a message had been sent via his easily accessed telephone line. After all, his American supplier was, to all appearance, a legitimate corporation, and the laptop computers would arrive as promised. Even if someone suspected that the message was in code, no one could decipher its true meaning - because the code had been chosen arbitrarily. Kenneth Madden, the CIA's Deputy Director of Covert Operations, had explained it to Gordon the evening before the operative had flown to Peru.

  The date of the shipment had nothing to do with the date of the mission. The quantity and the price of the laptop computers were irrelevant. What the message referred to was President Garth's imminent trip to Peru for a drug-control conference. The president's intention was to attempt to convince the Peruvian government to pay subsidies to farmers who switched to less lucrative crops than the easy-to-grow coca plants that local drug lords, among the world's major suppliers, needed to make cocaine.

  But the president would never reach the conference.

  TWELVE

  Tess hesitated. In the study in the Victorian mansion near Georgetown, a memory nagged at her subconsciousness. In a flash, it surfaced. 'But what about the treasure?'

  Priscilla frowned, puzzled by Tess's abrupt change of topic.

  'Before I used the phone, you mentioned a mysterious treasure,' Tess said. 'In southwestern France, in the thirteenth century.'
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  'Ah.' Priscilla nodded. 'Yes. When the Catholic crusaders killed tens of thousands of heretics to eradicate a new version of Mithraism."

  'You called it Albigensianism,' Tess said. The last stronghold of the heretics was a mountain fortress.'

  'Montsegur.' Priscilla squinted.

  'And you said that the night before the final massacre' - Tess trembled - 'a small group of heretics used ropes to descend from the mountain, taking with them a mysterious treasure.'

  'A rumor. A persistent legend, although as I mentioned, it could have some basis in fact. Since Mithraism survives in India, it might have survived in Europe as well. A small group conducting its rites in secret. To avoid the Inquisition.'

  'If so' - Tess raised her voice in frustration - 'what would the treasure have been?'

  Priscilla shrugged. 'The obvious answer is wealth of some sort. Gold. Precious gems. Indeed, as recently as the Second World War, the Nazis believed that such a treasure existed and was hidden in the area near Montsegur. Hitler sent an archaeologist, a team of engineers, and an SS unit to search for it in the numerous caves in the region. Evidence of their excavations can still be found. However, the treasure was not. At least, no one ever indicated that a treasure had been discovered, and surely, given something so dramatic, word would have spread. Then, too, another theory is that the treasure was the Holy Grail, the chalice from Christ's Last Supper. And still another theory claims that the treasure was a person, that Christ - contrary to tradition - married and had a son, a descendant of whom was the leader of the Albigensians. Those latter theories were made popular in a book called Holy Blood, Holy Grail. But those latter theories are nonsense, of course. Because the Albigensians had only a superficial resemblance to Catholics. They descended from a tradition much older than Christianity, one that happened to use rituals similar to those of Christianity, but that in fact was based on the theology - opposing good and evil gods - of Mithraism. The heretics would have had no respect for the so-called Holy Grail, and they wouldn't have cared if Christ had a son who established a bloodline. No,' Priscilla said, 'whatever the treasure, assuming it even existed, it more than likely was the obvious: wealth.'

  Tess breathed with excitement, although her excitement was tinged with fear. 'I disagree.'

  Priscilla adjusted her glasses, confused. 'Oh?'

  'I think there was a treasure. Not wealth. At least not in the ordinary sense, although it definitely was mysterious.'

  Professor Harding leaned forward, propping his hands on his cane. 'I confess you've made me curious. What are you suggesting?'

  Tess rubbed her forehead. 'If the heretics feared that their religion was about to be destroyed, if a small group managed to escape' - she darted her eyes toward Priscilla, then Professor Harding - 'what's the one thing those heretics would have considered so important that they wouldn't have dared to leave without it?'

  Professor Harding frowned. 'I still don't follow.'

  Priscilla's eyes, however, gleamed with fascination.

  'The treasure without which the heretics had no meaning,' Tess said. 'Something so valuable that they couldn't allow it to be destroyed and, equally important, desecrated. Something mysterious in the deepest sense of the word. Something so.'

  'Sacred,' Priscilla blurted. 'Absolutely.'

  'You understand?'

  'Yes!' Priscilla gestured emphatically toward the photograph. 'The image of Mithras that stood on their altar! When Constantine converted to Christianity, the Christians destroyed the Mithraic chapels. For all the heretics at Montsegur knew, the scuplture they possessed might have been the only one in existence. If they left it behind, when the crusaders found it.'

  Tess anticipated, The crusaders would have smashed it to pieces. The heretics had to protect the statue in order to protect their religion.' In imitation of Priscilla's earlier gesture, Tess jabbed a finger at the photograph. That statue. There's no weathering on its marble. No cracks. It's in perfect condition. A pristine replication of an ancient model. To borrow your words, someone went to a great deal of trouble and expense to reproduce that statue. Why? It makes no sense unless. I think I know the answer. It terrifies me. God, I think that statue's a copy of the one from Montsegur, but I don't think it's the only copy, and I don't think.' Tess stared at Priscilla. 'We've been talking around this possibility all afternoon, so why don't I say it outright? My friend believed in Mithraism. There are others who believe as he did. They're the ones who killed my mother, who killed Brian Hamilton, and who tried to kill me. To stop anyone from knowing about their existence.'

  'Fire,' Priscilla interrupted.

  'What about it? Tess struggled to control her shaking.

  'You said your friend was killed with fire.'

  'And then his apartment was set on fire, and my mother's house was set on fire, and Brian Hamilton died in flames in a freeway accident. Why is fire so-?'

  'It purifies. It symbolizes divine energy. Out of the ashes comes life. Rebirth. Fire was sacred to Mithraism. The sun god. When the torch is held upward, it signifies good.'

  'But how can all of this killing be good?'

  Priscilla suddenly looked aged again. 'I'm afraid there are two things I haven't told you about Mithraism.'

  Apprehensive, Tess waited, trembling.

  'First,' Priscilla said, 'followers of Mithras, particularly those in the Albigensian sect, the ones at Montsegur, believed in reincarnation. To them, death was not an ultimate end but merely a beginning of another life, until finally - after many lives - their being was perfected and they went to heaven. In that respect, they believed in the theories of Plato.'

  Tess remembered that The Collected Dialogues of Plato was one of the books in Joseph's bedroom. 'Keep going.'

  'The point is,' Priscilla said, 'a follower of Mithras was able to kill without guilt because he believed that he wasn't ending someone's life but merely transforming it.'

  Tess was appalled. 'You said there were two things. What's the.?'

  'Second, followers of Mithras were used to killing. They were trained to kill. Don't forget the statue. The knife. The blood. Roman soldiers converted en masse. Mithraism was a warrior cult. By definition. In their souls, they believed that they were engaged in a cosmic struggle of good against evil.'

  'The bastards,' Tess said. 'To defeat what they thought was evil, they'd do anything!'

  'I'm afraid that's true.'

  'They'd kill anyone, including my mother!' Tess raged. 'The sons of.! When I get the chance - and I'm sure I will because I'm sure they'll come for me again - they'll learn the hard way about the difference between good and evil!'

  THIRTEEN

  As the taxi rounded a corner and proceeded along a street of well-maintained, century-old houses near Georgetown, Craig stiffened in the back seat, seeing a black Porsche 911 parked ahead at the curb. Abruptly he leaned forward, pointing urgently. 'There,' he told the driver. 'Where that sportscar.'

  'Yeah.' The driver scanned the numbers on houses. 'That's the address you want, all right.'

  Craig glanced behind him, checking yet again to make sure he hadn't been followed. There wasn't much traffic. A few cars passed through an intersection back there. A UPS truck turned at the corner but headed in the opposite direction from where the taxi had gone. Halfway down the other block, the truck stopped. A uniformed driver got out, carrying a box toward a house.

  Craig had seen several UPS trucks on his way here. They were as commonplace as Federal Express and post office trucks. He had no way to tell if that particular truck had been tailing him. Indeed, contrary to popular misconception, Craig knew that unless you had a team using various cars to help you, or unless your opponent was clumsy, it was almost impossible to spot motorized surveillance, especially if your enemy also had a team and alternated vehicles.

  Well, Craig thought with growing unease as the taxi stopped behind the Porsche, I've done what I could. I can't keep cruising around the city. I've got to make a choice. I've got to commit. Tess is
waiting for me. She needs my help.

  Nervous, Craig paid the driver and left the taxi. While it drove away, he studied the Victorian house, saw colorful, high-stalked flowers along the sides, and wondered what on earth Tess was doing here. In a rush, he approached the front steps.

  FOURTEEN

  'Sorry. Wrong address,' the solemn man with a ring in his pocket told the woman whose doorbell he'd just pressed. 'My mistake. This package belongs down the block.'

  The woman had curlers in her hair and looked annoyed that she'd been interrupted. Inside the house, a TV gameshow host announced outstanding prizes, his audience applauding.