The Unification Chronicles

26: The Lost Gospel

Daniel snapped awake again when the Humvee hit a bump in the road. Look­ing back over his shoul­der, he saw it wasn’t so much a bump as a hole. Or a crater.

He’d been try­ing to sleep as they moved south, but the road con­di­tions, lack of any mean­ing­ful shocks or sus­pen­sion on the mil­i­tary vehi­cle and the heat kept wak­ing him up. He was pretty badly jet­lagged. To him it was still the mid­dle of the night, not late morn­ing. And he really hadn’t had a good night’s rest in a week, so that made it even worse.

And of course, there was also the fact that Jack wouldn’t stop talking.

“Hey, check this out!” Jack said from the front seat of the Humvee. He’d put a copy of Susan’s data­base on Jeff’s lap­top, and had been dig­ging through it while Susan did her own dig­ging in the other Humvee.

“What’s that?” Daniel said. He noticed the sol­dier sit­ting next to him in the back seat looked far less uncom­fort­able than Daniel felt. How do they do that?

“Sandy, you know how we keep report­ing Said Hamza dead, and then find him alive again have to retract list­ing him as dead?”

“I told you, call me Cap­tain. Yeah, he’s the Al Qaeda in Iraq num­ber two guy.”

“Turns out there’s a good rea­son,” Jack con­tin­ued. “He’s a frig­gin’ immor­tal. We prob­a­bly are killing him each time, but the bas­tard just won’t stay dead!”

“Shit, LT, you mean to tell me some of the bas­tards in Al Qaeda are these immor­tals of yours?”

“From what I can see, they’ve got demons placed in the IRA and Tamil Tigers, too. A lot of work in Cen­tral and South Amer­ica. And yeah, they get around the Mid­dle East.”

“They always did, accord­ing to you.”

“Wait a minute,” Daniel said, lean­ing for­ward. “You’re say­ing the demons have been key play­ers in — “

“In every war, rev­o­lu­tion, junta and ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion down through the ages. They were in the Cru­sades, on both sides, it seems. They were in Nazi Ger­many. They were in Stal­in­ist Rus­sia. Hell, it says here Rasputin was a demon. No won­der they couldn’t kill the bastard.”

“All this time, they’ve been walk­ing among us — “

“Stir­ring up trou­ble,” Jack said. “Any­where you find blood and death at human hands, they’re not far off. You stum­bled into the biggest secret of all time, Daniel.”

San­darski swerved the Humvee to avoid one of the larger craters, then said, “And you really believe this, LT?”

“Cap­tain Sandarski — “

“Thank you, sir.”

“Cap­tain, I’ve seen one of these things with my own eyes, and met one of the angels per­son­ally. Accord­ing to Susan, the angel that stood at the gates of Eden with a flam­ing sword. I’ve tried and failed too many times to kill a demon to think they’re any­thing other than real. You saw the videos I sent you.”

“A lot of the men thought those were a joke, LT. Hol­ly­wood spe­cial effects.”

“Untouched, Cap­tain. You saw on those videos what I saw with my Mark One eye­ball. They’re real. The one we fought, Batarel, was impaled, beheaded, blud­geoned, elec­tro­cuted, blown up, shot — and I mean I emp­tied a whole clip into the bas­tard, should have died from lead poi­son­ing at the very least — and it wasn’t until Daniel there tossed him into a vat of molten steel — “

“Holy shit, that was real?”

“That’s the kind of dam­age it takes to kill these things, Cap­tain. Napalm might do it, or white phos­pho­rus. The lab rat back in DC told me they’ve got tiny machines run­ning through their bod­ies, fix­ing dam­age down to the cel­lu­lar level as fast as it hap­pens. They can heal from almost any­thing. You have to hit them so hard there’s noth­ing left to rebuild, and you have to do it fast.”

“Well, shit,” San­darski said. That about summed it up for Daniel.

“And this tem­ple in Najaf?” San­darski asked.

“The Mosque of Imam Ali,” Jack said. “One of the most holy Islamic sites. Shia think Noah and Adam are buried there next to Ali, the third caliph.”

“Adam. As in — “

“The book of Gen­e­sis Adam, yeah,” Jack said. “Sad­dam damn near destroyed the place back in ’03 — “

“Yeah, I remem­ber hear­ing about that.”

“And it’s been rebuilt a few times over. But accord­ing to Uriel — “

“The angel you were talk­ing about? Won­der if he remem­bers Adam.”

“Accord­ing to Uriel, there’s a secret soci­ety inside all the Abra­hamic churches that knows the truth about the immor­tals, but believes them to be what they say they are.”

“You mean,” San­darski said, “you believe in these things, but you don’t think they’re demons?”

“Would a bib­li­cal demon have had trou­ble with molten steel?” Jack asked. “Should have been like going home, brim­stone and all that. I never saw horns or a tail, and Uriel didn’t have any wings I could see. They’re immor­tal, and I don’t doubt they’re where the leg­ends of angels and demons came from, but I don’t think they have any­thing to do with God.”

“Huh,” San­darski said.

“So any­way, huh!” Jack said has they hit another hole in the road. “Can’t you keep this thing level?”

“At the speed you want, LT? Con­sider your­self lucky the ride’s as smooth as it is.”

“Any­way, this secret soci­ety has hid­den arti­facts all over the world. In the mosque, there’s sup­posed to be a scroll with proof of immor­tal exis­tence. It’s been kept there for cen­turies, and kept a secret even though the place had been destroyed and rebuilt a bunch of times even before Saddam.”

“It’s a rough neigh­bor­hood, I’ll give you that,” San­darski said. “So who do you talk to when we get there?”

“Mul­lah Has­san Moham­mad,” Jack said.

“Hope he’s still there, LT. Not a place you want to hang out if they decide they don’t like us.”

Daniel sat back as the two men stopped talk­ing. The desert and small vil­lages sped past his win­dow. He was in Iraq. On the way to a holy mosque. I don’t even have a pass­port, Daniel thought. He looked again at the sol­dier in the back seat, who still hadn’t said a word, and San­darski. Jack trusted them, and he trusted Jack. He hoped they were good hands.

He tried to go back to sleep.

#

“Okay, LT, here we are,” Sandy said.

Jack looked out the Humvee win­dow at the Mosque of Imam Ali. They were just west of the city of Najaf, and the sun was behind the mosque, scat­ter­ing light around the golden dome that tow­ered above the two story struc­ture. It was a lot big­ger than Jack expected, and there were dozens, maybe hun­dreds of peo­ple scat­tered around the complex.

“Let’s go,” Jack said, and opened the door.

Daniel hopped out after him, and he saw Susan and Jeff get out of the other Humvee with the rest of Sandy’s men. The locals looked curi­ously at the sol­diers, but Jack didn’t see much hos­til­ity in their eyes. He sup­posed after seven years, they were used to Amer­i­can troops.

Not sure I’d ever feel the same were our posi­tions reversed, Jack thought.

“You want us to go in with you?” Sandy said.

“No, just hang tight out here. I don’t want to insult them by bring­ing guns into a mosque.”

“Sad­dam did it,” Sandy said.

“And look how things turned out for him,” Jack said. “We’ll be right back. It shouldn’t take long.” He motioned to the other civil­ians and they walked into the mosque.

Jack walked up to the first per­son he saw inside who looked like they worked there and said in Ara­bic, “I’m look­ing for Mul­lah Hus­san Mohammad.”

“I am sorry, there is no one here by that name,” the man replied.

“Please, I beg your par­don,” Jack con­tin­ued in Ara­bic. “We have come a long way, and were told to seek a Mul­lah Hus­san Moham­mad here.”

“I am most sorry. I can­not help you.” The man walked away.

“Well,” Jack said in Eng­lish, “that didn’t get us anywhere.”

“You speak Ara­bic?” Susan said.

“Badly,” Jack said. “I picked it up the last time I was here.”

“Use­ful skill to have,” Jeff said.

“Only if we can find some­one who knows some­thing. Come on.”

He walked down the cen­tral aisle of the main cham­ber, look­ing for a mul­lah who might know more. He saw a man in mullah’s robes talk­ing to the man Jack had just spoke to. They both looked over at him, and then the mul­lah clasped the man on the shoul­der and dis­ap­peared down a side cor­ri­dor. The man fol­lowed him.

Jack picked up his step and tried to fol­low, only to watch as the door to that cor­ri­dor shut just as he got there. He tried the knob and found the door locked.

“Something’s going on,” he said. “They’re duck­ing us.”

Jack looked around, and it looked like there were fewer wor­ship­pers than there had been before. He had to be imag­in­ing that.

“Can I be of ser­vice?” a voice behind them said in accented English.

They turned and Jack saw an old man in a thread­bare suit. He didn’t look like one of the priests or their sup­port staff. “Maybe. We’re try­ing to find Mul­lah Hus­san Moham­mad. We’ve come from America.”

“So has every­one else, these days,” the man said. “My name is Afif Ibn Ghalib. I’m the for­eign attaché for the shrine. I help aca­d­e­mics and other vis­i­tors who are not wor­ship­pers. And since none of you appeared to be here to pay your respects to Ali, I thought per­haps I could help.

“But I’m afraid there is no Mul­lah Hus­san Moham­mad here. I’ve been work­ing for the shrine for decades, and I can’t remem­ber such a man ever work­ing here. Are you cer­tain you’re in the right place?”

“We’re pretty sure,” Jack said.

“Why do you seek this Mul­lah Moham­mad, if I may ask?”

Before Jack could answer, Daniel stepped in. “We were sent to retrieve a scroll. A very old artifact.”

“I see,” Ibn Ghalib said. “And you are?”

“My name is Daniel Cho. This is Jack Har­ris, Susan Richard­son and Jeff Frankel. I was under the impres­sion we were expected.”

“I see,” Ibn Ghalib said again. “Well, I’m not sure how I can help you. Who did you say sent you?”

Just loud enough for Ibn Ghalib and the other three to hear, Daniel said, “We were sent by the Archangel Uriel, Mul­lah Mohammad.”

The man nod­ded, and seemed to age another twenty years before Jack’s eyes. “I see,” he said again, with far more grav­ity. “I knew this day would come, but I prayed to Allah that I would not live to see it. Come with me.”

He turned and led them down another hall­way to a stone stair­case, and then pro­ceeded down. As they fol­lowed, Jack whis­pered to Daniel, “How’d you know he was Mohammad?”

“While you were talk­ing to him,” Daniel whis­pered back, “the other wor­ship­pers were qui­etly ush­ered out. Even though he seemed calm, his pulse rate, which I could see by his jugu­lar, was rapid, indi­cat­ing he was much more agi­tated than he appeared. And he only showed up after you asked for him by name. Seemed like a solid guess.”

“You must have been hell on wheels in an oper­at­ing the­ater,” Jack said.

Daniel just looked at him. It occurred to Jack that he still didn’t know why Daniel quit being a surgeon.

“Just because I’m old doesn’t mean I’m deaf,” Moham­mad said in front of them. He led them out into a nar­row, low-​​ceilinged stone pas­sage­way, thick with dust.

“Sorry,” Daniel and Jack said in unison.

Moham­mad led them into a small room, which appeared to be empty. He walked over to the stone wall and pushed in on a stone, mov­ing it about an inch. Then he stepped over a few feet and pushed another. He pushed seven total when they heard a deep rum­bling. Dust shook loose from the walls as the far wall receded as one piece, then moved aside, expos­ing a small alcove.

“Behold,” Moham­mad said. “The Lost Gospel of the Angels.”

#

Sandy was stand­ing guard out­side with the men. He saw the usual traf­fic pat­terns, pretty much what you’d expect to see at a holy Mus­lim shrine. It was start­ing to get dark, and he knew the heat of the day would fade quickly. He was going to have a hard time keep­ing warm if they didn’t hurry—

Some­thing tripped an alarm in his mind, some­thing in his periph­eral vision. He looked over and saw a group of men who didn’t seem to be all that dif­fer­ent from any of the other tra­di­tion­ally dressed pil­grims to the mosque. They wore long flow­ing robes, and—

And if you didn’t know what to look for, you might not see the weapons and explo­sives they were concealing.

“Sergeant, radio Camp [what­ever is clos­est to Najaf] and have them send rein­force­ments,” Sandy said.

“Sir? How many?”

Sandy did a quick cal­cu­la­tion on what the men he saw could do if they really had as much sem­tex as he thought they did. “All of them.”

[In this chap­ter, make Jack wait out­side and observe the approach­ing demons. Inside, give Jack’s dia­logue, minus the Ara­bic, to Susan or Jeff. That way we avoid mak­ing Sandy a POV char­ac­ter. Never see­ing a scene from inside his head is vital to his reveal in the third act of Cru­sade to be one of the Grig­ori. Also, have him ask Jack in the Humvee if the data­base lists all the immor­tals, and have Jack explain that there are 200 demons, part of some­thing called the Grig­ori, that are listed only by their true names, but with no human identities.]