The Apkallu Protocol 6
Chapter 6
Having locked up the apartment, Norton and his guests headed out. He felt bad they were going out in the same clothes they’d arrived in the evening before, outfits that had survived a transoceanic flight and air crash. But before he could suggest a fix, Sophie interrupted.
“I’ve only had the coffee. Could we possibly get some breakfast?”
Falaise held his slim bag tight against his side, frowned under the summer sun. It was clear he wanted to get back to discussing the Akkadian tablets.
“Of course,” Norton said. “I know a place a couple blocks from here.”
Norton led them north to Café Lumen, the newcomers checking out the district as they walked.
During the meal they agreed tacitly not to discuss the business at hand.
“I’m curious, Dodd,” Sophie said, soon after they’d gotten their orders. “What are you researching? I mean, here in Budapest.”
So far she’d impressed Norton. Not having any fresh makeup to put on, she didn’t show a hint of self-consciousness.
“I’m working on a book,” he said. “On the semiotics of medieval heresies. And by a stroke of luck, I’ve been given access to an important new find. A manuscript here in Budapest, the records of an ecclesiastical trial.”
“Who are the heretics this time?” Falaise asked, cutting into the ham on his plate.
“An offshoot sect of the Waldensians,” Norton said. “If you don’t know, the Waldensians were rather standard as medieval heretics go. Rejecting Church authority, the priesthood of all believers, and so on. Precursors to the Reformation.”
“I only know of the Albigensians, the gnostic sect in the south of France,” Sophie said. “But I suppose the Waldensians are well known, yes?”
“Yes. But not the group I’m working on. The manuscript only came to light last year, and hasn’t yet been published. It was in a private collection—an interesting story in itself—but what’s more interesting is what this sect believed, at least from what we can tell.”
Falaise looked up from his plate, puzzled.
“The manuscript hasn’t been published, but you have access? I’d think the institution holding it would guard it jealously.”
“And you’d be right,” Norton said. “In cases like this, before a critical edition is published, usually the institution holding it won’t let it be seen. But I know one of the two scholars working on it. And he knows about the book I’m writing. So we made a deal. I wouldn’t publish my book until they’d finished their critical edition of this trial text. And I wouldn’t include any extended quotes.”
“So what are the interesting beliefs?” Sophie asked.
“Okay,” Norton began. “I’ll lay out what I can gather so far. From the text. The sect called itself the Sons of Ignác, or the Sons of Fire. They’re referred to by both names in the document. Ignác is the Hungarian for Ignatius. The Latin text of the trial includes some Hungarian notations, so we know what they called themselves in the dialect.”
“So you can read Hungarian too,” Falaise put in wryly.
“Not well at all. I spent a few months on it before coming. But if I have any trouble, I just make a notation and ask Kovacs. He’s the scholar working on the critical edition. In any case, most of the trial document is Latin.”
“So who was this Ignatius, or Ignác?” Sophie asked.
“We don’t really know,” Norton said. “Likely a renegade cleric who’d schooled them. But also maybe someone who by then had passed away. The sect flourished in the fifty years after an event known as the Buda Heresy. That event is well documented and can be traced to Waldensian influence. But as for this sect, which was dragged into trial in 1362, nothing was known of it until the manuscript came to light.”
“So you’re handling the actual 14th-century manuscript?” Falaise asked.
“Yes,” Norton said, “white gloves and all.” Turning back to Sophie: “Anyhow, the document I’m working on had likely been stolen from Church archives soon after the trial, then held privately for centuries. Kovacs and his colleague believe it was kept by one family for most of that time, handed down generation to generation. Probably to protect the family.”
“Sounds rather cloak and dagger,” Sophie said, taking up a forkful of her omelet.
“As for the sects’ beliefs,” Norton began, then stopped suddenly. He was gazing toward the entry. “That’s Professor Kovacs coming in the door,” he said.
“What an odd coincidence!” Sophie said.
“Not at all. He showed me this place. But let’s not talk about the sect just now,” he added in an undertone.
Kovacs was already at the table.
“Good morning, Dodd,” he said.
“Good morning, Laszlo.” Norton stood up. “I’d like to introduce my friends. This is Sophie Collins and Professor Claude Falaise. They’re visiting from the States. Professor Laszlo Kovacs.”
“Very glad to meet you,” Falaise said, extending a hand, as did Sophie.
“Here for tourism?” the Hungarian asked.
“Yes,” Falaise announced quickly. “We’ll be here a few days.”
“I’m hoping to get over to the archives later this afternoon,” Norton put in, hoping to cut short the pleasantries. He knew neither he nor his guests had arranged a cover story.
“Well,” said Kovacs, looking at Sophie, “I’ll just say it’s a pleasure to work with your friend Professor Norton. It’s an honor for us.”
“Please, Laszlo,” Norton said. “The honor’s mine. You’ve been too good to me.”
“I will leave you to finish your breakfast,” Kovacs said, bowing slightly. “I just stopped in to get some coffee.” He nodded in the direction of the cashier.
“Maybe see you later on. At your office,” Norton said, shaking the Hungarian’s hand again.
“Enjoy your visit to Budapest,” Kovacs said, his eye again on Sophie. “I hope I get a chance to run into you again.”
Norton sat down, looked at his plate. He’d eaten nothing, yet Sophie and Claude were half finished.
“I’m talking too much about this sect,” Norton said. “I should eat some of this.”
“We’re sorry to be eating so fast,” Falaise said offhandedly. “But an airline crash will give one an appetite. Especially if there are flames too.”
He stabbed one of the last pieces of ham with his fork.
Sophie frowned.
Norton began to work on his omelet. After a couple bites: “Okay, the Sons of Ignác,” he said, “their beliefs. I’ll go through what we know.”
Sophie leaned forward.
“I’m very curious,” she said.
“Dodd,” Falaise interrupted. “I’m sorry, Sophie. But we really should finish up our breakfasts. We should get back to studying the case we’re on. I’m actually …” He winced slightly.
“What?”
“The truth is I’m not comfortable in this chair. My back was screwed up by that plane slamming into the runway.”
Norton reached out a hand toward the old professor.
“Are you sure you don’t need a doctor?” he asked, hoping the answer was no. He’d heard tell of the inconveniences of Budapest medical services.
“No, nothing like that,” Falaise said. “I just don’t want to sit here much longer. And the main thing is—we really must get to work. We can talk about these Sons of Ignatius later. Is that alright?” He glanced to Sophie.
“Absolutely.”
They finished their meal, and Norton grabbed the check.
“No, you will not, Dodd,” Falaise said, reaching for it.
“Too late, Claude.”
Norton stood up and headed toward the cashier.
“Next time then,” Falaise called out. Then: “Acch!” he protested, rising slowly from his chair, hand on the table for support.
“Let me help you,” Sophie said, approaching him.
“Nonsense!” Falaise muttered, gesturing her away. “It’s not that bad.” He stood to his full height. “But I believe that Kovacs fellow would be glad to let you help him,” he said, eyeing her quizzically.
“Acch!” Sophie replied, imitating Falaise to a tee.
Falaise laughed. She raised a fist in mock threat.
“You two are fighting already,” Norton said, returning. “I leave you a minute and all hell breaks loose.”
“She’s dangerous, Dodd,” Falaise whined. “Dangerous, I say! We’re no match for her.”
Norton was glad to hear it.
***
Rather than go farther on foot, they opted to take a taxi to Karolyi Garden. Norton hesitated to open his phone, but finally did, intentionally not checking messages. Inside the city limits the app allowed for a driverless cab, but Norton opted for a driver.
They arrived at the small park not ten minutes later.
“It’s quiet,” Norton said as they got out. “There aren’t really tables that I remember, but this city’s not big on seating in parks.”
In fact it wasn’t so quiet. People were mulling about, some with kids. The few park benches they saw had been taken.
“Sorry. It’s summer. And the city’s getting overrun, it’s true. Last time I was here was before the war.”
“French and British escapees,” Falaise remarked, glancing around. They could already hear a fiftyish couple speaking French not far from them.
Since the 2027 civil wars, Budapest real estate had gone through the roof, money and monied West-Europeans pouring in to escape the Islamo-Leftist coalition that had taken over in London and Paris. Half the former EU states were now a bloc called the GEU, the “Global European Union”. The rest of the former EU, mostly the old Soviet satellite states plus Italy, were now independent, temporarily protected by US forces under direction of the Trump Administration.
“I’d escape too,” Sophie said. “The Goo. Nobody wants to be in the Goo.”
She was giving the new bloc it’s standard American pronunciation.
“Dumb fuckers,” Falaise muttered.
Norton looked at his old friend.
“Not sure I’ve ever heard you use proper English like that,” he quipped.
“My countrymen tried,” Falaise said in despair. “They almost pulled it off too. But the state had the weaponry. And the state—they’re the dumb fuckers I refer to.”
“It’s true you can’t eat pork in either France or England anymore,” Sophie said. “I read that England had just imposed the ban.”
“Yes, about a week ago,” Norton said. “Soon there will be no pork in the whole Goo.”
“Of course the lefties are happy,” Falaise said. “Kill meat farming and you cut carbon emissions. Dumb fuckers.”
They’d spotted an open bench and picked up speed. Norton strode ahead.
“Soon they’ll move on to banning chicken too,” he put in, turning back a bit. “You know—the dreaded ‘bird flu’.” He raised his hands to do the scare quotes.
“It’s all a sick joke,” Sophie scoffed. “Even in California we know it’s a joke.”
“And that’s saying something,” Falaise put in significantly, sizing up the bench. “When even the morons in California know something.”
They seated themselves on the single long bench, Falaise in the middle, bag on his lap.
“The Goo will never ban mutton though,” he said, puffing a bit from the speedy walk. “Carbon emissions or not, they need the lamb for the Eid sacrifice. If the lefties tried to go full vegan, they’d be slaughtered by their Muslim bloc-mates.”
“Probably true,” Norton said, leaning forward. “Hate to say it, but you have to admire the Muslims. At least they won’t bow on some things.”
Sophie’s raised eyebrows registered surprise.
“I know it, Dodd.” Falaise turned to him. “If only my compatriots had remained in their traditional faith, maybe they’d also have refused to bow. But most of them bowed.”
Sophie’s lips pursed slightly. She seemed to accept the point.
“Who was that writer killed soon after the violence started?” she queried. “Michel …?”
“Houellebecq,” Norton said. “He’d basically predicted something like what happened. The novel was titled Soumission.”
“I read it. Back when it was published in English.”
“At least the man died with a gun in his hands,” Falaise said.
They sat a moment without speaking, the relative quiet of the park punctuated by the shouts of children.
“So let’s look at those sketches.” Norton pointed to the bag.
“Gladly. I don’t want to sit here that long either.”
“You can walk, but not sit for long,” Sophie said.
“Basically,” Falaise said, putting on his glasses, then reaching into the bag.
It was the clear plastic folder again. He took out all four sheets.
Dodd took one, began studying it.
A cloud passed over the sun, giving them a short respite from the heat. It was around 11:30.
They waited for Dodd to comment.
“They have been sent,” he translated. “Long …”
He was concentrating, brows knit.
“Long …” he began again. “Long ages maybe. I’m not sure.”
“Who has been sent?” Falaise asked.
“I don’t know. I’m just reading from the first line. Show me another one.”
He studied it. The sun emerged again from behind the cloud.
“Something about lands will be barren, or laid waste,” he said after a while. “And a bit later on, No man will speak of …”
They waited. Dodd was mouthing things to himself. He frowned.
“I can’t read it,” he announced finally. “I mean, I can get phrases, but not really read it. Akkadian changed over time, so that’s one thing that makes it hard. And another thing is, I change over time. I just don’t remember it well enough. It’s been a dozen years or more. My Hebrew’s no longer so good either.”
“Well, at least you have Hebrew,” Falaise said.
“Could you read it with a dictionary?” Sophie asked.
“Certainly,” Dodd said. “I’d have to work a bit, but I know I could translate it. There may be certain phrases, but I’d still get most of it.”
“Now I want you to notice something else,” Falaise said. “Of course I can’t read it, but I do know that cuneiform tablets have two sides. And here we have four sheets, each showing one side. So that should be two tablets, right?”
“Yes,” Dodd said.
“But notice here,” he pointed to the notation written at the bottom of one of the sheets. “Verso 1, he read.”
“Yes, that means the back of the tablet. The other side would be recto.”
“I’m not an idiot, Dodd. I know that. But look at all four sheets.”
Dodd went through them.
“Oh,” he said.
“That’s right. All Verso. Verso 1, Verso 2, etc. Which means we actually have four tablets. But only one side of each.”
“Yes, that’s strange,” Dodd said. “If the four tablets contain a continuous text, then we only have half the text.”
“And maybe not even that, of course. Because until someone translates these, we can’t be sure what kind of text it is. I believe I’m right, yes? Maybe it’s just four short sections of a text that might be fifteen tablets long.”
“Yes,” Dodd agreed. “You’re right.”
“So it’s like having a few pages out of a book, but not both sides of the page,” Sophie said. “Like you have an image of page 3, then page 5, then page 7. Is that it?”
“Exactly,” Falaise said.
“Alright, but what are these sketches anyway?” Dodd asked. “You haven’t had a chance to explain the main thing. Why did you bring these?”
A soccer ball sped toward them along the ground, missing Dodd’s leg and rolling under the bench. A spry blond boy of about eight announced, “Sorry!” in English, then approached and bent down to retrieve it.
“Leonard!” a woman’s voice called. “Apologize to them.”
“I did!” Leonard protested, running back to where he was playing with a friend.
“We’re sorry,” the mother announced in a London accent.
“It’s no problem,” Dodd called back.
Falaise was getting impatient.
“It’s a long story,” he began. “But since we’re out here under the sun, I’ll give you the bare bones. I have good reason to believe these tablets are about the apkallu. Also, I know for a fact that they’ve never been published.”
“Where did you get them?” Dodd asked.
“The drawings were made in the 19th century. We know that for sure. They were made by the daughter of the man who owned the tablets. A famous man, in fact. One Edward Hincks.”
“I don’t recall the name,” Dodd said.
“Hincks was the British scholar who cracked Akkadian,” Falaise said.
“I only remember that there was a contest of sorts. I don’t recall the names. There were three scholars competing to decipher the language, and they each claimed they’d made progress, but the public didn’t believe them. The newspapers thought the scholars were faking it.”
“Yes,” Falaise agreed. “There was skepticism the language could be deciphered at all. But the scholars’ claims were true. They were close to getting it. I’ll tell you the details of the contest later. Quite brilliant, in fact. The idea for the contest. But as we know now, Edward Hincks was the real brains behind the decipherment. The other scholars involved had basically been cheating. Stealing his notes.”
“Interesting,” Dodd said. “So how did you come upon these sketches, and why do you think they’re about the apkallu?”
“I’ll have to tell you that later,” Falaise said. “When we’re out of the sun. But what I can tell you is this. Hincks knew that the others were not being fair to him. So when he had a chance to get his hands on recently excavated tablets, he kept them himself rather than make them public. He was a bitter man. Understandably.”
“I see,” Dodd said.
“And since he died with the tablets still in his possession, his daughter inherited them.”
“Okay.”
“Hinck’s daughter couldn’t read Akkadian, and didn’t want to give the tablets to the Royal Society. She kept them for herself, without telling anyone. But she did finally write down all that her father had said about them. And her father’s brief description included the information that the tablets were about the apkallu, that he thought they were important.”
“So we have these sketches, but only the Verso sides,” Dodd said. “But where are the tablets themselves?”
“That is something of an obstacle,” Falaise said. “But perhaps not insurmountable. The main point is that the tablets are still unpublished. After all these decades.”
“Hm. The daughter didn’t have her father’s notebooks?” Dodd asked. “I’m sure he would have made his own translations, no?”
“He probably did,” Falaise said. “But nobody knows what happened to the notebooks.”
“And so she made drawings of the tablets, but we only have the Versos.”
“That’s correct,” Falaise said. “And before you ask me, I’ll tell you straight out, we have no idea why we only have the Versos. It was a 19th-century woman who’d inherited them. She made drawings of both sides. And the sheets were passed down to her children. But somehow half the sheets were lost over the following couple generations. The Recto sides. So that now we only have these four.”
Falaise huffed. He was getting tired of sitting.
“The reason I bring them should be clear, no?” he concluded.
“Yes,” Norton said. “Everything else about the apkallu has been published. But not these. And they may be useful.”
“If we’re fighting demons, any bit of information might be of use. There’s not much text of any kind that’s been published about these fishy benefactors. So I was sure to get copies of these.”
“We have evidence they’re important,” Sophie broke in.
They turned to her. Her expression was grim.
“Think about it,” she said. “If these sketches weren’t important, we wouldn’t have been attacked in Dodd’s flat just as he began trying to read them.”
Dodd and Falaise looked at each other with the same expression of admiration.
“I told you, Dodd!” Falaise said. “She’s dangerous. And brilliant. My best student.”
“I’m not,” Sophie said. “The point is obvious.”
“Noticing the obvious is two-thirds of genius,” Dodd said.
“Thank you. But that I realized it just now—it doesn’t exactly make me overjoyed.”
They waited for her explanation.
“Because it means we’re carrying something that hell itself doesn’t want revealed. We were targeted, and …”
She frowned, defiant.
“What?” Dodd asked.
“Whatever demon attacked us in Dodd’s flat also tried to take down our plane.”
She glared at them, half defiantly, half from guilt.
Falaise and Norton said nothing. They knew it was true. The text messages Norton had gotten on the way to the airport proved it.
“Let’s go elsewhere,” Falaise said. “I’ve had enough of this sun for now, and my back has had enough of this bench.” He began to return the sheets back to their folder.
“It’s my fault,” Sophie said.
“It is not your fault,” Falaise insisted, turning to her. “You were just one of the people involved in this business, and you weren’t even the one who succeeded.”
“We were fools.”
“So be it!” Falaise said. “But you are not a fool now. That’s what matters.”
He paused, gathered himself.
“I want you to be brave, Sophie,” he finally said. “We have a fight on our hands. A fight that would frighten anyone. But I want you to be brave. Because we need your brilliance. And we’re going to fight!”
Norton watched the professor and his former student. He knew the old man was trying to encourage her, but on the other hand, he could tell he wasn’t lying. Falaise really recognized her as brilliant. How much of each—encouragement vs. brilliance? Norton wondered. He couldn’t answer yet, but sensed he’d soon learn brilliance was the main thing. There was in fact something different about her.
“Let’s get out of here!” Falaise announced. “It’s a beautiful little park, Dodd, but I need to keep moving.”
He removed his glasses and slipped the folder back into his bag.
Norton stood up, turned. The London woman, from a distance, was smiling at him, that familiar annoying glint in her eye. He knew what was in her head.
Tom Hanks.