There definitely was a story to be found in these bones. But what could it be?
The bot sonar hadn’t picked up any other exit tunnels branching out from this cave. Seeing how the bones were piled so high, however, Jason wondered if the sonar signal had been obstructed. Maybe there was something to be found
behind
the bones? There was only one way to determine if that was the case.
‘They’re only bones,’ he told himself. ‘Nothing but bones.’
Having witnessed plenty of battle zone carnage - from blown-off limbs to bullet-riddled and decapitated corpses - Jason wasn’t squeamish when it came to blood and gore. But bones evoked a different, unsettling feeling.
To Jason, naked bones underscored the impersonal, undiscriminating finality of death - the living being stripped of flesh to its crude frame. Like a vandalized car stripped down to its chassis and left sitting atop cinderblocks.
The ancients revered bones as a vessel for resurrection or reincarnation. As such, they built pyramids and lavish tombs and even mummified themselves to preserve the body’s sacred framework. This place, however, reflected a much deeper reality: death was cruel. Bones were nothing but remnants of a fleeting physical life. That’s what Jason had to believe. Because for the sorriest souls, like his brother Matthew, who’d been incinerated by ignited jet fuel in the World Trade Center on a crystal-clear September morning, nothing physical remained. Jason needed to believe that, in the end, bones didn’t determine one’s ultimate salvation.
Cringing, Jason placed his free hand on a knobby femur to get a feel for it. ‘Not so bad,’ he tried to convince himself. ‘Just like wood.’
Groaning, he tossed the light up on to the pile. Then he threw himself up on to the bones and began clambering his way to the top, using the skulls as steps.
‘Sorry, fellas …’
Halfway to the top, the pile partially collapsed under his weight as hollow rib cages buried deep beneath him folded inward with a series of brittle snaps. As if he had just cracked ice on a pond, he spread his weight flat. Once the bones settled again, he cautiously continued his ascent. Near the top there was more cracking and popping. A dust cloud of decomposed flesh wafted into his nose and mouth. ‘Aah!’ He spat out the dust, but a foul taste lingered on his tongue. That’s truly nasty, he thought.
He held the flashlight high and aimed the light into the shadowy gap behind the bone pile. Moving the light along the wall’s arc, he was able to scan about a third of the cave’s circumference. For good measure, he checked the ceiling too. Definitely no holes or openings.
He slid down the pile, sending a pair of skulls clattering across the ground. Then he continued slowly along the circle, shining the light on the skeletons. At the circle’s midpoint, he grappled to the top of the pile again and checked the rear wall and ceiling. Nothing.
Again he slid to the floor, continued along the pile. Three-quarters of the way around the circle he climbed the pile for a final inspection.
‘Okay. No way out,’ he muttered.
As he came to the end of the circle, he noticed something peculiar: dozens of jawbones had been neatly stacked in a separate pile. Upon closer examination, he discovered that none of them had teeth.
That’s odd, he mused.
Either these specimens were extreme examples of bad oral hygiene, or someone had extracted the teeth. But why would someone take them?
Then something on the ground glinted in the light. Jason bent down for a better look and at the foot of the pile saw a sharp silver edge covered in heavy dust. When he swept some of the dust away with his finger, he found something that was definitely
not
from long ago.
He picked up the object and held it under the light. It was a tool that resembled a hi-tech surgical instrument. Something a dentist might use to—
‘Extract teeth.’
Had to have been left behind by one of the scientists brought in for the 2003 excavation. He pocketed the plier-like forceps.
There was one item left, and Jason remembered the bot had spotted it to the right of the exit. Shining the flashlight waist-high, Jason ran the light along the curve of the wall until he found the spot that had clearly been smoothed by tools for a very obvious purpose: to prepare the surface for etching. And the image etched into stone made his jaw drop open.
As the Cessna’s engines whined down for final descent into McCarran International Airport, Thomas Flaherty’s BlackBerry chimed. He checked the display. ‘It’s from Jason,’ he told Brooke Thompson. When he brought up the text message, he noted a handful of icons for picture attachments. ‘Says: “Al-Zahrani in custody. Have Brooke review pix from inside cave. Is this Lilith?”’
Brooke sat bolt upright, not sure what to be most excited about. ‘Wait. Is he saying that Al-Zahrani has been captured? Fahim Al-Zahrani?’
Realizing he just slipped up big-time, Flaherty’s eyes went wide. Oops. ‘Yeah. About that …’ He cast his eyes to the BlackBerry, thinking how he could change the subject.
‘Go on … you can tell me,’ Brooke said. ‘You know I’m really good at keeping secrets.’
He glanced up at her. ‘I suppose.’
Flaherty briefly explained how Jason’s team had been tracking Al-Qaeda operatives for the past few months leading up to the ambush that forced Al-Zahrani and his surviving posse to take cover in the mountain.
‘Wow. That is
huge
,’ she said, mouth agape. ‘That’s like catching the Devil himself.’
Flaherty tried to wrap his brain around it too. ‘It’s ten million dollars huge,’ he murmured.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’ He shook his head. ‘Wow. I just hope he’s okay.’
‘Al-Zahrani?’
‘No … Jason. See, Al-Zahrani is Bin Laden’s new right-hand man. And, of course, Bin Laden was responsible for what happened at the World Trade Center. Jason’s brother had been an insurance broker for Marsh USA. Went to work early that morning … to his office on the ninety-fifth floor of the North Tower. They never found the body. So indirectly, one could say that Al-Zahrani, or at least what he stands for, was also responsible for killing Jason’s brother,’ he explained.
She nodded.
‘Jason must be freaking out.’
‘I bet he is.’
‘I hope he doesn’t do something drastic.’
‘What, like kill him?’
Flaherty nodded. ‘Not that anyone would shed a tear for Al-Zahrani. But Jason could get himself in a lot of trouble.’
‘I doubt he’d be anything but a hero,’ she disagreed.
‘I suppose. God, imagine when people find out about this. It’s amazing.’
‘So let’s see those pictures,’ she said, anxiously eyeing the BlackBerry.
‘Sure, let’s have a look.’ Flaherty read aloud the name Jason had assigned the first attachment, ‘Mass Grave’. He exchanged an uneasy glance with Brooke, then opened the file. When he saw it, he cringed. ‘Yikes. Take a look at this.’ He handed the BlackBerry to her.
The picture clearly showed a dense pile of human bones. Brooke wasn’t sure how to react. ‘This is what Frank’s team had been studying?’
‘Seems so. There are a few other pictures here,’ he said, showing her how to open the remaining files.
There were two more shots of heaped bones showing wider angles that Jason obviously had taken to emphasize the magnitude of what he’d found. The continuous death pile seemed to circle the cave. In the images, Brooke could make out the rocky walls and ceiling.
‘It’s pretty spacious in there,’ Flaherty noted as he looked on.
‘And it’s packed full of bones,’ she muttered. ‘God, look at all that … There’s got to be hundreds, maybe thousands …’
‘I’d go with thousands.’
The next picture Brooke brought up hit her like a sledgehammer. ‘Look at this,’ she said, turning the display to Flaherty.
He squinted to make out the details. ‘What are those?’
‘Mandibles.’
‘Mandibles?’
‘Jawbones,’ she said, grabbing her own chin.
‘I know what a mandible is. It’s just that …’ Still looking confused, his eyes went back to the picture. He pointed to his own mouth and said, ‘There aren’t any—’
‘Teeth!’ she exclaimed. ‘Of course!
This
is where Frank got the teeth. From
these
bones.’
‘All right, smarty. I would have figured that out. Still don’t understand this bizarre fascination with teeth.’
‘Me neither,’ she admitted.
Three more pictures remained.
The next image took Brooke’s breath away.
‘What is that?’ Flaherty said, tipping his head to see the image. It wasn’t at all what he might have expected. ‘Hubba hubba. Who’s that?’
At first, Brooke didn’t respond. She was absorbed in the image - a wall etching that depicted a voluptuous, naked woman in full-frontal. Flaring out from beneath her raised arms were bird-like wings and she wore an elaborate conical headdress. In her left hand, she held a serpent. Perched on her right hand was some kind of bird. And beneath her feet was a pile of human skeletons.
Flaherty tried to be more specific: ‘This supposed to be the same woman whose head got lopped off?’
‘Looks that way.’
‘Why would they behead an angel?’
Without taking her troubled gaze off the image, Brooke sharply shook her head. ‘No. Not an angel. Protective spirits … the
good
spirits,’ she explained, ‘are always shown with
upward
-pointing wings. See here how her wings are pointing down?’
‘Okay. So what does that mean?’
Brooke took a deep breath and looked up at him. ‘It implies that she is a demon.’
‘A
demon
?’ Flaherty said, smirking. Glancing at the naked woman portrayed in the picture on his BlackBerry, he felt like he was looking at the primitive equivalent to a centrefold model.
‘That’s right,’ Brooke said.
‘Hmm. Too bad,’ he said in jest.
She rolled her eyes. ‘I’m sure it’s a real tragedy that such a nice pair of boobs went to waste,’ she grumbled, grabbing the BlackBerry from him.
He held up his hands as if to declare his innocence. ‘What?’
She held the picture close to her eyes and squinted.
‘I can show you how to zoom in on it,’ Flaherty offered. ‘What are you trying to see?’
‘Not her boobs,’ Brooke said, to torture him a bit more. ‘There’s a symbol on her wrist …’
‘Here, let me help you.’ He wrapped his hand around hers and pulled the BlackBerry closer. Then he tapped on the display to enlarge the area she was interested in.
‘See this rosette on her wrist?’ Brooke said. ‘It’s an ancient symbol of divinity. This conical headdress she’s wearing is also a symbol of godliness.’
‘Okay. So she’s a
divine
demon wearing a dunce cap.’
She panned across the image to the wide-eyed bird perched on the goddess’s right hand. ‘It’s an owl.’
‘Who-o-o?’ Flaherty joked.
She ignored him. Zooming out to view the full image again, she shook her head and said, ‘God, how did I not think of this? Jason’s right. Of course this is Lilith. The serpent, the owl, the wings …’
‘And who, pray tell, is Lilith?’
‘In the pantheon of ancient Mesopotamian deities, she was the goddess of storms and pestilence. One of the demons the ancients called
Lilitu
.’
Just then, the jet hit a rough patch of air and jostled the cabin hard enough for Brooke to grip her armrests. Within seconds the turbulence smoothed away.
‘Careful … Lilith hears you,’ Flaherty whispered.
Brooke took a calming breath before continuing. ‘Lilith was even said to be the first woman God created alongside Adam. But because she was seductive and mischievous, God banished her from paradise. In exile, she found a new lover to satisfy her carnal desires - one of God’s fallen archangels named Samael. Better known as the Angel of Death or the Grim Reaper.’
‘You don’t say,’ Flaherty said.
‘By copulating with Samael, Lilith became immortal and acquired supernatural powers. Ancient apocryphal texts say that she morphed into a serpent and slithered back into Eden on a mission of vengeance against Adam and Eve. Using her powers of seduction, she persuaded the couple to disobey God so that they, too, lost favour with Him and were banished from Eden. It’s a common mythological theme,’ she explained. ‘Curiosity and forbidden knowledge leading to humankind’s downfall. Usually at the hand of a woman.’
‘Just like Pandora’s Box.’
She grinned tightly. ‘Funny you say that, because in the original Greek myth of Pandora, the vessel containing all the world’s evils is described as a
pithos
- not a box, but a large clay jar, just like the one Lilith brought into that village.’
‘So maybe Pandora was inspired by Lilith too,’ Flaherty said.
‘Maybe. And interestingly enough, Persian mythology separately developed Ishtar as the goddess of love, sex and war - the embodiment of vengeance. An image very similar to this winged figure here,’ she said, ‘is how Ishtar was depicted by the Babylonians. Anyway, I’ve given you an earful I …’ she said apologetically. ‘It’s just that this is all so incredible.’