The Judas Strain (Sigma Force 4)

A shaft of bright sunlight illuminated their labors.

Unlike Seichan and Kowalski, Vigor had not been able to watch the mutilation. Even now he swung away and returned his attention to the wall he had been studying. Away from the central shaft, the vault here lay in deep shadow. Vigor had been allowed a flashlight so he could hunt for another entrance to the subterranean cavern. And while he hated to help Nasser, if he could find another way down, then he could perhaps limit the degree of defilement to these ancient ruins.

But Vigor hadn't been granted much time.

Ten minutes.

With preparations under way, Nasser had climbed out of the vault. Vigor had noted him checking his cell phone, searching for a signal. Apparently unsuccessful, he had climbed out, ordering them to be ready by the time he returned.

Gray joined Vigor. "What is it? Did you find that doorway you were looking for?"

"No," Vigor admitted. He had walked the entire circumference of the vault. There was no other door. It seemed the only way down was through the stone face of bodhisattva Lokesvara. "But I did find this."

Vigor waited for one of the patrolling guards to pass, then shifted his flashlight flat against the wall, casting the beam up the surface. Lit by shadow and light, an expanse of wall etchings appeared, reminiscent of the bas-reliefs above. But it depicted no figures, just cascading tangles.

"What is it?" Gray said, reaching his fingers out to examine what the light

revealed.

By now, Seichan and Kowalski had joined them.

Vigor shifted the light, widening the beam to illustrate. "At first, I thought it was just decorative scrollwork. It covers all the walls." He waved an arm to encompass the breadth of the chamber. "Every surface."

"Then what the hell is it?" Kowalski muttered.

"Not hell, Mr. Kowalski," Vigor said. "This is angelic."

Vigor took the light and cupped it over a small fraction of the carved tapestry. "Look closer."

Gray leaned to the wall, tracing with his fingers. Understanding dawned in the commander's face. "It's made up of angelic symbols, all jumbled together."

Seichan joined Gray, following his fingers, nose to nose. "This is impossible. Didn't you say angelic script was devised by someone in the sixteen-hundreds?"

Vigor nodded. "Johannes Trithemius."

"How could it be here?" Gray asked.

"I don't know," Vigor said. "Maybe at some point the Vatican did send someone all the way to Cambodia to follow Marco's trail like we did. Maybe they returned with etchings of this script, and Trithemius somehow got ahold of it. Devised his script from it. And if he knew Marco's story of glowing angelic beings, it might be why he claimed the script was angelic."

Gray turned to Vigor. "But you don't believe that, do you?"

Vigor watched Gray step back, retreat a few more steps, his gaze fixed to the wall.

He sees it, too.

Vigor took a deep shuddering breath, trying to restrain what he suspected. "Trithemius claimed he gained knowledge of the script after weeks of fasting and deep meditative study. I think that's exactly what happened."

Seichan scoffed. "He just happened to dream all this up, a match to the ancient script here."

Vigor nodded. "That's exactly what I'm saying. Remember what I told you before, about how angelic script bears a striking resemblance to Hebrew. Trithemius even claimed his script was the purest distillation of the Hebrew alphabet."

Seichan shrugged.

"What do you know about Jewish Kabbalah?" Vigor asked.

"Just that it's some Jewish mystical study."

"Exactly. Practitioners of Kabbalah search for mystical insight into the divine nature of the universe by studying the Hebrew Bible. They believe that divine wisdom lies buried in the very shapes and curves of the Hebrew alphabet. And that by meditating upon them, one can gain great insight into the universe, into who we are at the most basic level."

Seichan shook her head. "Are you saying that this Trithemius fellow meditated and came up with this purer form of Hebrew? Stumbled upon a language—this same language—" She patted the wall. "A language that links to some great inner wisdom?"

Gray cleared his throat. "And 1 think inner is the key word here." He waved Seichan to step back, to join him. "What do you see? Look at the whole pattern. Does it look familiar to you?"

Seichan stared for a single breath, then snapped, "I don't know. What am I looking for?"

Gray sighed and stepped to the wall. He ran a finger along one of the cascades. "Look at the way it swirls down in spirals of broken helixes. Picture this section all by itself."

Seichan squinted. "It looks almost biological."

Gray nodded. "Follow the strands. Don't they look like double helixes of DNA? Like a genetic map?"

Seichan remained doubtful. "Written in an angelic language?"

Gray stepped away, his eyes still on the wall. "Maybe. In fact, there was a scientific study that compared patterns in DNA code with patterns found in human languages. According to a Zipf's law—a statistical tool—all human languages show a specific pattern of repetitive word usage. Such as the frequency the word the or a. Or the rarity of other words, like aardvark or elliptical. When you plot a graph comparing the popularity of words against the frequency of their usage, you get a straight line. And it's the same whether English, Russian, or Chinese. All human languages produce the same linear pattern."

"And DNA code?" Vigor asked, intrigued.

"It produced exactly the same pattern. Even in our junk DNA, which most scientists consider to be biological garbage. The study has been repeated and verified. For some reason, there is a language buried in our genetic code. We don't know what it says. But—" Gray pointed at the wall. "That may be the written form of the language."

Vigor ran a hand along the carving, breathless with awe. "It makes you wonder. Could Trithemius have tapped into that language during his meditations?" He straightened as another thought struck him. "And consider ancient Hebrew, how its characters are similar to angelic script. Could early written languages have somehow been derived from this, arising out of some inherent genetic memory? In fact, it makes you wonder if this language isn't the Word of God, mapping out something greater in all of us."

Vigor shifted his light, sweeping it to cover the breadth of the vast chamber. "But either way, all of this. All this angelic language. What is it telling us?"