xp_logs | SOIKOS: Tearful Reunions (Reply)

Farouk on the trail of the plotters

"Amahl. I didn't think you'd come by here. Not after last time." Father Andrew Connelly wiped the sweat from his bearded face, straightening up from his crouch. The tall Irish Jesuit was covered in dust, dressed in his usual khakis except for his clerical collar. All around him, a collection of students and locals bustled around the site, working on the ancient city location, digging now following a neatly grided pattern.

Farouk gestured minutely to bring short the quartet of the suit-clad security detail men who instinctively moved forward at the implied threat of imminent dismemberment perceptible in the padre's snarl.

It felt a little strange to be a bona-fide representative of the Society for once with the prerogatives there of. Frankly, Amahl was finding it rather tiring.

"Well, Andrew, I am actually here as a favor to you. Somebody has to take advantage of that notional Christian charity that you are supposedly practicing in between chilld-molestation and alcohol abuse. So here I am. Look grateful, you IRA reject."

"I don't have time for you, Professor. This is a real research project. Not one of your crackpot suggestions." He tossed his trowel down on a nearby makeshift table and waved. "My tent is this way. Don't talk to my students. In fact, don't even look at my students. They have the chance to be real scientists one day."

Farouk winced. "Too mean, Andrew. Too m--."

He did not have the time to finish as a tall, blond woman dressed in a battered man's cassock and tall combat boots suddenly erupted onto the scene.

"Oh shit."

Connely's reaction was only seconds behind that of the Professor as he also recognized the nun. "God's blood!"

To their credit Farouk's bodyguards moved quickly and with admirable efficiency, spacing themselves well and acting with smooth, machine-like expertise.

The woman was slowed down only marginally as she stomped her foot against the instep of the detail's leader, delivering a quick whirling palm strike to finish him off and within second was covering the rest of the men with his Tavor assault rifle.

"You vomitous, scum-sucking, goat-humping jizz-stain of a fuck! You let that bitch escape?!"

Farouk's rather undignified shriek of a command brought the valiant but suicidal attempt by the rest of his bodyguards to charge the nun to a sudden halt.

"Hello, Mary."

Maria Teresa Ramirez - a once nun, a once assasisn, a once whore, a once revolutionary and a once mother of Esteban Carlos Djugashvili Trotsky - spat in the sand and put a bullet between Farouk's feet. "Where. The fuck. Is. She?"

"And to think, you showing up seemed like a bad omen, Amahl." Connelly said, although he shrank back from the angry look the woman gave him. Before he became a Jesuit, he was a top sargeant in the 3rd Infantry Battalion of the Irish Army Corps, and wasn't a man to fear much.

Farouk crooked an eyebrow at him, but the priest shook his head adamantly and inched farther back. "Yer on your own, boyo. I was brought up by the sisters." He winced at the memory. "The thumb on the left hand still aches before the rain."

Amahl grimaced and turned back toward Mary, patting the air in a vaguely calming gesture. "Madam, if you could perhaps lower your weapon?"

"Now how would I geld you with it, if it was pointing at the the damn ground?" Maria smiled nastily and her finger tightened on the trigger slightly. "You are just not making any sense, guy."

Farouk sighed the weeks of exhaustion suddenly viwible in the tired expression as he abruptly lowered his arms and turned his back on the nun. "Enough of this nonsense. Andrew, I need to see the Codex."

Without turning, he pointed. "Do sit down, Mary and if it wouldn't trouble you too much, help Rashid up before he chocked on his own blood."

"... are you completely off your gourd, you slimy fuck?"

Farouk sighed and glanced back at her. "We both know that you won't shoot me. And the sooner you stop getting in my way, the faster I'll be able to give you some answers."

Without waiting for her reply he pushed Connelly toward the tent. "Come on now. Chop-chop."

Connelly ducked into his tent, and poured himself a drink without bothering to offer to the others. "What do you want the Codex for, Farouk?" He pulled out a key from his desk and unlocked a heavy steel case, opening it carefully. Inside was a heavily bound and engraved book, at least six centuries old and carefully protected in the controlled case. "Careful, you clod. If you keep pawing at it, you'll damage something."

Amahl took the volume with care bordering on veneration and sunk into the nearest availible folding chair with a grateful groan. "I fucking hate Pakistan. Nothing good ever happens in this shitfuck of a country."

The priest scowled at him as he reached for the whiskey. "Tell me about. Occasionally they even get these Arab assholes with delusions of academic adequacy wandering through and spoiling my entire day. Now what the hell do you want with the book?"

Amahl paused, his hand still in the cover of the ancient text.
I've been making rounds of the North West Frontier Province, trying to get a bead on that little to-do with Calysee, you may have heard about?"

"No, I've been living under a rock. In New Jersey." Connelly snorted derisively. "Of course I heard about that. LeT have been all but taking out adverts in the fucking Vogue, crowing about it."

He took another swig and started passing the bottle to Farouk but, glancing at the book resting on the latter's knees thought better of it and jerked the bottle away. "Those bastards have been by the village a few days back."

Amahl winced. "Bad?"

The priest spat and glared scornfully at his guest. "What do you think, genius? The local boss-hog came by with his roving court of Holy Justice. Flogged a local girl to death for getting raped without enough witnesses. Good times all around. But back to the business at hand. What is it you are trying to find? The Codex isn't going to give you the damn GPS location on Neramani, you know."

Farouk opened the book gingerly. The Judas Codex has come into his possession almost by accident in Spain, during his whirl-wind tour of the sorcerous underworld of Europe. He held the find back from Amanda and Wanda, scarcely able to believe the magnitude of the discovery.

He was almost ashamed at the lack of time he had been able to devote to to the study of the book since then. But life had a habit of upsetting even the most virtuous of plans. Besides he had utmost confidence in Andrew, both as a scholar and a guardian for the Third Bible.

Connelly was observing him, clever blue eyes intent. "I've been fucking around with it, boyo. It's rough going. Madness and brilliance, maledictions and blessings. Allegorical all to fuck and, I think, coded in sections." He emptied the bottle and threw it carelessly toward the exit.

"Like I write you then - some intriguing hints have popped up, but that's about it. I don't know what you expect to get from it in an afternoon of browsing."

Farouk was silent, absorbed in the book. The old, yellowing pages felt almost alive with the force of time and knowledge. He could have sworn that the vitality of them was reaching out for him, stroking the edges of his shields, beckoning him closer with heady promises and temptations.

The same bait, no doubt, that forced Connelly out of his comfortable ensconcement in the Vatcan and out into the field again. Digging in the middle of the war-zone, chasing the bare hope of 'intriguing hints.'

"The Whore, Andrew." Farouk glanced up to meet the priest's suddenly horrified gaze. "I need to know of The Whore."

"You can't be serious. The Codex is one thing, but Grail mythology?" Connelly tugged at his beard, mind racing behind his eyes. "If it gets out that I even know this, I'm going to be excommunicated and then stomped to death by the fucking Cardinalate."

Farouk's face gave him no real sympathy, and the Jesuit sighed. "It's a myth. Nonsensical millennial prophecies that supposedly the Templars discovered how to fulfill. In the book of Revelations, the Whore, the Antichrist and the Beast are all essential figures in bringing forth the Apocalypse and the war between Heaven and Hell that follows the Trump and the Call. According to Adso of Montier-en-Der, the Whore is a literal figure; a woman who is 'drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus'. In a letter attributed to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, he speaks of the order seeking to influence the coming of the Final Battle, and warns against such ambition. There's rumours that he seized from Raymond of Poitiers a ritual he and the Templars had sought to create their own Whore, admonishing them for their lack of faith and took the document back with him to Cluny. There's no mention of it since, in all the records of the Abbey library, so if it existed, it must have been destroyed."

Jesuits had been instrumental in rooting out many of the hidden early secrets of the church, including elements of alchemy, magic, and demon worship. Connelly was among their number, and his access was very good in the Vatican. "Grail fanatics and conspiracy nuts love the legend, because in order to create the Babylon Woman, who represents the Whore, she must sup the blood of martyrs from the Grail itself, taking back his sacrifice of his body and blood and twisting it into the darkness of the end of days."

Farouk closed his eyes briefly. "I am trapped in a bad Dan Brown novel with Tom Hanks's ugly Catholic brother." He sighed deeply. "Mother was right. I should have been a dentist."

"Well, dealing with you *is* like pulling teeth..." Connely commented acidly. "Now that we established that you are jelous of my ridiculously good looks and have no access to Wikipedia - let me repeat for the slower kids: What the fuck do you need the Codex for?"

Farouk turned another page, absently flipping the priest off. "Given the utter lack of reference to the lady in question throughout the Koran, I was somewhat perplexed by the fact that she kept coming up during my investigation."

"You think Calysee is..."

"Codename. Or something else. I don't know. But I've hit the wall in Peshawar. The trail has gone stone cold and I need help."

Connely raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Codex?"

Farouk shrugged. "I remember a passage here... The common wisdom is that the much of the story is allegorical, right?"

"Aye, and?"

"Well, Babylon is a pretty big part of the puzzle. The entire structure of this little episode is built on pretty heavy-handed symbolism. This, along with dominant textual interpretation argues that the bitch is on her way to Jerusalem."

"Well, that or Rome..."

"No, it's pretty clear that she's headed somewhere in the Middle East."

"Then, yeah - Jewtown is your best bet."

Farouk squinted. "Nice. That Irish charm is just backing up in your throat, isn't it?"

"The Codex, asshole. What's with the Codex?"

"Here!" Amahl snapped his fingers triumphantly and pointed toward the page. "Here it is. I remembered seeing it - Babylon means Gate of the Gods, correct?"

"Fuck if I know. Why?"

"Because, I think the prophecy should be read literally. They are not taking her to Israel, they are taking her to fucking Baghdad. Babylon."

Farouk rose, gesturing rapidly. "Opening the gate. Get it? Israel is a double blind, a misdirection. And if they manage to rig Calysee to blow and take out the Hussein family in the process..."

Connelly blinked, the map of the region unfolding in his mind. "Shit. We'll get a belt of anarchy and jihad from Hindu Kush to the Med."

"With D. Ken running wild throughout."

Andrew rubbed the scraggly five-o'clock shadow on his cheek thoughfully. "So the entire Babylon Woman connection is, what, just a hoax? Grail rumours to throw non-traditional groups who might be investigating things off the scent?"

"Maybe." Farouk rose, carefully returning the book to its place. "I'll need to get back home and massage the data a bit more, put out a few more feelers. There's still something strange about this whole thing..."

He caught Connelly's look and grimaced. "Even by our standards, I mean. For one thing - there's way too much Christian mythology undewriting the entire enterprise. Considering that it's being run by the Muslim fanatics and a mad Hindu fundamentalist."

The older prist snickered. "Hey, maybe the Temlars are actually involved?"

"Right," Farouk drawled. "Them and the Illuminati from the center of out hollow Earth."

He glanced at the Codex one last time, curiously relactant to part with the book, its draw growing perceptibly heavier suddenly, as if it could feel his temptation.

Connelly's hand was surprisingly soft on his shoulder and Farouk drew himself in, closing his eyes briefly and gathering his resolve. "Right. Thank you."

"Don't mention it."

The two emerged from the tent, blinking at unison - less at the bright glare of the sun than the panorama of Mary shooting dice with the Farouk's bodyguards. Rashid, the bloodflow staunched, was cursing with the vivid artistry of a poet to the admiring approval of many onlookers from among Connelly's crew and students.

Andrew shook his head in slow, sad, disgusted resignation. "I hate you like cancer, Amahl."