WINDSONG

SAECULUM ( A Novel: Part 21) – GALLICINIUM I

2012-02-12T20:24:00.003Z

SOL OCCAXUS (Sunset) Monday, 19 September, 2011

CREPUSCULUM (Evening Twilight)

I. Friday, 23 September, 2011
II. Thursday, 29 September, 2011
III. Thursday, 29 September, 2011
IV. Sunday, 16 October, 2011

VESPER (Evening Dusk)

I. Sunday, 23 October, 2011
II. Sunday, 30 October, 2011
III. Wednesday, 9 November, 2011
IV. Monday, 14 November, 2011
V. Monday, 14 November, 2011

CONCUBIUM (First Sleep – Coitus – Rest)

I. Thursday, 17 November 2011
II. Sunday, 20 November, 2011
III. Friday, 25 November, 2011
IV. Thursday, 1 December, 2011
V. Thursday, 1 December, 2011
VI. Thursday, 8 December, 2011
VII. Sunday, 11 December, 2011

INTEMPESTIUM (Midnight)

I. Sunday, 1 January, 2012
II. Thursday, 5 January, 2012
III. Saturday, 7 January, 2012
IV. Monday, 16 January, 2012
V. Sunday, 29 January, 2012
VI. Sunday, 29 January, 2012
VII. Friday, 3 February, 2012
VIII. Friday, 3 February, 2012

GALLICINIUM (Cock Crow)

I. Sunday, 12 February, 2012
II.
III.

MATUTINUM (Dawn Goddess)
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.

DILUCULUM (Dawn Twilight)
I.
II.
III.
IV.

SOLI ORTUS (Sunrise)

GALLICINIUM

COCK CROW

The hotel lobby, at that early hour, was deserted except for the dark-glassed and short-haired men of General Arnold’s extraction team. Impatient to get away they had dragged Michael Mara to his room, forced him into the shower, helped him pack and brought him back down to the lobby where a sleepy Pedro, the night porter, emerged from the reception office and walked unsteadily to the counter. “Doctor Mara. You were missing. Everyone in the hotel was worried. We notified the police,” Pedro said as he looked at the dark-suited men standing in the lobby.

“I want to check out, Pedro. I need my bill please,” Michael said.

Pedro looked at his watch and then up at the lobby clock to confirm his discomfort. “But it is only twenty minutes after seven, in the morning!”

“I know Pedro, but I have to go. It’s urgent.”

“I am sorry, Doctor Mara, but the receptionist does not start until eight. I am not allowed. You will have to wait.”

Karl – the extraction team leader had reluctantly given his first name to Michael – pushed Michael aside and launched into a tirade in Spanish, most of which he couldn’t understand. In the end he didn’t need to, as the impact on the hapless night porter was obvious and by the time Karl had vented his fury, Pedro was quivering. He agreed to get the receptionist to forward the account to the Hoxygene office. Michael felt sorry for him, and opening his wallet extracted enough for a more than generous tip.

“Thank you, Doctor Mara.” Pedro glared at Karl. “Are you, ok?”

“Yes. These are friends.”

The porter raised his eyebrows. “I hope you have a good trip. Please come back and stay with us again.”

“I certainly will, Pedro. Thank you.”

“Doctor Mara. We need to go, now!” Karl pulled at Michael’s arm.

Michael followed him out of the lobby while one of the detail reluctantly carried his hastily packed luggage.

“Oh, Doctor Mara. Wait please!” Pedro shouted as he rushed from behind the counter. He held out an envelope for Michael to take. “This arrived for you late last night. I was going to give it to the police today.”

“Thank you,” Michael said as he took the envelope from him and inspected it. Only his name, written in fine calligraphic style, appeared on the surface.

“Also,” Pedro said hastily. “Your wife telephoned two nights ago, twice in fact, about five o’clock in the morning. She sounded very upset when you were not in your room. I told her you might be away walking in the mountains. I think the police were going to try and contact her through your embassy in Madrid.”

“Thank you, Pedro.” Michael put the envelope in my inside pocket. “Did she leave a message? My wife.”

“She just said she would be back in Los Angeles in the late afternoon. You are to contact her at home.”

“Thanks again, Pedro. Good bye.”

The extraction team brusquely ushered him into a large black Volvo sedan with darkened glass windows and Michael was left seated alone in the back seat with just the driver and one other agent in the passenger seat. He watched as the agent retrieved a machine pistol, which he then lay across his lap, one finger hovering near the trigger mechanism. The driver looked back at Michael, before turning to his compatriot. “Point that hardware the other way, Dave. I’ve no fucking desire to be the unlucky victim of friendly fire caused by a Spanish pothole,” he said before he checked his rear-view mirrors and began to pull out. The remainder of the agents, had got into two further cars with blacked-out windows, one in front and one behind the Volvo and with a screech of tyres they all drove off at high speed in convoy.

Michael reached into his pocket and retrieved the envelope that Pedro had given him. I opened it, extracted and unfolded the letter, and began to read:

‘Dear Michael,

By the time you read this I will probably be already . . . ’

“Stop the car!” Michael suddenly shouted.

“What’s up, Doc?” Dave, the agent in the passenger seat, turned around and asked. “Jesus, Doctor Mara. You look like death.”

Michael hand shook uncontrollably and the letter flapped like a trapped butterfly. “I need to puke. Stop the car!”

There was burst of radio chatter and the Volvo slowed to a halt near a small area of shrubbery. Michael pushed out the door and even before he could exit the car he began retching viciously. He forced himself out onto the roadway, to the margin of the baking asphalt. After expelling what little was in his stomach he rested there, bent-double and sucked in air for a few minutes until he slowly straightened and returned to the car. As he approached, the front passenger’s window wound down and Dave the front passenger agent’s face peered out. “Are you ok?” he asked with a genuine concern.

“Yes. We have to make a stop. It’s vital,” Michael answered as he wiped his mouth with the back of a sleeve.

“No can do, Doctor Mara. Our orders –”

“Fuck Arnold's orders, Dave. We either make the stop or you leave me here. Dead or alive I don’t care.” There was another clatter of radio talk. The van backed up and Karl came storming across to where he stood. Michael gave him Alonzo’s address, adding the same ultimatum.

“Very well,” the lead agent agreed reluctantly. “Ten minutes tops! Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Michael mumbled and crawled back into the car.

Karl held the door open and leant in. His face, about four inches from Michael’s, had an almost serene sneer creasing it. “By the way. If there is to be a choice of someone kidnapping you or us taking you out, then we are sanctioned to do it. Do you understand that, Doctor Mara?”

“What?” he gasped.

The door slammed shut and the car started up again. Dave turned back to look at him. “Those are our instructions Doc. You must be very important.” He handed Michael a clean handkerchief.

“Thanks. I’m sorry about earlier.”

“Part of the job. Let’s go, Hal.” Dave pointed to the departing van ahead of them. The driver nodded his head slightly, eyes firmly fixed on the rear view mirror as he pulled out. Dave kept his hand on his gun.

They travelled in silence until the Volvo pulled up outside Alonzo’s address. Michael could see that the door of the house was open and wanted to rush out but was prevented as Hal had engaged the central locking. He had to watch as agents from the escort vans jumped out and moved to secure either end of the street. He then saw Karl enter the house with his gun drawn and one other agent following. It was a few minutes before Dave’s radio earphone activated.

“We can go in now. The building is secure,” Dave announced.

“What’s up? Tell me.” Michael pleaded.

“According to Karl, it’s not very pleasant. I’m sorry Doc.”

“What do –”

“Come on. We have very little time.”

Michael got out of the car and followed Dave into the house. Karl waited by the first courtyard pool. He said nothing but indicated that Michael should follow him. They walked to the archway that led to the inner garden and he suddenly saw Alonzo sitting in a chair beneath the pavilion roof. His face had a fixed smile, eyes slightly open, but with no movement, no greeting.

“He’s dead, strangled. Couple of hours, maybe,” Karl said coldly as he moved aside to let Michael approach.

“Christ. How do you know?”

“Some lividity. Little or no rigor mortis.”

Michael instinctively put out his hand to close the eyelids. The skin was still warm to touch. “He’s still warm!” he shouted, as he pulled away his hand.

“In asphyxiation the body temperature often rises,” Karl said in a detached voice as he looked around the garden.

Michael saw that Alonzo’s face was a suffused blue-purple colour with exploded surface capillaries. He lifted his chin and then saw the cord, an interwoven black and red silk dressing-gown cord, taut around the neck. There was little sign of a struggle. No soiling, no blood…no fight it seemed, he thought. Across Alonzo’s lap lay a bundle of slender, feathered tamarisk branches tied in the middle by a wrapping of thin bark. He could see that this had been stripped from the nearby potted mulberry bush, which now looked more distressed than ever. Alonzo’s hands, the left holding the right wrist in a lock, rested on the bundle. In his fisted right hand a piece of paper protruded. Michael tried to release it but it would not budge. He looked at Karl who shrugged his shoulders.

“Cadaveric spasm,” the agent surmised.

Michael prised open the stiffened grip, forcing the fingers back to do so. One finger snapped with a sickening sound and in his panic he pulled at the hand causing Alonzo’s unresisting body to slide off the chair. His head thumped off the tiles.

“Jesus, don’t do that,” Karl shouted. “Spanish forensics will find your DNA everywhere.”

It was too late. As Michael hurriedly unravelled the paper a small hard stone like object fell to the ground. He ignored it and looked at the paper. There were ten lines of writing, in Arabic, on the paper. He shook his head and exclaimed aloud, “Shit.”

“What’s up? Doctor Mara. What does it say?”

“I don’t know. It’s in Arabic.” He handed Karl the paper and knelt down beside the chair to try and retrieve the fallen stone. His stomach retched again.

“Neither yours nor ours, he is. . . ”

“What!” Michael looked up. Dave, the passenger agent, was reading the piece of paper. “Do you read Arabic?”

“Yes, but this is not Arabic. It’s old Persian.” Dave said in a matter of fact way as he held up the paper to the light before looking back down at Michael. “School of Oriental Studies, Harvard. We are not just ‘haircuts’ you know.”

“I’m sorry, Dave. I did not mean to assume anything. Please . . .”

Dave ignored him as he spotted the stone under Alonzo’s shoe and bent down to retrieve it. He turned it in his hand a couple of times before handing it to Michael. “Anubis charm. Obsidian. Head of the jackal. Guide of the dead into Hades.”

“What does the writing say? Please translate it for me, Dave.”

“ ‘Neither yours nor ours, he has gone directly to hell. For the Lord of Time the sun rises in the west. The dogs have looked on him and await the scattering’. It is signed by one ‘Zilullah’, the Shadow of God.” The agent-orientalist handed him back the paper.

“Thank you, Dave.”

“Do you know what this all means, Doctor Mara?” Karl was clearly agitated and anxious to leave.

“No I don’t,” he truthfully replied. “How about you, Dave?”

Dave smiled and nodded at Michael’s obvious deferral to his greater understanding. “It’s all a little strange and jumbled. The tamarisk bundle and reference to the dogs is strongly associated with the ‘ravan barsm’ ceremony of the Persian Zoroastrians celebrating the soul’s departure from the recently deceased. The barsom plant was originally used, hence the name of the ceremony, but often substituted for by tamarisk. The Anubis charm is Egyptian but the reference to the Lord of Time, I do not get. As I said, all a bit jumbled.”

“Excuse me,” Michael blurted, as he jumped to his feet and rushed back towards the first courtyard. “I must do something. I will not be long,” he shouted back to Karl but not caring whether he heard or not. Alonzo’s office was undisturbed but the door to the library was open. He ran through it and up to the lectern. The plinth was still raised, but it supported nothing but a small mound of finely ground sand. The hourglass was gone.

“We must go, Mara.” Karl had followed after him into the library and pulled at his arm. “Now!”

His thoughts were elsewhere. “What. Ok. What about Alonzo?”

“Who? Oh the stiff. We will contact the police once we are gone.”

“My friend.”

“Right. I’m sorry for your loss, but it’s no longer a concern of mine. Now come on. We’re out of here.”

There was no further resistance from Michael and within a few minutes the two vans and the Volvo were speeding through the early morning traffic. They headed north towards the road that would take them up into the Sierra Nevada. Dave said nothing for a while but then turned to look back at him. “Do you have any idea what all that was about, Doctor Mara? It seems very weird and almost . . .” He hesitated.

“Almost what?”

“Ritual.”

“The way he was killed?”

“Yes.”

“No. Alonzo was a good friend,” he said in a distracted way, as he tried to think things through.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Dave asked.

“What?”

“When you rushed off into the house. Did you find what you were looking for?”

“No, the Voice was gone.”

“The what!”

“Oh . . . nothing. I said . . . eh . . . my voice was gone. I’m tired, Dave.”

“Sure. Get some shut-eye, Doc. It’s a long drive.”

“Dave.”

“Yes.”

“Thanks.”

“De nada.”

Sleep plunged Michael into a demented dream from which he was awoken, abruptly, by being tossed across the car to the accompaniment of screeching tyres. “Fucking asshole,” Dave screamed out the window. Michael looked at his watch. He had slept for about an hour but his head was still groggy. “What happened?” he asked.

“Bloody farmer. Pulled right out in front of us.”

“Where are we?”

“Near Almaden.”

“The Calatrava mercury mines?”

“Yes. Where the Fuggers and then the Rothschild’s made their money,” the previously silent driver, Hal grunted knowingly.

“But that’s on the Cordoba side. I thought that we were going to Madrid.”

“We are.” Dave turned round as Hal shoved the car into reverse. “But we reserved the option of switching to Lisbon, depending on security status.”

The car’s tyres screeched to little effect.

“Shit. Were jammed against the shoulder.” Hal had his head out the window as he turned back to Dave. “You’ll need to get out and jack her up.”

“I need to take a leak anyway.” Michael said as he opened the door and stepped out. After the air conditioned coolness of the car the arid heat outside was like a furnace. There was no damage to the car and it did not take long for Dave and Hal to lever it back onto the road.

“Ok. Let’s go.” Dave had continuously talked into his radio mike, updating those in the van ahead. Soon they were accelerating towards Madrid. Michael took Alonzo’s letter from his pocket and began to read it again:

‘Dear Michael,

By the time you read this I will probably be already dead. I have seen the light of illumination and it is blinding. I am to join the lovers in paradise. Do not distress yourself on this point unduly, as it is my ordained time. There is however a matter of greater importance that concerns you.

With my death the ‘Lordship of Time’ passes to another and with it the key to the gathering of all of the Voices. I have no further control on who that might be but I fear the worse. You must try to recover Saclaresh and prevent it falling into the gathering of evil. Our time together was all too short. In olden days the relationship of a Pir and his or her designated pupil would often last for many years. In addition to guidance towards and through the doors of the Path the pupil would also be instructed in how to identify and surmount the obstacles to that Path. We, you and I, never had the time for this and I fear that the dangers to you as a result are great. Because of this I would understand if you wish to turn away from the Path, away from the responsibility of something that you do not yet fully comprehend or understand. That is my failure not yours.

As my final act of guidance, I want to try and alert you to one of the specific dangers. In the present I gave you the other evening are the original handwritten notes that Sir Thomas Malorye gave to Caxton in 1483 and which eventually comprised the fourth book of his Morte D’Arthur. Nobody knows of their existence and I would ask that you respect that. The book in question, deals with the seduction and eventual destruction of Merlin the Magician (Magian) by the virgin prefect (perfect!) Nymue and the approbation of his powers by her. Caxton spelt it this way but, in the handwritten notes, you will see that Malorye spells the name as Nur’mei, meaning the Solis or Light of Maat, the Egyptian Goddess of Truth and Justice. Watch out for this light, for it already shines on you. I do not want to offend you in any way but like Merlin with Nur’mei, Isabella was, and is, my downfall. You, on the other hand, are akin to Sir Bab de Magus, a brother coming to Merlin’s rescue but being unable to help because of the power of Nur’mei. Isabella carries that power and the potential for both good and evil but because of my love for her its design is obscure to me.

Take up the mantle of Sir Bab, Michael, for all our sakes. You are now the last of the Magi. Find Saclaresh and prevent its gathering.

I will wait for you by the Tuba tree.

Your friend,

Alonzo'

He read over the letter a number of times before checking his backpack to ensure that Alonzo’s package was still present. He let out an audible sigh of relief and Dave turned around to check on him. “You all right, Doc?”

“Yeah, fine, still a bit shook. I wished I could have done more.”

“There was no time. Did he have any relatives?”

“I don’t know. I’d only met him a couple of times, we never got round to talking about his family.”

“Central has informed us that the police have arrived at the house and begun their work.”

“Will they not want to contact me?”

“Not immediately. One of our crew is a forensic clean-up specialist and stayed behind.”

The countryside sped past until gradually it changed to an urban sprawl and a busy highway on the outskirts of Madrid. Turning off for the city’s airport they sped past the departures entrance and headed instead for the military airfield at the far end of the complex. A Lear jet waited, engines already fired up. It had a name – The Nightingale – painted below the cockpit window but no other markings on the fuselage. Karl and Dave followed Michael up the steps. Both seemed nervous. “Where are we headed for Karl?” he asked.

“Corsica.”

“Corsica?”

CONTADOR – CONTRABAN(NE)D

2012-02-07T20:22:00.001Z

In a week that the US Attorney’s office announced they were closing its investigation into seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong’s alleged performance-enhancing drug-use his successor as cycling’s superstar, Alberto Contador has been stripped of his 2010 Tour de France win and been given a two-year ban by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

As I mentioned in my blog of July 22, 2010 (Counter-Narratives and the Col du Tourmalet) the physical ‘achievement’ of the winner-takes-all contest between Andy Schleck and Contador on that hot summer’s day high in the Pyrenees exceeded all acceptable physiological parameters and yet for all that it was riveting because it was a contest.

Between ‘beef suppliers’ yes, but a contest all the same!

Sometimes you wonder whether there is any real difference between Contator’s behaviour and a concert pianist taking a cardiac beta-blocker to ensure that the most nuanced of concertos is achieved without tremble, or Tiger Woods or Picasso having sex to better strokes, or Brendan Behan drinking just to exist.

None really! It's about intent.

THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL: A VAPID INACTION FORCE BATHED IN JASMINE

2012-02-06T22:59:00.006Z

NO LONGER BROTHERS!

On the 31 January 2012 the 6710th meeting of the UN Security Council considered the report of the Arab League’s fact-finding mission into the crisis in Syria (UN Doc. S/2012/71). In introducing the report Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al-Thani, Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs of the State of Qatar and Chairman of the current session of the Arab League Council stated categorically that,

“The Syrian regime is promoting the idea of a hidden agenda harboured by certain States against it. That idea is untrue and belies the position of the international community concerning the events in Syria resulting from the Government’s policy. Many thousands of people have died and many detainees languish in prisons. The Government killing machine continues effectively unabated.”

In response, in condemning the Arab League’s submission of a report on a fellow member (albeit suspended since 12 November 2011) of the League to the Security Council, a body which in his opinion has ‘imposed hundreds of vetoes against Arab causes” the Syrian Arab Republic’s ambassador Mr Ja’afari stated,

“The Syrian people, who gave the world its first alphabet, are more familiar with the scent of jasmine than with the smell of blood in Damascus.”

In Damascus yes, but perhaps not in Homs!

Earlier this year the UN Security Council, in a Statement issued by the President on the 19 January 2012 (UN Doc.S/PRST/2012/1) reiterated its call,

“on all parties to armed conflict to comply with the obligations applicable to them under international humanitarian law and to take all required steps to protect civilians and recalls in this regard Resolution 1894”

In pursuit of this objective, where Syria was concerned, a resolution formulated by Morocco to urgently address the escalating crisis was vetoed by both Russia and China at the Security Council meeting on the 4 February 2012.

The Russian Federation ambassador VITALY CHURKIN said that, the bloodshed and violence in Syria must be ended immediately, adding that his country was taking direct action and planned to hold a meeting with President Bashar al-Assad on 7 February. While the Russian Federation was committed to finding a solution to the crisis, some influential members of the international community had been undermining the possibility of a peaceful settlement by advocating a change of regime. The draft resolution voted down today sought to send an “unbalanced” message to Syria, he said, adding that it did not accurately reflect the situation there. No proposal had been made to end attacks by armed groups, or their association with extremists, he said, adding that his delegation had, therefore, voted against the text.

This vacillation by Russia has only served to accelerate the Syrian regime’s ‘killing machine’ determination to eradicate all pockets of resistance in Homs. By the time of the meeting with the Russians many hundreds, maybe thousands will have been sacrificed so that Damascus can come up smelling of Jasmine.

China’s representative LI BAODONG at the meeting of the 4 February also called for an immediate end to all violence in Syria and asked for the respect of the Syrian people for a reform process that was in their own interest. China supported the Arab League’s “good office” efforts to restore stability in Syria, he said, adding that the international community should provide “constructive assistance” to achieve that goal. However, the country’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity must be respected, he emphasized but that China would continue to work with the international community towards an appropriate end to the crisis.

What the hell does an ‘appropriate end' mean in Chinese terms?

An 'Appropriate End' in China!

(A Note on the first picture above: Outside in the car-park on the day I took this picture in the lobby of a hotel in Damascus the rally cars of the al-Thani team from Qatar were being readied for the Syrian Rally.)

SAECULUM ( A Novel: Part 20) – INTEMPESTIUM VII & VIII

2012-02-03T20:25:00.002Z

SOL OCCAXUS (Sunset) Monday, 19 September, 2011

CREPUSCULUM (Evening Twilight)

I. Friday, 23 September, 2011
II. Thursday, 29 September, 2011
III. Thursday, 29 September, 2011
IV. Sunday, 16 October, 2011

VESPER (Evening Dusk)

I. Sunday, 23 October, 2011
II. Sunday, 30 October, 2011
III. Wednesday, 9 November, 2011
IV. Monday, 14 November, 2011
V. Monday, 14 November, 2011

CONCUBIUM (First Sleep – Coitus – Rest)

INTEMPESTIUM (Midnight)

GALLICINIUM (Cock Crow)
I.
II.
III.

MATUTINUM (Dawn Goddess)
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.

DILUCULUM (Dawn Twilight)
I.
II.
III.
IV.

SOLI ORTUS (Sunrise)

INTEMPESTIUM

MIDNIGHT

VII

“Wake up, you bitch,” the voice screamed.

At that moment Caroline Mara could not be sure whether the voice was part of a dream or a reality. She felt movement and pain as somebody violently shook her awake while shouting in her ear. She opened her eyes to find that the light hurt her and couldn’t focus. Who was talking to her? What had happened, she wondered. She did not remember anything.

“Wake up, you bitch,” the voice screamed again.

She lay face down on a bed. There was a taste of vomit in her mouth and soiled sheets about her head. She couldn’t move her hands. “Where am I?” Caroline had to spit out a plug of blood stained food before she could shout the words. “Where are my clothes? Is that you Diego?” she spluttered.

“Yes, whore,” Rios answered in an ice-cold tone.

“Why are you speaking like that, Diego? Why am I tied up? Why am I so confused?” she pleaded. Tears ran down her face.

“Rohypnol in your dessert, bitch. Your brain and ass were roched, as it were. Ha Ha.”

“Why? Why are you doing this Diego?” she cried.

“Shut the fuck up, whore.” He rolled her over on the bed so that she looked up at him. “Tell me about your husband’s work with the American Army,” he demanded.

“What?” Caroline tried moving her hands to cover her breasts and pubic area but they remained tied behind her. She struggled to release herself but the chords or wires holding her just cut deeper into her skin. Her tears ran freely. “I don’t know anything about the work my husband…Michael has done for the Army.”

“You’re lying!” Rios said angrily.

“I’m not Diego. I swear. Oh God I don’t know anything. Please stop hurt–”

Caroline’s pleas were interrupted as Rios leant down, grabbed her hair with his left hand and jerked her head backwards. His face was a sweating mask of hatred. She felt the retching begin again. He had a half-smoked cigarette in his other hand and brought its crimson tip closer and closer to her eyes.

“Tell me,” he demanded.

“I don’t –” She screamed as he suddenly pulled the cigarette away from her eyelid and buried it into the flesh of her cheek. She smelt the burning flesh, her own flesh and then the pain. She wanted him to stop. “I . . . Please stop hurting me, Diego. . . I only heard of one name. A General Arnold. I swear.”

“I don’t believe you, bitch. Make it easier for yourself and tell me about the Mara Stealth Virus.”

“The what? I don’t know anything, Diego. Please. Pleassssse!” Caroline screamed again as the Mexican policeman held the cigarette close over the skin of her right breast. She felt the heat getting more intense as he circled it towards her. All of a sudden he stopped and looked down at her for a moment, as if thinking about what to do next. The hard facial features softened and the voice grew kinder. He pulled back the cigarette and with his other hand began pinching her nipple gently, until it was engorged.

“Do you know, Caroline, that when the Spanish arrived in this part of the world they thought they would find the fabled race of Amazons? You know the legend about the Amazons, Caroline? Don’t you?” Rios suddenly and violently pressed the cigarette into the flesh of her right breast.

Caroline screamed again with the searing pain. “Nooooooooo…….. please!”

“It is said that they removed the right breast at puberty so that its full development would not interfere with their ability to draw a bow.” Rios pressed the cigarette into another spot. “Tell me about the virus your husband has developed for the Americans.”

“I don’t know. Oh God. I don’t know. Help me please. Somebody help.”

Caroline continued screaming as Rios burnt her again and again. She wanted to die. She couldn’t fight the pain any more. Then it suddenly stopped.

Rios turned away and walked towards the bathroom. “Shit. I don’t think she knows anything,” he said, annoyed.

“The Sheila must know something mate,” a voice from within the bathroom said.

“Unlikely. I’ve hurt her fairly bad.”

Rios spoke to somebody else and Caroline realised that there was another person nearby. Then it struck her: she recognised the voice! Caroline turned her head and tried to look towards the bathroom. She cried out in a weak and plaintive voice, “Rod . . . Is that you, Rod. Oh, thank God. You have come to save me, Rod. Thank God. Help me, Rod. Rooodddd please help me!”

“What shall I do with her?” Rios said as he stood over her again.

“Kill her, mate. I don’t want the Sheila fingering us. No trace. Understand. A bullet to the brain. Nice and quick,” Rod Mallory said coldly.

“But this is my room! I will be suspected,” Rios protested.

There was a long pause. “I know, mate.”

“What–”

Caroline watched through half-closed eyelids as Rios turned to look at the approaching figure of Rod Mallory. Suddenly there was a muffled sphattt sound and the blond Mexican’s head jerked back. Tissue and blood sprayed over her from a fist-sized hole in the back of his head and Rios body was catapulted back, to land across her chest and force the breath from her lungs. “Oh . . .Oh thank God! Get him off me, Rod. Get him off,” Caroline screamed as Diego’s body jerked in spasm and one of his hands came to rest on her leg. “Please hurry Rod. I’m going to puke again. I can’t breathe.”

“Sorry, sweetheart but I’m going to have to find a new tennis partner. Shame really. You banged Commander Rios there, like a dunny door. Even I felt like joining in.”

Rod’s shadow hovered over her. “Oh, God no. Not you, Rod. Not –.”

Caroline closed her eyes as the gun discharged.

VIII

It was dark, yet flashes of light illuminated the space where Michael Mara lay. Somebody was shouting, somebody was calling his name, “Michael, Doctor Mara. Wake up. Wake up.” His head was pounding and as he tried to sit up the dizziness took over. The flashes of light hurt his eyes. “Where am I?” he asked.

“Near your hotel outside the old cafe.”

It was a girl’s voice. American accent, he realised as he tried focusing on the face that hovered over him. He felt hers or somebody’s hands pulling at him. “How did I get here? What happened?”

“You don’t remember anything? You passed out in the apartment and Isabella wanted you to sleep it off. I brought you back here in my car.”

“Is that you Zoë? I can hardly make you out.”

“Yes, Michael. Apparently a mixture of champagne and pot and you’re anybody’s. Now come on. We’d better get some coffee in you.”

“Where’s Isabella?”

“She had to take an early flight from Granada to Madrid. I dropped her at the airport before coming here. She will be back tomorrow. A conference I think.”

“I need to talk to her.”

“She told me to tell you that you and she will meet in a quiet moment again. Whatever that means!”

“What time is it, Zoë?”

“Nearly six thirty.”

“In the morning?”

“Of course. Now come on. Stand on your feet.”

A hazy image of an angry Bob Arnold, his thick-set face glaring, suddenly seared into Michael’s confusion. He tried again to focus on his surroundings. The smell of freshly ground coffee was coming from the small 24-hour café that he recognized as being the one near the hotel. He began to search his pockets, in a flea-bitten frenzy of moving hands, for his wallet and cell phone. Both were still there, he realised with relief. The cell phone was still turned on but he could not remember whether he had followed Arnold’s instructions before he had left the Hotel. To Michael that conversation seemed a very long time ago. “You were there, Zoë, last night. It was you who made . . . eh . . . when Isabella was dancing.”

“It was me who made what, Michael?” the athlete asked as she strong-armed him from the car and across the pavement to stumble through the door of the café. She sat him down at an unoccupied table.

The few other patrons in the café stared in his direction. They, sober, were about to start a day’s work whereas he, it appeared, was abusing their hospitality and morning peace; another over indulgent layabout tourist. He looked at Zoe and said, “Last night when Isabella was dancing. You were there with me. We made love . . . I think.”

“Ha! Ha! In your dreams, my American friend! I think you had better stick to lemonade and coffee in the future. Hold on, I’ll just get yours. Sugar?”

“Thanks. Two please,” he said, more confused than ever. As she went to the counter he opened out the cell-phone and dialled in the instructions that Bob Arnold had given. He then pressed the redial button and left it on the table.

“Here is your coffee,” Zoë said as she looked down at the phone. She suddenly became agitated. “I must go now. I’m sure you will be alright from here.”

“Zoë . . . ” he called after her but she did not look back.

Michael Mara had been sitting in the cafe for about twenty minutes nursing his coffee and his confusion when three men with short haircuts and large dark glasses walked in. The morning sunlight was not that bright on this side of the street.

“Doctor Mara?” the first of the men asked as he approached the table.

“Yes.”

“I have been sent to get you by General Arnold. He is very anxious about you. You need to come with us?”

“I need this coffee more. Rough night. You know how it is.”

“Yeah right. Where the fuck, have you been? We’ve been searching for you for two days,” the man barked.

“What?” Michael was puzzled. His head throbbed as he looked at his watch. “What day is it?” he asked quietly unable to focus on the small date display.

“Friday, 7 September.”

“Friday . . . but that means I’ve been gone for ... Where? I don’t remember.”

“Who the fuck knows?” The man looked really pissed-off.

“I want to know!” Michael shouted, banging his hand down on the table. The cell-phone fell to the floor.

“I understand Doctor Mara, but we need to go, now.”

Michael hesitated. The sun-shaded man leant down and lifted the cell phone. He turned off the power and slipped it into his pocket. One of the three men remained near the door, while the others lifted him to his feet. He did not protest. The other café patrons nodded approvingly as they left.

SAECULUM ( A Novel: Part 19) – INTEMPESTIUM V & VI

2012-01-29T19:35:00.004Z

SOL OCCAXUS (Sunset) Monday, 19 September, 2011

CREPUSCULUM (Evening Twilight)

I. Friday, 23 September, 2011
II. Thursday, 29 September, 2011
III. Thursday, 29 September, 2011
IV. Sunday, 16 October, 2011

VESPER (Evening Dusk)

I. Sunday, 23 October, 2011
II. Sunday, 30 October, 2011
III. Wednesday, 9 November, 2011
IV. Monday, 14 November, 2011
V. Monday, 14 November, 2011

CONCUBIUM (First Sleep – Coitus – Rest)

INTEMPESTIUM (Midnight)

I. Sunday, 1 January, 2012
II. Thursday, 5 January, 2012
III. Saturday, 7 January, 2012
IV. Monday, 16 January, 2012
V. Sunday, 29 January, 2012
VI. Sunday, 29 January, 2012
VII.
VIII.

GALLICINIUM (Cock Crow)
I.
II.
III.

MATUTINUM (Dawn Goddess)
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.

DILUCULUM (Dawn Twilight)
I.
II.
III.
IV.

SOLI ORTUS (Sunrise)

INTEMPESTIUM

MIDNIGHT

When Caroline Mara reached her room, she showered for a very long time. After stepping out of the cubicle she draped herself in a huge bathrobe and moved into the bedroom. She lay down on the bed and, exhausted from the earlier hard tennis match with Rios, closed her eyes and was quickly asleep. It was nearly an hour later when she woke and immediately looked at her watch. She calculated that it must be nearly five in the morning in Spain but decided to telephone Michael anyway as she needed to talk to him. Their last conversation had left a pall of confusion hovering over her feelings. What the fuck did he mean by saying he had been doing some thinking? she wondered. “Thinking about what?” she said aloud as her hand probed around the floor for her electronic organizer. After locating Michael’s number she lifted the receiver and dialled. Caroline looked at her watch again.

A sleepy voice came on the line. “Halo. Hotel Palacio.”

“I am looking for Doctor Mara.” Caroline spoke in Spanish.

“Hold on.” There was a repeating dial sound that rang unanswered for two minutes. “I am sorry Señora. There is no answer from his room.”

“Would you please check again? It is important,” she pleaded. “I’m telephoning from Mexico.”

“Señora, it is nearly five in the morning here. He must be in a deep sleep.”

“Please try again. I’m his wife and I need to talk to him. I will wait.”

It was nearly ten minutes later when the receiver was picked up again. “I am very sorry, Señora. Doctor Mara is not there.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course. I went to his room. The bed has not been slept in. Perhaps he has friends in Granada or is travelling in the mountains. He told me yesterday that he likes mountains. We have beautiful mountains here,” the hotel voice said with awkward confidence.

Mountains my backside, Caroline thought as she struggled to restrain her annoyance. “Maybe. I don’t know. Thank you for your help. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

“It’s not a problem. Will I leave a message that you telephoned?”

“Don’t bother . . . No, please do. Thank you. Write in the message that I called and will be at home, 4 p.m., Los Angeles time.”

“ 4 p.m. Los Angeles time. That’s done.”

“Thank you again. Good night.”

“Good night, Señora Mara.”

The connection terminated.

“Fuck you, Michael!” She shouted at the phone as she next tried calling Rod Mallory’s number in Los Angelus. It was answered by a male voice with a strong South American accent.

“Hello.”

“I’m looking for Rod. Is he there?”

“And who is looking, may I enquire?”

“It’s Caroline Mara. Who are you? I want to speak to Rod.” Caroline shouted angrily down the line.

“Oh, Señora Mara. Rod said you might ring. My name is Roberto. I am a friend of Rod’s from Belize.”

“Where is Rod?” she asked impatiently.

“He said to tell you that he has gone to Europe for a few days. Something to do with a Swiss deal. He said to say he was sorry to miss the tennis tournament but that you would understand. He will be back on Sunday.”

“Blast it. Thanks Roberto. I’ll probably get a chance to meet you in LA with Rod sometime and I’m sorry that I shouted down the phone.”

“It’s no problem, Señora Mara. I will look forward to meeting you. Rod has told me a lot about you. You’re like a sister to him, he said.”

“Good night, Roberto.”

“Good night, Señora Mara.”

The bedside radio-clock showed her that it was nearly a quarter to nine. “What shall I do? What shall I doooo?” Caroline muttered as she got off the bed and paced across the room. She moved to the wardrobe and pulled the slide-door a little way along its track. Hesitating, she peered into the darkness for a moment, before shaking her head and fully sliding back the door. The automatic wardrobe light flickered on. Her hand moved to one of the hangers, and she gently rocked it back and forth. Suddenly the rail attachment mechanism accidentally released itself and a black cocktail dress, it had supported, fell in a heap to the floor. As Caroline stooped to pick up the crumpled dress she caught her reflection in the full-length corridor mirror. She looked at her half-crouched image for a long time before rising to her full height. She unravelled the dress from the hanger and held it against her chest. “Come on old girl. Snap out of it. Go for it! If Michael can be sneaking about so can you. Where the hell is he, anyway?” She looked once more at her reflection before she crossed the room to lay the dress out on the bed. She let the towelling-robe, she had been wearing, fall to the ground and humming to herself entered the shower cubicle again. It was quickly taken, this time, and as she dried off the beside telephone rang. It was exactly nine p.m. and she tried to contain a mounting excitement. Perhaps it was Michael, she thought and she walked into the bedroom and lifted the receiver. “Hello.”

“Caroline.”

“Yes, Diego,” she said as she recognised the deep voice.

“Are you still available for dinner?”

“I’m really not sure, Diego. I’m very tired and I might not be very good company.” Caroline smiled at herself in the mirror.

“Please, Caroline. You would do me a great honour.”

“Well if you put it like that Diego, how could I refuse? I am hungry.”

“Magnifico! That’s great! I will meet you at the restaurant bar in say, ten minutes. Would that be okay? I know how you ladies like to take time getting prepared.”

“Do you now? I’m so glad to be in the hands of such an expert. I will be down in five. I’m not planning to go to much trouble.”

Caroline put the phone down. After dressing she attached a simple pair of black pearl pendant-earrings and complimented these with three simple gold bands on her right wrist. She then removed her watch and rings and placed them in her slim shoulder strap Chanel bag. As a final flourish she liberally dabbed perfume to her neck and wrists and to the cleavage of her breasts and was just about to lock the door of the room behind her when she stopped and rushed back to the bedside telephone. Picking it up, she dialled Michael’s hotel number again. The connection to Spain was quick.

“Halo. Hotel Palacio.” It was the same voice. Awake this time.

“It’s Señora Mara again. Has my husband returned yet?”

“No. I am sorry, Señora Mara.”

“Fine. Please tell him I called. Good night.” Caroline looked at the phone for a long time before she slowly replaced the receiver.

Commander Diego Rios was waiting at the bar. Seeing Caroline approach he shot out of his stool and rushed to meet her. “You look sensational. I will be the envy of every man here,” he gushed.

“Thank you, Diego,” she said as the Mexican kissed her on both cheeks.

“I hope you don’t mind, but the maître d’hôtel is a good friend and he has kindly arranged a table for us in one of the private balcony dining rooms. It has a spectacular view and the music filters up without intrusion. Would that be acceptable?” the policeman asked as he signalled to the manager who hovered near-by.

“Yes. Perfect,” she said with a little too much emphasis that made Rios smile. In that moment, Caroline realised, she had made her decision and he knew it and was relieved to see that there was no obvious sign of any of the others from the American delegation. They must have headed for the nearby town as planned, she thought as she followed Diego and the maître d’ along a side passage to a small door near the end of the room. They then climbed a short set of marble stairs to step out onto to a balcony that had been decorated with overflowing vases of different coloured roses. Petals were scattered across the floor as if they had been windblown. The dining table looked out over the bay and Caroline could hear the waves crashing onto the rocks nearby.

Rios, for his part, immediately moved towards the table and after removing a already opened magnum of champagne from a nearby ice bucket, began to fill two crystal flutes he held in his left hand. “Dom Perignon Brut Rose. 1982. I hope you like it.” He smiled as he proffered the half-filled flute.

Caroline accepted the glass and moving to the balcony looked out over the sea. The fragrant nose of the champagne wafted upwards. She sipped the pale crimson liquid and let it bubble across her tongue. The Mexican policeman was watching her closely. “They must pay the commanders of the Federal Police very well to afford all this, Diego,” she observed.

“I’m owed many favours, and have a very creative accountant. This . . .” He waved his hand across the room like a frontier farmer. “This I will hide deep in my expense account, although no man in his right mind would want to hide you, Caroline.”

Despite herself, she blushed. In the background, music of blended Arabic voice and Spanish guitar was haunting the night air. Accepting the chair that a waiter held out for her, she sat looking at the rising moon. “The music is lovely. What is it?” she asked.

“Listen to the words,” he whispered as he looked directly at her and translated the song:

“Vivire para besarte. . . I live to kiss you

vivire para besarte. . . I live to kiss you

acariciar tu cuerpo. . . to caress your body

para poder amarte. . . so that I can love you

tu eres primito. . . you are the fountain

la fuente donde yo bebo. . . I drink from . . .”

“Very romantic Diego. Very over the top though! More of your arrangements?”

“Of course,” he said laughing. “It is from the combined talents of Rocio Alcala and Juan Martin on his album El Alquimista. I could not trust the hotel trio to replicate it and, as I wanted to express my sentiments, I arranged for the CD to be played.”

“Are you an alchemist then, Diego?”

“The only mystery about me, Caroline is a complete inability to dance. I say that in case you get carried away.”

She laughed as well, and remembering her earlier annoyance at the lack of choice in shoe selection, she now decided to slip them off to savour the coolness of the marble flooring against her feet. “I’m famished. What will we have to eat, Diego?”

“If you do not mind taking the risk, will you allow me choose for both of us?”

“In for a penny, in for a pound!”

“What did you say, Caroline?”

“Oh . . .nothing. It’s just an expression. Please go ahead and choose for both of us. I am now in your capable hands.”

Caroline relaxed and let the charged atmosphere between them determine its own course and she could feel the champagne, and the potent red wine that Diego had chosen, washing away any of her remaining inhibitions and caution. As the dinner plates were being cleared she found herself looking out over the balcony again. The moon was much higher in the sky and much brighter. If Michael is prepared to throw caution to the wind then there was no damn reason why she couldn’t, she reasoned. No damn reason at all! At that moment her foot suddenly touched Diego’s and felt a shiver of excitement in the pit of her stomach before she quickly moved her leg out from beneath the table and pretended to rub away an imaginary itch. She waited and then watched as the policeman shuffled his chair closer and bent down to gently lift her leg.

“You have beautiful ankles, Caroline,” he whispered as he pulled a rose petal out from the space between two of her toes and showed it to her. He used this to gently brush the dust from the skin of the sole. He then rested her foot on his chair between his legs.

Caroline did not withdraw her foot and instead, arched the toes forward to move slowly and rhythmically against his crotch. She felt his penis bulging beneath the linen cloth of his suit and she used her toes to delve below the underside of its hardness. Diego took her hand again and began kissing the tips of her fingers and was about to say something when the young waiter suddenly entered and immediately interrupted the mood and the opportunity. She quickly withdrew her leg from its nest between his legs and gave a slight cough as the waiter began to hoover the crumbs off the tablecloth. Rios’s face flared at the unwelcome disturbance and in a torrent of abusive language began to berate the cowering boy.

“Wow!” Caroline spoke in a louder than necessary fashion to stop him. “That wine was very powerful, Diego. My head is spinning. What was it?”

“A 1991 Caymus Cabernet. I’ll order some more,” he said, expansively.

“Oh no! I have had more than enough.”

Rios’ anger dissipated as quickly as it had risen and he waved away the relieved waiter with an instruction to bring their deserts. “Once again I must apologise for my behaviour. It is my Latin temperament! I get too passionate at times. I just wanted everything to be perfect tonight.”

“I would not see that as a fault. You are quite a connoisseur?” Caroline touched his hand.

“You mean the champagne and the wine?”

“Yes.”

“I have a small confession to make.” He held his hands up and a boyish grin softened his features.

“What is it?”

“I hope you won’t think me ignorant, but I did cheat a little. I love wine but can never remember one vineyard or vintage from another. I either like it or I don’t and I asked my friend, the maître d’hôtel, to choose.”

“Does that apply to women as well?”

“No! Never! With women I remember everything. Their clothes, their scent, their private noises, and the way they move and like to be moved. Everything!” He pushed out his chair and half-crouched, pulled it closer to hers.

“It sounds like there have been many.”

“Few as special as you, Caroline,” he deflected as he took her hand in his and massaged the fingertips.

The young waiter returned with deserts and this time Rios ignored him as he made a point of obviously releasing Caroline’s hand and letting his own slowly drift downwards beneath the table. He watched for her reaction as he found and then began to stroke the inner side of her thigh. For a moment she returned his look but then closing her eyes allowed her leg to swivel out from beneath the table, and lift to rest on his chair again. Once more she arched her foot forward to find his crotch. Her breathing quickened and she began to inhale in rapid short bursts. The young waiter couldn’t hide his embarrassment and Caroline opened her eyes just as he fumbled placing the plate in front of her. She smiled up at him and he nodded nervously before he turned quickly and rushed to leave the balcony. Looking down, she thought that the deserts were more like a cocktail than a desert. In each crystal bowl, a small scoop of crème-fresh ice cream floated on a generous pool of blue Curacao liqueur. Diego pulled his chair tight to hers. Content with their proximity, his fingers then searched for and found her ankle before they travelled, tantalisingly, back up her leg to glide around her thigh and move higher and higher towards the moist warmth of her groin. Caroline pressed her pelvis forward to allow him enter, her thigh pushed out against his. She felt his fingers slipping beneath the loose folds of the silk pants, she had chosen to wear and then his darting tongue, as he bent down kiss the skin of her knee. She dipped a finger in the pool of liqueur and tasted it. “Wow! More alcohol, Diego?” she groaned.

“These are very special deserts, Caroline,” he said as he looked up from her knee The liqueur will wash away any lingering taste of cayenne from the meal and allow the tongue to...”

Caroline hardly heard his words as she felt his fingers suddenly delve deep to finally find and begin to move rhythmically within her. She could feel the spasms beginning and fought for air. With a sudden and loud exhalation Caroline she pulled her legs together and pushed back her chair. “Phew! It’s very hot, Diego. Excuse me for a moment please. I need to use the powder room.”

“I understand.” He smiled. He stood up and coming around behind Caroline, held out her chair. “It’s over there,’ he said as he pointed to a small doorway at the far end of the balcony.

Caroline Mara shakily got to her feet and managed to compose herself a little before she walked barefoot towards the door. She pushed heavily against it and as it swung open, was relieved to find that the toilet cubicle was directly ahead. She entered quickly and locking the door behind her, sat down. “What are you doing, girl?” she asked aloud at the vague reflection in the green gloss paint of the cubicle door. What I want to! She thought. I want to feel desired, ravished. What harm would it do? She rationalised. There was red-blooded Mexican waiting to take her and she wanted to be taken. Her hands rested between her legs as she leant back against the cistern, breathing slowly. She could suddenly feel the warmth. Her toes arched against the cold tiled-floor. The spasms began again and this time she didn’t stop them, couldn’t stop them. “Oh God! Oh Godddddd!” she cried, as their intensity doubled her forward. She collapsed across her knees and it was some time before she could safely stand up.

Caroline left the cubicle and moved to the washbasin. After cleaning herself down, she checked and rechecked her appearance in the mirror before she applied a liberal sprinkling of perfume and returned to join Diego at their table. He looked concerned as he stood up and came forward to meet her. “Are you ok, Caroline? You were a long time and I was worried. You look flushed!” He held out his hand.

“I’m fine, Diego. Much better now, in fact.” She took his hand and allowed him to guide her back to her chair. He waited until she sat down before returning to his own chair, which during her absence she noticed, he had moved back to its original position. The ice cream desert had all but melted yet the taste was still superb and with renewed relish, she finished it all. She felt very relaxed and taking the initiative, started rubbing her leg against his.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“I feeeeel great, Diego. What a woo…wonderful night.” Caroline felt pleasantly drunk again and slurred some of the words.

“Tell me about your husband, Caroline?” He asked.

“Must we talk about him? Michael is probably out sha . . . shagging a frustrated Spanish lab-rat with big tits, as we speak. Bunsen burners instead of candlelight! No, that’s unfair of me. He’s . . . he has probably talked himself out of the opportunity. Poor man!”

“You don’t sound happy?”

“No, that’s not true. We are happy, in a way. I love Michael but he doesn’t do it for me anymore. Sexually I mean. Isn’t . . . isn’t that really sad.”

“I cannot understand why, Caroline. You really are so beautiful.”

“Thank you, Diego, you . . .” She suddenly pushed back her chair and stood up to lean across the table and kiss the Mexican on the lips. Immediately her tongue slipped into his mouth and began to explore. He responded and she could feel his hands on her breasts before, to his very obvious surprise, she withdrew and flopped back into her seat. “God. I feel so dizzy . . . randy but dizzy.”

“Come, Caroline. I think you have had enough to drink. I’ll bring you back to your room.” He stood up.

Caroline waited for Diego to walk around. As she stood up, she leant heavily on his arm. Turning towards him she placed her free hand on his still bulging trousers and whispered into his ear, “No, my Mexican lover. Take me to yours.”

“Are you sure?”

“Very.”

By the time they had stepped into the elevator Caroline could feel the warmth in her pelvis rising again. Once the doors closed she watched his reflection in the polished mirrors and followed his eyes as his hand moved between her buttocks. Separating her legs slightly to allow him probe, she smiled mischievously as she watched his face change when he suddenly realised that she had discarded her silk pants. The spasms came quickly as the doors opened. Reluctantly she moved forward onto the corridor while he kept his hand where it was, toying with her. Reaching the door of his room, Caroline struggled to insert the key card he had handed to her. On the third try, she succeeded and once inside the room, turned and began to fumble at the buckle of his trousers belt. She couldn’t understand how uncoordinated she felt her movements were. Her head spun.

Diego Rios suddenly grabbed at her hands and holding the wrists pushed her away from him. “Not so fast, Caroline. I want to savour these moments for a while. Stand over there against the bed with your back to me,” he ordered as he closed the door behind them.

She glared at him in mock defiance before she turned and staggered towards the bed. She leant forward slightly to lean on the end board and looked back over one shoulder to watch him watching her. “Like this, lover?” she teased.

“Yeah. Now take off your clothes for me. Slowly,” he demanded

With a shaking hand she pulled the thin straps of her dress over her shoulders until she could lift out her arms. Swaying from side to side she then used one hand to tug at the hem of the dress until it just began to slide over her skin. Her breasts were suddenly free. She kept her back to him and placed her hands on her head. She enjoyed performing for him. With alternating rising and dropping movements of her hips she was able to make the dress slither down her body and legs until it finally lay in a discarded heap on the ground. Her hands then came to rest on her buttocks, and she gently prised them apart so that he could see all of her. “Did you like that, Diego?” She smiled back at him as he began to remove his trousers.

“Very professional.”

“You have only seen a glimpse of my hidden skills.”

“Show me more,” he demanded.

Caroline turned slowly and walked towards him. Stopping about a hairsbreadth away she leant forward and began tracing the line of his mouth with her tongue. He pushed forward sucking at her lips, biting at her tongue. Her hands had dropped and were moving slowly up the inside of his thighs. She felt his erection as it tried to burst itself free. His hands struggled with his belt. She gabbed his wrists and suddenly jerked them away. “I’ll do that lover. Its my turn!” She undid the belt and slowly pulled down the zip of his trousers. After releasing the top clasp, she inserted her hands between the skin and the material of his shorts and clumsily began tugging at them. His erection sprang free as she quickly pulled the shorts downwards towards the ground. His trousers followed suit to fall about his ankles. Looking up at him from her crouched position her tongue darted out to lick the underside of his penis. She straightened up, pausing to squeeze his testicles as his throbbing cock pushed against her skin.

Diego Rios was in a desperate hurry to pull his shirt off. Buttons popped and flew like bullets across the room. He pulled at her hair forcing her head back down to take him in her mouth. Caroline obliged and tried watched him with upturned eyes as she teased and licked the pink exposed tip before opening her mouth to draw in the shaft. Her hands massaged the lifted testicles, running back and forth to the rim of his anus. His back arched, his breath came in short bursts. She kept it going until he seemed about to ejaculate.

“Sancta Maria!” he cried.

“Not yet Diego. Not yet,” she instructed as she squeezed the back of his erection to cut off the blood flow. After a minute or so she pulled away and turned back towards the bed. “Did you like that, Diego?”

“If you fuck as good as you suck woman, then I am a lucky man,” he said coarsely.

She glanced back at him. The coarseness excited her even more. She increased the rhythm of the movements of her hips so that her firm buttocks began to rise and fall in time with her breathing. Rios moved in closer. His hands began at her neck and tightened and squeezed in a downward descent. He found her again and began to tease the skin apart. Her legs separated as she felt the building orgasm. It came quickly, wet, and then built again. He was pulling at her labia. Her knees buckled. “Quick, Diego. Quick. Take me! Fuck me now!” she pleaded.

“Good things come to those who wait, bitch!” he grunted as he stepped back and retrieved the thick leather belt from his trousers on the floor. He hung it around his neck as he slowly stood up and began running his hands along the inside of her thighs. He watched her quiver to his touch. Suddenly his hands moved to her breasts, crushing the soft tissue back against her ribs. He plunged violently into her from behind, his weight grinding her down against the bed.

Caroline felt the spasms cascade over her in one wave after another. She put her hand back and pulled at his hair. “Deeper. Go deeper!”

“Like this, you gringo slut?” He pulled away her hand.

“Yes! Oh God, Diego. Yessssssssssss!” she cried.

“You like it like that, don’t you, whore! Bark for me like the bitch in heat you are.” Rios suddenly withdrew and pulled the belt from around his neck. Swinging it in a wide arc he slashed her hard with the buckle end across the skin of her bottom. The mark of the metal instantly imprinted with a bleeding weal.

Caroline felt the sensations of pleasure suddenly evaporate. She was left with just the pain. She cried out as she turned to look at him. “Jesus, Diego, that hurt. What the fuck did you do that for.”

“Shut up, whore!” he shouted as pushed into her again.

Rios' movements became more and more brutal. Her breasts seared with the vice hold he had across her chest with. He was deliberately hurting her, she realised as she felt another searing pain scorch across her back. She managed to pull his hand off her breasts but suddenly found her head snapping back. With his now free hand he tugged at her hair. One of her earrings tore through the skin of her ear lobe as she shook her head trying to free herself. He bit into her neck. Caroline screamed, “Diego! Stop it! You’re hurt –”

“Shut up, you slut. Take your fucking like the bruja you are.”

His hand came around to suddenly cover her mouth and nose. She was very frightened. She could not breathe and tried to pull away from him. He was still in her, driving her down, not letting her free. She felt him come. He went deeper and deeper. Her skin tore. She tried hitting back with her elbow. She bit at his hand. There was suddenly a noose around her neck. It tightened. She needed to breathe. Her head was spinning. She wanted to vomit.

Caroline Mara felt her urine running out as the darkness came.

The video-telephone link was of poor quality. The man pulled the jeep over to the side of the road. Trucks heading for the border roared past.

“Ali baik salaam” The voice link cackled.

“Akzabti.”

“Who wishes to use our shade?”

“Is it done?”

“Not yet. It is set up for tomorrow night.”

“And the hourglass.”

“Will be on its way by courier to Corsica the day after.”

“Good. We are very pleased.”

“It is our duty to the inheritor of Kaya Rudbari.”

“You will find great reward in heaven.”

“Allah will not begrudge an earthly reward as well.”

“Of course. It is already lodged.”

“Shukran, Sahib al-Sa‘igh.”

“Ahlan wa sahlan, Sahib al-Sirr.”

SAECULUM ( A Novel: Part 18) – INTEMPESTIUM IV

2012-01-16T22:34:00.004Z

SOL OCCAXUS (Sunset) Monday, 19 September, 2011

CREPUSCULUM (Evening Twilight)

I. Friday, 23 September, 2011
II. Thursday, 29 September, 2011
III. Thursday, 29 September, 2011
IV. Sunday, 16 October, 2011

VESPER (Evening Dusk)

I. Sunday, 23 October, 2011
II. Sunday, 30 October, 2011
III. Wednesday, 9 November, 2011
IV. Monday, 14 November, 2011
V. Monday, 14 November, 2011

CONCUBIUM (First Sleep – Coitus – Rest)

INTEMPESTIUM (Midnight)

I. Sunday, 1 January, 2012
II. Thursday, 5 January, 2012
III. Saturday, 7 January, 2012
IV. Monday, 16 January, 2012
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.

GALLICINIUM (Cock Crow)
I.
II.
III.

MATUTINUM (Dawn Goddess)
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.

DILUCULUM (Dawn Twilight)
I.
II.
III.
IV.

SOLI ORTUS (Sunrise)

INTEMPESTIUM

MIDNIGHT

Once again Michael Mara’s call to General Arnold’s office was accompanied by a series of security checks.

“Hi buddy, where are you?” Arnold’s tone was brusque and agitated.

“Spain still.” Michael replied.

“Mikey, I need you to be more specific than that.”

“For what reason Bob?” Michael looked at his watch. It was nearly ten pm local time, and he’d arranged to see Isabella at eleven.

“A very good reason. Your life Mikey!”

“Come on Bob, don’t be melodramatic.”

“Michael. We’ve had further intel come in that confirms some of the concerns you expressed yesterday.”

“Which concerns, Bob? There were many,” he said sharply.

“We think that there is some sort of contract out on you and that there might be a kidnap attempt. I need to know exactly where you are. Don’t mess me around on this!”

“Jesus. OK, Bob. Take it easy!” As Michael gave Arnold the address of his hotel in Granada he walked into the bathroom of the large suite that he occupied. Its narrow-arched Moorish window with frosted-glass overlooked the plaza of the hotel entrance. Sitting on the toilet seat he released the catch and slowly pushed out the window a fraction to look down at the plaza below. All appeared quiet apart from the arrival of a taxicab but then if somebody were waiting for him they would hardly be making themselves known, he thought.

“Michael! Are you still there?”

“Yes, Bob.”

“I need your cell-phone number. Please leave the unit on from here on out.”

“Why, Bob?”

“Until a team gets to you we need it.”

“What team? What do you mean?”

“Langley is dispatching two teams from Lisbon and Madrid, ASAP, to protect you.”

“Is this really necessary, Bob?”

“Yes, buddy. Leave your phone on . . . Just in case.”

“Just in case of what?”

“In case something happens to you. We can use it for triangulation and thus track your location. When this call is over dial in *42** 783 and set the cell-phone for repeat call. This will then make it work like a transmitter. Do you follow, Mikey?”

“Yes, Bob, I mean General, Sir.” Michael deepened his voice in an attempt at a little levity.

“Michael, this is very serious man, you are in grave danger. Secure the room and wait for the teams. The first should be there in about three hours. I will – ”

“– This line is being terminated.” A metallic voice broke in and the line went dead.

Unsettled, both by the conversation and the sudden cessation of the telephone call to Arnold, Michael Mara waited for a few minutes before trying the number again only to become even more frustrated when encountering a continuously engaged signal. He kicked out at the bedside table causing the innocent alarm clock that had squatted on its surface, to bounce in the air and then tumble towards the floor where it wedged itself under the base of the bed. Retrieving it, he saw that the clock face protested the disturbance with a blurred red-flashing 10.45, which did not move on. Time was standing still, he thought. He then tried Isabella’s number, again without luck. After what Alonzo had told him about the Voices, he needed to talk to her, to have her confirm her involvement. More than that he needed to see her. Perhaps she would come to the hotel instead, he wondered. He looked at his watch and after waiting again for a few minutes, dialled her number again.

No answer.

The excitement Michael felt was a mixture of fear and desperation, an alchemical elixir that he had seldom experienced since he was a teenager. Bob Arnold’s warning was flashing into his consciousness but served only to prompt a memory of himself, as a lad of fifteen, sneaking out for love from the seaside house, a corrugated-tin-roofed shack that his mother used to rent for the summer. At that age, in his first truly physical relationship, Mary Delahunty was much older than him and also happened to be dating somebody else. He had recognized no fears save those of rejection and her boyfriend. Late night secret summer rendezvous, he remembered, and the danger added to by his stepfather’s warnings of dire consequences if he were to cause his mother any trouble in his frequent absences. Truth be told, he sometimes felt she too would have welcomed the chance to sneak out, sneak away, as well. She was less lucky in love, he thought.

Michael stared at the phone. He decided he had to go and see Isabella. If he hurried, he reckoned, he could get to her apartment and return to the hotel before Bob Arnold’s goons would arrive. He turned off the lights, firstly in the bathroom and then in the bedroom, and threw a quick glance down through the narrow opening in the bathroom window to the empty plaza below. He then crossed the carpeted floor of the suite to the balcony doors, and after opening them slowly inched forward to the alabaster-capped railing to scan the shadows of the hillside that sloped down from the hotel. Satisfied that there was no obvious danger, he returned to the room, stepped out onto the corridor and closed the bedroom door quietly behind him.

Avoiding the elevator Michael made for the hotel’s emergency stairs and nearly stumbled down the top steps as a sudden crashing noise, from a new batch of cubes being churned out by the ice-maker on the stairwell landing, caused his legs, and then his heart, to lose their rhythm. Composing himself, he took one of the ice-cubes to moisten a dry mouth and ran down the steps at speed to the basement garage level. There he pushed at the release mechanism of the fire exit door and found himself in the narrow laneway and cool night air at the back of the hotel. As the heavy metallic door closed behind him he thought he could hear the sound of voices on the stairwell. Alarmed, he ran blindly along the pitch-black laneway. The laneway passed around the side of the hotel and opened onto the steep hill that ran down towards the Campo del Principe. Stepping into the shadows when any car or taxi came from the direction of the hotel he finally flagged an empty cab about to ascend the hill. Grunting, the protesting driver executed a labour-intensive turnaround and fifteen minutes later deposited him outside the address that Isabella had given earlier. He kept a watch throughout the journey for signs of somebody following them but convinced himself there did not appear to be any evidence of danger.

The cab sped off and in the darkened doorway Michael eventually found the intercom button with the name Sanjil written above it. The identity label looked new. He pressed it and the reply was immediate.

“Hello.”

“Isabella, it’s Michael. I’m sorry I’m so late.” It was nearly 11.30pm.

“I am happy you could finally make it Michael. Come on up. Third floor.”

The buzzer went and he pushed through the unlocked door into a marble floored atrium. There was an old staircase to one side and an even older-looking grilled elevator set deep in a recess on the opposite wall. He took the stairs and soon reached the third floor landing and made for the one door he could see at the end of a short corridor. He was just about to knock when he heard the elevator mechanism engaging and quickly retreated back to the stairwell to wait in its shadow to see if the elevator stopped on the same floor. To Michael’s mounting panic, it did. After a protesting metallic opening-back of the grill doors he could hear creaking footsteps and, cautiously looking around the corner, he saw a young woman approach the door at the end of the corridor. She wore a baseball cap but, though her back was towards him, her movements seemed somewhat familiar. There was also a small defect in her left ear lobe. It was the red-headed nude hurdler, he thought with relief and coughed as he stepped out from the shadows.

The girl turned around to look back. She did not appear surprised by his sudden appearance and smiled warmly. “Ah! The man from the bathhouse. Are you breathless from the stairs?”

“Zoë, is it not? Athlete, Georgia Tech. Isabella’s cousin,” he said quickly.

“Well remembered, I’m impressed.”

She did not look like she was, he thought.

“And you are?” she asked.

“Michael Mara.” He held out his hand and she took it in a firm grip. “It is nice to meet you again,” he said.

“Are you here to see Isabella? She did not mention you were coming. I hope I don’t intrude . . .” Zoë the athlete winked as she released his hand and turned to the door. “A ‘wallflower’ or ‘gooseberry’ I think you say.”

He blushed. “No . . . of course not,” he blustered.

The apartment door opened and Isabella stood there. She kissed her cousin on both cheeks and threw Michael an apologetic glance over the girl’s shoulders. Zoë moved on in and Isabella waited for a moment before stepping forward and kiss him lightly on the lips. “I am sorry, Michael. I’m never sure when Zoë might call. You know what family are like? She will not stay long. I promise.”

“She said that you weren’t expect . . . It doesn’t matter. I’m just glad you’re here,” he mumbled. “I tried telephoning earlier with no success.”

Isabella smiled again as she took his hand and led him into the apartment. “Come in. You are most welcome. I’ve only just arrived myself. I was worried when you were late that you were not going to make it or that I had missed you.”

“Wild horses would not drag me away, I –”

“Zoë, make yourself useful!” Isabella interrupted to shout at her cousin. “There is some champagne in the fridge. Will that suit you, Michael?”

He looked around him. The living room of the apartment was long and narrow with scattered Persian carpets and silk-covered divan type couches placed against the wall. The windows were shuttered with latticed doors and what little light existed, was generated by two very tall flickering wax-candles set on ornate stands in the far corner. There was very little other decoration save a large antique smoking water pipe on a small cabinet in the corner nearest the entrance. The air was scented with jasmine and rose. It was a private room, feminine, he thought. “That would be fine. Thank you, Isabella.”

“Excuse me for a moment, Michael. I want to shower and change my clothes. As I said, I am not here that long before you.”

“Sure!”

As Isabella left the room Zoë returned with an uncorked bottle and three glasses. She smiled as she expertly poured the frothing wine. “Do not worry, Michael. When Isabella returns I will disappear into her room. I have some work to do on her computer.”

He blushed and smiled guiltily back. “When do you return to America for your studies?”

“Next week, and you Michael, when do you go home?”

“Home! Too soon unfortunately, as I will miss Granada.”

“It has that effect on some people. Once caught in its snare you never want to leave. Are you married?” she asked matter-of-factly.

“Yes.”

“Is your wife here?”

“No.”

“Has she ever been to Granada?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You should bring her next time. She should see the city that has charmed you.”

“Yes.” He gulped down the wine and accepted a refill. “Next time perhaps.” At that moment Isabella reappeared. Michael watched her intently. She was wearing a full-length cotton kaftan with silk borders and her hair, still wet, was wrapped in a turbaned towel. Around her neck was the gold chain and hanging from it . . . Nefradaleth. He couldn’t take his eyes off it.

Zoë noticed Michael's interest as she handed Isabella the bottle. She smiled back at him before winking at Isabella. “I will leave you two in peace. Michael and I were just talking about being seduced,” she said sweetly.

“What!” he protested.

“By Granada and its charms, of course.” Zoë gave another wink and after stretching out a hand to touch Isabella gently on her cheek disappeared from the room.

“She is always teasing. Do not mind her, Michael.”

He moved up on the divan as Isabella sat down beside him. He could feel her body heat and thought that the seal appeared to glow. He put out his hand to touch it. It was almost like, he thought, the strange need of people to touch the swelling abdomen of a pregnant woman; a primeval, unlearnt, instinctive reaction to something that was so basic to existence. He wanted to draw from that energy and Isabella seemed to understand and did not pull away. “She is right though about the seduction of the city,” he said quietly, earnestly, as he fondled the seal.

“Is that what you want, Michael. To be seduced,” she asked.

“I would be lying if I denied it.” Michael pulled back a fraction to watch her eyes but as he retreated she took his hand from the seal and placed it over her left breast. He could feel the nipple rise erect beneath the cloth.

Isabella then placed her hand over his and pressed it inwards gently. “Do you feel my heartbeat? Flesh and blood Michael. I am not some mystical creature. I am neither an ideal nor a phenomenon,” she said.

“I know but . . . you are different Isabella. The seal for example . . . Nefradaleth.”

At the mention of the Voice’s name she startled and jumped up from the chair to hover over him, leaving his hand grasping thin air. “You know its name! How do you know that?” she demanded.

“I know the names of all seven Voices Isabella. Alonzo told me.”

“Even I do not know that, Michael. You must be marked out in some way for Alonzo to divulge the secret of the Voices. Somebody special.”

“I do not know about that. He is a fascinating man and I have learnt so much from him, even in such a short time. We are meeting tomorrow again.” Michael heard cackle-like noises coming from the corridor and tried looking in their direction.

Isabella refilled their glasses before she retook her place beside him again. “That’s Zoë. She is on an Internet voice and visual link to her American coach. The speakers are of poor quality. What else did Alonzo say about Nefradaleth, Michael? Quietly though! I do not want Zoë to overhear.”

“He is concerned that it might fall into the wrong hands. Something about a Swiss collector,” he explained.

“This is all very unexpected,” Isabella said with a hint of annoyance as she stood up again and began to pace the room.

“What is?” he asked, concerned.

“You Michael, knowing the story of the Voices and having a conversation about them with me, as if they were a normal subject for discussion. It is very strange.”

“It was you who put me in touch with Alonzo. You must have known this might happen.”

“Believe me, Michael when I say that I did not anticipate any such development.”

“Alonzo is very worried, Isabella. I think he hopes I might help prevent the gathering of Nefradaleth and the others.”

“That will never happen Michael. I am its guardian until I die. Nefradaleth not only brings with it the responsibility of care but also great peace and fulfillment. Can you understand that?” she said. Her eyes blazed with intensity.

“I understand responsibility Isabella, but despite all my academic and commercial success I have seldom been able to contemplate, or experience, true peace and fulfillment. Until now that is. I think,” he replied with unfamiliar uncertainty.

Isabella walked to the small cabinet where the antique water pipe stood. She opened a drawer. “Forget the Voices for a moment. Will you smoke a joint with me, Michael. It is pure Afghan gold,” she enquired.

“Sure,” he said.

Isabella brought two rolled and tapered cigarettes and after lighting one off the wax candle handed it to Michael. She then lit her own and sat down cross-legged on the floor in front of him. Both of them took two large inhalations, sucking in air like a back draft to aid the rush. The sweet-smelling smoke tingled in his nostrils. “Tell me something about your responsibilities, Isabella. Alonzo mentioned an organization called the Alumbrados,” he persisted.

Isabella looked at him for a moment before she relented. “The guardianship of Nefradaleth is a sacred duty. It demands an acknowledgement, and acceptance, of the principals of light and dark. The Voice is one of the Portals of Matter through which we can experience the true essence of God. The ancients held that God and matter were of equal importance and interdependent and that the limitations of matter such as evil, both moral and physical, were a positive force rather than a defect. Matter in its purest form, man’s soul, can only contemplate God by total absorption in the essence of his beneficence.”

“But what is your role?”

“I am a ‘Perfect’ and must be ‘quiet’ by example. This allows me approach a level of gnosis of God that few are able to penetrate. I am continually in His presence and the light courses through my veins. I can deny my needs, my wants, my desires, knowing that they have already been truly fulfilled. Yet also, I may indulge those needs without staining the soul. I can accept outside authority without distortion of my inner self. I am passive to God’s will and intuitive to God’s design. Nefradaleth is the key to that intuition.” Isabella’s eyes glazed over a little as she spoke, before focusing back on him, to wait for his reaction.

“Why was Alonzo so concerned about the possibility of Nefradaleth ending up in the wrong hands?”

“Alonzo has less faith than I in the intuition of men’s souls and their relationship with God. His real responsibility is not concerned with resolving the philosophical conflicts of monism or dualism but only with his guardianship of the journey of that discovery and its universal ferryman.”

“I don’t understand,” he said. “What do you mean by the ferryman.”

“Time Michael, time! Alonzo is the Timekeeper. He is convinced that once all the Voices are gathered together then time will lose its ability to govern the journey of men’s souls. Both the attraction and separation of God and matter, light and dark, will be lost. Chaos will reign. Again!”

“Is that possible?”

“You tell me, Michael. You are an intelligent man and a rational scientist pushing at the boundaries of knowledge. Have you enough faith in your ability to fully understand all of the ramifications and responsibilities of your work? By asking the question, if what I and more importantly, what Alonzo have already told you is possible then you have already accepted that it might be so. I do not concern myself unduly about the questions but accept whatever consequences will accrue.”

“Does that not worry you, Isabella?”

“No. Why should it? I have annihilated myself to God’s will. If it is to be, it will be.”

Michael suddenly felt the combination of hashish and champagne stripping away all of his reservations. Isabella was somebody he could talk to and he knew how desperate he was to open his soul, to be free, as she was. Tears welled up in his eyes. “I would so like to have found what you have, Isabella. In fact . . . Jesus, I hope I’m making some sense here. . .” He took and squeezed her hand tightly. “I would like to with you, body and soul, lust and love, passion and peace. All of you! I too would like to be annihilated, as you put it, by what you have: by what you are.”

“I think you are drunk, Michael,” she said gaily.

“No, I’m not! Well, perhaps a little. It’s great pot,” he said as he released her hand and leant forward to touch Nefradaleth again. “All of a sudden I feel a tremendous clarity of purpose. Nothing else matters.”

“Nothing?” Isabella asked as she stood up. Unravelling the towel she let her hair fall free and then stood between his knees. She rested her hands on his shoulders and slowly leaning forward let her wet-ended hair drape over him. In one movement, she lifted Nefradaleth’s chain over her head and let it slide down her hair to place it around his neck. “The truth, Michael!”

“Nothing! I really mean it, Isabella. This is so important.”

Isabella withdrew and stood watching him as he rotated the stone that rested on his chest. “What about your wife, your work Michael?” she asked.

“I love Caroline. That is her name…Caroline. Don’t get me wrong Isabella. We . . . we’ve a good relationship. She’s very strong and the best judge of people I know. I have leant on her far more than she ever has on me.”

“And yet you are here with me. Have you told her about me?”

“No,” as he inhaled again on the reefer.

“Why not? Remember what we spoke about yesterday. Surely if this being here with me is important to you, she would understand. Nothing has happened between us.”

“I don’t agree. I feel that something great has happened between us. I had hoped you felt the same.” He had difficulty keeping the sense of hurt from his voice.

Isabella placed her finger on his lips. “As it happens I do feel the same, Michael but I also want no part of a deceit. Be true to your heart. It will cause less pain in the end.”

“I was hoping to talk to Caroline this evening, before coming here, but she is in Mexico and I’ve had difficulty contacting her.”

“Why is she in Mexico?”

“Doing some work for the American Government.”

“Secret work?”

“Yes in a way. She’s a counterfeit expert . . . Anyway I was waiting for a phone call from her but it never came. I had intended to tell her about you, Isabella and how important my feelings for you and Alonzo had become. I think, in fact I now know, that I have spent far too long compartmentalizing my responses, my emotions and have never allowed myself to be completely open about anything, particularly my needs. I always assumed it would cause conflict with Caroline so I held back. Afraid! Maybe, as you have pointed out, Caroline would understand. I don’t really know. I have never asked. I have never wanted to put our . . . my concept of love to the real test.”

“Are you prepared to lose everything for your want of this freedom, for your want of me?” Isabella asked.

“Yes . . . I think I am and it’s not a fantasy.” He answered as coherently as he could and thought of his conversation with Bob Arnold. “After talking with Alonzo and now with you, I have suddenly realized how infinitesimal my time, our time is, and that it is better to grasp the moment. It is a duty almost.”

“I am not an idealist, Michael. The concept of a rigid unity of being or purpose has no attraction to me. There is good and there is evil, there is darkness and there is light, there is wisdom and there is ignorance, there is substance and there is chaos. What we make of these forces is for God to orchestrate both within and without us. I will not judge your desire to change only support its necessity. I will not have you covet me but will open your mind to the concept of a greater belonging. A greater love.”

At that point Michael Mara felt he was floating, in love and at peace with the world and himself. Bob Arnold’s goons could run and jump for themselves, he thought. “I am ready for that,” he giggled and inhaled again.

Isabella Sanjil smiled as she stroked his cheek with the rim of her champagne glass. She laughed an easy laugh, a compassionate laugh. “You must need sex very badly to give it all away so easily.” She took the reefer from his grasp and laid it in a nearby ashtray where her own was almost untouched.

“It’s not about sex, Isabella. Honestly. If . . . if that ever happens between us it will be a bonus. I just want the freedom of knowing you, truly knowing you.” His speech slurred.

“We will see,” she said.

“What do you mean?” he asked concerned by her tone.

Isabella Sanjil stood fully erect and in one whirling movement lifted the kaftan over her head. Fully naked underneath she had a slim body, small firm breasts and sculptured hips. There was little in the way of pubic hair. “Take off your clothes, Michael and lie back,” she instructed.

“What about Zoë?” he asked as he obeyed. Isabella came forward and lifted Nefradaleth from around his neck. He watched as she tilted the champagne glass and the bubbling liquid coursed down his chest and hastily indrawn stomach to cascade over the base of his engorging penis.

“I want you to do something for me, Michael.”

“Anything, Isabella,” he groaned.

“I am going to stand here and I want you to never take your eyes off me, no matter what happens or what you feel. Do you promise?”

He nodded. At the same instant he thought he could feel a gentle breeze on his leg as if somebody was blowing on it. Isabella began to move from side to side in a gentle rocking motion. As she continued to move, her hands circled up and down her body, and lightly brushed with long fingers her nipples, and then her neck, and ears. He watched as her hair flowed and back arched. His head spun, the room spun around him. Suddenly her warm body mounted him and with a gentle rocking motion, moist and warm, moved forward and back, forward and back.

“Do not look away, Michael! Watch me?” Isabella instructed as she moved faster and faster.

Michael’s heart pounded, suffused. It could have been an age or an instant, he was not sure. He groaned. Her movements became even quicker. A telephone rang somewhere beyond them. Then his explosion and implosion. The night closed in. “Isabella, Isabellllla,” he screamed.

The dancer disappeared.

Ireland’s Financial Crisis – Blame it on the Tea!

2012-01-13T16:56:00.005Z

In recent years Ireland’s descent from being the palatine economic whizzkid of Europe to that of a junkyard bailout orphan has been precipitate and much of the blame has been attributed to lack of regulation and an over-reliance on an inflated value of property. I disagree somewhat and place much of the causation on our consumption of tea!

Let me explain this reasoning!

In the early 1900s my great-grandfather Hugh Coyle was a tea merchant in Georges Street, Limerick. His son David, my maternal grandfather established a similar operation in the 1930s at 50 Corporation Lane, Dublin and at the onset of the Second World War was Chairman of the Wholesale Tea Dealers Association of Ireland. At the outbreak of the war, Ireland had the third highest per capita consumption of tea in the world, importing about 11,000,000 kilos per year, most of it sourced at London’s tea market at Mincing (from the Anglo-Saxon for nun: minicen) Lane.

In wartime 1939 the UK Ministry of Food took control of the tea trade and appointed a Director of Tea. Rationing was introduced and the allocation of tea available for neutral Ireland dropped to about 25% of normal, or 0.5oz (0.014kg) per capita, by 1941. As a consequence a ‘Tea War’ with echoes of the ‘Tea & Taxation Wars’ that had precipitated the 1776 American War of Independence was declared by Sean Lemass, the Irish Minister for Supplies. He established a number of companies, backed by Government financial guarantees, to source and procure scarce and essential commodities. Thus Tea Importers (Eire) Ltd. came into being with my grandfather being first Chairman and one of four Directors (a fifth was added in 1947). The first shipment of tea (859 chests) to arrive under an Irish flag was on the LEDA (later renamed the Irish Elm) on the 31 August 1941 from warehouse stores in Montreal, Canada. The company was deemed to have been very successful in carrying out its wartime remit.

After the war, in 1947, Tea Importers (Eire) ltd changed their name to Tea Importers Ltd but continued to function as a non-profit tea importing monopoly. By 1958 the Government was anxious to remove itself from the guarantees it provided and it enacted the Tea (Purchase & Import) Act of 1958. This in effect allowed what now became Tea Importers (1958) Ltd to be a stand-alone commercial entity with an expanded membership open to all merchants. Not all tea merchants in Ireland however agreed to join the new company. Peter Barry of Barry’s Tea in Cork was a notable absentee, objecting to the company’s overseas agent buying in bulk, and the tea arriving in Ireland untested. He felt there was no substitute for a proper tea merchant tasting the product at source.

Tea Importers (1958) Ltd although required to buy tea in the country of origin still controlled the shipping monopoly. It also began providing credit and financing facilities for its members, as well as raising money on the London bond markets at cheaper rates than that available in Ireland. Because of this activity it established a separate finance subsidiary, Enterprise Investment Co. Ltd. in 1962. This subsidiary with the advice of the Swiss Banking Corp, applied for and were granted a Bankers Licence by the Irish Central Bank in 1963.

My grandfather David Coyle died in 1967 after an association of 26 years with the two companies.

In September 1973, because of pressure on its monopoly status being brought to bear by Ireland’s accession to the EU, the name of the company was changed by Special Resolution from Tea Importers (1958) Ltd to Irish Bank of Commerce Ltd and a subsidiary company Tea Importers Ltd was established to carry on the import and tea agency transactions. IBC’s banking licence, was renewed by the new Central Bank Act of 1971 on condition, as far as I can make out, that it was not allowed to advertise its financial services publically. It continued to serve the tea trade primarily but only had a small deposit base and when a Mr Sean FitzPatrick joined it as an accountant in 1974 it only had four employees.

In 1978 or 1979 the Irish Bank of Commerce, finally left the control of the tea merchants and became a subsidiary of the City of Dublin Bank, a small merchant bank established in 1964, and run by Gerry Murphy. IBC appears then to have been used as a vehicle to purchase another small Dublin bank Anglo Irish (or Little Anglo) Bank. Sean FitzPatrick was put in charge of Anglo Irish and a little later the joint entity formally was incorporated as Anglo Irish Banking Corporation (big Anglo) in 1986 with Gerry Murphy as Chairman, Sean FitzPatrick as CEO and another IBC employee, Tiernan O’Mahony as a senior executive.

Anglo Irish Bank Corp’s expansion proceeded from there in an exponential and fantastical fashion, completely under-resourced and overvalued, resulting eventually in the Irish Banking Crisis and the skinning of the Celtic Tiger. Most of IBC’s assets were hived off to Credit Lyonnais along the way but its goldmine of a banking licence, and the tea leaf reading hopes of the merchants of 1962, was formally transferred to Anglo Irish Bank Corp. on the 23 June 1997.

Thereafter the lack of regulatory control of the amalgamation of small Dublin merchant banks in the 70s appears to have created the permissive personal and corporate atmosphere where the acquisition of small marginal banks and financial institutions, became a game, a fairground of distorting mirrors where the entity was actually less than its component parts. As a reward to their unbridled hubris the same bankers then created yet another fairground in the property sector in which to play the game.

Anglo Irish Bank Corp ceased to exist after its amalgamation with the Irish Nationwide Building Society was renamed the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation Ltd. in June 2011. Its liabilities guaranteed by a similar government guarantee granted to the Tea Importers (Eire) Ltd of 1941 and which will remain a millstone around all our necks for generations to come. I wonder what has become of that Tea Importers (1958) Ltd./ Bank of Commerce banking license.

The Irish tea trade also changed in the same time period, and saw the amalgamation and then failure of many of the wholesale merchants. Coyle Tea established by my grandfather David merged with two others to form Allied Tea Blenders but after only a few more years trading went into liquidation. Tea Importers Ltd. was wound up on the 13 June 1986, its war finally ending in defeat.

There you go. Blame our crisis on tea. Anyone for a cuppa!

Further Reading:

Tea Importers Limited & Tea Importers (1958) Limited.

A Memoir 1941-1986 by J.W.Savage.

A Hundred Years of Ceylon Tea 1867-1967 by D.M. Forrrest

SAECULUM ( A Novel: Part 17) – INTEMPESTIUM III

2012-01-07T12:54:00.003Z

SOL OCCAXUS (Sunset) Monday, 19 September, 2011

CREPUSCULUM (Evening Twilight)

I. Friday, 23 September, 2011
II. Thursday, 29 September, 2011
III. Thursday, 29 September, 2011
IV. Sunday, 16 October, 2011

VESPER (Evening Dusk)

I. Sunday, 23 October, 2011
II. Sunday, 30 October, 2011
III. Wednesday, 9 November, 2011
IV. Monday, 14 November, 2011
V. Monday, 14 November, 2011

CONCUBIUM (First Sleep – Coitus – Rest)

INTEMPESTIUM (Midnight)

I. Sunday, 1 January 2012
II. Thursday, 5 January 2012
III. Saturday, 7 January, 2012
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.

GALLICINIUM (Cock Crow)
I.
II.
III.

MATUTINUM (Dawn Goddess)
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.

DILUCULUM (Dawn Twilight)
I.
II.
III.
IV.

SOLI ORTUS (Sunrise)

INTEMPESTIUM

MIDNIGHT

III

The afternoon shadows had lengthened. Alonzo Aldarhze was the first to break the silence. “Have you been able to follow all that I've said Michael? I have not spoken such an amount in English for a long time.”

“Yes. Your English is perfect Alonzo its just that there is a lot to take in regarding the history of the Voices,” Michael Mara assured.

“There is no need to worry about much of it, only their significance. The history of some of the Voices is only a brief overview. Their travels are not your primary responsibility, Michael. But their destination might be.”

“What do you mean, Alonzo?”

“Let me continue and you will soon understand better. Is that acceptable?”

“Sure.” Michael’s face flushed.

The older man smiled at his visitor in a fatherly fashion. “I had not completed the story of Saclaresh. After the planisphere of Roger II of Sicily disappeared the mystical Voice of the Magi somehow surfaced in Damascus. In the early 1500’s, when Isma’il I of the militant Safavid Sufi’s took power in Persia, his Pir or spiritual guide was a man called Sahkulu Baba Tekeli, nicknamed Seytankulu or ‘slave of the devil’. Under this man’s influence Shi’ia became the state religion and Sunni’s were persecuted, a situation which continues to this day. Sahkulu was thought to have cemented his position in the Safavid court by magically producing a miraculous Qur’an. It was considered particularly so as it was written in the new nasta’liq script developed by the famous Persian calligrapher, Mir ‘Imad al-Hasani. Sahkulu is said to have hidden Saclaresh within this Qur’an’s elaborate binding.”

Michael slapped away a mosquito that hovered near his neck and reached forward to retrieve another cigarette. “I’m afraid I don’t understand the significance of the script, Alonzo.”

“Let me explain it a little bit better, Michael.” Alonzo seemed in a hurry to continue. “Most copies of the Qur’an were written in one of the six accepted variants of kufic script. The Ottomans, who were traditional Sunni, favoured the nesih variant and would not use the newer nasta‘liq style of the Shi’ite Persians for copying the Qur’an because it smacked of heretical innovation and tampering with the Prophet’s words. The few Qur’ans that did exist in the nasta’liq script were probably produced by the Safavid Shahs to be presented by their ambassadors in their dealings with the Ottoman court. This was a deliberate attempt, of course, to confront the Sultan and trick him into accepting a Shiite Qur‘an, and its truth, as protocol dictated that they could not refuse a gift. To prevent such an embarrassment the Sultan would have a copy of his own Qur‘an nearby and when the gift of the Shi’ite nasta’liq version was announced he would solemnly lift up his own and kiss it, thereby affirming its sanctity.”

Michael was amused. “The pen is mightier than the sword. Eh!”

“Indeed.” Alonzo agreed. “The ‘Devil’s Qur’an’, as it was soon called after Sahkulu’s nickname Seytankulu, with Saclaresh still secreted within its binding, was in Isma’il’s possession until his death. Recovered at that point by Sahkulu’s family, it remained in their guardianship until 1638 when the Ottoman Sultan, Murad IV sacked Baghdad. From there it travelled, with its Sahkulu guardian, a famous musician, to Istanbul. In 1705 the ‘Devil’s Qur’an’ was put on the market and acquired in Istanbul by a Prince Demetrius Cantemir of Moldavia who brought it with him to Russia. In 1785 his son Antiochus, the Ambassador of Czarina Catherine to George III of England, brought the Qur’an to England. It was once again put on the market and in 1792 was acquired by a man called Sir Gilbert Elliot who was soon to become Viceroy of the very temporary Anglo-Corsican Kingdom. In the confusion of Gilbert’s departure from Corsica, in 1796, the Qur’an was somehow left behind in Ajaccio and was later given to Napoleon when he stayed there in 1799. Napoleon gave the Qur’an as a present to Gaspard Monge, his confident and after Monge’s death in 1818, the copy was sold to the Parisian branch of the Armenian Balian family.

One of the most famous members of this family was Karabet Belian who was to become the architect of the famous Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul. It was he who discovered that part of the leather binding of the Qur’an appeared to have been stiffened by an old piece of parchment with faded cuneiform writing on it. Belian was very anxious to have this translated and arranged to have the Qur’an sent to a Reverend Edward Hincks, the rector of a small parish in Ireland, and one of the most brilliant cuneiform experts of that time. It was Hincks who, when having to carefully strip the leather cover to release the parchment, found Saclaresh hidden within the damaged binding. Coincidently perhaps, it was also at this point that Hincks began to publish his own major discoveries.”

“What do you mean, Alonzo? What discoveries?” Michael had never heard of Hincks.

“The Reverend Hincks, like you Michael from what you have told me of your life, was born in Cork, in the south of Ireland. He entered Trinity College, Dublin at the age of fifteen and received his Doctorate of Divinity from there in 1829. In 1826 he was appointed by the College to the small parish of Killyleagh in County Down in Ireland where he remained until his death in 1866. By force of sheer intellect alone, as he did not travel to Egypt or Mesopotamia and was a little removed from the academic world, he was the scholar who confirmed the significance of Egyptian ‘cartouches’, who determined the Egyptian system of chronology and who applied the final polish to a full understanding of hieroglyphic grammar. If this was not enough he also, with even greater success, turned his attentions to Mesopotamia. It was Hincks who first determined the syllabic nature of Assyrian cuneiform and by 1852 had provided the basic decipherment of Akkadian. This is why the Balian family sent him the Qur‘an. Quite an extraordinary man really and almost forgotten! He should be spoken of in the same awe as Champollion!”

Michael startled at the sudden intensity of Alonzo’s impassioned words.

The older man, noticing the effect, calmed himself quickly. “I am sorry Michael to get so excited. The decipherment of ancient languages is a hobby of mine and I have always felt that Hincks did not get the recognition he deserved. After Hincks’s death in 1866 his possessions dispersed and there was no mention of the ‘Devil’s Qur‘an’ or of the seal. The book itself eventually reappeared in 1916, when it was bought at an auction at Christies in London. It is now in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin. They, of course, do not know or catalogue it by this name nor are they fully aware of its true provenance. Indeed the original binding has gone completely to be replaced by a new binding, which must have been done in London by somebody not used to dealing with Qur’ans.”

“Why?”

“The new binding, a close copy of the original perhaps, has been attached upside down in the wrong fashion. In the meantime Saclaresh had disappeared again.” Alonzo stood up and tapped out the burnt remnants from his pipe into an earthenware pot containing a small mulberry bush.

“Why so much detail about Saclaresh, Alonzo?” Michael asked.

Alonzo immediately began to fill and pack his pipe again and it was a few minutes before he seemed ready to continue. “Because its fate intimately concerns you, Michael!”

“In what way?”

“I’ll return to it but let me finish the stories of the other Voices first.”

“Sure. Sorry Alonzo.” Michael looked puzzled but the older man ignored this as he retook his seat.

“Finally there was Ayatau. After the break up of al-Edrisi’s planisphere, Ayatau went west from Sicily to Majorca in the guardianship of the Jewish Charazes family of mapmakers who had helped el-Edrisi make Roger II’s planisphere in the first place. It and its surrounding silver mounting from the map were fashioned into an hourglass about 1500 and it has remained in the care of the Timekeepers since. I am the latest in that line.”

“You mean you have one?” Michael sputtered out.

“Yes.” Alonzo was watching Michael’s face intently.

“May I see it?”

“Of course. Let us go back to the library.”

Alonzo led Michael out of the study and back along the courtyard corridor to the first room they had entered. Saying nothing the two men entered the library and Alonzo went to the reading lectern that stood in the centre of the room. Depressing, what Michael assumed was, a hidden lever the octagonal top of the lectern opened and a plinth, with an elaborately carved, silver hourglass set on it slowly rose up. Alonzo waited for the movement to stop and reaching forward lifted the hourglass off the plinth and handed it to Michael. “Look at the top.”

Michael’s grip was nervous and he was suddenly afraid that the fragile looking glass might break. Both the top and bottom had a lid of about four inches of solid silver, which were linked in delicate latticed arches to the neck of the glass. The heaviness of the hourglass surprised him and yet, he was certain he could still sense the gentle vibration of the shifting grains of sand as they moved through the narrow channel when he turned the glass in his hands. In the centre of the top lid, set almost flush with the silver surface, was an azure-blue stone with a primitive but delicate carving of a horned man holding either two snakes or two rivers. There was a pair of hieroglyphs to either side of the figure, who sat cross-legged beneath a carving of the crescent moon and oval sun. “This is fantastic. What did you say you were called Alonzo? A Timekeeper.”

“Yes. A sahib al-zaman. Look at the bottom lid Michael.”

Michael inverted the hourglass, slowly, to look at the bottom side. Set with balas rubies he recognized that it was a representation of the constellation of Orion. “Orion?” Michael thought of his father.

“Yes, or in the language of the people, Araum, the God of Time. It is appropriate, as the Voices are really the archons of time. Astronomy, language, history, science, philosophy are really tools to help us understand and define the concept of time but it is an impossible task. Saint Augustine once astutely remarked, when asked about time, that he knew ‘exactly what it was but couldn’t explain it’. Time past, time present and time future are without matter. When all else is destroyed, time will remain. It is the mastery of time that will allow us to penetrate new dimensions both within and without ourselves. The Voices are the seven gates between birth and death. Only in harnessing the power of all seven, when the Archons of Time are gathered, do our people believe that time can be controlled. The responsibility of the Timekeeper is to ensure that does not happen.”

Michael had upturned the hourglass again and, as he watched the cascading sand, was tracing the stone carvings with his finger. His brow was furrowed with deep lines of concentration. “I swear that I have seen something like this before. It was recently but I can not remember where exactly.”

Alonzo smiled. “With Isabella?”

Michael looked startled. “Yes. Of course! She was wearing something similar on a neck chain the first time we met. Does she have one of the Voices?”

“Very perceptive Michael. Isabella is the guardian of Nefradaleth, the Woman’s Voice.”

There was a long silence as Michael tried to digest everything he had been told. He began thinking out loud as he replaced the hourglass on the lectern plinth. “Why . . .”

Alonzo touched the lever and the plinth sank down again. “What is it, Michael? Ask anything you want.”

“Why have you told me all of this, Alonzo? What is my role in the story?”

“You are to be the next guardian of Saclaresh,” the older man said matter-of-factly.

“Me?" Michael exclaimed. "How? You said it had disappeared.”

“Think of it not being lost but more like waiting to be found. By the person whose fate it is to do so, of course.”

“Where do I start?”

“From my researches my best guess is that it is in Etschmiadzin.”

“Etschmiadzin? Where is that?”

“Near Yerevan in Armenia. It is the monastery complex that is the seat of the Supreme Patriarch and Katholicos of the Armenian Church. I am now fairly certain that Saclaresh was returned by Hincks to the Belian family and that they gave it into the safekeeping of the Katholicos.”

Michael had barely touched his coffee and now that he reached for it, found it to be cold. The aroma had left with its heat.

Alonzo got up. “I will get some more. Are you sure you would not like some more food Michael? Perhaps some fruit?”

“No thank you, Alonzo. Coffee is fine.” Michael watched him shuffle out and went back to look at the books in the display case once more before leaving the library and taking a seat in the outer study. He could hear the rattle of the cups and saucers as the older man returned. “Who is the Gatherer, Alonzo?”

“A man called Charles Alexander.” The older man was blunt with his answer.

“Charles Alexander! Not again! I don’t believe it.” Michael nearly knocked the tray from Alonzo’s hand as he brought his hands to his forehead in exacerbation.

“Do you know him, Michael?”

“This is the second time recently that I have had to answer that question, Alonzo. The man is beginning to irritate the hell out of me.”

“How do you know him?”

“His company has just made an offer for mine. I have never met him personally although I did hear him speak once.”

“Alexander is an extremely wealthy and powerful individual who wants to gather all the Voices.” Alonzo sighed as he put the tray down on a small side table and began pouring Michael his coffee.

“Thank you. Why?” Michael asked, more than disturbed at the coincidence of hearing Alexander’s name in connection with the Voices. Up to then it had been a story, not grounded in reality.

Alonzo stopped pouring. “Why does any powerful man seek more power than he has the ability to control? Sugar?”

“Thank you.” Michael stirred in the cubes as he watched Alonzo pour his own coffee and then sit down.

“Power is the ultimate prostitute. It is the mistress of enchantment, which fills the void or vacuum in men’s lives. In gaining it however, a price is extracted, an arrangement made, a Faustian deal with the devil accepted. Vacuums are spaces in men’s hearts devoid of everything except time. In order to be fully empowered it is also necessary to expel time from that void. He, Alexander, if he is the Gatherer; the green man, wants to control time.” The older man wearily closed his eyes and arched his head back as he finished.

Michael sensed that this weariness was almost a recognition that Alonzo’s responsibilities as the Timekeeper, had exhausted his energies. Alexander might win out. “What is Isabella’ s role in all of this, Alonzo? You said that two or three more of the seals might soon join the Voices that Alexander already has. Does that include Nefradaleth? Does she know of my possible involvement with another of the Voices?”

“Perhaps.” Alonzo spoke hesitantly. “I will talk to you about it another night. I am now quite tired. Would you mind if we stopped for this evening Michael.”

“No. Of course not.”

“Thank you Michael. Excuse me for one moment.” Alonzo went back into the library and after a few minutes returned with a package. “I want to give you something but I want you to promise me not to open it until you have left Granada.”

“Why, Alonzo?”

“I like to give my guests presents but I never want to embarrass them into returning the compliment. It is human nature to assess a present and then to judge what would be an appropriate response and the tendency is to rush out and acquire something in the city. By waiting until you leave Granada then if you wish to do so, it will be something from your heart and not expediency. That is my pleasure and my request.”

Michael took the package and placed it on his lap. “Thank you, Alonzo. I will wait.”

“Good, now let me show you to the door. We might meet for a walk tomorrow, perhaps?”

“Yes, Alonzo, I would like that. Same time?”

“Yes, Michael, same time. God willing.”

The two men walked slowly to the door. There was a light evening rain falling and Michael could feel the chill of the cold wind. One of the street lamps was flickering, struggling to fully light up. Michael turned back to say good night to Alonzo and was struck by how aged the intermittent weak orange light made the older man look. The eye sockets were deep in the shadows of his face as Alonzo looked up and down the street.

“Alonzo, what about the seventh Voice. You did not tell its story. Why?”

“The seventh Voice is called Ammonkaph, the Silent One, the last gate. Its history has always been shrouded and only revealed to its guardian. These guardians have been reputed to include Hermes Trimegistus, Pythagoras, and Plato and perhaps even Francis Bacon. I suspect, that for most of its journey it was to be found, like Nefradaleth, in Egypt, but cannot be absolutely sure.”

“That’s a pity, particularly when you know so much about the others,” Michael said sadly. He could sense Alonzo’s disappointment.

The older man nodded his head. “Ammon in Egyptian means the ‘hidden one’ and it was also the Hebrew name for Alexandria. An Arab writer suggests that the Voice was known as the Caliph’s Seal, which was supposed to have been in a secret lodge called the Abode of Learning, in Cairo about 800CE. That is the only reference I have found.”

“Perhaps it’s fated to remain hidden.”

“I’m not so sure. Ammonkaph is rooted in the matter of this world and waits just below the horizon of our lives to greet the rising and setting of the light.” Alonzo added bleakly.

The hairs on the back of Michael’s neck stiffened and he shivered as they were suddenly doused by a heavier shower funelling up the narrow street. Quickly stuffing Alonzo’s present under his jacket he took the older man’s hand and shook it warmly. “Good night, Alonzo.”

“I know it must be difficult for you Michael to be suddenly enveloped by such a metaphysical and, perhaps your intellect is screaming, seemingly fantastical sequence of events. All that I ask is that you open your heart to the gestures of our existence. All that I have told you normally takes many years and stages of full understanding, but there is not enough time for that. You do not fully realise it yet but your destiny is one of enormous responsibility and importance. Goodbye, Michael.”

“Alon–” Michael shivered again, his words cut off by the closing thump of the heavy door. He thought about ringing the bell, but stopped himself short. Thoughts of the connections to the Voices, to his company, to Isabella and to Charles Alexander swirled in his consciousness. Pulling up his collar Michael turned to face into the driving rain of an electrical storm that had descended on the city.

SAECULUM ( A Novel: Part 16) – INTEMPESTIUM II

2012-01-05T22:32:00.003Z

SOL OCCAXUS (Sunset) Monday, 19 September, 2011

CREPUSCULUM (Evening Twilight)

I. Friday, 23 September, 2011
II. Thursday, 29 September, 2011
III. Thursday, 29 September, 2011
IV. Sunday, 16 October, 2011

VESPER (Evening Dusk)

I. Sunday, 23 October, 2011
II. Sunday, 30 October, 2011
III. Wednesday, 9 November, 2011
IV. Monday, 14 November, 2011
V. Monday, 14 November, 2011

CONCUBIUM (First Sleep – Coitus – Rest)

INTEMPESTIUM (Midnight)

I. Sunday, 1 January 2012
II. Thursday, 5 January 2012
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.

GALLICINIUM (Cock Crow)
I.
II.
III.

MATUTINUM (Dawn Goddess)
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.

DILUCULUM (Dawn Twilight)
I.
II.
III.
IV.

SOLI ORTUS (Sunrise)

INTEMPESTIUM

MIDNIGHT

Clouds were forming over the distant Glarnisch as the phone call was put through and on the waters of the Zurich See, far below, the silver-haired man could see the wind whipping up the crests of small waves. The line crackled as he spoke, “Sabah el-khair, Shaikh al-Shurat.”

“Sabah en-nur… mein der Freund.” The voice switched from Arabic to lightly accented German with ease.

“You would prefer to speak in German?” the silver-haired man asked.

“Yes.”

“I was surprised at the message for me to make urgent contact with you. Are you certain this line of communication is secure.”

“Yes!”

“What is the problem?”

“I have heard some disturbing rumours and I want assurances from you.” The voice on the phone line was harsh and abrupt.

The silver-haired man swivelled in his chair to lean heavily on his desk. A concerned frown crossed his face as he answered cautiously, “Have I not always been honest with you my friend? Have not you, and the al-Qae’da always been assured of my support?”

“Your generosity is not questioned my friend, without your support it would have been difficult to continue the jihad.”

“Well then. What is the problem?”

“The rumours, I have heard suggest that you might have become involved with some of the elements of the Badhriya opposition group in Afghanistan. Is this true?”

“Ramzi –”

“No names friend!”

“You know that I believe, as you do, that the route to paradise must be littered with the bodies of the Jews and Crusaders. I fully supported the fatwa of 1998 and will continue to help you in any way I am able.”

“What is your connection with the Badhriya friend? I do not have much time. Be truthful!”

The silver-haired man's fingers gripped the receiver tightly. “I have long believed, and you know this because we have discussed it, that the control of the supply and distribution of narcotic drugs into any country is by far the most effective way to destroy its fabric. In addition, the financial benefits allow me to support those movements fighting for a new world order, such as yours. At present, the American government is putting a huge effort into eradicating the Mexican and Columbian narcotic trade into the United States and the opportunity is there to supply the market from somewhere else. It is true that I had made contact with some of those involved in the opium trade from Afghanistan but I understood they were only a marginal part of the Badhriya and the opposition to the Taliban.”

“They are vermin!”

“But useful vermin my friend. They are the carriers of the plague and may be used for our purposes. I am just walking on a different road to the same great khan as you. Trust me!”

“I trust very few people my friend. If your opium traders are in any way connected to Ahmed Shah Massoud they will very soon find that the ground beneath their feet opens up to swallow them. I would advise you to finish your business with them quickly. Give me their names so I can keep them under surveillance.”

“I will.”

“When?”

“Next week when my use for them has diminished.”

“What is happening?”

“I will soon have access to a technology that will allow me control the worlds cocaine production. That power will be mine . . . ours to dispense. After that, the opium traders in Kabul will be of negligible importance. Both our ends will then be served by me giving you the names.”

“Very well. One week!”

“I thank you, Shaikh al-Shurat.” The silver-haired man’s face jerked with anger as he spoke. He did not like being pushed into a corner.

“One more thing, my friend,” The tone of voice of the man at the far end of the line had a chilling tone.

“Yes.”

“Stay away from America next week.”

“Why? What are you planning?” he asked, as he pushed his hand back through his hair.

“Just stay away. This is my advice. The ashab al-kahf are awake. Allah ykhallik, maah es-salameh.”

The connection terminated with a loud click. The silver-haired man got up and paced around the table. Stopping, he suddenly banged his fist in fury on the surface causing the papers he had been working on to jump into the air. He leant forward and touched the console button. “Fraulein Schmitt,” he growled.

“Yes, Sir.”

“Telephone a Mr Rod Mallory, in California. I need to speak to him. Urgently!”

“Yes, Sir. Is there anything else?”

“No . . . yes! Yes there is! Cancel my travel arrangements to New York for next week and the appointments that we had made in the city. Also, I want you to ask Ziffel, my broker, to come here straight away.”

“Will I endeavour to rearrange the New York appointments?”

“No. Not for the moment. Thank you.” He slumped back into his chair, rocking back and forth in it silently, before turning again to look out at the mountains.

FLASH FICTION: BACKFILLED

2012-01-02T16:07:00.002Z

Jack moved uncomfortably in his chair. He had been in the office many times before but now its decoration irritated: Mayan glyphs, a sonogram print of whale noise, a 1693 French naval map of Galway Bay, a picture purloined from National Geographic of an ancient temple, a line drawing of an archaeological dig from Orkney; other random stuff... but not a Munch or Van Gogh in sight.

‘You seem very agitated today, Jack.’

The silence broken. He turns toward its source. ‘I’m not doing this any more,’ he said with finality.

‘Why?’

‘One... two reasons. I cannot afford it and its going nowhere.’ The walls appeared to close in on him.

‘I think that in these past few months you have made enormous progress.’ The voice was soft, neutral.

Jack resisted the desire to stand up and strip the office walls bare. Instead he concentrated on the uncluttered desk between them, and decided to say what he had planned to say. ‘That’s crap and you know it Robin. If I was making progress how come I feel so disjointed, so disturbed. I want closure with the past so that I can get on with my future.’

Another silence enveloped them. Then, ‘I don’t do closure Jack.’

It hit him like a thunderbolt. He gasped for air and stuttered, “Well what the hell am I doing here so?’ He stood up and went to the window. Tears were forming.

Again, after a little time, the neutral voice, ‘Apart from the desired outcome of these encounters, you and I have a shared interest in archaeology. Is that not right?’

‘Yes,’ Jack replied not turning back. ‘What has that got to do with it?’

‘Do you see those pictures on the wall? The picture of what is thought to be mankind’s earliest temple complex at Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, which was built at the beginning of the Neolithic about 10,000 BC. And that line drawing of the temple complex from the Ness of Brodgar in Orkney from the end of the Neolithic, about 2500 BC?’

Jack turned, looked at the wall, nodded.

‘What have they in common, apart from marking the beginning and end of Stone Age monumental dialogue with the Gods?’

Jack took down the National Geographic picture, retook his seat and stared at it. ‘Apart from our lack of true understanding, I don’t know.’

‘They were backfilled.’

‘What?’

‘Backfilled! There came a day when the temple complexes had either outlived their function or their location. Both existed for about 2000 years and then were deliberately backfilled. Their existence buried but not erased. The people that had built these monuments were moving on, either by choice or as a consequence of pressures caused by changes in environment or population migration. Who knows? But it was not a closure just a transition… a backfilling. Do you see what I am getting at?’

‘Yes! I think so,’ he replied, the tears drying up.

‘A hex on the notion of closure, I say! The consequences of existing, good or bad, are never closed, never can be, Jack. Just backfilled and then you move on.’

‘But?’

‘Time’s up for today Jack! But take that picture with you. I’ve been meaning to redecorate.’

SAECULUM ( A Novel: Part 15) – INTEMPESTIUM I

2012-01-01T13:26:00.004Z

SOL OCCAXUS (Sunset) Monday, 19 September, 2011

CREPUSCULUM (Evening Twilight)

I. Friday, 23 September, 2011
II. Thursday, 29 September, 2011
III. Thursday, 29 September, 2011
IV. Sunday, 16 October, 2011

VESPER (Evening Dusk)

I. Sunday, 23 October, 2011
II. Sunday, 30 October, 2011
III. Wednesday, 9 November, 2011
IV. Monday, 14 November, 2011
V. Monday, 14 November, 2011

CONCUBIUM (First Sleep – Coitus – Rest)

INTEMPESTIUM (Midnight)

I. Sunday, 1 January 2012
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.

GALLICINIUM (Cock Crow)
I.
II.
III.

MATUTINUM (Dawn Goddess)
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.

DILUCULUM (Dawn Twilight)
I.
II.
III.
IV.

SOLI ORTUS (Sunrise)

SAECULUM – The Story So Far:

Michael Mara is a biogenetic entrepreneur whose company Hoxygene has developed a plant virus which is able to destroy the Cocaine leaf. As a consequence the company is fighting a battle on two fronts: a hostile bid from a rival manufacturer, and an American administration, which want to sequester his patent designs for the cocaine virus. Michael senses that control of his life work and his life in general is slipping from his grasp and is feeling very vulnerable. While in Granada, Spain attending a conference he encounters the exotic Isabella Sanjil and a mysterious Alonzo Aldahrze and that vulnerability is laid bare. Aldahrze appears determined to instruct him in the knowledge of an ancient legacy and Isabella in a more immediate reality. Michael’s wife Caroline and his business partner the Australian Rod Mallory are encouraging him to sell his company and this he feels this is a major betrayal and is adding to the isolation he feels. Caroline Mara is a currency counterfeit expert who is in Mexico attending a US-Mexican multi-agency anti-drug cartel task-force meeting and irritated by Michael’s intransigence has accepted a dinner date with one of the Mexican task force officials, Diego Rios.

INTEMPESTIUM

MIDNIGHT

Michael Mara arrived at Alonzo Aldahrze’s house a little before the agreed time. An elderly housekeeper, a woman with sad eyes and a prominent moustache, opened the door and led him to the inner courtyard where orange blossom and jasmine scented the air. A small table with two chairs had been set in the shade of a small wooden pavilion, whose roof arched up to a narrow point and whose sides were a series of exquisitely, and intricately carved lattice panels that appeared to expand and contract in response to the light or shadow that fell on them. The housekeeper was pointing to a chair for Michael to sit on when Alonzo appeared. The distressed features of the previous evening were gone as he grasped Michael’s shoulders and kissed him on both cheeks. “You are most welcome my friend. Please take a seat. Would you like a glass of wine?”

“Thank you. White please,” Michael said. It was only at that moment he noticed the inner ceiling of the pavilion. It appeared to descend to meet him in a series of green-and-gold-coloured tiled stalactites like cascading verdant comets from a glittering sky. His mouth automatically opened at the wonder of its design and execution.

Alonzo stood beside him, and stretched up his hand as if to catch a star. “This is the pavilion of my pleasure, the house of my heart, the true centre of the garden of my happiness. It belonged to a Sufi mystic shayk who once lived in Cordoba. He had called it the Khalwat el-rumman. Wonderful, is it not?”

“Incredible.” Michael answered genuinely. “What does Khalwat el-rumman mean?”

“Khalwats were the spiritual retreats where Sufi’s could ‘remember’ God and el-rumman is the pomegranate fruit. In Sufi mysticism the pomegranate was the fruit of the Garden of Essence, the final stage in their journey of exploration and the symbol of the Unity of Being.” Alonzo turned away to speak to the housekeeper in Spanish. She ambled off towards what Michael supposed was the kitchen. Alonzo giggled in a child-like way as he sat down. “Señora Hernandez and I have been together for nearly twenty years. I have no idea what age she is only that she is much older than me and I am seventy-two. She is going to bring us the food and wine and then go home. Her cooking is never predictable but always substantial. I am glad there is someone else to share it with.”

“Last night. Was everything all right?” Michael asked, concerned.

“What?” Alonzo replied a little startled. “Oh I understand! The need for me to go out? Yes. Of course. There was no real urgency after all. I am sorry that it interrupted our evening.”

Señora Hernandez shuffled back with the food and wine, and flashed a big toothless grin at Michael as she placed an overflowing plate of cold meats and cheeses in front of him. She then said her good-byes and Michael could hear a nearby back door locking behind her as she left. The two men ate in relative silence until satisfied they had both done justice to her efforts.

“You were about to tell me the story of the seals, Alonzo. I would still like to hear it.”

Alonzo pulled out his pipe and making sure that it was well filled took obvious pleasure in lighting the tobacco. After a ritual series of puffing and packing manoeuvres he finally appeared satisfied and watched Michael for a while through a fog of billowing smoke. “Do you believe in fate Michael or do you still find the circumstances and discourses of our meetings a bit strange or offbeat?”

Michael Mara pondered the question for a moment before he stood up to touch the roof of the pavilion and walk the full circle of its inner perimeter. He was behind the older man when he replied. “That is a difficult question, Alonzo. I have generally determined my own destiny but I enjoy chance encounters or at least I think I do. Perhaps it is more a natural inquisitiveness but I am happy to allow the encounters follow their course. If that is fate then I welcome it. Meeting you seems right somehow, comfortable, and I have not questioned it. Should I?”

“A little perhaps but it is not important at the moment. What about the mystical aspect?” Alonzo probed.

Michael retook his seat. “Like many people I have at times come across the writings of both modern and medieval esotericists in their promotion of an ancient, and continuing, wisdom. Similarly I have read scholarly works on the concept of secret organisations and their possible impact on society, be it benign or malign. To be honest with you, I have often enjoyed and responded to their sometimes well-argued hypothesis but shied away from their strident advocacy. Nothing I have read or encountered became a revelation or offered a life-changing philosophy but . . .”

“But what Michael?”

“A number of years ago my local Freemason lodge approached me with a view to joining them. Sure I was interested in the speculative side of Freemasonry but a non-belief in a Supreme Being rather precluded my involvement.” Michael searched Alonzo’s features for a response, but the older man’s face remained impassive. “Yet when I look around your surroundings and listen to you speaking there is an inescapable and palpable sense of timelessness and of some kind of intellectual inheritance. That intrigues me but, in part answer to your original question, it was not an exploratory path I was prepared to undertake. My life and work has been . . . is dedicated to the solution of questions posed by the physical world surrounding us and not the soul.”

“You corrected yourself, Michael. Any reason?” Alonzo smiled.

Michael nodded, realising that that the answer was already obvious to the older man. He also realised that, where Alonzo was concerned, it was necessary for him to vocalize that answer and he pondered silently on his response for a few minutes, before replying. “I am often accused of being too pedantic or absolute. By my wife Caroline mainly.”

“Your wife. She is not with you.”

“No. She is in Mexico at present…working.”

“Ah. I see.” Alonzo observed with a degree of finality. “Go on Michael. You were explaining yourself.”

“I wish I could Alonzo. My inner life has become somewhat sterile, responsible yes, but devoid of real emotion. I’m selfish, self-contained, compartmentalised in my relationships and often diffident. Yet in the past few days since meeting you and …”

“Isabella?”

“Yes you and Isabella. I have had this overwhelming feeling that I want to lay myself open, to fully expose myself to the wind and rain of that experiences regardless of the consequences.” Michael paused.

“Continue Michael. Spit it out, as you Americans say.” Alonzo reached out to touch his companion's knee.

“Firstly. It scares the shit out of me because I cannot control the outcome. Secondly I wonder if this ‘desire’ is just a further indulgence because I’m in the financial and intellectual position to make that choice. Am I running away or towards something? I don’t know, Alonzo. I’m confused. Am I making any sense?”

“Yes Michael, you are. But only because I have travelled much the same road as you are now.” Alonzo paused for a few seconds. “I do not know why it was determined that my life and the legacy of the Voices should be so interlinked. I resisted the demands of such a legacy, for many years.” The older man placed his hand on Michael’s and squeezed it gently. “In pursuing the possibility you, my young friend, are opening far more doors than are being closed behind you. But are you willing to continue?”

Michael Mara felt a strange sense of euphoria. His frown disappeared to become the excited face of a nine-year-old boy again. He did not hesitate. “Yes Alonzo . . . Yes, I am!”

Alonzo settled back in his chair, flicking fallen ash from his pipe off his shirt. “Good. So be it! Would you like more wine?”

“No thanks, Alonzo. Please go on.”

Alonzo Aldahrze smiled. “All of the lazuli seal stones or voices have ancient names which are passwords to their history. The first six that I will tell you about are called Syrbeth, Abrape, Nergimmel, Ayatau, Saclaresh and Nefradaleth.”

“The names of the Voices. They are quite Hebraic. Why is that?” Michael asked.

“About 900CE the head of the Afghan gold merchants, and guardian of the first seal, Syrbeth, was a Jew called Alut Tagar Hiwi. Somehow he came to be aware of the significance of the seal and the story of the others. He decided it was necessary to be able to identify the Voices by a secret code and attached a Hebrew letter to each of their names. It has remained so to this day. Up to becoming the property of the goldsmiths Syrbeth had rarely left its original homeland in the high valleys of Nuristan, in Afghanistan. Its guardians, both good and evil, had always been the people of those mountains. Sometime after Alut Tagar Hiwi, perhaps as part of a legacy of his own, Syrbeth became an essential aspect of the traditional initiation ceremony of the leader, or Malik, of the goldsmiths of Kabul. In a final act of submission to their cause the new Malik had to kiss the seal. Few, if any of the guild leaders have known the true origin of their seal of office, yet were and are prepared to guard it with their lives. At present it is in the possession of Hasan al-Sa‘igh, the current Malik of the guild of goldsmiths in Kabul, but he plays a very dangerous game.”

“In what way?” Michael asked.

“Hasan al Sa‘igh is a friend of the al-Qae’da terrorist group who are helping the Taliban in Afghanistan, yet he is also the leader of a secret Karmatian organization, known as the Badhriya, which are loosely associated to the Northern Alliance and dedicated to the extermination of the Taliban. Al-Sa‘igh is the warlord who controls most of the output of the poppy crop of the region.”

“I don’t quite understand the connection.” Michael spoke with a puzzled frown.

“In past centuries opium was a side-line business for the goldsmiths, who always had controlled the trading contacts, but now is their main source of income. Hasan is greedy and it has brought him into open conflict with the Taliban who are determined to control the opium industry from Afghanistan as a statement of their intention to restore the rule of shair’a law in the country.”

“I read something about the tonnage they have destroyed so far.” Michael spoke quietly.

“I suspect, sometimes, that it is an empty gesture. There are too many of the old mujahadeen within the Taliban hierarchy.” Alonzo shook his head from side to side, a pained look on his face. “The danger for Syrbeth is that, in Hasan’s attempts to fund his conflict with the Taliban, outside parties have learnt of the seal and are attempting to acquire it. In addition, within Afghanistan, a carved stone like Syrbeth is seen by the Taliban as an idolatrous object to be destroyed.”

“Like the Buddhist statues of Baiman?”

Alonzo took the pipe from his mouth and accompanied by a slight nod of his head pointed it at Michael in acknowledgement. Alonzo lit his pipe again. Michael watched the smoke drift to the sky. He had not noticed it earlier but was certain that he detected the distinct smell of hashish. He decided not to mention it.

The older man continued, “The second seal, Abrape remained for most of its existence on Indian soil and did not leave that sub-continent until the late seventeenth century. The seal and its successive guardians had journeyed, with the other Voices that had left the Hindu Kush, across the mountain passes and down the Indus Valley to the sea. About 2500BCE, a thousand years after the other seals had departed, Abrape was to be found in Mohenjo-Daro but with the invasion of the Aryans it moved south-eastwards to the Banas culture at Adar. Its history after that is a little confused. Abrape made, what you might call ‘its public reappearance’ in the twelfth century of our time. It was given by one Jasodhar, a Brahmin of Pali, a town very close to the ancient Adar, as a tribute to Siha, the first of the Rathor Rajputs. Siha had it incorporated into a jewelled khilat ceremonial dagger that later was part of the dowry of Harkha, the daughter of the Rajput Bhar Mals, when she married the Mughal emperor, Akbar, in 1562. About 200 years later it was given to the Shah Shuja-ud-Daula of Oudh, for his support of the disintegrating Mughal Empire and when Warren Hastings, the Governor General of the East India Company, confiscated the treasure of the Oudh begums it was transported to England. After Hastings’s death the khilat passed through the hands of a series of private collectors and Abrape now rests in a bank vault in Switzerland. It has for company one of the other Voices and there are rumours that two or three of the others will join them soon.”

“You mean there are possibly five in the possession of one individual.” Michael asked.

Alonzo gave a grave nod of his head. “Yes. The Gatherer!”

“Who is the Gatherer?” Michael asked excitedly.

Alonzo held up his hand. “I will tell you later, but let me finish the stories of the Voices. It is important.”

Michael sat back. “Sure. Sorry.”

“The next three seals, Nergimmel, Ayatau and Saclaresh, have a similar early history. Arriving in Uruk about 3700BCE the Guardians kept our people in lower Mesopotamia until founding the Mittani homeland, centred at Washukanni about 1600BCE. If you remember the story I told you, it was predicted that the people would find their new homeland when they saw the constellation of Orion at the same latitude as the grove in the mountains.”

“Yes.” Michael nodded.

“Well, Washukanni is at that latitude and it was there that these three Voices separated for the first time. Nergimmel and Ayatau were eventually reunited by Roger II, the Norman King of Sicily in 1039CE.”

“One of my heroes!” Michael said as he took a sip of his wine and lit a cigarette.

Alonzo hesitated for a moment then shrugged slightly. “The seal called Saclaresh has had a much more mystical history. It is known also as the Voice of the Magi. It remained under the care of the Magi priests until the defeat of Darius III and sack of Persepolis in 330BCE. Alexander became its next guardian and Saclaresh remained in Babylon after Alexander’s death. In the third century of our time it became the possession of Mani and later of the Manichean Perfects, the priests of that religion. In 1038CE George Maniakes, the Byzantine General, conqueror of Syria and a Perfect, led his Varangian Norsemen and Bulgar irregulars to Sicily. Saclaresh was deposited in the church of Santa Maria di Maniace in Maletto until stumbled upon by Adelaide, the mother of Roger II, King of Sicily. She gave it to Roger at his coronation.”

Michael shifted in his seat. He was having some difficulty in following the history and was glad that Alonzo was skipping over many of the details. “So Roger II was the first great Gatherer?” he observed.

“Yes, Michael.”

“I see.” Michael felt stiff. “Alonzo, do you mind if we take a walk in the courtyard while you continue?”

“No, of course not. Let us go.”

Michael and his host stood up and linked arms as they walked the courtyard perimeter. “The other two Voices, Alonzo. What of them?” he encouraged.

“The next is Nefradaleth, sometimes called the Woman’s Voice. First surfacing in Sheba, in modern day Yemen it eventually arrives into Egypt. The Voice always stayed with a woman Pharaoh Queen such as Sobeknefru or Hatshepsut and finally was with Cleopatra VII of the Ptolemy’s in 51BCE. After the Roman occupation of Egypt, Nefradaleth became the responsibility of the chief Archon priestess, Sophia of the Gnostic settlement in Chenoboskion, on the east bank of the Nile near Qena. The rise of Islam saw it journey, first to Alexandria, then to Cyrene, and then to Tunisia from where it moved to Palermo. In 1111CE the Voice was given by Rebecca ben-Gerbi to Queen Adelaide when she moved the capital of Norman Italy to that city. Nefradaleth had been altered somewhat in its travels and in addition to the marks of our People, its total surface had also been covered in a series of hieroglyphic, Gnostic, Arabic and Hebraic symbols. Because of these strange marks, and their meaning, Adelaide directed that the Voice be deposited in the Antoine ascetic convent of Monte Vergine near Avellino in Campania. When Roger II built the church of S.Giovanni degli Eremiti in Palermo, Nefradaleth returned with the monks and nuns of Monte Vergine to administer the church. Roger II of Sicily had now control of four of the Voices.”

A breeze from the mountains was making the night air chilly and both men were happy to return to Alonzo’s study. Soon the sweet smell of hashish once again wafted through the room.

“Roger II commissioned al-Edrisi to create a map of the known world, which he did on both paper and in a silver planisphere. The four Voices that were in his possession were incorporated to represent the four cardinal winds and the huge planisphere was stored in the palace in Palermo. On 9 March 1161, however, there was a palace revolt against William I, Roger’s son and King of Sicily since 1154. In a four-hour orgy of looting, the palace treasury was ransacked and the planisphere disappeared. The strange thing was that the revolt was put down only two days later, yet there was no trace of the planisphere. It had already been broken up for its silver and the Voices were already dispersed. Nefradaleth became the responsibility of Clementina, Countess of Catanzaro and lover of Mathew Bonnellus, chief of the revolt against the King of Sicily. It was suggested that it was she who planned the coup, as she wanted to get all the Voices but had to settle for just one. William came after it to her fortress at Taverna but Nefradaleth was gone. It next surfaces within the Cathar community at Montesegur in the Languedoc. On the night of 16 March 1243, the last night before the citadel commander Mirepoix and the remaining occupants resigned themselves to their fate, a female Perfect called Esclarmonde de Foix, along with three others, secretly escaped from the fortress and recovered the Cathar treasure that had been hidden two months earlier in the cave of Sabaoth. It became the responsibility of successive female perfects of the Spanish Cathars who went into hiding, first amongst the Mara Gatos people of Astorga and then in 1259 to the newly established Kingdom of Majorca. The tradition continues to this day in the guardian-ship of the highest female initiates of the Alumbados.”

“What happened to the other three?” Michael interrupted.

“Nergimmel was quickly recovered and incorporated into a jewelled chalice that became the property of Richard the Lion Heart of England, when he was given it as a present by Tancred, King of Sicily at Catania on 3 March 1191 in exchange for the supposed Excalibur sword of King Arthur. Later the following year Richard, on his way back from Acre, was shipwrecked on the small isle of Lokrum near the city of Ragusa, or what today we call Dubrovnik. He was only able to salvage a few personal possessions, one of which was the chalice. He gave it to the priests of the new cathedral that was being built in Ragusa, in thanksgiving for his survival. Ragusa was destroyed by an earthquake in 1667 and in the widespread looting of the city that followed, Nergimmel disappeared. Much later, Napoleon was thought to have acquired it when he created his Illyrian States but it soon disappeared again, only to turn up recently in the vaults of a Swiss bank…”

Alonzo stopped speaking suddenly, stood up and walked towards the inner library door. He stopped for a moment and looked back at Michael. “I am sorry that I must give you so much information in such a short space of time. But time is of the essence. There is a necessary urgency.”

“Why?” Michael asked. But Alonzo had disappeared inside.

Unhinge Your Inner Henge in 2012

2011-12-31T18:20:00.002Z

FLASH FICTION: CONTEMPT

2011-12-21T20:51:00.002Z

CONTEMPT

The mid-afternoon air in the stuffy courtroom was stifling hot. Housed as it was on a temporary basis in the building where Delaney’s Fairy Dancers and Fiddle Players had previously practiced, it had neither air-conditioning, acoustics, nor gravitas.

A slightly angular man, in his early 40s shuffled across the battered floor to the witness box, gave his name and made a solemn affirmation. The judge mopped his forehead and looked at his watch. “I understand you are representing yourself Mr Murphy.”

“I am An Chúirt,” Alphonse replied.

“It’s ‘A Bhreithimh’ in the District Court,” the judge said wearily.

“Noted,” Alphonse said.

The judge nodded to the prosecuting barrister to begin his examination. The young lawyer busy reading his brief and without looking at the witness asked, “What age are you?” There was silence in the court. Alphonse Murphy busied himself taking a notebook and pen from his pocket. “Mr Murphy I asked you a question,” the barrister said looking at the judge.

‘I had no idea you were asking me a question… me specifically that is,” Alphonse replied.

The judge leant forward. “What are you doing Mr Murphy. You must give your attention to the court.”

“I am taking notes. Anyone, witness or spectator can take notes. Can’t they?”

“Please answer the question.”

“42. Thereabouts!”

“You are a regular patron of Mackey’s Pub Mr Murphy. Yes or No will suffice,” the barrister continued.

Alphonse wrote furiously. “Yes,” he replied.

“Thank you,” the barrister said with theatrical exasperation. “You are unemployed are you not?”

“I am a humanist,” Alphonse replied. There was laughter from the small group of spectators.

“That is not what I asked you,” the barrister spat. “Are you unemployed Yes or No.”

“I cannot answer that question,” Alphonse said defiantly.

“Judge,” the barrister pleaded.

“You will Mr Murphy,” the judge said angrily.

“It is not relevant to my case and therefore I respectfully decline to answer,” Alphonse said quietly.

“Do you not think, if you could stop bloody writing for one moment, that young Mr. Griffith here might be doing you a favour Mr. Murphy. If you are unemployed it might be a factor in modifying any punishment you receive.”

“I assume I am yet innocent A Bhreithimh. In any event I do not want pity I want a job. Unemployment has a multi-factorial aetiology, which cannot be answered truthfully with a simple yes or no answer. Like I said,” Murphy said reading from his notebook. “The question is not relevant to my case and I have a legitimate expectation of procedural fairness by your self and the court. It is my right.”

The judge stood up, shaking. “Unfortunately in here I am the sole arbiter of your rights Mr. Murphy and am holding you in contempt. You will be jailed until you purge that contempt. Take him down,” the judge barked at the court officials.

“Jasus,” a spectator said at the back of the courtroom. “What was he up for?” he asked his friend.

“After hours drinking.”

©R.Derham 2011

Happy Christmas 2011

2011-12-16T15:12:00.000Z

FLASH FICTION: WAITING FOR BRUEN

2011-12-11T11:42:00.002Z

WAITING FOR BRUEN

He turns off the ignition and waits.
Checks his watch.
Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes pass.
He checks his phone.
No signal.
He steps out.
Horizontal rain.
Cutting.
Nobody about.
Sees his reflection in the side-mirror.
He is no picture.
Dirty crumpled coat like Columbo used to wear.
And the smell and taste of cheap cigars.
Too many days like this, he thinks.
Though half-closed eyes he walks toward
a battered lock-up door stained by graffiti and urine;
half-open.
He calls out.
Silence.
He hesitates then pushes the door.
Scraping sound.
Pitch-black within and a cat-piss smell.
Steps in stagnant water, searching for a switch.
Strange crackling sound and a faint thrill in his finger.
He jumps out of the water suddenly afraid.
The light flickers:
a single bulb with a jaundiced glow.
His eyes adjust.
One wall stacked with books:
stratified.
A mausoleum, he thinks.
He touches the shroud.
A puffball cloud of dust rises leaving his handprint.
He coughs.
There is a noise in the darkness beyond.
He reaches out.
Chooses a book as a weapon.
Hardcover, sharp edges.
There is a sudden crash and a spitting sound.
He jumps again and just misses a cat; a black mangy cat with three legs moving fast past him.
He calls out again.
Silence.
He looks at the book in his hand.
Oxford University Press: Decanting Kant – The Metaphysics of Pleasure.
He leaves it down.
Edging along the wall he goes deeper.
A different smell intrudes: putrefaction.
His stomach turns and neck-hairs bristle.
He steps in another pool.
Sticky.
Lifts his shoe to see.
Dark red liquid stains the sole.
He feels the air evaporate and pants.
Pulls out a lighter.
Unsteady hands.
Follows the trail of fluid.
Overturned can of paint and a dead rat:
Eviscerated, maggot-ridden.
He calls out again.
Graveyard quiet.
He stands at the back wall, jammed.
He covers his mouth and nose with a linen handkerchief.
He pulls at the shroud.
A dust-storm envelops him;
driven inwards by the wind.
He coughs again and waits for the dust to settle.
He looks.
Racing green on blocks, pristine:
an old Morgan.
Beautiful, he thinks and the light-bulb blows.
Shit, he says.
Has to feel his way past the car and books.
He stops with a start.
In the doorway, in what light there is, a man is standing.
Thin, angular, white-haired:
haloed like an angel.
Holding the cat.
Stroking the place where the missing leg should have been.
You Bruen, he croaks.
Yeah. Are you interested?
Maybe!

Note: This piece was originally submitted by e-mail on the 27 November 2011 for the FlashFiction section for a work less than 500 words in the Irish Times newspaper. I have not heard back from them or even whether it was ever received.It is dedicated to my friend Ken Bruen, crime writer and metaphysician.

SAECULUM ( A Novel: Part 14) – CONCUBIUM VII

2011-12-11T11:34:00.004Z

SOL OCCAXUS (Sunset) Monday, 19 September, 2011

CREPUSCULUM (Evening Twilight)

I. Friday, 23 September, 2011
II. Thursday, 29 September, 2011
III. Thursday, 29 September, 2011
IV. Sunday, 16 October, 2011

VESPER (Evening Dusk)

I. Sunday, 23 October, 2011
II. Sunday, 30 October, 2011
III. Wednesday, 9 November, 2011
IV. Monday, 14 November, 2011
V. Monday, 14 November, 2011

CONCUBIUM (First Sleep – Coitus – Rest)

INTEMPESTIUM (Midnight)
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.

GALLICINIUM (Cock Crow)
I.
II.
III.

MATUTINUM (Dawn Goddess)
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
IX.
X.
XI.
XII.
XIII.
XIV.

DILUCULUM (Dawn Twilight)
I.
II.
III.
IV.

SOLI ORTUS (Sunrise)

CONCUBIUM

FIRST SLEEP – COITUS – REST

VII

Isabella opened the door of the apartment, entered and softly closed it behind her. There was the sound of running water from the far end of the corridor.

“Is that you Isabella?” a muffled and slightly distorted voice called out.

“Yes,” she answered as she entered the living room while quickly checking through the envelopes she had recovered from the lobby mailbox. “Don’t leave the bathroom in a mess. I know what you pampered elite athletes are like. Lackeys running after you.”

“Very funny.” The same voice was suddenly more distinct.

Isabella looked up to see her slim, blonde houseguest walk almost completely naked into the room, her head and face partially covered by a bath-towel as she busied herself drying off the last wetness of a recent shower. Isabella smiled as she admired the movements of the lithe and supple body and the almost innocent and carefree way the naked girl found, and perched on, the soft armrest of a chair. Isabella immediately moved closer and letting her hands linger on the moist shoulders, massaged them gently. The younger girl arched her neck back in response and purred out a pleased sound, like a stroked cat. After a few minutes, Isabella slowly lifted the towel and looked into the cool eyes before gently kissing her cousin’s lips. “I can see why our scientist friend found the sight of you so exciting Zoë. You flaunt that wonderful body of yours with total abandon.”

“Why not? They are so uptight, those Americans.”

“Irish-American, apparently.”

“Even worse! How did you get on, Isabella? Was the scientist equally enraptured by your own displayed, but withheld charms?”

“You have never complained.”

“No! You are right but then, I’m not very fussy and very horny.”

Isabella laughed and pulled at the naked girl’s ear. “As it so happens, everything is going to plan.”

“What do you mean?” Zoë stood up and began to wrap the towel around her.

As a mother would, Isabella finished the movement as she grasped the final corner and tucked it within the fold that lay across the younger woman’s chest. “As we anticipated, his attraction to me is the typical male response. It is rooted in the principals of action and not of reception. With careful handling I can ensure that the attraction will remain seated in his will and not his senses. In that way it can be easily manipulated.”

“And fully erect!” Zoë laughed.

“For as long as is necessary for our purposes.” Isabella joined in the laughter and the two women hugged, tenderly.

After a few moments Zoë withdrew. She walked across the room and pulled back the lace curtains a fraction to look down on the street below. She turned her head slightly in Isabella’s direction. “And what if it becomes more than that? Don’t forget how well I know your failings, Isabella!” she said, concerned.

“You mean the possibility of love?”

“Yes.”

“Any potential for a greater involvement, particularly in this instance, must be avoided at all costs and any inclinations towards it to be instantly undermined.” Isabella paused for a second to join the younger woman at the window. “I do find him attractive however.”

“I could sense that.” Zoë spoke sternly.

“But I also recognise my weakness for love. As an affliction it cannot be commanded or controlled but it would negate our efforts.”

“I’m glad you realise it.” Zoë pulled away as Isabella leant forward to kiss her.

“Don’t be harsh on me, Zoë. Isn’t it for that reason that I have you, my sweet shadow? If you sense me drifting, you can haul me back.”

“It’s a dangerous game, Solis … Isabella.”

“Yes, but exciting . . . and necessary for our cause.”