The Angel of Eden (32 page)

“Mr. Madison,” Yersan said. “I have a great debt to repay to my poor friends outside.”

He trained the pistol on Nick. “Make any further attempt and your friend will die.” Alaz shoved Bennet toward me. Yersan motioned for us to stand facing the wall.

Alaz groped in my pockets and confiscated the other guns. “Take off that jacket. You even steal my clothes?” He pushed my face against the wall, bound my hands, and tied Bennet's again. Yersan hauled Nick to his feet and sliced the cord at his ankles. He, too, was ordered to face the wall. We were lined up execution style. Bennet began to sob.

I heard a scraping sound, something being lifted and dragged aside, something being cranked up. It reminded me of the heavy metal grates being opened on sidewalks in front of New York shops. “You first, Madison,” Yersan said. “The woman last.”

I turned and saw that the carpet had been pulled away to reveal an open hatch in the floor. A flight of stone steps led into a black hole. I descended in almost pitch dark, the steps slippery with mold. Nick and Bennet followed, Yersan and Alaz behind them. At the bottom I could hear one of them fumbling for something and then a snap, as if he'd locked the trapdoor shut again. A dim light came on behind us, illuminating the shadowy outline of a long hallway. I stumbled forward over the uneven floor.

We seemed to walk forever until we reached a dead end. Bennet and Nick were told to lie on their sides facing the wall on their right. Alaz moved ahead. I heard a click and then the sound of stone
grating on stone. Light suddenly flooded into the corridor, so bright I had to shut my eyes. Yersan ordered me forward. I didn't want to be separated from Bennet and Nick again but had no choice. I pushed myself away from the wall and blinked in the blinding light. At first, all I could make out were two towering flames, taller than me, that seemed to burst from the ground. I took a couple of steps closer, then lurched back from the wave of heat.

“Turn to your right, Madison,” Yersan ordered. A third man ducked around the corner from the source of light. The stone slid back into place, locking him in with Bennet and Nick on the other side.

Yersan kept his gun on me, Alaz not far behind. “Your friends are our insurance for your good behavior. Move.”

When my eyes adjusted to the light, I gasped at what I saw before me.

Forty-Seven

Sahand Protected Area, Iran

W
e stood in a canyon so long I couldn't see its end. On either side gleaming red rock cliffs stretched to the sky. The canyon floor was hundreds of feet wide. I saw now that the flames weren't shooting out from the earth but rather from holes in a square of perfectly fitted stone bricks. They must have been natural gas wells, just like the fire altar we'd seen near Kandovan.

Eternal flames.

A square pool lay at the foot of these natural torches, its clear water reflecting the flames without a ripple. Electric-blue stones encircled the pool, its far side emptying into a brook that flowed on into the canyon. The surroundings were lush with plants and trees of all kinds, greener than anything I'd seen since entering Iran. Some early spring plants had even flowered, pink petals unfurled to reveal bright yellow stamens heavy with pollen. The temperature here was warmer by at least twenty degrees. A unique ecosystem,
hidden from the outside world. My senses took it all in but my brain was numb. “Magnificent,” I finally murmured.

“You were determined to see it,” Yersan said. “You are a foolish man, but I'm happy to oblige you.”

“This is what Helmstetter was searching for?” Alaz caught my eye and nodded. “How did you find this place?”

Yersan answered for him. “We are its caretakers. A tradition of service handed down by our ancestors for thousands of years. Both Alaz and I were called to serve when we were young men. It is a privilege. A sacred trust.”

He motioned toward the brook. “You may explore if you wish.” Like two baleful nursemaids, they trundled behind me as I walked upon a carpet of deep, rich green moss. I made my way over to the west canyon wall. The cliff face seemed to shine and I wondered why.

Alaz sensed my unspoken question. “The canyon is oriented so that it has the benefit of the sun all day long,” he said. “Otherwise, this lush plant life wouldn't exist.”

The rock was red quartz—vast sheets of carnelian. I'd never before seen such an expanse of precious stone, and it had neither pockmarks nor the rough, unfinished surface you'd find in natural material. Although it was awkward with my hands tied, I touched the surface. It had been polished, sanded somehow, by hand. Tens of thousands of square feet. The entire surface shimmered like a rosy mirror in the waning rays of the sun. It seemed to produce a magnifying effect, intensifying the light. I cocked my head a bit, my ears picking up a faint hum, almost as if the light were singing.

It occurred to me that the rock's satiny surface served another purpose: security. The cliff was as smooth as glass, making it virtually impossible to scale unless you had climbing equipment.

At intervals along its face, life-sized winged figures—the Apkallu of Mesopotamian art—had been carved into the rock.
“Our angels,” Yersan said when he saw me admiring them. A noise startled me and I turned to see a gigantic bird take off from the crown of a small tree with a flap of its expansive wings.

Yersan raised his hand as if to trace its trajectory. “A vulture. Our ancestors believed them to be godly because they touch heaven. They fly higher than any other bird, sometimes as much as thirty thousand feet, and seem to disappear into the sky. These are the birds the ancient ones immortalized as angels.”

I could hear the pride in his voice. But it cracked with sadness when he spoke again. “The man you shot in the back is dead. We will take him away to a
dakhma
to be consumed by the vultures. After three days he will enter paradise. That is our way.” The image of the man writhing on the ground came back to me, yet I felt no remorse.

Yersan instructed me to head down the shiny brick pathway that followed the stream for what he said was a mile or more. I'd taken the bricks as red quartz until I saw that, through some primitive type of metallurgy, they'd been fashioned from a rudimentary pink gold.

Surely we had little time left to live—Eden's guardians wouldn't let interlopers escape with the secret to paradise—and yet I felt content to meander along the path, listening to the tinkle of brook water and wrapped in a deep, encompassing sense of peace.

The canyon walls narrowed, refracting the rosy light and creating a strange, pervasive glow that seemed to hang in the air as if it were a living presence. I had to shield my eyes against it. The hum grew louder.

We turned a bend. The light faded and I could look up again.

Ahead, the canyon ended in a low wall and a small plaza fashioned from the same bricks as those forming the path. Abutting the plaza was another building hewn into the rock of the cliff, this one boasting two huge double doors made of cedar. The stream diverged outside the wall so as to form a T-shaped moat.

Alaz undid my bonds and I flexed my hands and wrists.

“Before you enter the temple, take off your shoes and socks, Madison,” Yersan ordered.

Yersan and Alaz removed their own footwear and bowed toward the strange temple. Then Alaz waded across the moat and mounted the stone wall. I followed suit and Yersan came last.

A fat vine grew around the cedar door frame, its stem as thick as a young tree, its creeping tendrils and swelling green buds spreading upward to cover a good part of the temple's lower facade. To the left of the door was a primitive stone carving of a snake, to the right a vulture. Another stone carving, this one a winged figure, was set above the lintel.

The Sacred Tree

Yersan touched the vine. “This is the tree of knowledge. It is not particularly rare. It grows in many countries, even your own. Are you surprised that it is a vine and not a tree? The art of our ancestors has always shown the truth.”

Forgetting myself and the holiness of this place, I scoffed, “The tree of knowledge is only a metaphor.”

“Is it not interesting that literalists take every word in Genesis as fact, except for one sentence?
‘Of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.'
This is interpreted to be allegorical, that Eve was given the direst warning against temptation lest she usher sin into the world. But what if it was meant to be taken literally? What if you
could
die from ingesting the fruit of the tree? What if God, who cared deeply for his newly formed creatures, wanted to protect them like a loving parent? Warned them the same way Enki warned Adapa about eating the bread and water offered by the snake god?”

“You're saying it's poisonous?”

“This vine contains a most potent hallucinogen. Even in the hands of experts it can be deadly.”

Yersan paused. “The legend of the serpent stealing the plant of immortality, first recorded in the Epic of Gilgamesh, emerged, thousands of years later, as the serpent winding around the tree of knowledge in Eden. The snake was transformed by early Christian theologians into the devil.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

Yersan smiled. “Are you not the one who wishes to taste the forbidden fruit and learn about the man who came here to seek immortality?”

Forty-Eight

W
ithout another word, he handed his gun to Alaz and approached the cedar doors. They were so heavy it seemed to require all his strength to brace them open. Each man bowed toward the dim interior before entering. I followed them in. Despite my skepticism, I felt I'd stepped into a sacred place.

A wide stone basin sat in the center of the room. Like the Zoroaster shrine in Yersan's New York shop, it was filled with a fragrant oil. Delicate, flickering flames rippled across the oil's surface, producing a rainbow of color. I couldn't place the scent—a little like incense but not as cloying or spicy. Some kind of flower tone. Augmented by the heat, it penetrated the room. It made you want to take deep breaths as though it was a drug you craved.

Polished carnelian blocks formed the walls and floor, reflecting the light thrown by the flames. A simple room, but somehow it felt more elegant than a king's salon. I caught my breath and stopped
in my tracks when the two men stepped aside to let me see what lay beyond the fire basin.

A figure was seated on a throne-like chair of wood inlaid with gold and lapis lazuli. A vulture's-head mask of hand-beaten gold, primitive but somehow all the more regal for it, covered most of the skull. That didn't disguise the skull's elongated shape, just like the statue I'd found in the salt cave and the one Strauss first showed me. The figure's white hair and beard were tightly braided, wigs perhaps, added after vultures had picked the bones clean. It wore a sleeveless wool jerkin that might once have been red but was now badly deteriorated. Gold bands embossed with rosettes circled each wrist and ankle.