Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [67]
Very Irish and hence very Catholic, he spun to face West—who just nodded silently, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
‘Come on,’ Big Ears said. ‘I read The Da Vinci Code, too. It was a fun book and it had a great conspiracy theory, but this is something else.’
Wizard shrugged. ‘Although its everyday followers don’t know it, the Catholic Church is indeed a thinly veiled reincarnation of a very ancient Sun-cult.’
Wizard counted the points off his fingers:
‘The virgin birth of the Christ character is a direct retelling of the Egyptian legend of Horus—only the names have been changed. Look at the vestments Catholic priests wear: emblazoned with the Coptic Cross. But 2,000 years before that symbol was the Coptic Cross, it was the Egyptian symbol, ankh, meaning life. Look at the Eucharistic chamber on any altar: it is in the shape of a dazzling golden Sun. And what is a halo? A Sun-disc.
‘Go to Rome and look around. Look at all the obelisks—the ultimate symbols of Sun worship, pointing up at their deity. They are all genuine Egyptian obelisks, transported from Egypt to Rome by Pope Sixtus V and erected in front of every major church in the city, including St Peter’s Basilica. There are more obelisks in Rome than any other city in the world, including any Egyptian city! Why, Liam, you tell me, what word do you say at the end of every single Catholic prayer you utter?’
‘Amen,’ Big Ears said.
‘The Ancient Egyptians had no vowels in their writing. Amen is simply another way of spelling Amun. Every time you pray, Liam, you intone the most powerful god of ancient Egypt: Amun.’
Big Ears’s eyes went wide. ‘No way. . . ’
Zoe brought the conversation back to the point: ‘But the Artemis verse says that its Piece is worshipped every day in the Cult of Amun-Ra’s highest temple. If what you say is true, then the highest temple of the Roman Catholic Church would be St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican in Rome.’
‘That is my conclusion too,’ Wizard said.
‘Welcome to Problem No. 1,’ West said. ‘If the Artemis Piece is in St Peter’s Basilica, it could be anywhere in there. The cathedral itself is a behemoth, the size of about seven football fields, and beneath it is a labyrinth of tombs, crypts, chambers and tunnels. For all we know, it could be on display in a crypt, worshipped every day by only the most senior cardinals, or it could be embedded in the floor of the main cathedral, twenty feet underground. Searching for a golden trapezoid in there would be like searching for a needle in a mountain of haystacks. It could take years, and we don’t have years.’
‘And Problem No. 2?’ Zoe asked.
Wizard said, ‘The Zeus piece. As you said before, this verse gives us absolutely nothing. Beyond the usual legends we have no way of knowing where it is.’
A silence fell on the room. This situation had not been anticipated. The Callimachus Text had served them so well so far, none of them had thought that it would completely fail them on the later Pieces.
‘So what do we do?’ Zoe asked.
‘There is one option,’ West said solemnly. ‘But it’s not one that I’d take lightly.’
‘And that is . . . ?’
‘We get outside help,’ West said. ‘Help from an expert on the Capstone, perhaps the greatest living expert on it. A man who has devoted his life to pursuing it. A man who knows more about the Seven Ancient Wonders than anyone else alive.’
‘Sounds like a guy we should have consulted 10 years ago,’ Fuzzy said.
‘We would have if we could have,’ Wizard said, ‘but this man is . . . elusive. He is also psychotic, clinically insane, in fact.’
‘Who is he?’ Sky Monster asked.
‘His name is Mullah Mustapha Zaeed. . . ’ West said.
‘Oh no, this is outrageous—’ Stretch sat upright.
‘The Black Priest of Kabul—’ Pooh Bear breathed.
West explained for the others.
‘Zaeed is Saudi by birth, but he’s been linked to dozens of Islamic fundamentalist terrorist groups as far afield as Pakistan, Sudan, and Afghanistan, where he was sheltered by the Taliban until September