Angelopolis (17 page)

Sveti smiled, as if pleased to have found a fellow Azov admirer. “I don’t have to tell you, then, that Azov is doing something that no one in the history of our field has done before. This center was founded so that we could conduct on-site exploration of artifacts pertaining to Noah and the Flood.”

Vera looked past Sveti to the island. She could make out the details of the lighthouse, its smooth stone spiraling around and around until it reached a series of windows at the top. Looking back toward the shore, she saw the village rising in the distance, as if emerging from the sea.

“So this is where the Nephilim got their second start,” Vera said.

“Over the years there have been many conjectures about what might lie underneath our waters—the lost civilization of Atlantis being one of them—but the most interesting theory, popular since the fourth century, is that Noah’s Ark landed on Mount Ararat, on what used to be the coast of Turkey.”

“But that’s a thousand miles away from here,” Vera said.

“True,” Sveti said. “And it’s no longer even close to the edge of the Black Sea. Scholars have always believed the actual recovery of objects from the ark to be impossible for this reason. A little over a decade ago, however, academics at Columbia University, William Ryan and Walter Pitman, published a book that changed the nature of investigations about the Flood. They believed that the myth of the Flood—which can be found in nearly every major mythological system, from the Greek to the Irish—had originated from a cataclysmic event that occurred roughly seventy-six hundred years ago. They posited that, as glaciers melted, water from the Mediterranean breached the sill of the Bosporus, and a deluge of water gushed over the land, wiping out ancient civilizations and creating what is now the Black Sea.”

Vera remembered when the book was published. Azov had mailed her articles about the controversy. “Serious scholars of the region agreed that the Bosporus had been breached, but they thought the scale that Ryan and Pitman proposed was completely off the mark. If I recall correctly,” she added, “their theories were attacked as unsubstantiated.”

“They were at the time. But then Robert Ballard, the American oceanographer and nautical explorer who’d made his name by discovering the
Titanic
, began to explore the Black Sea with submarines and advanced equipment. Even skeptics had to wonder if they weren’t onto something. What the world at large did not know was that Ballard was actually working under the advisement of Dr. Azov. And, as it turns out,” Sveti said, handing Vera a finely wrought topographical map, “there is something much, much better than the ark below the Black Sea.”

“So the Ryan-Pitman theory of the Flood is correct,” Vera said. “The land under the Black Sea was once inhabited.”

“Exactly,” Sveti replied. “Only, after years of research, we now believe that the Flood did not occur in one grand cataclysmic deluge, as the mythology from the Bible to Gilgamesh describe. Rather the water rose in small increments over a vast span of time. The Bosporus broke bit by bit and the waters flowed into the basin over a period of decades, subsuming the villages as it rose.”

“Forty days and forty nights were more like forty years,” Vera said.

“Or even longer,” Sveti said. “In our explorations we’ve discovered that the first wave of flooding caused a massive migration from here to here.” Sveti moved her finger along the map in Vera’s hand. “You can see the present-day shoreline of the Black Sea drawn in a solid red line. The dotted line you see about two inches inside—and then the next dotted line you see two inches from that, and the third three inches from that—these are ancient shorelines.” Sveti pointed to the innermost dotted line, then the middle one. “The second wave of the Flood caused another migration—and the construction of new villages—and so the pattern continued over the course of many decades. Many of the oldest villages on the Black Sea coast, such as Sozopol and Nessebar to the north, were built generations after the settlement of the present shoreline. The villages under the sea are, obviously, ancient. Thousands of years older than anything we can find above water.”

“I see the scholarly significance of this discovery,” Vera said. “But what does it have to do with Noah and his sons?”

Sveti smiled, as if she had been waiting for that precise question. “It has everything to do with them.” She took the map from Vera and folded it. “As you will soon see.”

•   •   •

As the boat veered toward land, Vera climbed to the prow, feeling the wind rushing against her body as she tried to get a better view. The island was covered in long wild grasses that shivered in the breeze. Seagulls swooped and circled, as if scouring the scrub for mice. From such a close proximity, the lighthouse seemed to tilt away from the land, a trick of perspective that allowed her to see a man standing at a small red door, gazing out at the boat as it approached. The driver cut the engine, and the boat slowed and slid alongside a long wooden dock.

She climbed out of the boat and followed Sveti over the dock and up the uneven terrain. The lighthouse loomed ahead, its stone surface ragged with age, rubbed and eaten through by saltwater and wind. A great iron casement sat at the top of the tower, protecting the enormous spotlight from the seagulls. A helicopter was perched on a paved circle, its bulbous plastic windshield awash in sunlight. The man Vera had noticed earlier was gone, but the red door had been left ajar.

“Come,” Sveti said. “Follow me. Azov will be waiting inside.” She turned and led her up the winding, rough-hewn steps of the lighthouse, following the spiral to the very top.

Vera could hear voices behind a door. Sveti pushed the door open, the bottom scraping against the stone floor, and they walked into a bright, circular observation room, which had windows that gave a panorama of sea. The afternoon sunlight was brilliant and warm, glinting off the emerald water. A scattering of fishing vessels floated in the distance. The lighthouse was removed from the real world, peaceful, and she tried to imagine what it would be like to wake up every morning in that room, to rise and look over the sea as the sun rose.

Azov sat at the head of a table piled high with mollusk shells, slabs of wood, and a glass jar filled with odd-shaped beads. He was in his midfifties, with gray-flecked black hair and a matching beard. He watched Vera with affection as she stepped into the room. Standing, he switched off a radio, and gestured for Vera to sit.

“I have to admit,” Azov said, smiling at Vera, “that I was surprised to get the call that you were coming on official business. We’ve been all but ignored by your colleagues. The society in Berlin has extended some support, but other than that, nothing.”

“Scholars in Russia are always interested in making progress against the Nephilim,” Vera said, struggling between the loyalty she felt toward her employers at the Hermitage and the deep respect she had for her mentor. “We are working toward the same end.”

“A prudent answer, my dear,” Azov said, clearly proud of Vera’s diplomacy. “Come, give me a kiss. I’m thrilled that you have finally come to visit me here, where I am most in my element.”

Vera stood and went to Azov. As she kissed his cheek she felt anxious to seem every bit the accomplished angelologist she had become. She turned to the artifacts piled on the table. “These must be your finds from the bottom of the Black Sea.”

“Correct,” Azov said, picking up a piece of pounded copper. “These objects are from a settlement that was begun within the first four hundred years of the postdiluvian period, during Noah’s lifetime.”

“That seems like quite a few lifetimes,” Vera said.

“Noah lived to be nine hundred and fifty years old,” Sveti said. “By the end of this period, he would have been middle-aged.”

“We located the village a little over twenty years ago,” Azov continued, “and have been doing underwater excavation since then. It hasn’t been easy, as we don’t typically have the kind of equipment and resources that high-profile exploratory divers have, but we’ve managed to pull up a number of intriguing objects to support our most recent hypothesis.”

“Which is?” Vera asked.

“That Noah was not only charged with protecting the various species of animals, as is believed in biblical lore, but that he was protecting the plant life of the planet as well. His collection of seeds was extensive. When the rain stopped, he cultivated and preserved these plants for future generations, making certain that the precious cellular energy of ancient times was carried forward,” Azov said.

Vera toyed with the latch on her satchel, wondering if she should wait to give Azov Rasputin’s album. She was keenly aware that the plants pressed inside represented a similar kind of energy, and that Azov would find them fascinating.

Sveti stood, went to a cabinet, unlocked it, and removed a fat spiral notebook, the pages wrinkled, as if they’d been drenched in water and dried in the sun. “There are multiple tales of what happened to Noah after the water levels descended,” she said. “By some accounts he planted grapes and produced wine. By other accounts he became the most significant farmer in history, planting all the seeds himself. Others believe he distributed the seeds to his sons, and that they took them to different continents, where they planted and cared for them.”

“The regeneration of the world’s flora and fauna would have taken thousands of years,” Vera said. “I thought it was just a myth that he did it alone.”

“Of course,” Azov said. “But within myth there is often a seed of reality.”

Azov stood and, taking Vera’s hand, led her to a giant glass case against the wall. The case was empty save for pieces of driftwood of various sizes resting upon the shelves.

Azov pointed to the pieces of wood. “These are tablets that we believe belonged to Noah. They were discovered by Ballard’s team on an underwater ridge off the coast of the Black Sea, on what was once the shoreline of an ancient freshwater lake that existed before the Bosporus broke. The settlement there was later subsumed by a second level of flooding, perhaps as large as the first flood, and was destroyed. We posit that Noah left the settlement too quickly to take the tablets. He may have lost them during the second flood, or he may have left them on purpose; there is no way to be certain. He traveled to the border of what is now Turkey and Bulgaria, and here he planted the seeds and raised the animals that he had carried in the ark. It was here, on our coastline, that the new world began.”

“Or was dispersed,” Vera added.

“Exactly,” Azov said. “Noah’s sons—Shem, Japheth, and Ham—migrated to different regions of the world, founding the tribes of Asia, Europe, and Africa, as we all know from our beginning tutorials in angelology. We also know that Japheth was killed by the Nephilim, and his place on the boat was taken by one of their own, thus ensuring that the creatures continued to exist after the Flood.”

“What was not known,” Sveti cut in, “is that Noah kept records of everything—the Deluge, his journey on the ark, records of his sons’ wives and children, even records of the propagation of the animals he herded. He had seen one world pass away and another begin. He had been chosen by God to live while the rest of the world perished. It only makes sense that he would write about what he had experienced.” She opened the notebook she’d pulled from the cabinet. “My work before I began this project was in ancient languages, and so it has fallen to me to assist Azov in his attempt to understand the contents of Noah’s tablets. This page,” she said, indicating a script that Vera found inexplicably familiar, “is a copy of the words found on that tablet there.” She pointed to a fragment of wood lying in the case. “It is a record of the seeds Noah carried onto the ark.”

“These are Noah’s memoirs?” Vera asked.

Azov slipped on a pair of plastic gloves before reaching into the case and removing the tablet. “This piece of wood,” he said, “is one of over five hundred tablets we recovered from a village submerged 350 meters below the surface of the Black Sea. They were bundled together and stored in a casket. Carbon dating shows that it is nearly five thousand years old.”

“I’m sorry, but it is really difficult to believe,” Vera said, slipping on the pair of gloves Sveti offered before taking the wood from Azov. “Any organic material would disintegrate rapidly under water.”

“On the contrary,” Azov said. “The composition of the Black Sea created ideal conditions for preservation. It is essentially a dead sea. Although it was once a freshwater lake, saltwater from the Mediterranean spilled into it, creating an anoxic climate. The organisms that might eat wood or other degradable materials are absent. Artifacts that would have disappeared within a millennium are still intact, as if frozen in time. It is an archaeologist’s dream.”

Vera ran her gloved fingertips over the crevices. The tablet was light, made of a hard durable wood, with strange symbols stamped into it. Glancing at Sveti’s notebook, she realized that the symbols had an uncanny resemblance to the scribbling in Rasputin’s album. It took all of her restraint to refrain from confirming the match immediately. “So you are saying that you believe these tablets are not simply from that period of Noah’s life, but that they were written by Noah himself?” Vera asked.

Azov said, “These tablets were discovered among the items in the settlement, and we’re certain that the settlement was Noah’s home after the Flood.”

“What is your proof?” Vera asked.

“Carbon dating, the location of the settlement, identifiable personal belongings. And, most important, the tablets themselves.”

Vera turned the slab of wood over. It looked like something out of an Egyptian tomb. “If this is as old as you claim, it is simply incredible that it exists at all,” she said. Carved into the grain were more symbols, many of them partially washed away. “What is this alphabet?” she asked, trying to mask the growing excitement in her voice.

“It is a language called Enochian,” Sveti said. “It was given to Enoch by God, and Enoch used it to write the original story of the Watchers and the Nephilim. It is a common belief that a pre-Deluge lexicon—a universal language that contained the original power of Creation—existed. Some believe it was the language God used to create the universe, and that it was the language used by angels and Adam and Eve. If Noah was the last human being to carry antediluvian traditions to the new world, it makes perfect sense that he would have been versed in the language of Enoch.”