The Paradise Prophecy

“We’ll never get a better chance.”

Callahan didn’t know how much good it would do them if they were sitting in a Turkish prison cell, but she took a seat behind the desk and tapped the keyboard, bringing the screen to life. To her relief, Ozan’s computer wasn’t password protected. No hacking necessary. She called up the file system, quickly clicked through the menus, and found Ozan’s client database.

“No time for a thorough search,” she said. “I’ll just download the whole damn thing.”

Taking a memory chip from her handbag, she stuck it into the computer, hit a key, and seconds later, the database was on disc. As she ejected the chip, she heard a shout down the hall.

They’d discovered the guard.

“You ever been to jail?” she said. “It isn’t fun. Especially here.” LaLaurie got to his feet. “We need to hide.”

“Maybe if we turn sideways, they won’t notice us.”

He gestured to a closet against the left wall. A narrow, rectangular wooden wardrobe. “In there,” he said.

“Both of us? There’s barely room enough for-”

“We don’t have a choice.” He crossed to it and threw it open. There were a couple thick coats inside, but at least it wasn’t stuffed full.

Callahan heard running footsteps in the hall, urgent voices.

She eyed LaLaurie with reluctance, then switched off the computer monitor and joined him at the closet. It took them a moment to squeeze in, chest to chest, a smashing of body parts that turned two medium frames into one large one. But they managed to make it work and get the door closed.

Then a two-way radio squawked and someone jiggled the office doorknob, barking a command in Turkish. “Open it.”

A key chain rattled, a lock was turned and the door flew open.

Callahan sucked in a deep breath as a flashlight beam swept through the office, passing the crack in the closet door like a lighthouse beacon, once again reminding her of LaLaurie’s mind meld.

A switch was flipped and the overhead light went on.

Through the crack, Callahan saw three uniforms in the doorway. One fire, two security. One of the security men stepped inside and crossed to Ozan’s desk, checking behind and under it.

With sudden horror, Callahan spotted something-

– Her purse. She’d left it next to the computer monitor.

How fucking careless could she be?

Her heart started thumping. So hard she was convinced it would burst a hole straight through LaLaurie’s chest. And just as she was sure the guard was about to find the thing-it was right there in plain view, for God’s sakes-someone in the hallway shouted, “Hakki! Come quick!”

The guard in the doorway turned. “What is it?”

“Someone’s been in the archive room where Director Ozan was found. They took away the tape.”

Hakki gestured to the other guard. “Come on.”

The guard by the desk nodded and crossed the room, then shut off the light and closed and locked the door behind him.

Callahan let out a shaky breath. “That was pleasant.”

“I thought your chest was gonna explode. Do you always get so worked up, or is it this little bear hug we’ve got going?”

“Just for the record, Professor, I know twenty different ways to kill a man with one hand. You want to try me?”

“I think I’ll pass.”

“Smart move.”

She was about to push the wardrobe open, when LaLaurie held her back. “Wait a minute.”

“Look, buster, you’ve already copped your feel, so if-”

“No,” he said, “I’m getting something in here. A feeling. We aren’t the only ones who’ve been in this wardrobe in the last few days.”

“What are the odds? It is a closet after all.”

LaLaurie threw the doors open and gestured for her to get out. Callahan didn’t hesitate. As she squeezed past him, however, he immediately turned, shoved the coats aside and began to inspect the wardrobe’s back wall, running his hand along it.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Ozan was once a smuggler, remember? And old habits die hard. What do you bet he had more than one way into the tunnels, in case he had to disappear in a hurry?”

She gestured. “And you think this is it?”

“There’s a definite energy here.” His hand stopped moving. “And it looks like Gabriela wasn’t the only one who had a thing for hidden doors.”

Callahan heard a faint snick, then LaLaurie shifted slightly and pulled, sliding the entire back panel of the wardrobe to one side, revealing another set of steps.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Callahan said.

The steps led to a part of the tunnel that had been sealed off from the rest of the archives-smaller and narrower, curving sharply to the left. After waiting for Callahan to retrieve her purse, Batty took the lead, moving along the curve until he came to an arched doorway that opened onto a brightly lit, cavelike chamber with a vaulted ceiling.

He stopped in his tracks, taken aback by what he saw. “This sure as hell isn’t Narnia.”

“Another book lover,” Callahan murmured, but her words were inadequate, giving short shrift to what lay before them.

It was a small library, with ten or more rows of bookshelves, each filled with exquisitely bound books. And if Batty was correct, not one of them was less than two hundred years old.

Ozan was not merely a book lover, but a bibliophile-in the grandest, most traditional sense of the word.

Batty stepped forward cautiously, as if his mere presence here might do damage to these treasures. The sight of this room electrified him, and he was suddenly alive, the most alive he’d felt since he’d lost Rebecca. More alive than that night with the mysterious redhead.

And that was saying something.

Crossing to the nearest shelf, he moved down the first row of books, gently running his fingers along the spines, feeling their age, their gravity. He began removing and examining them, one after another.

Demonomanie des Sorciers by Jean Bodin. A Compleat History of Magick, Sorcery and Witchcraft by Richard Boulton. Basilica Chymica by Oswald Croll. Disquisitionum magicarum by Martino Del Rio. Manuale Exorcismorum by Maximiliani ab Eynatten.

First editions all. Each one pristine. Priceless.

And this was only a small sampling of Ozan’s collection. Batty had never seen so many volumes on the paranormal and the occult gathered in one place.

“Check this out,” Callahan said.

He turned and found her standing next to a cluttered worktable at the center of the room. On one corner of the table sat a small stone figurine of a winged Saint Michael, his sword held high.

“I’m sensing a shared obsession,” she said, then gestured to the mess on the table. “Looks like he was trying to decipher code. Just like Gabriela.”

Batty joined her there and she pointed to a spiral notebook with several lines of verse written on it in English, some of the words and letters crossed out, others circled-

– all of them from the eleventh chapter of Paradise Lost.

Sitting open next to the notebook was another pristine first edition, nearly five centuries old.

Batty picked it up. “Steganographia,” he said, carefully leafing through it. Its pages held lists of spirit names, tables full of numbers, zodiac signs, planetary symbols. “He must have been using this as