“Why would you care?” Bashir asked. “It’s ancient.”
“It exposes the lie,” Cruor said.
“What lie?”
“The lie of God,” Cruor said.
Bashir looked confused.
“For one small act of disobedience, God cast humanity from paradise. For one mistake He confined us to a harsh life and to certain death. Some go to heaven and some to hell, or so we are told. But if a man can live forever, he has no need for heaven or hell or the claims of a false god.”
Bashir struggled to respond, but he looked as if he did not know what to say.
“It is the first lie!” Cruor shouted. “All the other lies have come from it. Go to any corner of the world. There you will find men begging a god they cannot see for forgiveness, for life. We will not beg for what we can take … and give if we choose.”
Bashir backed away. Cruor grabbed him.
“Look at it,” he said.
“You’re insane,” Bashir said, panicking. “All of you, more insane than those who kill for greed or lust.”
“The truth is written there!” Cruor shouted. “You said it yourself.”
“No,” Bashir said. “I will not show you.”
Cruor shoved Bashir’s head toward the scroll, slamming his face into it. “You will show us the way.”
“Go to hell,” Bashir managed.
Cruor pulled him back and struck him across the face, sending him flying into the wall.
Remaining on the floor, Bashir cowered as far from the Man of Blood as he could get.
Cruor motioned to another member of the brotherhood, who grabbed Bashir and dragged him forward. With a knife, Cruor cut Bashir’s hands free. Then, one by one, he chained them to the rails where Scindo’s hands had been cuffed days before.
“Scindo!” Cruor shouted, pointing to Bashir’s feet.
Scindo dropped to the ground and shackled Bashir’s feet. Despite the man’s struggles, he quickly pulled the straps tight so Bashir could no longer move.
“What are you doing?” Bashir shouted.
No answers.
Cruor moved toward a door. The other member of the brotherhood removed an acetylene torch from a rack and turned the handle for the gas.
With a spark, the flame lit. A jet of white and blue.
“I’ll read it,” Bashir said. “I’ll tell you what it says.”
Scindo knew it had to be done, but he felt sick inside. He looked to Cruor, who paused in the doorway as the man with the blowtorch moved up beside Bashir.
“Wait,” Cruor said.
Scindo’s heart pounded in his chest; a sense of relief swept over him. The Persian had come to his senses. Perhaps Cruor would spare him.
Cruor smiled at the man with the torch.
“Have Scindo do it,” he said with finality. “He must earn his stripes.” And then he stepped out and slammed the metal door shut.
CHAPTER 31
Hawker stared dumbfounded at Sonia. He remembered the branding on her father’s chest, the verse from Genesis. He knew that Ranga had been interested in ancient artifacts, and that Bashir had been a noted seller of such things — that’s why Danielle had gone to Beirut — but what Sonia had just told him sounded patently absurd.
“The Tree of Life?” he said. “As in Adam and Eve, don’t eat from this tree or you’ll die, Tree of Life?”
“Actually,” she said, “Adam and Eve were allowed to eat from the Tree of Life. And in doing so they remained young and healthy and immortal. It was the Tree of Knowledge that they were warned against eating from.”
“Right,” Hawker said, trying to remember his Sunday school teaching from so long ago. “And your father thought this was real?”
A question came from Savi. “Don’t you believe in the Garden of Eden, Mr. Hawker?”
“On a physical level?” he said. “No.”
“Interesting,” she said. “So the Fall of Man, the doctrine of Original Sin, God’s punishment for us: Are these not things you accept?”
The last thing Hawker had expected this evening was a discussion of religious doctrine. Still, he felt the need to answer, as if Savi was testing him somehow.
“The fall of man — I see it every day,” he said. “But we’re capable of great good and righteous sacrifice ourselves.” This was something he’d almost lost belief in until recently. “As far as Original Sin goes, I have enough of my own to worry about.”
“And God’s punishment?” she repeated.
There was definitely a test in her words somewhere. As if she was probing for an answer.
In truth, much of what religious groups called God’s punishment made little sense to Hawker. The soldier guarding the Ark of the Covenant getting hit by lightning for touching it as he tried to stop it from falling to the ground. Moses doing everything God asked but being forced to wander the desert for forty years and then barred from entering the Promised Land because he had one moment of arrogance. It all sounded a little harsh to him. A little too human, like the men who wanted to instill a doctrine of absolute obedience regardless of right and wrong. Something he had always railed against.
“I’ve done plenty of things God would be right to punish me for,” he said. “But Adam and Eve? They took the apple — or whatever it was — after being tricked by the serpent. If I remember rightly, the Bible even mentions that the serpent was filled with guile the likes of which Adam and Eve had never seen.”
“The serpent was the devil,” Savi noted.
“I know that,” Hawker said. “But my point is this: If God is all-knowing, then He had to know what would happen when the devil found Adam and Eve in the Garden. And if He’s all-powerful, then He could have stopped the serpent from getting in there in the first place by snapping His fingers. So Adam and Eve made a bad choice. But to some extent — if you believe it all really happened that way — then somehow God was partially responsible. And punishing humanity for that makes no sense to me. Would you punish your child for being tricked by a predator that you allowed into their world in the first place?”
Savi smiled. “You seem very intense on this point.”
“Men twist God’s words,” he said. “And it’s usually those who claim divine authority.”
“But you believe?”
“In God, yes. In man’s descriptions of Him, some of them very much. Others don’t seem like they’re talking about the same guy.”
Savi looked at Sonia and then back at Hawker. “So you are a man of faith, but you reject some teachings and accept others,” she said suspiciously.
“To accept everything you’re told or to reject everything you hear are the two signs of fanaticism,” he said. “And I reject that above all else.”
She nodded. “I see. And so if God didn’t know what would happen in the Garden, then He’s fallible. And if He did know, then He’s culpable. Is that what you’re saying?”
Hawker was done playing games. “I’m saying the least He could have done was hire a gardener to kill the snake.”
Sonia laughed and Savi’s smile continued. “And if He didn’t?” Savi pressed.
Hawker wondered what she was getting at. “Then it’s because the whole thing is a metaphor. We’re all innocent till we fall. We all make our own choices. You, me, everyone. We’re all Adam, we’re all Eve.”
Sonia looked over to Savi, who suddenly seemed less excited. Perhaps it wasn’t the answer she was looking for.
“He sounds like Father,” Sonia said.
With that, it came to Hawker that he’d had a similar conversation with Ranga a decade earlier. Right before Ranga had left Africa. Had he already been thinking along such lines back then?
“Yes he does,” Savi agreed, the slightly sour look remaining on her face. “He also sounds like Pelagius, who suggested a similar thought in the fourth century.”