Stick to what you know, said the voice in his head. You’ve got your hands full as it is, Sammy boy.
This was true. Schaap had already come back with a working list of military units and ranked them according to their assignments in Iraq, as well as by their associated in-signias and mascots. There were plenty of lions, of course, but a bunch of hybrid animals, too: the winged soaring black panther of the 82nd Airborne’s 3rd Combat Brigade out of Fort Bragg, the fishtailed lion of the 8th Marines Regiment out of Camp Lejeune, the Screaming Eagle of Fort Campbell’s 101st Airborne. So many that Markham had never heard of; so many that his head felt as if it was spinning when he left the Resident Agency.
The flight attendant motioned for him to turn off his BlackBerry. He did and closed his eyes. Perhaps it was good that he was getting away. There was nothing he could do now but wait. No one else for him to question until all the data came back and he could get some boots on the ground. Besides, he needed to sleep; needed to clear his mind and come back fresh with a new perspective.
Yes, said the voice in his head. A nice little vacation to see your wife’s killer get pumped full of chemicals. Now that’s what I call fun in the sun!
The plane stopped again and Markham opened his eyes, slipped his hand under the seat in front of him and removed some papers from his briefcase. He read them.
An examination of how the god Nergal transitioned over the centuries from a solar deity to the lord of the Underworld (as well as his association with the planet Mars) cannot be explained without an examination of his relationship to Ereshkigal, the Babylonian goddess of the Underworld.
The love story of Nergal and Ereshkigal is unique in that it takes place in Irkalla, the Mesopotamian Land of the Dead. Two different versions of the myth exist—the first discovered in Tel El-Amarna, Egypt, dates from around the fifteenth century BCE and contains roughly 90 lines of text; the second, much longer version (approx. 750 lines) dates from seventh century BCE and was found on the site of the ancient Assyrian city of Sultantepe.
In the first version, Nergal descends to the Underworld with an army of demons, rapes Ereshkigal and seizes her throne, then remains there to rule as king. In the later tradition, Nergal seems to make two trips to the Underworld, and instead of an army of demons, he takes down a special throne that will protect him from being seized by ghosts. Ereshkigal then seduces Ner-gal by showing him a glimpse of her body while taking a bath, and the two then fall into a passionate love affair. Otherwise, the basic story lines are the same.
In both versions, the celestial gods hold a banquet, and since Ereshkigal is the queen of the Underworld, cosmic law dictates that she cannot journey to the heavens to join them. She sends an envoy to fetch her portion, and Nergal, god of war and pestilence, is rude to him. The other gods deem that Nergal must be punished by Ereshkigal for the insult. Nergal descends to the Underworld, overpowers Ereshkigal, and the two fall in love. Thus, the chief difference between the two versions is that in the first, Nergal comes to the throne by violence. In the second, the conflict leads to a love affair.
A significant portion of the Nergal and Ereshkigal myth is missing from both the Tel El-Amarna and the Sultantepe versions. However, as mentioned earlier, not only do we have what appears to be the mythological record of how the god Nergal went from becoming a solar deity to the lord of the Underworld, we also have a cultural record that expresses views about human sexuality, as well as Neo-Babylonian and Late Assyrian relationships between men and women.
Let’s examine the …
The plane started down the runway; and by the time it lifted off, Markham’s eyelids had grown heavy—the urge to sleep overpowering him as the plane climbed higher and higher.
The thoughts, the images that flickered before his eyes were of the lion-headed god Nergal—but the lion god is also Elmer Stokes, complete with a buzz cut and a dirty white T-shirt as he chases Michelle through the parking lot of the Mystic Aquarium.
Markham runs after them in the darkness, around a maze of corners and through pools of light cast down from street-lamps. Then the flash of a giant bathtub, up ahead in the distance, and the lion god and Michelle disappear.
There is only the parking lot now and the silhouettes of thousands of impaled bodies stretching out toward a fiery horizon. He can hear Michelle speaking somewhere behind him—“Would you like something to drink, ma’am?”—but he tells her to go on without him.
He does not wish to leave—not today, not when he is so close—and lets the images and the low humming of the plane’s engines, the Babylonian spirits, carry him forward to the temple at Kutha. He can see it in the distance, no, behind him—where is it?
He sits down on the asphalt, his back against something hard—Michelle’s car? He turns around to look and discovers that he is alone on an obsidian ocean—in a rowboat be- neath a stormy sky. He searches for the shore but cannot find it.
No, now there is only the Impaler—up ahead in the distance, seated Indian style on the water and moving away quickly, silently, leaving no trace of wake behind him.
He feels himself sinking, but doesn’t resist. The sky and the ocean are one now, heavy and sinking with him as the curtain of sleep descends—as the Impaler’s wings unfold from his back and lift him high into the air … higher and higher, smaller and smaller until the both of them disappear like smoke into the seamless black.
PART III
INTERSECTING
Chapter 42
Annie Lambert loved her son Edmund more than anything in the world, but sometimes even she couldn’t help pinching his nipple and twisting it until he screamed—when he was a poop head, sure, but especially when he called himself “Eddie.”
His grandfather had been behind that; even went so far as to teach the boy to write E-D-D-I-E in capital letters, hyphens and all, in the dirt when the boy was five years old. Her son’s name was Edmund—Edmund, Edmund, Edmund!
And besides, Edmund knew better, too. He’d been writing his name the right way since he was three years old, and Annie vowed that she would twist little Edmund’s nipple until the boy learned to obey her and only her.
True, Annie Lambert had given her son the name Edmund primarily as a dig at the old man. A private joke with herself, really, and she never thought in a million years that her father would find out Edmund was a character in Shakespeare—let alone a bastard one at that. But Claude Lambert did find out. How? Well, Annie never worked up the courage to ask him.
As with everything else, however, Claude Lambert didn’t get mad or act any different toward his daughter than he had all her life. Quiet, cold, uninterested. No, the old man only got even. As he always did. Through other people.
Yes, teaching her son to write his name E-D-D-I-E was par for the course for old Claude Lambert. Just like the cookie crumbs on the settee in the parlor, the spilled bottle of her mother’s perfume, the blueberry stains on her pillowcase from a stolen pie on Thanksgiving.