It was a large male lion.
Edmund had heard the stories at the start of the war; knew that in the days leading up to and immediately following the U.S.-led invasion, the sight of animals wandering the streets of Baghdad was quite common. Most had either escaped or were freed by looters from the Baghdad Zoo, which had been home to a large number of lions. Many of the big cats had been rounded up by American soldiers in armored vehicles; others were rescued from the Hussein family’s personal menageries, as well as from the appalling conditions of many private zoos.
Yet the rumors among the locals had persisted; sightings of man-eaters believed to have once belonged to Saddam Hussein’s son Uday, who was notorious for feeding his lions with the flesh of his enemies.
Rumors. Just rumors.
But here, north of Mosul, so far away—this couldn’t be happening.
The lion was closer now.
It stopped about ten feet away and looked back over its shoulder down the alleyway. Edmund registered in the back of his mind that the lion looked well fed. And at the same time he realized he was not afraid, he felt a crack inside his head—the lion, the alley shifting crooked across his eyes, along with a high ringing in his ears. He was vaguely aware of the sound of gunfire and shouting behind him, but felt himself being pulled forward, as if a hand had been placed on the barrel of his rifle, gently pushing it down. He let it fall but didn’t hear it hit the ground as the ringing in his ears grew louder.
The lion turned back, lowered its head, and stepped closer—looked meekly up at him with eyes both sad and full of greenish white fire. Edmund felt as if the air around him had turned to lime Jell-O, his movements heavy and not his own. A dream, a swirly dream of shadows, of bright green crumbling brick and a presence—no, two presences—whispering somewhere behind him.
“Be a good boy and carry that rope for me, okay?”
“C’est mieux d’oublier.”
Then Edmund saw the word G-E-N-E-R-A-L—a flash of silvery letters, stitched in cursive across a dark blue background. It was as if the word was sneaking up on him from behind; as if he was catching only a glimpse of it before it faded back into the black.
“C’est mieux d’oublier.”
Then another crack.
Now, there was only the lion again, staring up at him from the green. Edmund stroked its mane, his hand tracing slowly down to caress its face. Another flash of memory, and Edmund’s fingers were inside the lion’s mouth. He registered somewhere the feel of its teeth, but at the same time saw his fingers as his grandfather’s, the lion’s mouth his own.
The lion licked Edmund’s hand—not his hand, but his good luck charm; the ancient Babylonian seal between his thumb and forefinger.
“C’est mieux d’oublier,” Edmund whispered, and suddenly felt a hot wetness in his groin—felt it running down his legs—and realized his face was cold and moist, his breathing labored as if he was sobbing.
Sobbing?
Edmund could not remember crying since his mother died, since that TV show with the happy little boy who looked just like him got canceled.
“Be a good boy and carry that rope for me, okay?”
“It’s not my fault,” Edmund said—and all at once the alley shifted again, this time with a whoosh, and the green of his NVGs grew brighter. The lime Jell-O dissolved, the air grew thinner, and now there was only the sound of someone calling his name.
Edmund looked down at his hands. The Babylonian seal was gone, and the lion was moving away—did not look back as its heavy paws carried it quickly around the curve of the alleyway and out of sight.
“Come back,” Edmund heard himself whisper. “Come back.”
He felt someone touch his shoulder—heard his name, closer now—but the world had already begun to iris into black.
Edmund awoke in the infirmary, groggy, but clean and dry and stripped down to his underwear. The lights, the col-ors—especially the whites—seemed brighter, and Edmund could hear the tapping of fingers on a keyboard.
“He’s awake, Doctor,” said a female voice to his left.
Edmund turned toward it, but a bright light met his eyes—a man’s voice now, soothing, and a gentle hand on his eyelids propping them open. Then the light was gone, and in its place, big orange dots and lots of questions. Lots of answers, too—most of them “I don’t know” in a scratchy voice that sounded nothing like his own. Words from the doctor like dehydration, heat exhaustion, fainting, and semi-comatose—questions about what he ate, “I’m going to give you so many ccs of this and so many ccs of that,” and more words that Edmund didn’t understand.
And then he remembered—asked suddenly, “Where’s the lion?”
“The lion?”
“Yes,” said Edmund. “The lion who killed my mother.”
“You’re hallucinating, soldier,” the doctor said.
Silence. A dull prick on his forearm.
“Carry that rope for me, Doc,” Edmund whispered, fading. “It’s better to forget.”
“That’s right,” the doctor said. “It’s better to forget.”
Chapter 52
Two soldiers were killed in the ambush, two were wounded, but Edmund’s team got eight insurgents thanks in part to Edmund’s intimate knowledge of the area and his quick rerouting of his troops toward the park. And even though Edmund didn’t participate in the gun battle, even though no one ever knew what happened to him in the alleyway, his men didn’t blame him for the loss of their comrades.
But Edmund couldn’t have cared less if they had. All that, his former life, was over. All that—the Army, Iraq, war, insurgents, death—all nonsense, all meaningless to him now in comparison to his anointing.
Sergeant Edmund Lambert was given a clean bill of health but declined to speak with an Army counselor. He made two more patrols and killed one Iraqi before flying back to Fort Campbell. He never mentioned the lion or the General ever again, and never once mourned the loss of his good luck charm. The lion wanted it. The lion wanted everything. But most of all, the lion wanted him, too.
It was all so clear to him now. Indeed, the answer had been there ever since he was a child, but Edmund had simply been too stupid to see it. The General.
G-E-N-E-R-A-L
Yes, Edmund thought, if he broke apart the word General (or, wrote it on a piece of paper like his grandfather had taught him, dash-dash-dash and whatnot) and rearranged the letters, one would get Nergal with a leftover E, as in:
G-E-N-E-R-A-L = E + N-E-R-G-A-L
Or, if one preferred, on could write the equation this way:
E + N-E-R-G-A-L = G-E-N-E-R-A-L
Either way it was the same. The leftover e, of course, stood for Edmund. There could be no doubting that now. The evidence was clear, irrefutable, beyond coincidental. Edmund knew this with every fiber of his being; knew it in a way that made him feel as if he had never known anything before.
The god Nergal had visited him in his dreams all those years ago—had bestowed upon him the code, the equation, the formula—and had since waited patiently for Edmund to understand. And how many times had he heard those words from Rally and his grandfather? Equation and formula? Ner-gal had been speaking to him all that time through the old men, too!
And now, finally, Edmund understood what the god was saying: Edmund and Nergal on one side of the equal sign, the General on the other. Yes, only with Nergal could Edmund become the General.