She regarded him dubiously, unsure where the sudden divergence of topic was heading. ‘I’ll… take your word for it.’
‘So when I got back from Iraq and started researching — really researching — the Book of Revelation,’ he went on, ‘I realised that John’s visions were very much like my experiences under drugs. The intensity, the reality of what you’re seeing, the way your perception of time skips backwards and forwards, how all your senses are engaged — it made me think that John underwent a similar experience.’
‘Wait, wait a second,’ said Nina. ‘One minute you’re telling me you believe the Book of Revelation is true, that you take it literally — and the next you say that nope, the guy who wrote it was tripping?’
‘I never said I took Revelation literally. I said I believe it’s true — that it contains the truth.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she was forced to admit.
He clasped his hands together as if about to deliver a sermon. ‘I quit the CIA and went on a pilgrimage — to Patmos. There’s a monastery there, the Monastery of St John, marking where John wrote the Book of Revelation.’
‘The Cave of the Apocalypse.’
‘You know it?’
‘I know of it. John supposedly lived in the cave during his exile, and that’s where he wrote Revelation. I’ve never been there, though.’
‘You should.’
‘Let me go, and maybe I will.’
That prompted a mocking snort from Simeon. Cross gave him a stern look, making him lower his head in penance, then continued: ‘I visited the cave, and saw the crack in the ceiling through which John heard the voice of God telling him to write down his visions. I also saw that water comes down through it from above. Now, the land around the monastery is private, but that never stopped me before. And you know what I found growing in the woods? Psilocybin mushrooms. Hallucinogens. It looked like the monks had tried to clear them, but there were still patches hiding away. And if they’re growing naturally there now, there’s no reason to think they wouldn’t have been there two thousand years ago.’
‘So… you really do think that John was tripping when he wrote Revelation?’
Cross nodded. ‘The water might have been contaminated. Or he could even have eaten the mushrooms, not knowing what they were. But yes, I believe that his visions were psychoactive hallucinations.’ His gaze intensified. ‘So I had to find out where they came from.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I told you — you can’t hallucinate something you haven’t experienced. Yet John described mountains falling from the sky, the sea turning to blood, cities being destroyed — and he also described the twenty-four Elders, and the angels bound at the Euphrates.’ He returned to the laptop and pointed at the statue in the centre of the image. ‘He described this!’
She frowned. ‘But he couldn’t possibly have seen it.’
‘No. But someone could have described all those things to him. Or, more likely, he read about them, and all the other things that came from his subconscious when he had his vision. They were described so vividly, with such detail, that his mind was able to visualise them perfectly.’
‘So where did he read about them?’
‘The answer’s in Revelation. Chapters two and three are the letters that the Lord told John to send to the seven churches: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea.’
‘All in modern-day Turkey,’ said Nina.
‘And all places that John must have visited to know so much about them. The Ephesians hated the Nicolaitans, the Smyrnans were rich, the Thyatirans tolerated the presence of the false prophet Jezebel — and he also knew that Antipas the bishop, his friend, was martyred in Pergamum.’ He watched Nina expectantly, as if waiting for her to make a connection.
One came almost immediately. ‘Pergamum is another name for Pergamon,’ she said. ‘And Pergamon had one of the largest libraries of the ancient world.’ His expression confirmed that she had guessed correctly. ‘Is that what you’re saying? You think John read something there that formed his visions in Patmos?’
‘That’s exactly what I think, Dr Wilde,’ Cross replied. ‘The library contained the ancient texts of the Elders — a record of the meteorite strike and the binding of the four angels at the Euphrates.’
‘Well, I can tell you a big problem with your theory right away,’ she said. ‘Mark Antony took everything from the Library of Pergamon to give to Cleopatra as a gift. He cleared the place out, every last scroll. There’s no exact date for that, but he died in 30 BC — long before Jesus was born, never mind John. And Antipas died in AD 92, so Revelation couldn’t have been written until after then.’
‘The Library of Pergamon still existed for centuries after John wrote Revelation,’ Cross told her dismissively. ‘Either Mark Antony didn’t really take its entire contents, or some were hidden from him. John was still able to visit and read what he found there.’
‘That’s just supposition, though,’ she objected. ‘You’re making things up and presenting them as facts to fit your theory.’
‘It’s not a theory!’ he barked, making her flinch. ‘It’s the truth! I know it’s the truth, because God led me to it!’ Another stab of his forefinger at the image of the angel on the laptop. ‘I found the angel! I witnessed its power with my own eyes!’
Nina tried to control her returning fear. Cross was revealing himself as a zealot, and she knew from experience that such people were most dangerous when their beliefs were directly challenged. ‘What power?’ she asked, hoping to calm him by bringing him back to his pet subject.
He ignored her. ‘I found the truth on Patmos. I know what caused John to write the Book of Revelation — and I know it holds something real. I came here and established the Mission away from the corruption and sin of the world, and it gave me clarity. I’ve seen the truth. I believe it, my followers believe it, and you’ll believe it too. You won’t be able to deny it when I find the other angels!’
‘That’s what this is about?’ she said. ‘Finding the rest of the angels from Revelation?’
Cross nodded. ‘The Elders kept one of them at the temple in Iraq, but hid the other three for safety. I believe they wrote down where they hid them, and that this text ended up in the Library of Pergamon, where John read it.’ He stared at the remains of the statue once more. ‘He might not have realised its significance, at least consciously, but when he had his visions in the Cave of the Apocalypse, his mind, guided by God, brought it all back to him. He wrote down everything he saw during the vision. It was all mixed up, scrambled, surrounded by other hallucinations, but it was still based on what he’d read about the Elders and the angels.’
He whirled back to face Nina, white robes swirling. ‘That’s what I believe the Book of Revelation is, Dr Wilde. It’s a code. And I’ve spent twelve years reading it, uncovering its secrets — cracking that code. The texts I found in the temple gave me the clues I needed to decipher it.’
‘This?’ Nina protested, waving at the laptop’s screen. ‘This is gibberish!’
‘You don’t need to read every word in a book to understand the story. It told me enough. I know where to find the angels — at least, I know which parts of Revelation contain the clues leading to them. What I don’t know yet is where these locations are in the real world.’