The Lovecraft Code Read online

  GREGORY ANGELL is a disillusioned professor of religion and ancient languages who has seen first-hand the violence of religious fanaticism in war-torn Mosul, in Iraq. He now sleeps with a gun under his pillow in his Brooklyn apartment and waits for the conflagration to come.

  So he's just the man for the job.

  A mysterious unit of America's clandestine security apparatus has discovered evidence that a new brand of terror is on the rise: a cult that worships an alien god and seeks to resurrect a religion that was old when the world was young. Angel is recruited to find the cult, trace its movements, and seize the Book that is at the heart of the frenzy that has united elements of the world's major religions in a desperate search for the ultimate weapon of mass destruction.

  At the same time, cells of the cult have surfaced in New Orleans, Iraq, Afghanistan and deep beneath the mountains of Nepal. Somehow, this all has something to do with Angell's ancestor, an archaeologist and scholar of Oriental languages at Brown University in the first decades of the twentieth century.

  And with a Nazi spy in Florida who believed he had discovered the key to the re-animation of dead matter.

  And with the Yezidis, a sect on the verge of annihilation by the Islamic State.

  And ultimately with the father of Gothic horror, H.P. Lovecraft, and the mystery of what was stolen from his apartment in 1925.

  What Angell unknowingly seeks is the dark secret at the heart of what it means to be human, and what it says about the divine. It's the source of genuine terror, and it's not anything that Angell could have imagined.

  Published in 2016 by Ibis Press

  A division of Nicolas-Hays, Inc.

  P. O. Box 540206

  Lake Worth, FL 33454-0206

  www.ibispress.net

  Distributed to the trade by

  Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

  65 Parker St. • Ste. 7

  Newburyport, MA 01950

  www.redwheelweiser.com

  Copyright © 2016 by Peter Levenda

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Nicolas-Hays, Inc. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

  ISBN: 978-0-89254-217-8

  Ebook: 978-0-89254-633-6

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Available upon request

  Book design and production by Studio 31

  www.studio31.com

  [BP]

  Printed in the United States of America

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  DEDICATION

  to

  Donald and Yvonne Weiser

  From BBC News April 12, 2003:

  Looters Ransack Baghdad Museum

  Thousands of valuable historical items from Baghdad's main museum have been taken or destroyed by looters. Nabhal Amin, deputy director at the Iraqi National Museum, blamed the destruction on the United States for not taking control of the situation on the streets. On Saturday, Unesco—the UN's cultural agency—has urged the US and Britain to deploy troops at Iraq's key archaeological sites and museums to stop widespread looting and destruction. ... The museum's deputy director said looters had taken or destroyed 170,000 items of antiquity dating back thousands of years.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Book One: Chatter

  Chapter One: Remote Viewing

  Chapter Two: Chatter

  Chapter Three: Mother Night

  Chapter Four: The Anatomy of Melancholy

  Chapter Five: Wings

  Chapter Six: A Rich Uncle

  Chapter Seven: The Libel

  Chapter Eight: The Codex

  Chapter Nine: The Horror in Clay

  Book Two: Tentacles

  Chapter Ten: Submission

  Chapter Eleven: The Codex II

  Chapter Twelve: Ahl al-Kitab

  Chapter Thirteen: The Horror at Red Hook

  Chapter Fourteen: The Gate to the Underworld

  Chapter Fifteen: The Towers of Satan

  Chapter Sixteen: The Towers of Silence

  Chapter Seventeen: The Codex—III

  Chapter Eighteen: The Eidolon

  Chapter Nineteen: Kafiristan

  Chapter Twenty: The Big Uneasy

  Chapter Twenty-One: The RV

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Codex IV

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Black Book, Black Sites

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Codex V

  Chapter Twenty-Five: The Lurker at the Threshold

  Chapter Twenty-Six: When the Stars are Right

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Beyul

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Tulku

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Codex VI

  Book Three: The Black Book

  Chapter Thirty: The Terton

  Chapter Thirty-One: Extraordinary Rendition

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Death and Resurrection

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Walpurgisnacht

  Chapter Thirty-Four: The Beast in the Cave

  Chapter Thirty-Five: The Babylonian Protocol

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Losing My Religion

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: “Is R'lyeh Burning?”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: The Pandora Effect

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: Climate Change

  Chapter Forty: Raptor/Rapture

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Prologue

  ... those who are without are my adversaries, hence they oppose me. Nor do they know that such a course is against their own interests, for might, wealth, and riches are in my hand, and I bestow them upon every worthy descendant of Adam. Thus the government of the worlds, the transition of generations, and the changes of their directors are determined by me from the beginning.

  —Kitab al-Jilwa, the Yezidi Book of Revelation

  ... the deathless Chinamen said that there were double meanings in the Necronomicon ...

  —“The Call of Cthulhu,” H. P. Lovecraft

  Mosul, Northern Iraq

  April 15, 2003

  Operation Iraqi Freedom

  Faruq, the plainclothes security officer of the Mukhabarat—the Iraqi Intelligence Service—bent over the victim. The skinny old man was tied to a pipe that ran the length of the basement room where he was being held. He had not eaten in days. He had not bathed in weeks, not since the water had been shut off during the bombing, and he smelled like a corpse. His clothes consisted of a tattered pair of shorts, which was all that was left after the guards ripped off his clothes as they laughed. The security officer had insisted that his groin be covered so he would not have to look at the gaping wound. He had nothing but contempt for the man, who was not even an Iraqi but a Yezidi.

  “We should have wiped out all of you when we had the chance. We did our best, anyway. Chemicals, biologicals, bombs. Whatever came out of Saddam's box of tricks. But it still wasn't enough.” Faruq spat in the face of the man, who had long since ceased to react to anything but the worst pain. To men like Saddam, the Yezidis—like the Kurds—were not Muslim. They were not even Arab. He didn't know what they were, and he didn't care. All he knew was that they threatened his hegemony over Iraq and for that reason had to be destroyed.

  “I will ask you again, kafir. Where is the book?”

  The victim was long past whimpering. He knew that another punch, another kick was inevitable. More electricity, probable. Another dunking of his head in the overflowing toilet, extremely likely. He had surrendered what it was to be human. What it was to be a human being. His soul was now hovering over his body,
straining at the golden cord that connected them together.

  The victim had once been a man. But that was before the attack on Baghdad with its feeble excuse of weapons of mass destruction. That was before the events of September 11, 2001 ruined everything for everyone. He had been a man. Before the Mukhabarat found him cowering in a neighbor's house and dragged him out and onto the back of a flatbed truck. He had been a man before they kicked him so hard and so often in his genitals that it no longer mattered what gender he had once been. Whatever it was, he was no longer.

  He had been an employee in the Baghdad Museum. He had been one of the last to leave when the Americans came earlier that month. They had tried—all of them, all of the museum staff—to save what they could before the barbarians and the bombs destroyed Iraq's ancient inheritance: the artifacts from Babylon, Akkad ... Sumer. He had done his share, grabbed what he could, and made for the north. For Mosul, near the ancient city of Nineveh. Mosul was at the edges of Kurdish territory, and he had friends and family there who would hide him and his treasure.

  Some cylinder seals. A vase from the time of Nebuchadnezzar. Some steles. And a book.

  The book had been wrapped carefully and placed in a waterproof box. He had not dared open it, but one night before the Guard came to arrest him his neighbor's daughter had been too curious. Only eleven years old, she had pried open the box when he was asleep. She could not read the ancient lettering, the handwritten manuscript that covered hundreds of brittle pages. But when he woke up—the victim who had once been a man—he saw what she had done and before he could scold her he recognized the title of the book.

  It was not a title page the way modern books are printed. It was only mentioned in the opening paragraph. Kitab al-Azif. It is a strange name in Arabic. Azif refers to the sounds made by insects. “Buzzing,” perhaps. Or “whining,” as in the sound made by a mosquito. Or the strange choral chanting of the cicadas. He did not know the English word, but he knew the reputation of the book.

  It was not as old as the other antiquities in the Baghdad Museum. By comparison, it was almost modern. Ninth century, perhaps. Under normal circumstances it should never have been in the museum at all, but the fame and notoriety of the Kitab al-Azif made it an invaluable part of the museum's collection. Like many of his people, he knew its history and the purpose to which the book had been put, centuries ago.

  And he knew the only ones who could be entrusted with it now.

  His arrangements had been made only a day before Mukhabarat Division 5—Counterintelligence—found him. The lackeys of the great Saddam did not care about the steles or the cylinder seals, and the vase merited only a passing glance. They only wanted the book.

  And the book was the very last thing he would give them. He would give his life first.

  There was a rumbling beneath the ground that traveled up the feet and along the spines and shook the very skulls of the guards. Tanks. Armored vehicles of all types. The dreaded helicopters. “Boots on the ground.” The Americans were in Mosul. Time was running out.

  The security officer was in better shape than his victim, but not by much. He had only eaten some dry bread in the past twelve hours, washed down with weak tea. This operation was off the books as far as Iraqi intelligence was concerned. They could have cared less at this point about the Kitab al-Azif. Everyone was scrambling to save themselves and whatever money or valuables they could find before scurrying across the border west into Syria or north into Turkey, their uniforms left behind so as not to identify them. Some, the Shiites, were getting a warmer welcome in Iran but to get there they would have to go through Kurdish territory.

  Kurdish territory was a dangerous place to be for a member of the Iraqi security services. The Kurds had a long list of grievances against Iraq and especially against the brutal, murderous regime of Saddam Hussein. He and most of his colleagues were caught in a trap between the Coalition forces to the south, and Kurdish territory to the north and east. He would have to go across into Syria from Mosul, if he could avoid Kurdish and Coalition patrols along the way. No matter; his job before the American invasion had been to infiltrate the Syrian intelligence networks that were constantly sending spies across the border into Iraq. He knew who they were and how they operated, and how to cross over into Syria undetected.

  But Faruq was no ordinary policeman. He was a member of a sect that made even the hated Crusaders look like orthodox Muslims. And this was their last chance to get their hands on the one document that would give them the power to unite the secret tribes across all of the Middle East and Central Asia into one victorious army that would take back what had been stolen from them during the time of the Prophet. His brothers were scattered from Kailash to Kashmir, descendants of races that had been converted to Islam with fire and sword but who worshipped the Old Ones in secret, in clandestine shrines deep within the mountains and valleys of an ancient empire that had stretched from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean.

  And all that was standing between them and the ultimate revenge was a skinny academic with a broken body and a soul that was struggling to leave it.

  An explosion rocked the street above. Mud and plaster rained down on them from the ceiling. The victim did not seem to notice, but his captor was intensely aware that time was running out. He had to make this fool talk, and his options were limited. They all talked eventually, but he did not have the luxury of time. Baghdad had fallen a week ago. Mosul was already in Crusader hands. If he was going to escape Iraq he had to do it now, today. Yet he did not understand why this man was so resistant. Prisoners usually started babbling as soon as they saw the chains, the electrodes, the filthy toilet. This man—he glanced again at the museum identification card in his hand—this Fahim Abd Al-Latif was an archivist, no more than that. They had located his family, but most of them had already fled, including his wife and two sons. The only leverage he had was the neighbor and the neighbor's young daughter.

  It was from the girl that they got the confirmation that the book existed, and they did not have to torture her to get it. She seemed eager to please. Her father, on the other hand, proved more recalcitrant. They could hear his screams from the cell next door. Pointless to torture him now, but the guards were angry at the fall of the regime and were taking it out on the fat man who had fathered such a beautiful girl.

  The security officer went to the door and called for the girl to be brought in.

  Fahim did not look up, nor did he give any indication that he knew what was going on. It might already be too late, thought the officer.

  The girl was brought in.

  She was young and wore no veil, and was dressed simply. Her eyes were an amazing blue in a dirty but otherwise very pale complexion. She was Yezidi, there was no doubt about that. Even her hair was light in color, what might have been a honey brown hue if it had been washed and combed properly.

  The officer took the girl by the hand and stood her in front of Fahim, who still had not looked up from the floor. He felt the front of her dress, rummaging across her chest, and understood that she was already on the verge of womanhood.

  She whimpered.

  He lifted up her coarse cotton gown and felt along her thighs and buttocks while she squirmed against him. In another year or so she would be ripe, probably sold in an arranged marriage to a wealthy sheepherder or carpenter. Ordinarily, Faruq would have raped her by now, just on general principles and because he had not had a woman in several weeks due to the fighting and the constant bombardment. He liked the very young girls. There was no chance of disease, and their skin was so soft. He liked the way their eyes widened in pain and shock when he entered them. Sadly, there was no time for this now.

  He withdrew his revolver.

  “Fahim, pay attention,” he said softly.

  The man hung limply from his restraints, but his chest moved slightly, in and out, so he was obviously still alive and breathing.

  “Fahim. I have Jamila. She is right here. Can't you smell her? The swee
t smell of innocence and purity?”

  The victim, the thing that had once been a man, stirred.

  “Look up, Fahim. This is the last chance you will have. You cannot save yourself, you are nearly dead already. But you can save Jamila. Beautiful young Jamila.”

  Slowly, as if opening his eyes was physically painful, he raised his head to look straight ahead of him. What he saw nearly made him pass out.

  The security officer was holding Jamila away from him, by her neck. He had his revolver jammed between her thighs.

  “You will tell me where to find the Kitab al-Azif, and you will do so now. Otherwise, I will take young Jamila's virginity in my own way. Do you understand?”

  He drew the hammer back on the revolver, cocking it. The sound was loud, even in this cell beneath the embattled streets of Mosul.

  Jamila began to wet herself, and the urine stained the barrel of the revolver, but the officer did not withdraw it.

  Fahim looked up, pleading in his eyes, first at the officer then at Jamila. Jamila's eyes were shut tight, as much against the humiliation as the fear.

  “I will count to three. If you have not given me what I want to know by three, then Jamila will be raped by the bullets of my revolver and I will leave her body next to yours as you die slowly of thirst and starvation in this godforsaken hole in the earth.”

  Fahim tried to form a prayer in his mind, but the words would not come. The images were fretful and fleeting. He knew that this time of horror would one day come, the time of facing his own death. He knew that he would be reborn in the garden of the Peacock Angel if he lived his life correctly. But he did not know if protecting the Kitab was more important than protecting Jamila. What was the worth of a book when compared to the life of an innocent young girl?

  Normally, the answer was a simple one. A book had no value when compared to the life of a human being, any human being.