The cardinal realized that his guest had become obsessively fixated on the tower and those who built it. Even forcing the story of Nimrod into a connection with this European tower showed how serious he was. From the expression on his face, the cardinal understood he was not joking. Yet part of his mind was still occupied with the words supposedly spoken by the devil.

It was the first time he had heard anything like this. He had taken part in several exorcisms before, and after the last one he had sworn never again to involve himself in such matters. Despite numerous rites, the devil would not release the child’s body. Eventually they discovered the cause: the child had made the worst mistake imaginable. He had urinated on the ashes—an opening to the other realm—and in doing so had opened the door. Whether it was truly the Devil or some malevolent jinn that had latched onto him, no one knew, but despite all the ceremonies the entity refused to leave the child’s body.

Thus they had performed the ritual with what felt like an army of cardinals. He remembered withdrawing to a corner of the church, far from everyone’s sight, and opening the prayer book he kept hidden. He had barely begun reading a few passages when they understood from the girl’s changing voice that the jinn was hurling curses. Moments later, after the cry, “You Pharacletes will fail!” echoed through the hall, they heard the small child bursting into tears.

What remained in the minds of the cardinals that day was not the banishment of the demon, but its screams. Not all of them, but those who were learned knew that Pharaclete referred to the One who distinguishes truth from falsehood. And only a few among even those scholars knew that this word appeared in the earliest gospels as one of the names of the promised and long-awaited savior.

The cardinal had noticed something else as well: his guest possessed a considerable knowledge of the Holy Scriptures and of other books filled with sacred counsel. Indeed, the man listened to the stories of the Tower of Babel and Nur-Adud not like a humble seeker of wisdom but like a teacher examining his student. Had the common folk heard the tales he recounted about the building of towers, they would surely have risen in fury, shouting, “The devil is here!” and would have torn the tower down along with anyone inside it.

The cardinal was thinking swiftly, searching for a way to refuse his guest’s request without offending him. Otherwise, he was certain that the Pope would scold him for sending away a man of high office who had offered generous support to the Church. His intention was not so much to defend a man he barely knew, but something far greater. What he truly sought was to eradicate from society the practice of burning demons, witches, and unbelievers—of impaling them on greased stakes, crucifying them, or burying them alive. Such acts, which could be seen as issuing judgments in the name of God, were grave sins he longed to uproot.

Failing to receive the support he expected, Samiri shifted his strategy.

“The man who speaks with that accursed creature does not even believe in the Trinity,” he said.

Fearing that further silence might provoke his guest’s anger, the cardinal finally spoke:

“For his sake, I shall beseech the Messiah…”

Thanks to the Protestants, the Catholic Church no longer enforced the selling of absolutions as strictly as before. They had realized that the poor possessed no money to offer. Those who longed to be forgiven by Allah naturally drifted toward Protestantism. In order not to lose the common folk who formed its true strength, the Catholic Church had softened its stance.

While speaking with a friend who had traveled from distant lands, the cardinal had once asked:

“It is unacceptable for the Church to sell paradise by forgiving sins in exchange for money. Yet there is a similar practice among you as well, is there not? Only the name differs.”

His Eastern friend replied:

“In the heavenly religions, believers show their love for Allah by giving up what is most precious to them. And let us admit it: in every age, wealth—whether money, valuable goods, property, orchards, or homes—is what human beings cherish most. Allah asks His servants to offer a portion of these as a sign of devotion. One may donate them to a house of worship, give them to the poor, or build a fountain, a school, or other charitable works. There is no requirement that these offerings be handed specifically to a religious official.

A person’s intention is known only to Allah. If his intention is sincere, Allah accepts his charity; but if he gives in pursuit of worldly power, divine revelation tells us that he will gain no spiritual reward. Still, we cannot know what lies in a person’s heart. We assume that whoever gives does so for Allah’s sake and thus fulfills this act of worship. Yet we can never declare who is destined for paradise or for hell.”

When the cardinal saw the fury burning in Samiri’s eyes, he felt himself pulled away from his thoughts. The more Samiri failed to detect a trace of demonic wrath in the cardinal’s gaze, the more he simmered inside like a boiling cauldron.

Gritting his teeth, he said,
“We must act exactly as it is written in the Old Testament.”

The cardinal hoped he had misunderstood whom Samiri meant—but his fear was realized.

“Just as Jezebel was stoned to death, so must it be done.”

The cardinal thought to himself:
Look at this man… He wants someone killed, their body torn apart, and fed to dogs, all because he supposedly spoke with a demon in a tower—and even that is uncertain. And he expects me, a representative of the Church, to sanction this.

Yet his mind was caught on Samiri’s earlier remark: why did this man not believe in the Trinity? Was he implying he was not a Christian? If the cardinal asked, the subject would deepen, and Samiri might demand that even more people be stoned. He had to avoid denying any further requests from such a powerful guest.

He decided the best way to draw out an answer was to ask about the tower’s location:

“Where is this tower you speak of? In which city?”

“There is one not far from here,” Samiri replied, “but there is another tower where the demon is said to speak. The one I’m referring to lies near Zurich, atop the peaks of the Alps.”

The cardinal had finally found a chance to free himself of the man. Besides, in the region Samiri mentioned, Protestants held more influence than Catholics, and there were virtually no followers of any faith other than Christianity. Had he said Spain, Portugal, or France, there would at least have been small communities of other Abrahamic religions. For a man to claim he was Christian yet deny the Trinity carried only one punishment. Under such circumstances, it was clear that a fate far worse than that of rebellious Protestants or Jews awaited him.

The cardinal knew that neither the rulers of the state, nor humanist circles, nor even the scholars could save this man. It was far too early to speak about respecting people’s religious choices. It had been only a few years since a man named Servetus—who too had denied the Trinity—was impaled on a greased stake. To avoid such an end, the person in question had only one option: to flee.

When the cardinal offered excuses—saying he would speak with the cardinal in Zurich, though Protestants there were influential and the effort might be futile—Samiri lost hope in him. Even though he had hinted that the man was currently in London, he understood that nothing would change, and he left the room.

The cardinal understood that as Samiri departed, his look seemed to say, “We will speak again; you will pay the price for refusing to help me.”
He sighed and thought to himself, “Whatever my fate is, I shall bear it,” and returned to his desk.

Samuel had listened to every word from behind the half-open door and had a sense of what the silences in the conversation meant. From the expression on the cardinal’s face, he could tell the man disliked Samiri intensely. Before he could ask, the cardinal spoke:

“I thought he was exaggerating. But look—despite holding a position as important as deputy mayor, he openly asked me to preside over a stoning. Everything you told me about him was accurate, not a word too much or too little,” he said, then asked:

“But I fail to see what these men could possibly have to do with so many idle murders. We cannot declare someone guilty merely because of an ignorant and fanatical demand,” said the cardinal.

Samuel replied,
“London has always had the occasional vagrant killing, but in the past few days alone we’ve received missing-person reports for nineteen girls—some of whom were nuns in a convent. And an interesting detail: all of the missing girls were devout Christians.”

“But if they’re not kidnapping them for ransom, then what purpose could they have? There are no bodies. Besides, shiploads of slaves arrive every day from Africa. Why risk being caught and punished in London when one could obtain ready slaves from there?”

Samuel cast him a chilling look and said only one sentence:
“For bloody, mystical sacrificial rites.”

The cardinal waited for Samuel to say ‘I’m joking,’ but his face remained utterly grave.

“You know very well that sacrificial offerings exist in many religions. In the Book of Exodus, sacrifices offered to Allah are mentioned.”

“We are in Europe,” the cardinal answered. “The Holy Scriptures command the sacrifice of animals, not humans. As far as I know, the kind of human sacrifice rituals you're referring to were practiced in Mesopotamia, my friend.”

“You are mistaken,” Samuel said. “Before Christianity, our kings would raise their cups in the name and honor of Jupiter. They offered countless sacrifices to the star-gods, and this custom was widespread among the people as well. You know how it is—the cream follows the milk. Once the sacred breath of the Messiah spread across Europe, the rituals of human sacrifice came to an abrupt end. But later, mystical and marginal orders revived the offerings made to Ismar, the Star-God; to Samas, the Sun-God; and to Sin, the Moon-God—this time under a new disguise.”
Then he looked directly into the cardinal’s eyes and asked:
“Can you guess what that disguise was?”

The cardinal shrugged.
“All I know is that, around that time, the Church was beginning to turn into a political power,” he said. Then, taking a deep breath, he continued:
“Yes, they used the Church itself to offer their sacrifices to the gods. In other words, they targeted certain people, branded them as witches, sorcerers, demons, or heretics, and then provoked the Church authorities against them. The clergy, stirred by such accusations, inflamed the people with their sermons and led them into killing these victims with horrifying brutality. Tell me—whom did the Messiah ever have stoned or executed as a witch or a heretic? What divine revelation ever permitted such savagery? You know well that these were doctrines invented long after the Messiah. And you heard it yourself just a moment ago—he twists the passages about the wicked Jezebel’s stoning in the Old Testament to justify his cruelty.”

“Yes, my friend, you’ve understood it correctly. Their true aim is to conceal their human sacrifices to their gods. They use quotes from the Torah and the Gospel to deceive the masses and win them over.”
Samuel gave the cardinal a meaningful look and continued:
“My friend, you may think this way, but the other cardinals clearly do not, for they have approved the merciless slaughter of countless people. Or rather, as I said before, they were seduced by the manipulation of this mystical sect. But deception does not absolve them. It cannot wash away the guilt of those who allowed such atrocities to take place.”

“So you’re saying this mystical order used the Church for their own interests, is that it?”
“Yes. And their other aim was to tarnish the image of the Church first, and then of God Himself in the eyes of the people. Unfortunately… they succeeded.”

The cardinal thought for a moment, then spoke in a careful tone that would not offend his guest:
“My friend, all right, perhaps such a mystical sect exists. But if you’re going to accuse them of being an organized structure or the manifestation of a distorted creed, you must have something solid to support your claim. How can you convince anyone that these people are not merely a depraved little gang, but a network spread across the world?”

Samuel leaned forward.
“Let me ask you something. Do you think the number of the nineteen missing people was chosen at random?”
“Yes,” the cardinal answered, then raised an eyebrow. “Or… was it not?”

“They did it to offer one sacrifice for each of the nineteen star-gods.”
“And why pious girls?”
“I do not yet know the reason,” Samuel replied, “but I will find it.”

“How do you know there are nineteen star-gods?”
“The belief in star-gods goes back to the Sumerians—indeed, it is the very root of paganism. They believed the stars ruled over their lives, and you know they had made remarkable progress in the science of the heavens.”

“Yes, the religious tales told about the building of those towers do contain a measure of truth. Yet they also built them to observe their own gods—the stars. The lands where the Sumerians once lived lie now within the Ottoman realm, in Mesopotamia. Have you ever heard of the ruins of Nur-Adud, in the southeast of the region once called Natolya, now known as Anatolia?”

Samuel took a piece of leather from his pocket, placed it on the table, and continued:
“I borrowed this from the London Library. What you see here is the Lion Horoscope—the emblem of their gods. It is also the world’s first star map. A royal scholar drew it after examining the original horoscope unearthed in that region. Count them yourself: each of the nineteen stars represents a star-god. And the crescent beneath the lion’s jaw symbolizes the moon, the domain of the god Sin.”

“So Sin, you’re saying, was different from the others—does that mean he was superior?”
“I’m not entirely sure… but that is what I believe.”

“In that case,” the cardinal mused, “he would be given a more precious sacrifice—perhaps a state official, a scholar, or a wealthy figure. Someone whose absence would be felt by society.” Samuel nodded slightly and continued:

“I met with a historian who specializes in Mesopotamian civilizations. He was the one who told me everything I’ve just shared. And according to him, Jupiter was also exceedingly important to those people—more precious even than the sun. Every forty-seven years it draws remarkably close to the Earth, shining so brilliantly that it gleams like a lantern across the night sky.”

The cardinal was not hearing such things for the first time, yet he chose to listen in silence. The more he listened, the more eagerly Samuel spoke. After all, the man before him was a highly distinguished representative of the Catholic Church in England; having such a listener only encouraged Samuel further.

“Now guess what truly remarkable thing I’ve discovered about all this,” he said.

Seeing the cardinal’s intent gaze, Samuel answered his own question:

“There is a scientist who studies astrology.”
The cardinal interrupted him with a faint smile:
“So you’ve promoted fortune-tellers to the rank of scholars now? You know how important Jupiter is to them.”

Samuel realized then that the cardinal was not at all ignorant of these matters.

“No, I mean a real scientist. And he told me that the phenomenon I mentioned—the one occurring every forty-seven years—will happen tomorrow night. What is even more intriguing is what I found in the archives: forty-seven years ago, on this very date, nineteen novice nuns and three others vanished. And unfortunately, their bodies were discovered later—scattered in separate places. But what strikes me as truly strange is that nothing else was recorded about the victims. No notes on how they died, no mention of wounds, markings—no small autopsy, nothing. How could the police of that time fail to investigate such a mysterious series of deaths?”

The cardinal nodded, showing that he agreed.
“Yes, but by now those bodies will have long decayed. We cannot accuse some clandestine order of committing those murders merely by looking at numbers and dates.”

Although Samuel sensed that his close friend was starting to treat him as though he were losing his mind, he chose not to dwell on it and continued:

“But I said the witnesses—the victims’ families—might help us. Of course it was difficult; after forty-seven years, most relatives had either passed away or claimed they had never seen the victims’ bodies.” He paused, then delivered the blow:

“But a few of them remembered the horror as if it were yesterday. They all repeated the same words. They said an eight-pointed star had been carved into their sisters’ abdomens, and that around the star there had been a thick crust of dried blood. Which means the killers carved those symbols while the girls were still alive.”

“The eight-pointed star… sacrifices offered to Ismar, the god of Jupiter,” the cardinal murmured.

Samuel looked at him with suspicion. The cardinal realized Samuel was silently asking, “And how do you know that?” and felt compelled to explain himself.

“We did not study only the doctrine of God at the Vatican,” the cardinal said. “In our courses on comparative belief, we were also taught the faiths that existed before the heavenly religions. A few things have stayed in my memory.”

Samuel almost said, “Then why have you been acting as though you were hearing everything I’ve told you for the first time?”
But he held his tongue; he did not want to appear distrustful.

The cardinal could not help feeling a flicker of fear.
If Samuel realized he was lying, nothing he said afterward would mend the situation. He could not reveal the truth about himself—not fully. And even if he did, Samuel would almost certainly refuse to believe him, perhaps even suspect him of belonging to the very mystical order they were discussing.
He knew that explaining everything would entangle the matter beyond repair.

One thing, however, was certain: Samuel had only glimpsed the tip of the iceberg.
If he were to see what lay beneath the water, he would understand he could never handle such a burden and would withdraw, muttering, “Is it really my task to save the world from chaos?”
Realizing this, the cardinal decided that silence was wiser.He finally broke it with a question:

“Very well… who is this man they are targeting?”

“What difference would it make if you knew?”

The cardinal shrugged.
“Perhaps I might be able to help.”

Samuel paused briefly before answering:
“John Wickens.”

The cardinal lurched forward from the chair he had been leaning back in.
“What did you say?”

Samuel was taken aback; he had not expected such an explosive reaction.

“So, you do know him, I presume.”

The cardinal regretted it instantly—he couldn’t very well claim ignorance—so he offered the kind of answer befitting a clergyman:
“He would come to the church from time to time; we spoke occasionally.”

“What did you two talk about?”

“The usual matters… what ought to be done to earn Allah’s pleasure, and so on…”

The cardinal knew that if he said anything about the Trinity, prophets, or the nature of divine revelation, he would be forced to confront a flood of uncomfortable questions. Samuel, guided by the instincts that years of police work had sharpened, sensed that the cardinal was hiding something about Dr. Wickens. His intuition rarely misled him. Still, when he glanced at the clock, he realized he had to leave. With an appointment waiting for him, he could not corner his friend into answering.

Seeing Samuel rise, the cardinal drew a deep breath. As he walked him to the door, he murmured:

“Be careful… these people are capable of anything.”

Samuel lingered on those final words.
Was it a subtle threat?
“No… don’t be ridiculous. Stop playing detective,” he muttered to himself.

On his way to meet his superior, he tried to recall the true name of the informant planted inside the mystical order. After tomorrow’s ritual, he thought, I’ll get his name—and the names of every last one of them.
Advisers to the king, ministers, commanders, governors—whoever was involved, we will uncover them all.

With my superior’s approval, we can arrest them right after the ceremony. Unless, of course, they say the evidence is insufficient and that we must wait…

A faint, ambitious smile tugged at his lips.
Who knows? The king himself might even award me the State Medal of Distinguished Service.