Free The Revelation Code (Wilde/Chase 11) by Andy McDermott Page B

he told Nina. ‘That proves you’re the right person to find what I’m looking for. But I’m curious. You’re willing to accept Gilgamesh as a source of truth. So why not the Book of Revelation?’
    ‘Because some of the events in Gilgamesh can be corroborated by other sources. Revelation can’t. It’s a completely stand-alone piece of work, and to be frank, it reads like some sort of drug trip.’
    She expected an angry response. Cross’s reply, however, surprised her. ‘Have you ever taken hallucinogenic drugs, Dr Wilde?’
    ‘What? Of course not.’
    ‘I have.’ Her surprise grew at the admission. ‘Part of my training with the CIA’s Special Activities Division. It lets them judge if an operative’s likely to give up information under truth agents. I passed the test, by the way.’
    Nina gave him a thin smile. ‘Congratulations.’
    ‘But I discovered something about hallucinations, which I’ve since corroborated from other sources.’ A glance at Simeon; had he been another CIA agent who’d undergone the same training? ‘Anything you see while under the influence is taken from your own subconscious mind – it’s something you’ve already encountered, but reflected back at you in a distorted way, like a funhouse mirror. You can’t hallucinate something you’ve never encountered before, because there’s nothing for your mind to work with. So if you’ve never heard of an elephant, say, it would be impossible for you to hallucinate an elephant.’
    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