Declare
First published in the United States of America in 2001 by HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
This paperback edition first published in Great Britain in 2010 by Corvus, an imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd.
Copyright © Tim Powers, 2001. All rights reserved.
The moral right of Tim Powers to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
First eBook Edition: January 2010
ISBN: 978-1-848-87758-0
Corvus
An imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd
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Contents
To Fr. Gerald Leonard SVD
And with thanks to Chris Arena, John Berlyne, John Bierer, Jennifer
Brehl, Charles N. Brown, Beth Dieckhoff, J.R. Dunn, Ken Estes, Ben
Fenwick, Russell Galen, Patricia Geary, Tom Gilchrist, Lisa Goldstein,
Anne Guerand, Varnum Honey, Fiona Kelleghan, Barry Levin,
Marion Mazauric, Andreas Misera, Ross Pavlac, David Perry, Serena
Powers, Ramiz Rafeedie, Jacques Sadoul, Sunila Sen-Gupta,
Claire Spencer, Tom and Cheryl Wagner, and Eric Woolery —
and especially to Jennifer Brehl and Peter Schneider and Serena
Powers, for that long discussion about Kim Philby, over dinner at
the White House in Anaheim.
Birthdays? yes, in a general way;
For the most if not for the best of men:
You were born (I suppose) on a certain day:
So was I: or perhaps in the night: what then?
Only this: or at least, if more
,
You must know, not think it, and learn, not speak:
There is truth to be found on the unknown shore
,
And many will find what few would seek.
J.K. Stephen, inaccurately quoted in a letter from
St. John Philby to his son, Kim Philby, March 15, 1932
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Declare, if thou hast understanding.
PROLOGUEJob 38:4
Mount Ararat, 1948
… from behind that craggy steep till then
The horizon’s bound, a huge peak, black and huge
,
As if with voluntary power instinct
,
Upreared its head. I struck and struck again
,
And growing still in stature the grim shape
Towered up between me and the stars, and still
,
For so it seemed, with purpose of its own
And measured motion like a living thing
,
Strode after me.
—William Wordsworth,
The Prelude
, 381–389
The young captain’s hands were sticky with blood on the steering wheel as he cautiously backed the jeep in a tight turn off the rutted mud track onto a patch of level snow that shone in the intermittent moonlight on the edge of the gorge, and then his left hand seemed to freeze onto the gear-shift knob after he reached down to clank the lever up into first gear. He had been inching down the mountain path in reverse for an hour, peering over his shoulder at the dark trail, but the looming peak of Mount Ararat had not receded at all, still eclipsed half of the night sky above him, and more than anything else he needed to get away from it.
He flexed his cold-numbed fingers off the gear-shift knob and switched on the headlamps—only one came on, but the sudden blaze was dazzling, and he squinted through the shattered wind-screen at the rock wall of the gorge and the tire tracks in the mud as
he pulled the wheel around to drive straight down the narrow shepherds’ path. He was still panting, his breath bursting out of his open mouth in plumes of steam. He was able to drive a little faster now, moving forward—the jeep was rocking on its abused springs and the four-cylinder engine roared in first gear, no longer in danger of lugging to a stall.
He was fairly sure that nine men had fled down the path an hour ago. Desperately he hoped that as many as four of them might be survivors of the SAS group he had led up the gorge, and that they might somehow still be sane.
But his face was stiff with dried tears, and he wasn’t sure if he were still sane himself—and unlike his men, he had been somewhat prepared for what had awaited them; to his aching shame now, he had at least known how to evade it.
In the glow reflected back from the rock wall at his right, he could see bright, bare steel around the bullet holes in the jeep’s bonnet; and he knew the doors and fenders were riddled with similar holes. The wobbling fuel gauge needle showed half a tank of petrol, so at least the tank had not been punctured.
Within a minute he saw three upright figures a hundred feet ahead of him on the path, and they didn’t turn around into the glow of the single headlamp. At this distance he couldn’t tell if they were British or Russian. He had lost his Sten gun somewhere on the high slopes, but he pulled the chunky .45 revolver out of his shoulder holster—even if these survivors were British, he might need it.
But he glanced fearfully back over his shoulder, at the looming mountain—the unsubdued power in the night was back there, up among the craggy high fastnesses of Mount Ararat.
He turned back to the frail beam of light that stretched down the slope ahead of him to light the three stumbling figures, and he increased the pressure of his foot on the accelerator, and he wished he dared to pray.
He didn’t look again at the mountain. Though in years to come he would try to dismiss it from his mind, in that moment he was bleakly sure that he would one day see it again, would again climb this cold track.
Learn, Not Speak
London, 1963
Of my Base Metal may be filed a Key
,
That shall unlock the Door he howls without.
—Omar Khayyám,
The Rubáiyát
,
Edward J. FitzGerald translation
From the telephone a man’s accentless voice said, “Here’s a list: Chaucer… Malory…”
Hale’s face was suddenly chilly.
The voice went on. “Wyatt… Spenser…”
Hale had automatically started counting, and Spenser made four. “I imagine so,” he said, hastily and at random. “Uh, ‘which being dead many years, shall after revive,’ is the bit you’re thinking of. It’s
Shakespeare
, actually, Mr.—” He nearly said
Mr. Goudie
, which was the name of the Common Room porter who had summoned him to the telephone and who was still rocking on his heels by the door of the registrar clerk’s unlocked office, and then he nearly said
Mr. Philby;
“—Fonebone,” he finished lamely, trying to mumble the made-up name. He clenched his fist around the receiver to hold it steady, and with his free hand he shakily pushed a stray lock of sandy-blond hair back out of his eyes.
