The Vermeer Code

Zarathustra hat zuerst im Kampf des Guten und des Bösen das eigentliche Rad im Getriebe der Dinge gesehn, --die Übersetzung der Moral ins Metaphysische, als Kraft, Ursache, Zweck an sich, ist sein Werk.

Zarathustra was the first to consider the fight of good and evil the very wheel in the machinery of things, --the transposition of morality into the metaphysical, as a force, cause, and end in itself, is his work.
--Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, "Warum ich ein Schicksal bin"

The news bulletin said the Vice-President had just checked into a hospital, suffering from chest pains. I yawned and went on packing my bags. Suddenly a burst of knocking assaulted the apartment door.

I peered through the peephole and was shocked. Standing outside was the penultimate President of the United States, Jeff Blythe. His arm was around the quivering, white-faced Djinni Strauch, the current President's daughter. I paused only an instant before letting them in.

The young woman collapsed on a couch, put her head in her hands, and began sobbing and coughing. Blythe sat beside her, hugging her as one would an injured animal. "Doctor," he said to me, "I'm afraid I have some terrible news. Your husband has just been killed by a poison gas bomb. The same people tried to kill us, too, and may try to kill you as well."

He must have seen how devastated I was by this horrible news. He quickly jumped up and guided me to a chair, which I slowly deflated into. He looked at me with a pained expression and said "I'm terribly sorry. I know this must be an overwhelming blow. Can I get you anything, like brandy or whiskey?" I nodded and vaguely pointed toward some bottles and glasses on a side table. On the couch Djinni looked up and said "Me too."

Fortified with alcohol, I mumbled a request to tell me what happened. Blythe said "I'll have to make this very fast. I think we shook off one follower, but if they check all the most likely places for us to go, they'll be here soon. You know that your husband came to see me this afternoon at my office in Harlem?"

I nodded. The ex-President went on. "He didn't say what it was about when he made the appointment, but when a world-famous physicist tells me he has urgent news, I'm ready to listen. Frankly he looked and sounded very wild and very frightened. He was ranting about some terrible secret in the Iranian nuclear program, and some ancient cult of Zoroastrians trying to take over the world. He claimed to have found evidence of them in some coded paintings by Vermeer, and insisted that he needed to take me to some museums to show me. I was getting concerned about his state of mind.

"That's when Djinni burst into my office." He nodded toward the current President's daughter, now helping herself to a second drink. "This year she's been teaching at a school not too far from my office. We bumped into each other at a bar and have gotten to be friends since, despite our partisan differences. She rushed in today and said she'd gotten my email and brought the package that was delivered to her. I hadn't sent her any email, so I told her we should turn the package over to the Secret Service. When I stuck my head out the door to get an agent, my secretary told me the one assigned to cover the office had not shown up. Now I was getting really worried.

"Then the package burst open, spewing out clouds of some sort of colored gas. Your husband and Djinni both collapsed. I used an old school trick and didn't inhale, so that I was able to carry her out into the hall. By the time I took another breath and rushed back in, your husband and my secretary were both dead. Djinni's been coughing ever since, but she seems to be recovering." Over on the couch she nodded between swallows of her third whiskey.

He frowned. "This must have been carefully planned. Someone knew about our appointment, and wanted to kill an ex-President, a President's daughter, and a noted scientist all at once. That someone also was able to waylay my Secret Service protection. That scared me that this could be some kind of inside job, so I decided to flee with Djinni instead of hanging around to let them have another shot at us. As we pulled away in a taxi, one man was yelling and chasing us on foot, so they'll be on to us before long. How much did your husband tell you about whatever got him so excited?"

I rose and went to the window, slowly opening the curtain a tiny slit at one side and peeking out at the street below. I sighed, and told them, "He was convinced the cult was real and dangerous. He believed it had caused wars and overthrown nations, and had thoroughly infiltrated the U.S. government. He even blamed it for the attempt to impeach you as President. Everything clicked into place when he learned how America got its greatest canvas, or rather panel, of Vermeer's.

"Now it looks like he was right, judging by what happened to him and you -- and by the two large men on the corners down there very carefully not looking this way." I turned and headed to grab my coat and purse. "There's a back passage that lets us out on the other side of this block. Let's hope they don't have it covered yet. Come on." Djinni hurled back another shot, and they both scrambled after me down the hall to the stairway.

When we got a cabbie to stop, I told him to take us to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, at Fifth and 82nd. "We'll go there first, because the Frick closes later," I told my companions. "I'll show you what he saw that gave him the clues. Since my own academic specialty is ancient religions and heresies, he talked about that with me at length. What he might have found out about the Iranian nuclear program through his international contacts among dissident scientists, I don't know, but he was in close touch with many of them."

Blythe looked puzzled. "What do reactors or bombs have to do with an old painter or religious fanatics?" he asked.

"My husband," I began, and was held up by a catch in my throat, trying to become a deep sob. "I'm sorry," I said. "We've got to move fast. I'll just have to break down later." I stared at the street as we moved. "He concluded that Vermeer was a member of this secret cult that's been around for many centuries, trying to claim power for their own schismatic version of the old Zoroastrian religion of Persia. He thought many of Vermeer's paintings were coded messages about their dream to displace Christianity from Europe and replace it with their radical version of the more ancient faith."

As we drew near the museum, he said "I thought he mostly did tributes to middle class families of his day."

"The people in his works were just like the noodles in spaghetti, only there as an excuse for the sauce. What he was really doing what painting light, and celebrating how it revealed the true world to us. Light was the symbol of the supreme being he secretly worshipped, Ahura Mazda. Often the orthodox Zoroastrians were assumed to be fire worshippers, becuase they saw fire as the symbol of their deity. Vermeer's branch just found a different symbol. They visualized the universe as a conflict between the goodness of light and the evil of darkness. Later the Impressionists picked up on some of Vermeer's techniques, but missed the religious subtext."

I paid the taxi driver and we entered the Met, passing a maintenance worker trying to clean up some graffiti, one of those ubiquitous "Obey Dwarf" heads. I led my companions first to the Allegory of Faith and started their journey with some quick comments. "He did this to appeal to the same Catholics he pandered to by converting to please his wealthy mother-in-law. It has lots of cliches of Catholic symbolism, like a crushed serpent on the floor. Really he is saying how silly he thought the church was. Observe how she is not looking toward the light, but away from it, toward a glass sphere hanging from the ceiling. Some critics say that represents human reason. It really shows how empty he thought the universe of the church was, since it didn't consider light the manifestation of eternity. That's why the hanging ball is transparent; it has nothing inside. It was rather risky of him to try that in such an openly populistic work."

Next came A Girl Asleep. "This was once sold as Een dronke slafende Meyd aen een Tafel, or "A drunken sleeping maid at a table". People mistakenly assumed it was just a moral lesson about temperance. Notice how dark it is, without his usual light coming in from a window. The woman is actually Christian Europe itself, intoxicated by meaningless pleasure, unconscious to the light of truth, and shut off from the real world."

"He did this Portrait Of A Young Woman as a quick and frankly inadequate copy, just for money, from a patron who loved his much more serious version, now famous as The Girl With A Pearl Earring. I'll tell you later what that really was about, but the novel and movie were nothing but propaganda planted by the orthodox Zoroastrians. They went to a lot of trouble to convince people who saw that picture that it only showed a real girl and a real pearl. Neither was true. She was emerging from darkness for a more ominous reason." I let them ponder that, and led them to the next picture.

"This Woman With A Lute is one of several paintings he did of people with instruments or playing music. This was a large part of his criticism of the continent. They were preoccupied with mere sound, instead of focussing on the visual aspect of God. This one is hopeful, since the woman has at least opened the curtains back to let in some light. Will she take the next step? The woman in the next painting does. Note the map on the wall of Europe, traditionally oriented with North at the top. That will change."

"Here is the misnamed Woman With A Water Pitcher. The real subject is her opening of a window to let the light of Ahura Mazda in. Suddenly the painting bursts out with beautiful highlights, especially on the pitcher. These were what he saw through a camera obscura. He didn't just trace them, since often he altered them, but they display the glory of light now that the window is open. Notice again the map on the wall. Now that the barrier to true reality has been breached, it is not the same map of Europe. At the Frick there's one that will make this more clear. Let's hurry on there. It's only about a dozen blocks away."

On the quick cab hop to the Frick Museum, they were both peering suspiciously at passers-by and other vehicles. When we made it inside without being grabbed or shot, I ushered them to see Officer And Laughing Girl. "First, see how happy this woman is, now that her window is open to the light. Now look at the map on the wall. If you know your geography, you'll recognize this as a map of the Netherlands, but turned sideways, so that North is on the right, and West is at the top. This is his message that once the light is welcomed, the whole world will be upended. The pole star of the civilization, if you will, will then be pointing to what was the East -- in other words, to Persia. He liked this symbol so much he used variants of this same map several times."

"Girl Interrupted At Music presents the moral choice Vermeer sees facing Christianity. It can remain distracted with those instruments and music there on the table, or it can accept the truth being handed to them to read -- that is, to see with their eyes. This girl looks out as if asking which choice she should make. We'll see more of these letters used as a symbol of visual truth."

"Next," I said, "we have Mistress And Maid, which challenges Zoroastrians to evangelize. The woman in yellow -- which shows her own loyalty to the light she is sitting in -- is pondering whether she should write to others to spread the truth, and therefore light and the very substance of the deity. She does decide to do so, as we'll see in the next one. That one, unfortunately, isn't here in New York. We need to go to Washington and the National Gallery of Art, which three very important works giving a lot of clues to this cult.

"I suggest that we split up, because they may be looking for the three of us together very soon, and travel separately. We'll meet at the National Gallery when they open tomorrow at ten A.M. Don't go home or call anyone. If there is somebody after us who can get to the Secret Service, then no contact can be considered secure. Don't use your credit cards, or they'll be traced. Do you both have enough cash?" He did, and even had enough to spare to hand some to Djinni.

We left from different exits, or at least I thought we did. The next morning I was in D.C., standing outside the National Gallery, watching some hooded kid stencilling a chalked version of that damned "Obey Dwarf" head onto the sidewalk. I was disgusted to see my two fugitives walk up together, doing everything but holding hands. I said "Should I ask when you two met up again?"

Djinni giggled and said she got lost outside the Frick, but fortunately "Jeff" had seen her and offered to help her find her way. Then they decided that by staying together they could watch each other's back. She giggled again at my raised eyebrow, then said "Really, I did not have sex with him," and dissolved into laughter. The ex-President blandly ignored all this with a straight face. I shook my head and led them on to the first painting.

"This is A Lady Writing A Letter. You see it's the same woman from the last one we saw yesterday. Now she has accepted her sacred charge, and is composing an epistle urging Christians trapped in darkness to open their eyes and see the powerful photons from heaven. The campaign to spread radical Zoroastrianism has now begun. There are a couple more of his works here that predict how the struggle will come out."

"Woman Holding A Balance is one of his most revealing works, where he once again pulls the tail of the church. This picture is popular with Christians who love what they think it means. Yes, she is standing in front of a painting of the Last Judgment, but that means she has turned her back to it. Yes, she is holding a scale, but it's an empty one. Vermeer's shallow pun here is a reference to the Bible's "weighed in the balances and found wanting", and it is the church he means is being judged. At a deeper level, there really is something on the balance, for those "who have eyes to see". Look closely and see that both scales are full of light. The measure of life should be bright light, not dark swirling clouds. The religion that follows Ahura will prevail. Others will be hung on walls as mementos. This imaginary judging does not go unobserved, as we'll see in Vermeer's last painting here."

"This tiny work on a wooden panel is the most important one of his in this country. It's not really a Girl With A Red Hat. There's a good reason some critics have remarked on the androgyny of the image. It is actually Vermeer's personification of his supreme being, Ahura Mazda. To him, this was the very face of God. No real hat would look like that crown of bright red. That is meant to be a wreath or halo of fire.

"Notice how this entity is seated facing away from us here on earth, but has turned to look over the shoulder at some mundane matter here among us that has suddenly turned interesting. What has happened is that the forces of darkness have begun to contest for control of the earth, and so now Ahura Mazda will have to get personally involved. The evil ones should be very afraid. Notice those big pearls hanging from the ears? That's not what they are. Those are entire universes, tiny as jewels to this supreme being that chooses to wear them as mere earrings. They symbolize the incomprehensible power you are looking at.

"This was the one that started my husband's train of clues to the conspiracy. The museum's tours explain how this painting was a gift of Andrew Mellon, the Secretary of the Treasury during the 1920s. It was one of his heirs, Richard Mellon Scaife" (suddenly Blythe turned to look at me with a worried frown) "who funded the campaign to impeach you. That was really all about Iran, and so was the 9-11 attack." Now he was staring open-mouthed at me with the beginning of fear in his eyes. I shook my head. "No more here," I said. "The walls have ears -- or at least bugs. Come with me and I'll show you the last pieces of the puzzle." I led them out to catch a taxi.

As we rode to our final stop, I added more. "I don't know if the Mellons were part of this group of Neo-Zoroastrians, but if they were not, then some of their advisors, or the advisors of those advisors, must have been. It all fits too neatly. We're going to my newly rented townhouse here. I've been hired as a visiting professor for the next semester, and I was packing my last bags when the two of you burst in on me yesterday. I've already moved most of my stuff here, including some reproductions of other Vermeers. I think you'll be surprised."

As we entered my living room, all four of their eyes were pulled to the centerpiece of the wall, the Girl With A Pearl Earring. I stood by it and smiled at them. "Now can you see why the orthodox Zoroastrians tried to belittle this as a mere painting of a bejewelled model? Again, those things hanging from her ears are universes of their own. This could be a pendant to the so-called Red Hat picture. Just as in that one, this subject is seated facing away from us, but has turned to look over the shoulder at the world. This is Ahriman, the creator and controller of all evil, the powerful arch-enemy of Ahura Mazda, who contends for ultimate domination. Notice how she dwells in black emptiness, but Ahura did not. The neo-zors believe this horrible being is actually at work in the world, and her followers must be destroyed for light and good to triumph. Step this way into the next room and I'll show you another one."

Hanging over the bar was The Concert. "This one shows again the choice Christianity is facing. What we might call "Old Europe" still has its back to the light, idly playing music instead of accepting the truth. Meanwhile, "New Europe" is facing the window, not singing but declaiming from that text the truth about reality. Critics assume the man between them is playing a lute. The top of that object he holds is misleading. It is really not a musical instrument, but an adze, with which he is about to follow the instructions of the proclaimer with the letter, and bash in the head of the harpsichord player. Vermeer was really quite merciless toward those who were given the chance but rejected the light."

Meanwhile Djinni, helping herself to some whiskey, looked up closely at the painting and announced, "I don't think this is a reproduction. This looks like it really is three hundred and fifty years old." She and the ex-President turned to me questioningly.

"That's right," I said. "This was stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston early one morning in 1990, while the city was recovering from Saint Patrick's Day celebrations of the night before. I thought it was appropriate to use their own profligate indulgence in honor of their patron to have someone remove a great work of another religion from their disbelieving clutches. The two phony cops hired for the job were promised they could sell the other paintings they removed as distractions. If they had lived, they might have gotten rich from a Rembrandt."

By this time, Blythe was nodding, with a self-satisfied grin on his face. He said, "I thought so. You're part of this cult yourself, aren't you? We weren't really being followed, were we? That was just a story to lure us here. What happens next?"

"Indulge me for one last time. Come into my study and I'll show you the very last painting. This one really is just a reproduction, but I think you'll recognize something about it." I turned and went through another door. They followed and stopped, staring in shock.

"You know her, don't you?" I asked, as I moved across the room to stand by the desk and the Lady Standing At A Virginal hung over it.

Blythe looked shaken. "It looks like Tensing," he said.

Djinni turned to him and asked, "You mean your wife, the Congresswoman?" He nodded.

And with that as her cue, in from the bathroom came U.S. Representative Tensing Norkay Blythe of New York, holding a rather large pistol of strange design. Djinni blushed all the way to purple. Tensing barely glanced at her, and with a twist of her mouth said, "Jeff, you're such a tool. It was so easy to manipulate the two of you together so that we would have bipartisan martyrs when they found your bodies killed by the terrorists. Now we've had to cover up the wasted deaths of your secretary and the doctor's husband until we can kill you together. If it's any consolation, the Vice-President has just resigned "for health reasons", and tomorrow President Strauch will be appointing me in his place so that we'll have a two-party coalition for the next step in the war. Shame you'll miss our military revenge for your callous murders. By the way, this gun is a laser, so you'll get to die from the power of light that you silly Christians have rejected."

Suddenly her body leaped backwards against the wall as if flung there. She looked down at her torso in astonishment to see the feathered shaft of a large arrow sticking out of the middle of her chest. Her corpse slowly slid down to the floor. We all turned and looked at the door from the front room, to see a very short former member of the Cabinet holding a crossbow. "Bobby!" said Blythe. "Am I glad to see you!"

"Happy to help, Mister President," he said. "I've been shadowing her since I first suspected she was part of this heretic conspiracy. Fortunately, I was small enough to squeeze in through the doggie door silently."

...Zarathustra ist wahrhaftiger als sonst ein Denker. Seine Lehre und sie allein hat die Wahrhaftigkeit als oberste Tugend -- das heisst den Gegensatz zur Feigheit des "Idealisten," der vor der Realität die Flucht ergreift.... Wahrheit reden und gut mit Pfeilen schiessen, das ist die persische Tugend.

...Zarathustra is more truthful than any other thinker. His doctrine and his alone posits truthfulness as the highest virtue -- this means the opposite of the cowardice of "idealists" who flee from reality.... To speak the truth and to shoot well with arrows, that is Persian virtue.
--Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, "Warum ich ein Schicksal bin"

"Well, thank God you saved us from this awful cult of Persian fanatics," said Blythe.

The short archer shook his head. "They're not real Zoroastrians, sir. Didn't you look at that picture on the wall? See how she is standing at the keyboard playing music and turning her back on the light? Didn't you wonder why the doctor here has a picture of the Evil One in her front room? These people aren't even schismatics. They are followers of Ahriman, who've made a deal with the mullahs that rule Iran now.

"Think about it, sir. Reagan supported the Iraqis against Iran. But the first President Strauch reversed course, and made war on Saddam. That attack on the World Trade Center in your first term had been intended as the excuse for a second war against Iraq. When you won, they just let that fizzle out. They waited until his son could get in to really destroy the towers so he could blame that on Iran's secular enemy and destroy them. Your killings were going to be blamed on Syria, the next target."

Blythe looked puzzled. "Well, what was all that gibbering about some terrible Iranian weapons project to destroy the world?" he asked.

The ex-Secretary looked uncomfortable. "Well, Mister President, I'm afraid the doctor's late husband really did stumble upon something going on in the Iranian weapons labs. He just misunderstood who was doing it. You see, we real believers have some genuine orthodox Zoroastrian scientists infiltrated into their labs. We are secretly trying to advance beyond even thermonuclear bombs. We plan to alter the basic structure of space-time to create an artificial white hole. This would be a portal with so much light energy bursting out that it could destroy anything near it. The bad news is that "near" is meant in astronomical terms. If we succeed and ever set one of these off, it would pulverize the entire planet."

"Why would any sane person want to build such a monster device?" stormed Blythe.

"It's a deterrent, like the doomsday machine in Dr. Strangelove."

"I thought that wound up destroying the world in that movie?"

"Yes, but we're sure President Strauch will be more sensible. It's only these Ahriman-worshippers who believe the old prophecy that he is a messiah of death."

Djinni cut in. "They think Papa is a messiah?"

The short man nodded. "The old Zoroastrian legend was that he appeared about one thousand B.C. That started a new period of three thousand years during which good and evil would contend for human souls. At the end of that time would come a prophet and his three sons. One of them would be the new messiah who would save the world. The first President Strauch had three sons, one is President now, and it's been three thousand years. Q.E.D."

Djinni had been repressing a giggle. "Grandpapa's a prophet, too? Is Papa gonna change white powder into wine? And we're hearing this from the Obey Dwarf?" She roared with laughter.

Bobby went over to her and pointed his crossbow up at her face. He shouted "I'm not a dwarf! I'm half an inch taller than a dwarf!"

While his back was turned, I grabbed the Congresswoman's laser from the floor and blasted Bobby to bloody hell. Unfortunately for Djinni, the powerful beam went through his body and left a large hole in her torso as well. I turned to face the ex-President. I'll admit I was impressed. You could see how fast his mind was working. He smiled at me and said "I think I can solve your problem for you."

"What problem is that?" I asked.

"Now your greatest enemy has revealed itself, with a scheme to destroy the world. Never mind bombing Syria to help the mullahs in Iran; now we all need to blast their nuke labs before those orthodox Zoroastrian fanatics succeed and kill us all. You still need bipartisan martyrs and a bipartisan Vice-President for unity in this next war. Now all we have to do is change the scenario so that we can lament how terrorists from the out-of-control Iranian nuclear labs killed Tensing and Djinni, and Bobby too. There'll be universal support when the President asks me to serve as his next Veep so that the country will all pull together. I'm your best bet."

I lowered the laser. This really was the luckiest, or the most clever, politician on earth. We shook hands on the deal. As I headed to the phone to call in a crew for planting the right evidence, I said to him, "Jeff, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

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