Ark of Fire

CHAPTER 39

Enraged, Stan MacFarlane snapped shut his cell phone.

Aisquith and the woman were in Oxford.

Although the how of it eluded him, the why was plainly evident. Somehow they’d managed to find out that the medieval knight Galen of Godmersham had uncovered the Ark of the Covenant while on crusade in the Holy Land. The museum director, Eliot Hopkins, must have passed that information on to Aisquith before his death.

“Do you want me to take care of it, sir?”

Stan glanced over his shoulder. He knew that former gunnery sergeant Boyd Braxton was anxious to make amends for the debacle in Washington.

“Sometimes it’s in one’s best interest to be merciful.”

It took a few moments for the other man’s befuddled expression to morph into an amused grin. “Oh, I get it, Colonel. Like Tony Soprano, you want to keep your friends close and your enemies even closer.”

That being as good an answer as any, Stan tersely nodded. “Tell Sanchez to put a tail on Aisquith. I want to know the Brit’s every move.”

Turning on his heel, he strode down the low-ceilinged hall, his booted footfall muffled by the well-worn Persian runner. On either side of him hung gilt-framed landscape paintings.

A tastefully appointed house for the discriminating traveler.

When he leased the house on the website, he hadn’t given a rat’s ass about the décor. He only cared that the manor house was located midway between London and Oxford at the end of a half-mile oak-lined driveway. He needed a base camp to set up operations. Oakdale Manor fit the bill.

Brusquely nodding, he acknowledged the armed sentry standing ramrod straight beside the upholstered chair. The Heckler & Koch MP5 clutched to the sentry’s chest came courtesy of a sergeant major in the Royal Marines who routinely padded his retirement account with illegal small-arms sales.

Passing the age-blackened doors that led to the formal dining room, he gave a quick, cursory inspection, verifying that his highly paid contract worker was busy deciphering Galen of Godmersham’s archaic poetry. A postgraduate student enrolled in Harvard’s medieval studies program, the scraggly-haired twenty-nine-year-old had jumped at the chance to pay off the nearly seventy thousand dollars in student loans that hung over him like a well-honed ax blade. Soft-spoken and effeminate, the man put Stan in mind of a loose bowel movement. If not for the fact that he possessed the arcane body of knowledge necessary to decipher the fourteenth-century quatrains, he would have cut the stoop-shouldered pencil dick after yesterday’s meeting with the Oxford highbrow. For the moment, however, he served a purpose.

Satisfied to observe the bespectacled scholar intently staring at his laptop, an eight-hundred-year-old map of England spread out on the table beside him, Stan continued down the hall to the kitchen.

For some reason the stone-floored country kitchen put him mind of his grandmother’s kitchen back home in Boone, North Carolina. Maybe it was the green-mottled crockware that lined the open shelves. Or the scarred wood-planked table that dominated the center of the room. Whatever the reason, he could envision his aproned grandmother standing at the oversized gas stove frying up some freshly laid eggs with big slabs of salted ham.

Reduced to eating English slop, he cut himself a thick slice of bread from the loaf that’d been left on the table. Slathering it with plum jam, he carried it over to the casement window that overlooked the garden. Through the gnarled branches of dead wisteria that framed the outside of the window, he could see a fine-looking white horse frolicking in a distant field.

How much did Aisquith know?

Probably not much. That’s why he was in Oxford consulting with the foremost expert on the English crusaders. How ironic that the two men were acquainted with one another. The intelligence dossier on Aisquith had made no mention of the relationship. Luckily, he’d had the foresight to buy off the housekeeper.

Still it was troubling to discover that Aisquith knew about the quatrains. Although given that he possessed the sole copy of the quatrains outside Duke Humfrey’s Library and given that the library was only open to Oxford faculty and students, the Brit didn’t have a prayer of examining the original codex. Without the quatrains, Aisquith was just pissing in a gusty wind.

He glanced at his watch.

It was 1331 local time.

He’d hoped to have the quatrains deciphered by now, his excitement mounting with each passing hour. No doubt this was how Moses felt when he crafted the Ark of the Covenant, placing inside it the two stones inscribed with the Ten Commandments. With the creation of the Ark, Moses had ushered in a new world order. The hinge of history had swung upon the Ark. And it would soon swing again.

Praise be to the Almighty! For the battle is the Lord’s.

Although he knew that he had a tough fight ahead of him, he took solace in the knowledge that he would have at the ready the best weapon a soldier could have.

For twenty-five years he’d been readying himself. Love of God. Purity of heart. Cleanliness of mind and body. Those were the qualities of the Ark guardian.

Harliss, a burly ex-Marine, now a “consultant” with Rosemont Security, poked his head into the kitchen. “Sir, he’s got something for you.”

Knowing that “he” referred to the Harvard scholar, Stan headed for the dining room.

“What do you have?” he barked without preamble as he entered the room. The side chairs had all been pushed to one wall, enabling a free flow of movement around the large oval-shaped table. Several framed paintings were on the floor, propped against the same wall.

The scholar walked over and dimmed the overhead chandelier, a PowerPoint slide projected onto the now-pictureless dining room wall. Stan found himself staring at the four quatrains that Galen of Godmersham had composed prior to his death.

The despitous Zephirus rood forth from Salomon’s Cite jubilant they sang

But a goost forney followed as a tempest of deeth

Repentaunt for his sins the shiten shepherd yeve penaunce

Thanne homeward he him spedde the ill-got treasure on holy stronders

From Jerusalem a companye of knights in hethenesse they ryden out

Ech of hem made other for to winne on the heeth of Esdraelon

They bataille ther to the deeth the vertuous knight the feeld he woone

And ther-withal chivalrye he kepte wel the holy covenaunt

This ilke worthy knight from sundry londes to Engelond he wende

Arca and gold ful shene he carried to the toun he was born With open yë he now did see the blake pestilence he wrought And whan this wrecche knight saugh it was so his deeth ful well deserved

Sore weep the goos on whom he truste for oon of hem were deed

I couthe not how the world be served by swich adversitee

But if a manne with ful devout corage seken the holy blissful martir

In the veyl bitwixen worlds tweye ther the hidden trouthe be fond

“Just as you thought, this word arca is the key to deciphering the quatrains.” Using a pointer, the younger man indicated the third quatrain. “Arca, of course, is the Latin word for ‘chest.’”

Because the bespectacled nimrod hadn’t told him anything he didn’t already know, Stan made no reply. Although he’d provided his paid scholar with a high-speed Internet connection enabling him to hook into the world’s best libraries, he’d parsed his words carefully, refusing to disclose the details of the mission.

By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy.

Not one to disobey God’s dictates, Stan intended to do all in his power to ensure that the unholy did not cast their gaze upon the Ark. The scholar had merely been told that he and his men represented a consortium of art collectors trying to track down a medieval chest believed to have been buried in the mid-fourteenth century somewhere in England. If his Harvard-educated boy wonder wondered at the trio of armed guards, he’d been wise enough to keep his own counsel. Unbridled greed had a way of making a man turn a blind eye.

When no reply to his “arca” comment was forthcoming, the pasty-faced scholar nervously rubbed his hands together. “Slowly but surely, it’s all coming together. I’ve got the first three quatrains more or less figured out, but I’m still trying to hammer out quatrain number four. Don’t you guys worry. I’m guessing that I’ll have this baby cracked in the next couple of hours.”

“You’ve been deciphering the verses since late yesterday. I had expected some tangible results by now.” Stan made no attempt to hide his annoyance; the scholar was unaware that he was working on a carefully crafted timetable.

“Hey, you can’t rush these things. Although I can tell you that the four quatrains form a rectilinear allegory.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Boyd Braxton muttered, staring at the scholar as though he were a turd on the bottom of his boot heel.

Smirking, the turd replied, “For those of us who never took geometry, I am referring to the four-sided geometric configuration known as a square.”